Estepa & Osuna

Hey, again!

Haha, I'm doing like 3 blog posts today. So much happened over the last few days, I didn't have time to blog!!

So Thursday was Thanksgiving (see previous post). On Friday I got up early to go on a field trip with my school - remember, I have no class on Fridays. The trip was to Estepa and Osuna, small towns in Andalucia about an hour away from Sevilla. Estepa is where my Civilization professor (Enrique) grew up, and it's where his parents live now. Estepa is the only town in the world that makes cookies called mantecados, which are Spanish Christmas cookies, are only sold in Spain only during Christmas time. Enrique's parents own a mantecado factory in Estepa, so we went on the field trip to tour Estepa and the factory. We also went to Osuna to tour that town.

This trip taught me an important lesson in taking risks and taking advantage of opportunities. On Thursday (the day before our day trip to Estepa), a friend of mine started getting really negative about the trip. We weren't being provided food, and she didn't like having to pay for lunch. We also found out it was an all-day trip (rather than just the morning as we'd thought), and my friend didn't like that. She also felt like there was nothing to see in Estepa, and that she was going to waste a day on a trip that wasn't fun. To be honest (and maybe this is a sign of weakness, idk), I started to kind of agree with her. She was saying that she wasn't going to go, and I started thinking that maybe I shouldn't go either. It's easy to get caught up in negativity when you're around someone who's being so negative. We ended up talking to my roommate, who decided to go despite what my other friend was saying. She said that it was a new experience, so of course she wanted to go. I decided then that she was right, and I decided to go too, even though I knew it could be really lame and wind up being a waste of a day, at least I was trying, right? My other two friends both ended up bailing on the trip, for the reason that they wanted to take advantage of being in Sevilla and not waste time on some trip that could wind up being stupid. They're reasoning was "What's there to see in Estepa other than some cookie factory?"

Well - I'll post pictures about it right after this - I wound up having an awesome time. Estepa is settled in the mountains, and we climbed up one side and got a gorgeous view from the top. We got to see nice views of the countryside, too, which I hadn't seen since I went to Gibraltar in September. I am SO GLAD I went on this trip rather than staying at home. Sure, it was a small town. But I got to see a different side of living in Southern Spain. Plus, I got to try these mantecado cookies, which are very important in Spanish culture during Christmastime. I also got to go on a tour put on by my great professor. And - for whatever it's worth - my friends who stayed in Sevilla to take advantage of being there wound up doing nothing that day. I really think they missed out on a great trip. And I wanted to mention this because I think it's important to not be afraid to try new things when you're travelling. Maybe this is obvious, but I know I almost got sucked into a fear of taking risks, of only staying where you're comfortable. And I think I would have really missed out if I had decided not to go to Estepa and Osuna. I'm going to try to remember this for the rest of my time in Europe: a little risk is a good thing when you really have nothing to lose.

Anyway - we arrived in Estepa in the morning and went on a tour of Enrique's family's cookie factory. Enrique was our tour guide, and he was just as animated as he is normally in class. It was really cool to meet his parents and get to see him "in his element".

Part of the factory

Enrique showing us where they store the main ingredients: flour, sugar, almonds, and pork lard!

Raw dough going into the furnace

Coming out of the furnace, have to be cooled (furnace operates at 200C)

Me and Marcela in our factory garb. 

Enrique after he told us he "wanted to be in our pictures!". He's such a cool character. He kept saying he felt like a celebrity with all of us following him around, haha!

Enrique showing us his favorite type - regular mantecado.

They don't just make cookies - they also make chocolates. And they're delicious!

Enrique and his mom

"La Suprema Calidad" (Supreme Quality). True that.

Me and Enrique!

After the tour we got to try them! They had all sorts of mantecados and chocolates! They even had some protein bars, which they manufacture during non-Christmas times.

REALLY good chocolate.

The building you see on the right over the patch of trees is Enrique's high school. Can you imagine focusing on academics with this view?!

Enrique continued being our tour guide for the rest of the trip. He's always fun to listen to!

Remnants of the Muslim wall of the city

More Muslim remnants

View of Estepa

Steps to a convent in the city

me and Estepa

University of Osuna in Osuna

Osuna

Osuna - tower where Enrique's parents got married. I basically learned his whole life story on this trip. Even saw where he lived!

