Madre Mia

Week numero 2:

This week, in stark contrast to the first, didn't actually have any plans to begin with, so I suppose that nothing could get in the way of the fulfillment of any of those not made plans. I had school/work until Thursday and my mom and host mom (Carmen) spent the days together. My mom also got to know a few of my coworkers at the hotel pretty well and even introduced my host mom to them (which if you know my host mom its pretty impressive that my mom convinced her to go in, because Carmen is probably the shiest person you will ever meet) when I wasn't there. The only kind of tough part was the food. We eat lots of meat, little vegetables and everything is loaded with olive oil and salt - which takes away from the healthiness of the would be healthy foods. Carmen made a big effort to make more salads and other sorts of greens, but even a salad that she claimed had no salt on it tasted like sea water. In terms of the food those 4 days might have felt a little bit long and I think that when we left to go to Granada on Thursday afternoon the thing that we were most looking forward to was the ability to chose our own food.

We took the train from Sevilla to Granada, about a 3 hour train ride, Thursday after my classes and arrived around 9:30 or so that night. The hotel said it was located a little bit outside of the city but within 'striking distance' of the center, so, being that 'striking distance' could have a number of interpretations, we were a bit worried about the location - luckily it ended up being about a 7 minute walk from the busiest street in Granada. We went there that night for tapas and frozen yogurt and then watched Boy Meets World in spanish before we went to bed. (I had forgotten how much I like that show, I think it is the one show that I ever actually watched as a kid). The next day we got up 'early' at 9 (like I said in that previous blog update I never knew that my parents had it in them to sleep so long) and got ready for a big Granadan day. First thing on the agenda was the Alhambra. Built by the Moorish in the 1300s it was used as a refuge for the King and his family. It is a string of palaces built together interlaced with beautiful gardens and water features. It is located on a hill overlooking all of Granada and offers spectacular views of the snow capped Sierra Nevadas in the distance. It is also the biggest tourist attraction in Spain - something that we had to learn the hard way when I went to buy the Alhambra tickets 4 days before (all of them had already been sold out so we just bought the garden tickets which, although we didn't have full access to the palaces, was still beautiful). The history there is really impressive and, although it is very well preserved, back 500 years ago when it was in its hay-day and all the paint was bright and colorful it really must have been a sight to behold. Anyways we spent a good couple of hours there and then walked back down through the woods into a little plaza with a creek running through it in the very upper corner of Granada. From the plaza there is just one tiny little street that follows the stream back into the city center, slowly opening up until the city surrounds you.

From there I told mom that we had to find this Kebab place (Kebab's in Spain aren't like the typical meat on a stick deliciousness we like to think about, but are kind of like a burrito - chicken, lettuce, tomato, beats and really yummy, spicy sauces wrapped in a tortilla type object) where I had ate the first time I was in the city about 5 months before hand. It is in a part of the city known as the Albacin (full of tiny streets that weave there way through white houses up to another great view of Granada) which isn't exactly the easiest place to navigate, but somehow we made it there without much of a problem. After lunch I figured my mom would want to do that Spanish thing she had fallen so in love with and take a siesta, but we were both feeling like doing more stuff so we got on one of those hop-on hop-off bus tours of Granada. This is probably the best, most efficient way to get a feel for the layout and structure of a city because the bus does a big loop and stops at all of the biggest attractions. We weren't really planning on getting off anywhere, but we stopped at this science museum park and both of us immediately knew that we wouldn't be returning to the hotel anytime in the near future. We went to an exhibit on Darwin, an animal exhibit and a butterfly pavilion but the coolest was definitely an exhibit on the human body. There were a lot of interactive activities and probably the most surprising bit of information that we stumbled upon is that the human lung has a surface are of about 70m squared - that is roughly the same area as one side of the tennis court! There was also an 'operation' type game where you have to put all of the body parts back in the body and i was very impressed with my moms knowledge of what us humans have on the inside. We then played a game where two people sit on opposite ends of a table, put their foreheads against a piece of steel and try to mentally push this metal ball in a cage towards the other person. It says that the key is to not actually think about anything and to relax the brain as best you can - i've never thought a had a very relaxed brain but according to that game im good at not thinking haha (i dont know it that is necessarily a good thing though). There was also a birds of prey show which was pretty awesome. They walk around with hawks, eagles and owls then let them fly and give them fake prey to try to catch - most impressive was definitely the eagle.

