Archive
November 28, 2005
Thanksgiving, English.
Since I wrote last Thanksgiving has come and gone. Our program took us out to a thanksgiving dinner. The dinner was terrible, the alleged turkey was some sort of meat-loaf like substance, the entire dinner was devoid of anything thanksgiving-esque. It was crap. But, honestly I'm not bitter, its Spain they don't know what thanksgiving is. I just wish we would have had a nice Spanish dinner instead of some stuff that was called thanksgiving.
However not all was lost, as the next day I was going over to one of my teachers place with fellow classmates for a thanksgiving dinner. our professor didn't know what it was all about and wanted us to cook her a Thanksgiving dinner. My friend Stephanie and I were assigned the job of mashed potatoes and a dessert. for out dessert apple crisp was decided on. we bought a ton of potatoes and apples, and spend the afternoon before the dinner slaving away in my piece of crap kitchen making our food. We didn't have a potato masher, so I was forced to use a whisk that was falling apart to mash the potatoes. during the process I developed a good size blister on my finger.
We were not very confident in the apple crisp because the oven I have isn't very precise. for temperatures there are 2 choices. Big flame or small flame. you actually have to manually light the flame. so we made the crisp and put it in the oven on big flame for about 30 min, it was looking rather gooey, so we kept it in there a bit longer. It was still looking slightly gooey, but more crispy than before when we took it out and headed out to the Dinner.
At the dinner there probably 15 other people, most of them all brought food. the Turkey was cooked by master chef David, he bought the biggest turkey he could find, which clocked in at around 12lbs. the Turkey was cooked in what was essentially an over sized toaster oven. nice. despite this, it turned out fantastic, as wall all the food. People seemed to love the apple crisp, Ana, our teacher made a amazing carrot cake. this dinner definitely redeemed Thanksgiving.
More Photos from Thanksgiving.
The next morning, was a group trip for the little British territory in Spain, Gibraltar. The most startling thing about this place was there is English everywhere, which makes sense as it is technically British. but having only been around Spanish for the past months, the presence of English was stunning. people loaded up 2 liter bottles of Dr. Pepper as its impossible to get in Spain. Also the duty free shops selling cartons of cigarettes, jugs of alcohol, and bricks of chocolate were also a hit. We drove up the rock to where the Monkeys hang out. These monkeys are the only natural monkeys living in Europe.
they are for the most part friendly, if you kneel down with some food in your hand you can get them to crawl on top of you. There were some big guys who would grab onto your leg and pull at your pants for more food, they looked slightly dangerous and scary. Other than the monkeys, and for us the novelty of being surrounded by English, I think Gibraltar might be a bit dull, but none the less I thought it was a great trip.
November 14, 2005
This past weekend I went to the las alpujarras, which are a series of towns on the other side of the Sierra Nevadas way up in the mountains. We took a bus to the first town of Pampaneira, from there we walked up to the town Capileira. Basically, its just a series of white washed towns way up in the mountains. There are tons of random trails and old old roads connecting them. I would have definitely liked to spend more time here.
Las Alpujarras
This weekend I am trying to arrange a trip to Morocco, previous attempts have fallen through, and this might be the last chance I have. Jeff and I found a tour company that operates student tours there. People in my classes have gone and said it was a nice trip. Its not as extensive as I would have liked, I hear the southern part of the country is the best. But due to time constraints (its only a weekend) I think it sees a good amount of stuff.
I think we are getting a new roommate tomorrow. Guillermo left a while ago to return back to Argentina/Brazil, I was sad to see him go. A super nice guy, even though he was something like 42 years old, it seemed like he was just another friend my age. He left without telling anyone but me and Abdallah. He didn't tell Almodena (our land lady) because he would have had to pay her some money, im not quite sure what for. I think he may have skipped out on the last months rent. anyways, he was a funny guy.
The daughter of Almodena came by today to tell us a new person would be moving in tomorrow, all she said is that the person is German. Tons of people come by looking at the empty room, but forwhatever reason its a hard sell.
Believe it or not, I have just over 1 month remaining in my stay here. Time has gone by fast.
I have also added a few new pictures to my general Spain category.
General Photos of Spain
November 04, 2005
Photos
Ok, I have uploaded photos from both Seville and Portugal.
Only a few from Seville, a lot from Portugal.
Click on the links to take you directly to the gallery
November 02, 2005
PORTUGAL
OK so I am now back from Portugal. The trip started Thursday afternoon, when I met Freya downtown and we waited for Jeff to come pick us up in the rental car which he was picking up from the airport. Jeff soon arrived, we quickly jumped into the car as Jeff had parked in the middle of a Taxi queue line. Driving in Granada is interesting, the main part of the center is closed to only Buses and Taxi´s (and a hell of a lot of moto´s) so we had to take a backwards way out of town but finally made it out to the freeway.
settling down into what was going to be a 9.5 hour drive ahead of us to the norther Portuguese town of Porto, I just kind of zoned out. After a few hours we were in the area in Andalusia known as Extremadura. which is to put it in short, a piece of crap. Extremadura is at the END of all guide books on Spain, and the section is always pitifully short, there is nothing going on here except for this one town that has some Roman ruins. its kind of like central Washington, but in Spain. SO as we proceeded north, the scenery became noticeably more lush. it was the first time in a long time that the trees i saw out my window were not planted in lines. It was decidedly more natural looking than the area around Granada, as the trees were wild, grass was on the ground - not sandy dirt, and there were some cool rock formations.
