Sunrise to sunset.

Here's the sunrise from my window. At the end of this post, you'll see a picture of the sunset from my window. Hence, the title of this post.

I have (had) a new tradition that occurs (occurred) whenever I rode (would ride) my Sevici back home (I'm sorry, that was really annoying; I'll try to never do that again). Anyways, near the end of Lopez de Gomara is a stretch of orange trees with particularly low-hanging fruit. Before the city of Sevilla ruined my tradition by sending a crew of a dozen-ish men to pick the oranges off those trees (they do it periodically to most of the orange trees in the city), I would always pick an orange off its branch while riding and drop it into my Sevici's basket. Then, whenever I'd come across a parked Sevici with a orange in the basket, I would snicker to myself. Well, so much for that tradition. By the way, I'm writing/editing this on limited time, so please forgive any grammar mistakes :)



Picture of the river, in case you were wondering.

McDonald's BBQ Chicken Burger. 1€. Awesome. Legit. Other overused positive adjective. That's all.



Here's a picture of people relaxing. Like we will be this weekend. Read on if you want to know more! Extra credit if you can find Claire, Jenna, and Amanda in this picture.

So this weekend (well, in two hours) Kane, Tori, Stephanie, Caprice, and I are heading out on a road trip down south! We're gonna go to Jerez, Gibraltar, Estepona/Marbella, and various villages in the Pueblos Blancos. I'm really excited to see more of Spain and take a bunch of pictures, so the next blog post will probably have some new scenery in it! Also, I realized I have a trip for the next 6 weekends, including and not limited to Toledo, Majorca, Granada, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid (those last three are gonna be with Taisa over my spring break!). I feel like I'm gonna be incredibly exhausted by the end of it all, but am really excited nonetheless. I would love prayer for safety and health throughout that time!



Another reason I'm excited about this weekend? I done with the first wave of tests and presentations. Had my fourth test on Wednesday, and that 50 minute presentation about photography today. We went outside for a little and I did a quick demo for the class (thank you to Jon and Kane for modeling, to Kaitlyn, Allison, and Karina for being flash-holders, and to random guy of the street for Tebowing with Jon and Kane). Regarding the speaking aspect of the presentation, my grammar was pretty atrocious, but hey, it's over. And at least I got to choose what I wanted to talk about!



Something I forgot to mention. I got to play trumpet with a random German guy I met on the street a couple weekends ago! I was riding my bike down this street named Tetuan with a bunch of stores (kind of like their State St., for you Santa Barbara folk), and I heard the sound of a trumpet coming down an alley. I biked up that way to investigate, and saw a blonde guy sitting on a step outside of an old catholic church, hidden amongst the mix of commercial buildings and apartments of the Centro. I waited til the end of his song, and then told him "Bien hecho!", (never know how to punctuate this kind of thing) at which point I realized he didn't speak Spanish. I introduced myself, found out his name was Alex and he was traveling around Europe for a year, told him I played trumpet too, and then made with him to play together the next day. This picture above is the place where we played, in case you're especially curious (taken about a week after the fact, for purposes of my own personal nostalgia :).



A couple more things about Spanish culture. Taxes are already included in the price you see on food, clothes, everything. Even these cookies you see above (the off-brand ones on the right cost 54 euro cents, so naturally I eat them a lot). SO convenient. WYSIWYG. Come on America, get with the program. However, a point that I think America does right is meal times. I was realizing the other day that it's a lot harder to be productive here in the afternoon because we end up eating two meals after school (and they're meals that already generally last longer than those in the states). So, instead of getting lunch quickly out of the way (not saying it's not enjoyable, just saying it can be done quickly) in the midst of classes, lunch and dinner are both after class, knocking a significant number of hours out of the day. Something else that I'm needing to get used to is writing tests on blank paper. That's all we get, several sheets of white printer paper. Apparently that's how all tests are done here, and lined paper is what the kids use in grade school. We got into a discussion about it in Literature, and Salva, our professor, was amazed that we use lined paper at our age in the States.



The things you hear while biking... A while back, I was biking on Argentina when I overheard a Mom saying to her to kids, "Pero, la caca de caballo..." Kind of bummed I missed the end of that conversation.

