On The End

hola todos!! que tal estais??
I have missed saying that.



So yes as you can tell, all's well that ends well--- and other miscellaneous sayings that I've picked up from my parents that I'm not 100% sure if I'm using right.


I've been home and have long since adjusted back to American life. It wasn't too hard, I wasn't gone for that long. But let me tell you: jet lag is real and if you think you are better than it you are mistaken.
Sincerely,
prideful traveler who thought it was normal to wake up fully rested at 4 am for a week straight.

I thought maybe I'd have some bigger wrap-up thoughts for Spain, but I've already said quite a bit. I didn't end up writing on our last trip or my last days in Alcala and Madrid either, but maybe they're better told in person.

I miss Spain. I love Spain. But I love America too. It's good to see the world-but it's better to be home.

I'm grateful for it all. It wasn't easy all the time (for reasons that you wouldn't expect), but I'd go again.

Cheers,
Jessie

On Sevilla, Córdoba, Granada and Halloween

Hola todos!

SO HEY from…. Well yeah, the bus.

So this weekend we went to visit the triple threat of Sevilla, Córdoba, & Granada en el sur de España. This is our last long trip (we have shorter trips following) and can I just say thus far? Totes worth. And you know all sassy comments aside about the bus, I’m amazed how fast time passes when I feel like I am sitting doing ab-so-lute-ly nothing...

So Córdoba first:

Oh wow, so Córdoba was a funny little town. When we visit little towns that are farther away we usually do it on the way to another town. IE we had a shorter time in Córdoba while on the way to Sevilla. And when we got off the bus I remember looking at Córdoba and thinking “welp….. we’ll see what this is going to be about haha. Looks like an evil little-r Toledo…. That is somehow less scenic…” annnnd-alright wait it took ALL STINKING DAY to get to Córdoba, I almost forgot. Picture this: you get up at 5:15 to get ready to run at 5:30. You finish, go home, shower, and it’s 7:00. You get dressed, pack the rest of your things, grab breakfast and your lunch your mom made for your trip, and rush off to the plaza that’s about 8 minutes down the road. You get on the bus at 8 am. And you stay on it until 1:30 in the afternoon. Can you imagine that?? I don’t have to… since that was my life on Wednesday.

I actually loved Córdoba. So in our class civilización iberico we spent a few weeks reviewing classic architecture in Spain. And it was very very very very boring. But seeing it in person? Phenomenal. And I definitely wish I payed attention more in class haha. Dang… anyway, it was so crazy. Something I wasn’t aware of when I came to Spain was the presence of middle-eastern influences. As someone who studied Spanish in the context of almost exclusively South and Central America, I didn’t know too much about 1. European geography 2. Specifics of European history. It’s not a big deal since it means I’ve learned a lot in my time here, but it didn’t make sense why 1. There are no Mexican restaurants and 2. Every big city seems to have at least a half dozen kebab shops, among other things that aren’t related to food haha. I asked this to Sonia and she throws her hands up in the air and says something to the effect of why would we want to have Mexican food here?? This is Spain! In America, you’re right next to Mexico, yes? So you have a lot of Mexican restaurants. In Spain, it’s the same with middle eastern restaurants like the kebab shops. We’re not going to have Mexican food here, it’s allllll the way on the other side of the ocean, there’s no reason we should have it here. So... I really miss tacos haha. ANYWAYS WHAT I WAS TRYING TO GET AT: In Spain, a lot of the history -in a very very blanket statement over a few thousands of years- is between three groups: the catholics, the jews, and the muslims. So there are a lot of catedrales, sinagogues, y mosques depending on what part of the country you’re in, despite the majority of Spain being catholic.  So we went to see the mosque in Córdoba and it was incredible and so different from every thing else we’ve visited. Totally worth it. If you can stomach all of the tourist shops with the arches and potted plant tshirts.

