Mom and I in Madrid

18th December (three days with mom in Madrid)

Today is my third day with my mom in Madrid. My only comment on that is YES!! We have been having a blast. On Saturday morning at exactly 7am she met me at the airport and lets just say that both of us were really extremely excited to see the other( we hugged for about 1 minute). We have been inseperable since wondering around Madrid. We have visited the Reina Sofia Museum (spent a lot of time there looking at Dahli, Monet, and of course Picasso´s art) been eating doners (which are a pita with meat, lettuce, tomato, ranch and some red dressing- turkish fastfood), Prado museum (we spent a lot of time there looking at Valezquez, Goya, and Greco), the Retiro park, a little shopping, went to the Eragon movie (we had assigned seating like a play), eaten a few tapas, bought some art and of course led the carefree hostel student life.

Some of the highlights have been the things neither of us planned on like running into demonstrations at Plaza del sol and playing with sparklers in the mass of people, or buying a dvd from a street vendor that has a blanket laid out ready to be picked up if a cop comes by (and feelign like it was a drug deal because he kept looking around), and getting a little lost on a street and encountering a store filled with people buying meat and cheese and learning how to buy 1/4 kilo of meat and cheese (neither of us knew the word for a 1/4 so it was media media kilo- you can imagine the guy´s expression). The little things that make life interesting and enjoyable!

I am excited to see what the rest of our vacation together will bring!

Barcelona

I am sure about these dates it was the 6th through the 10th of December.

Let´s just say my trip to Barcelona (even though it ended up being a lot later then I had prior thought was AMAZING!!!)

I ended my intercambio with Mario at 7:15 (we had taken a walk through the newly completed plaza nueva and met up with his sister and brother and all three walked me back to the apartment) and I met up with Jimmy (we had to stop twice because I made him go back so I could get a pair of nice shoes and he had to get money from an ATM). We finally made it to the stop in front of the university and we waited for the bus. Madia and Brian joined us and we made it to the airport. We were a little early so we hung out in the shops then checked in (which was difficult because Jimmy had forgotten his passport and they were threatening to not let him on the plane, then they told him that he would need a copy of it for the return trip and this once they would let him by). Then we went through the metal detectors (Jimmy got stopped here three times and his backpack had to be searched further by one of the guards, it was at this time that I realized that Jimmy was one of those people you travel with that no matter how many times you say something he does it the same way every time, everybody knows one of these people). Finally at exactly 10:30 we were on the plane and on our way to BARCELONA.

I slept on Jimmy´s shoulder while he played Madia´s Saduko. We got into Barcelona around 12 discovered that the metro stopped at 10 so we took a taxi ride to our hostel, el paraiso. This hostel was interesting. First you came up to the glass doors rang into the hostel told them what room you are in then climb up the stairs ring in to the front desk again at the door and enter a place filled with color. The walls were orange with green trim and doors were purple. It had a common room at the end of the hall on the right side of the front desk that had a big screen tv, desks, a couch and its own bathroom. there were people in there when we were showed it. Next was our room we were taken down the hall on the opposite side of the office took a couple of corners passing rooms and then opened an exit to cross a suspension bridge covered on all three sides by hay (I don´t believe it was real hay) and then onto the rooftop which had a few tables set up and then three more rooms and a bathroom on the end. It was really original and cute.

Our room itself had two bunk beds, 4 lockers a sink, and a tv. On the first night Madia and I froze (yeah that sucked). The next night I found an extra blanket on top of the lockers and used it for the next two nights (that was a lifesaver). As a group our routine turned into searching for a new café every morning for coffee and tostadas for everyone (but me because we stopped by a store and bought these little muffin things called valencianas and pack of the juice with milk drinks all for 2 euros, and I don´t drink coffee). Afternoons consisted of sites, lunches were at places we thought looked good and we stopped by a market every night for dinner in the hostel.

It would take forever to describe every day so I am going to write about the places we saw that I thought were interesting. First of all was Las Ramblas. We discovered this on the first day and it is a long ¨touristy¨ avenue in between the streets are vendors, musicians, and other entertainers. On the sides of the street were tourist shops. The first day we went to las Ramblas we walked down to cross the bridge over the harbor and went to this big shopping center. Out in front of it were these piles of white palates that had been wrapped together like christmas presents (yep we took pictures of these). Then we spent around 30 minutes looking around the mall and returned to mainland. A huge statue

Carmona

My trip the first day in December ( I believe)

Our program offered to take us to a small pueblo only 30 minutes outside of Sevilla and of course I convinced a group of friends to go with me. Let me just say this was really a cool trip. First we were dropped off practically in the middle of the town and then our teacher Pedro started the tour. We first walked by an ancient clock tower and it was then that we began to learn the story about Pedro the Cruel. Now Pedro the Cruel was a king of spain and what I got from Pedro´s story Pedro the Cruel wasn´t really cruel, only in love. The story says that he was in love with a common woman in Carmona (his castle is there). Problem was this woman was not in love wth him and she was married. Well as it so happens the husband of the woman dies and she is left single and available for Pedro. The woman still doesn´t like Pedro and now he is becoming even more agressive so she goes into a bar and grabs the hot olive oil and pours it onto her face. Half of her face was scarred for the rest of her life and from that day on Pedro the cruel stopped loving her. Her coffin is in Sevilla at a church near my school so I am hoping to see it tomorrow (Pedro said he would take us).

Anyways Pedro took us winding through the small streets to the top of the mountain and we walked through the big huge castel walls into a ........ hotel. This was the castle of Pedro the Cruel and now has been redone into a hotel. The 5 star hotel has made considerable efforts to make the castle look like it did with Pedro the Cruel but they are all replicas or what they imagine would have been there at that time period.

One of the hotel managers took us on a tour to see the fountain that sits in the open area in the middle of the building (which was actually there with Pedro the Cruel) this fountain was huge and really pretty and I guess there was a fight between two brothers over this fountain and Pedro the Cruel won it. Next we saw the view of the countryside from the balcony (it was amazing you could see everything!) Then a visit to the dinning room and a sitting room. Of course a peek at one of the hotel´s fine rooms available for our next visit to Carmona. It was actually really neat to see.

Then we moved to the town square where there is just an open square with all four sides surrounded by shops where we sat and had snacks and ordered drinks (Chris Grisby and I ate our bocadillos and fruit from our señoras).

Then we went to a fort kind of thing in the middle of the town that was pretty neat because of its view from 3 stories (I was not completely sure what it was but we had fun climbing the stairs and exploring it) there was a guy that was belaying down one of the walls, which looked like fun.

Then we took our last stop in Carmona and by far my favorite (Pedro wasn´t going to take us to it because he didn´t know how many would be interested and he had never been to it himself before). We went to the necropolis! Let me explain a necropolis, a necropolis is a burial site for the romans. In this particular necropolis they have discovered around 200 remains but it hard to say exact amounts because the bodies were cremated and then placed in pots. Next these pots were put in tombs (kind of like the pharoahs) where the father´s remains would be in the front of the tomb and his son´s on either side of this. The pictures I took explain this better then I am right now. We climbed down a ladder and saw one of these little rooms. Then as we walked down the hill we came upon a huge tomb that was as big as a probably our house in Green River that had been dug out. There were columns seperating rooms and in the middle a statue of an elephant. I explored what I could and found a hall connecting two of the rooms and in it there was the remains of a picture of a man being fanned by a servant but the rest of the picture had decayed away. Every one of these tombs we saw I took a lot of pictures (my camera ran out of pictures so I borrowed Pedro´s and then his ran out of pictures too!)

Needless to say I enjoyed this necropolis and my trip to Carmona!