I hope you never look back but NEVER FORGET...
We NEVER have a boring day here in Spain, even when we have to go to class! We actually made it to our first class on Tuesday before it even began, which is good because the teacher locked late people out of the room! This is the teacher who looks like Krissy. I'm not sure her name, so we always refer to her as Krissy. Anyway, Krissy is REALLY strict and gets angry very easily. She's kind of intimidating and definitely breaks the mold of the normal Spanish teacher. I'm pretty sure that class, Spanish Regional Economy, is going to be the hardest one we have here, and it also is the most time consuming, so I'm sure I'll like it the least... We have a group project in there right before break, and we have to turn in the Powerpoint slides for it by Thursday, so we're going to work on that this weekend. Henrietta, the girl from Denmark who is the female version of Henry, is in our group. We're comparing the average family incomes of Spain, Denmark, and the USA and investigating reasons as to why they're different.. pretty exciting, huh?
We also started our Spanish language class on Tuesday. I guess it's sort of like a block class at MSU, as it is not as long as a normal class. We went over some very basic elementary Spanish on the first day, and then we played games. Oklahoma friends are in there with us! It seems like it'll be fun, but we're actually going to have homework in it -- oh no! :) The final is also 70% of our grade.. no fun!
We had another little surprise when we were going to "work" on Tuesday. We headed to the bus stop, like always, slightly before 6:00 and waited for good ole bus #31 to show up and take us to Blasco Ibanez. First, it took FOREVER to get there. We saw so many other buses come and go. Finally, the bus appeared, and we were disappointed to see that the driver was the mean, old, grumpy man. Whatever. We boarded the bus anyway, but as soon as we got on mean, old, grumpy bus driver asked if we were going to Blasco Ibanez, and when we said yes, he said he was NOT going there! He proceeded to yell at us in quick, confusing Spanish that we didn't understand and made us get off the bus. Back to the sidewalk we went, and he drove away. We had NO idea what was going on, but we called Maria, the lady we work for, and she explained that there's a strike going on with both the bus AND the metro. I guess strikes here in Spain are a little different than the US. For one, the strikers schedule days and time to strike. For example, they aren't striking today, but they are going to strike the next week, but they don't strike all day; they only do it at certain times. They are forced to do minimal work, so they have to drive around, but they can refuse to pick people up and take them where they want to go. Supposedly the reason they're striking is because they're mad that people never pay. Well, that makes sense, but instead of being annoying and not driving the poor American students without cars around, why don't they just create a system to make people pay?? Seriously! :) Oh well.. I just hope the strike ends before the family gets here, or else we'll probably be flagging a few taxis or taking the subway at awkward times. Whatever!
Wednesday is our busy day at campus, but it went pretty smoothly. We have one four hour class called "Web Design", but it basically came down to "make your own facebook page class". Our webpage just consists of information about us, links we like, and pictures of places and people that make us happy. We also have to make up an idea for a website, but we don't have to actually build it. Our idea is ehostel.com. (Kind of like eharmony, you know? :)) It'll be a dating site where people looking for love can meet in hostels because we have observed that most people who go to hostels are looking for people to hook up with. Of course, this is not the case for us! :) Our teacher thought it was pretty amusing.
The REAL excitement of Wednesday didn't happen until late that night after class and grocery shopping, though. It was around 11pm our time, and Emily and I had both just taken super long, relaxing showers. All was well in the world. Then, someone buzzes our door. At 11pm. Of course, we screamed, especially when we looked through the peephole and saw this old man standing there. We were not about to open the door to some strange man who was insistently knocking on the door and yelling. The door was locked, but Emily threw herself up against it. The man would NOT leave. He kept buzzing and yelling. We had no idea what he was saying. In the meantime, I was on instant messenger freaking out to people because, you know, that was really helping the situation.. He finally went away, and we calmed down. Then, he came back! More yelling, more banging, more buzzing. He added a new phrase in there, though. He started yelling "policia! policia! policia!" Uh, yeah, we were not about to fall for that; we knew he wasn't the police! Finally, our phone rang. It was the landlady. She informed us that the creepy man was actually her relative who lives below us and we needed to open the door for him. By this time, Emily and I were both on the verge of tears because we were so scared, so she kept saying "tranquila, tranquila!" (Calm down!). When we opened the door, the man saw us, realized that we were Americans who speak poor Spanish, and felt SOOOO bad for yelling. He just didn't understand why we would not open the door! Apparently he had explained to us the situation, but we didn't understand it. It turns out that our shower was leaking onto his ceiling and flooding his bathroom, and he wanted to come and look at it. Our bathroom was not leaking, but he led us downstairs and showed us his. He lives with his mom, we think, and she was mad at first that we had refused to open the door for ten minutes, but when she realized that we're just "stupid Americans" she, too, felt really bad, and Old Mama gave me a big hug. The creepy-man-who-really-isn't-creepy-but-in-fact-really-really-nice also hugged us repeatedly and apologized for being so aggressive, but he just didn't understand why we wouldn't open up. On the bright side, we now know our neighbors, and they're really nice! On the downside, our shower isn't getting fixed until Monday, so we're stuck "showering" in the sink. Good thing I'm becoming a pro at not showering.. just kidding! This is actually kind of gross, but we'll manage.
Thursday was another boring day of class, but as soon as we were finished, the weekend started! The first thing we did was book plane tickets to Paris for April with Abril! We're going to spend four days there and hopefully seeing most of the main sites and spending a day in Disneyland! It's going to be SOOO incredibily fun having Abril with us! She's amazing.
I also got a little package from Cash on Thursday -- Spanish Bibles to give to people we meet! They are so awesome. It's a very thoughtful thing. I can't wait to see opportunities that arise for me to give them away. Thanks, Cashmo! :)
Aside from that, we actually have a lot to do this weekend; we have a few group projects coming up, and I have to teach my lesson in English this upcoming week because the teacher will be gone, so I need to make a Powerpoint for it! We went to work today instead of yesterday because yesterday the transportation services were striking but not today. Crazy! I think we'll have a night in tonight. We have dates with homework, sparkling grape juice, and ice cream. In reality, I think I prefer homework over creepy men, especially creepy 30 year old men who lack facial hair.
It's supposed to be in the upper 70s tomorrow, so we're heading to the beach. Then, we're going out with Lucia, Alberto, and friends to celebrate Alberto's birthday!! We haven't seen Al in so long; we're pretty excited!
Of course, another exciting thing is the fact that I will be with my family in London at this exact time in two short weeks!!!!! I can't wait to watch my dad's interactions.. can't wait (love you, daddy!! :))! And, of course, I can't wait to just simply spend time with my parents and brother (although I'll miss my kitty greatly.. sad day!)! :) This means that the halfway mark of our journey is rapidly approaching. Where has the time gone?? Thanks to you ALL for the continuous support, prayers, and kind words. You all have made this experience much smoother and easier! Love you!
...all the ones who love you in the place you left.
Friday, February 29, 2008
Monday, February 25, 2008
the imaginary boyfriend saves the day!
She's at the starting line...
I don't even know where to start! In the past few days I've been kicked out of an airport, camped out in a bathroom, accidentally gone on a date with 30 year old Italians, leaned with the tower, fallen in love with Florence, and so much more.. but let's start with the beginning!
We bought tickets for the metro on Thursday and legally rode it for the first time to the airport! We actually arrived at the airport about two hours before our flight, which was a good thing because the check-in line for Pisa was HUGE! Security was equally long. Spain will elect new government officials on March 9, which means it's been 4 years since the Madrid bombings. This means that Spain's security level is at its peak, and they are being very cautious about everything.
For some reason, our plane from Valencia to Pisa was packed. There were only a few open seats on the plane, and people had their luggage crammed in everywhere. When we landed in Pisa, Ryanair played a song over the intercom that sounded like something you'd hear at a horse race, and then everyone started yelling and clapping. Ryanair made some announcement about how, once again, they arrived on time, but I've noticed something about Ryanair: they always say their flights will last longer than they actually do so that they will always be ahead of schedule. Don't let them fool you! Silly Ryanair...
Since our flight got in so late to Pisa on Thursday night, we had planned on hanging out at the airport for a few hours before heading to the hotel in the morning. Well, Pisa International Airport had a surprise for us... they are closed from midnight-4am! The security guard kicked us outside! There we were stranded and cold in a foreign country all by ourselves. I will admit that we laughed about it a great deal; this kind of stuff only seems to happen to us, and there was nothing else we could do about it besides laugh. The security guard must have felt sorry for us, though, because he led us to this outdoor patio of a restaurant that had a canopy, and he let us shack up in there with a couple of other people. We tried to sleep, but that was impossible because it was freezing. However, we soon heard the voices of other Americans, and we invited them to join us in our little hut. A small group of college students from Michigan and Wisconsin who are studying abroad in Florence for the semester poured in to our refuge. Within a minute of knowing these people, I knocked over their wine bottle and made it break all over the floor. Luckily, the guy who it belonged to was really nice and didn't seem to mind too much! We ended up playing card games with them and talking to pass the time.
We even shared our blankets! As you can see from the left, everyone was huddled together for warmth. Seriously, it was
miserably cold! The blankets really didn't do a lot of good, and we were definitely counting down for the reopening of the airport. Finally, the airport reopened, and we all jetted into the warm building. It was 4am at this time, which meant it was still too early to go to our hostel. Buses weren't even running! Considering we hadn't slept much the night before, Emily and I were very tired, so what do two tired girls do? They follow the example that Will Smith set in his movie Pursuit of Happiness, and they find a large handicap bathroom with a lock on the door. Ours happened to be located on the second floor of the Pisa airport! You know, looking back, I find it really gross that I slept on the floor of a public restroom for 6 (yes, until 10am!) hours, but at the time I was so tired that I didn't care. Really, it wasn't a bad little set-up. When we woke up, there was a sink and toilet right there waiting for us to use... and the ground was warm; you can't complain!
Still, we were more than happy to depart from the airport that Friday morning. After being told to go to 5 different places, we finally found a bus that lead to our hotel. Yup, you read that right; for once, we stayed in a hotel instead of a hostel (thanks, hostelworld!!). It was nestled into the Italian countrysid
e about 5 minutes outside of Pisa, and it was absolutely gorgeous!! This is the front yard of the hotel. The best part was there was little kittens everywhere!! I guess, really, that's not the best part. The best part was probably the room! There was a bed, a heater, a TV with American channels, and our very own bathroom.. quite an upgrade from the night before or any of the hostels we've stayed in in the past! They even offered us free calls to U.S. (We hope it was really free... guess I'll see when the credit card bill comes next month!! Haha.), so Em and I got to call our parents. We can't complain about that! We took a short nap in our luxurious bed before heading into the great town of Pisa, which is home of the leaning tower and.... nothing else!
It wasn't hard to find the tower. There's really nothing else in Pisa! We've heard a lot of people say that there's nothing great about the tower, but I was really impressed with it. It looks like it could just topple over any second, but it doesn't!! Plus, there was a neat cathedral next to it.
We enjoyed taking pictures and watching people. It was also sort of neat to read about the history. There have been some major restorations done in order to make sure that the tower doesn't fall! During World War II, the U.S. actually considered bombing the tower. I'm glad we didn't! I liked seeing it.
After spending some time at the tower, we ate our first Italian meal: pizza! You could tell it was a bit of a touristy restaurant; part of the menu was in English! It was good, though, and we got to sit outside on the street, which I love! We walked around more of Pisa after lupper, and I discovered what might quite possibly be my favorite thing about Italy... gelato! Seriously, Italian ice cream is the best! :)
As it got closer to 7:00, we headed to the sister hotel of our hotel. Our hotel's owner had told us earlier in the day that if we wanted to go to happy hour, we could meet there. Well, since there's nothing else to do in Pisa, we decided to go for it. However, "happy hour" in America is apparently not the same as "happy hour" in Italy.
Our hotel owner didn't come pick us up to go to happy hour; instead he sent two men. At first, we assumed that these people also worked at the hotel, but it soon became clear that they were not employees (one has his PhD!). They showed us some of the more lively parts of Pisa, and then they took us to this Pizzaria.. does something sound strange about that? It was! Turns out our hotel owner had set us up on a date with two of his friends who are THIRTY. It was really creepy, especially when you stop and think about the fact that these two men are 10 years older than me, which makes them 20 years younger than my dad... gross! Don't worry; Emily and I are not stupid! We had a plan to get out of the situation. We lied and told them that we had boyfriends. As soon as they found this out, the entire atmosphere changed, and when we le
ft the pizzaria, they weren't jumping to walk close to us and talk anymore. They lagged behind and eventually told us that they were tired and wanted to go home. They offered to drive us back to our hotel, but we declined because it was awkward and creepy. In the end, we accidentally went on a double date with 2 30 year old Italians, but we did get a really expensive pizza (25 euros!), a pitcher of wine, and a good story out of it, so we can't complain too much. There's a picture of our new boyfriends on the right.. I think their names were John Paul and John Mark or something. I'm pretty sure the one in the purple was mine; he did all the talking, while his friend just sat back and observed. Why do I always get the ones who feel the need to talk excessively??
