how was ireland?

a difficult question to answer, but easily put, incredible. the countryside is majestic- so lush and green with historic ruins, farm plots separated by rock walls, livestock and very narrow winding country roads. in reference to the city life, dublin is a decently sized city, but not overwhelmingly large and really could be “toured” within a day or two. dublin has its own unique character, with pubs and cafés on every block, divided by the river liffey. it isn’t a “beautiful” and “romantic” city like i hear paris is, but is clean, with impressive parks and modern buildings mixed in with historic ones. for an outline of the trip: i went with my friend ashley desforge who i met in granada, she’s wonderful- has similar interests and loves to be adventurous. we landed in dublin on a thursday night (april 26th) and leisurely made our way to our homestay at a friend of jack’s (my sister-in-law) place. we figured out the public transport system and immediately discovered how amiable the irish are. we had the address to siobhain’s (jack’s friend) in raheny, just outside of dublin, and narrowed down our search by constantly asking for directions. ashley and i not only had a place to stay, but were treated to a splendid dinner in the city the first night we were there. we didn’t eat until like 10pm so it was hard to find somewhere open. the irish have a more similar eating and going out schedule to the US which was kind of refreshing to find. ashley and i contemplated whether we should travel north or south of dublin the next day, but we ended up staying in dublin because we weren’t sure if we would have the opportunity later on. we walked all around the city and saw buildings like the customs house, the post office (which was incredible! it’s comparable to the capital building in the states), trinity college which houses the book of kells, st. patrick’s cathedral and the dublin castle. we hit up the hot spots like temple bar, grafton street and went to st. stephen’s green. i was so impressed by the parks- it would be nice if all countries modeled their parks after those of the irish - very expansive with ancient trees, flowers, large ponds and so peaceful... we left for galway that night, which is on the west side of ireland and when arriving, had a short glimpse of the nightlife. we were planning to go to the cliffs of moher on saturday night after touring galway, but found out there was only one bus that leaves in the morning … we wanted to see galway that day so we looked into renting a car, but we weren’t old enough… we stressed a bit about how we’d get to the cliffs, but thought we would figure it out later. we passed through the town touring some of the cathedrals and stopped at the saturday market- tasted some irish specialties, listened and watched some irish music and dance. we relaxed around the coastline for a bit and figured the only way to the cliffs was to hitchhike. so after talking to locals and figuring how to go about it, we did it. hitchhiking was one of the best parts of the trip- going to the cliffs, we received rides from 2 irish college boys, a belgian chef and 3 italian boys who where checking out ireland for the week. the cliffs were pretty spectacular. the weather was perfect the whole time we were in ireland, sunny with blue skies. therefore from the cliffs, we had an impressive view of the coastline. the only crappy part was being covered with bugs, ashley didn’t have too many problems, but for some reason i always attract them. whenever i run, i also always get bugs in my eyes. eh, just my luck. our hostel for that night claimed on it’s website to be “on the cliffs” but in actuality was 15 km away in lisdoonvarna. we hitched a ride with an irish family from dublin and were stuck in the back of a station wagon behind their 3 or 4 kids. the dad humored us with his great sense of humor. we simply gave him the address and he took us to the doorstep of our hostel even though we had passed the town they were staying in. the hostel had just made the change from being a hotel and so turned out to be really nice. ironically, the night we chose to go out was in a town with a population of 1,000- but it turned out to be SO fun. we went to the “boomin” irish pub, listened to live irish music and met some locals. the boys were much more polite and not nearly as forward as some of the spanish are, ah finally. we left the next morning, hitchhiking back to galway with an irish farmer, a tea shop owner, an older woman and a marine biologist and then took the bus back to dublin. we had a nice warm home cooked meal with family friends of ashley’s, the hyltons, who have been living in dublin for 2 years. monday, we went south of dublin to glendalough to see ancient ruins and hike around 2 lakes- and again it was an absolutely beautiful day. on our way back to dublin, we stopped in greystones, a beach town and walked the beach while the sun was setting. we had an hour long dart ride back to dublin and we just sat there listening to music and thinking about how blessed we were for how well our trip had gone. the next morning siobhain took us to the airport and we passed out for the plane ride back. least to say, i think i’ll be visiting ireland again, maybe ashley might even live there :) i hope to keep in touch with someone i met in lisdoonvarna, siobhain and the hyltons. i can see why the irish are proud of their heritage- they have a beautiful country and wonderful people.