When we got back on the bus we went to fnd the hotel in Sevilla. I’m still not sure how to spell it because in English I think it’s Seville, and in Spanish Sevilla (seh-bee-ya). I was hecka hungry so Alyssa, Rachel, Megan, and I decided to hunt out some food and decided to go to this Italian restaurant. And I died. I DIED. Have you ever had real Italian pizza??? I feel like that is just thrown around in the states, “real Italian pizza”. Admittedly, I wasn’t in Florence or anything crazy but WE HAD THE MOST INSANE PIZZA. Do you know how insane a pizza has to really be to still be talking about it days later?????? It was great. But by the time we were done eating it was literally almost midnight, holy Hannah.

Next day: SEVILLA

Alright alright alright alright get excited… I LOVE SEVILLA. Love it.

Sevilla is this just classy town. It feels like a classic “Spain” city.  

We got to tour the palace and the cathedral... it's the largest gothic cathedral in Spain, if I remember right. If I'm wrong, tell me. Memory don't fail me now! Haha. We got to take these ramps up 1.2 billion feet in air to see the city from the bell tower, it was sweet. But in the least racist way I can say this, seriously what the heck is with asian tourists haha? They are seriously everywhere.

It was great to be in Sevilla, because our hotel was in a useful part of the city haha! Sometimes we stay in a neighbouring town or on the outskirts of the city so we're essentially stranded. But in Sevilla we could stay out if we wanted or go back to the hotel and nap... all good options. So in our free time after our guided tour we came back to recoop and regroup a bit before visiting... well honestly i don't know the name of what we visited. The guide called it "puerta sol" and then drew a line ("puerta!") and pointed upwards ("sol!") so we'd make the connection ("es muy muy facil! puerta... sol!! entendéis?") but you can google "Sevilla mushroom" and it comes up hahaha. We wanted to walk the streets more than figure out what it was, so we kept on going after seeing it. We ended up helping buy a suit and it was hilarious. We brought it back to the hotel and WENT TO SEE A FLAMENCO SHOW. 

My thoughts on flamenco:

So there are a handful of things that are essentially at every tourist spot in Spain.

1. merchandise from said city, like those black bags with the rainbow font that say MADRIDMADRIDMADRID or SEVILLASEVILLASEVILLA or LONDONLONDONLONDON... alternatively, very poorly designed shirts that are either red with yellow decals or those tacky black and paint-splattered shirts with said city's name 

2. Fans. Hand-held fans. Doesn't matter the town. How many times have I seen someone actually use a fan?? Probably twice. 

3. Ugly magnets? Who collects fridge magnets any more?

4. Very cheaply made flamenco dresses

5. Bracelets. Everywhere. 

Flamenco dresses and other various silly things are everywhere because the flamenco is a famous dance from Spanish culture. And I was hesitant if I had any interest in even going to it because the dresses look a little strange as an extranjera, but it was SO COOL. I will without a doubt or any hesitation however say that for the safety of your ears you do not need to see more than one flamenco show in a life time. It is MUCHO CLAPPING but so fun to see. New dream... to be a sassy flamenco dancer for a day. Werk it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqxJMCQxb_Q 

Another day: La Alhambra

So in true study abroad fashion: I forgot where we were going. This was neither in Córdoba, Sevilla or Granada. So just pick a city and I will agree with you it was there. Even though it wasn't haha. La Alhambra was SUCH a fun distraction. It was this incredible garden and historical place. But the rule is if you wouldn’t post this many pictures of aa cathedral you shouldn’t post that many of a garden. So I won't. But let me tell you... garden goals. Forreal. 

I just realized I don't remember actually stopping in Granada. I might edit this later. But currently... did we go to Granada? haha..... oh shoot. 

And basically, we came home (to the hotel) to sleep before the bus ride. Because apparently we had 6 or 7 hours to conquer the next day. BooooOOoooOooooOooooooooooo.

In other news, some Halloweeny updates: Halloween in Spain is not the same. 

