Home at last, sort of

So my plan was to go to my friend Ya'el's house when I got back. She lives relatively close to the San Fran airport where we were supposed to fly in. However, our plane from Madrid was late and consequently we missed our connection in Atlanta. It was either wait two days for a flight to San Fran or fly to Sac. So of course I fly to Sac but my luggage did not. Thank you so much to Lacey for picking me up and letting me crash there on such short notice. I'm not about to trek to Ya'el's with only one clean shirt I had in my carry-on, so tomorrow I'm headed back to Turlock to wait for my luggage. Sorry everyone, your presents are in the luggage. Since this blog was mainly to let family know where I was and what I was up to during my trip, I'll be discontinuing until I need it again (hopefully a study abroad Cuarnavaca, Mexico two winters from now). Thanks for all the comments and support. When I move to Cordoba (in the far future) you can all come visit.

Roma

Rome was wonderfu, very historic. So tired, had to sleep in the bus station last night. So many adventures to tell! I´ll be back in the states tomorrow night, back in Jackson on the 10th and back in Turlock the 16ish. Love you all, hope all is well. Gotta run.

¡Espana gano, Espana gano!

¡Espano gano, Espana gano! What a great day to be in Spain. What a bad day to be German in Spain. Yestday we came back early from the beach in Portugal to be back in time for the game. The beach was wonderful, the water was freezing, and it was challenging being in a place where for the first time I couldn´t understand anything anyone was saying and no one understood me. We were at the beach long enough for me to get a nice sunburn even after applying spf 30. When we came back, I watched most of the game with the family I´m staying with then met a friend to go to Plaza Mayor to watch the last ten minutes or so. 0-1 Espana! It was wild. I bought a flag and was jumping and cheering with the rest of them. I cracked up when the whole plaza was singing to ¨we are the champions.¨
Well, I gotta run. Our group is meeting in a few minutes. Tonight we´re meeting at the bus station to take the bus to Madrid to catch the plane to Rome! I bought a guide of rome and an italian dictionary, but all I could find was in Spanish. So I still have to practice while I´m there, ha ha.

¡Futbol!

The other night was one of the best nights I´ve had here. First, my roomate and I went to a concert in the old cathedral (12 centruy old) to see a professional choir from Germany. She actually made us late, so the first half was sitting in a courtyard and listening through the door. We went in after intermission. I can´t describe this cathedral. It´s too beautiful and immense for description. The music was the same way. It was all boroque choir music and it was fantastic. After that, my roomate ordered crappy paella at a pricey restaurant (I got a sprite that cost 2€).

Then we went for ice cream at Plaza Mayor and to watch the game. Spain won against Russia 3-0 (or 3-1 don´t remember). It was a madhouse! I got some good videos of the chaos. Imagine hundreds of people in Spain colors watching the game on a thirty foot screen and going crazy at every goal. When the clock finally ran out and Spain officially won the game, it went insane. We followed a stream of people up the road, singing and chanting and clapping. We all wound up at this plaza with a good size fountain. Tons of people were climbing in the fountain and all over the statue. Just tons of people everywhere! I really hope Spain wins the European Cup tomorrow in the game against Germany, cause if they do it´s going to be crazy.
Love you all. Don´t get sick from the smoke. I´m off to get some good paella.

Future Plans

Still enjoying Salamanca. The other day there was a brief but beautiful thunderstorm. Our window doesn´t have a screen so I stuck my head out and enjoyed the weather. I´m not enjoying class. The grammar teacher literally shouts the whole time. I think she might be hard of hearing. She gave me a massive headache with her shouting and when I tried to leave to go to bathroom (to get a few minutes of quiet) she wouldn´t let me. She said no one could go to the bathroom during class. I felt like I was five. I do like the teacher in the conversation class. She talks at a normal volume. Ah, well I can live with it for another week.
Cause next week we´re going to Rome!!!!!!! I never dreamed when I planned coming to Spain that I´d get to go to Italy. Yes, it´s expinsive, but I´ll never to go so cheap (comparatively) again. We´re going to spend four days in Rome. And before then, on Sunday I´m going to Portugal. I´m going to the beach with the school group. I´d like to go another time to so I can see more of Portugal than just the beach and It´s only an hour and a half bus ride away.
Well, that´s the plan. It was great getting to talk to mom yesterday. Dad, sorry I didn´t get to talk with you. Kellie, Neil and family - have a great trip; I think you´re leaving really soon. Hope everyone else is well and fine and not getting smoked out from all the fires going on. I don´t know where the fires are, but I know there´s a lot of them.

Os quiero, hasta luego.

