Free Museum Sunday!

Sometimes life just ends up working in your favor. Because I did this program when I did I ended up being in Paris at a very fortuitous time in that we ended up there both at the beginning of July when all the clothing stores are having sales and on the first Sunday of the month. In Paris many of the museums have free admission on the first Sunday of the month, which is great for us, but I was a little surprised at because in my experience with other museums, they seemed to have one free day a week, instead of just once a month. I was wondering if this had to do with the sheer volume of people going to the museums in Paris as oppose to the ones in the States. So Sunday for us it was back to the museums!

We started at another thing that Mom missed on her last tour of Paris, with the Rodin museum. It was really amazing, since the museum is actually in his house and in his gardens, which were quite amazing by themselves. We had a bit of trouble in that we couldn’t really figure out where the museum started, since the entrance was a newer building with a temporary exhibit that was not free, except that we tried to go in there twice with our limited French. But eventually we managed to find out way out in the garden and began by looking at the statues there, including one of his most famous “The Thinker.” We went over to another famous The Burghers of Calais which is the one statue that my parents managed to see through the fence of the museum. It had an amazing story behind it in that during the Hundred Year War six principle citizens of Calais offered up their lives to spare the rest of the town, until the queen begged the king to spare their lives. We also saw The Gates of Hell that is a huge set of amazing doors, with amazing intricate details. We then moved to the inside and looked at some of the smaller statues and also saw some of the works done by his protégée/lover Camille Claudel, who was actually quite a sculpture in her own right. Although it was pleasant outside it was very stuffy in the house with all the people in it so it was really nice to get back out into the gardens. We saw some more amazing statues, like one of Victor Hugo and move further into the shade of the garden. There was a beautiful fountain there and we walked along looking at all the amazing statues. There was a funny moment where I was trying to figure out what the name of the statue and after I figured it out and told it to my mother, this guy comes up to me and asked me in French about the same statue and I managed to communicate the right statue to him and that always makes me feel good. At this point we were getting pretty hungry but we decided to press on.

We made our way to Napoleon’s Tomb thinking that it would be open for free as well but as we found out from the guard, it was not and we decided that it wasn’t worth going in but we did go to the cafeteria, where we had a delicious lunch of quiche and tart. It really perked us up.

Next we made our way back to the Louve for one more visit. There were some works of art that I studied in Art History 101 that I did not get to see on our first tour of the museum. I was expecting the worst, since the Louve last time was a nightmare and people had to pay to get in, how was it going to be when it was free. We were actually very surprised, since we were looking at the less obviously famous works of art it was actually much more pleasant experience. Sticking to the ancient works of art was a really cool experience, especially after the better understanding that I got after Art History 101, although I realized just how limited one semester is to cover such an expansive period of art’s history but I truly love seeing things that I’ve studied. When I was explaining The Seated Scroll to my Mother some British women starting asking me questions about it, which was kind of cool but I felt awkward with her just jumping in.

I got a little pissed off when I saw that people were touching works of art, especially with the ancient stuff and taking flash photography. A lot of these works are thousands of years old and people just run their hands all over them like it is no big deal. Since the museum is so crowded and big, there aren’t nearly enough guards to watch over every room and if I had known French I would have been all over that, especially since a lot of the times people seemed to be doing it mindlessly, as they were walking. What the hell? And every once in awhile I would see a flash and that was fairly annoying, especially since it’s pretty damaging to paintings. But over all it was another really enjoyable visit.

Then in the evening we went on a walk around our neighborhood and look at all the amazing Paris architecture. It was a beautiful night with great light so we snapped a couple pictures along the way. We also saw this completely burned up something that seemed to an art project because Mom saw some paper with writing on it. She also saw a puppy which she try to get the lady to let her pet, but she didn’t understand English and she kept looking for me for answers but I couldn’t explain it to her so we didn’t get to play with the cute puppy but it was a fabulous day otherwise.

Flea Market and Montmartre

So now that we were done with our four day museum pass, we decided to move on to “things Mom did not get a chance to do last time in Paris” and go to one of the famous flea markets in Paris, which have been around since the 1870s. They are a little different than we would think of flea markets in that many of them are actually situated in small store like rooms, instead of just being out in the open on tables. This was probably one of our more adventurous trips since we would be moving way out of our neighborhood almost into the suburbs of Paris. We took the metro, which by now we were pretty familiar with, took our maps and Rick Steves and tried our best not to get lost. After we got out of the Metro station though, I was not too sure of our odds of actually making it to our destination. But after looking at a couple maps we made our way to what looked like the right direction according to our guide book and we were feeling pretty good about it, especially since there was a sign pointing us in the right direction, but after that first sign we were just wandering around in what seemed to be the market knock off area, with people selling cheap clothes, bed sheets, underwear and electronics. Not really the atmosphere we were going for. Finally after looking at the map for the millionth time we found our destination, though we weren’t actually sure which part of the market we were in, but at least we could tell we were in the right place. The markets are known for their antiques and one of the first stalls we came across was one selling old carousel animal, which unfortunately was closed so we could not take a closer look. We peeked in some of the stalls, mainly the ones with paintings as my Dad had instructed us to look for a specific painter while we were there. One stall specialized in old posters, which were fun to look at but super expensive. One thing we noticed is that the sellers did not seem super protective of their wares.

