Spanish Way of Life

So the way the Spainards do things are very different than the way we do things.  The way they are slow paced about everything they do is one thing that I love.  We don't start class till 9 am because no class in Spain starts before 8:30 am.  We eat breakfast at 8 am, have lunch at 2:30 pm, and then have supper at 9:30 pm.  Sometimes I have to have a snack in between that because that's a long time to go without food.  The big meal of the day is lunch which consists of bread, salad or soup, and then a hot meal.  A traditional food here is tortillas de Espana which is potatoes in a tortilla shape held together by eggs.  It's one of my favorite meals here.  They think it's crazy though that we eat our meals so early.  They take 2-3 hours off in the afternoon for Siesta time which is right after lunch and it's a time to just relax.  The stores here are open from about 10-2 and then back to 5-8 pm.  So it seems like the shops are never open when i'm walking to and from school.  My teachers are always telling me to be tranquillo which means to be calm when i'm stressed about things.  They just have such a relaxed way about them.

Another thing that's different here is their night life.  They don't start up until 11 pm at night and then go until whenever they want to the next day.  Most people start off drinking at a bar or in a public park, then go to a disco techa (dance club), then go out to eat afterwards.  The longest I ever stayed out was until 7:30 am and I was leaving early.  The dance club that I was at was still completely packed and my Spanish friend was telling me it was still pretty early but I was wiped out.  I would never stay out that late back in the States.  Probably 3 am max.  But here it's so different because it's just a social gathering.  It's the same way with drinking.  I've noticed a lot of people don't drink to get drunk but to drink because it's a social thing.  Since it's legal for them to start drinking younger here then the states they don't go out and go crazy as much.

I love that the city is so big and has so  much to offer than we have back home.  There's always something to do like go bowling, paintballing, dancing, karoke, go to the mountains, or go to the beach.  We're about an hour away from the Sierra Nevada Mountains so I could go hiking if I wanted to.  (though I hate hiking so that won't be happening)  Or I could go to the beach an hour away and just lay in the sun all day.  I also  love being able to go dancing every week.  We don't have clubs anything like this at home expect for in really big cities like Chicago or something but they're found every where here.  That's one thing that i'm definitely going to miss but I do love the small town charms too.

Traveling Europe

Alright I know I know I haven't written in about month but I have a pretty good reason.  I had to finish level two, had 1 1/2 weeks off for spring break, and then start up level 3.  I hadn't studied a lot for my level two test which I was pretty  nervous about but I ended up passing the class with a decent grade.  This time around though I'm going to make sure to study everyday.  My last level was 3 weeks and this level is 2 1/2 weeks so they shorten up a little each time.

 A month ago I went and visited the capitol Madrid with my program for a 3 day weekend.  On the way there we visited a neighboring town called Toledo for a couple hours and had a tour guide with us.  We pretty much saw all the  basics in Toledo but were rushed for time because we had to be in Madrid by 5 pm and it's already a 5 hour bus ride away from us.  The first night we were able to walk around and visit whatever we wanted so I saw the museo catedral and then a huge plaza called ayuntamiento.  The next day we visited the palace that the Spanish royal family uses for special ocassions.  We got to look inside but we couldn't take pictures which was kind of disappointing.  Some friends and I ate at Hard Rock Cafe and we got the typical american meal: chocolate milkshake, french fries, and a chesseburger.  It was so good to eat that I hadn't realized how much I missed American food.  That night we went to a play that was about 3 different women doing different skits the whole time.  It was a little hard for me to understand though since I don't know that much Spanish.  After that I went with some people to a discotecha and it ended up being a lot of fun because it was so big so we could be listening to spanish one minute, then english, then techno music.  The next day we went to an art museum and to the biggest park in Madrid which were both pretty cool to see.

