First off I’ll be heading to Milan, Italy.   From there I’ll be going up to Sion, Switzerland and meeting a travel buddy there named Sevy for a few days.  She knows Switzerland very well so I’m very excited for everything that is in store for me there.  She also speaks French, so when we head back down into Italy, between our English, her French, my Spanish and limited Portuguese I don’t see how we’ll have any trouble at all getting around.

We plan on heading to Venice, Cinque Terre (look up pictures of this place!), Florence, and Rome for sure, as well as maybe including a day or two in either Pisa/Sienna/Civita/Orivieto.  Rome is as far south as I’ll get in Italy, before we part our separate ways and she heads back up to Switzerland.  I’m very excited for these places in Italy, and I’m sure I’ll want to head back to explore the rest of it once I’m done.

Anyways, from there I will go to Budapest, Hungary on the 19th to stay with a friend I met here in León, Berta.  She was wonderful to hang out with here in León and I know I’ll have a great time there too.

Afterwards on the 23 I’ll go up to Cologne again to see Jasmin, and depending on my poorness, I may head down to Munich to meet a German kid I met at the Centro here.

On August 2 I’ll come back to León, stay a night here, then it’s off to Madrid with two more stops between there and Portland.  So basically in the next month I’ll be at least on 7 separate planes.  As long as getting back to the US takes less than my last 72+ hour trips back from Brazil, I’ll be happy.

I’m also happy to say that this last week has been one of the best in León.  There has been a festival called Las Fiestas de San Juan, which involves fairs, burning stuff down, watching fireworks, drinking lots, and more.  There has been tons of stuff to go around and buy and lots of people out.  On top of that, school just got out (I had my last exam on Monday, my grades should come out really well actually) so students are kind of going crazy, along with all the foreign people having their “despedidas” (going away parties).

And on top of THAT, it has been the World Cup which is AWESOME to watch here in Europe, especially with a team as great as Spain.  I watched my last game yesterday here in Spain, where Spain beat Portugal and I made a little video so you can all see what the center of León is like after they won.

It’s of the Plaza Mayor, the cathedral, and the Calle Ancha.

Now that they won I feel like I need to take my Spanish jersey with me traveling so I can support them in their next game(s).  Anyways, it’s just great to be where so many people care about the sport, and I’m lucky to have been here during this time.  I’m sorry Italy and Switzerland are out since I’m going there…

So that’s really all that has been going on.  Studying and enjoying the atmosphere that León dominates during summer and desperately lacks during any other time of the year.  I went on an excursion to La Cueva de Valporquero a while ago and took a video of that, but haven’t had the time to put it together.

Thanks a lot for those of you that have been checking out what I’ve been doing.  I know I have very little good things to say about the study abroad situation in León, but the one thing I’ll take back from this trip will be the traveling, which I don’t think I really have anything bad to say about.  Traveling here as been wonderful.  And I’ve been in every community of Peninsular Spain except for 1, which is a pretty big achievement.  Up here in the north we get commercials of the south (Andalucía, just one part of Spain) and it’s pretty cool to say you’ve been to every recognizable place in the video:

So I guess that’s all.  I hope you’re all well, and I’ll be back in the US on August 4 after traveling one month with a 14-15 pound backpack!!  Let’s hope everything goes smoothly.

Love you all,

Nate

I caught another cheap Ryanair flight and she picked me up in the airport on Saturday.  It was great to ride along the water as we made our way into the city.  From the very beginning I was impressed with Alicante.

I’ve probably spoken to more people about Alicante than I have Sevilla or Granada for some reason, and I’ve never had a Spaniard say anything very positive about Alicante, but I think it’s a city with a lot of beauty and in a good location with an airport that goes everywhere.  You can see for yourself how nice some of the views are.

Anyways, before heading to the hostel I got to know her host mom a bit.  Grace, unfortunately, had to go through some problems with her first host family (who, as do probably 95% of Spanish host families, accepted her for financial reasons) and changed to another woman named Pilar, who was very warm and kind.  Grace told me that the woman took her out to lunch shortly after moving in, which sounds very nice considering that I’ve never gone past the front door with my host family in 9 months.  It’s basically the situation I wish all students could have from the beginning, but the change came too late, although she did still get to experience that!

Grace took me on a little tour of some parts of the city, which was great!  It was also nice for her because she got to see some of her favorite places for the last time before she headed back to the US.