People do dress up and go out, but it's different. In some towns, they go trick-or-treating. In our town, they had a lot of people out dressed up in the streets for fun, but mostly hanging with friends and doing normal things + face paint and cheap costumes. Not too different from America? We went to this sweeeeet play though. It was really cool!! So the play is called Don Juan and is naturally, a famous spanish obra. In short, Don Juan is a womanizer. He claims he can make any woman fall in love with him/he could conquer any woman (that is a bit of a spanglish translation- use your context clues). And now, I will insert more wikipedia block quotes: 

Tirso de Molina wrote “El burlador de Sevilla” in 1630 in order to demonstrate a life-changing lesson. He saw that everyone was throwing his or her life away, living and sinning as they pleased, because they believed that in the end, as long as they repented before they died, they would receive the grace to enter heaven. Through his play, however, he shows that even Don Juan, who is identified as the very devil, a “man without a name” and shape-shifter, has to eventually pay for his sins. Tirso reminds us that we must pay for our actions, and that in the end death makes us all equal.

Although the various iterations of the Don Juan myth show some variation, the basic story remains the same. Starting with Tirso's work, Don Juan is portrayed as a wealthy, seductive libertine who devotes his life to seducing women, taking great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life.

"Tan largo me lo fiáis” is the aphorism that Don Juan lives by. It is his way of indicating that he is young and death is still distant, trusting he has plenty of time to repent for his sins.^[2] 

It was so fun to watch. But............ they found my weakness. Standing in one place for extended periods of time. Because it was an outdoor play! It was insane! There were maybe 5 or 6 different stages in an arena-type courtyard (the same place they had the fair grounds for la semana cervantina). And scene to scene would take place on a different stage. And we would have shuffle like cows in the night trying to get closer to the next stage to try and see the actors (who were still at least 200 feet away) over a million other heads in the crowd. I've never in my life been so excited to be tall. Spanish people are honestly just short. Sonia (one of our professors) stands at a whopping 5'3" and I'm 5'10" with most shoes and basically it was a great experience for me! Haha. But then I crouched down to be her height and I pretty much lost it because you can't see a single thing hahahaha oh man. Thank you American genes. 

So that was basically Halloween. I also bought myself some frozen yogurt. Praise.

Anyways... almost finals week over here! TIME TO PANIC

With love como siempre,

Jessie

Quote of the day:

Jessie: "ah shoot we're gonna be late... we're always laaate"

Alyssa: "it's fine, it's because we smell all da roses."

ALL DA ROSES

ps photos have not finished uploading to dropbox so check back tomorrow if you're SUPER CURIOUS about what the photos will be. Hint: probably about Sevilla, Córdoba, or the flamenco dance. Or me next to a garden. Idk all possible things.

                                                                                                            

On Toledo & Windmills

What's up fam!

So shout out this week to my Grandma Kay who made me laugh more than I thought possible over a greeting card. Grandma, you’re the best. She sent me a Halloween card all the way from the States and it has TEN EUROS IN IT and that was SO COOL!! Except I couldn’t help but laugh because the first line said “you’ll have to tell your Italian friends about Halloween, I’m pretty sure it’s an American holiday”. Hahahahaha. I’m just curious how one addresses an envelope to “Alcala de Henares, Spain” and then jumps to Italy haha…… I love her. Also Halloween isn’t just an American holiday. They just do it right in America.

So last week we took a short little trip to see the one and only Toledo. 

Just kidding. 

The tour guide said about 100 times there’s another Toledo in Ohio. 

I will own up right now that I have a surprisingly small amount to say about this trip. If you read about the last trip I had a hard time turning on the Spanish ears? Wasn’t really a problem today… it was more like a filtering the Spanish into “what matters” basket. I think I filtered every single thing I heard into “not a piece of information that will change my life”.

Except the bit about Ohio. Obviously very important. 

But I’ll tell you what we did anyways! 