Wind turbines

Funny sign outside a bar. You see this all over Spain, it's how restaurants adverstise which tapas they have that day. It's a list of tapas, and then on the line 2nd from the bottom it says "Lo que diga mi mujer" which means "Whatever my wife says". Thought that was awesome.

That's all about Estepa/Osuna. I think I'm done blogging for today (3 blogs in 1 day is enough! :D). Tomorrow I'm going to do a blog reflecting on my time here so far, so be on the lookout for that.

Talk soon :)

Día de Acción de Gracias (Thanksgiving)

Hey, everyone.

So I'm going a little out of order, you might have seen I just blogged about yesterday, but now I'm gonna jump back and blog about Thanksgiving last week. Hope that's okay :)

Thanksgiving was a good day. I made plans with some friends to make dinner at my piso, because most of my friends live with host families, and inviting friends over isn't really allowed (especially if you plan to take over the kitchen).

However, before Thanksgiving dinner, I had plans to go to the Museum of Fine Arts here in Sevilla. It was a free tour put on by some professors at my school - why not? I was persuaded by a Spanish friend to go on the tour in Spanish, and I'm glad I did. I didn't think I'd be able to handle the tour in Spanish, but I actually was able to follow the guide very well! Our guide was named Rafae, and he's an Art History teacher at our university.

A courtyard in the museo

Listening to him for 2 hours speak about art in Spanish made me kind of wish that I had taken my History and Culture classes in Spanish. I had considered it at the beginning of the semester, but had decided not to because I felt that I would learn a lot more from the class if I took it in English. And I think that was correct - I've gotten SO MUCH out of my classes. But I wonder if my Spanish would be even better if I had taken them in Spanish too. I guess I'll never know :) and it doesn't really matter. But it was really cool to be able to listen to his explanations of art and understand him completely without really trying that hard.

Another courtyard

One gallery of the museum. Check out the people on the left - shows you how HUGE the paintings are!

Almost all of the art in this museum was religious in some way. Really makes it obvious that I'm in a very Catholic country. This piece was one of my favorites. Rafae said it represented a more human Jesus, just a baby sleeping. It also had symbol representing his "destiny": the cross.
Nino Jesus dormido by Schut

After the tour, I went home where my roommate and some friends had already started cooking. I had told my Spanish roommate that Marcela and I were having friends over, just to be fair to her and give her a heads up. I also invited her to dinner. She said she couldn't come because she had to work, but she made us a cute note:

Dinner ended up being a success! We ate homemade mashed potatoes, corn, broccoli, homemade stuffing (really good, none of us had ever made it before, props to Lindsey!), turkey (filets that we bought in the store, we couldn't cook a whole turkey because I don't have an oven), and an apple pie. It was delicious! Ohh... and of course, wine. :D

Fanciest Thanksgiving feasts use plastic silverware...

Pre-dinner picture: Kaley, Katie, Marcela, Lindsey, me, Elesa
You have no idea how hard it was to pose for a picture instead of digging in...

So yeah - pretty nice Thanksgiving. I missed you all a lot (really wanted to be in Naples with Charlie, Barbara, mom, Russ, and Mike!) and I would have liked to be with family. But these girls are kind of like my family over here, so it worked out :)

Besos!

Granada

Hello, again!

I'm gonna go out of order on my blogs here. I know, I know - that's crazy! But I really want to blog about my trip to Granada (yesterday), but I haven't blogged about last week yet. So I'm just go out of order, blog about Granada, and blog about last week after. Hope that's okay with you :)

So yesterday I went to Granada. Granada is east of Sevilla, about 3 hours on a train. It's a pretty big tourist spot because of the Alhambra, which is a giant palace that was built in the 1200's by the Nasirids, who were Muslim rulers of the Kingdom of Granada (back when Spain wasn't "Spain", but was just a collection of kingdoms). This kingdom was the last Muslim hold in Spain, until 1492 when the infamous Ferdinand and Isabel kicked the Muslims out. The Kingdom of Granada was the only Muslim stronghold in Spain for almost 200 years, so it's much more "Arabinized" than other areas of the peninsula.

I went to Granada with Kaley on Sunday. We took a train that left at 7AM (yikes!) and took about 3 years to get to Granada. We had a pleasant train ride, the car we were in was practically empty, I guess because of how early it was. We met some nice Spanish guys on the train who were impressed with our Spanish skills (yay!) and otherwise had an uneventful ride over.