Later on I got to meet four of her closest friends, who are all very nice and have a way higher level of Spanish compared to the many students I know in the north.  We went out for some drinks and to some clubs before heading to the beach where apparently many of the people go to finish up the night.  Some even get so drunk that they go swimming in the Mediterranean at 3 or 4 in the morning.  And, yes, Alicante is warm enough to do that.  One of my least favorite parts of León is that everything is concentrated in the Barrio Húmedo, whereas Alicante seemed more spread out with a lot more to do, probably because León is just over a third of the size of Alicante.

The next day, Sunday, we woke up pretty late since we had been out til about 4:30, and we climbed up to where a small castle rests on top of a large hill placed in the middle of the city, right near the beach.

There is an incredible view from on top of the castle of the entire city.  In fact, up there is where I realized that I liked Alicante more than Cádiz, which I found to be waaaaay overrated.

We ate some pretty typical Spanish bocadillos above the city, and I feel like she had to drag me away from the nice view so we could go meet one of her friends.

Later, four of us headed out to some other small city/town nearby to go hang out in the sun, of which I don’t remember the name (help, Grace?).  That’s another great thing about Alicante.  They have all these other places to explore that are easily reachable by the little metro.  I hope they appreciated that because León has nothing of the sort.  Many of the destination points (which can be fun) are only reachable by car.

That night was a relaxing night (thanks Grace for cutting my hair!!) because we woke up on Monday to go visit one of the most beautiful cities I have seen in Spain, called Altea.  None of the three girls had been there before, so it was the first time for all of us.  After getting there, I was upset at them for not going there almost every weekend!  (It only takes over an hour to arrive by train, if you don’t miss it by 30 seconds like we did.)

It’s a great little white town right on the beach with the bluest water I’ve ever seen in my life and some spectacular views.  We trekked through it for a little while in search of food when a sweet Spaniard girl pointed us in the right direction.

Eventually we found a little bench in the shade to watch the water and we ate our delicious food.  3€ each for more food than we could eat.  That’s how I wish food worked here every day, buying the food you want and not runny eggy soggy french fry eggs for 50% of the meals.

After eating we tiptoed across the rocks (which make a great rumbling sound against every small wave) and into the water, and so we spent the afternoon either swimming (hooray for being back in the Mediterranean!  And even warmer this time…) or laying out in the sun.  Everyone may or may have not taken advantage of the topless beaches.

That night we got back to get Grace’s going away party set up.  I had a great time hanging out with all of her friends again.  The night went super well and we ate great food.  I can hardly imagine being able to bring friends over to my house again!  Sounds a little like a dream…

The next day we woke up early and went back to the beach for the last time before I had to go.  I got to go swimming again and loved it.  Grace is a very sweet girl who is easy to get along with, or maybe impossible not to is a better way of saying that.  She took a short walk with me to some places I wanted to take pictures and then got me lunch at her apartment.  Afterwards she got me on the bus towards the airport and I flew away from the south for the very last time, watching the blue waters creep from my window view.  Grace is actually back in the US now and I hope her trip went well.  Eat some good food for me!

This post will not be much different from the others.  I got into the north and once I stepped off the plane I had to throw on 3 shirts to keep warm since I didn’t bring any jackets, and I was still cold.  And it started to rain.  Once into León, I ran into a couple from Poland who will start the Camino de Santiago either today or tomorrow.  I gave them the 30 second tour of León and came back home.

Something strange happened for the first time here, though.  Every single time I’ve returned home from my trip, the first words out of my host mom’s mouths are something about either A) how great the crappy old American movie is that she’s watching, B) how she doesn’t feel good, or C) how something in the house broke.  This time it was B, but my host brother was there and cut her off (for the first time in 9 months) to really ask me how my trip was.  That was a nice end to a nice trip.

Upcoming: there is an excursion on Saturday to Asturias (a region to the north that I love), but the weather doesn’t look so great, and it might be during the England/USA World Cup game, so I may not go.  I have a total of 4 weeks to pass before I take my final exams and can leave León.  This is the weather I have to look forward to this week.  Doesn’t really match up well with these pictures too well, does it…?

Until then I have practically no class and nothing to do.  So this is the final stretch before I hope to reach Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Portugal during my 1 month travel time.  I plan on watching almost every World Cup game and getting ready for my trips in the next three weeks.

I hope you are all well.  Feel free to write me!  ¡Y que gane La Furia Roja!

>>> http://picasaweb.google.com/x3xleggedxninja

Hello hello!  Just got back from my second Andalucía trip last night (this time with the language school) at around 4 in the morning, and just like last time… loooooved it!

On Wednesday we left first for Córdoba during the afternoon, which is a pretty far bus ride from León, and so we had to stay in a small little town a little bit outside of Córdoba.  Woke up early and then finally drove into it.  On the bus ride a girl from the language school who is in my class but I didn’t really know too well sat next to me; she’s from Budapest and speaks Spanish really well, so it was nice getting to know about her.  Thank god she did because without having someone to talk to the bus rides would have lasted foreverrrrr–she’s on the left and another fun girl from Connecticut who goes to the language school is on the right.