Needless to say, after that encounter we didn't hang around too much at our hotel the next morning. Before leaving, we had one last strange encounter there. We met two other American college students, and within a minute of knowing us, they invited us to travel with them. They were a tad strange, and when we declined, they invited us for beers. Again, we declined, so they proceeded to follow us to the bus station and got off at the train station stop with us, even though that was not their stop... whatever! Maybe I need to learn to be more friendly, or maybe I need to figure out how to stop attracting such people. Anyway, we caught a train to Florence (Firenza!). Of course, after arriving in Florence we had the traditional meal of McDonald's, and then we headed off for our hostel, Novella's Place. After some searching, we finally found the place. Soon w
e realized that we weren't really staying in a hostel, though... I'm pretty sure we were staying in these people's apartment! It appeared that they live in a few of the rooms while renting the other room out. Overall, the place was fairly clean compared to other places we've stayed (especially the bathroom floor!), but it had this eery feeling to it. See that gate on the right? You had to walk through a door and THEN that gate and then another door and then another door to get to the room. It was weird. It was definitely not fun at night. What was even more strange was that they put us in one room for the first night, but then this little Italian woman who owns it who speaks no English made us move rooms the second night, and of course, we had no idea why. Whatever... it was clean! And cheap!
Our first stop in Florence was Ponte Vicchio, which is commonly referred to as "Old Bridge". It's basically a really famous bridge that runs over the Arno River is adorned with very expensive jewelry shops a
ll throughout it. It was so cute, and it's something like 700 years old! It was one of the only bridges in Florence that survived World War II, which makes it even more special. The bridge led us to the other side of town, and we stumbled across the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, (the DUOMO!) which happens to be the 4th largest cathedral in the world. Seriously, it was huge! Unfortunately, unlike many of the other cathedrals we've seen, it lacked the intricate little details and ornate objects, which I love so much.
Still, it was a spectacular sight. See the dome part of it in the background? Well, if you are willing to pay 6 euro and climb 4
63 steps, you can go to the top. Well, we were willing! We decided to follow the mass of people waiting to get to the top. The way up was horrible. The staircases are all very narrow, and the ceilings are very low. It didn't help that the staircases were WINDING, and many people were trying to go down as we were trying to go up.. oh, it was not a fun process! When we finally got to the top, it was all worth it, though. You could do a complete 360 around the dome and see the entire town of Florence. It was magnificent!
Seriously, it was beautiful. See the mountains in the background? That's what I really love about Florence. I am having a hard time deciding whether I like Italy or Ireland better. Right now, I may be leaning (leaning! Get it!) towards Italy. Surprisingly, mots people speak English there, or at least more people speak it there than they do in Spain. I felt stupid because we'd go into stores and try to order things, and we'd dumb everything down before we soon realized that the store owners spoke English. Oh well! :)
After spending a large amount of time on top of the Duomo and breathing in the beauty of Florence, we strolled down to Galleria Dell Academia... home of Michelangelo's "David"! There are imitations of the amazing sculpture everywhere about town, but the real deal lies within this museum. I'm not a big art person, as I know very little about it, but I am so glad we decided to go to this museum. IT WAS AMAZING! David was so much bigger than I would have imagined. I just can't get over the fact that we viewed something that Michelangelo touched. I don't know a lot about sculpting, but I can tell you that this was amazing. He paid attention to every little detail, right down to the veins in his hands.
I took a few pictures of it before getting yelled at. Apparently there was this tiny sign in the back of the room that said NO photography, but I swear I didn't see it! The lady screamed at us and said, "Can you not read?!?!" Well, what if we couldn't, lady? The fact is that I can read, but I didn't see the sign, and since I didn't see the sign until after snapping a few pictures, I now have pictures of the real deal. Hooray! :)
We did some other touristy things on day two.. more exploring Florence, Pitti's Palace, and the Uffizi. On
e of my favorite things that occurred outside the Uffizi was the below picture. There are all these people who dress up like statues and hold perfectly still so they blend in! Then, of course, if you throw a coin or two at them they liven up for pictures. Yes, I got conned into giving them money; they were fun, especially because I didn't realize they were real people at first! Apparently the guy in this picture is real, but behind him is one of the actual statues. I saw a statue of Donnatello, which leads me to wonder where the rest of the Ninja Turtles were... maybe I'll find them when Aaron comes! :)
After wandering the city some more, we caught a cab to Michelangelo's Point. It's one of the highest spots in the city of Florence, and a really old cathedral is housed there. My friend Courtney suggested that we go there at sunset, so after looking through the cathedral and roaming the grounds, we found a nice little spot to sit and just look over the city. We also witnessed a wedding ceremony taking place.. how cute! Watching the sun melt into the sky while overlooking the city of Florence was a pretty spectacular thing.
I found myself wondering how anything could be more beautiful or amazing, but God likes to surprise me.. we decided to walk back to the city of Florence from the point because it was a beautiful evening, and we sort of knew where we were going. We headed downhill and found the river and followed it to the bridges. We ate dinner and gelato, and the sky continued to get even darker. When we crossed the bridge to go back to our hostel, we looked out over the river, and this is what we saw:
The moon was hitting the water perfectly, and the bridge was illuminated in just the right way to make the reflection in the water stand perfectly still. It was breath taking and left you with a sense of awe. Seriously, it was one of the most perfect moments I have ever had in life; I don't think there's any possible way I could have enjoyed it more (other than possibly replacing Emily with a boy... ;)... JUST KIDDING, EM TRAM!). I've often heard people, including myself, say, "Why, God?" when bad things happen, but for once, I was saying, "Why, God?" in a good way. Why did He choose me to be here and to experience this? I am not deserving of this, but I am so grateful to be here and to see these things and to try all these new things. I am continuously blessed beyond description. I don't ever want to forget little moments like Sunday night; I want to hold on to it all as best as I can.
Now we are back in Valencia. In two and a half weeks, my family will be here!! I am SOOO excited!!!! It'll make the whole journey complete! Of course, this means that my stay in Europe is almost halfway over. How is that even possible? This time last year, I would have never imagined that I'd be here. I thought my future was pretty well mapped out, but God bent it a bit, and here I am. It makes me wonder where I'll be in a year from now. With new experiences, I may branch out a little more in life, but one thing is for sure: my roots will never change! :)
...of the rest of her life.
I don't even know where to start! In the past few days I've been kicked out of an airport, camped out in a bathroom, accidentally gone on a date with 30 year old Italians, leaned with the tower, fallen in love with Florence, and so much more.. but let's start with the beginning!
We bought tickets for the metro on Thursday and legally rode it for the first time to the airport! We actually arrived at the airport about two hours before our flight, which was a good thing because the check-in line for Pisa was HUGE! Security was equally long. Spain will elect new government officials on March 9, which means it's been 4 years since the Madrid bombings. This means that Spain's security level is at its peak, and they are being very cautious about everything.
For some reason, our plane from Valencia to Pisa was packed. There were only a few open seats on the plane, and people had their luggage crammed in everywhere. When we landed in Pisa, Ryanair played a song over the intercom that sounded like something you'd hear at a horse race, and then everyone started yelling and clapping. Ryanair made some announcement about how, once again, they arrived on time, but I've noticed something about Ryanair: they always say their flights will last longer than they actually do so that they will always be ahead of schedule. Don't let them fool you! Silly Ryanair...
Since our flight got in so late to Pisa on Thursday night, we had planned on hanging out at the airport for a few hours before heading to the hotel in the morning. Well, Pisa International Airport had a surprise for us... they are closed from midnight-4am! The security guard kicked us outside! There we were stranded and cold in a foreign country all by ourselves. I will admit that we laughed about it a great deal; this kind of stuff only seems to happen to us, and there was nothing else we could do about it besides laugh. The security guard must have felt sorry for us, though, because he led us to this outdoor patio of a restaurant that had a canopy, and he let us shack up in there with a couple of other people. We tried to sleep, but that was impossible because it was freezing. However, we soon heard the voices of other Americans, and we invited them to join us in our little hut. A small group of college students from Michigan and Wisconsin who are studying abroad in Florence for the semester poured in to our refuge. Within a minute of knowing these people, I knocked over their wine bottle and made it break all over the floor. Luckily, the guy who it belonged to was really nice and didn't seem to mind too much! We ended up playing card games with them and talking to pass the time.
We even shared our blankets! As you can see from the left, everyone was huddled together for warmth. Seriously, it was
miserably cold! The blankets really didn't do a lot of good, and we were definitely counting down for the reopening of the airport. Finally, the airport reopened, and we all jetted into the warm building. It was 4am at this time, which meant it was still too early to go to our hostel. Buses weren't even running! Considering we hadn't slept much the night before, Emily and I were very tired, so what do two tired girls do? They follow the example that Will Smith set in his movie Pursuit of Happiness, and they find a large handicap bathroom with a lock on the door. Ours happened to be located on the second floor of the Pisa airport! You know, looking back, I find it really gross that I slept on the floor of a public restroom for 6 (yes, until 10am!) hours, but at the time I was so tired that I didn't care. Really, it wasn't a bad little set-up. When we woke up, there was a sink and toilet right there waiting for us to use... and the ground was warm; you can't complain!
Still, we were more than happy to depart from the airport that Friday morning. After being told to go to 5 different places, we finally found a bus that lead to our hotel. Yup, you read that right; for once, we stayed in a hotel instead of a hostel (thanks, hostelworld!!). It was nestled into the Italian countrysid
e about 5 minutes outside of Pisa, and it was absolutely gorgeous!! This is the front yard of the hotel. The best part was there was little kittens everywhere!! I guess, really, that's not the best part. The best part was probably the room! There was a bed, a heater, a TV with American channels, and our very own bathroom.. quite an upgrade from the night before or any of the hostels we've stayed in in the past! They even offered us free calls to U.S. (We hope it was really free... guess I'll see when the credit card bill comes next month!! Haha.), so Em and I got to call our parents. We can't complain about that! We took a short nap in our luxurious bed before heading into the great town of Pisa, which is home of the leaning tower and.... nothing else!
It wasn't hard to find the tower. There's really nothing else in Pisa! We've heard a lot of people say that there's nothing great about the tower, but I was really impressed with it. It looks like it could just topple over any second, but it doesn't!! Plus, there was a neat cathedral next to it.
We enjoyed taking pictures and watching people. It was also sort of neat to read about the history. There have been some major restorations done in order to make sure that the tower doesn't fall! During World War II, the U.S. actually considered bombing the tower. I'm glad we didn't! I liked seeing it.After spending some time at the tower, we ate our first Italian meal: pizza! You could tell it was a bit of a touristy restaurant; part of the menu was in English! It was good, though, and we got to sit outside on the street, which I love! We walked around more of Pisa after lupper, and I discovered what might quite possibly be my favorite thing about Italy... gelato! Seriously, Italian ice cream is the best! :)
As it got closer to 7:00, we headed to the sister hotel of our hotel. Our hotel's owner had told us earlier in the day that if we wanted to go to happy hour, we could meet there. Well, since there's nothing else to do in Pisa, we decided to go for it. However, "happy hour" in America is apparently not the same as "happy hour" in Italy.
Our hotel owner didn't come pick us up to go to happy hour; instead he sent two men. At first, we assumed that these people also worked at the hotel, but it soon became clear that they were not employees (one has his PhD!). They showed us some of the more lively parts of Pisa, and then they took us to this Pizzaria.. does something sound strange about that? It was! Turns out our hotel owner had set us up on a date with two of his friends who are THIRTY. It was really creepy, especially when you stop and think about the fact that these two men are 10 years older than me, which makes them 20 years younger than my dad... gross! Don't worry; Emily and I are not stupid! We had a plan to get out of the situation. We lied and told them that we had boyfriends. As soon as they found this out, the entire atmosphere changed, and when we le
ft the pizzaria, they weren't jumping to walk close to us and talk anymore. They lagged behind and eventually told us that they were tired and wanted to go home. They offered to drive us back to our hotel, but we declined because it was awkward and creepy. In the end, we accidentally went on a double date with 2 30 year old Italians, but we did get a really expensive pizza (25 euros!), a pitcher of wine, and a good story out of it, so we can't complain too much. There's a picture of our new boyfriends on the right.. I think their names were John Paul and John Mark or something. I'm pretty sure the one in the purple was mine; he did all the talking, while his friend just sat back and observed. Why do I always get the ones who feel the need to talk excessively??
Needless to say, after that encounter we didn't hang around too much at our hotel the next morning. Before leaving, we had one last strange encounter there. We met two other American college students, and within a minute of knowing us, they invited us to travel with them. They were a tad strange, and when we declined, they invited us for beers. Again, we declined, so they proceeded to follow us to the bus station and got off at the train station stop with us, even though that was not their stop... whatever! Maybe I need to learn to be more friendly, or maybe I need to figure out how to stop attracting such people. Anyway, we caught a train to Florence (Firenza!). Of course, after arriving in Florence we had the traditional meal of McDonald's, and then we headed off for our hostel, Novella's Place. After some searching, we finally found the place. Soon w
e realized that we weren't really staying in a hostel, though... I'm pretty sure we were staying in these people's apartment! It appeared that they live in a few of the rooms while renting the other room out. Overall, the place was fairly clean compared to other places we've stayed (especially the bathroom floor!), but it had this eery feeling to it. See that gate on the right? You had to walk through a door and THEN that gate and then another door and then another door to get to the room. It was weird. It was definitely not fun at night. What was even more strange was that they put us in one room for the first night, but then this little Italian woman who owns it who speaks no English made us move rooms the second night, and of course, we had no idea why. Whatever... it was clean! And cheap! 
Our first stop in Florence was Ponte Vicchio, which is commonly referred to as "Old Bridge". It's basically a really famous bridge that runs over the Arno River is adorned with very expensive jewelry shops a
ll throughout it. It was so cute, and it's something like 700 years old! It was one of the only bridges in Florence that survived World War II, which makes it even more special. The bridge led us to the other side of town, and we stumbled across the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, (the DUOMO!) which happens to be the 4th largest cathedral in the world. Seriously, it was huge! Unfortunately, unlike many of the other cathedrals we've seen, it lacked the intricate little details and ornate objects, which I love so much. 