We were at McDonald's (I'm too lazy right now to look up whether that requires an apostrophe or not, so I'm gonna go with it) earlier this week, but Kane said something that was really funny. Well, I'm gonna say "seemed funny at the moment in light of the context" just in case you don't think it's funny. Anyhow, Kane forgot his money at home, so Caprice gave him her wallet to go buy him and her some food, and Kane's response was: "Caprice, how mad would you be if I paid with your ten instead of with the coins because I don't want to count the fifty cent pieces, because there are six of them? I guess I already counted them. But still, how mad would you be?"



Well, onto the highlight of my week. What an incredible night. Saturday evening a group of us from Iglesia Bautista and various other evangelical churches and ministries in town met up at Puerto Jerez (right by our school) to go pass out food and jackets, and also offer prayer and a phone number for an organization that helps get people off the street in Spain. I was a bit nervous, because I wasn't sure how we would get split into groups, and how the conversations would go, but it became very clear that this was what God had planned for me for the evening.

Our group of six was assigned to go up to the Alameda, an area north of the Centro, but we didn't find anyone homeless people in the area. We kept walking northeast-ish, in hopes of finding someone, and after a while got to a neighborhood of town called Macarena. We finally came to the intersection of two small streets, one of which was kind of darker and had two men sitting on a ledge, about halfway down its length. The girls in our group (we had four girls and two guys) were a bit nervous about approaching two grown men in a dark alley-like street, so they suggested that just Andres and I head down if we wanted to. So, Andres and I started down the street, a little bit warily, and when we got to the men we asked them "Disculpe, ¿Ustedes quieren algo para comer?". One of them responded, a bit confused at what we were asking, and as soon as he spoke I heard a thick Russian accent in his Spanish. I asked them if they spoke Russian, and lo and behold, both of them did! The conversation that followed was the most meaningful conversation I've ever had with strangers in Russian. We gave them both some of the food and juice that we had while Igor (from Latvia) explained that his documentation had been stolen (or so he claimed) and he couldn't get work or open up new papers, and that Nicolai (from Ukraine) didn't have enough money to fly back to his family. Afterwards, we prayed for the two of them, and as we ended I could see tears in Nicolai's eyes. Definitely a powerful experience that left me in those "wow, something really awesome just happened" type of shivers. As Tori put it afterwards, I never thought I would end up speaking this much Russian (almost more than I speak in California) in Spain.

Igor also invited us to come back, since he usually just hangs out in the same place, so last Tuesday after class I biked over to that area again and found him in the very same spot, like he had said. A great conversation that ensued, although I heard probably more words that sound a like the Russian word for pancake and like the English word for "kto" than I've ever heard in my life :) I got a little bit of Russian food from the Russian store (and also met a guy named Anatoliy who's from Brest; unfortunately, he didn't know anyone of the last names that I named for him) for us to eat, and it was SO GOOD! Never thought I'd miss хрен so much :) It was probably a kind of funny sight, now that I think about it, the two of us eating колбаса, черный хлеб, и хрен together on a small Spanish street while Igor recounted his story with a plethora of Russian expletives. Well, all that to say, God definitely made himself clear to me this week. If you could pray for the Lord to soften their hearts, I would really appreciate it!



Well, I need to start packing for our trip, so I should probably come to an end. Here's the sunset. Until next time! Tsa luego!

An Incurable and Infectious Malady.

Hola todos! Welcome to my week. You must be wondering if I've contracted a disease. Well, you'll just have to read this whole post to find out.

But first, some pictures. This is where I live!



This is the Puente de Triana. I think its actual name is Puente de Isabel III or VII or XII or MMMXMVIII, but it leads to Triana so most call it the Puente de Triana. If someone's new to the city, you can usually just say "the circle bridge" and they'll know what you mean (hopefully). Interesting fact about Triana: it used to be its own city and the river wasn't joined by any bridges, so some people still say "I'm going to Sevilla" when they're crossing over the Guadalquivir over towards the Centro.



Ahh. The elephant sculpture. From the bridge, this looks like a modern art elephant. Not as much from this angle, but still. Tyler, I don't know if you're gonna read this at any point, but I'm sticking with my elephant hypothesis.



Crew (if that's what you call this; I just always think Social Network when I see people doing this). Anyhow, because boats don't really come through here, small watercraft traffic is common (that sounds like something out of a boring travel book).