Córdoba was a new city for me which I had left out of the trip with my mom on purpose so that I’d actually have a reason to go on this one, or rather so that I’d have somewhere new to see.

After walking around for really only a few minutes, Javi (my history teacher from the language school, and also the permanent guide for the excursions) ran into his father-in-law, who is friends with the winner of the Patio Contest that takes place every May in Córdoba.  Their patio has won several years and won this year, just about a week or two ago.  So we got a wonderful view of pretty much the most beautiful patio (shared between a handful of neighbors) in Córdoba.

After that we headed over to a Palace called Palacio Viana and walked around there for a while, then headed out for some lunch.

Then we headed over to the Mezquita (Mosque), which is the main attraction in Córdoba.

Construction on it started around the year 600 as a church and was later bought by Emir Adb err-Rahman and reworked by him and later descendants starting in 784 until 1236 when Ferdinad III retook Córdoba from the muslims.

Anyways, later on Charles V gave permission to alter the building even without having seen it.  And what the Christian church did was pretty much slab a massive cathedral smack in the middle of it, which is super unfortunate, because if there is one thing that Spain has enough of…

It was great to go inside of it because I’ve seen much more Roman and Christian architecture than I can even remember, and this was something completely different.

After seeing the Mezquita, we headed west to Sevilla where we arrived that evening.  The night before Sevilla’s football team had just won La Copa del Rey which is the tournament of all the soccer teams in Spain.  While I was waiting to take a shower I turned on the TV and found where the huge celebration was.  Then I turned it off I could hear the party going on, which was only a few blocks away.  Unfortunately we all got out of the hotel about 10 minutes too late, and just missed the gathering of everyone, but there were a ton of people dressed up in the Sevilla jersey.  It was nice to know my way around Sevilla because we were able to find everything.

The next day we saw all the same stuff I had seen before except a nice little museum.  Went to the Cathedral (ate lunch by it with a group of people which was great), Alcázar, and neighborhood tour.  Sevilla is a beautiful city and everyone really loved it.

That night we went out and got some tapas and drinks right around where I stayed the first time because it’s a nice little place to hang out.  Everyone wanted to drink more and we found a terrible little dance club, which neither the Hungarian girl nor I wanted to hang out at, so we went out bar hopping ’til everything was closed around 4.  Surprisingly enough she can drink way more than me.

On Saturday we arrived in Nerja, a beach I really wanted to go to but didn’t know it existed until my mom and I arrived back in Barcelona.  It’s a normal sized, amazing town just like you’d expect a little outside of the larger city Málaga.

We hung out pretty much the whole day there and I got a ton of sun.  Ice cream, swimming, football, tanning, everything you could hope for in a beach day.

Plus it’s awesome to be able to say that now I have swam in the the Mediterranean Sea.  The water wasn’t even too cold, and towards the top was actually pretty warm.

Anyways, it was a great day at the beach!  Afterwards we went to Granada which I think was everyone’s favorite city.  We got there at nighttime and went up to El Mirador to look out at the Alhambra again.

Then we dropped our stuff of and headed out to a get a few tapas, which I explained to everyone are huuuge there compared to León (the only two cities in Spain where the tapas are free).  After the tapas we went to a tetería (a hookah bar), which was very nice and relaxing.  Half the group then wanted to go dance but I stayed with the hookah people and spent the rest of the night there until around 3.

The last day was all about the Alhambra, which I’ve talked about already two posts ago.  Unfortunately for my mom, I missed a spot the first time I went.

But this time I saw everything, and I can’t stress how amazing it is to have Javi as our guide.  He was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had and an incredible guide who really knows how to explain things.

So basically, lesson re-learned: the south is awesome, and I had a great time with the other students from the Centro (most of them speak Spanish pretty well now, which is a change from the trimester where speechless Japanese kids ruled the school).

I have 5 weeks of school left, then I really need to either knock over a bank or hit the lottery so I can travel around some more.  I hope everyone is doing well!!

Hello!  Hope everyone is doing well wherever you all are.  Things have been going pretty well here lately.  We had a random week of weather comparable to a Portland summer, which was incredible, but it didn’t last and now we’re back to rain and cold.  But, I can’t see my breath in the cold anymore, so that’s a win for me.

School’s going fine.  I did a 3 day presentation with a group for one of my classes and it went really well so that’s good.  I’ve basically finished one of my final papers, and I have one more to do, which I’m hoping I get done so that I have no other conflicting school work and I’ll be able to go to Alicante later on in a few weeks, after my next Andalucía trip.

