Spring Break Traveling: Paris

Paris. The land of beautiful monuments, delectable baguettes, and accordion music. On the other hand, the land of tedious lines, overcrowded museums, and burgers that cost more dollars than the number of seconds it takes light to travel 3.76 million miles (and that's a lot).

In this essay, I will be presenting an unbiased perspecti...HA. Read on if you'd like to read about our time in Paris. Despite the number of tourists per square inch and the astronomic gastronomic economic consequences (well that sure was laconic), I actually liked it quite a bit. We met this guy from New Jersey (I think...) in the airport that absolutely hated Paris for those reasons, but you know what they say: http://bit.ly/yXnBPv. To be honest, a ton has happened since Ty and I visited Paris (translation: I'm way behind on blogging). Since then, Taisa and I visited Madrid, spent several days in Sevilla, a couple of my friends and I explored the Basque Country up in the north of Spain, our semester came to an end (with papers, finals, and everything else that the end of any semester entails), and our orchestra went to China. I'll be blogging about those in the weeks to come and have this vision that maybe, just maybe, I'll be caught up enough some day to blog about things within several days of them happening, as opposed to months. But now I'm just blabbing. On to Paris. Originally, I would've probably attempted to split this post into two, but in the interest of catching up on blogging, I'm just going to make this one huge super hiper (Rafaell is the besttttttt everrrrrrrr - shout out to mah man on da wes' coas' the big "R" forever) long post. Enjoy! (Sorry, I got "hacked," as they say these days...)



The plan was to meet my sister in Paris, so I booked myself a flight from Sevilla to Paris Orly about a month beforehand. The day before, I found out that Tori, Steph, Emily, Kayla, Katrina, and her sister Sarah (see Sarah, I told you I'd give you a shout-out!) were all on the same flight as me. Made for a much more enjoyable travel experience than flying alone. Once we got into Paris, Kayla, Katrina, Sarah, and I grabbed the RER B line into town (Orly is a convenient 15 kilometers 10 miles [woohoo, I can use miles now!] outside the city). I had realized the night before at somewhere around 2 am that I had no idea how to get to the hotel my sister and I were staying at, so I figured it'd be a good idea to figure that out. Luckily, they have apps for everything these days, including Paris's metro system...



I parted with the ladies at Châtelet Les Halles, one of the bigger stations in the city, and after two more transfers finally met up with Taisa. One of our good friends from Ty's Westmont days, Nick, actually lives in Paris currently, and he had graciously offered to spend time with us doing touristy things and showing us around. On our way to meet up with Nick, we made a stop at the Arc de Triomphe. My favorite part was probably the bro on the bottom right. I'm pretty sure he's saying something along the lines of, "What the? Really? Are you serious?"



Here we are! The weather the first day in Paris was a little on the gloomy side, as you can see (looking at this picture now after our China trip, what immediately comes to mind is smog, even though in Paris it really was overcast - if the city pictured were Beijing, it very well could have been a sunny day and still looked like this).



Picture with the flowers for mom. Picture with the metro for Filly...heh heh heh Fil :)



Our first meal in Paris! If you want to eat cheap in Paris and eat tasty food, baguettes and cheese are the way to go (we went for Camembert the first time). We found a little boulangerie/pâtisserie on our way towards the Eiffel Tower that had the best apricot pastry I have ever had. And it was under €2 too! Incredible, considering a meal at a not-very-expensive establishment can easily run you over €12.



A Seine-sational river... (insert Dsan's pun laugh here)



We found a famous monument! The name always escapes me.



Long exposure with the 70-200. It was kind of breezy, so I was worried the shot wouldn't work, but I spread the GorillaPod out pretty far and it ended up being pretty stable. Exif: 3 seconds, f/10, ISO 200.



Another long exposure. See if you can find the crazy heptagonal bokeh. Not exactly sure why that appeared where it did! Exif: 4 seconds, f/13, ISO 200.



Ty and I outside the Moulin Rouge. Some French (I'm assuming) bros jumped on the opportunity to take a picture with us as well; I'll put that one up when I put up all the Paris photos on Facebook. Bottom left is the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, top right you can see the Arc de Triomphe, and bottom right is an unusually empty Parisian metro.



