La primera mitad de mi semestre ya esta terminado. [The first half of my semester is already done.]

Hello folks!

Last week marked the halfway point for us students studying here in Valladolid.  We had midterms before our break from the 17th-19th of March.

It was quite the intensive week, I must admit.  I had 6 exams during my week, along with attending classes regularly.  Needless to say, I was pulling my hair out before Wednesday even arrived!  Thankfully, my desk and bed only looked like a mess for a few days before I remembered to pick it all up!

Studying for literature, art, grammar, oral expression, and culture! Planning trips!  ARGH! I was so stressed! 

Overall, I would say the first half of the semester was definitely successful.  I can tell that my Spanish has improved a lot since I've been here.  Some days I think that maybe my Spanish speaking abilities haven't changed that much, because I still speak a lot of English...but then I remember how scared I was even to walk into a cafe in the beginning of the semester.  Either way, my confidence with my Spanish speaking has definitely increase a lot.  My host mom and Spanish friends keep telling us how good our Spanish skills are, and it's hard to believe them because we're constantly comparing ourselves to native speakers.  But after thinking about how much I really do know, I'm happy to say I can successfully function in a Spanish speaking country, without a translator!  :)  In fact, if any of you want to go to a Spanish speaking country, I'll be more than willing to tag along and translate FOR you!

Anyway, I'm happy to report that out of 10 points, I got 8.75 or higher on all of my exams.  Excluding my grammar exam, which was out of 40 points.  I received 35 points on that exam! Overall, I'm very happy with how I did.

When I think back on the first few days here in Valladolid, I can't do anything but laugh.  I was terrified of getting lost, nervous to talk to my host mom, shocked at some of the things I was seeing...and now with people visiting me (Chase and my parents) I'm sure they'll go through some of those same things.  Though they're not staying for 5 months, it doesn't necessarily mean they won't be amazed and weirded out by the things they'll see.  Chase is getting the chance to stay here at Maria Jesus's piso, she offered to have him stay with us, and we so graciously accepted the offer!  It was such a nice move on her part, she's already taking in 2 foreign students, but now she has offered to house my boyfriend for 2 nights as well...the more time goes on, the easier it gets to feel welcome here in Spain.  I'm really excited to show him where I've been living for the past 3.5 months and for him to meet my mamá española!

It's been a crazy 3.5 months, and I honestly don't know how to feel about that.  I do know, however, that this whole experience is going to end way to soon.  Before I know it, I'll be on a flight back to the States, and I'm actually terrified of that, too!  On one hand, I feel like it was AGES ago that I was in Madrid with the whole group, that we took a trip to Toledo.  Shoot, it even feels like eons ago that we took our placement exam in Valladolid.  On the other hand, it feels like I just got off the plane yesterday.

I think I can chalk this discrepancy up to different aspects of my adjustment here in Spain.  It feels like just yesterday in the sense that I'm still learning how the Spanish culture functions and where exactly my place is within that culture.  However, it feels like ages ago that I was spending the first night in Madrid because of the changes I've gone through while I've been here.  Being in Spain has taught me a lot so far, both about myself and the way that I interact in society.  I've learned a lot of valuable lessons here, and I honestly don't know if I can put into words what I'm feeling right now.  All I know is that being thrown into a completely different situation, and living in a different country for a period of time really shows you who you are at your core.  It strips you down to your insecurities, it plays on what you fear most, and it tests your level of patience.  But then, it picks you up, gives you confidence, and allows you to question things you haven't dared to question before.

I have now, a level of confidence that I can honestly say I haven't experienced before.  By being forced to interact with strangers who most of the time have NO idea what I'm trying to say, by meeting new friends, and by interacting with my familia española, I've changed.  Branching out, being on my own, and learning even the smallest things every day has really taught me to appreciate all that surrounds me.  It's taught me to look for the silver lining in EVERY situation.  (It exists, I promise you.)  I can now walk down the street, and find something new every day to appreciate.  Today, as I was walking home from school, as small and trivial as this might be, I witnessed two middle aged men stopped at a stop light in a bread delivery truck, laughing so hard they were crying.  I had no idea what they were laughing about, but still that made me smile.  Last weekend when my friends and I were lost trying to find our hostel, a caravan of buses drove past us.  We were sitting on the curb with our backpacks...we probably looked like a group of lost and/or homeless tourists.  Most of the buses drove past and either laughed at us or waved to us.  But one bus stopped and a woman on the bus motioned to us to get on, and asked if we needed a ride anywhere.  Here, a bus full of complete strangers, was offering to give us a ride.  It was one of the most kind gestures that anyone could have done for us.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that studying abroad has had so many benefits so far...not only the obvious (my Spanish is better!), but also the less obvious.  I'm so thankful I've had this experience in my life, and I know when I get home it will be difficult to explain it to my friends and family.  But I will try.  Because I want you all to feel, to see, to hear, and to taste what I'm experiencing.  If I could bring you all here so you could share in this experience with me, I would in a heartbeat.

Thank you all for supporting me, for being there for me on the rough "I miss home" type of days, and for your love.