So we drove only a few hours to see the panoramica of Toledo. It’s cool that they make these stops for us. Moments like this makes me think my life is a postcard. I know I say that about Utah too, but it was really beautiful. But I think I left my heart in Barcelona, because every other town is great but… Barcelona was the best. 

We walked the streets of Toledo touring different important bits and holy freaking heck. When they say Toledo is known for swords… I was going to take a picture of all the different sword shops, but after taking one picture and then looking down the street I decided that was a dumb idea. Madrid is to shoe shops as Toledo is to sword shops. It was crazy because I went with our group from store to store to store to store to store and I had this moment of understanding where it finally made sense to me why men hate shopping with women for silly things that they don’t need. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH A SWORD, they weren’t even sharp! Why would you buy a sword that has less risk than a butter knife? These were letter openers. VERY EXPENSIVE LETTER OPENERS. 

Toledo was actually really cool and had parts that reminded me of my hometown. Actually, that’s probably more the weather than the town itself, but anyhow. My favorite thing we saw was probably the museum dedicated to El Greco, a famous painter from Spain. This is kind of dorky, but I love seeing the artistic liberties different museums take to create an experience. Back home the art museum by the lakeside is beautiful (google: Milwaukee Calatrava) but also limited to things it can display inside since it’s so stinking cold. Also that it could snow up to your knees in an afternoon. Anywho, the weather in Spain is a little more flexible. It does get cold, but my host fam says they get snow in Madrid maybe once a year. So half the experience of visiting this museum is walking in and out of these buildings/home from the time period that have been preserved… it’s neat. Also one of our professors always makes fun of me for drawing mascaras feas in class, but there were some hilarious statues that I also loved that I’ll attach a picture if I remember. 

After walking around the town with our guide, they took us out to the country side to race go carts!!!!!!! SPANISH CARRRRTS!!!

Just kidding. We went to see the cathedral hahahahahaha.

The cathedral had two very cool features that I hadn’t seen before. One of them was this crazy, ah……… I want to call it an art installation, but that’s not the name of it. I want to say statues, but that doesn’t feel like enough. I don’t know, it was sweet. These statues were a few hundred feet in the air right in front of this stained window-my dinky camera phone does not really do it justice. Mirad:

The other one was this painting in one of the rooms that was the entire ceiling. This is not so much a thing I’ve never seen before in Spain, it was just really really good. We talked in class about it- that the painting is supposed to continue the architecture upwards as an optical illusion and look like heaven is directly above you. It’s well done, but the illusion I didn’t think was all that crazy. But I was impressed at the accuracy of the perspective and proportion abilities of the painting…. Can you imagine being literally bent-over backwards to paint some random cathedral ceiling as if you were looking directly at someone’s butt 300 feet above you? Jeez oh man… these are some of the thoughts I have in cathedrals. #bigdeepcollegethoughts

Anyhow, so that was Toledo. Oh AND we went to see the REAL DEAL painting by El Greco!! Yes, the one Señor P spent a whole class period lecturing about in Spanish 4 back at GHS. The one I thought I would spend the rest of my life having only known from a textbook. ITS GIGANTIC. And I couldn’t take pictures where it was displayed, so I want you to imagine a wall. Stack another wall on top of it. If you can see the top of the wall without cranking your neck all the way back, add another wall. That’s the size of the painting. We had free time afterwards where some friends went and payed 10 euros to do a zipline in Toledo (“the longest zipline in Europe”- I’m still a little skeptical) but I wasn’t feeling too well so I was kind of ready to book it out of Toledo. 

After having to suffer through a handful of skinny skinny Spain backroads, the bus took us out to the countryside. And then suddenly we were in the middle of nowhere to see los molinos de viente… windmills!! That was such a fun day. That was honestly the highlight for me. I KNOW THEY’RE JUST WINDMILLS but they made me really happy. I think we were going to tour them with a guide, but for some reason it was closed so we just got to goof around for an hour and take some pictures, it was great.  That was probably why it was the highlight of my day since nothing really cool happened. I mean I was trying to get the supa professional angle for a photo by kneeling on the ground and I kneeled literally directly into these huge thorns, but that isn’t interesting haha. Also it drew blood. I was shocked. MAN DOWN.