Here's another view of the trendy elephant and circle bridge.



On the left is the Torre del Oro, and on the right is the Torre del Mad Controversy. This skyscraper (currently at about half of its proposed height) is a kind of big subject of late because UNESCO has said it would remove Sevilla's World Heritage status if the building was completed (because it would overshadow the Giralda of the cathedral). It seems like people are pretty divided about it: my host dad approves of it (he says all historical cities, even Paris, have a modern sector with modern buildings) as does one of my professors, but another one of my professors says it's not only a bad choice in terms of culture but also in light of the economic plight of Spain right now.

Okay, now on to my week.

Monday. The convent. Oh boy. So last week, we met the kids that we'd be working with for our Acción Solidaria service learning class. They were great, clearly a bit rowdy, but it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and they were generally cooperative. However, Monday rolls around (my and Jules's day for working at the convent) and they put us both in a classroom and have us teach the kids English, either one kid or two kids to each of us. I started with Rocio, who wanted to learn for about the first fifteen minutes of the hour, and then proceeded to not want to learn. Tania, however, upped the ante a little bit and decided she only wanted to learn for about three minutes (did I use that expression correctly?). It seems that the moment you try to have any authority over them, they cease to be responsive to the things you say; what can I say though, they warned us that this would be the hardest Acción Solidaria site! Regardless, they're really fun kids and also kids that need a lot of love (most of them have parents that couldn't support them or were incarcerated, so their kids were given up to the convent), so I'm hoping that in the weeks to come I'll be able to find ways of teaching them that keep them engaged and keep them having fun. Anyways, I'd love your prayer for that!

I had three tests this week. Needless to say, I'm glad the week's over! I was actually gonna have four, but Salva, our Spanish lit prof, got sick, so it was bumped to next week. I was gonna put a smiley somewhere in there, but don't want to appear heartless. Entonces, next week I'll have that test, and then on Friday I have to give a presentation for fifty minutes in grammar class. I don't think I've ever given a fifty minute presentation in English, let alone Spanish.



For a while now, I have wanted (the past perfect is probably more correct here, but it still doesn't express really well what I intend to say) to visit the "other river" in town (which I have dubbed the Quadlguivir), and this week Kane and I did! Whenever you look at Sevilla in Google Maps (http://g.co/maps/qecza), you see that there are two rivers running through town. Turns out, según Katie Wiggins (one of the great staff members at school!), the "river" we walk over to school every day is really a canal, and the other river is the actual Guadlquivir. I read somewhere that they diverted the original river because it would flood the city in the rainy seasons all too often.



Anyhow, I like this river better than the canal. It's actually blue, and has plants along its river banks (rather than concrete). My kind of river.

I've got a couple other exciting developments from this week to share! A few days back, I went to the Russian store for the third time to get some more chocolate-covered halva with a couple friends, and I spoke with the Russian ladies currently there for a good ten minutes. I got to know the owner (I'm assuming she's the owner, she's the only one I ever see working there), Valentina, a bit, and then also met some nice older Russian ladies that like hanging out/shopping there (Nina and Alla; typical slavic names, in case you're not savvy with your Russian culture facts). Since then, I've gone in two more times, and Valentina refuses to let me pay for the halva! We're friends!! So excited about this.

On to the next subject:



I found practice rooms! They're not free (€59/month), but I really need a place to practice trumpet and piano, and this place is pretty great. I'm also secretly hoping Dr. Shasberger somehow sees this blog post and knows that I'm preparing for orchestra tour (wink wink, Rebecca ;).



This is my favorite piano in the building. Coincidentally, it's also the best-tuned piano in the building. Also, I have a plethora of stands to choose from, should I get picky.



On top of it all, this is my view from the window.

This past Monday (I believe it was Monday, at least...) it was 0°C when I biked to school. That's a bit chillier than I'm used to. Also, today was the first substantially cloudy day we've had. I was even attacked by a few drops of rain while biking to McDonalds this evening. By the way, McDonalds here is classy. They have free WiFi (pronounced "weefee" in Spain) and the inside is rather swanky. Not like McDonalds in the states.

I wanted to share something from Don Quijote with you. Like I've mentioned before, I'm really loving this class! Here's a line from Chapter 6 (in English, just for you) where those closest to Don Quijote are deciding which of his books to burn (because it's due to his books that he's gone crazy and thinks he's a knight).