It is with this post, I write a special shout out to my parents.  Without you, I wouldn't have ever had the guts to go through with this semester.  I still remember sitting at the kitchen table when we FIRST discussed my studying abroad, before I had even made the decision to go.  You were both so very supportive.  Then when I had my interview at International Programs, I was asked about how my parents felt about me going.  I was proud and happy to say that I had two wonderful parents who would support me in what ever I do in life, even if that included living in Spain for 5 months.

I love you and I know I wouldn't be where I am today without you.

Much love to everybody who has helped me along the way, friends, family, and strangers!

<3

Love,

Erin 

     

 

Valencia - parte 2! [Valencia - part 2!]

So, back to Valencia.   :)

After the beach we made the wise decision to head back home to our hostel and get ready for the night's festivities!  Sunday night was called the Nit del Foc, which isn't Spanish, by the way, but it translates from Romanian to Night of Fire, and they were lighting the sky with fireworks.  Valencia is considered the world's pyrotechnic capital...and I definitely agree with that statement after seeing the firework show Sunday night!

 
We watched the fireworks from under a bridge, and when we came up to street level to go back home on the metro, all we saw was a HUGE mob of people flooding the 5 lane wide street coming towards us.  At this point, the group of 8 of us decided to grab a travel buddy and make our way back home to the hostel in pairs...I swear, getting 8 people home safe in that mob was incredible!
We all ended up on the same metro train anyway, but it was similar to sardines in the metro, and on the streets..well, let's just say I have NEVER seen that many people in one area of a city before.  It was absolutely loco, but it was definitely a sight I will never forget!

Monday we didn't do much except bum around the city and in doing so, we found the large Virgen  in the middle of the city, which is adorned with tons of carnations.

Here's an up close shot of the detail on the statue!  It truly was beautiful!  And to the left, look at all of the people! It was like that all weekend long, but being here was definitely worth the crowds!

And of course, a trip to Valencia is not complete without a meal of Paella!  :)  With chicken of course! 

  

Valencia's Cathedral - because no Spanish city would be quite complete without one! 
















And also, there were 100's of thousands (I read it in the newspaper) of women dressed like this the entire weekend - my host mom told me they're called vestidos regionales, which means regional dresses.  She says every region has a different type of dress, and this happens to be that of Valencia!  They only wear them on festivals and special occasions, though!


Phew, and finally..I'm almost done, I promise!  Monday our bus left at 4pm, but the burning of las fallas happened at midnight that night.  I didn't stay to watch the burning because I wanted to get back in time for classes on Tuesday morning, but I had friends who did stay!  Here's a photo of one of the fallas being burnt!  It was really  neat how they did it...they set up a giant line of fireworks and firecrackers before the falla, and lit the end on fire..the flames worked it's way through the firecrackers until it hit the falla!  My friends told me it was really neat to see!

And with that, I conclude my trip to Valencia!  I know it was two really long posts, but I wanted to show you everything I saw!  :)  I hope you enjoyed it!  And keep reading, because I have a lot of travel plans coming up really soon!  Barcelona, the Canary Islans with mom and dad, Portugal, and even Italy!

Love you all,

besos y abrazos,
Erin

Creo que encontré mi ciudad favorita - Valencia! (parte 1) [I think I found my favorite city - Valencia! (part 1)]

Hola from Valladolid!  

This past weekend, (March 17th-19th) a few friends and I decided to take a trip back to the Mediterranean!  We just loved it so much the first time and we couldn't get enough of it!  :)

This time we traveled a little bit further south than Barcelona/Sitges, and we went to Valencia, Spain's paella capital!  Every year, Valencia hosts what's called "Las Fallas" (lahs fayas) between the 15th and 19th of March.  I didn't know much about this festival before coming to Spain, but I definitely learned a lot once I got to Valencia! Las Fallas is a great celebration in honor of San Jose (Saint Joseph), patron of the carpenters.  Anyway, the city of Valencia is the 3rd largest city in Spain, and during Las Fallas, it doubles in population!  Let me tell you, there sure were a TON of people visiting for the festival!

Las Fallas - you're definitely asking yourself what that even means. Technically, it translates to "the failures" but let me tell you this weekend and festival was anything BUT a failure.  The fallas themselves are grand displays of creativity and talent.  They are huge floats, if you will, that people decorate and create out of paper maché, wood, mold-able polystyrene and paint according to a theme they have chosen.  They then work on them all year long, starting the day after last year's celebrations end, only to have them be burnt down at the festival.  We're talking serious business...some of these fallas cost over 900,000 € and are about 30 meters high! (The tallest was constructed in 2007 and was 32 meters tall.)

Here are some photos of the fallas that we saw this year in Valencia:

Each Falla has a different theme, and some are just made to be fun! Some of them critique society, we saw a few that had funny satirical concepts of them about the social security and some of the financial issues the country is going through.  They're really beautiful, and absolutely amazing to see.