Oop.. shoot. Almost completely forgot. In between Toledo and the windmills we visited a different town… except in the nicest way I can say it, it was literally the most boring town I’ve ever seen. A tumbleweed could have blown down the street and it would have been thrilling. Haha. 

The reason I mention it at all is because they’re a part of the history of spain. Obv. As I’ve talked about super briefly, Spain is known for Don Quijote written by Cervantes. And every single city seems to feel like they have a claim to it haha, because literally literally every single city has merchandice of Don Quijote on his horse with Sancho walking next to him (google it). The other symbolism you’ll find everywhere are windmills. Don Quijote supposedly hiked through this part of Spain and attacked the windmills as he thought they were monsters/enemies? It's hard to summarize two huge books haha. 

And the little rinky dinky town was a part of the camino del quijote.

The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha), is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote is considered one of the most influential works of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published, such as the Bokklubben World Library collection that cites Don Quixoteas authors' choice for the "best literary work ever written".^[2] It follows the adventures of a nameless hidalgo who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote.

He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. It had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word "quixotic". Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse and Wilhelm Meister.^[3]

Exciting block quote courtesy of Wikipedia. My homie for life.

So that's that. 

Love you all!

Keep the faith.

Splurge on on toilet paper, 

shampoo,

and chocolate.

Always chocolate.

un abrazo-

Jessie

On Plays, El Prado, y el Torneo Medieval

What’s up todos!

So life here is odd. Mostly because despite having a schedule, sometimes it still feels pretty disorganized. We had a big stinking exam this week, and also some fiiiield triiiips. Jessie, you are already living a field trip. How could you have a field trip within a field trip. Great question peanut gallery, lemme tellya bout it.

As far as the school days are concerned, they pass pretty quick. One of my favorite thing we do outside of school is still our intercambios. We just get to have English hour with this adorable Columbian girl and it’s so funny. Although less funny when she asks us “what is the difference between ‘joker’ and ‘clown’?” and the best I can do is draw very sloppy cartoons for her haha. Also she showed us her English homework and HOLY COW I’m SO GRATEFUL I ALREADY SPEAK ENGLISH. She was analyzing sentence structure and it was pretty much the most boring thing on the earth.  

Wednesday was exam day…. I don’t want to talk about it haha. Let’s just say there have been better days. Memorizing things that don’t have a concrete timeline in your mind? Not my specialty. Especially history. Booooo. But life goes on.

On Thursday we had the COOLEST EXPERIENCE. We went to a playyyyy!! So after school we went home and had lunch with the fam, hung around and took a nap for a while, then went to the train station and headed out to Madrid. We went to see La Estrella de Sevilla (literal translation: The Star of Sevilla) and it was SO cool. Sadly, we couldn’t take pictures. But it was crazy, there were 7 actors and basically an empty stage-no real back drops or settings. The props they had were a super minimalist chair, a crown, two swords, and about 30-or-so poles. Oh yes… and the Spanish drama unfolds. It was based off of a real historical event (of course) and you can read about it here: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Estrella_de_Sevilla

This is hard to explain exactly, but I want to say real quick why I loved the play despite probably following a whopping 40% of the dialogue…the presentation.  Like I said, they had these pole-vaulting sized rods that they used to create scenery. It was such an interesting minimalist way of telling a story. In between monologues the characters would each pull a pole out of the floor (the stage was set up so they would stand on their own) and then  anchor them in somewhere else. They were walls, hallways,  trees,  entryways,  torture instruments … haha. It was a great play.