By the time we finally got back to the hotel room almost 12 hours had past since we left that morning. The thing is that we didn't feel like we were really pushing ourselves to do as much as possible or anything and we didn't arrive to the room exhausted, but we still saw as much of Granada as one could see in one day. For the evening we went to a restaurant where my mom got a salad that made me think we were in America or something and then we went to a cool little arabic cafe and got some green tea/banana smoothie! with whip cream!

The next morning we had to catch a train at 11:30am but we still managed to do some productive things: buy the host family a picture book of granada then walk back to that little albacin area and get some bracelets (that we could have very easily gotten the day before, but there wasn't any time pressure on us the day before and the fact that we couldn't make any wrong turns or we would miss the train this time around made it more exhilarating). On the way to by the bracelets we also walked into a part of the city that we didn't even know had existed and that one could easily spend another day in (reason to go back). The last night in Sevilla we spent trying to get the tv to show the game between Real Madrid and Barcelona (the most highly anticipated game of the year in Spain - and of course our tv decided to give us problems with that one single channel) and then we got up at 5 the next morning to head to the airport of Sevilla.

Anyways I would say that those were two fun, eventful, memorable weeks! My mom and I were just  saying that if that volcano had erupted a bit sooner she might have just had to stay here until I leave! If only if only. In other news its the famous feria of sevilla right now and it is absolutely everything it was ever built up to be. Haven't been to bed before 6 am yet this week and i highly doubt that that will be changing tonight. I also went to barcelona this past weekend so thats what the next update will be about!

Thank you for coming madre y padre of mine!

Family Fun

Week 1 (mom and dad)-

Allow me to begin this blog by saying that this vacation went nothing as planned. I've actually really began to question the use of making plans, for so often they seem to fail. And its not to say that we didn't have a good time, in fact we probably have more stories/memories now than we would have if things had actually gone according to plan. I think that one of the best parts of plans is the stories that come about upon their falling through. So, with plans in my mind, I'm am going to divide this part of the blog into 2 versions - 1) the plans or, how the trip would have been had everything gone according to plan and 2) how it actually went down.

1) My dad would arrive in Sevilla at 2. My mom would arrive at 3. I would go to the airport to pickup my dad and then we would wait until 3 for my mom to arrive. From there we would take a bus to the hotel where I work.

2) We would spend tuesday and wednesday in sevilla and take in as much of the Semana Santa as we could - we would also eat lunch at my host parents house/take them out to dinner one night.

3) Thursday morning we would go to Granada where we would see the Alhambra and spend one night

4) We would go to Ronda on Friday where we would spend two nights

5) Still partly related with number 4, Saturday we would go to Gibraltar for the day and then go back to Ronda for the night

6) We would return to Sevilla Sunday and my dad would fly out Monday

There were also 2 things that my dad simply had to do: 1) Go to Gibraltar 2) Eat the infamous Iberian ham (and, if we go back about 2 weeks, he was also set on making it to Africa).... lets see exactly which one of these was accomplished...

Now, for the real version...

