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....    :) 

Erase una vez, yo fui a Salamanca. [Once upon a time, I went to Salamanca].

Hola otro vez!  :)

The Monastery!

March 3rd our school had another excursion, this time to the city of Salamanca.  It's located about an hour and fifteen minutes away from Valladolid, so it wasn't too much of a bus ride!  There was a small group of us who elected to spend the night in Valladolid, and come back on Sunday.  We heard the city had a great night experience because it is home to many international students!  We also knew it was a larger city and wanted Sunday to walk around to see more of the city than what we had time for on Saturday.

Cathedral!

Anyway in the morning, with our professors, we took a guided tour along the small windy streets of Salamanca, and we had a great tour of the Cathedral.  It's a really unique cathedral in that there are 2 actual buildings built right next to eachother.  The old cathedral was built in what is called the Romanico style, and the new is built in the typical Gotico style.  The new, or second cathedral was built using an original wall from the old cathedral.  It's really cool because you can see the difference between the two churches standing in one spot!

The Cathedral from the Park!

The dove in the middle of the yellow circle at the top of the dome is the size of a car.  It just shows you how tall and incredible these buildings really are!! 

Casa de las Conchas

Plaza Mayor!

We also saw other highlights such as the Casa de las Conchas.  It's said that there is a pure gold note hidden under one of the shells on the outside of the house, but I guess not many people believe it!  (I sure don't!)  Anyway, we had a lot of free time on this excursion, and we wandered around the city looking at interesting buildings such as the monastery, and what's considered the most beautiful Plaza Mayor here in Spain.  Even though it is beautiful, it's kind of boring...because the whole plaza is one solid color.  It's all tan.  It's got wonderful architecture, but lacks flair, in my opinion.  However, it is most definitely gorgeous at night when it's all lit up - that's a sight I won't forget seeing!

The plaza mayor is decorated all around with medallions of influential people in Spain's history, including King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella, and you guessed it, Dictator Franco. Though, his medallion looks a bit different than the rest because it's created out of molded easy to clean plastic to stand up to the vandalism.  In fact, while we were there, it was stained purple because of the red paint people throw at it. Some people don't believe Franco should be included in the Plaza Mayor because of his dictatorship, but like it or not, he's a famous character in Spain's history...they didn't decide to only remember the GOOD influential people. Sometimes, you've got to take the good with the bad. Anyway, bullfights were also often held in the Plaza Mayor, with the last ceremonial corrida (bullfight) taking place in 1992.

The University Facade!

We also saw the university in Salamanca, being one of the oldest in Spain.  It includes a facade with the Reyes Católicos, and their shields.  It also has religious scenes on it, because what would it be without it?  :)  Every where you look here in Spain, you'll find some sort of religious themes.  It's such a huge influential part of their history. 

The Roman Bridge

The following day, my friends and I wandered through some parks, and we found the river with the famous statue of the bull by it!  (It's from a novel we read in literature).  We also saw a Roman bridge, and sampled some interesting food. (More on that, later!)

Anyway, our trip to Salamanca was super fun, and I'm really glad I spent the night and was able to see more of the city!  It was neat because I remembered a lot from the last time I was there, and I even found the apartment building where I lived for 3 days in 2006! 

I shall update soon with more trips and experiences!  

besos y abrazos,
 
Erin (ps - I also convinced a man in Salamanca that I was a Spaniard, and he believed me!!! My Spanish must be getting better!!)

Mi cumple en España! [My birthday in Spain!]

Phew.  Well, today is March 20th, and I cannot believe that in 2 months, I have to leave this beautiful country.  I've learned to love the people, the food, the way of life, and my family.  They say that you have culture shock when you live in a different area of the world for a while, but I think when you open your mind to new things, you don't really have time to be "shocked".  It's more like...culture realization.  I think more of the "shock" part comes into play when you come back home and realize how different things really are.

When I try to explain even the most simplest things to Spaniards, they look at me like I'm crazy.  I told Maria Jesus, my host mom, that before coming to Spain, I've never had warm milk for breakfast.  She thought I was loca (crazy). She told me that you can't drink cold milk for breakfast because you need something to warm up your stomach before the day gets started!  I'm not sure if that logic really works, but I see nothing wrong with giving it a try!  I'm so used to it by now, it would be weird to drink cold milk!