Still, it was a spectacular sight. See the dome part of it in the background? Well, if you are willing to pay 6 euro and climb 4
63 steps, you can go to the top. Well, we were willing! We decided to follow the mass of people waiting to get to the top. The way up was horrible. The staircases are all very narrow, and the ceilings are very low. It didn't help that the staircases were WINDING, and many people were trying to go down as we were trying to go up.. oh, it was not a fun process! When we finally got to the top, it was all worth it, though. You could do a complete 360 around the dome and see the entire town of Florence. It was magnificent! 
Seriously, it was beautiful. See the mountains in the background? That's what I really love about Florence. I am having a hard time deciding whether I like Italy or Ireland better. Right now, I may be leaning (leaning! Get it!) towards Italy. Surprisingly, mots people speak English there, or at least more people speak it there than they do in Spain. I felt stupid because we'd go into stores and try to order things, and we'd dumb everything down before we soon realized that the store owners spoke English. Oh well! :)After spending a large amount of time on top of the Duomo and breathing in the beauty of Florence, we strolled down to Galleria Dell Academia... home of Michelangelo's "David"! There are imitations of the amazing sculpture everywhere about town, but the real deal lies within this museum. I'm not a big art person, as I know very little about it, but I am so glad we decided to go to this museum. IT WAS AMAZING! David was so much bigger than I would have imagined. I just can't get over the fact that we viewed something that Michelangelo touched. I don't know a lot about sculpting, but I can tell you that this was amazing. He paid attention to every little detail, right down to the veins in his hands.
I took a few pictures of it before getting yelled at. Apparently there was this tiny sign in the back of the room that said NO photography, but I swear I didn't see it! The lady screamed at us and said, "Can you not read?!?!" Well, what if we couldn't, lady? The fact is that I can read, but I didn't see the sign, and since I didn't see the sign until after snapping a few pictures, I now have pictures of the real deal. Hooray! :)
We did some other touristy things on day two.. more exploring Florence, Pitti's Palace, and the Uffizi. On
e of my favorite things that occurred outside the Uffizi was the below picture. There are all these people who dress up like statues and hold perfectly still so they blend in! Then, of course, if you throw a coin or two at them they liven up for pictures. Yes, I got conned into giving them money; they were fun, especially because I didn't realize they were real people at first! Apparently the guy in this picture is real, but behind him is one of the actual statues. I saw a statue of Donnatello, which leads me to wonder where the rest of the Ninja Turtles were... maybe I'll find them when Aaron comes! :) After wandering the city some more, we caught a cab to Michelangelo's Point. It's one of the highest spots in the city of Florence, and a really old cathedral is housed there. My friend Courtney suggested that we go there at sunset, so after looking through the cathedral and roaming the grounds, we found a nice little spot to sit and just look over the city. We also witnessed a wedding ceremony taking place.. how cute! Watching the sun melt into the sky while overlooking the city of Florence was a pretty spectacular thing.
I found myself wondering how anything could be more beautiful or amazing, but God likes to surprise me.. we decided to walk back to the city of Florence from the point because it was a beautiful evening, and we sort of knew where we were going. We headed downhill and found the river and followed it to the bridges. We ate dinner and gelato, and the sky continued to get even darker. When we crossed the bridge to go back to our hostel, we looked out over the river, and this is what we saw:
The moon was hitting the water perfectly, and the bridge was illuminated in just the right way to make the reflection in the water stand perfectly still. It was breath taking and left you with a sense of awe. Seriously, it was one of the most perfect moments I have ever had in life; I don't think there's any possible way I could have enjoyed it more (other than possibly replacing Emily with a boy... ;)... JUST KIDDING, EM TRAM!). I've often heard people, including myself, say, "Why, God?" when bad things happen, but for once, I was saying, "Why, God?" in a good way. Why did He choose me to be here and to experience this? I am not deserving of this, but I am so grateful to be here and to see these things and to try all these new things. I am continuously blessed beyond description. I don't ever want to forget little moments like Sunday night; I want to hold on to it all as best as I can.Now we are back in Valencia. In two and a half weeks, my family will be here!! I am SOOO excited!!!! It'll make the whole journey complete! Of course, this means that my stay in Europe is almost halfway over. How is that even possible? This time last year, I would have never imagined that I'd be here. I thought my future was pretty well mapped out, but God bent it a bit, and here I am. It makes me wonder where I'll be in a year from now. With new experiences, I may branch out a little more in life, but one thing is for sure: my roots will never change! :)
...of the rest of her life.
Monday, February 18, 2008
to italy we go!
I keep staring down the road...
Monday there was RAIN in Spain!! Poor little Abril had to walk from UPV to our apartment in the rain, but she had an umbrella, so she was ok! She only got three hours the night before due to homework (Apparently people who have real classes here get real homework. Ew!), but she wanted to come to our little piso to help us with our internet situation. Isn't that sweet?? I love our little Mexican friend! We didn't get everything solved, but it's in the works. We are so lucky to have her!! We are planning trips to Paris and Germany with her; how fun will that be?? :)
After she left, we sort of lounged around the apartment for a while because it was POURING outside (Yes, we had clothes out on the line. Here's to another three days of drying time!). All of the locals say that it never rains here, but it seems to have rained a lot since we've been here! Lucky for us, the drainage system at UPV is just a tad better than that of MSU, so even though we don't have our rain boots, we're not drowning! I took a shower while we were hanging out (miraculous!), but for some reason the hot water in our shower would NOT turn on, although it would turn on in the kitchen. We eventually got it worked out but not until Emily got to see me running around completely naked and COLD from the lack of hot water!
Eventually, we decided to venture out into the rain; after all, we're only going to be living here once, right?? Plus, we're all about the "free" public transportation that we happened to come across Sunday! With umbrellas in hand, we walked a few meters to the metro stop and studied the map carefully. Basically, we had no idea where any of the stops really led, so we decided to just pick one at random that appeared to be near the center.
We picked a good stop! When we got off the metro, we were greeted by the "Chinos" stores and a supermarket! After a bit of browsing in the stores, we headed in the direction of the "centro", which is really the old part of Valencia. Surprisingly, we realized that we knew where we were at... sorta! :) We found a beautiful park that kind of resembles Central Park but, of course, on a much smaller scale! There were beautiful fountains in it that we plan to return to and play in when it's warmer and not raining! As we were walking, we said, "Man, it'd sure be nice if we could find a Cortes Ingles!" That's the Wal-Mart of Spain that I mentioned earlier. Well, we kept walking, and Emily spotted one randomly! It just appeared out of nowhere! This was a different one than we had been in before; this one is part of Valencia's mall. We decided to escape the rain and head for shelter within the mall. Surprisingly, there are very few American stores in it. I think the only one I recognized was Gamestop, and as much as I love nerdy boys, Gamestop's not really my kinda place! :) Inside the mall, we witnessed the most awkward thing ever: this girl was groping this guy inappropriately on a public bench. . . It was not a fun site.
We also went to Corte Ingles' grocery store within the mall. Here are a few things I've noticed: the seafood section smells disgusting, ice cream comes in styrofoam boxes, there is no cranapple juice to be found anywhere, and people in Spain must not eat mac & cheese. Oh, there is also alcohol mixed in with gatorade and other every day, non-alcoholic drinks. So weird.
Emily and I were feeling spontaneous Monday night, so we logged on to ryanair.com and looked up cheap flights for the weekend. We finally found a pleasing destination: Italy! We then found hostels and train tickets, and so this weekend we're off to PISA and FLORENCE! Yes, I will lean with it. Thanks for asking! :)
We were back to school on Tuesday. We may have woken up slightly late for our first class, but we were there for over half the class. We're planning our first group project with Henrietta, this girl from Denmark. Besides the similar names, Henrietta reminds me of our friend Henry (H!!) from MSU. They're both tall, thin, and blonde-haired. I'm sure Henrietta loves the Denmark Bears (I just made that up) almost as much as Henry loves the Lady Bears.. almost. Anyway, Spanish Regional Economy really isn't bad. It's still a lot of history, and our teacher looks exactly like Krissy Lewis. However, she's a bit more intimidating than Krissy! :)
We hung out on campus in between classes on Tuesday. The dining halls on campus are surprisingly cheap, and they have our favorite: tortilla espanola! I laugh every time we go into the cafeteria because there is a little old lady who takes your money, just like Martha in Garst. However, the little old lady at UPV is MUCH, MUCH faster than Martha; she seriously has your change ready for you before you even hand over the money! Unlike Martha, she doesn't stop, examine your name, and say, "So how are you today, Allison", though. That's unfortunate, but even if she did say it, I may not understand it. :) We hit the computer lab after lunch in order to print plane tickets. There are tons of Alex Hutchins in Spain. That's basically our favorite activity to do on campus: sit back and watch people who walk by and try to see who they look like from the states. There are a ton of Eric Sentells. J-polk would love it!
The funniest thing happened as we were heading to our next class, English. Em and I decided to stop in at the bano (bathroom!) before heading into the classroom. Well, Emily got locked in the stall!! I swear; something strange ALWAYS happens to us! I tried to push the door open from the outside, but it would not budge. Meanwhile, a small herd of women congregated within the small bathroom and stared as Emily and I called back and forth to each other. You know, I'm pretty sure it was embarrassing for Em to be stuck in there, but it was embarrassing for me to be standing there trying to break into a stall! She got out eventually. Apparently the doors have some crazy little locks on them. The Europeans think we're crazy, but I kind of enjoy being the "dumb American". It's fun to not have to care about anything.
English class was amazing as always. We turned in a proposal for what we want to teach the class. I think we're going to concentrate on public speaking and writing speeches. My favorite thing about this class is that the teacher is going to be gone for the entire month of March, so we're not going to have to go. It's a rough life over here, isn't it?
We were supposed to meet someone at our piso soon after class, so we decided to ride the metro home. We hopped on like always and made it through a stop. And then we were on to the other stop. There was still one more stop to go before getting to our apartment, so Emily and I were just standing around waiting for the metro to start again when all of the sudden I see this girl jump out of her seat and frantically start hitting the button to make the door open. I found this to be very unusual because we had been sitting at the stop for a while, so she had had plenty of time to get off. Then, I turned and looked the other way and notice these men dressed in very official uniforms heading towards us shouting "PAGARLO!!" (Pay it!). I turned to Em and said, "EMILY, THIS IS OUR STOP!", and since she had not noticed the guards yet, she said, "No, it's not!". I repeated, and then she realized what was going on, and we jumped off the metro as soon as possible and ran down the sidewalk away from the guards. It was crazy!! I felt like we were being attacked! Don't worry; we're going to go buy a metro pass tomorrow. No more illegal riding for us. We don't want those fines! Oh, there's never a dull day with us!
We went to our "job" last night. We're getting better and better at using the bus system, although we're now so familiar with the streets that I don't think we need to use it to get to the lady's house. Still, we were able to make it there and back in no time! We sat around and talked in English for an hour and then got paid. How sweet is that? It's quite possibly even easier than working the Scholars House front desk... :)
The excitement died down for a few hours, but it eventually picked back up. We decided to make frozen pizza, and we sat down to eat. All was fine and well... The pizza was splendid! However, as I was chewing, I noticed this hard little piece within my food. Then, my tongue hit the front of my mouth and I realized that my titanium bolt was exposed. Yeah, that little hard piece was my tooth floating around inside the pizza! I spit it out as soon as possible (It looked like cat barf. Yippee.) and just stared at it. There was no freaking out this time. Just staring. I decided the best option would be to get online and tell my momma, who told me to call the dentist and see if the answering machine listed his hours (it was 8:45pm) when this happened. Surprise! He picked up! He said he'd be there until 9:30 if I could make it. Well, we flew down the stairs, ran to the taxi pool, caught the first taxi available, and sped across town. The cab driver dropped us off at the appropriate building, and I realized I didn't have my passport to get into the fancy building, but I showed them my driver's license, and they mistakenly thought my license number was the same as my passport number, and I did not correct them! Up the elevator we went, and Dr. Gomez and his wife greeted us! He had been out of town all of last week, so he was dealing with patients late last night. He fixed my tooth in no time, and this time he used some really permanent glue, so hopefully it's there to stay! Emily took the hottest picture of me ever while I was in the chair. I'm sure I'll share it sometime soon. :)
We're getting to be experts at catching those cabs. It only took us a minute or two to get one back to the apartment. You know, I hate it every time my tooth falls out. It's inconvenient and bothersome. Good things come out of it, though! We've really gotten to know all of Valencia thanks to the numerous cab trips. Seriously, we're familiarizing ourself with the city more and more thanks to my tooth implant. :) See, good things come from bad things! And as you can tell, God is taking wonderful care of us in every bad little situation. No doubt!
As you can tell, last night was pretty fun-filled, but the excitement didn't stop there. When we returned to our apartment around 10:00, it was raining AGAIN. No big deal. We hung out for a while and contemplated going to bed, but before we got that far the power went out!! There we were - in the cold, dark apartment! Fortunately, I have the world's best mom who prepares for everything, and she had packed a wind-up flashlight for me (It's not the kind you shake, although she's really good at doing that. You should ask her to demonstrate.). I used the light of my computer screen to dig it out from a drawer, and we wound it up! It worked perfectly during our little outage. It was getting cold, though, so Emily and I spooned in my bed together for warmth. We created a video for your enjoyment that will becoming within the next few days. We waited and waited in hopes for the power to return, but it wasn't looking very promising, so Em decided to take a shower. I held the light for her while she did so; that'll be something I always remember! I guess having gas can be kind of nice; it means you still have hot water even when there's no power! Amazingly, when she got out of the shower the power returned!! We still have no idea what caused the outage, but we can now say we lived through our first Spanish power outage. Yeah!