1) I waited in the airport for an hour and the first parent of mine that I saw coming through the gates was my mom. What happened, one might be so inclined as to ask?? Well, my dad had a problem with his ticket and had to change everything while in Mexico, 2 days before coming to Spain. Did I have any idea of this? No. Does it matter? Not really. I mean I could go into more detail about how I spent an hour running through the airport, looking for him in every corner, getting chased by the security guards and hiding in the bathroom, but that wouldn't be altogether factual.... Seeing my mom walk through those doors was a cool feeling. It had been so long since I had seen my parents (since August 18) and upon seeing her it felt like it had been a matter of years and a matter of minutes since I had last seen her all at the same time. She told me that my dad would get in in about two hours, so we decided it would be best to take the bus to the hotel and then for me to come back and get him later. The bus, however, didn't exactly go according to plan (haha). It was supposed to drop us off at about 5 minutes walking distance from the hotel, but due to Semana Santa (which consists of parades all throughout the city for one week) the route was cut way short and we were forced to find other modes of transportation. We got a taxi, there's probably never been a taxi driver in a worse mood than this one, and he took us another half of the way there then demanded that we exit the vehicle as he couldn't go any further (a lie). But we really didn't want to be in there anyways so we did as told. And, what did we exit that taxi to??? A furious flurry of ferocious formidable rain. Lowering our heads into the head on rain, we made the push towards to the hotel (about 10 minutes away walking). From there I showed mom the the best room in the hotel (that my high ranking stature in Hotel Murillo had won them) and then went to pick up my dad. His flight arrived on time, the bus went all the way to the stop closest to the hotel and the sun was shining. About a stark a contrast as one can find to that first journey to the hotel. From there both of my parents were exhausted, and rightfully so, so I decided to be a gracious guest and let them rest until the following day.

2) I guess, to my astonishment now that I think about it, that Tuesday actually did go more or less according to plan. The first part of the day we spent walking around some historic sites of Sevilla (places that I hadn't even been) and ate lunch at a restaurant that I had made reservations for at 3pm. Following lunch my dad and I went shoe shopping and my mom went back to the hotel to rest a bit. I never realized that my dad knew so much about shoes, but he analyzed those things like a Darwin must have analyzed those animals when forming his theory on evolution. Lets just say that I have absolutely no doubt that I got the best pair of shoes available to me in all of Sevilla. That walk back to the hotel though, it was like trying to get through wall upon wall of Denver Broncos lineman (they best of the best). We kept running into procession after procession, each time having to back track and find a new way of getting around them. The walk there: 15 minutes. The walk back: 1 hour and 15 minutes. The shoes: 90 euros. Sevilla: crowded. Sevilla during Semana Santa: well not priceless, but thanks to hotel murillo not too bad either.

3) If Tuesday went more or less according to plan, Wednesday made up for the rarity. Although we did actually spend the whole day in Sevilla, as planned, the place where we spent the day wasn't exactly what we had in mind... la urgencia. The emergency room. My mom had been having respiratory/fatigue problems and we decided that the best thing to do would be to go the hospital and see if we could get any oxygen out of them. That was the main objective: the oxygen. 7 hours later we would achieve the goal. We went through the entry phases incredibly fast. Within 30 minutes of entering we were already talking to a doctor although there looked to be people who had been waiting for much longer than us (something we would soon understand). I learned that being able to speak/understand spanish in daily life and being able to do the same when it comes to medical issues are two entirely different things. Via my dads vast medical knowledge (the doctor actually asked me if my dad was a 'medico' back in the US), my moms spanish and my translating we were able to get the main points across. After about a 20 minute meeting we were sent back into the waiting room where we would realize the true function of the 'waiting' room. We had to be in there at least 4 maybe 5 hours. The waiting room was a complete contrast to a waiting room that one would find in the US. There were no cellphones. There were no books/magazines. There were no impatient people. There also weren't, oddly enough, anybody that looked to be in dire, 'emergency room' conditions. We came to the conclusion that we had been seen so quickly because we could have had a very serious problem, but once the doctors realized that it could wait, they felt content with putting us where everybody else with the 'it can wait' problems were. It actually seemed to be more of a social event than anything. The patients were all there with there family members or friends, chatting and chatting and chatting as if they could go on forever. Nobody, aside from my dad =), was showing any sort of impatience and they all seemed to be perfectly content where they were. Anyways we were eventually called in again and the doctor told us that she wanted to do a scan of my moms lungs to make sure that something wasn't wrong (i wish I could say that in more sophisticated terms, but I forget all of the medical terminology - maybe when my mom and dad read this they could put a little comment down there at the bottom of the page describing what the doctor was actually worried about). We weren't too excited about doing the scan, however, and considered calling the doctor back in the US. That seemed to throw our doctor off a little bit (no questioning the doctors knowledge) so we decided against getting a second opinion and did what was recommended. Luckily nothing was seriously wrong and we eventually left the hospital with what we had came for - the oxygen. That experience, to say the least, isn't one that any of us will forget, and all in all we were actually pretty impressed with the Spanish health care system. They had treated us foreigners with as much care and attention to detail as if we were any normal Spanish patient, they didn't skip any steps, they gave us the oxygen without any problem as well as gave my mom a steroid shot without telling her anything (that shot made her feel great for the next 8 days) and all for free (my dad estimated that in the US that day would have cost us $3000).