But anyways, last night I just back from Segovia, a fun little city farther south and sort of near Madrid.  I wasn’t really expecting much but it turned out to be a lot of fun, plus pretty much everyone from the Centro decided to go so it was even better.

The first stop we made was to see was the Alcázar (constructed between the 12th and 16th centuries).  We saw it from a little field below, but later we walk into it.  If it were up to me, that’s where I would have stopped to eat lunch, because it was a very beautiful little place.

The second thing we saw in the city was the roman aqueduct, which the city is very well known for.  I had seen it in pictures before, but when you get there it’s a little different.  You can’t tell how great of shape it’s in from most of the pictures, and you’d never guess it was constructed like 2,000 years ago, but there must have been a lot of reconstruction on it.  The aqueduct transports water from a river about 20 miles away.

There was also a little festival going on in the city this weekend, so there were merry-go-rounds, people making balloon animals, even a lady on big stilts.  One of my friends and I were talking about how touristy this city seemed to be, but once we saw the festival going on we realized what was happening.  A bunch of people from Madrid go to Segovia during the weekends to hang out and relax.

Either way the aqueduct was pretty impressive and I’m glad I got the chance to see it after having looked at so many pictures of it in history class.

Afterwards we walked over to La Casa de los Picos (from the 15th century), but didn’t enter.  I don’t actually know what’s inside of it (if someone really lives there or what), but the exterior was pretty neat looking.

Then we had a lunch break, and instead of going to a stuffy, slow, meal-of-the-day place, two of my friends and I went and found a nice little market and got a bunch of food for like €5 each.  Also, I don’t know how it happened, but I randomly decided to buy some strawberries… and they were the best strawberries I have ever eaten in my life.  I offered some to my friends and they turned it down but I said they didn’t have a choice.  After trying it they agreed.  Thought I would throw that out there.

We finished lunch early and check out the cathedral a bit.  To be honest I thought, at first, that it was better than the León cathedral (which has been my favorite cathedral in Spain so far), but after walking around the backside, you see it is kind of run down.  The front is pretty incredible though!

We also saw the San Esteban Church, built in the 13th century.

And afterwards we headed into the Alcázar.

There was a throne room.

An armory room.

Tons of decorated ceilings that reminded me of the Palacio Nazarí at the Alhambra in Granada.

And the red canopied bed where some important royal lovin’ took place.  My teacher said that it’s documented that servants would go up to the door and put their ear up to it so they could know if anything was going on inside the bedroom.

We headed up the tower and checked out the view.  It started to sprinkle a little bit but it wasn’t too bad.  There were still nice views of the city.

After the Alcázar we went to the Palacio Real de La Granja de San Ildefonso.  It used to be the summer residence for kings to go hunting and hang out.  There are 26 sculptural fountains that basically blast water.  It takes a ton of pressure to shoot the water so they don’t do them very often.  And it only lasts for about 5 minutes when they do.

Two days a year they have all of the fountains going.  We got to go see two when we were there.  Pretty much all of the fountains represent mythological themes by the way.  It was pretty cool, and would be super amazing to hang out there on a nice, hot summer day when all of the fountains are going.

Well, that’s the trip!  I got back last night and must have been tired or something because I slept 11 hours.  I guess I should start on my final paper.  Really looking forward to that.  The week after this one I will be back in Andalucía for about 5 days.  It’s going to be hot and fun!  Plus I’ll know where I am (for half the trip, we’re going to Córdoba and Nerja.  I held of going to Córdoba because I knew we’d go there on this trip.  And I discovered Nerja only after returning to Barcelona, so I was pretty bummed I didn’t think to go there.  Worked out!).  Hope everyone is well.

I have uploaded all of the pictures onto Picasa, so they should be easy to see.  If you want to see them in order (recommended since things are explained that way), just start with “Barcelona, Catalunya” and work your way up.  Many of them have comments.

There are a ton of photos, but we went to a ton of great places!  I would pick out the best but it would just be too hard.  So I hope you find enough time to take a look at them.  I had a great time traveling with my mom and now we have both gotten to see the best of Spain.

We went (in this order) to: Barcelona (4 days), Reus, Sevilla, Cádiz, Sevilla, Ronda (2 nights), Málaga, Granada (2 nights), Sevilla, Barcelona (3 days), Sitges, and back to Barcelona.  The trip was easier to do with Sevilla as a home base, a tip the hostel owner gave me.

Now it’s time to write some papers, work on a Peace Corps application, and try to fix my messed up schedules in León and Portland.