Then that following week I had my final for level 2 and then left for a 5 day trip around Italy.  On this trip I went with my friend Becca who's in the program with me.  Italy was my dream vacation so I was so excited to finally be able to go here.  I was going to be very disappointed if I wouldn't have visited it while I was in Spain.  We left on a thursday and made our way to Venice.  There was a strike in Spain that day so we had to take a taxi to get to our plan which was an hour and a half away since there weren't any buses running.  So that was an unexpected 150 euros that we had to pay for.  Once we got to Venice that night we just settled into our hotel.  That next day we visited around the main island in Venice and saw the main plaza which was St. Mark's.  We saw the bascillica, campanile, clock tower, canals, and a bunch of designer shops.  We were going to take a gondola ride but it was 80 euros for two people for a half hour and we decided it wasn't worth it that much.   We made sure to eat a lot of gelato and see the stain glass work which is what they're famous for.  To get around Venice you have to take water taxi's everywhere which was really different.  Then we left at 3 to go to Florence and ended up getting there around 5.  That night we looked around for a while and then had a nice meal.  The next day we saw a bunch of gardens, ponte vecchio bridge, different plazas, and lots of artwork.  We also went to this amazing pizzeria where they had a special stove to cook it in.  It's seriously the best pizza I've ever had and Florence lives up to the reputation of having the best pizza in the world.  After we were done seeing everything we wanted to in Florence we took another train to Rome that lasted about 3 hours.  The next couple days we spent in Rome were the BEST days I could have imagined.  There was so much history there that it made it even better.  We saw the pantheon (where we took pictures with gladiators), a bunch of churches, old ruins, trevi fountain, tomb of the unknown soldier, Vatican city including St. Peter's Bascillica and the Sistene Chapel, and of course the grand daddy of them all the Colosseum.  The Colosseum was by far my favorite part of the whole trip.  I could have spent all day in there and was wondering what it would have been like to see the gladiators in action there.   We ended up traveling by every way possible: boat, car, train, plane, and bus.  So after this trip I was an experienced traveler to say the least.

We got back on a Tuesday night and had a day off before we were traveling to London on Thursday.  I was going to London with Becca (who I went with to Italy) and Tayler.  We were going to spend 2 1/2 days and we were pretty excited to hear English all the time but we were going to get spoiled with it.  While we were in London our days we were pretty packed but lots of fun.  We saw a musical called Wicked, London Eye, changing of the guards, buckingham palace, the original hard rock cafe, houses of parliament, big ben, westminster abbey, m&m world, St. James park, St. Paul's cathedral, John Wesley's house, and the Tower Bridge.  We didn't go into all of these places because it would have ended up costing a ton of money but we at least had to say that we had seen them.  It also didn't help that for every 2 american dollars it's 1 British pound so that made us do even less things.   It was really cool to see a musical because it's the first professional one that I have ever seen and the fact that it was in English was a plus too.  They had double decker buses every where which were pretty neat.  We wanted to see the royal dresses but we couldn't figure out where they had them so that was a little bit of a disappointment.  But overall the trip was a lot of fun and I'm glad I got to go.  Especially since they had reese's so we stocked up on those since we don't have them in Spain.

Then we had a day off after London before I started my level 3 class.  It seems alright so far but i'm making sure that i'm studying everyday so that way I can get a better grade this time around.  This weekend though I went to Barcelona and I wish I would have had more time to be there.  I went with 3 other girls from my program and we left friday afternoon and got back saturday afternoon so we had limited time.  We got really cheap tickets so that's why we didn't stay too long. We saw parque Guell, the Barcelona futbol stadium, and la Sagrada Familia.  Parque Guell had a bunch of houses in it that looked like gingerbread houses which were pretty cool.  The Sagrada Familia was a huge church that was antique looking on the outside and very modern on the inside.  It had some of the most beautiful stain glass work I have ever seen, especially when the light was coming through it.  Also a funny story was that we got the wrong directions to our hostel so we ended up on the opposite of the city that we needed to be.  We took about a hour hike up there and had a great view of the city.  Though we got a taxi ride to our hostel because at that point we were sick of hiking.  Ok I think that's pretty updated now.  I promise I'll write more soon!