Varias Cosas 1-4

Before I forget to write them down, I've got a few things floating around in my mind.

1. On the news today, about halfway in, there was a story titled "El espárragus más grande de España," or, "Spain's biggest asparagus." I thought this was great, especially as the asparagus in question was a good 20+ meters long.

2. People, especially young ones, in Spain are curiously fixated on the US. In my University of Granada course (War and Modern Society), the US is a topic of conversation every single day, generally with tenuous connections to the topic being discussed. Questions from students are framed as: "Why do some countries, like the US, not have child soldiers, and why do others have them?", or discussions of war propaganda turn into conversations about how the US media works, unrelated to its portrayal of the war. It's frustrating that I keep hearing about the US, especially as I generally lack enough confidence/language skills to answer students in class. and correct their misconceptions (though I'm not always sure what those misconceptions are, since it's really, really, really hard to follow Spanish 20 years olds speed talking with a Granada accent). My professor had to almost force the class to start thinking about Spanish media at one point...I keep wondering why they don't show curiosity about their own country, or why they seem to avoid talking about any topic in relation to where they live. Of course, that's just in one modern history class, so my perceptions are a bit skewed.

3. I'm increasingly aware of the danger of returning home after having adopted the Spanish way of asking for things. As in, you demand them. So just a warning before I go back- if I command you to do something without adding a please, or forget to say excuse me if I bump into you, I'm not being rude! I think I've said please maybe 3 times in the past 3 months...it's just not done here. You tell people what you want, obviously in a nice tone of voice. People are just very blunt (sometimes to the point of being rude), but they get to the point and cut out all the flowery language we sometimes use.

4. And most fantastic of all, I saw a turtle on the sidewalk today on my way to school. A little river turtle, at least a half mile and several major roads between the river and my apartment, but there he was, chilling on the sidewalk looking a bit nervous. He had disappeared by the time I came home.

An Update

So. I've done and seen a lot of things since Morocco, and I should probably document them so that some of you (Sabrina...) can live vicariously through me.

Here in Spain, they celebrate Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter. There are lots of concerts, speeches, processions, people, though I didn't see any of these. IES students need to leave their homestays for the week, since the directors want to give our host families a break, and also don't want to be responsible for us when they take their vacation. So, as the rest of my program went to Italy or Greece, I naturally headed over to Finland, Estonia, and Latvia.

Mike and I previously planned on going to Russia or Turkey during for break, but it turned out that you need a visa so we looked for somewhere you didn't need documentation to get to. After deciding that the Baltics would be a friendly non-visa place to go (When else am I going to get there?), we then discovered it was easier to fly to Helsinki, so we tacked that on as well.

(As a side note, Mike is writing about this too. Obviously it's more interesting on my vastly superior blog, but there's a couple of perspectives on the same trip floating around out there.)

After a pretty painless flight from Malaga to Helsinki, with a stop in London where I met my dear Michael, we discovered that we'd arrived one day too late for good weather. This was a theme to be reiterated on the whole trip, but the frozen bay and the cold really weren't too bad, considering I was in a completely different part of the world, and warm weather would be awaiting me in Granada.

We mostly wandered around Helsinki, going into various impressive churches and monumental buildings. Among the highlights were the national library, the Finnish History museum (complete with an entire exhibit commemorating a war the Finns lost), an underground rock church, and the market. There weren't too many tourists about, though there were some. At one point, I was fairly certain that a vendor we were talking to told us we were stupid for coming to wintery Finland for spring break, but Mike heard "different."

We then took the ferry over to Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. We spent most of our time in the old city, an ancient part of town surrounded by an old stone wall. It was a bit touristy, but still charming, with its wool markets, antique stores, multitude of restaurants, and several old churches, one of which we were almost locked into. I ate one of the best meals of my life here with the BEST beer...following a recommendation, we went to a Medieval-themed restaurant, which may or may not have had anything to do with Tallinn, but which was still fun. Between the honey beer, which I may go back to Estonia for, and the huge plate of wild game sausages, I definitely left satisfied.

We also explored some of the newer part of the city. Estonia was under Soviet control until about 15 years ago, and since then, they've done a whole lot to modernize. There were old, old farm houses with yards sitting next to Soviet-style block buildings, nearby to huge glass high rises. Definitely crazy. We even found a cemetery, which although not as old as it appeared at first glance, was pretty creepy and great.

From there, it was on to Riga, the capital of Latvia, via a 5 hour bus ride through the country. Riga was way different than Tallinn- more of a big city, with dozens of museums, big imposing buildings, shopping, parks. We ended up going to the Occupation Museum (Soviets and Nazis, not jobs), more churches, and an amazing market. There were rooms for fish, bread, dairy, meat, pickles, all in a zeppelin hangar. I'm pretty sure I wasn't hungry this entire trip, because I was always eating something. We also stayed for a night in the "Tiger Hostel," which was decorated up with tiger print. Those Latvians sure loved their animal prints- they were everywhere.

I was a bit sad to say goodbye to the Baltics, but three days or so staying with Mike in London awaited me. London was a great city, with an overstimulating array of restaurants and markets, but I'll be back for a week after my program ends in Granada, so I won't devote too much time to describing it.

Lest you think the excitement was over, I then flew to Madrid to pick up my parents, who came to visit for a week. I'll spare them too much agony, and not say anything embarrassing about them, but I'm pretty sure they had a great time. I introduced them to tapas, schawarma, and my host family. Then we went to Madrid for the weekend, where we saw a big protest against the king held by several hundred communists, and looked at a lot of art within a 12 hour span. I believe they now have the urge to keep traveling having done it once...thanks for coming parents!

And now things have settled down for the time being. I've got less than 5 weeks left, which look to be filled with lots of projects and essays, but also some fun times. Then London, then home on June 3, for all those who will be there. Then Rochester for the summer sometime the following week, where I will (most likely) be living in the lovely-- soon to be renamed-- Ecoestate. (!!!)














Frozen Helsinki.














A Big Building in Helsinki.














Tallinn's Old Town.


















There was some nice weather!














Riga from above.














Who could resist this picture? Riga had ingenious underground walkways (the site of this cartoon), a bit like UR's ingenious tunnels.

Ehhhh

Before you all die of suspense, I do plan on updating this sometime in the very near future, barring meteors, or more Internet problems! On my to-do list is writing about Semana Santa (=spring break) and adventures with my parents. But after this one last essay, a cooking class, celebration of finishing a presentation in my Spanish university class, and perhaps fixing my Internet.