The next morning we met up with Nick again and continued exploring. It was beautiful out - perfect weather!



The original facepalm.



More French-like things.



I believe this is Rue des Petits Carreaux. It's an awesome little street with cheese shops, bakeries, cafes, etc. We ordered coffee at a little cafe, then grabbed more baguettes and cheese, some jamón, and a jar of probably some of the best jam I've ever had so we could go eat...



...at the park!



Next we headed to the Pompidou, a modern art museum, which had great views of the city from the top level.



Some of my favorite works at the Pompidou.



After the museum, Nick had to head off, so Taisa and I deciding to keep walking about until it was time for church. At the top of this picture is some important building (if I remember correctly, it's a government building) and at the bottom is a restaurant that Mando and Hannah and I ate at when we were in Paris with our high school's jazz band five years earlier. My sister was luckily patient enough to let me try finding it.



Notre Dame.



Some more sights we saw during our meandering. People at cafes in Paris sit side-by-side and look out at the street. It's kind of interesting; we did it earlier that day when we were at Petits Carreux, and it was pretty fun people-watching inconspicously.





I really liked the river in Paris a lot. Taisa and I walked along it for a good bit; made for a really nice afternoon stroll.





Then we decided it was time for a photo session.



A couple hours after leaving the museum, the time for church came, so we ventured towards the church Nick had been attending in Paris, which had an evening service in English. At church, we met several of Nick's friends, with whom we went out for food afterwards. Two of these friends that I should particularly mention are Chrissie and Owen. Chrissie, as it turns out, is actually Snow White (she works at Disneyland Paris) and Owen is an aerospace engineer (let me know if you prefer another title, Owen) in England. We also found out that the two of them weren't working the next day, had plans to go to Disneyland, and had two extra tickets. What are the chances? Our flight out of Paris was the next day (originally), but it was in the evening, so...



...we went to Disneyland with our new friends! Please note the Don Quijote and Sancho Panza in the Small World ride.



Because Chrissie works at the park, a lot of the other actors and actresses working that day knew her. This included Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, who took a good ten minutes of their time to mess with us, dance with us, and skip with us. Lots of fun. Well, after a good numbers of rides, dashing madly to catch up with the Stars 'n' Cars parade, and meeting a coworker of Chrissie's from Cadiz (a town really close to Sevilla), the time soon came to part. Chrissie and Owen, if guys are reading this, thank you so much for spending time with us obnoxious Americans :) Anyhow, we bought our metro tickets for the Orly Airport and began the long haul from the completely opposite side of Paris. Little did we know...



...we'd be spending another night in the city of light. We got to the airport, found out that are flight was cancelled, and then spent the next three hours waiting in a line with probably about one hundred people in it. We made some good friends, including a young family with a rambunctious young daughter named Luisa and another Spanish family with grown kids. One of the sons was a prison psychologist in the Grand Canary Islands, and we even talked about Don Quijote a little bit in Spanish because he saw that I was reading it in line.

We soon found out that the moody French air traffic controllers decided to go on strike, so our flight to Barcelona was cancelled. We headed back into the city at essentially midnight and walked around til we found a decent-looking hotel. We talked to the man working at the desk, and he told us it was full, but directed us to another hotel in the area...who also had only one guy on staff, but this one didn't speak English, Spanish, or Russian (we asked, just in case... :). Some five to ten minutes later we had communicated things sufficiently with each other and he directed us to our room. We were a little bummed about not getting to Barcelona that night, but happy to have a warm room for the night. And thankfully, the next day God bestowed us with the best weather we had had yet! With the sudden turn of events in our travel plans, we realized we now had a chance to go up the Eiffel Tower. Consequently (I don't use that connector often), we headed over toward that direction.







Tulips at a park right near the base of the tower. They were in full bloom and magnificent (I hardly ever use that word either).





And there she is! Is a tower a "he" or a "she" in French? I don't know. I'll stick with "she" for now.



A pretty incredible engineering feat, the tower is. #yoda



Views down from the tower. The park in the upper right is where I took most of my Eiffel Tower photos from.