I hope everyone is well!

(León is obsessed with being separated from the rest of the country.  Autonomy is a big deal for many and this sort of graffiti can be seen every ten steps in my city.)

Last weekend my friend Grace came here from Alicante which was great!  I mean we did have a completely open room ready to go here in this house, but since what lies behind the front door of a Spaniard del norte’s is super super über private, she wasn’t allowed to stay here, which made me kinda mad.  Ironically, it’s only private if the person is well-known and isn’t paying to be an exchange student.  Mm-hm.  (Also: I can’t switch to the slightly bigger room with the bigger room and bigger window that gives more nice light and will open up nicely when it starts to get warm soon.  WHATEVER, SPAIN.)

So I showed her around León, which by now every single person in the world should know how I feel about this city.  I meet a lot of Erasmus and American students (from other countries in Europe) who say they really love this city, but normally after talking to them for a minute I realize what they actually MEAN is “I love all the other foreign people who are here, I don’t have any Spanish friends, and I have no attachments to this city.”  Yeah, I feel the same, but I’m not learning that way, and neither are you.  To be honest it is shocccccking how little some people have learned after being here as long as I have, although it even surprises me how many words I don’t know still, too.

ANYWAYS so I showed Grace around.  Weather was cold and it kinda rained a bit, so it wasn’t the most pleasant weather ever.  But I showed her everything there is to see.  So that took an hour and then afterwards we played Chinese Checkers for 2 and a half days.  Hah.  The only thing she didn’t experience was the food, which is way too bad because to understand my experience in this city you have to eat in my house.  But since watching a movie with a friend in my house has been off-limits since day 1, well I don’t even feel comfortable bringing anyone past the Door of Secrecy.

(This is a hill of sheep.)

I think she enjoyed the city as a city to visit, but I also think she understands it’s not the ideal place to live.  She even got to go to one of my classes, and I did the math during the class and we read one line of poetry every 12 minutes in that class.  Definitely not used to that, but “ESO ES LO QUE HAY” (the equivalent to “that’s how things are”).  We did go get some of the special racist lemonade that they serve here.  By the way, it’s true what they say, drink a few of those and you get a huge hangover for some reason.  We also did see an early Semana Santa procession go by, one of the first ones if not the very first.  Probably the best experience though was stumbling across a fairly large anti-abortion rally in front of the cathedral.  Although, surprising to see here?  No.

En fin, I hope she wasn’t too bored, and I thank her for coming out here, and I’ll be very excited to go see her in Alicante sometime so I can see what I’m missing out on.  Hooray cheap Ryanair!  She had a very optimistic attitude about this city when she was here, but in my defense she is an optimistic person and she does not live here.  I am turning into Scrooge, rawr!!!!  …………. Does Scrooge say ‘rawr’?

Also today I locked myself out of the house and the high was like 9 degrees celsius soooo in order to keep warm for those 7 hours and I had to keep buying alcohol to stay in bars, so I guess I got quietly and inadvertently drunk/broke until finally my host momma came back and left me the key, although I did meet some pretty cool Brazilians and an Italian guy who moved here for school a bit ago, so hopefully I see them around more.

Before I came back however I went to the cathedral because there are cars everywhereeee in the city right now to see the Semana Santa processions, and this is what I saw (this is like one of a million processions that they have during this week):

There are more tomorrow morning at like 7 in the morning but yeah that’s not gonna happen.  Now I’m cold and dying (although 95% over the cold I’ve had the last few days) but…

TOMORROW I LEAVE FOR BARCELONA!

Thank god, it’s time for some more traveling.  I’m thinking about making a Day in the life of Nate in León video before I leave here.  I wish I had a nice camera!  But this should be the best trip yet, I’ll be meeting my real momma there on Saturday morning and from there we’ll be hanging in Barcelona, then off to a little tour of Andalucía, then back to Barcelona where I’ll be sentenced to return to León and 3 major papers to write (but shh we’re not talking about that, not even thinking about it!).

So here’s to the potentially best trip so far!  20 hours and I’m outta here!  I wish you could all be coming out here, too, but don’t worry.  It’s not too late, I’m here ’til July/August!  Talk to all in a couple weeks!

¡Viva el feto! (Which can mean “fetus” OR “ugly person.”  Coincidence…?  Not in Spain it’s not!)