out and about

well, i should be prepping for a presentation, but i'll get to it... i'm giving a little speel on pablo neruda's "verbo" - i don't think it's one of his best, but it was preselected, and i wanted to do neruda. i'm going to the alpujarras for the 2nd time this weekend- a smaller mountain range that leads into the sierra nevada. hiking will be fun, and afterward i'm going to a bullfight for the first time. thought i would check one out- to see the world-renowned spectacle and the customs surrounding it, but i'm not sure if i will stay long. it will be disturbing. i have to take a language proficiency exam called the "DELE", similar to the TOEFL in the US, but of course in spanish. not so sure if i will pass, it would be nice though. the test is comprised of oral, listening, written, and bubble filling sections and is about 3 hours long. i have a practice tomorrow and the actual test is may 11th. we have the 30th of april and the 1st of may off from school, so i decided to go to ireland with a friend. we found decently priced airline tickets and jumped the bandwagon. i heard it's absolutely beautiful there. nothing much else is going on on my end except running into some creepy guys on the streets. you would think there would be an age limit on pursuers, but no. i'm trying to put together some travels for when i finish school. in the cards- italy, portugal, england, scotland, serbia/bosnia, greece and germany. i'll probably end up going to 2 or 3 places. my return flight from madrid is the 15th of june and i finish school may 24th. i've mostly been taking sm. side trips in spain or exploring granada. morocco was the first time out of the country. i have a lot of friends that travel during the weekends, but it's only 3 days and to spend the money for transportation- might as well stay there for longer and really experience wherever it is you are traveling to. i repeatedly am being told that greece is the most beautiful place- however, i might have to wait for that one and make a separate trip. plane tickets are ridiculous, but once you are there it's reasonable. we'll see... well, cheers! wish me luck on my presentation and exam studying- i'm definately lacking on the studying bit...

welcome back to spain!

well, i came back from burt's and jack's wedding, and low and behold, shitty food once more. i had a potato bocadillo for lunch the next day, disgusting! i felt like i lived in luxury while in san diego: space!, amazing, healthy food, nice hot showers, talking and seeing family and friends and ahhh, just home! the states really aren't that bad, once you looked past the fucking political arena. why the exchange rate of the US dollar to the euro is so horrible... thank you bush administration for the pathetically large, incomprehensible national debt we have accrued, and our entanglement in a foreign war with poor foresight of how to shift the responsibility of running an entire country to its own people. we can't even afford to educate our own citizens, how does the administration expect to render a sustainable infrastructure of a government, educational system and economy in another? not to say we shouldn't have gotten involved, but it was brought about in the wrong way. i totally just went off, but studying latin american history and being in europe makes me realize how pathetic and purely stupid our government can be and has been. anyway, the wedding was amazing for the 4 days i was in the states. 48 hours of travel sucked royally, but was completely worth it! being a bridesmaid was so much fun, i did feel way fancified with nails, hairdo and dress. jack looked gorgous, just a natural beauty which i'm sure burt realizes. it was pretty spectucular to hear jack say before the wedding that she never thought she would get married and how burt was pretty amazing. okay, soulmates. i feel like that trip was over after one breath- so quick! before leaving for san diego, i went to morocco, my first time outside of spain. kind of shocking! i feel like i haven't had much time at all to travel and plus, there's so much to do within spain. spain is really diverse, each region has its own personality, culture, architecture, weather, sometimes language- just different. i was only in morocco for one night and 2 days, but it was a good first time trip to africa! although it didn't seem like africa. i went with a program called studytravel-spain, usu. comprised of students studying in spain. it was good, because i didn't get sick- all our meals, travel and hotel stays were included. we left from malaga, spain, took the bus to algeciras, further south of spain, and then took the ferry from algeciras to ceuta, morocco. ceuta and one other city in morocco are still colonized by spain interestingly. from ceuta, we went to tanger, tetuan and chef chouan. the first 2 were big cities, and the third a town. in the majority of moroccan cities/ towns there are "medinas", historic parts which were the cities beforehand. in the case of chef chouan, the entire town is a medina. within the medina, you can see how homes were typically constructed in the past, how markets and small plazas were situated, and how confusing it could be to find your way through small winding, narrow streets/ pathways. while in an alley, walls are on each side- the homes. there are no clear separations from which home is which besides the different doorways and a sm. window next to the door. they put all their effort into beautifying the inside... ok, i'll write more later, gtg, but i'm working on putting pictures on winkflash, hopefully that will be done soon, and i can invite everyone to see my albums. later!