"'Ah, senor!' said the niece, 'your worship had better order these to be burned as well as the others; for it would be no wonder if, after being cured of his chivalry disorder, my uncle, by reading these, took a fancy to turn shepherd and range the woods and fields singing and piping; or, what would be still worse, to turn poet, which they say is an incurable and infectious malady.'"

See what I mean?! Pretty hilarious. Well, I think so. And now you know that I'm not actually suffering from a contagious deadly sickness, but rather have taken up quoting literature (perhaps still a contagious deadly sickness?).

Last topic for the night:



We found good Mexican food!! Ok, by good, I mean good by our Spain standards for Mexican food, but we actually liked the place a lot. The staff were super nice, gave us extra chips on the house ("invita la casa" I believe is the phrase here), let us wear authentic sombreros (they were heavy!) while we ate, gave us all flowers (they gave them to the girls, so I teased them about getting me one -- they left and came back with the female waitress, who gave me a flower :), and had a guy walking around playing guitar and singing Mexican songs. We even tipped. No one tips here, but we were that pleased with the service :)



Ah, here he is! Our favorite guitar player. When we left, the staff told us to come back soon, and I know we will!

They also just called me and said I should get some sleep, so I'm gonna listen.

Adio! Tsa luego!

C'ordeaux Ba.

Hey there. I think it's probably time for me to post again. So here goes nothing. By the way, this was written (will be written, is being written, depending on what Mark is talking at this point) over the course of an afternoon/evening and various comings and goings, so the timeframe might be a little confusing. I'll extend that statement over the whole of my blog posts. They never really seem to get written in one sitting. So now, on to Mark of the past (several hours ago past).

Today, I was biking to here (I really wanted to say that -- also, by "here," I mean Café de Indias) and while I was riding down Calle Something, I collided with a leaf falling from a tree. If I was artsier, I'd say something along the lines of "the fluttering leaf, in the midst of its downward transcendence towards the cobblestones, gently embraced the basket of my crimson bicycle, before drifting to its friends on the ground several moments later." But no, I collided with a leaf. Chocar, if you will. Or would it be atropellar? Hmmmm. There's another question for Carmen (she's our grammar teacher). Anyhow, I really like biking through the city in the afternoon. It's relaxing.

Also during my bike ride, I drafted a tram for about half a second. It was pretty cool.

Well, I figure I'll show you some pictures of our trip last week, and then if you're still interested, you can keep reading the rest of my scattered thoughts después.

Córdoba. The name originates from the French expression "c'ordeaux ba," which means "city of good repute." Okay, maybe not, but it was worth a try. Last Friday (hey, exactly a week ago!) todo el mundo (that means everyone, mom) went on a day trip to Córdoba, about two hours from Sevilla.



And thus begins our trip. This was our bus, and on the left, our pitstop along the way. I got leche manchada, which translates literally to stained milk. But that's how you order coffee when you want a lot of milk in it. We learned that in grammar class. How convenient.



We saw this during our drive. Probably one of the coolest engineery kind of things I've seen here yet. According to the one and only Caleb Hamstra, the mirrors you see on the ground are all parabolic mirrors and focus the sun's light on the tower. Inside the tower is a reservoir of water that gets heated with the mirrors, and then the steam produced makes electricity. AWESOME.



Ah, here we are! Córdoba.



Here are some outside details of the cathedral/mosque I told you about near the end of the last post.



Okay, I know I had a fountain picture in the last post, but I'm having a lot of fun with these. Bear with me.



Some details inside the mosque part of the building.



Now for the cathedral part.



Writing. Glad it's not written in Papyrus ;)



After the cathedral, we headed over to a Jewish museum (our Tres Culturas class deals with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, so we got to see a bit of all three). These are some views along the walk towards the museum. Note the juxtaposition of complementary colors. Art teachers, hope you're proud!





This was one of my favorite parts of the day. At the end of our tour through the museum, we were able to listen to this guy play and sing a couple of Jewish songs. It was really beautiful (and I don't use that word often). It remind me a lot of some more folksy-genre songs I've heard before. If anyone knows what this instrument is called, let me know!