All the school stuff has been sorted out, so I am now officially in the University!  I still have to take one class at the Centro, but as the long as the scheduling doesn’t conflict with the next trimester (I’ll know about that in a couple weeks), then I should be fine.  I’m taking Language Philosophy, Commentaries on Spanish Texts, and Classic Literature.  Some of them are actually kind of hard, but that’s what I wanted.  I’m still a little disappointed that we actually don’t even read that much in the classes.  I picked up all the reading packets for one of the classes and it’s like nothing.  Plus a lot of what I’ll be reading will be the equivalent to reading Middle English, so who knows how much it will help me.  Also in the 3 university classes I have, there are a total of 3 Spanish students and 20 Erasmus (foreign) students, meaning I’ve given up completely (not that I can do anything more about it) on trying to have classes with native speakers.  Anyways it’s nice to have that all sorted out.

Then a couple of weekends ago one of the girls, Kasey, I met in Madrid had an excursion up to León, so I took her and her friends out to tapas one of those nights which was actually really fun.  Plus this time I wasn’t so tired from traveling and wearing a backpack.  Here in León they serve pretty small drinks, but they all come with a tap and they’re cheap, so what you do is go to like 10 bars in a night or something, which confused one of the girls that is probably used to glasses of wine that are half the size of the bottle.  It was nice to hang out with some people who had never been here before!

OH and speaking of… it’s about time here in León to go start killing Jews.  Yep, well actually some people are already killing Jews but the normal time to go kill Jews is Thursday I think, which is when I’ll probably go start to kill some Jews.  Some Spanish people have also warned me not to kill more than 3 or 4 Jews a night.

Okay, so let me explain… in the Middle Ages, people in León would drink this concoction of terrible wine, sugar, limes, oranges, figs, and cinnamon.  Apparently it use to realllllllly mess them up, and they would get all mad at the Jews for having killed Jesus, so they would run down to the Jewish hangout and just start killing them, which is actually the main hotspot (the barrio húmedo) in León where people go out at night.  Leoneses for some reason maintain the very politically incorrect way of saying “let’s go out and get this drink” by instead saying “vamos a matar judíos” (let’s go kill Jews).  So apparently that’s what people do here during Semana Santa, which is coming up in a few days.  I don’t think any further comments are necessary.

I’ve also been on 2 excursions, but this will be short because our main guide (who is also my teacher at the Centro) couldn’t come on either of them, so I pretty much learned nothing, had no idea where I was or what was going on.

First we went to the Picos de Europa which is up high in the Cantabrian Mountains which really wasn’t as spectacular as I was expecting from pictures.  I don’t think we went to the best places, plus the weather wasn’t great–in fact we were supposed to go a weekend earlier but couldn’t because there was a huge storm.  But we did get to see some churches, a cathedral and a spot where the Virgin Mary appeared.  The Picos de Europa just look like a super beautiful place that I would loveeee to explore and hike around but without a car I’m pretty much constrained to one spot.  I definitely miss going to nature though.  I don’t think most Spaniards know how to appreciate it; they’re surrounded by all this Roman and Medieval architecture which is the only beauty they are used to, at least that’s what I’ve noticed in the north.  Those who experience the coast in the south definitely have to have a different viewpoint.

The second excursion I did was just around here in León.  It was a super beautiful day and I was hoping we’d be going on a hike or something, but then I got on the bus and asked a friend and she told me that we were going to 4 museums.  Ah!  I just wanted to be outside all day!  Luckily some of the museums actually were outside and I wasn’t stuck in a building all day.  All of the stops had to do with artistry, such as textiles and pottery.  We went to Jiménez de Jamuz, Santiagomillas, Val de San Lorenzo, and Castrillo de los Polvazares.  It was all pretty interesting but mostly I just enjoyed the nice weather haha.

So that’s what has been going on.  I also got my hair cut, whoo!  I went and found the oldest man possible because young people here are kind of into mullets, and I’d rather have a 60s style haircut than a mullet (they don’t even have a word for mullet here though!!!)  He was super nice and told me all about the hiking and biking he does.  Not fair man.  Maybe since it’s starting to warm up I can go play more basketball and RUN a little, sheesh.

Upcoming events: a friend from LC, Grace, is going to come see León for a couple days so that she can see what her exchange trip COULD have been like.  She is studying in Alicante, which is where I COULD have been, so I’ll be sure to go down there sometime to visit her, too.  She’s in for a pretty boring weekend, although she’ll be getting here just in time to kill some Jews.

Another exchange student (I believe from Washington) will be coming to live here, so we think.  The Japanese girl, Saori, has left, and I kind of got used to having another student here, so it’ll probably be nice.  That’s her in the picture, and on the right is my host mom, who as far as I know always ends up with faces like that in every picture (at least all the ones I have).  Plus the weather will get better, maybe I’ll get someone who likes to play basketball!