The day after, we went to the Prado again but this time with Rebeca who teaches our civilization class. This lady knows her stuff, it was cool to be lead around chronologically talking about different paintings with someone I actually knew (read: not a tour guide). But three hours standing kind of killed. So afterwards we walked Madrid and went home. Megan, Kristen, Alysa and I went to see El Mercado de San Miguel which is one of the sites to see in Madrid and we hadn’t been since our first day in Spain. It’s really cool to see actual fresh-markets with fish and fruit and tapas!!! Expensive little tapas haha. BUT it’s also cool because everyone who is there is not on their phones. It’s actually a social activity. I mean of course it helps that adults go to the market to have real adult  social time and not a bunch of teenagers who are their to have a social time and then publish it publicly. Haha...

So that’s that, really for what I did anyways. Oh shoot haha, I wanted to talk about the fair!!!! Aw yeahhhh

So last week for La Semana Cervantina Alcalá hosted one of Europe’s largest medieval festivals. Actually, I’m almost certain it is THE largest. And it was so great!!

The streets were covered in banners and little booths of artisans with wood crafts and necklaces and spices and ham and pastries and more jewelry and rugs and floral crowns and sweets and nuts and it was great. It made me think of the farmers market back home on Saturdays y me echaba de menos mis padres jaja.

There were a bunch of activities for the four days it was set up, but we were traveling (also: it was Sunday) so we could only go to do something on Monday. So after staying in to study all day, we went to a JOUST!!!!! I thought it was going to be a bust, but it turned out to be THE MOST FUN and I was laughing and smiling for basically two hours straight. The joust was this sweet production with real caballeros and shenanigans, it was great. We sat in the blue section so our caballero was azul but I actually think he was kind of evil haha… like a bit of a villain in their production. I took some videos so if you want to see some of it they are definitely in the process of being edited and shipped to Hollywood #jokes #amateurhourwiththesmartphoneinthefrontrow

Edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCSAz2rPrdM

And after that I rode a camel. It was glorious.

Also frick, you need a ton of calf muscles for those things.

like ya now, love ya always, don’t forget about me while I’m in Spain;)

peace, swag, n blessinz

Jessie

On Salamanca, Zamora, & Ávila

Hey! Sup y’all. I cannot get the font size to be consistent on this post and it is driving me crazy. It's beyond my abilities hahaha... Be forgiving. I went for the legible size.

So this week we are in and around the town of Salamanca, Zamora, and Ávila. Map below.  I’m grouping them together because it was more or less a two-day trip and they kind of blend together in my mind. I have to apologize in advance because there is no timeline to this post.

I guess to start the trip we have to acknowledge la semana cervantina; in Alcalá right now there’s a festival that I’ve heard (and cannot verify beyond a Google search which I have no internet to do right now) that it’s the largest medieval festival in Europe. Having been to none prior to Spain, I’d have to agree haha. But anyhow it’s so cool! There are banners hanging everywhere and little booths for the artisans to sell things, we’re going to visit it when we come home. Anyhow the reason I mention it is because it happens at the Plaza de Cervantes (claro) annnnd that’s where we meet the bus. So again: big time festival: big time inconvenience haha. We had to take all our little suitcases and backpacks at 8 am and migrate a street down or so and it felt soooo silly. I hate feeling like a tourist.  Derp derp derp don’t mind us and our backpacks, pillows, and rolling suitcases on this ancient cobblestone while you’re just trying to catch the bus for work…

So these three cities are pretty small in my mind. I know they’re bigger than my tiny-tourist brain can fathom but they definitely weren’t big bustling cities like Madrid and Barcelona.

In Ávila we went to see and walk the giant murallas (walls) of the city. You know when you have days in class where you sit for 50 minutes and walk out not sure if you processed a single thing? That’s kind of how I’m feeling now writing about this weekend. Because I’ve got nothin’. Well shoot I definitely processed it, I just can’t remember it. For shame.