We pretty much made it on time to class today. We had a lab session for a class. The lab is taught in Spanish, but we work in groups, and our group all speaks English. Billy's in our group! There's another guy too, but we don't remember where he's from. Our teacher's a nice little guy who insists that we call him by his first name and not "sir". We had to watch a movie in this class, and I may have fallen asleep through parts of it, but apparently it didn't matter too much because once again, there's no homework!
Our following class is the one we have for four entire hours, but he gave us a nice lunch break in between! It actually went by really fast, but we talked about the simplest things that make me wonder how we spent so much time devoted to those topics. Whatever! Naps were in order after class. We had to go back to campus this evening, though, for another lab. This lab was also in Spanish, and Henrietta's in it with us. I kind of like the Spanish labs. Our teacher's really nice, too! I can't get over how they schedule you time to do your homework here, but I'm not complaining!
Tonight we finalized our plans for Italy. We're hitting the Leaning Tower, hoping to see Michelangelo's David, going to some famous plazas and squares, etc. We're leaving Thursday evening and coming back Monday! I'm not going to take my laptop with me, so unless we find an internet cafe (lighter backpack and more room -- yeah!), I may not have a new post until Monday night or so. Hope you all enjoy your weekends! If you're hanging out in the Midwest, be safe with the ice/snow mixture! Love you all!
...just looking for my one chance to run.
Monday there was RAIN in Spain!! Poor little Abril had to walk from UPV to our apartment in the rain, but she had an umbrella, so she was ok! She only got three hours the night before due to homework (Apparently people who have real classes here get real homework. Ew!), but she wanted to come to our little piso to help us with our internet situation. Isn't that sweet?? I love our little Mexican friend! We didn't get everything solved, but it's in the works. We are so lucky to have her!! We are planning trips to Paris and Germany with her; how fun will that be?? :)
After she left, we sort of lounged around the apartment for a while because it was POURING outside (Yes, we had clothes out on the line. Here's to another three days of drying time!). All of the locals say that it never rains here, but it seems to have rained a lot since we've been here! Lucky for us, the drainage system at UPV is just a tad better than that of MSU, so even though we don't have our rain boots, we're not drowning! I took a shower while we were hanging out (miraculous!), but for some reason the hot water in our shower would NOT turn on, although it would turn on in the kitchen. We eventually got it worked out but not until Emily got to see me running around completely naked and COLD from the lack of hot water!
Eventually, we decided to venture out into the rain; after all, we're only going to be living here once, right?? Plus, we're all about the "free" public transportation that we happened to come across Sunday! With umbrellas in hand, we walked a few meters to the metro stop and studied the map carefully. Basically, we had no idea where any of the stops really led, so we decided to just pick one at random that appeared to be near the center.
We picked a good stop! When we got off the metro, we were greeted by the "Chinos" stores and a supermarket! After a bit of browsing in the stores, we headed in the direction of the "centro", which is really the old part of Valencia. Surprisingly, we realized that we knew where we were at... sorta! :) We found a beautiful park that kind of resembles Central Park but, of course, on a much smaller scale! There were beautiful fountains in it that we plan to return to and play in when it's warmer and not raining! As we were walking, we said, "Man, it'd sure be nice if we could find a Cortes Ingles!" That's the Wal-Mart of Spain that I mentioned earlier. Well, we kept walking, and Emily spotted one randomly! It just appeared out of nowhere! This was a different one than we had been in before; this one is part of Valencia's mall. We decided to escape the rain and head for shelter within the mall. Surprisingly, there are very few American stores in it. I think the only one I recognized was Gamestop, and as much as I love nerdy boys, Gamestop's not really my kinda place! :) Inside the mall, we witnessed the most awkward thing ever: this girl was groping this guy inappropriately on a public bench. . . It was not a fun site.
We also went to Corte Ingles' grocery store within the mall. Here are a few things I've noticed: the seafood section smells disgusting, ice cream comes in styrofoam boxes, there is no cranapple juice to be found anywhere, and people in Spain must not eat mac & cheese. Oh, there is also alcohol mixed in with gatorade and other every day, non-alcoholic drinks. So weird.
Emily and I were feeling spontaneous Monday night, so we logged on to ryanair.com and looked up cheap flights for the weekend. We finally found a pleasing destination: Italy! We then found hostels and train tickets, and so this weekend we're off to PISA and FLORENCE! Yes, I will lean with it. Thanks for asking! :)
We were back to school on Tuesday. We may have woken up slightly late for our first class, but we were there for over half the class. We're planning our first group project with Henrietta, this girl from Denmark. Besides the similar names, Henrietta reminds me of our friend Henry (H!!) from MSU. They're both tall, thin, and blonde-haired. I'm sure Henrietta loves the Denmark Bears (I just made that up) almost as much as Henry loves the Lady Bears.. almost. Anyway, Spanish Regional Economy really isn't bad. It's still a lot of history, and our teacher looks exactly like Krissy Lewis. However, she's a bit more intimidating than Krissy! :)
We hung out on campus in between classes on Tuesday. The dining halls on campus are surprisingly cheap, and they have our favorite: tortilla espanola! I laugh every time we go into the cafeteria because there is a little old lady who takes your money, just like Martha in Garst. However, the little old lady at UPV is MUCH, MUCH faster than Martha; she seriously has your change ready for you before you even hand over the money! Unlike Martha, she doesn't stop, examine your name, and say, "So how are you today, Allison", though. That's unfortunate, but even if she did say it, I may not understand it. :) We hit the computer lab after lunch in order to print plane tickets. There are tons of Alex Hutchins in Spain. That's basically our favorite activity to do on campus: sit back and watch people who walk by and try to see who they look like from the states. There are a ton of Eric Sentells. J-polk would love it!
The funniest thing happened as we were heading to our next class, English. Em and I decided to stop in at the bano (bathroom!) before heading into the classroom. Well, Emily got locked in the stall!! I swear; something strange ALWAYS happens to us! I tried to push the door open from the outside, but it would not budge. Meanwhile, a small herd of women congregated within the small bathroom and stared as Emily and I called back and forth to each other. You know, I'm pretty sure it was embarrassing for Em to be stuck in there, but it was embarrassing for me to be standing there trying to break into a stall! She got out eventually. Apparently the doors have some crazy little locks on them. The Europeans think we're crazy, but I kind of enjoy being the "dumb American". It's fun to not have to care about anything.
English class was amazing as always. We turned in a proposal for what we want to teach the class. I think we're going to concentrate on public speaking and writing speeches. My favorite thing about this class is that the teacher is going to be gone for the entire month of March, so we're not going to have to go. It's a rough life over here, isn't it?
We were supposed to meet someone at our piso soon after class, so we decided to ride the metro home. We hopped on like always and made it through a stop. And then we were on to the other stop. There was still one more stop to go before getting to our apartment, so Emily and I were just standing around waiting for the metro to start again when all of the sudden I see this girl jump out of her seat and frantically start hitting the button to make the door open. I found this to be very unusual because we had been sitting at the stop for a while, so she had had plenty of time to get off. Then, I turned and looked the other way and notice these men dressed in very official uniforms heading towards us shouting "PAGARLO!!" (Pay it!). I turned to Em and said, "EMILY, THIS IS OUR STOP!", and since she had not noticed the guards yet, she said, "No, it's not!". I repeated, and then she realized what was going on, and we jumped off the metro as soon as possible and ran down the sidewalk away from the guards. It was crazy!! I felt like we were being attacked! Don't worry; we're going to go buy a metro pass tomorrow. No more illegal riding for us. We don't want those fines! Oh, there's never a dull day with us!
We went to our "job" last night. We're getting better and better at using the bus system, although we're now so familiar with the streets that I don't think we need to use it to get to the lady's house. Still, we were able to make it there and back in no time! We sat around and talked in English for an hour and then got paid. How sweet is that? It's quite possibly even easier than working the Scholars House front desk... :)
The excitement died down for a few hours, but it eventually picked back up. We decided to make frozen pizza, and we sat down to eat. All was fine and well... The pizza was splendid! However, as I was chewing, I noticed this hard little piece within my food. Then, my tongue hit the front of my mouth and I realized that my titanium bolt was exposed. Yeah, that little hard piece was my tooth floating around inside the pizza! I spit it out as soon as possible (It looked like cat barf. Yippee.) and just stared at it. There was no freaking out this time. Just staring. I decided the best option would be to get online and tell my momma, who told me to call the dentist and see if the answering machine listed his hours (it was 8:45pm) when this happened. Surprise! He picked up! He said he'd be there until 9:30 if I could make it. Well, we flew down the stairs, ran to the taxi pool, caught the first taxi available, and sped across town. The cab driver dropped us off at the appropriate building, and I realized I didn't have my passport to get into the fancy building, but I showed them my driver's license, and they mistakenly thought my license number was the same as my passport number, and I did not correct them! Up the elevator we went, and Dr. Gomez and his wife greeted us! He had been out of town all of last week, so he was dealing with patients late last night. He fixed my tooth in no time, and this time he used some really permanent glue, so hopefully it's there to stay! Emily took the hottest picture of me ever while I was in the chair. I'm sure I'll share it sometime soon. :)
We're getting to be experts at catching those cabs. It only took us a minute or two to get one back to the apartment. You know, I hate it every time my tooth falls out. It's inconvenient and bothersome. Good things come out of it, though! We've really gotten to know all of Valencia thanks to the numerous cab trips. Seriously, we're familiarizing ourself with the city more and more thanks to my tooth implant. :) See, good things come from bad things! And as you can tell, God is taking wonderful care of us in every bad little situation. No doubt!
As you can tell, last night was pretty fun-filled, but the excitement didn't stop there. When we returned to our apartment around 10:00, it was raining AGAIN. No big deal. We hung out for a while and contemplated going to bed, but before we got that far the power went out!! There we were - in the cold, dark apartment! Fortunately, I have the world's best mom who prepares for everything, and she had packed a wind-up flashlight for me (It's not the kind you shake, although she's really good at doing that. You should ask her to demonstrate.). I used the light of my computer screen to dig it out from a drawer, and we wound it up! It worked perfectly during our little outage. It was getting cold, though, so Emily and I spooned in my bed together for warmth. We created a video for your enjoyment that will becoming within the next few days. We waited and waited in hopes for the power to return, but it wasn't looking very promising, so Em decided to take a shower. I held the light for her while she did so; that'll be something I always remember! I guess having gas can be kind of nice; it means you still have hot water even when there's no power! Amazingly, when she got out of the shower the power returned!! We still have no idea what caused the outage, but we can now say we lived through our first Spanish power outage. Yeah!
We pretty much made it on time to class today. We had a lab session for a class. The lab is taught in Spanish, but we work in groups, and our group all speaks English. Billy's in our group! There's another guy too, but we don't remember where he's from. Our teacher's a nice little guy who insists that we call him by his first name and not "sir". We had to watch a movie in this class, and I may have fallen asleep through parts of it, but apparently it didn't matter too much because once again, there's no homework!
Our following class is the one we have for four entire hours, but he gave us a nice lunch break in between! It actually went by really fast, but we talked about the simplest things that make me wonder how we spent so much time devoted to those topics. Whatever! Naps were in order after class. We had to go back to campus this evening, though, for another lab. This lab was also in Spanish, and Henrietta's in it with us. I kind of like the Spanish labs. Our teacher's really nice, too! I can't get over how they schedule you time to do your homework here, but I'm not complaining!
Tonight we finalized our plans for Italy. We're hitting the Leaning Tower, hoping to see Michelangelo's David, going to some famous plazas and squares, etc. We're leaving Thursday evening and coming back Monday! I'm not going to take my laptop with me, so unless we find an internet cafe (lighter backpack and more room -- yeah!), I may not have a new post until Monday night or so. Hope you all enjoy your weekends! If you're hanging out in the Midwest, be safe with the ice/snow mixture! Love you all!
...just looking for my one chance to run.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
apparently the metro is a little like Ryanair...
We're all in this...
Oh, what an interesting day... we went to bed extremely late but surprisingly woke up on time to make it to church. This morning was our first attempt at using the metro, and it went rather well! The metro's a little confusing here because it has two different names. Obviously, one name for it is the "metro", but others call it the "tranvia". Until today, we thought there were two different systems, but Abril explained it all to us. Apparently the "metro" is what the Spaniards use when they're referring to the above ground part of the subway. The lines that run next to our apartment are above ground, and they go to the main parts of the city, like the center. The tranvia consists of 3 or 4 underground systems, which run to outer parts, like the airport, but both the tranvia and the metro are operated by the same people; the only difference is that one is above ground and the other under. ANYWAY! Upon arriving at the metro station this morning (which is conveniently located about a minute from our piso), we discovered that we were unable to buy a ticket to board the metro because it only takes cash, and neither of us had any. Well, someone had told us before that you don't really have to buy a ticket if you don't want, so we decided to watch some other people and see what they did. Yup, they just boarded the metro from a side door far away from the driver and took a seat without ever flashing a ticket. Well, we wanted to go to church, and while we thought maybe it was slightly wrong to get on without paying in order to go to church, we decided to do it anyway. We got on line four, found two empty seats, and road it to our stop without any problems and without ever spending a dime (or a euro!).