Night came and as we made out way up to the North of Extremadura we started to climb up this small mountain pass. where it was pouring, we keep driving up and found our selves in a cloud and couldn't see much outside of the car. this wasn't to fun, but soon we were descending and out of the cloud and just in the rain.
crossing the border (or lack there of thanks to the EU) was a breeze, we barely even slowed down as we flew through what was once the guarded checkpoint, all the installations are still in place, just without any guards or gates. Finally we were in Portugal, the country which reportedly has the most dangerous roads in all of Europe. a little snip it:
From a news article:
Official: Portugal is a road death trap
A total of 2.425 people died on Portuguese roads during 1998, translating into a figure of 24 deaths for every one hundred thousand inhabitants. A list, published in The Economist, which studied statistics of the 27 most notorious countries in the world awarded Portugal with a considerable victory margin, making Portugal the undisputed road death champion of the world
This became apparent, we didn't see any real auto accidents, but the drivers were insane as they pass wherever they can at insane speeds, they get within feet from your bumper. anyways, we made it to Porto and promptly got lost. Porto is a maze of 1 way streets that zig-zag around in the most absurd way, and after driving for 9.5 hours it was even more hard to figure out what was going on. after driving around for 30 min we found where we needed to be, parked the car and walked and found a place to stay.
Porto is a nice town, built on the side of the hill which runs down to a River, its full of Port/Wine companies, cool buildings, and despite being right next to Spain, it felt unmistakably different. we spent the day walking around town, checking out old buildings, went to a Port cellar, and on a tour of how they make port.
We headed out in the afternoon for the little town of Tomar, halfway inbetween Porto and Lisbon. The drive was nice and we got into Tomar at dusk. within 10 min of parking the car we were staring at a map of the town trying to figure out where the heck to go, and this guy comes up to us and starts talking, asking "where do we want to go" it quickly becomes apparent that this guy is french and drunk. he asks if we want to "make big party" we try to shrug him off, but he is persistent that he shows us the cheapest place to stay in town, so we follow him and he ends up taking us to one of the places that the book recommended. fantastic. he talks with the owner in Portuguese, we get a room, and start to head back to the car to pick up the bags. at this point we are growing tired and a bit weary of or new friend, I think he gets the hint, and just kind of slinks off. that's the last we saw of him. The next day we went to this Castle in Tomar which was built by the Knight of Templar. the castle was very very very cool, and we basically had it all to our selves.
From Tomar we headed to Lisbon. Lisbon had a few nice points, but I didn't like it much. the first nigtht there it rained a lot, when we woke up in the morning our room was flooded with water. what apparently happened was that the window/door wasn't closed all the way which allowed water to come in. luckily nothing important got wet. we took a train to the town of Sintra 45 min away. Sintra was a nice town, it would have been cooler had it not been raining/extremely cloudy. in the down are a bunch of old mansions and cool houses, along with a royal palace and a Moorish fortress, all built in a forest on the side of a hill. it felt like a fairy tale.
From Lisbon, we went to the town of Tomar, which is an old town entirely enclosed by a wall. inside of the town are the best Roman ruins in all of Iberia (or so the guide book says) they were very impressive. like a mini roman forum. Also in the town was a Chapel of Bones. all the walls were covered in human bones and skulls. it was slightly odd, the most disturbing fact was that on some pillars near the ropes keeping people back from the walls, bones were MISSING. why the hell would you ever EVER want to steal some random 300 year old Femur from a bone chapel. also, on some of the skulls some clever people had written their names. cute.
we slightly over estimated Evora, we thought were would be enough diversions in this town to last us the afternoon, but rather we had more or less experienced the town in 1.5 hours. so we hung out in our rooms and rested ( as we were all rather tired) dinner was interesting. we went into this restaurant where the proprietor was a 35 year old looking dude who was very very large, was very bald and looked like he ran a Tattoo parlor and dealt in other shady business during the day. we ordered, the food came. it was OK. when we went to pay, the bill came to 16.50 for all three of us (it was super cheap) and i handed the guy a $20. he asked if we had 1.50 in change so he could just give us $5 bill back. we said we did not have change, and he looked pissed. he went to the register pounded around for bit, then came back with a hand full of coins. most of the nickles. he just looked at us with an absolutely disgusted face and kind of huffed and walked off flipping his hand in the air.
we stared at the pile of coins on the table in disbelief.
this is something people over here in stores do not like, they DON'T like to give you odd amount of change, you will get dirty looks, end even if your just buying a few post cards, they will say they they cant (read: too lazy don't want to) take your $20 for 0.60 worth of post cards.
The next morning we headed out early and drove back to Granada.
It was a fun trip but had a lot of driving. I took a bunch of pictures, I will put them and the Seville images online probably tomorrow.