We wandered around some more and found a section that was a little more applicable to our shopping needs, in that we had found the vintage clothing, books and other smaller random antiques. There is something about old magazines, postcards and knickknacks that I just love. My mother sees this stuff more as junk, but I just love the possibilities behind it, seeing all the projects that I could do with everything that I found. Once we got to this section, I found a really cool scarf for 5 euros with a very bold 1960s pattern on it, some old post cards from Wisconsin that some one had sent back to France (I also found some from Denison University, one of the schools I thought about going to). We saw some amazing vintage clothing that was way too small for either of us but was fabulous to just browse through. Mom really liked this one necklace, but the stall was closed so we circled back multiple times till it was finally open again. Unfortunately it was too expensive for her. We also got a book for my Dad of this French comic that he read as a kid, which he actually remembers reading in his youth. As we were leaving we saw this great messenger bag for me, which was not an antique but very useful and something that I needed. Mom also found one of her first purchase; a scarf that was actually remarkably similar to one that a classmate of mine had in Spain. The flea market was a great time, but I just wish we had a better sense of where we were so that we could go to the right places.

We managed to find our way back, tracking back exactly the way we came thankfully. But by this point I was very hungry so we stopped at a restaurant and our waitress was super nice and we got a great meal with a vinaigrette salad with avocado, a steak with fried egg and a chocolate mousse, which was so rich and delicious. It really hit the spot and if we had waited any longer the walk to then next location would have be incredibly difficult and cranky.

We then decided that since we were in the area we would go to Montmartre, the place where all the artists lived and where the basilica church was. It’s on a hill and is the highest point of Paris. I mapped out a route to get us there but eventually we got a little lost. Mom kept wanting just to go to the right since we knew that we had to go up hill, but with the streets being the way they were, sometimes you could get on a really small street that would just end and that wouldn’t even be on the map and I did not want to get more lost than we were. The streets that were not on the map were our downfall. Eventually a man driving stopped and asked if they could help us, who spoke English (yay!). He began to explain where to go but then he decided just to give us a ride there. So my mom jumped in the car but I was a little confused on why she was getting in the car so the guy told me that we were hitch hiking and told me to get in. I was pretty nervous about it, but the guy drove us up in the nicest neighborhood, where people had gardens in Paris, where the rich and famous live. It seemed to be ok so I relaxed a bit and it was nice not to have to walk up that huge hill.

He dropped us off and we went to the basilica and admired the view and all the artists who were working and selling their art. There were a lot of people drawing caricatures and doing really typical drawings/paintings of the Eiffel tower, but some were quite good and more original. Then we went into the basilica and it was very beautiful and they had real candles, which was cool to see after Spain, where they had fake electric candles and those just don’t have the same feel to them. My mom and I lit a small tea light, we could have gotten a big candle but that was a ten-euro donation and that was just too much for us. We sat there for a while and enjoyed the peace of the basilica. Afterward we checked out the artists one more time and then we walked down the hill back to the metro station. We ran into some scammers with the bracelets and I managed to avoid it. W also managed to find the metro stop perfectly but we were so exhausted that we just snacked it out when we got home, interneted and went to bed.

Orsay For The Second Time

Now I am back in the States but I still have many stories to tell so I plan to keep the blog going until I written them all down.

One thing I forgot to write about was what we did after we went to Orsay the day before when we went back to the Tuileries, the gardens outside of the Louvre and we went for a walk in the evening. There is a Ferris wheel on the other side of the park that my Mom really liked and we took some beautiful photos with the sun going down of the statues. I then got some lemon sorbet with mint in it and we just sat and enjoyed ourselves. We saw a man selling small sailboats to float in the small lakes and we were very excited to see this man because my Dad mentioned this to us before we left. It was a great time, because it was quite relaxing.

So today we got started super late, not even setting an alarm, except for the fact that Mom usually wakes up around 10ish and will go on the computer and eventually wake me up and we have our breakfast of fruit and juice and peanut butter sandwiches. So then after we managed to get on our way we walked to Orsay back again to see the rest of the collection. Today we focused on the pre, post and impressionist work and we splurged and got the audio guide of the museum, which of course made our whole visit much longer. I loved getting all those details but I feel like they never have the information on the painting I want. The small ones that are not as famous but they can’t have information on all of them or else we would be there forever instead of just five hours. We started the day with the pre-impressionist and we looked at all the painting that shocked the salons, even though it seemed that every other painting there was rejected by the official art world and shocked audiences and critics. It was funny because we saw a group of French school children on a trip to the museum and it made me wish that I were born in Europe so that when I was in school I could go to museums like that for school trips. I wonder if there is the same resentment of museum trips when you get to go to museums like Orsay.