This, if I understood correctly, is the only Jewish temple that wasn't destroyed during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian peninsula. Correct me if I'm wrong, SIS people, because for some reason that fact doesn't seem right to me.



Ventana, hoja. Ventoja.



That wall behind us is older than Kane's age and my age multiplied. Actually, I don't know that.





Fido.







Some of the bros.







Picture time over.

Now I'm at Starbucks. Café de Indias didn't have power outlets, and my battery was dying a tragic not-too-slow death. Just saw a guy walk by outside with the lowest V-neck I've seen in ages. Well, it was a really wide one too. Maybe it was a women's shirt. Who knows.

Let me start that part over.

Now I'm at Starbucks. If I look right above my laptop, I'm looking at Europe's largest cathedral in the afternoon sun. That sounds better than talking about salmon-colored V-neck shirts. Also, if I look right below my laptop, I see a table.

Today after class, Caprice and I went to the Russian store and bought chocolate-covered halva (a typical Russian sweet [the noun, not the adjective]); I think it's crushed sunflower seeds and sugar). They were good.

The other day I learned (by virtue of Wikipedia, whilst researching for one of my grammar class compositions) that much of southern and central California's landscape (a lot of what you see when first heading north of SB) is what they call oak savannah. Lived in Santa Barbara all my life, yet I never knew that. What a shame.

Speaking of research, Michelle, Claire, and I had to give a presentation on Shiite Islam on yesterday. A fifty minute presentation, at that. I don't think I've ever given a fifty minute presentation in English.

I have a bit of bad news, and a bit of good news. We'll start with the bad news. In the beginning of the week I lost one of my gloves. I had it in my jacket pocket after getting to my destination (somewhere in the city, I'm not sure where I was because I don't know when I lost it) and I guess it fell out. Or a left-handed one-handed (in this scenario, the hand that would be gone would be the right hand) pickpocket picked my pocket (say that five times fast) with his previously-ungloved left-hand. In any case, my hands have been about 20 degrees colder than usual whilst (that word reminds me of Zaunius's class in high school when we had a New Zealandish [New Zealish?] exchange student in our class) biking to school this week. This morning was substantially colder than the other mornings this week, and when I got off my bike, I could hardly feel my hands.

Now for the good news. Today, Maricarmen gave me a late birthday present! She bought me gloves!!! What an awesome host mom. We also made pizza together tonight. Except when I got the oregano out, she had this disgusted look on her face. I am convinced that Maricarmen doesn't like any with flavor :) I tried to find if we had basil, but instead quickly found out that the Spanish word for basil isn't "basilico." I looked it up on WordReference so I could ask Maricarmen, and saw that it was "albahaca." However, I accidentally said "albajaca." Turns out, a "jaca" is a pony, and "alba" (like my host sister's name) means white. So I asked if we have any white pony to put on the pizza. Suprisingly, we didn't. And we didn't have basil either.

I went all the way to the top of my building a few days back to see if I could get on the roof. The door at the top was locked of course and the only one of my keys that fit wouldn't open it, but I asked Maricarmen if you can get on the roof and she said yeah! Stayed tuned for 10th-story discoveries in one of the next couple blog posts.

Couple of pretty staggering facts about Christianity in Spain. Según (according to) Marcos (the youth pastor at Iglesia Bautista), only 0.018% of Spain is evangelical Christian. There are over 7,000 cities in Spain that don't have a single person in them who knows the hope that Christ offers. Like I said, pretty staggering… keep Spain and the Christian ministries here in your prayers!

Well, I need to get some sleep. Miss all you guys back home and hope all is well! Panch, Carson, others: do a waffle countdown to some helpless freshman in my honor.

Tsa luego!

Andalucians, Quijote, y El Alcázar.

So maybe I lied. This one isn't shorter. Just letting you know so you don't feel swindled when you realize how much time you've wasted reading my random musings...

I was typing in Spanish the other day, thought the word "cuando," and typed "when." Go figure.