Salamanca

The south of Spain is much hotter than up here in the north. The trip to Cordoba was wonderful. I fell in love with the city; I found where I want to come back to live. We saw the Mesquita. It used to be the largest mosque in the world when Cordoba was the center of arabic culture. After the conquistas it was turned into a catholic cathedral which it still is today. You know the pictures of Spain with a hall full of red and white arcs? That´s where we were. A whole big section of the town is considered a historic preservation site. It´s the largest remaining Jewish quarter in any southern city. Most of the Jewish quarters were destroyed durring their expulsion. It was 42 degrees centigrade, which means well over a hundred farenheit. The heat kind of whiped me out. I haven´t really recovered from it until today. I think I got a little heat stroke there.
Anyway, that was Friday. Saturday was a nine hour bus ride from Granada to Salamanca. My new ¨family¨is a single mom with a seven year old daughter. One of the first things she said was that her house is our house while we´re here. She´s much nicer and more open than the last people. And apparently the last people were really jipping us on the food too. No wonder I was always hungry! I guess our last family was not normal as far as food, but at least they were nice.
As much as I like the food and new family, I don´t like that´s it´s a half hour walk from school and part of it up this big BIG hill. A well, work off that home cookin´.
Also my glucometer just stopped working. I don´t think it was the battery because it never showed a low batter signal or anything. So, I´m woking on that. I also underestimated things like soap, so I get to try some spanish brands.
Sunday we rested. I tried to find the church branch, but the internet didn´t have an adress or anything so I didn´t have much to go off of. I went on a little walking tour of city Sunday evening and let me tell you, what a city. Once you get the main part of town (not where I live) it´s like walking through history. We saw one of the oldest universities in Europe, for example right next to a historic house called the house of the dead. I like this city much more than Granada, but Cordoba was still my favorite.
Last night was a huge deal for Spain. They won against Italy for the European cup. They one 4-2 in penalty kicks after overtime. At the winning kick, you could hear a roar go up in the street. People streamed into the street waving flags and singing. I stuck to cheering from the balcony and watching the (illegal?) fireworks.
Today was class all morning. We were half an hour late because my roomate and I got so lost. The teacher was shouting the whole time (she kind of had to in order to be heard over this one group) which was really annoying, but we reviewed two tenses that I learned last semester, and I feel like I got a better grasp on it this time.
Tomorrow, my roomate and I are going to go picture taking and historical site seeing around the city. After class of course.

Side notes:
Kellie - I got about a one minute clip of that concert. They asked us not to take picture while they were playing, so the screen is black but the sound is good.
- I don´t know any further plans about Italy. The family that really wanted to go are leaving Spain tomorrow and not coming back until the plane out.
- Portugal is a two hour bus ride away.

Termino Granada

Classes are getting better. Today it was a class of three people so I learned a lot more. In conversation we talked about ETA and Spanish history which was very interesting. In grammar the hard part is remembering all the irregular verbs I´ve forgotten and today we learned two past tenses that I´d never used before. I like learning the new stuff in class. Tomorrow though I´m not going to class because we´re (3people) are leaving really early in the morning for Cordoba.
Yesterday was a blast. We (4people) went to the parque de las ciencas. It´s kind of like the exploratorium but fun for adults too. The butterfly house was beautiful, but they were never still long enough to get good pictures. The planetarium there was nice, but I wish I could have understood more. Most of the exhibits had English text too.
I´m not going to get to Morroco. No one is going. The trip coordinator highly suggested against it and swayed the Professora whom I was going to go with. And I´m not going with the other guys (only 3) in our group because I wouldn´t feel safe with them. I´m pretty sad about that.
But I did get to wear my outfit. Last night we went to basically a little morroco and I split dinner (fantastico!) at this great little place. One of the ladies in the group, her late husband was from Algeria and so she was able to tell us what was good and what wasn´t. She said it was as authentic as we could have gotten in Morroco, only here you don´t have to worry about the ice. The best part last night was after dinner we went to a concert of Sufi music. Appartenly, there´s a huge music festival going on in Granada right now and so there´s lots of little concerts gonig around. This concert was amazing. This guy had a case full of different lutes, one guy had a guitar like instrument in a lot more strings, two guys with drums, and one guy had a dolcimer like instrument but with probably five or six times more the strings. He was incredible. And the singing! It was trancelike. So even though I didn´t get to go to Morroco, at least I got to wear the outfit.
After tomorrow in Cordoba, we´re headed up for the day long bus trip to Salamanca. Oh, and the Professora has been tossing around the idea of taking the bullet train from Salamanca to Rome. Roma!