We exchanged photo-taking favors with a Russian couple we met on the top of the tower. Also, I found out I had grown a little taller while studying in Spain. Afterward, Ty and I splurged a bit and had lunch at a cafe that was about a block from the tower. We could see it/her/the tower as we were eating (although you can't really tell to well in the picture).



Finally, we made it back to Paris Orly...to find out the flight we had been re-scheduled onto had been canceled as well. It soon became evident that Barcelona would no longer be in our travel plans for that week. The Iberia staff placed us on a flight from Paris to Madrid, but it was scheduled for late morning the next day. You know what that means! Airport sleep-over. Less comfortable than it already doesn't seem. We made several more friends while waiting in a couple hours of new lines, include the previously mentioned angst-filled guy from maybe New Jersey and the girl you see pictured above, also named Luisa (I think). It was her birthday that following day that we would be in the airport! Poor girl. She was super sweet and was handling the situation really well. Props, new friend. Props.

Well, believe it or not, eventually we got on a plane out of Paris. We were going to Madrid! And that will go in the next blog post. Congrats on making it this far in this post. You have proven that you are a true friend. Or that you just like spoilers and read the last lines of this post.

Anyhow, I should go. We're leaving to go mountain biking in Utah in forty minutes, so I have to pack up a few last things. Pray that the trip goes well and that there aren't any injuries!

Tsa luego!

朋友。回家。中國！

I'm not sure if that was right, but I figure I can have Daniel, Shanan, or Felix help me out somewhere down the road if it's not :) Basically, that's a summary of this post (which is a super-short update that I feel I should post to let you know that I made it home!).

First off, 朋友:

I wanted to thank all of my friends at SIS for their friendship this semester. You guys have been an incredible encouragement to me and I'm looking forward to seeing you down the road! Like I've said many a time before, there's always room for you guys in Santa Barbara, so come and pay us a visit! :) Also, a big thanks to everyone that came to Plaza de España Naboo on Saturday for the bocadillo potluck. Hanging out with y'all was the best way I could think of of ending my time in Spain, and I want you to know that you'll be sorely missed by one certain Belarusian kid. A shout-out to my frisbee bros for helping me desecrate the halls of a historical monument with a good game of Three Flags Up (Five Hundred, for everyone that is confused about the real name of the game). Good luck with finals, everyone! You got this!

Then comes 回家:

Filly, Ty, and my dad picked me up last night in LAX and brought me back to Santa Barbara. Couple things to note from the past 24 hours: Chipotle dinner, my sister's home-made lemon bars (my favorite dessert, and made with our home-grown lemons; you really can taste the distinct taste of our lemons in 'em!), eating breakfast with Filly (thanks mom for the delicious food!), biking a bit with Fil, moskovskaya kalbasa with hren and chorni hleb + tortilla chips and guacamole for lunch (hooray for multiculturalism), depositing Europe-expense-offsetting tax returns (albeit a very minimal offset), Pascucci's with my family and Kozachuki, and visiting the Bancrofts for a bit (minus Ape and Eli :( ).



Here's breakfast with Filly!

And lastly, 中國:

Our orchestra is going to China tomorrow! We're getting on a bus at seven tomorrow morning and hitting the road down to LAX. We'll be traveling for ten days to see and play in Beijing, Suzhou, and Shanghai. Pray for safe travels, good performances, and lots of fun and fellowship for all of us, as well as an easy transition for me to playing the new repertoire from this semester with the orchestra. Can't wait to see all of my buddies, including my two studly roommates and all my brass bros! Ahhhh!

Well, I'm going to bed! The fiend they call jet lag has not been my friend, and he will probably continue that trend in the next couple dozens of hours. Also, before I go: pray for Alison as she finishes up her finals and then travels for the next three weeks!

Ok, I'm out for realz now. Tsa luego!

Ronda. Round 2.

Here we go again!

By the way: I dare you type "Round 2" into Google Translate and translate it into Spanish.



About a month back, us SISers went to Ronda for the day. We had a pretty great time, but I'm gonna try to let the pictures do most of the talking instead of my words, for a couple reasons: it's almost 2 am, it's finals weeks, and the typical picture is worth a dozen words (that's how it goes, right?) cliché. The picture above is the view into the valley. I probably posted a similar picture when I talked about Ronda during our road trip, but hey, maybe you missed it the first time around.