After the first floor we went up to the restaurant, which was actually part of the hotel that existed when it was still a train station and at the time it was built, for the world fair it was actually quite modern at the time with electric lights and indoor plumbing that was actually just kind of a stopping point for most people taking the train. So the dining room that we ate in was part of the original building and had the original decorations, which were absolutely gorgeous. I had a risotto and this amazing lemon tart and some of my mom’s ice cream, which included some of the best strawberry ice cream I’ve ever had.

We then saw the actual impressionist works which was amazing, of course the same problem of crowds around the most famous, but I saw so many beautiful painting and a couple of Degas sculptures and it was amazing. As Mom and I were wandering around the galleries we saw a couple of people who were dressed in period clothing, complete with hats and makeup. It was as if they stepped out of one of the paintings themselves and decided to wander around the museum. I really wanted to take a picture of them but I felt that would be pretty rude. We also ran into some Canadians who said it was great to hear English, when me and my Mom were talking about paintings, sitting after a couple of hours of walking.

We got to the end of the museum and we looking at one of the stores to see if we could find any Art Deco jewelry for my mom and I was looking at the other stuff they had in the museum shop and I noticed that a lot of the stuff had the Monet bridges painting on them and I hadn’t seen that painting so I decided to go back and try to find it. Then of course I realized that there was a whole other wing of the museum that we had skipped that was most of the post impressionist stuff and so I quickly walked through there while Mom was at the end, which made her worried because I had been gone for so long. I didn’t find the painting- it was probably on loan to another museum. Mom did not find anything, because the bracelet she liked was too small, which was strange because she has tiny wrists. She was having trouble because they thought she was trying to return her audio guide when really she was asking about the bracelet.

By the time we had finished it was closer to five, and we were trying to get to the Rodin museum but we decided that even with taking the Metro that we would get there with enough time so we sat for a while and then we went home and just relaxed. We joked about what we were going to do for the fourth, especially with seeing a “Gad Bless America” sign in one of the tourist shops. We talked about trying to find an American restaurant, saying that we go back to the “Happy Days” diner we saw on our walk on the first day. We didn’t actually end up doing any of that but we spent the rest of the evening napping and interneting.

Modern Art and Shopping- Too Tired To Think of Something Clever

At this point in our trip I was feeling slightly over stimulated by all the museums and churches that we had seen but we had the museum passes for four day and we didn’t want to waste it. So we decided that it would be best not to go to Versailles, the palace that the Kings eventually lived in because that would be an all day trip, and for some reason that is just doesn’t seem worth it. If it was in Paris I think that we definitely would have made an effort to stop by, but I am not interested enough to spend a whole day there. Instead we decided to basically go the opposite route and see he Pompidou museum, which houses a huge modern art collection.

On our walk we saw a lot of cute little boutiques with my favorite French word in the window, soldes (which means sale). These stores we much different than the ones we had seen on our previous walk, in that they were much more price and style appropriate for me. The other store would have been fun to walk into and look around but way too intimidating to try on anything. This neighborhood seemed much more my style, but we were on a mission and fashion could only pull me so far away from modern art.

It was a bit of a walk but we finally made it to our destination. The building itself was built for the modern art and its architecture reflects its contents. It is made out of glass that curves around the building in big tubes. It kind of reminds me of what people thought the future would look like in the 1950s. The building adds a bit of color by leaving the pipes exposed for different necessities in the building, like water, electricity and the elevator, all color coded based on function. I thought it must be very difficult to keep clean, and my Mom said that the last time she went it was much dirtier.

Then we went inside and had to stop at the café so Mom could get her coffee fix. The interior was very bright with polished metal accents and a lot of color everywhere, including the blue ceiling and the neon signs telling you where everything was. After coffee we made our way to the fourth floor to the permanent exhibit. It was actually really cool because we figured out that the museum was devoting a large part of their permanent collection to women artists. The opened the exhibit by feminizing a lot of famous male modern artists, like Francine Bacon and Annie Warhol on these huge shiny buttons. It was interesting to see, but a lot of female modern art is very political and although I think this is a good step, I think it’s more important to have just a better balance of women artists in a modern collection, rather than just giving them their special women’s section. Since a lot of women’s modern art deals with issues about women and women in art I think the message gets water down when you have them all next to each other. I was certainly glad to see it though, although I wasn’t a fan of all of it obviously. I think that’s why most people don’t like modern art, because they feel afraid to say they don’t like something or that they don’t understand one piece and so they dismiss the whole genre as if it is all something they don’t like or they can’t understand any of it.
Anyway then we moved up onto the second floor, and I found some really great pieces from artists that I had never heard of, like Tamara de Lempicka, Nathalie S. Gontcharova and then some pieces from the masters of the modern like Picasso and Matisse and Colder. There was a patio on the fifth floor with some statues and some great views and sunshine, which is always nice. I’m always a fan of modern art museums but I feel bad if I don’t spend a lot of time looking at every piece because so many people just skim over so many pieces, that I feel as someone who likes modern art that I really have to pay extra attention to everything. This is a hard way to look at every museum, especially one that you are trying to see in a couple of hours. I wish there was a modern museum like that close to me especially since the Pompidou is suppose to have great temporary exhibits, which we did not get a chance to see, since we only had the museum pass.