3) To say the least, we didn't go to Granada on Thursday. Instead we went to my host parents house and ate a huge, huge lunch. My mom was starting to feel better so it only made since that my dad would get start to feel under the weather - in this case it was the stomach. My mom contributes it to his eating too much, but, even if it was, I don't think that you can blame him for overindulging. My host parents put out the best food that I had seen in the house since my arrival and my dad finally got that Iberian Jamon that he had been waiting for for so long. (He also was the life of the party but it was the last we would see of him until 11 am the next day.) After lunch we tried to change the return flight for mom for something a bit sooner but the prices to do it were ridiculous. The solution we eventually found was to overnight a portable oxygen unit that my mom would be able to use walking around in Spain and take on the plane rides home. (That unit made it as far as customs in Madrid before it was turned around and sent back to the US)..... It was really nice for my parents to finally meet my host parents. I know that the moms had been looking forward to it for a long time and they definitely enjoyed getting to know each other (and they would spend almost all of the following week together too).

4) We actually made it to Ronda this day! My mom decided that she was feeling up for it and we took a 2 hour bus ride from Sevilla to Ronda friday afternoon. And it was definitely worth it. Ronda is an absolutely awe-inspiring, take your breath away little town. It is built on a huge cliff with a river running through it (though it is 100 meters below town level). I could describe it more, but I'm going to adhere to the saying that a picture paints 1000 words and just put up a couple of pictures here..... We even stayed up late (in American terms) to see the procession pass through town! My parents sure adapted quickly to the Spanish lifestyle - siestas during the days, 'late' nights and sleep in mornings - if you know my parents very well be careful what your around because your probably about to throw up your arms and fall over backwards in your chair out of amazement, but they slept until 10:30!!!!!!! that morning. At least 12 hours of sleep. I have never been so surprised in all my life.

5/6) Gibraltar never happened. My Dad's flight was changed to Sunday morning so we left Ronda saturday afternoon to get back to Sevilla. That night we had a few guests over and we had a fun discussion about the differences between Spain and the US in terms of taxes/health care/ect. The next morning my dad had to wake up at 5am to get to the airport for his 7 o'clock flight.

And that concludes week 1! My mom stayed an extra week but I don't think I have it in me to do 3 blog updates in one day, so I will get to that later. You will also notice that there are not any pictures (even though I specifically said that there were in the ronda blog) but that will change here in the near future. I would give an exact date on when the future updates/changes will be, but that would be a plan and I'm just not into doing that sort of thing! Though it could make for a good story....

Friend Time!

Well it looks like another overwhelming gap between blog entries has arisen. For that I am sorry. But after this entry there will be another one very soon, maybe even on the same day(!!!) so hopefully that will make up for any hard feelings. Anyways I'm going to go back in time here and start this blog update the 18th of March....