We saw some birds and plants.



And then the bull ring!



Aimee gave me attitude; half of our program jumped; Emily, Kayla, Lauren, Sarah, and Kerianne smiled; and Steph and I followed suit.



Here's a wider shot of the bull ring. Also, this is unrelated, but Alba just started crying. Thought you'd like to know.



Then they brought out the bull and the torero, and the rest was just an emotional rollercoaster for everyone involved.



We then got to see the paths that they would lead the bull through before letting it out into the ring. Salva (my Spanish lit teacher) made noises at us from the top. That rope in the upper left-hand corner is attached to the door that lets the bull through into the passageway.



More great people, several additional plants, and a lamp.



Here you see a petrified bull, Cameron's impression of a football referee (it's spot on; you have to see it), a dried cherry tree, and an unpetrified horse.



After the bull ring tour, we had free reign to explore the city for a bit. Here's an iglesia that's in one of the main plazas in Ronda. The white and yellow color scheme is pretty big in Andalucia; whoever makes that yellow paint probably makes bank (it's always the same shade of yellow!).



Emily, Tori, and I then walked to the bus station so the ladies could by their tickets to ________ (I think it was Málaga, but I'm not sure enough to assert that), we grabbed ice cream on the way (I got strawberry...it was pretty swell), and then met up with some friends at El Lechugita, the cheap and tasty tapas place we found the first time we were in Ronda. I got one of the same things I got the first time, a pork loin skewer (brocheta de solomillo; basically, shashliki, for the Russian-speaking folk)...it was so good! Tender pieces of pork, onion, and fat (yes, chunks of fat) made for an awesome tapa.



One of my favorite views in Ronda.



We found this cool vista point (that we didn't realize our school tour would take us to just an hour later) that looked out over the river gorge and hung out for a while. We may have played ninja and planked up there, but I don't have photo evidence of it, so you'll have to go to Facebook to verify my claims.



Ah. So much to discuss here. First off, note Jon, Kerianne, and Yus trying the fruit on the olive-like tree. I'm still not sure if they were actual olives. I am sure that they were not very pleasing in the taste category (though if they were actual olives, the same would be true). Next, we have the bridge picture. Two words: the Hamstras :D



Old buildings galore.



Next, we went to this old abandoned building that has a huge staircase that descends down to the river (Michelle Obama has visited it, or so claimed the faded poster out front). We went down to the bottom, Salva had several of us share about different aspects of our experiences in Spain, and then we started the arduous trek back up.



Then we headed towards our bus, admiring the view from the huge bridge that connects the old and new parts of the city. Katie, our student ministry coordinator (one day I will learn and remember what her official title is; it's something along those lines...) got in trouble because some of us took too long taking pictures off of the bridge. Whoops! Sorry Katie :) That's a sheepish grin, not just a regular grinning grin. And I promise it wasn't just me!



Here's the valley once again, this time basking in the late afternoon light.



And here's the house I will one day buy... as Jessie's rewritten lyrics go, "Let's get hitched and buy that one [white] house in the south of Spain..."

And so ended our Ronda trip! Now for a couple of anecdotes/musings before I hit the hay.

A couple weeks back we had a movie night at our school and had free PIZZA and all kinds of other unhealthy goodies. Afterwards, some of us bros were still itching for something to do, and I just happened to have my frisbee with me, so we went to Parque de los Príncipes at 11 to throw the disc around. It was glorious. Tonight, we had a reunion and did the same thing. At 12:27, the security guard kicked us out, but it was a great hour and a half. We were definitely lacking some Lane Sauce though, if ya know what I mean.

Some of the telebasura, as Heather's intercambio called it, that is watched at my house here is the show Gran Hermano. I've heard we have/had it in the states as well: Big Brother? Well, rather than be a potentially interesting George Orwell tribute, it's a show where they stick a bunch of extremely-mature (verbal irony, not sarcasm; thank you Tori for looking that up) twenty-something-year-olds in a house and film them 24/7. They have different activities arranged for them to do, because life apparently gets boring sometimes (really? I thought they were all busy cheating on their respective significant others...[now that would probably count as sarcasm]), and one of the activities the other week was a choreographed dance that they were all required to participate in. Well, although the show itself wasn't too entertaining, Vitso (my 27-year-old host dad) pretending to dance was hilarious. If only I had gotten a video of it!