After the museum we went to go look for somewhere to eat and so we followed the advice of Rick Steve’s again, and looked for the whimsical fountain and ate at one of the restaurants. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the fountain, because at this point the camera ran out of batteries (our only time this happened in Paris, which I think is pretty good). I was actually using my parents’ camera, and this made me realize more than ever that I need to get a new camera with better shake protection. Even though my camera is only a couple years old, pictures inside or without the flash just don’t come out like they do on the new cameras. I was fading pretty fast at this point but I got a really great dish of chicken and chanterelle mushrooms and rice. It was pretty heavy but I was hungry and then I got some coffee and that perked me right up. I’m not quite the addict that Mom is but I am definitely a convert.

Then we were done with museums (at least for the afternoon, I mean what else would we do on vacation without art museums??) but now it was time for shopping! We went to a couple stores and some were more successful than others. I got a pair of flats for 10 euros (which is about 14 dollars) and some other great finds. It was a little awkward because we didn’t have our shopping vocabulary and we were warned in the guidebooks that it was a little different in the boutiques, so we tried to follow what other people are doing. The only mistake I made was going into the wrong dressing room, because it was connected to the office, so that wasn’t that bad.

After that we went back to the room for a bit and then we still had some energy so we decided to do a preview of the Orsay Museum, since it was open late that day. So we walked down there and saw a bit of Max Ernst’s illustrations and all of the Art Deco stuff, which was mainly furniture, glass work and ceramics. This was great because we had a limited amount of time but we knew we were coming back, so we didn’t feel like we had to rush through anything. So we could just stop and peek at stuff, like the Klimpt painting. I really enjoy the Art Deco style and they would set up entire rooms of artifacts and it was amazing to look at (and imagine actually living in a set


(I'm actually on my way home here so I'm feeling really tired because it's super late back in Paris but I still have my flight back to Milwaukee... I'm trying not to sleep though because I want to overcome jet lag)

Pictures!!

1. Me in the L'orangerie next to a Didier Paquinon painting.
















2. Mom and I on the Seine before our boat tour. You can kind of see the dock behind us on the right, with all the lights.


















3. Me on the Left Bank in front of one of the booksellers stalls.
4. Me in front of Notre Dame, our first major stop in Paris
5. The Eiffel Tower at night from the boat tour.

Where are we going next? Back to the Lady’s Butt- The Beginning of My Museum Tour of Paris

I think I can begin each blog post from Paris saying that we begin each day starting out later than we want to. We set our alarms with the best of intentions but something always gets in the way, the first day we went out we forgot our camera. We set our alarms for 8:30, which was just too ambitious, and we ended up getting up at 9:30 and leaving around 10:30. Then we had to stop and get coffee or my Mom would not be able to function, so we went to the place we had gone the day before, but this time there was no space at the bar so we sat at a table. A fun cultural fact we learned is they charge you twice as much for a cup of coffee when you sit at a table, for the ambiance! My mother was not happy about this since the coffee there was fairly expensive to begin with. It’s one of those things we will laugh about later, but it was hard to let go (I had one of those today so look out for it in later blog posts! Look at me, creating suspense). Then we were on our way to the first stop of the day- the Louvre!
The Louvre is the magnificent national museum of France and it is the most visited museum in the world. The building itself is almost as magnificent as the art inside of it as it was once a palace in the 12th century. Once a new king moved in there he would add on to the building, which makes it perfect for an art museum. Eventually it was left for Versaille and was opened to the public in 1793 so that everyone could enjoy the royal art collection. More recently in the ‘90s another entrance was built by the American architect I.M. Pei that is a big glass pyramid with the lobby underneath and a small pyramid next to it. It was constructed to help handle the large masses of people coming to the museum everyday. Not everyone likes the pyramid entrance, partly because they say it does not fit with the rest of the architecture and that it is difficult to maintain because it is glass but I like it and I think it is a cool contrast with its surroundings.
We had a bit of trouble finding the right entrance, because of our museum passes we could use the group entrance and we could avoid the huge line through the pyramid for people who were buying tickets. But we found it all right and entered into the museum only to find it packed with people. It turns out that Wednesday is one of the busiest days for the Louvre so it was us and thousands of other looking and jostling in front of some amazing pieces of art, which I found frustrating because when I go to art museums I actually want to look at the art. I don’t just want to see the famous stuff and take a picture of it. I don’t just want to stare at it for two seconds and then move on. If I wanted those things I would stay at home and look at art books (because those reproductions will be better than anything you can get on a camera). I want to see the parts that you can’t get from reproductions, which is somewhat hard for the most famous parts of the Louvre.
It started out a little rocky because we were following the Rick Steve’s free audio guide (which was great!!) and we could not find the first room. It was especially hard because my mother and I are both severely directionally challenged, there is a language barrier and the hordes of other tourists that obscure signs, stand right in your way and devour whole works of art… It turns out in the end that the first room (Pre-Greek art) was closed, which was particularly sad for me because I had just studied those works in my Art History 101 class.
After a rocky start we actually had a great day. We saw many really famous works, like the Venus de Milo, the Winged Victory, the Mona Lisa (which had such a crazy group in front of it I took a picture of the group and the painting). We also made a detour to see some of the things I studied like Roman painting, an Etruscan sarcophagus and if we go back on Sunday (it’s free on the first Sunday of the month along with many other museums) we plan to see some of the other more ancient works, especially from Egypt and things like the Code of Hammurabi.
After our tour we were exhausted and hungry so we decided to just stay in the Louvre and eat lunch. Usually the big museums have great food that is pretty reasonably priced so it is easier to just eat there then to have to look for a place to eat outside. We did have to wait quite a while to pay for our food but when we sat down we realized there was free refillable pitchers of water, which doesn’t seem like that big of deal but we always get really dehydrated and in restaurants they will usually only give you one small glass of water, unlike the States where they bring you water till you burst. So we were very content with our meal and we fill up our water bottle and then went back out into the heat. It has been unusually hot in Paris according to most of the people we talked to.
We then decided to take a break from the artwork and sit outside in the gardens right outside the Louvre called the Tuileries, which was a really nice break. There are a couple of fountains (with really filthy water) and a ton of statues and a wide long path that leads to another pond where people race boats, according to my Dad. There are no benches but instead they have metal chairs, which can be moved and rearranged, and my Mom and I found two in a shady spot and commenced with people watching and one of our favorite hobbies, judging what people are wearing. We never do it meanly and a lot of the times we are looking for ideas for ourselves but we certainly have a lot of fun.
Once we are ready we move on to the next museum at the end of the park, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is a very small (compared to the Louvre) museum dedicated to the impressionist painters. I really enjoyed this museum at first partially because I could actually look at the artwork up close. They had a great temporary exhibit on a current artist, Didier Paquignon who lived in both Spain and Paris, which you could really see in his artwork that I loved. His colors were very Spanish and his style was very impressionist and he did a lot of different types, landscapes, portraits a series on the metro.
We then moved on to the more famous dead impressionists, which I enjoyed but the last part that we visited was most memorable; Monet’s Water lilies, 8 of the series in a two circular room that was built specifically to house these paintings. When I first saw them though, I was a tiny bit disappointed solely for the reason that the last time my mother came to Paris 14 years ago, she told me about this room and so as a child I had imagined a floor to ceiling room painting with only holes for the door. Of course reality cannot compete with a 6-year-old’s imagination but it was still pretty amazing. We sat there for a while and then we went home. It was a fabulous day!!