Train station is pretty empty at 6:30A

Me on the train!

When we got to Granada, we went to a restaurant near the Alhambra to get some breakfast. It was a really quaint restaurant with a lot of character. We ended up going back to this place for lunch too because we liked it so much.

Our quaint breakfast place

VERY typical Spanish breakfast: piece of toast with olive oil on top, then a tomato puree-type thing, then topped with  York (a type of ham, similar to our cold cuts). SOO GOOD. Had orange juice and green tea too :)

After breakfast, we made our way into the Alhambra. The Alhambra includes the Nasirid Palaces (palaces of the Muslim rulers), watch towers, and lots of gardens. It reminded me a lot of the Alcázar in Sevilla that I've been to before (see previous blogs), just way cooler, and with a lot more Muslim influence.

Map of the Alhambra

We didn't get to see any type of change in season from summer to fall in Sevilla, but it was fall in Granada! I loved seeing the changing leaves. So pretty! I don't get to see that anymore since I live in Florida :)

Inside the palaces, the walls were decorated with these carvings that were absolutely amazing. There were shapes and words (in what looked like Arabic) carved into the surface of the walls. In some rooms, there were carvings all over the walls from floor to ceiling, and then the ceilings were carved too. Highly impressive. I was pretty amazed by it. I tried to capture it in these pictures.

Trying to capture all of the details on the walls.

Close-up carvings on walls.

I also really liked the shape and details of the doorways. You'll notice I take a lot of pictures of doorways and entrance ways.

Really cool ceiling in one room. Those white and blue things form the ceiling, and were almost like stalactites in how they hung down from the ceiling.

More details of the carvings.

Courtyard - pretty much impossible to take pictures of it without getting other tourists in the shot.

We went into this really cool room that had an amazing ceiling and details on the walls. I tried to capture it in the following shots:

The ceiling. It's hard to capture, but that's a 3D surface.

Walls and part of the ceiling (this photo was taken against the wall, at my height, pointing upwards at the ceiling)

Trying to show more detail.

The leaves looked like hearts to me, I liked them :)

Fallen leaves!

We found ourselves next on a watchtower, where we saw beautiful views of the city of Granada and the surrounding mountains (Sierra Nevada).

Me and the city

Snow on the mountains! Ugh, it was such a pretty view!

After wandering through the Alhambra for a few hours, we went back to that restaurant for lunch.

Outside of the restaurant

Tinto de verano to drink

Paella

Bacalao (cod fish) in tomato sauce with veggies

Closer look - so yummy!

Melon for dessert

The restaurant

The restaurant

The restaurant

The restaurant

After lunch we walked through the city for a while on the way to the train station. I didn't find Granada to be especially pretty, but that might have been partially because it was a Sunday so the city was essentially dead. Either way, it was fun to walk around in. It was also nice because sometimes we'd turn a corner and suddenly see a very pretty view of the mountains in between the buildings of the street we were on. It was cool! You don't get views like that in Sevilla.

I disagree, man.

The ride home was a little more interesting. We bought our return ticket on the way here, because we were told that we'd save 6 euros if we bought the ida y vuelta (going and coming back) trips together. So we bought them together, because, why not? Well - evidently we were supposed to do something before getting on the return train to save seats. We didn't know - I've been on trains two times before and I never had to reserve seats. So Kaley and I got on and sat down wherever. The car started to fill up, and a lady asked us to change seats because she had reserved it. We thought those seats were maybe just special reserved seats. So we moved to other seats. And then we were asked to move again because they were reserved too. Turns out that everyone had reserved seats. We ended up getting asked to change seats 4 times throughout the trip, as people got on at different stops on the way to Sevilla and we happened to be in their seats. The car was casi (almost) full, but thankfully we were able to get seats each time we changed (although we didn't get to sit near each other anymore). We made it home safely, though, so it was all okay.

I really enjoyed my time in Granada. The views were one of my favorite parts, I loved seeing the mountains and the gorgeous colors! I also loved the thought that I was walking through buildings that Arab rulers walked through. Or that I was in hallways that Ferdinand and Isabel used to occupy (since they lived here for a while after the conquest). The history there (and in Europe, in general) is sometimes amazing to me since I'm not used to such deep history in the US. Granada was definitely an amazing experience.