Two weeks ago, Alba started crying up a storm (mostly around 3 in the morning). I think it's because she subconsciously realizes I'm leaving soon ;) It's gotten better again lately, but the other day she did have a temper tantrum when her mom wouldn't give her the phone (in the middle of her conversation). Alba proceeded to lunge for the phone (they were both seated on the couch) while Maricarmen dodged her unrelenting attempts at seizing her quarry. It made for quite the comical scene. Speaking of Alba, a couple days ago, Tori asked me if I'd noticed if Alba had grown at all since I came to Spain. At first, I had trouble of thinking of anything in particular that had struck my attention, but in the time since then I think I've come to realize that Alba's speech has definitely developed a good bit in these past couple of months. For instance, today Alba was watching an episode of Caillou (cue annoyingly catchy theme song) and they kept repeating the phrase "platillo volante" (flying saucer). All of a sudden, I hear Alba say it with perfect pronunciation...kind of took me aback, seeing as she often has trouble with simpler phrases. Now that I think about it, I think it's the sound "ay" that is difficult for her, as she almost always says "fio" instead of "feo" (that's a pretty common word for Alba unfortunately...). Hahaha, I just remembered something else. This is my last Alba/Maricarmen story for now. Two days ago, Alba and Maricarmen were on the couch, and Alba knocked on the wall of the living room and said "vecinos!" (neighbors)... well, on the other side of that wall is our kitchen. I think spatial reasoning is still coming for her. Anyways, Maricarmen proceeded to ask her if she thought the vecinos were "buenos," and she responded with a yes. But Maricarmen added, "Pero pocito pesados, no?" (But a little annoying/difficult, no?), to which Alba responded, "Sí, y 'fios'" (refer to above translation of Alba's unique Spanish). Oh boy. Teaching 'em well from an early age.

Yesterday was my last Sunday at Prosperidad, the church I've been going to in Spain (no, once again, they don't teach the prosperity gospel there; it's the street name). It was sad saying bye to the friends I've made there and to the pastor and guys on the worship team, but I know I'll see them one day! YOLF (hope I'm using that correctly; I've just seen McClean and Becksters using it a substantial amount on Twitter, but I could be off on my usage here). It's been a great church family, and that's really what it feels like: a family (although I do think that half of the church is related to each other). What I've really enjoyed is hearing things that I've learned at Westmont in Spanish, like that fact that Jesus "tabernaculizó" ("tabernacled") among us, or that the gospel of Mark is a gospel of "acción" (action) because the writer always uses "de repente" (suddenly). There's something really unique about hearing those things in a different language; it kind of reinforces them in a neat way I didn't expect.

I am up to my elbows in papers this week, so I'd really love prayer! Today I (for the most part) finished my 6-page Don Quijote paper (and we have to 1.5 space it, not double!), and tomorrow I'm going to try to power through my Spanish lit paper (also needs to be at least 6-pages long, 1.5 spaced). We'll see how that goes, seeing as Quijote took me a good three days...I also have to do two grammar compositions and study for finals, which I'm taking this Thursday and Friday. AHHHHHHH. These past three days I've just been going to the practice rooms in the morning (I'm trying to milk my money's worth out of the remaining time I have there, and also get my chops as close to ready for orchestra tour as I can) and working on my papers whenever I get tired of playing, switching back and forth between my trumpet, the piano, and OpenOffice (free word-processing FTW) as needed. Then I eat lunch, and go study in a coffee shop, and then go back to the practice rooms around eight, and head home for dinner. On a brighter note, it's actually been really good being able to play trumpet consistently again. Also, we've gone out to breakfast twice in the past three days, which is AWESOME. I love breakfast.

I mentioned orchestra tour in that last paragraph. I want to mention it again, because it's coming up! A week from tomorrow I'll be flying to China with everyone. I can't wait! But first, there's this little thing called papers and final exams. Which are difficult when you don't sleep. So I'm gonna go to bed.

Tsa luego!