And On The Left You Will See… My House

Now we have been in Paris for a couple days and I am having a wonderful time. I had a bit of difficultly adjusting since I know only a few key phrases in French, that coming from a place where I could basically communicate if I was lost or ordering in a restaurant was difficult. Although according to the internets i.e. facebook people really seem to like Paris over Madrid, since it got “liked” five times and Madrid got zero. I can’t really say which city I like better yet but I think Madrid will always have a place in my heart since I can (to some extent) speak the local language.

Annnyway we arrived at the Madrid airport with plenty of time to spare from our hotel. At this point it was just my mom and I because my dad had taken an earlier flight back to the States through London. For all of us who don’t have to get back to work, we were off for 8 days in Paris. Unfortunately something I ate disagreed me so I was making a lot of bathroom trips, but by the time I got to Paris I was feeling much better. (I’m thinking it was the salad at the Prado, it had a lot of shellfish in it.) We were actually flying through Olry instead of Charles Degal so it was much easier for us to navigate except for the fact that they only had one carousel for our section of the airport so there were several flights on one carousel and so we had to wait in this huge crowd for our bags, which thankfully both arrived. I think our French would be severely stretched if we lost our bags.

We took a cab to our hotel, which our cab driver did not know, so that made mom a little nervous but I was frantically trying to pick up some phrases from the book, so I was not really aware of it. The hotel is in a great location, very close to the Louve and other cultural sites but not directly on the busy street. One thing that was new for me is that when we leave the hotel we leave the key at the front desk. Our room it tiny, about half the size of my double at Dickinson in Goodyear, so there is basically room for the two single beds, a small closest and the bedside tables. The bathroom is very nice, but now we have a leak from the ceiling, so that is a little unfortunate. When we first got here I was just feeling under the weather from being sick and nervous and Mom suggested that we go out and get some dinner, which actually helped quite a bit. Thankfully the menu had an English translation and we sat outside, bumping elbows with other tourists and Parisians (literally, the tables outside are ridiculously close together). I got roasted chicken with lightly fried zucchini and a tower type salad with tomato, eggplant and cheese and a bit of lettuce at the top. It was delicious and just what I needed. Then we went for a bit of a walk around our neighborhood and saw all the shops and cafes that were close to us. We also stopped in a small grocery store and got some cheese, fruit and crackers, which was perfect for breakfast and lunch. Unfortunately once we got back into the room we’ve noticed that there was a sign that said “no outside food or drink in the room” even though we have a mini bar in the room. So while we are in the room we store stuff in the fridge but when we go out we hide stuff in our suitcases and under our clothes and secretly sneak out our garbage in tote bags. We feel very silly about it all, but the city is so expensive and this is a really cheap easy way to eat before we go out. Now we probably eat out one meal at a time and the rest we just snack it out.