When we got off of our stop, we had a few problems finding the church, although this nice little Spanish lady pointed us in the direction of the street. We finally found it, although we were a few minutes late, and we entered after service had already started. Well, it turns out that today the normal pastor was not scheduled to speak; this guest missionary was doing the preaching, and oh, was it unusual... You know the tele-evangelists you see on TV? Take one of them and multiply by 500 and you get this guy. Oh, and his wife was a lot like him but slightly calmer. He was loud, animated, and bold. He had some really horrible jokes that didn't make sense but the non-native English speakers laughed anyway. He was also big on criticizing George W. Bush, which I am not opposed to, but I'm not entirely sure people outside of the US understood. He talked about how the church should spread the gospel and not religion and how they should concentrating on telling people what to DO instead of telling people what to NOT do. Well, that was all good and well... and then the speaking in tongues started. Please note that I am NOT criticizing people who support or practice this (I think differences in religion are interesting, and I'm slightly fascinated by them. Really!). However, this was my first time to see this in person, and it was all very... different. I was sort of uncomfortable with it, especially when the guy started bringing people up front to pray in tongues. Emily and I just sorta looked at each other and wondered what to do, but we noticed that many others, including our Oklahoma friends, were doing the same thing. That's pretty much the entire church experience. I'm not sure if we'll go back when the normal pastor is speaking or not. We'll see...
After church we said adios to the Oklahoma friends and headed to las tiendas de los chinos! Basically, these are small little stores run by Chinese people that are basically like dollar stores in the USA. They sell all kinds of random stuff. We didn't buy anything, but we'll definitely be returning!
The afternoon was a bit uneventful, although we once again used the metro FOR FREE! We took a nap in the afternoon and then headed over to Abril's via metro. I'm loving this metro thing, especially when it's free! Abril is amazing, too. She's going to help us talk to la duena tomorrow, and she taught us more about the metro! :)
When we were done at Abril's, we headed to UPV to access the internet so we could watch the Catholic boys open presents. Well, we went to this place that we THOUGHT was the student union. We have been there a few different times, and it's open 24/7. Well, tonight this security guard comes up to us and asks us what room we live in.. turns out we've been chilling in the dorm and NOT the student union, and we were not allowed to be there!! It was slightly embarrassing.. but we made it to the student union! I just love the fact that the desk workers let us stay there for hours last night. Surely Missouri State desk workers would be more attentive and do a better job at protecting the halls? :)
We're about to head to bed, but before we do, here's a video of our attempts at lighting the stove with Nancy Barnes... do enjoy! :)
...together.
Oh, what an interesting day... we went to bed extremely late but surprisingly woke up on time to make it to church. This morning was our first attempt at using the metro, and it went rather well! The metro's a little confusing here because it has two different names. Obviously, one name for it is the "metro", but others call it the "tranvia". Until today, we thought there were two different systems, but Abril explained it all to us. Apparently the "metro" is what the Spaniards use when they're referring to the above ground part of the subway. The lines that run next to our apartment are above ground, and they go to the main parts of the city, like the center. The tranvia consists of 3 or 4 underground systems, which run to outer parts, like the airport, but both the tranvia and the metro are operated by the same people; the only difference is that one is above ground and the other under. ANYWAY! Upon arriving at the metro station this morning (which is conveniently located about a minute from our piso), we discovered that we were unable to buy a ticket to board the metro because it only takes cash, and neither of us had any. Well, someone had told us before that you don't really have to buy a ticket if you don't want, so we decided to watch some other people and see what they did. Yup, they just boarded the metro from a side door far away from the driver and took a seat without ever flashing a ticket. Well, we wanted to go to church, and while we thought maybe it was slightly wrong to get on without paying in order to go to church, we decided to do it anyway. We got on line four, found two empty seats, and road it to our stop without any problems and without ever spending a dime (or a euro!).
When we got off of our stop, we had a few problems finding the church, although this nice little Spanish lady pointed us in the direction of the street. We finally found it, although we were a few minutes late, and we entered after service had already started. Well, it turns out that today the normal pastor was not scheduled to speak; this guest missionary was doing the preaching, and oh, was it unusual... You know the tele-evangelists you see on TV? Take one of them and multiply by 500 and you get this guy. Oh, and his wife was a lot like him but slightly calmer. He was loud, animated, and bold. He had some really horrible jokes that didn't make sense but the non-native English speakers laughed anyway. He was also big on criticizing George W. Bush, which I am not opposed to, but I'm not entirely sure people outside of the US understood. He talked about how the church should spread the gospel and not religion and how they should concentrating on telling people what to DO instead of telling people what to NOT do. Well, that was all good and well... and then the speaking in tongues started. Please note that I am NOT criticizing people who support or practice this (I think differences in religion are interesting, and I'm slightly fascinated by them. Really!). However, this was my first time to see this in person, and it was all very... different. I was sort of uncomfortable with it, especially when the guy started bringing people up front to pray in tongues. Emily and I just sorta looked at each other and wondered what to do, but we noticed that many others, including our Oklahoma friends, were doing the same thing. That's pretty much the entire church experience. I'm not sure if we'll go back when the normal pastor is speaking or not. We'll see...
After church we said adios to the Oklahoma friends and headed to las tiendas de los chinos! Basically, these are small little stores run by Chinese people that are basically like dollar stores in the USA. They sell all kinds of random stuff. We didn't buy anything, but we'll definitely be returning!
The afternoon was a bit uneventful, although we once again used the metro FOR FREE! We took a nap in the afternoon and then headed over to Abril's via metro. I'm loving this metro thing, especially when it's free! Abril is amazing, too. She's going to help us talk to la duena tomorrow, and she taught us more about the metro! :)
When we were done at Abril's, we headed to UPV to access the internet so we could watch the Catholic boys open presents. Well, we went to this place that we THOUGHT was the student union. We have been there a few different times, and it's open 24/7. Well, tonight this security guard comes up to us and asks us what room we live in.. turns out we've been chilling in the dorm and NOT the student union, and we were not allowed to be there!! It was slightly embarrassing.. but we made it to the student union! I just love the fact that the desk workers let us stay there for hours last night. Surely Missouri State desk workers would be more attentive and do a better job at protecting the halls? :)
We're about to head to bed, but before we do, here's a video of our attempts at lighting the stove with Nancy Barnes... do enjoy! :)
...together.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
add another two to the list of creepy boys.
Choose to chance the rapids...
We had some fun with Billy, but the best part is that he showed us how to REALLY use our oven! In my last post, I said that Ken and Nancy taught us how to use it. Well, they did.. sorta. We were able to light the top part of the stove through their amazing instructions, but when we had to adjust the temperature, the fire always went out! Billy, however, showed us how to light the bottom of the stove, and the fire does not go out when you change temperatures! AMAZING! In order to celebrate such a triumph, we cooked frozen pizza. It was good! The wine that Billy brought us was not so great, but we drank it anyway. Apparently it's something that has to grow on you, but why continue to drink it if you don't like it in the first place? I do not know...
We spent today, day number two of our weekend, at LA PLAYA (the beach)!! We made the two minute trek down the street and said hello the sand and waves of the Mediterranean.
Personally, we thought it was a bit too cold to actually get in the water, but we saw other people wading out in it. There were also a select few wearing VERY small amounts of clothing, but that's an entirely different story... Although it was February, there were still quite a few people out. Apparently the cool thing to do in Spain is not to play sand volleyball; the popular thing is to play sand soccer (or "football")!
These guys were playing for hours!! It was kind of neat to watch. Soccer is already a sport that requires so much energy; can you imagine for playing that long on the beach in the SAND?? Emily and I spent our time relaxing. We journaled, ate el principe cookies (THE BEST!!), studied the Word, and reflected on the past few weeks while streaming music from our ipods. It was such a calming, restful experience! Just being still and knowing that He is our God can do so much for your soul. It really helps you to feel rejuvenated and refreshed! I am amazed by the fact that I can feel so close to God anywhere, even if it's 5,500 miles from home! You know, sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean really often) I freak out about the smallest things, and I wonder why things, like my teeth, are happening. Today I think I finally realized something important, though (I'm sure God is wondering what took me so long..!). All of these little things may go wrong: my teeth may fall out, I may miss flights, our apartment may have horrible internet connections, etc, but the important thing is that I'm HERE! This little girl from Pryor, Oklahoma, has been given the opportunity to live in Spain for five months and experience Europe in whatever way she pleases. Is that not amazing?? That is such a HUGE blessing! Little trials may come now and then, but the fact remains that God chose me to come here. He placed me here. It's all part of His will, and everything will work out perfectly according to His plan! I am so blessed! If I complain to you or worry about some little detail, please remind me of this fact. :)
My favorite thing about our little beach are the mountains in the background. This picture really does not do them justice, but they make the entire thing even more spectacular!
We stayed on the beach until the sun started to set. This is looking back at Valencia from the water. Our apartment's back there and to the left! This is my town (by town, I mean huge city with millions of people) for the next few months!! Can you believe it? I can't wait for it to get warmer! I never thought I'd live on the beach, but here we are.. we might as well take advantage of it as much as we possibly can! Don't get too jealous, H!
Of course, no day would be complete without creepy men, right? Today we got not one but TWO! We're so lucky. So we're sitting on the beach, and we turn around to take a picture of the city behind us. Apparently the guy behind me thinks that I'm taking a picture of him, and he says, "Chicas!!" I smiled at him to be polite and then promptly turned back around in a fashion that would make my dad proud! A few minutes passed, and I sort of forgot about the encounter. It was getting late, so we decided to pack up and return to the apartment, but as soon as we stood up, one of the guys ran up to us and started to talk to us. He introduced himself as Sanchez, we introduced ourselves, and then he motions for his brother to come too. Well, soon we have these two strange men standing inches away from us and telling us how pretty our eyes are. Sanchez's brother was kind of quiet and reserved... or so we thought! Apparently his brother's Spanish isn't very good because THEY'RE NOT FROM SPAIN! They're from Russia! It took us minutes to figure out that they were from Russia.. they say it weird! Anyway, Sanchez focuses his attention on me and starts hitting on me hardcore. I'm not really even sure what all he said, but he ended up asking if we wanted to take a picture with him. I wanted to tell him no, but whatever.. we took a picture! Here it is:
That's Sanchez on the right and his brother on the left. As you can tell, his brother is way hotter, but unfortunately, I think Sanchez had already claimed me, and even if he hadn't, his brother didn't speak much Spanish and spoke no English! I guess ole Sanchez really loved our picture because he asked me to email it to him; I now have this creepy Russian boy's email address, and I will admit that I gave him mine. However, when he asked for my phone number, I played dumb and tell him I forgot it! I know that'll make you happy, Daddy-o! He did give me his, though.. too bad I don't plan on ever using it! He then proceeded to ask if we would like to go for a walk; we declined. He asked what our plans were for the night, and when we told him we were hanging out with a friend, he asked if we would like to meet him on the beach again tomorrow. Again, we said no. He kept telling us he didn't want to bother us, so you think he'd get a hint, right?? Nope! As I'm standing there talking to this man, he can tell that I'm getting cold, so he offers me his jacket. I then tell him I have one, so I don't need his. So what's he do? He reaches down and picks up EMILY'S jacket and put it around my shoulders!! Emily, meanwhile, is standing there freezing, but sweet little Sanchez is apparently only concerned about me at this point.. oh, lucky me.. He then tries to zip up Emily's jacket on me, but it doesn't work too well because I didn't put my arms through the sleeves because it's not my jacket!
There's Sanchez at work, trying to make me warm... Nice or creepy? You decide, but I'd probably go with the latter! Finally, we tell them that we just have to go, and they agree to say good-bye.. sorta. (Dad, you might not want to read the next part! :)) Emily walked off, and I started to follow, but then Sanchez runs up to me and points to his eyes and then at mine and FREAKING TRIED TO KISS ME! How awkward! He called me "guapa" (pretty) one last time and then waved good-bye as he told me he'd see me later. I ran to Emily and wanted to die of laughter, but I held it in as we walked away because I know they were still watching us.. so, yeah, that's my story of the creepy men from the beach. How do we always manage to get these people?? Emily wondered why Sanchez went after me and not her, but I'm thinking she was the real lucky one. Oh well.. it's a fun story, right? I got hit on by a Russian man in Spain, and he tried to give me Emily's coat to wear even though we were both clearly cold -- haha! Let's hope I never see that one again! :)
Now, for the moment you've ALL been waiting for.... the video tour of our CRIB (aka "el piso")!! Please take a few minutes to join us as we give you the grand tour and don't be TOO jealous of our awesome decorations, appliances, furniture, etc... Just hit the play button in the center of the picture/video!
Ok, I'm not COMPLETELY sure that's going to work.. so if not, I guess I'll try again later. Actually, I think it DOES work -- amazing! Enjoy! COME VISIT US!!! Seriously, how can you resist a piso like that? We may even share the el principe cookies with you and do your laundry for you! :) Anyway, I'm heading to bed! Love you all!
...and dare to dance the tide.
This four day weekend thing is something that I could really get used to! Sleeping in on a Friday is an amazing feeling! The only reason I forced myself to wake up was in order to head to the post office (correos!) to pick up a care package from my parents. It took the guys a few minutes to find my package, but after repeatedly saying "Allison Bat-is" as they searched everywhere for the box, it appeared! I happily returned to el piso and ripped it open, and I found lots of "sweet" (literally!) presents from the parents and some hair products -- yay!! Oh, there were also two jars of extra crunchy peanut butter, which is a necessity of life but nowhere to be found in Spain! Thanks, Mom and Dad!
Later that night our newest friend Billy came over. He's from Cameroon, Africa, but he has been in the United States for two years as an exchange student in Alabama. Now he's doing an exchange at UPV through the same program as us!
Later that night our newest friend Billy came over. He's from Cameroon, Africa, but he has been in the United States for two years as an exchange student in Alabama. Now he's doing an exchange at UPV through the same program as us!