My friend Ryan was coming to visit!! He was to arrive on Friday the 18th of March. Being that the tickets directly into Sevilla were so expensive however, we decided that it would be better if he flew into Madrid and I met him there. Which, as I have learned time and time again this year, that was much easier said than done. At first I looked for plane tickets (to get me from sevilla to madrid) and I thought that I had found one at a reasonable price, which would have been a miracle - but, alas, no miracle was to be involved (although the airport said 'sevilla' it was actually an airport in a tiny town about 2 hours outside of the city). With the option that would have made my life almost completely stress free out of the discussion, I was forced to go to plan B - the bus. My host brother, Moises, decided that he wanted to come with me (and this actually was a miracle - I don't know if I have mentioned before that he is always on his computer, but he is... his computer broke however so he decided to come with me and meet up with his cousins whom live in Madrid) so I had to look for bus tickets for the both of us. I thought everything was under control, (the tickets purchased and all) but at 10 o'clock the night we were supposed to leave I realized that I had only reserved the 1am bus tickets, not actually bought them. Realizing this minor detail I went to buy them only to find that they I had to have done it 24 hours before the bus departed and that there were none remaining. To put it simply that little mistake sent the whole house into a panic (thats the problem when once you start traveling with other people). To make a long story a little bit less cumbersome (and to not wear-out my writing desire in the description of a single event) Moises and I were rushed to the bus station by his Dad where we got the last 2 seats on the 11 o'clock bus. We then arrived in Madrid at 4 in the morning, waited until the train station opened, took a total of three metros to a different bus station where we caught a bus to his cousins house - hour of arrival: 8 am. I guess it gave Moises a little better idea of what my life had been like more or less during that month of travel.

From there Moises and I went with his cousin and his cousins mom to pick up my friend at the airport. (Looking back on this we were incredibly lucky that the plane arrived on time and that I made it to the airport because we didn't have any hostel for the night or, for that matter, any form of a plan B whatsoever.) Upon arrival the only thing that Ryan really wanted to do was sleep, (as always is with overseas flights) but unfortunately for him he would get very little of that in the following days. That day we went to a tour of the Real Madrid soccer stadium (absolutely massive) and showed Ryan a bit of the city center. The first night in Madrid we stayed in a hostel and went out for some tappas with a friend of mine that I had previously met in Sevilla (I somehow found same tappas street that I had gone to over 6 months before hand) and then watched some Spongebob Square Pants spanish version on the hostel TV.

The following day we had our very own choufer. Moises, not the previously mentioned Moises but the cousin of Moises whose name conveniently happens to be Moises, drove us around the city and stopped at all of the premier locations. Ryan and I also decided that we wanted to go to the Real Madrid game that night so we got to the stadium right when they started selling the tickets and stood in a line that took about 30 minutes to get to the front of. Not to bad... only it was the wrong line. The other line, the correct line, went about 2 blocks and would have taken a minimum of 2 or 3 hours (without any guaranteed tickets waiting for us). Ryan hadn't come all the way to Spain to just give in like that, however, so we resorted to the scalpers. The tickets ended up being 80 euros a piece and we sat at the top top top tippity top, but sometimes you just need to live a little I suppose. That night we stayed at the cousins house (which meant not going to sleep until 8am) and the next day we went to the bus station planning to go to Cadiz but eventually ending up in Sevilla (a story that is a little bit too complicated to describe).

We spent the rest of the week in the wonderful Spanish beach city of Cadiz (a short hour and a half drive from Sevilla) and Sevilla. Cadiz had something similar to a tornado passing through it for both the days we were there (to avoid any confusion I'm just going to go ahead and say that that was an exaggeration, though it was definitely windy) but when you go somewhere just for a beach nothing is going to stop you from doing those beachy activities such as swimming, sand castles and laying out. Upon our return to Sevilla I had to go to school/work but Ryan has two other friends from school studying here so I don't think that he felt too lonely. He left the following friday morning to go to Alicante, Spain for the weekend and I started getting ready for the next visitors - mis padres!! This is getting its own blog, however, so i'm going to end this one by thanking ryan for coming!!! although i don't think he is ever going to read this.... if you actually do read this ryan im sorry for saying that you never would, but if you don't read it I would like for everybody else to know that i thank ryan for coming and that you guys should come too! 6 weeks left....