The next day we woke up kind of later than we wanted and we decided to do the historic walk of Paris that was outlined in our guidebook (Rick Steve’s). It was amazing especially since we downloaded a free podcast guide to the walk, which was a lot of information about plazas and the streets itself that you never really have an audio guide for. The day started kind of slow because we didn’t really know where we were going, so we slowly walked along looking for a metro stop. We eventually found a metro stop but then it took us another fifteen minutes to by metro tickets, only to realize that we were close enough to walk to our first place on the tour, so that seemed kind of silly but it was good to get oriented.

We started this part of the day at Norte Dame and by the time we got there it was around mid-day. We got museum passes for four days, which means that we basically are covered for all the major museums that we go to and we can use the group entrance, which means shorter lines. It also is for some more obscure museums like the post office and stamp museum and the ceramics museum (both of which I would like to go to but I don’t think my Mother would be interested in the stamp museum and the ceramics museum is outside of Paris and would be difficult for us to get to). Notre Dame was amazing of course both inside the cathedral and then the view from the tower. Only I went up in the tower because my Mom saw it last time she came and there was a long wait and it was a pretty tight area and sometimes we both get claustrophobic. Even at the end of the hike up the stairs I was getting a little freaked out because the stairs really narrow and they feel like they go on forever. But it was totally worth it to see the views, the gargoyles and statues and the bell. That took a really long time to the point where Mom started worrying about me but there was no where else for me really to go. Afterwards we sat outside and ate a little snack that we brought including yogurt and almonds under the statue of Charlemagne and it was perfect. We then saw point zero which was the center of France and was the center of Paris thousands of years ago.

After Notre Dame we went to the Deportation Memorial, which was for the 200,000 people who were deported during World War II by the Nazis. It was really stark and grim; the architect built it so the only thing you could see was the sky and the sea. Paris really disappears when you enter into the memorial and then there is an internal part with 200,000-lit crystals and an eternal frame.

We then walked along the left bank of the river and looked at all the people selling used books and by the St. Julien-le-Pauvre, which has some middle age houses around it. Our next stop was The Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, which is a famous English second hand bookstore, which many famous writers visited while they lived in Paris like James Joyce, Gertrude Stein and Erza Pound. We walked through the Latin Quarter, which was named after the intellectuals who communicated in Latin at the University of Paris. We walked past two squares, St. Michel, where there is a statue of St. Michel fighting a demon, and many students and political uprising happened there and St. André-des-Arts.

We had two more stops along our walk. My favorite place that we went was Sainte-Chapelle, which was built by Louis III to house the “true” crown of thorns. It was pretty small but the second floor was basically full of stain glass windows and it was awe-inspiring. Lastly we went to the Conciergerie, which was the famous prison where people were kept before they were guillotine and they had a replica of Marie Antoinette’s cell. By this time we were totally exhausted so we crossed the Seine and headed home for a nap.
We got up and went down the block to another little café close to our hotel. It was a very nice leisurely dinner which Mom and I spent people watching and commenting on how nice (or not so nicely people were dressed). I got quiche de jour with tuna and mom got a shrimp Cesar salad. After dinner we went back to Pont Nour the bridge and we took a nighttime sight seeing cruise. At this time it was about 10:30 and so it was getting pretty dark so some of the photos we took didn’t really turn out but it was a very relaxing way to see the sights because we didn’t have to worry about navigation. It was also a good way to orient around the city. Our tour guide spoke in both French and English but her English was really hard to understand but she did point out her house on the tour (hence the title of my post).

There is some stuff I missed here in my blog- my last couple days in Malaga, Toledo and Madrid, but I will get to those soon!

SHUT UP and dance with me

Ok so I went on some trips this weekend, but that takes some serious dedication and time that I do not have, so instead you will be getting another update on my mundane "normal" Spanish life. But soon I will tell you about my last day trips in Spain.
Sometimes I think my host mother has shown me all of her Spanish food tricks and then I get home and have something completely new. Yesterday for example she fried me some vegetables, eggplant, onion and potatoes that she said were "ecologica" which I assume meant they were organic and then gave me a sunny side up egg and the normal salad that I get everyday. I was a little confused by the fried egg, since it was not anything she had served me before, especially for lunch. Then she proceeded to tell me that the egg was actually for the vegetables and I was supposed to dip my veggies into the egg yolk. I found this especially amusing especially after going to school in PA, where they call the sunny side up a dippy egg, which my roommate for New York was especially irritated at since one time at a diner they only understood her when she ordered a dippy egg. So I guess it's not just for Pennsylvanians any more, the Spanish have dippy eggs too! I'm usually not a huge fan of any sort of liquidness in my eggs but this was actually really good.