This is one of my favorite photos - that awkward moment when you get your braces stuck in something you probably shouldn't have had in your mouth to start with!  We've all been there!  :)

 They're literally placed all throughout the city - on almost every street you can find another falla, especially in the heart of the old city.  We stayed in a hostel in a nearby suburb of Valencia called Burjassot, and there were even fallas in our town!















Anyway, now that you get the gist of the fallas, I'll tell you all about our wonderful weekend in Valencia!  Well, it started late Friday (the 16th) at night.  Three of us took a bus from Valladolid to Madrid that left at 9:30 and arrived at midnight.  Our next bus left Madrid at 1am with an arrival time of 5:15am.  However, when we got to the buses outside of the Madrid bus station, ready to board, 2 of us couldn't find our bus!  It was supposed to be bus #1, but it didn't exist!  There was a fleet of about 5 buses heading towards Valencia leaving at 1am, but alas, #1 was no where to be found. After asking countless people, one kind man finally told us our tickets were for Friday (the 16th) at 1am!!!  We forgot to take into account that our bus tickets should have been for the 17th at 1am!! (The date changes after midnight..of course!  Why didn't we think of that?!) We sprinted to the ticket counter with 5 minutes to spare, managed to purchase new tickets, and sprinted back to the buses to make it on time!  Our weekend had already proved to be...exciting, at least!

We arrived in Valencia at 5:15am, after quite the bus ride.  My friend Gretchen was on a separate bus, and Katie and I sat next to each other on our bus ride...we got about 1 hour of sleep!  So...we all thought it would be really neat to watch the sun rise over the beach!  From the bus station, we started walking towards the beach..or so we thought!  None of us had maps, so we were walking from bus stop to bus stop, using the city maps mounted on the stops!  After about 20 minutes of walking, we realized we were going the complete opposite way of the beach!  So we turned around, and kept walking.  We found some Fallas yet that night, and also a lot of people just going home from the night's festivities...but after a ton of walking...we found the beach.  The only bummer was..it was 10:30am!!  We walked for about 4 hours to find the beach!  (This did include, however, a stop at a café to get some coffee and a croissant for breakfast, as well as using their bathroom to freshen up!)  At this point, the zipper on my pants broke - I figured that it was going to be a day devoted to Murphy's Law...and I was not let down...just wait! 

We were all exhausted, slap happy, and ready to lay down for a bit.  After romping in the Mediterranean, we layed on the beach.  Boy did it feel good to give my feet a rest!  We had 4 more people getting into Valencia at 1:20pm Saturday, so we headed back to the bus station (metro this time!) and met them.  We decided to check into our hostel, so we took the metro to Burjassot (the suburb of Valencia where we stayed) and attempted to find our hostel.  We literally walked around for several hours trying to find this place.  We split up, looking for it...it was no where to be found!  So one of the groups headed into a bar to ask some people, and turns out, we were literally walking around the block with our hostel on it the whole time.  Great!  So, it was turning out to be an interesting weekend, to say the least.

Finding the hostel was heaven, because it was the nicest hostel I've stayed in to date.  It's right next to a campus, and we think it's a building of dorm rooms, but when they have extras they rent them out like a hostel.  We had 7 people in 3 different rooms, both with 2 beds.  Each room had a spacious bathroom, a fridge, and a kitchen area!  That night we planned Sunday and Monday, and got dinner, and hung out until I fell asleep and broke up the party...leave it to me to fall asleep sitting on the floor leaning up against our closet!

The next morning we explored the city of Valencia - we packed a lunch and headed out towards the center of the city.  We saw some more fallas, and lots of the city.  We found their Plaza de Toros (bullfighting ring), train station, and cathedral.  The city is also surrounded by a sunken park that used to be a river.  Since then it has dried up and converted into a huge park, complete with bridges, fountains, orange trees, palm trees, and cherry blossom trees! 

Look at the SWEET tree we found!! 

We also headed to the most important tourist attraction in the city - the Ciudad de las Artes y Ciencias (directly translated: City of Arts and Sciences).  It's an architectural complex of museums, aquariums, planetariums, and an opera house.  It is by far the most interesting architecture I have seen.  It's also one of the most beautiful locations I've seen.  The buildings are all VERY modern looking, and they're all incorporated into the whole scheme of things in their own way.

Check it out!

This spaceship like building is the Palacio de las Artes Reina Sofia.  It holds a theatre and an opera house and is dedicated to the arts and music.
The eye shaped building below is called L'Hemisféric and it holds an IMAX theatre and a planetarium.  It was built with the shape of an eye on purpose, due to it's devotion to movies and astronomy!

Here's one more photo of the architecture I think you'll really appreciate!

I plan on printing it and hanging it in a frame when I get home - shoot, I plan on doing that with a LOT of photos I've been taking!  Enjoy!
We also enjoyed the beach on Sunday - however it was extremely windy so sand was everywhere..absolutely EVERYWHERE.
Well, I'm going to keep writing about my weekend in Valencia, but we did so much, I can't fit it into the blog!  It's telling me I'm overloading it with photos and data, so I will finish up my weekend in Valencia in a second blog entry...

to be continued....    :)