We had some fun with Billy, but the best part is that he showed us how to REALLY use our oven! In my last post, I said that Ken and Nancy taught us how to use it. Well, they did.. sorta. We were able to light the top part of the stove through their amazing instructions, but when we had to adjust the temperature, the fire always went out! Billy, however, showed us how to light the bottom of the stove, and the fire does not go out when you change temperatures! AMAZING! In order to celebrate such a triumph, we cooked frozen pizza. It was good! The wine that Billy brought us was not so great, but we drank it anyway. Apparently it's something that has to grow on you, but why continue to drink it if you don't like it in the first place? I do not know...
We spent today, day number two of our weekend, at LA PLAYA (the beach)!! We made the two minute trek down the street and said hello the sand and waves of the Mediterranean.
Personally, we thought it was a bit too cold to actually get in the water, but we saw other people wading out in it. There were also a select few wearing VERY small amounts of clothing, but that's an entirely different story... Although it was February, there were still quite a few people out. Apparently the cool thing to do in Spain is not to play sand volleyball; the popular thing is to play sand soccer (or "football")!
These guys were playing for hours!! It was kind of neat to watch. Soccer is already a sport that requires so much energy; can you imagine for playing that long on the beach in the SAND?? Emily and I spent our time relaxing. We journaled, ate el principe cookies (THE BEST!!), studied the Word, and reflected on the past few weeks while streaming music from our ipods. It was such a calming, restful experience! Just being still and knowing that He is our God can do so much for your soul. It really helps you to feel rejuvenated and refreshed! I am amazed by the fact that I can feel so close to God anywhere, even if it's 5,500 miles from home! You know, sometimes (and by sometimes, I mean really often) I freak out about the smallest things, and I wonder why things, like my teeth, are happening. Today I think I finally realized something important, though (I'm sure God is wondering what took me so long..!). All of these little things may go wrong: my teeth may fall out, I may miss flights, our apartment may have horrible internet connections, etc, but the important thing is that I'm HERE! This little girl from Pryor, Oklahoma, has been given the opportunity to live in Spain for five months and experience Europe in whatever way she pleases. Is that not amazing?? That is such a HUGE blessing! Little trials may come now and then, but the fact remains that God chose me to come here. He placed me here. It's all part of His will, and everything will work out perfectly according to His plan! I am so blessed! If I complain to you or worry about some little detail, please remind me of this fact. :)
We stayed on the beach until the sun started to set. This is looking back at Valencia from the water. Our apartment's back there and to the left! This is my town (by town, I mean huge city with millions of people) for the next few months!! Can you believe it? I can't wait for it to get warmer! I never thought I'd live on the beach, but here we are.. we might as well take advantage of it as much as we possibly can! Don't get too jealous, H!
Of course, no day would be complete without creepy men, right? Today we got not one but TWO! We're so lucky. So we're sitting on the beach, and we turn around to take a picture of the city behind us. Apparently the guy behind me thinks that I'm taking a picture of him, and he says, "Chicas!!" I smiled at him to be polite and then promptly turned back around in a fashion that would make my dad proud! A few minutes passed, and I sort of forgot about the encounter. It was getting late, so we decided to pack up and return to the apartment, but as soon as we stood up, one of the guys ran up to us and started to talk to us. He introduced himself as Sanchez, we introduced ourselves, and then he motions for his brother to come too. Well, soon we have these two strange men standing inches away from us and telling us how pretty our eyes are. Sanchez's brother was kind of quiet and reserved... or so we thought! Apparently his brother's Spanish isn't very good because THEY'RE NOT FROM SPAIN! They're from Russia! It took us minutes to figure out that they were from Russia.. they say it weird! Anyway, Sanchez focuses his attention on me and starts hitting on me hardcore. I'm not really even sure what all he said, but he ended up asking if we wanted to take a picture with him. I wanted to tell him no, but whatever.. we took a picture! Here it is:
That's Sanchez on the right and his brother on the left. As you can tell, his brother is way hotter, but unfortunately, I think Sanchez had already claimed me, and even if he hadn't, his brother didn't speak much Spanish and spoke no English! I guess ole Sanchez really loved our picture because he asked me to email it to him; I now have this creepy Russian boy's email address, and I will admit that I gave him mine. However, when he asked for my phone number, I played dumb and tell him I forgot it! I know that'll make you happy, Daddy-o! He did give me his, though.. too bad I don't plan on ever using it! He then proceeded to ask if we would like to go for a walk; we declined. He asked what our plans were for the night, and when we told him we were hanging out with a friend, he asked if we would like to meet him on the beach again tomorrow. Again, we said no. He kept telling us he didn't want to bother us, so you think he'd get a hint, right?? Nope! As I'm standing there talking to this man, he can tell that I'm getting cold, so he offers me his jacket. I then tell him I have one, so I don't need his. So what's he do? He reaches down and picks up EMILY'S jacket and put it around my shoulders!! Emily, meanwhile, is standing there freezing, but sweet little Sanchez is apparently only concerned about me at this point.. oh, lucky me.. He then tries to zip up Emily's jacket on me, but it doesn't work too well because I didn't put my arms through the sleeves because it's not my jacket!
There's Sanchez at work, trying to make me warm... Nice or creepy? You decide, but I'd probably go with the latter! Finally, we tell them that we just have to go, and they agree to say good-bye.. sorta. (Dad, you might not want to read the next part! :)) Emily walked off, and I started to follow, but then Sanchez runs up to me and points to his eyes and then at mine and FREAKING TRIED TO KISS ME! How awkward! He called me "guapa" (pretty) one last time and then waved good-bye as he told me he'd see me later. I ran to Emily and wanted to die of laughter, but I held it in as we walked away because I know they were still watching us.. so, yeah, that's my story of the creepy men from the beach. How do we always manage to get these people?? Emily wondered why Sanchez went after me and not her, but I'm thinking she was the real lucky one. Oh well.. it's a fun story, right? I got hit on by a Russian man in Spain, and he tried to give me Emily's coat to wear even though we were both clearly cold -- haha! Let's hope I never see that one again! :)
Now, for the moment you've ALL been waiting for.... the video tour of our CRIB (aka "el piso")!! Please take a few minutes to join us as we give you the grand tour and don't be TOO jealous of our awesome decorations, appliances, furniture, etc... Just hit the play button in the center of the picture/video!
Ok, I'm not COMPLETELY sure that's going to work.. so if not, I guess I'll try again later. Actually, I think it DOES work -- amazing! Enjoy! COME VISIT US!!! Seriously, how can you resist a piso like that? We may even share the el principe cookies with you and do your laundry for you! :) Anyway, I'm heading to bed! Love you all!
...and dare to dance the tide.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
3 days of class. 4 days of weekend!
Life is like a novel...
Our first week of school is over! Yeah, that's right, after three days of class, we're back to the weekend! My, what a rough life! :-) This week was pretty easy. Most of the classes were spent doing introductions, covering the syllabus, etc. Even though this was not necessarily a "normal" week of classes, I can already tell a huge difference between UPV and MSU. First of all, UPV is so much more laid back than MSU. MSU has you make your class schedules months in advance. At UPV, you don't have to finalize anything until halfway through the semester, so if you want to try out classes and then decide, you can. It's also not only possible but normal to schedule overlapping classes; you just skip one and go to the other. Most classes at MSU are mandatory. Classes at UPV consist of two parts: "practica" (lab) and theory. You're not required to go to theory; it's all conveniently posted on the internet for you. You are, however, required to go to practica. However, practica is basically a time set aside for you to do your homework. That's right; you get class time to do your homework, so "home"work doesn't really exist here in Spain. Another advantage of UPV is that you don't have to buy textbooks; it's all either online or in the library! Finally, classes at MSU give tests about every four weeks. That's not the case here in Spain. You have one test: your final. That's kind of a scary thought; that means a LOT of your grade relies on that final, but the professors have assured us that if we do the assigned work, the finals will not be hard! Plus, one class already informed us that there is no final -- yeah! :) Oh, and if for some reason you would fail a final, you can actually retake it. Of course, if you're not ready to take the final when the time comes, you can just delay it. Is that not crazy?? That is SO unlike Missouri State!
I'm taking 12 hours total. I have Spanish Regional Economy, which is basically a history of Spain. Then, I have a Spanish language class, English (mi favorito!), Hypertext and Web Design, and Intro to Multimedia Productions. Those last two probably don't sound very fitting for me; they sounds more like something my brother would take. However, I think they're going to be useful! The Web Design class isn't necessarily about building webpages, although we will. A lot of it has to do with creating organization throughout websites. I do like organization, and this is the class that doesn't require a final! As for the multimedia class, I have to have something like it for my major, so whatever! Plus, our friend Billy is in this class with us, which is probably going to make it much more exciting!
While it does appear that there are a lot of perks about UPV, I do miss a few things about MSU. Of course, I miss Scholars House, my home away from home! I also miss the Bear Line, which is MSU's bus system. I never used the Bear Line at Missouri State because the campus isn't large enough to really need it. However, UPV is HUGE, and I often find myself wishing there was a bus system to make going from one end of campus to the other. Seriously, it's about a 25 minute walk, which isn't the best if you have to be somewhere in a hurry! I also miss free printing. You have to buy "print cards" here that let you have 28 print-outs for 2 euros. I guess 2 euros for 28 print-outs isn't too bad when you remember that you don't have to buy books, though!
As I said before, it only take us about 5 minutes to get to UPV, but the walk across campus is a bit longer. They are doing construction on the edge of campus, and every time we walk by, the Spanish men whistle at us. It's sort of amusing, but then we remember our history with creepy men, and it's not so much anymore! Whatever. :)
We started our job today. It was amazing. We got paid $15/hour to sit around and talk in English to this 15 year old girl, Natalie. She is going to London in July, and she wants to perfect her English beforehand. She's already really good! We just talk about whatever, which turned out to be beneficial for Emily and me because we were able to ask her about Spanish politics, Las Falles, normal Valencian weather patterns, etc. She taught us a lot, and we shared our native tongue. It was neat! Plus, her mom was super sweet! We're really blessed to have this little job. How do I always end up with such jobs? Remember the Sugar Shack? And the baby-sitting job? And the Y? There were all great, easy jobs (minus the whole making snocones bit) that I enjoyed! I'm blessed! This is also good experience for me, considering I want to teach English!
Tonight was our first attempt at using Valencia's bus system. We were fine on the way there. We found our bus stop, rode it to the stop, and got off at the correct place! We even survived the mean bus driver who felt the need to read the paper WHILE driving.. but whatever! Coming back was a different story, although we had a different yet still mean driver. We got on at the same place that we had been dropped off, and we rode it for a while, and then everyone got off the bus but us. The driver then informed us in very rapid Spanish that we would have to pay again to continue riding. Apparently we had gone to the end of the route, and in order to circle back around to our apartment, we had to pay another fee! We were so confused. This sweet little old lady behind us tried to explain it to us, but she, too, spoke extremely fast, and I seriously think she was partly deaf. She thought we had said "San Rafael" when we had actually said "Tramoyeres". Yeah, those don't sound too alike! She did give us these keychains, though, that advertise peace and cooperation for Valencia! When it close to her stop, she offered to let us get off with her and then drive us back to our apartment. Is that not sweet?? We declined, though, because our stop was right there! The Spanish people are so welcoming and friendly, though. Seriously, they shower us with kindness (minus the bus drivers!). It's a very warm environment.
As for now, IT'S THE WEEKEND!! How exciting! We're going out with Billy on Friday night, catching a movie with Abril on Saturday, and maybe hitting up the beach. We'll see. :) I'm just excited to sleep in tomorrow. My parents and Aaron will be here in a month from today!!! Time is flying by! Anyway, love to you all from Spain! y besos!!
...with the end ripped out.
Our first week of school is over! Yeah, that's right, after three days of class, we're back to the weekend! My, what a rough life! :-) This week was pretty easy. Most of the classes were spent doing introductions, covering the syllabus, etc. Even though this was not necessarily a "normal" week of classes, I can already tell a huge difference between UPV and MSU. First of all, UPV is so much more laid back than MSU. MSU has you make your class schedules months in advance. At UPV, you don't have to finalize anything until halfway through the semester, so if you want to try out classes and then decide, you can. It's also not only possible but normal to schedule overlapping classes; you just skip one and go to the other. Most classes at MSU are mandatory. Classes at UPV consist of two parts: "practica" (lab) and theory. You're not required to go to theory; it's all conveniently posted on the internet for you. You are, however, required to go to practica. However, practica is basically a time set aside for you to do your homework. That's right; you get class time to do your homework, so "home"work doesn't really exist here in Spain. Another advantage of UPV is that you don't have to buy textbooks; it's all either online or in the library! Finally, classes at MSU give tests about every four weeks. That's not the case here in Spain. You have one test: your final. That's kind of a scary thought; that means a LOT of your grade relies on that final, but the professors have assured us that if we do the assigned work, the finals will not be hard! Plus, one class already informed us that there is no final -- yeah! :) Oh, and if for some reason you would fail a final, you can actually retake it. Of course, if you're not ready to take the final when the time comes, you can just delay it. Is that not crazy?? That is SO unlike Missouri State!
I'm taking 12 hours total. I have Spanish Regional Economy, which is basically a history of Spain. Then, I have a Spanish language class, English (mi favorito!), Hypertext and Web Design, and Intro to Multimedia Productions. Those last two probably don't sound very fitting for me; they sounds more like something my brother would take. However, I think they're going to be useful! The Web Design class isn't necessarily about building webpages, although we will. A lot of it has to do with creating organization throughout websites. I do like organization, and this is the class that doesn't require a final! As for the multimedia class, I have to have something like it for my major, so whatever! Plus, our friend Billy is in this class with us, which is probably going to make it much more exciting!