We've also had a recent interaction with other Spaniards in that we needed to get our bus passes renewed, since they only lasted a month and we are here for five weeks. It was a little annoying because we didn't think about doing this before, and when I got on the bus in the morning I got the angry red beep instead of the green light when I got on the bus. One thing that I don't know if it's buses everywhere but here you don't swipe your card, you just put in front of a scanner. It was funny because this is how one of my fellow Dickinsonians recognized me because the first time I got on the bus I was looking for a place to swipe it and I didn't understand how it worked. Anyway our director gave us some money but we figured out it would be cheaper to get about 20 rides on our cards instead of paying for each ride individually (10 rides is like 6.20 and each ride when you pay in cash is 1.10 so it's really a great deal). It was really easy to do and we found the place really easily but we did have to wait in line a little bit. I always like being able to complete these kinds of mindless tasks that I wouldn't even think twice about in the States because here it makes me feel like I've accomplished something.

Then on Monday we had tutorias and we went to one of the cafes we often go to. One time awhile ago we actually went to this place called telepizza at the insistence of the boys in the group because it was their anniversary and they were selling pizza for one euro (and later we found out ice cream and soda as well). Usually though we go to more traditional places and this time I got this great lemonade with mint in it and we talked about books because Somia my turtora wanted some suggestions for good books in English. I offered to give her High Fidelity because I had that here and I felt that even though I enjoyed it I didn't need to bring it home and that would save me some weight in my suitcase, but of course the one book I could offer her she had already read!! They were playing a Rufus Wainright album in the cafe, Poses, which is one I have, so that was a little strange to hear.

Today is the festival of San Juan, which from my interblag reading and from what people have told me is bonfires on the beach and people wash their face and feet at midnight to purify themselves. My professor also said that sardines are what people eat. Down the beach from us there are supposed to be some concerts, so I am very excited for tonight. Somia is also very excited because she said in the past the festival has always correlated with the day before exams for the students so no one really felt like going out so I am happy that I can do both.

Another exciting event, that the guys in my group are more interested in than I am, is that the US is playing Spain in soccer on Wednesday. They joke though that if they are out in the centro watching the game they are very likely to get into a fight.

My Malaga part of the trip is coming to a close, which makes me sad. I will certainly be glad to be done with classes but I will miss my family here, the beach and all my friends. I am so excited to see my parents and travel a bit more with them...

Beach'n

Now that I have this blog, even though it’s basically just my friends and family who is reading it, I totally understand how it’s hard to keep a blog updated even when I have stuff to say. It just takes a lot of effort to type this all up and maintain my own journal, especially with all the other activities that are going on in my life, with classes, tutorias and trips. So never again will I get angry at a blog that I read when they haven’t updated in a week or so. See I am learning new cultural things every day!

Now my classes are almost over and I am started to get a little nervous, because I got my language test back and I passed but I didn’t do as well as I hoped. But this seemed to be what happened to the entire class so I am not alone especially since the test seemed really unfair because we weren’t being tested on what we learned. The test we got was just kind of a standard language test that really had nothing to do with what we learned including vocabulary that I have never heard of and a lot of the grammar questions were exceptions to the rule that we never talked about. And now we are approaching the next and last test and I am super worried because I did not do well on this last test and I feel like in the last week the professor crammed a lot of really difficult tenses and she did not do a good job of explaining them. It’s just that we didn’t have the time to devote to really understanding the lessons. We are also taking our culture class, which I think is just hard right now; everyone is feeling worn out and the teacher seems very bemused by us and our way of being in class. One time we were laughing with one of our classmates because she was just being so silly when she was doing her presentation, which is partly just her personality and how she talks but it wasn’t malicious at all. But the professor seemed so offended that we were laughing and she said this is a university class and we should be acting formal, which I just thought was so odd because at least back at Dickinson our classes are respectful but they are certainly never formal and none of my other professors her are formal at all. Of course I am also worried about this test and can’t wait till these classes are over although I really don’t want to leave Spain.

We went out this last Thursday again and this time Somia and her younger sister came out with us. This was her sister’s first time coming out to the discotheque because she was only 16 and she was so excited to be out. It was funny to see someone going to the clubs for the first time, someone who hadn’t even been burned by going out. It was fun to see. This time when I went out I actually managed to find someone to dance with who is Spanish, since most of the people we interact with are also foreign but mostly from Europe, so I got to practice my Spanish, even when I was out and about. But it was hard because it was mostly yelling so it’s hard to understand even when I’m speaking English. One of the interesting that we’ve noticed is that men will not approach you when we are out or even out on the streets when you are in a group with guys in it. So sometimes when we go out we will move away from the bigger group so that we can meet new people.

I’ve also been doing some shopping while I was here. I found a great jacket that is very classy and is something that I could do casually but also I could wear to work and it is really well made. That was a little more expensive and when I got home and showed it to my mother she was very impressed but she told me that in July everything would really go down in price and I could have probably gotten it for about 15 euros cheaper, but that did not dismay me for very long. I also found a great cheap necklace and a purse that was half off that was perfect. It’s a really bright yellow, has a zipper and a longer strap and was half off.