In Salamanca we walked the centro of the city, including (wait for it) the cathedral!! Haha. But there are some interesting things I remember about Salamanca that I can present in no particular order:

This is a staircase. Obviously. But it was just a funny little part of a palace we went to. The guide had said “notice how it’s not closed off to the city… there are two doors. So if an enemy were to come, the guards would point them to this staircase. And it’s tall enough it would give the royal family to prepare themselves but also it’s small enough that you can’t fight within it. “ I actually don’t know if I’m quoting that as accurately as I could, but like I said… it was a harder day for listening haha.

Salamanca is a university town, that’s why it’s so big. I think there are about 17,000 students or so in the town, a lot of them extranjeros learning Spanish. There are tourist shops (like all cities) every 50 feet or so, but instead with sweatshirts and tshirts for la Universidad de Salamanca haha. And there aren’t shoe stores at every corner. Salamanca is cool but I actually think Madrid is a lot cooler, although I know I’ve only seen a few hours of the city. Somehow I have skipped over our stop in Zamora. I think the issue is that Zamora and Salamanca are too similar with the S-sounds. Also it’s because I legitimately can’t separate them in my mind. So from this point on the specifics of these stories are all just heading south haha…

Salamanca has this thing for frogs. It was tough for me to put this together at first because when the guide started talking about the history/story she would say una rana (frog) and I heard arana (araña = spider) haha. But then we would walk down the street and see a bajillion frogs at the tourist shops. So anyhow, it’s all based off this story that I am also going to link you to so my sparknotes does not destroy it:  http://spanishinspain.blogspot.com.es/2014/08/the-frog-of-salamanca.html OR journals.worldnomads.com/colleen_finn/story/.../The-Salamanca-frog

Basically, Salamanca loves frogs. Skim the articles.

After our tour of the city, Rachel, Sarah, Alyssa, and I decided to sit down and grab dinner after a day of walking. And it was phenomenal. It’s such a European thing to sit and just enjoy a meal and your company and it’s so relaxing! When you make the time for it anyways. Otherwise it’s way stressful because you just want “american service” (quick, to the point, bend-over-backwards-to-please–the-customer). I had a seasoned hamburger with tomatoes and fries. I know that doesn’t sound exotic, but it was so stinking good. And I know if I haven’t mentioned it here, I at least made in my mind a goal to order different things to eat but I will talk about this in a sec.

Probably one of the most fun things we did in Zamora (?) was going out to eat as a group. Eating as friends is so stressful figuring out the check. But sometimes our director pays for us to get a snack together that the guide recommends to us when we finish, and we actually had a meal and it was so good. I made a goal in my mind at the beginning of the study abroad to step out of my comfort zone and order things on the menu that I either 1. Have never had 2. If I’ve had nothing on the menu at all, order something I can’t pronounce and so far this has worked flawlessly with the exception of when people ask what I ate I also can’t remember it haha. Sometimes though, you gotta be real… I am in Europe and paying for food, just because I’m having a cultural experience does not mean I should hate my life (or in other words.. my meal) because sometimes it’s anyone’s best guess when we’ll have time to sit down and eat again. SO IN CONCLUSION oh man I just love hamburgers

Other things we did:

SAW SOME CATHEDRALZ

WENT TO SUM MOOSUMS

TALK WIF DA ESPAÑOLAS

Alyssa and I went to this cool Art Nouveau art museum and it was really great. It wasn’t the type I was hoping for (Alfonse Mucha: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfons_Mucha) but I had time to sketch some really fun things. Maybe someday I’ll post those here, too. It was fun going to a loser museum. Of course it was professional and with important pieces, it also had these beautiful stained glass pieces and was just a smaller museum (aka: not the Prado) so it was just a little bit more home-y. Oh and in regards to “talkn wif sum españolas”, that’s not a cool story. We just walked across this ancient roman bridge to the other side of town looking for a famous statue. Apparently it was at the beginning of the bridge and we didn’t see it, so we had a fun chit chat with a local while she walked us back to show us. I love these people!