And lassssssstly, my momma will be coming out here in less than 2 weeks to travel around Barcelona —> Andalucía with me!  So that means I have to plan the trip, which I’m going to get started on now.  It’ll definitely be a lot of fun!  Plus the food will be  Here is an example between restaurant food and home food, can you tell the difference??

(Yes, someone did stick their finger in the bread and tear out most of the middle.  My host mom likes the middle and my host brother likes the crust.  Nate likes whatever he can get!)

I hope everyone is well, find me on Skype if you ever wanna talk!

¡Os mando un abrazo!  Hasta luego.

(FUERZA CHILE)

^^^^ remember there are new albums!

Hi everyone!  Well I just got back from Germany and since I don’t know whether or not I have classes or not this afternoon I can’t really go to school, so let’s talk about Germany instead.

While I was waiting for the plane last Tuesday I met a girl from Holland and another one from Germany, the one from Holland knew everyone I did here but for some reason we had never run into each other before, and the girl from Germany was visiting a friend in León.  On the plane I made the German girl tell all about Carnaval in Köln since she lives there, which was nice because I found out some things about it that no one had told me before.  So the plane ride was nice, and for a total of €7 for the round-trip I won’t complain about the seats or anything.

I got into Düsseldorf, or the fairest outskirts of it (part of the reason the flights are so cheap are because they drop you off in the middle of nowhere) where Jasmin and her parents came to pick me up.  First of all, her family is suuuuuuper sweet and nice, which I guess doesn’t surprise me after having lived a year with Jasmin, but the whole stay there they made me feel like I was part of the family, and even said that a few times.  I speak no German but Jasmin’s parents definitely were making efforts to have conversations with me, and they both surprisingly speak very well.  In the car ride back it was nice to catch up with Jasmin since she’s one of the hard ones to keep up with through email.  But she’s doing great and still loves to laugh.

We hung out at her house that evening until we went to go get one of her older sisters, Joyce, from the train station.  She just got back a bit ago from studying in Barcelona so we had a lot to talk about concerning Spain, plus we did some talking in Spanish.  I told her at one point that her and Jasmin seem like twins and they replied to me that if Caroline, their oldest sister, had come back home for Carnaval I would tell them they look like triplets.

I guess to keep this kind of short, the next day I went into Köln with Jasmin and we walked around to see some things, the main attraction is the cathedral which is honestly the most gothic architecture I think has ever been built.  We went up to the very top of it and the city was covered in this cool misty cloud, so you couldn’t see very far but it was still a really nice view.  By the way the climb is 509 steps high so I thought I was going to die when I got to the top.  Jasmin hadn’t been up there for a while either so I’m glad we did that.  I told her when I go back this summer we will have to climb it on a clear day.

After the cathedral we walked across the Rhine river on a bridge where couples put locks on the railing and throw the key in the water.  I can’t tell you how many there were but you can at least see part of the railing.

The next day we went over to some of Jasmin’s friends house and got started with the party around 4.  One thing I loved about Carnaval was that everybodyyyy gets dressed up and goes out, despite the freezing winter that has been going on there.  It was snowing most of the days and there were plenty of girls wearing dresses or skirts for their costumes.

The clubs are great, especially the ones that play the classic German Carnaval music.

Here’s one of the best songs:

And since everyone speaks English (not just English, but the most fluent English ever), it was really easy to just run around the clubs and meet people, which is sort of how all the nights went.  Just standing in line you meet a bunch of people, they bump into you or something then say “excuse me” in German, you reply with “I have no idea what you just said” and then you have made a new friend.  This is why I am sticking with the statement that Germans and Brazilians are the generally the most fun and happy people in the world.

Anyways, being there was sort of like a 5 day party marathon.  Then at home it would be a relaxing break until we went back out.  Jasmin’s family cooked a lot of great food from India and I learned how to eat with my hands, which was hard at first but I learned after a while… sort of, at least I didn’t give up on it!

Towards the end of the trip Jasmin and I went to the huge parade in Köln which I think is called the Rosenmontag Parade.  We got there late and ended up leaving early, not because it wasn’t fun but because it lasts like 5 hours or something.  The parade makes fun of lots of political leaders and pretty much everything else in the news, a lot of which Jasmin had to explain to me since it had to do with Europe within the last year (such as refs betting on soccer teams they are reffing for).

They throw tons of candy, too, and I mean like tooooooooons of candy, you get smacked in the face with it all the time.  I ate more candy in one day than I have the whole time I’ve been here in Spain.  And it’s not just during Carnaval, they eat amazing chocolate all the time!

Now I’m back in León and struggling to figure out when and where I have school, if I even have it at all.  But I guess I’ll get that all figured out tomorrow.  And some Japanese girl will be coming to stay here for a month starting on Saturday if they gave my host mom the right date and time (which she didn’t have for me).