Anyway, I meant to write about my birthday celebrations in Spain.  But first a little bit about Spain's March.  I don't know if the same lion/lamb phrase works for the weather here in Spain, but if so, March definitely came in like a lamb.  We've been having exceptional weather here so far.  It's been high 60s/70s and I've been taking FULL advantage of the beach and parks here in the city.  It's fantastic to not have fog for my morning walk to campus!  I hope it doesn't leave like a lion, though!  I have a lot of great traveling plans at the end of the month!

Spring happens to be mating time for birds.  Which might seem a little out of left field, BUT it means the peacocks are ready to strut their stuff in Valladolid's Campo Grande!  I happened to be there, with my camera, just in time to see one of the males with it's tail open!

Also, spring happens to be the season of my birthday and this year it landed on a Friday.  It was nothing short of a wonderful time!  I sure had a great time, celebrating my birthday with my friends here! It was a GREAT time!  Thursday nights, the city of Valladolid has great deals on tapas, so a group of us went out to enjoy the deals thursday night.  The first place we went, I got a delicious tostada de jamon and they warmed it up!  Toast with Spanish ham on it is absolutely amazing!  The next place we went to, we decided to get a few different things and split them among those who came out!  We ordered calamari, patatas bravas, and another type of potatoes (I can't remember the name).  At the second place, my dear friend Brenna surprised me with CANDLES for my birthday (I had told her previously that day that I just wanted candles to blow out) and heart shaped suckers for those of us who came out to celebrate!  It was so sweet of her!  :)

We stuck the candles in bread!!

Thank you so much Brenna!  :) 

The next day was Friday, and I went to classes, but after that, I decided to get my hair cut!  I chopped most of it off...it's a relief to ditch that hair for the spring/summer!  During lunch that day, my host mom presented me with a gift.  I was absolutely speechless.  It was so kind of her to think of me on my birthday.  That evening our host mom (Maria Jesus) taught Rochelle (my roommate) and I how to make flan.  Here it is for those of you wondering:  (and it's really delicious)

In a bowl, combine:
4 eggs
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 can regular milk (use can to measure milk after you pour sweetened condensed milk into bowl)

Mix this until blended smoothly.

In the bottom of a loaf pan, caramelize (melt until golden) about 1 cup of sugar to give the bottom a good coating.  Then, pour the previous mixture into the pan and bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour.  Test the sides with a knife to see when done.  (If it comes out clean, it's done).  Cool completely, and serve by inverting onto a platter.  Maria Jesus also decorated it with strawberries and whipped topping.  :)     

Anyway, Saturday we had a family lunch with Maria Jesus, her sister, her brother-in-law, and her nephew.  She cooked us chipirones (baby squid), snails, and an amazing rice/cod/potato/green pepper dish.  I'm really excited to get the recipe and bring it back home and cook it all the time!  It was really nice to talk with Maria's family and to get to know them better.  It's taken us a while to warm up to everybody, but Rochelle and I feel like family here in Spain.  :)

I have a lot more to say about March, but I don't want to make one GIGANTIC entry with a million photos, so for now, besos y abrazos mi amigos!  <3

Erin

Hablemos sobre Valladolid [Let's talk about Valladolid]!

Hey!

After fielding some questions about what I'm actually doing here in Valladolid, rather than just traveling, I thought I would write about my life here in Valladolid for a short bit, and show you what MY town is like! 

It took me a while, but I know the city pretty dang well now.  Almost like the back of my hand.  This took a lot of getting lost and finding my way home, but it was all worth it.

I've already done an entry and showed you the city a little bit, but I had a lot ot photos at night from that entry.  Last week Sunday I walked around our city and pretended I was a tourist, rather than a student.  I found some great things to share with you all!