So remember that link about the frog I just gave? You really should read it. It has this great bit about Ávila that I will straight up copy/paste and not at all claim to have written:

Ávila is a fortress town, with a medieval stone wall that surrounds the city. The town is probably most known for St. Teresa of Ávila, a nun who founded a more primitive order of Carmelites known as the decalced, or “barefoot” Carmelites. After she died, her body was exhumed and found to be in pristine condition—so much so that the Catholics regarded it as a miracle and declared her a saint. As a reward for sainthood (okay, I am writing this part with a touch of sarcasm), a few fingers were cut from her right hand. Allegedly, Franco himself (Spain´s dictator until 1975) kept these fingers next to his bed.

Gruesome little anecdote, isn´t it? But then again, many religious stories are.

We saw this. And I was still gathering my bearings after temporarily losing the group (yes: I’m that kid on the field trip... basically always) and I remember having the 13 of us plus the tour guide huddled around this glass case that said NO TOCAR, NO FOTOS.

Because there was a finger behind the glass.

This stinking ancient, rotting, once-fleshy thing!!!!

Honestly………………………………ew.

So if that is not an exciting way to end this post, I don’t know what is haha. A pointless and funny bit about this trip is also this little tangent I have about the “spain accent” … because I love it. And I feel like among extranjeros it’s hit-or-miss and especially in our group it’s definitely more of a miss. But here’s the thing: IT’S SO USEFUL.

For those reading who don’t speak Spanish or are unaware of the specifics of the “lisp-y Spain accent”, in short, in Spain they use the sound / θ/  or “theta” (but say it like you’re Spanish… so th-ay-tah. Actually I can’t really break that down better unless it was in person). It’s the “really gross lispy Spanish” that I’ve basically heard every in the states say they can’t stand. And I agreed with them up until I had heard it and had to experience it. For example, and my explanations are limited over text, but for example:

Zapato (LA: zah-pah-toe)

Zapato (ES: th-uh-pah-toe)

Luz (LA: loo-z, almost exactly the same as “lose” like “you lose the game”)

Luz (ES: loo-th, like “mama my tooth is looth!!” haha)

Decir (LA: day-seer)

Decir (ES: day-th-ear)

but the “lispy” theta sound is not used for every s- sound or every time you see a “c”

Casa (LA: cah-sah)

Casa (ES: cah-sah)

Considerado (LA: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

Considerado (ES: con-see-d-air-ah-doh)

*LA: Latin America ES: España

Dang I am so good at this phonetics game. #jokes

ANYWAYS the reason why I mention it:

Once upon a time back at BYU I was having a discussion about different dialects in Spanish, as Spanish students usually do pretty much at least once a week. Someone had told me that the Spain accent is actually ‘super useful in regards to spelling’ or something like that, but… I pretty much forgot it almost immediately after.

But now it has come back in vivid HD color: because I spelled “Zamora” wrong for this entire post when I first started writing I haha This happened since 1. I hadn’t seen any signs that said “Zamora” all day and didn’t think anything of it until the little red squiggle popped up on Microsoft Word but also 2. I spent the day with our BYU group which includes a general majority of Spanish speakers who have learned south-american Spanish. This includes mexico, Costa Rica, or our director and his wife who are from the Domincan Republic. SO when Profesor Alba is saying “Zamora” it sounds exactly exactly the same if he were to say “Samora” and so thus we see my plight.

That took way longer to explain than it should have, but cheers to you for reading this far!!

Peace swag blessinz and frozen yogurt,

Lotsa love

Jessie

Also: we walked around a fountain six times to help us find true love. Oh Spain.

Also also: Alyssa and I went to a 15 minute theatre production for 3 euros and it was hilarious. Not for the faint of heart. Read: not a G-rated performance, not for an LDS audience. Lessons learned… oh Spain.