It was super awesome to see Jasmin again and I really hope that I can go back out to see her again this summer, or that she can come visit me sometime while I’m out here.  The last day I was there we took her to college, so now she is going to be living in Hannover and going to school there part-time.  It was sad because she is the last girl to move out of the house, her sister Joyce will go back to school, and her oldest sister is already moved away, plus her dad just left on a 5 week business trip, so her mom is going to be home alone but I think Jasmin will go back to see her as much as possible.

But I had a great time in Germany.  I’m definitely glad we got all these exchange students during my life!

As alway, pictures are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/x3xleggedxninja

Galicia, so far, has been the most beautiful place I’ve visited in Spain.  It actually reminded me a lot of Oregon.  It rains there pretty frequently… but therefore the air feels great to breathe, it’s green everywhere, and people are pretty relaxed.

Actually, coming into Galicia I turned on my phone radio.  It was fun to listen to them talk because there are two languages in Galicia: Spanish and Gallego.  Gallego is basically a mix of Spanish and Portuguese, so it was fun to pick up on a lot of the Portuguese words they randomly threw into their sentences such as “tambem” for “también” or “chegar” for “llegar.”  To be honest I would love to pick up some sort of fun accent like that, and not even an accent but a totally different language that’s just sprinkled into Spanish.

Anyways we first stopped in a town to see these old hobbit-looking houses that were used on the Camino de Santiago.  The straw-type roofs that they build there last like 50 years and do a great job at keeping the rain out, which it does all the time.  We just stopped there for a moment and then continued on.

Eventually we got to Santiago de Compostela, where the final destination of the 9th century pilgrimage across the Iberian peninsula, the Camino de Santiago, is located: the cathedral.  This cathedral has some crazy façades to it which actually cover what used to be the main sides of the cathedral.  So it’s kind of like a cathedral trapped inside a fake cathedral.  Inside is home of Saint James’ relics which we got to go see, and while we were in there some big religious head came to check it out because they opened the doors to the crypt, which they normally don’t do.

Later in the day, after having toured the inside, we went up to the very top of the cathedral, where you can walk around on the roof.  There’s an incredible view up there and you can see pretty far… we were actually lucky enough that it wasn’t raining at all, since at one point my teacher told me that it rains 300 days out of the year.  People from León or the south don’t really understand that “mist” isn’t rain, so I bet that number is actually a little bit lower.

On this trip I met a bunch of people since I don’t really go to school at the Centro anymore.  That afternoon we all went out for some traditional Galician food, which consisted of an empanada, carne asada, some of their wine and tarta de Santiago.  After eating we went to go meet up so we could go to the hotel and the Vice President of Spain, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, came outside after some sort of conference across from the cathedral.  Afterwards we all went to the hotel, hung out until almost 3 in the morning and then went to bed.

The next day we headed to A Coruña, which has been my favorite city so far in Spain.  Before we arrived there, we stopped somewhere on the coast to see some ruins of the Celtas that lived there in “castros.”  The sun came out and it was a really nice experience.  I love being at the beach and I wish I lived somewhere around there, especially when the weather is perfect.  At one point I almost got swallowed up by a sneak attack wave while I was acting for a video, so that’ll probably wind up online somewhere.

After that we got to A Coruña where we ate at “A Taberna do Pulpo” (The Tabern of Octopus), where they served us some more good Galician food.  A Coruña to me seems like a pretty advanced, clean, tranquil yet interesting city  Like I said, if I could live in any of the cities I’ve visited so far, it would be A Coruña.  It has more natural beauty than the other places I’ve been to.

The main sight they have there is the Tower of Hercules, which was built by Romans around the 2nd century.  With almost 2,000 years, it’s et oldest working lighthouse in the whole world, and it has an amaaaaazing view of the city.  I could have stayed up there all day and I really enjoyed looking out at the Atlantic (you can see the very tip of the Iberian Peninsula where the land stops going north, but instead to the east where Asturias is (another part of Spain I loved and will go back to once it gets warmer).

Anyways, we finished up there and headed back home, where of course it’s cold and dry… BUT in about 24 hours I’ll be on a plane to Germany and hanging out with Jasmin in Cologne, where they have the bigggggggest Carnival festival in all of Germany.  I need to get a costume together, but maybe she can help me.  When I get back classes will have started, but since the director of the Centro is not available (ohmygosh, shocker!) I probably won’t be signed up for a single class when I get back, and everything will be a big headachy mess.

But that’s in 10 days… now is time for fun!  ¡Siempre hay que meter más caña!