I'll start with our university.  Our campus is about a 40 minute walk from our house.  Since it's been getting nicer out, the walk is much more manageable, however, it's still slightly chilly in the mornings.  Our "class" consists of about 85 students from Eau Claire, Stevens Point, IUP (in Pennsylvania), some students from California, as well as South Korea and Japan.  We are then split up into groups 1 through 7 depending on our Spanish speaking and comprehension levels.  My group has 17 students in it.  We all sit in one room, and our teachers change classes, rather than us switching rooms every hour.  Our classes normallly start around 9:30 am, and they all last 1 hour.  We have 2 classes until 11:30, and then we get a 20 minute break.  Depending on the day, we might have none, one, or 2 classes yet after the break.  We're normally done by 12:50pm, with the exception of a few days here and there where we have more classes (or less!).

Every few weeks our schedules change, so right now I'm in the middle of a schedule, and it ends on March 16th.  After that, we'll get a new schedule and that will most likely go until our spring break, which begins on March 31st.

Above is the main building on campus, and we actually enter in the small brown building behind it.  This whole area, as you can see below, is called the Campus Miguel Delibes.  He was a famous Spanish author. 

 So that's our campus.  There's also another campus in the city, not too far from ours, which is where a lot of the other students go.  There is a building on our campus directly devoted to foreign students taking classes (where we go) as well as a cafe/computer lab where we can print things, and a building for technology and science.  On the other campus, there are buildings for different subjects as well.




 Valladolid is a city with a lot of history.  It was the capital of the Spanish empire from roughly 1469 to 1561, when a great fired destroyed a lot of the city.  At that point, King Philip II moved the capital to Madrid.  However, the city still has a lot of really awesome historical buildings.  In fact, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella (two of the most prominent figures in Spain's history) were married here, Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) lived here for quite some time, and King Philip II was born and baptized here.  

This church is called La Antigua, and it stands in the shadow of the cathedral.  They're literally neighbors.  I was standing next to the cathedral when I took this photo.  I think it's kind of sad that I'm living in this beautiful city, but I've already become accustomed to seeing these things on an almost daily basis.  Sometimes, I  have to remind me to open my eyes and see the beauty around me, rather than thinking of it as my daily walk to class. 

 Here's the cathedral, or at least part of it! 

 And this is called "Plaza Universidad".  It's a plaza near where the other university is, and it's close to a lot of high schools.  There are statues of lions in front of this building...and legend has it, he who counts the lions in the plaza will be riddled with bad luck.  Needless to say, I haven't counted the lions! They are lions that are holding a shield, the shield of the university.  Lions are said to be a very protective animal, so they're widely used as a symbol here in Spain.

 This is the house that Cervantes' and his family used to live in.  It's here that he finished the first half of his magnum opus, "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha". 

 Our city also happened to be the city in which Christopher Columbus died in.  The plaque on the wall behind the replica of this ship marks the location where he died.  There is now a huge museum dedicated to Christopher Columbus' journeys to the New World, and how Spain grew as a result of his discovery.

 Here are some more modern buildings in our city - this is the view I see every morning when I cross the river going to school!  It was so calm and precious one morning, I just had to snap this photo.  I see people fishing in this river, and I've even fed the ducks!








 Here's a photo of the plaza mayor during the day time.  It's a beautiful square in the middle of the day with people and cafe's strewn about, especially now that the weather is starting to pick up!








 Here's a photo of the river along with some buildings - they're all apartment buildings similar to the ones I live in!  

 And here is a peacock that roams the city's park, called Campo Grande.  I saw one the other day open it's tail (it's mating season) but unfortunately didn't have my camera on me!



 


Here are some photos of the fountains in our city.  The large one with the rainbow is located in Plaza Zorilla, and it's my favorite. It's absolutely gigantic, and it is near my house - a 10 minute walk across the river.

The smaller one to the right is called Fuente Dorada (fountain of gold) and it's been frozen several times this semester - which is a rare occurrence here in Spain!  For a while there we were getting our winter air from Siberia, but it's gone now!


And finally, I'll throw a picture of me in here.  :)
 

I love living in this city, and I'm so grateful to have this experience!

I hope you too, enjoyed another short entry about Valladolid!

Love and miss you all,
besos y abrazos,

Erin