While it does appear that there are a lot of perks about UPV, I do miss a few things about MSU. Of course, I miss Scholars House, my home away from home! I also miss the Bear Line, which is MSU's bus system. I never used the Bear Line at Missouri State because the campus isn't large enough to really need it. However, UPV is HUGE, and I often find myself wishing there was a bus system to make going from one end of campus to the other. Seriously, it's about a 25 minute walk, which isn't the best if you have to be somewhere in a hurry! I also miss free printing. You have to buy "print cards" here that let you have 28 print-outs for 2 euros. I guess 2 euros for 28 print-outs isn't too bad when you remember that you don't have to buy books, though!
As I said before, it only take us about 5 minutes to get to UPV, but the walk across campus is a bit longer. They are doing construction on the edge of campus, and every time we walk by, the Spanish men whistle at us. It's sort of amusing, but then we remember our history with creepy men, and it's not so much anymore! Whatever. :)
We started our job today. It was amazing. We got paid $15/hour to sit around and talk in English to this 15 year old girl, Natalie. She is going to London in July, and she wants to perfect her English beforehand. She's already really good! We just talk about whatever, which turned out to be beneficial for Emily and me because we were able to ask her about Spanish politics, Las Falles, normal Valencian weather patterns, etc. She taught us a lot, and we shared our native tongue. It was neat! Plus, her mom was super sweet! We're really blessed to have this little job. How do I always end up with such jobs? Remember the Sugar Shack? And the baby-sitting job? And the Y? There were all great, easy jobs (minus the whole making snocones bit) that I enjoyed! I'm blessed! This is also good experience for me, considering I want to teach English!
Tonight was our first attempt at using Valencia's bus system. We were fine on the way there. We found our bus stop, rode it to the stop, and got off at the correct place! We even survived the mean bus driver who felt the need to read the paper WHILE driving.. but whatever! Coming back was a different story, although we had a different yet still mean driver. We got on at the same place that we had been dropped off, and we rode it for a while, and then everyone got off the bus but us. The driver then informed us in very rapid Spanish that we would have to pay again to continue riding. Apparently we had gone to the end of the route, and in order to circle back around to our apartment, we had to pay another fee! We were so confused. This sweet little old lady behind us tried to explain it to us, but she, too, spoke extremely fast, and I seriously think she was partly deaf. She thought we had said "San Rafael" when we had actually said "Tramoyeres". Yeah, those don't sound too alike! She did give us these keychains, though, that advertise peace and cooperation for Valencia! When it close to her stop, she offered to let us get off with her and then drive us back to our apartment. Is that not sweet?? We declined, though, because our stop was right there! The Spanish people are so welcoming and friendly, though. Seriously, they shower us with kindness (minus the bus drivers!). It's a very warm environment.
As for now, IT'S THE WEEKEND!! How exciting! We're going out with Billy on Friday night, catching a movie with Abril on Saturday, and maybe hitting up the beach. We'll see. :) I'm just excited to sleep in tomorrow. My parents and Aaron will be here in a month from today!!! Time is flying by! Anyway, love to you all from Spain! y besos!!
...with the end ripped out.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
a little piece of Oklahoma in Spain!
We're singing a new song...
EDIT!!!! Okay, important update that deserves to be mentioned.. Nancy and Ken Barnes, parents of the lovely Ashley Barnes, figured out how to work our oven all the way from Maryville, MO! Apparently you have to hold in the button on the oven while lighting the match. They are brilliant, and now we have an oven to make frozen pizza in!! Thanks, Barnes family!! Love from Spain!!!!!!! :)
On our first day of class here at UPV, Missouri State got out due to ice. How ironic! We may have woken up slightly late, but we still made it to class on time. Well, I should restate that. We made it to a class on time. We were actually around 5-10 minutes early! However, as we sat down and pulled out notebooks, we noticed that no one around us was speaking English, and this was supposed to be one of our classes that was in English. We sat there for a few minutes and waited for the teacher, but as time went on and the language became more and more foreign, I decided to ask the girl next to me if this class was in English. She shook her head and replied that it was in Castellano. Oops! It turns out we were in a Spanish Regional Economy class, which was correct, but it was not the English section, which is not good considering I do not speak Castellano! We ended up making it to our class, and we were only a few minutes late. This may be a problem in the United States, but no one cares whether or not you're on time here. In fact, the teacher told us that it's not really required for students to come to theory classes; all of the information is online, and no attendance is taken. They're definitely a lot more laid back here than at MSU. They don't even make you finalize your schedules until a few weeks into the semester so you can sort of try out classes and see how they go. Crazy! Considering I am the type of person who organizes her closet according to ROYGBIV, I'm not sure I like this disorganization, but I'll just try not to think about it... :)
Anyway, the class itself was something that I really enjoyed. Don't let the "economy" title fool you! It's basically a history class about Spain and its trends. Hopefully my enthusiasm for this class continues. If not, there's still another neat aspect about this class... it's FULL of people from Oklahoma State! There are 2-3 girls and 1 boy. The guy, Kyle, is from Bartlesville. You're probably thinking, "Wow, what a small world! Random Oklahoma people in the same class in Spain on a campus full of 35,000 people." That's not what makes the world seem small, though! Kyle told me he knew someone from P-Creek, and when I asked who, he informed me that Kristen Carrick had been his lab partner in a biology class. Talk about small world!! The other girl we talked to who goes to OK State was really nice, too. It's nice to have some fellow Okies around. :-) Plus, they told us about a Protestant church here that even has services in English. Not that I don't love mass when we go, but this is exciting! We also made friends with a girl named Henrietta from Denmark. She sort of befriended us by asking us to work with her on a group project. I love the diversity of everyone. I love to ponder why we are all here together. God brought us together from all over the world to meet at this place and at this time for some reason.
We had a fairly long break between our first class and our second class, English. Okay, I will admit that this class is NOT designed for native English speakers, and I may have originally signed up for it because I thought it'd be easy. However, after today I have realized that this class is actually going to be really beneficial for me! If I take the ESL (English as a second language) minor route, this'll give me some good ideas as to how to present a new language to foreign speakers. The teacher, who is from Louisiana, is also going to let Emily and I do a bit of teaching and critiquing, which, of course, relates to my major of English education. I'm excited about this class! This is the kinda stuff I love, which is good considering I'll probably be doing it the rest of my life! :)
It actually started to rain on us when we left campus today. It came out of nowhere! We were not prepared, and I was not happy... thank goodness I woke up so late for class today! I would have hated to have spent time making myself look somewhat cute and then gotten rained on! :)
Tonight Emily and I explored the neighborhood around our apartment. You have to be very careful when walking on sidewalks. There is seriously a fresh pile of dog poop every ten feet; it's gross! We found a grocery store (mercadona! It's the Dillon's of Spain.) very close to our little home, which lead us to grocery buying. We had cheese and bread for dinner. We eat like poor people, but it's good. And we drink Coke with it, so it's like we're on the upper end of poor! We still need to figure out the oven situation... Think about how amazing our apartment next year will be in comparison to this! I am not saying I am not happy with the current situation, but I am saying that it'll make me appreciate next year's clothes dryer, microwave, etc, even more! :) Plus, we'll have Rach and Ash with us, and Henry and Jered will be next door, so it'll be like a happy little family! I can't wait for the boys to make us cook for them.. can't wait! :)
I'll leave you with a picture. This is what UPV looked like today. It appears to be a little warmer than Springfield right now, huh? :)
P.S. Thanks for my V-Day card, Mom and Dad! Yay, mail! It's even better here than in Missouri!
...and everything starts today.
EDIT!!!! Okay, important update that deserves to be mentioned.. Nancy and Ken Barnes, parents of the lovely Ashley Barnes, figured out how to work our oven all the way from Maryville, MO! Apparently you have to hold in the button on the oven while lighting the match. They are brilliant, and now we have an oven to make frozen pizza in!! Thanks, Barnes family!! Love from Spain!!!!!!! :)
On our first day of class here at UPV, Missouri State got out due to ice. How ironic! We may have woken up slightly late, but we still made it to class on time. Well, I should restate that. We made it to a class on time. We were actually around 5-10 minutes early! However, as we sat down and pulled out notebooks, we noticed that no one around us was speaking English, and this was supposed to be one of our classes that was in English. We sat there for a few minutes and waited for the teacher, but as time went on and the language became more and more foreign, I decided to ask the girl next to me if this class was in English. She shook her head and replied that it was in Castellano. Oops! It turns out we were in a Spanish Regional Economy class, which was correct, but it was not the English section, which is not good considering I do not speak Castellano! We ended up making it to our class, and we were only a few minutes late. This may be a problem in the United States, but no one cares whether or not you're on time here. In fact, the teacher told us that it's not really required for students to come to theory classes; all of the information is online, and no attendance is taken. They're definitely a lot more laid back here than at MSU. They don't even make you finalize your schedules until a few weeks into the semester so you can sort of try out classes and see how they go. Crazy! Considering I am the type of person who organizes her closet according to ROYGBIV, I'm not sure I like this disorganization, but I'll just try not to think about it... :)
Anyway, the class itself was something that I really enjoyed. Don't let the "economy" title fool you! It's basically a history class about Spain and its trends. Hopefully my enthusiasm for this class continues. If not, there's still another neat aspect about this class... it's FULL of people from Oklahoma State! There are 2-3 girls and 1 boy. The guy, Kyle, is from Bartlesville. You're probably thinking, "Wow, what a small world! Random Oklahoma people in the same class in Spain on a campus full of 35,000 people." That's not what makes the world seem small, though! Kyle told me he knew someone from P-Creek, and when I asked who, he informed me that Kristen Carrick had been his lab partner in a biology class. Talk about small world!! The other girl we talked to who goes to OK State was really nice, too. It's nice to have some fellow Okies around. :-) Plus, they told us about a Protestant church here that even has services in English. Not that I don't love mass when we go, but this is exciting! We also made friends with a girl named Henrietta from Denmark. She sort of befriended us by asking us to work with her on a group project. I love the diversity of everyone. I love to ponder why we are all here together. God brought us together from all over the world to meet at this place and at this time for some reason.
We had a fairly long break between our first class and our second class, English. Okay, I will admit that this class is NOT designed for native English speakers, and I may have originally signed up for it because I thought it'd be easy. However, after today I have realized that this class is actually going to be really beneficial for me! If I take the ESL (English as a second language) minor route, this'll give me some good ideas as to how to present a new language to foreign speakers. The teacher, who is from Louisiana, is also going to let Emily and I do a bit of teaching and critiquing, which, of course, relates to my major of English education. I'm excited about this class! This is the kinda stuff I love, which is good considering I'll probably be doing it the rest of my life! :)
It actually started to rain on us when we left campus today. It came out of nowhere! We were not prepared, and I was not happy... thank goodness I woke up so late for class today! I would have hated to have spent time making myself look somewhat cute and then gotten rained on! :)
Tonight Emily and I explored the neighborhood around our apartment. You have to be very careful when walking on sidewalks. There is seriously a fresh pile of dog poop every ten feet; it's gross! We found a grocery store (mercadona! It's the Dillon's of Spain.) very close to our little home, which lead us to grocery buying. We had cheese and bread for dinner. We eat like poor people, but it's good. And we drink Coke with it, so it's like we're on the upper end of poor! We still need to figure out the oven situation... Think about how amazing our apartment next year will be in comparison to this! I am not saying I am not happy with the current situation, but I am saying that it'll make me appreciate next year's clothes dryer, microwave, etc, even more! :) Plus, we'll have Rach and Ash with us, and Henry and Jered will be next door, so it'll be like a happy little family! I can't wait for the boys to make us cook for them.. can't wait! :)
I'll leave you with a picture. This is what UPV looked like today. It appears to be a little warmer than Springfield right now, huh? :)
P.S. Thanks for my V-Day card, Mom and Dad! Yay, mail! It's even better here than in Missouri!
...and everything starts today.
Monday, February 11, 2008
the tooth fairy strikes back.
I'm finding that You and You alone...
It seems like we are hit with trial after trial here in Valencia, and I notice that each time something happens, I freak out a little bit, and then God takes care of it perfectly. The perfect example of this would be my tooth. When it initially happened, I was not calm about it. Then, I realized there was nothing I could do, and I settled down a bit. I emailed a dentist in Valencia on Saturday when it happened, and he ended up emailing me back on Sunday telling me that I could drop by his office on Monday morning to see what could be done. Well, at 8am this morning Emily and I caught a cab to Dr. Gomez's office (That was an ordeal all in itself. We didn't know where the taxi zone was at first, and I kept trying to flag down cabs that were already occupied. Then, I tried to flag down two cars that were for driver's ed. Oops!), and we were dropped off at this huge building that required us to show them our passports in order to receive access cards so we could enter the building. Up the elevator we went, and we were standing in a dentist office. Dr. Gomez and his wife greeted us; he speaks very good English, and he knew exactly what to do about my implant. He didn't even bother to take down my information before whisking me away to the chair:
The process seriously took ten minutes. He cleaned my implant, put some glue in it, and stuck it back on. Apparently he read my email this weekend and felt sorry for me, and that's why he let me come in without an appointment, even though he had to leave this afternoon for a conference! God answered my prayers beautifully by giving me this nice, English-speaking man who knew how to work with the type of implants I have! I now have a tooth again, and I can smile without scaring people with the titanium bolt -- yeah!