with passing time

so i haven´t been so great at maintaining this blog, only 3 entries, pathetic, i know... but, it´s hard if you don´t have a computer. whenever i have computer/internet access, i usu. only have time to check e-mail. i would like to give my sincere apologies for not responding rapidly to e-mails, but please keep sending them because i do read them. i´m definately exhausted, i´m not so sure if i can become accustomed to staying up to 7 in the morning. when they say the spanish stay out all night, they really do stay out ALL night. the typical "going out" night: meet for drinks and tapas at one of the million bars at about 11 and either go bar hopping or stay there until like 2 or 3 and then continue to a bar/club with a dance floor or to a discoteca. it´s pretty fabulous that in granada tapas are free... fyi, tapas are sm. portions of food, could be anywhere from toasted bread with cheese or ham (they LOVE ham), a sm. hamburger, fried calamari or once i had half an avocado- an avocado with mayonase, but definately took the mayo off. so continuing on with the night, if you so wish, you go dancing or just continue drinking at a bar. return home at about 7 and hope that you don´t have to get up until lunch the next day. i definately love the discotecas and bars with dance floors- so much fun. there´s a wide variety of music they play at bars- anywhere from reggae to r&b to techno, not a fan of techno though... it seems like my friends that are high enjoy techno the most. so moving on... i am actually staying quite busy with school. we have school from mon-thurs and have each class twice a week, 1 1/2 hours each time, talk about long, long, long... the fav is my european union class, so interesting. i have a very animated professor who definately takes up the full hour and a half. i need to start studying for the dele exam soon, i´ve definately been putting that off. recent excursions... i went with my program to madrid, segovia and toledo- great trip. in madrid, we hit up the museums- museo del prado, museo reina sofía, museo thyssen-bornemisza and saw garcía lorca´s "la casa de bernarda alba". i got a taste of velázquez, goya, zurbarán, ribera and so many others, only slightly impressive ;) . i went out one night with friends. i have some spanish friends in granada who have friends in madrid, so a couple of girls and i met up with them. two of them own bars, so we stopped by both and stayed at one after it closed- it was pretty rad, we had a bar to ourselves. we stayed there for awhile and then went dancing. the next day was rough with touring, but it was worth it. outside of madrid, we passed through san lorenzo de el escorial (a mausoleum of the spanish monarchs, palace and monastery complex) and afterward "el valle de los caídos" (the valley of the fallen)- a place i totally recommend you read about. it was breathtaking- situated up on a mountainside with a spectacular view. the site contains the largest basilica in the world which hollows out a hill and makes it seem like a cave. atop the basilica is the tallest memorial cross in the world. the fascist history surrounding the valley, the remains of the 40,000 from the spanish civil war the monument sits atop on and the slave labor involved in constructing the memorial gives the valley an eery feeling. the basilica was frigid and dark, but left a sense of awe. the next day, we toured around segovia- such a picturesque city. we passed through the cathedrals, aqueducts and visited the castle that appears in snow white. toledo, the old capital of spain, was more fortified, as could be expected, and had a much different appeal. consider the side of a building to be a face, if more decorative and "pretty", the architecture is labeled feminine. more simplistic and fortified architecture is more masculine. if i can ever upload my pictures at a decent rate, i can show you how toledo is considered a more masculine city and segovia, more feminine. i got to run, until next time...

transition

granada´s charm is starting to rub off on me now... i´m starting to understand granidians better now and my speaking is coming along. hopefully i´ll be exiting the culture shock stage soon. but of course, i had a stroke of bad luck... i was on crutches. i busted up my foot and my toe is broken. no glorious story to go along with the break either. it wasn´t from dancing the night away at a discoteca or climbing mountainous terrain, but rather from slamming my foot into a door frame at my host family's apartment. classic klutz.
now i've made the smooth transition to wearing a boot. i finished 3 weeks of intensivo - 4 hours straight of class in the morning, the first 2 hours with a speaking class and the second 2 hours, a grammar class, and a DELE class for an hour and a half in the evening. the DELE is similar to the US TOEFL, therefore testing spanish proficiency. as part of the program, we are required to take the DELE exam in may (it's offered in november and may). after finishing intensivo we have about a week off. we went to córdoba and sevilla with the program, involving about 29 students, and now i broke off with a group of girls and we're in barcelona. córdoba, a smaller town, was one of those classic european towns, with narrow winding streets, old apartment buildings with small windows and shutters, with clothes hanging on clothes lines, and small cafés with patios in plazas. we were only there for about half a day and soaked up the beatiful muslim mezquita and bathed in the arabic bathes. how heavenly- i think i will have to live close to bathes such as those or construct a miniature version when i have a house. i would welcome all my guests there. afterward we bused off to sevilla, a much larger scale city than córdoba, walked through the remains of an ancient roman city, toured a museum and the third biggest cathedral in the world, went on a short boat tour, visited the gardens and a muslim palace. when i get my computer, i will finally post pictures. now in barcelona... amazing city. huge and gothic- one of my favorite types of architecture. we are still in our first days, and i am sure i will write more about this enchanting city. staying in a hostel is crazy interesting, i've met some people from all over the world, the most amiable have been a group of 12 irish students studying in england. we went to a hole in the wall type of bar last night that is more of a local spot and it was great. i spoke some spanish with some locals who were really encouraging me to practice, it was fun. anyway, i hope things continue to perk up... no more hospital visits. my first was with a friend who was attacked by a dog in the streets. it was our first time hanging out. the dog didn't dig into her skin, but knocked her on her side and she twisted her ankle. such luck. the dog was being walked by an owner and it just went crazy. we saw the dog in passing the other day and now it has a muzzle (: serves it right.

first encounter

una nueva entrada... so far i don´t like it here at all. okay, so the historical aspects are really cool. granada is a beautiful city with impressive architecture. i haven´t had the opportunity to tour much, but that´s where i will be. the people here are ridiculous- so rude, with no common courtesy. they instill SO MUCH importance in fashion. there is a type you must conform to or else you are ostracized. it´s so frustrating not being able to speak and speak openly. i could potentially pass as a spaniard, if i dressed appropriately, but i can´t speak or understand anyone. anyway, i guess it will come with patience and practice. i start school tomorrow, hopefully then i can really pick up with the spanish. classes are at the centro de las lenguas modernas - un edifcio muy agradable y historico. all the instructors are very nice, so that will be a good change... i don´t really have any pictures to post yet, but will soon. miss you all.