The accent in Andalucia is really interesting. Spanish here sometimes sounds a bit like Italian. For instance, the first night that I got to my house, Victor (whose name they pronounce "Veetso") was showing me around and it took me a little bit to realize that the word "etse" meant "este." But that's just how they pronounce things! In the Andalucian accent, it's also common to drop the letter "s" from the ends of words. For instance, "hasta las nueve" becomes "hatsa la nueve." Another idiosyncrasy, to use a shnazzy word, is swallowing the "d" in words ending in "-ado." So, when I meet people now, I say "encantao" instead of "encantado" (they're not as big on "mucho gusto" on this side of the Atlantic). Regarding words that aren't said here, you'll get looked at funny if you say computadora, ahorita, chido, refrigerador, etc. Here they say ordenador, ahora mismo, guay, frigerífico. Oh Spain.

Other differences between Spain and Mexico: THE FOOD. For some reason (and I know I'm not the only one to have made this rather naïve assumption), I expected Spanish food to be at least a little bit similar to Mexican food, seeing as they speak the same language. Well, definitely not true. It seems that people here in general aren't bit fans of spicy food. And not just spicy food, but most spices in general. They like mayo, frying things in olive oil, and seafood. But that's ok. A lot of the food is pretty good actually. Just a lot more European than I expected.

More words I'm learning in Spanish before English: appertain, picaresque, Bucephalus.

I'm also realizing how weird some things we say in English are. For instance, let's consider the word "any." It makes complete sense to me in contexts like, "Are there any cats left in the catamaran?" However, what about the sentence, "Can you turn the music up any louder?" What does "any" mean there? Or how about the word "never." Often when we forget to do something and later realize it, we say, "Shoot! I never went to Costco!" However, that's in fact not the case. We've definitely been to Costco before. So why do we say "never?" Just some food for thought.

Classes. My classes have been good! I start off the day with Spanish literature with Salva, who is hilarious! The first day of class he told us about the time he visited the states. He was staying with a family in Moorpark, and one afternoon decided to go on a walk. He knew he just had to remember that his house had an American flag out front and a basketball hoop...hahah, needless to say, he got lost. Also, he was astonished at American flooring. You see, carpets don't really happen much out here in Spain. They've got hard floors pretty much everywhere, or at least everywhere I've been. My next class is Don Quijote, with José María. He is incredibly knowledgeable (I was gonna say smart, but it didn't sound as sophisticated). He also teaches my fourth class, Tres Culturas. He calls himself more of a historian than a literature type of guy, but he definitely knows his lit, especially since he's teaching a whole class on one book. My third class, between Quijote and Tres Culturas, is Gramática Avanzada with Carmen. I love this class. It always goes by really quickly, and I feel like everything we're learning comes up all the time when I head home for the day. I've also really liked the Quijote class. The language is definitely archaic at points, but Cervantes is a genius. The whole book is a huge parody on a really popular genre of the 16th and 17th century, los libros de caballerías (books about knights-errant). The fact that he wrote a novel as immense as Quijote that is complete satire is really impressive. And he wrote it so well that a lot of people at the time thought it was just a really good book within the genre of the caballerías. Here are some facts that we learned in that class yesterday:

Don Quijote contains 88,431 words, of which about 22,800 are unique.

The normal person in the 16th and 17th centuries had a grasp of 13,000-15,000 words.

In the 19th century, the number had diminished to 10,000-12,000 words.

Hoy en día, the average person has a grasp of only about 5,000 words.

On top of that, kids that drop out of school early (or I think that's what José María was saying) utilize only about 500-1,000 words for all their communication.

Pretty crazy. I remember our 12th grade English teacher comparing the book 1984 to what's happening in our world today, and he brought up that example.

PSA: It's really windy outside right now.

Anyhow, on to some picture! For Steph's birthday, we went to the palace. It was really beautiful. Hope these pictures convey that!



This is what we thought was the entrance, until we tried to enter and found out it was the exit. Whoops.



Here's Stephanie, me, and Caprice! Steph and Caprice are rooming together here and both go to Wheaton.



A couple details inside and outside the palace.



Caprice, yours truly, and Jules enjoy probably the most elaborate bench we've ever sat on.



Pots.



Stairs.



Old Stuff.



Ladies. By the way, our program has 9 guys and somewhere over 30 girls. Westmont ratio, anyone?



I'm done writing captions. Feel free to think of your own!







They had peacocks!

Well, I'm out. Next blog post: our trip to Córdoba! We went yesterday with our whole group (instead of having class :) and I'm excited to show you guys pictures of the cathedral/mosque we visited (the building's been both Muslim and Christian; crazy!).

Tsa luego!