Emily and I headed to the university after the dentist. Most people at UPV started class today but not us. We've opted to take all of our classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in order to have a four day weekend every week. Not a bad set up for traveling, right? We found out where our classes are and finalized our schedules. Oh, we also FINALLY met Billy today! Billy is another exchange student from the US that is going to UPV through Magellan. It was the most random meeting ever, but it was funny. We then walked back to our apartment, and I had my first experience with the washing machine. Now, you may wonder what is so hard about washing clothes, but have you ever seen a machine like this?
Yeah, that's our washing machine! It's the most ghetto little appliance I have ever seen, but it adds to the charm of our little home. You have roll it on wheels to the hook-up and then open that door that resembles a cheese grater in order to stick your clothes in. I didn't have to worry about how to work the dryer because apparently Spain doesn't believe in dryers! Everyone puts their clothes out on the line to dry. I haven't done laundry in three weeks, but really, I didn't have a lot. This is due to the fact that I've only worn two pairs of jeans in the past two weeks, and I've worn shirts two or three times. It's kind of gross, but let's remember that I didn't really have a choice!
I am getting back into the groove of being clean. I actually shaved my legs last night (I took a picture of pre-shave, but my mommy thinks it'll gross you out, so I'll refrain from sharing.), and the little forest of hair is no more! I've also started to shower again on a daily basis. When you add this to the fact that I now have a tooth AND clean clothes, it's like I'm a brand new person!! I may even straighten my hair tomorrow. I miss thin hair. I really miss my Chi.
Overall, life in the apartment is grand. A video tour WILL come when we get adequate internet. We're almost done unpacking, and our little piso is starting to feel like home. I just need to add a few pictures, and it'll be complete. It's a quaint little place that is nearly perfect for us, despite the grandma decorations and lack of heat. The only real complaint I have is that we don't know how to use the stove! It's gas. We know how to light the burners, which is great, but we can't figure out the oven. We'll master it soon, though! I'm sure. Until then, we'll just continue to make Spanish tortillas:
Basically, it's a potato omelet, and we add cheese to ours. THEY ARE THE BEST! Seriously, this is one food from Spain that I plan on continuing to eat on a regular basis upon return to the USA, and all of you that are living with me or near me in the apartment next year can rest assured that I'll be fixing these for us on a regular basis. Emily and I sort of feel like we eat like poor people here in Spain. We are abundant in potatoes, bread, and cheese, but that's ok. It's good. Plus, we have the best freaking cookies in the world (Principe!!), so we can't complain. Basically, Emily and I are well on our way to becoming the Yoshikos of Spain. We just have to perfect the flipping of the omelet, but once we do, we'll definitely be able to find jobs at Sodexho if ever needed! :)
As you can tell, God is taking care of us here in Spain. He continues to bless us in new ways every day, and although mini crises seem to hit us a bit too frequently, His will always shines through, and problems are soon resolved. Seriously, think about all of it. We came here without knowing anyone; God gave us Lucia, Alberto, and Alberto's family. We were homeless, and Lucia took us in. We looked at apartment after apartment with no luck, and then God showed us the the ideal place. We didn't have a cell phone; Lucia gave us one. My tooth fell out; God lead us to an English speaking dentist. HE HAS TAKEN SUCH GOOD CARE OF US!!! It is a wonderful feeling to know that we have a Father who cares for us and holds true in His promise to provide for us. I just need to work on worrying about the problems less and trusting more. I have an entire 4 months to improve, though. :)
Yeah, 4 months. Can you believe that it's been almost 3 weeks? I can't! Things may slow down a bit once classes start, but for now, time is flying by, and I feel like I'll be back in good ole Oklahoma in no time (Do you feel the same way, Mom? :)). For now, I should head to bed. I have to face the real world in a few hours, where I will be forced to remember that the main point of this trip is to study; it's not all fun and games after all! I feel kind of silly dreading school tomorrow after all of my friends were forced to return weeks ago, but let's remember that since I took summer classes between my freshman and sophomore year, this has been the longest break I've ever had during college, and I've loved it! Anyway, that's all for now from Valencia. I have a tooth, and I'm about to return to school. Love you all! If you're in Missouri, be safe with the ice, and enjoy your days off because of it!!! Scholars House kids, I hope you get power back soon because I miss our nightly chats!! :) besos!
...can break my fall.
It seems like we are hit with trial after trial here in Valencia, and I notice that each time something happens, I freak out a little bit, and then God takes care of it perfectly. The perfect example of this would be my tooth. When it initially happened, I was not calm about it. Then, I realized there was nothing I could do, and I settled down a bit. I emailed a dentist in Valencia on Saturday when it happened, and he ended up emailing me back on Sunday telling me that I could drop by his office on Monday morning to see what could be done. Well, at 8am this morning Emily and I caught a cab to Dr. Gomez's office (That was an ordeal all in itself. We didn't know where the taxi zone was at first, and I kept trying to flag down cabs that were already occupied. Then, I tried to flag down two cars that were for driver's ed. Oops!), and we were dropped off at this huge building that required us to show them our passports in order to receive access cards so we could enter the building. Up the elevator we went, and we were standing in a dentist office. Dr. Gomez and his wife greeted us; he speaks very good English, and he knew exactly what to do about my implant. He didn't even bother to take down my information before whisking me away to the chair:
The process seriously took ten minutes. He cleaned my implant, put some glue in it, and stuck it back on. Apparently he read my email this weekend and felt sorry for me, and that's why he let me come in without an appointment, even though he had to leave this afternoon for a conference! God answered my prayers beautifully by giving me this nice, English-speaking man who knew how to work with the type of implants I have! I now have a tooth again, and I can smile without scaring people with the titanium bolt -- yeah!
Emily and I headed to the university after the dentist. Most people at UPV started class today but not us. We've opted to take all of our classes on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays in order to have a four day weekend every week. Not a bad set up for traveling, right? We found out where our classes are and finalized our schedules. Oh, we also FINALLY met Billy today! Billy is another exchange student from the US that is going to UPV through Magellan. It was the most random meeting ever, but it was funny. We then walked back to our apartment, and I had my first experience with the washing machine. Now, you may wonder what is so hard about washing clothes, but have you ever seen a machine like this?
Yeah, that's our washing machine! It's the most ghetto little appliance I have ever seen, but it adds to the charm of our little home. You have roll it on wheels to the hook-up and then open that door that resembles a cheese grater in order to stick your clothes in. I didn't have to worry about how to work the dryer because apparently Spain doesn't believe in dryers! Everyone puts their clothes out on the line to dry. I haven't done laundry in three weeks, but really, I didn't have a lot. This is due to the fact that I've only worn two pairs of jeans in the past two weeks, and I've worn shirts two or three times. It's kind of gross, but let's remember that I didn't really have a choice!
I am getting back into the groove of being clean. I actually shaved my legs last night (I took a picture of pre-shave, but my mommy thinks it'll gross you out, so I'll refrain from sharing.), and the little forest of hair is no more! I've also started to shower again on a daily basis. When you add this to the fact that I now have a tooth AND clean clothes, it's like I'm a brand new person!! I may even straighten my hair tomorrow. I miss thin hair. I really miss my Chi.
Overall, life in the apartment is grand. A video tour WILL come when we get adequate internet. We're almost done unpacking, and our little piso is starting to feel like home. I just need to add a few pictures, and it'll be complete. It's a quaint little place that is nearly perfect for us, despite the grandma decorations and lack of heat. The only real complaint I have is that we don't know how to use the stove! It's gas. We know how to light the burners, which is great, but we can't figure out the oven. We'll master it soon, though! I'm sure. Until then, we'll just continue to make Spanish tortillas:
Basically, it's a potato omelet, and we add cheese to ours. THEY ARE THE BEST! Seriously, this is one food from Spain that I plan on continuing to eat on a regular basis upon return to the USA, and all of you that are living with me or near me in the apartment next year can rest assured that I'll be fixing these for us on a regular basis. Emily and I sort of feel like we eat like poor people here in Spain. We are abundant in potatoes, bread, and cheese, but that's ok. It's good. Plus, we have the best freaking cookies in the world (Principe!!), so we can't complain. Basically, Emily and I are well on our way to becoming the Yoshikos of Spain. We just have to perfect the flipping of the omelet, but once we do, we'll definitely be able to find jobs at Sodexho if ever needed! :)As you can tell, God is taking care of us here in Spain. He continues to bless us in new ways every day, and although mini crises seem to hit us a bit too frequently, His will always shines through, and problems are soon resolved. Seriously, think about all of it. We came here without knowing anyone; God gave us Lucia, Alberto, and Alberto's family. We were homeless, and Lucia took us in. We looked at apartment after apartment with no luck, and then God showed us the the ideal place. We didn't have a cell phone; Lucia gave us one. My tooth fell out; God lead us to an English speaking dentist. HE HAS TAKEN SUCH GOOD CARE OF US!!! It is a wonderful feeling to know that we have a Father who cares for us and holds true in His promise to provide for us. I just need to work on worrying about the problems less and trusting more. I have an entire 4 months to improve, though. :)
Yeah, 4 months. Can you believe that it's been almost 3 weeks? I can't! Things may slow down a bit once classes start, but for now, time is flying by, and I feel like I'll be back in good ole Oklahoma in no time (Do you feel the same way, Mom? :)). For now, I should head to bed. I have to face the real world in a few hours, where I will be forced to remember that the main point of this trip is to study; it's not all fun and games after all! I feel kind of silly dreading school tomorrow after all of my friends were forced to return weeks ago, but let's remember that since I took summer classes between my freshman and sophomore year, this has been the longest break I've ever had during college, and I've loved it! Anyway, that's all for now from Valencia. I have a tooth, and I'm about to return to school. Love you all! If you're in Missouri, be safe with the ice, and enjoy your days off because of it!!! Scholars House kids, I hope you get power back soon because I miss our nightly chats!! :) besos!
...can break my fall.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
do you think the tooth fairy still visits 20 year olds?
Just to see you smile...
What's wrong with this picture??? If you say "curly hair" or "Allison, your necklace is messed up." or "You really look like you need to shower!", YOU'RE WRONG!! I am missing a tooth! Remember back in high school when I went through a very tedious process of surgery after surgery in order to have metal bolts attached to my jaw bone so I could receive teeth implants? Well, today one of those implants decided it would like to leave my mouth and experience Valencia for itself, so it popped itself out while we were walking to the university and landed on the street. For a few seconds, we could not find my precious bit of porcelain, and I temporarily forgot about the titanium bolt that was jutting out of my jaw as we searched for it. We found it on the edge of the sidewalk, inches away from a hole that leads to the sewer.. Oh, how thankful I am that it stopped where it did! I shoved it back into my mouth without thinking about how unsanitary that is and started to cry. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING NOW? These babies are NOT supposed to come out! Emily made me feel better, though, and we started laughing about it.. at least it gave me something interesting to blog about, right?
We continued on our walk to UPV because we both knew there was nothing we could do about it then, and we were able to access UPV's wireless. I told my parents about the problem, and my dad tried to make me laugh by reminding me that now I look more like I'm from Arkansas than Emily does... sad day! The current plan of action is to find a dentist in Valencia (hopefully one that speaks English..) and see what can be done about it. Until then, I'm just going to have to beat off all the boys that desperately want to make out with the toothless girl with the titanium bolt sticking out of her mouth...
The good news is that our walk to UPV took us around 5 minutes. Seriously, we are 5 minutes from our school and 2 minutes from the beach!! Is that not awesome? Clearly, all that worrying we did over apartments was silly because God seems to have picked us out the perfect little apartment!
On tonight's agenda we have Spanish tortilla making and eating (potato omelet -- mm!) and hopefully unpacking. Maybe the tooth fairy will visit me tonight, too! Everything's going to be okay. If people from Arkansas don't need teeth, perhaps I don't either. :)
...I'd do anything.
What's wrong with this picture??? If you say "curly hair" or "Allison, your necklace is messed up." or "You really look like you need to shower!", YOU'RE WRONG!! I am missing a tooth! Remember back in high school when I went through a very tedious process of surgery after surgery in order to have metal bolts attached to my jaw bone so I could receive teeth implants? Well, today one of those implants decided it would like to leave my mouth and experience Valencia for itself, so it popped itself out while we were walking to the university and landed on the street. For a few seconds, we could not find my precious bit of porcelain, and I temporarily forgot about the titanium bolt that was jutting out of my jaw as we searched for it. We found it on the edge of the sidewalk, inches away from a hole that leads to the sewer.. Oh, how thankful I am that it stopped where it did! I shoved it back into my mouth without thinking about how unsanitary that is and started to cry. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING NOW? These babies are NOT supposed to come out! Emily made me feel better, though, and we started laughing about it.. at least it gave me something interesting to blog about, right?
We continued on our walk to UPV because we both knew there was nothing we could do about it then, and we were able to access UPV's wireless. I told my parents about the problem, and my dad tried to make me laugh by reminding me that now I look more like I'm from Arkansas than Emily does... sad day! The current plan of action is to find a dentist in Valencia (hopefully one that speaks English..) and see what can be done about it. Until then, I'm just going to have to beat off all the boys that desperately want to make out with the toothless girl with the titanium bolt sticking out of her mouth...
The good news is that our walk to UPV took us around 5 minutes. Seriously, we are 5 minutes from our school and 2 minutes from the beach!! Is that not awesome? Clearly, all that worrying we did over apartments was silly because God seems to have picked us out the perfect little apartment!
On tonight's agenda we have Spanish tortilla making and eating (potato omelet -- mm!) and hopefully unpacking. Maybe the tooth fairy will visit me tonight, too! Everything's going to be okay. If people from Arkansas don't need teeth, perhaps I don't either. :)
...I'd do anything.
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