Then since we were going on two day trips this weekend we didn’t want to have too late of a night so we just went out for a drink on Friday. We were going to go down to the center but then we ended up closer to our neighborhood at one of the fish places by the beach. I got a mohito and it was delicious and it was super sour. We had a good time and then went to the bus stop but decided to start walking because we were closer. As soon as we passed on of the bus stop we see the bus pulling up. We run back and start waving our hands to get the driver to open the door but she won’t because she is a little past the stop at the light. So then we book it, running as fast as we can to the next stop but we are at a weird part of the street and we do not make it to the next bus stop. Then we start walking again and we see another bus passing us by, which is particularly irritating because at this point at night the buses only come every 20 or 30 minutes. So after all that running we miss both buses and ended up walking home.

I have a big pickle (Oh tee-shirts in Malaga)

So now I’ve been here for a couple weeks and I’ve noticed some of my habits and I was thinking that it would be great to write to you guys to give you the FULL Málaga experience. One thing that I love, even though I don’t think that this is specific to Spain, is the bus here. Just the idea of public transportation is so new to me, since I’ve never really lived in a big city. I mean I’ve done the subway in New York and the tube in London, but I’ve never been anywhere long enough to really get used to it and feel like I have a good understanding of it. Here I really only take one bus, so I can’t say I have a grand knowledge of the whole Málaga bus system, but I certainly get the number 11 and this confirms that I really want to live in a big city when I get out of college. I like having the freedom of having a car, but being able to read or just people watch or do work while I commute. Now in the morning I make sure to catch the bus closer to 9 because the next one is always really crowded, so I have to stand. My bus does not take me all the way to my building where I take my classes, so I walk. I walk past two different free newspapers and I usually get both because our whole group has become obsessed with sudoku and one I like to read better but the other has two sudokus in it. One also has horoscopes in them and my friend and I enjoy reading them to each other. One thing that is different is that the horoscopes are not only split by signs but also by gender. And the male and the female horoscopes are very different. Like today for female Leos there are surprises that they should be careful of, but for male Leos they should get their finances in order.

One thing that my friends and I noticed is that it seems like there is a huge baby boom here, where it seems like a lot of women here are pregnant or have really small babies. One of my friends joked that she should get pregnant so she can truly experience the Spanish culture and what would our program director say about our idea. One thing that I love here is that the strollers here also have umbrellas attached to them to shade the baby which I think is very adorable and something I would like to take back with me when I have stroller needs (which is going to be a long long LONG time down the road).

Another sort of cultural shock element that I don’t even notice anymore is how people dress. I was sort of peeved about this because one of the first days our director was telling us to try and blend in. She told us then that for the women don’t start dressing in their summer clothes till much later and that we should not really wear our summer clothes yet, especially when we are in the city. I found this frustrating mostly because this is the kind of the information that would have been wonderful to have BEFORE I packed all my stuff and when I had the ability to bring more clothes so I could fit in. Luckily I brought two cardigans and two pairs of jeans, but I wish I brought more shoes that went with these outfits, especially since flip flops are not really ok to wear to class in the same way they are in college. At first I was doing this just to feel more appropriate but now I actually feel pretty chilly in the morning and the sweater serves its rightful purpose.

Another thing that I’ve noticed, not only in Spain but all over Europe is the amount of graffiti just all around the city. I’m not sure what the difference is, I am assuming that it has to do with the laws here and there but graffiti seems to be everywhere. On the bus it seems like names but on the street there seems to be a lot of political messages. For me when I first got here, I used the graffiti to figure out where I was, in making sure I got of at the right bus stop.

Another thing I have yet to understand is how the Spanish wait in line. Sometimes when we wait in line people will just let you go ahead of them. And it’s not just an age/gender thing, like letting the old or women or people with babies on first. I think it has to with when you get to the bus stop, not what place you are in line. And then when you get on the bus, people are super polite even when it’s crowded, and they won’t push passed each other to get to the slightly less crowded part of the bus. One of my friends said that in New York, nobody would stand for this and they would just yell at each other to move on back, even just for a couple extra centimeters of space. The post office is probably the most civilized place I have ever been, you take a number and you sit and you wait for your turn.

Today I had my last test of the week and then I went home for lunch. Usually I eat lunch alone but today there were four girls from Austria and Germany who are new to the house. It was funny because I’m pretty sure we saw some of these new girls on the bus because they basically took over the whole number 11 with all their suitcases because usually at the time we catch the bus it’s usually not that crowded.

It was funny to see other people interact with my host mom, who said that I was the captain of the house because I am here for the longest, she also just called me her daughter and was joking around about guys hitting on me in the clubs asking for kisses… The girls were nice but they were SO young the youngest being 14 and the oldest 16. They certainly look like they could be in college. I was talking to them in Spanish and they said that I talked really fast and well, which made me feel great and definitely made me feel good about my progress. Then my mother started asking one about one of the people in her group who used to live with my host mother’s sister and who was switching houses. I don’t think the girl understood that she was talking about her sister and was saying how the house smelled and she didn’t like how other students were living there and my mother kept trying to defend her sister’s house saying it was very large and very clean (which I know sometimes my mother goes over to her sister’s house to help her clean) and that the girl couldn’t find a better house in Malaga. So that was pretty awkward because I could completely understand what my host mother was saying but I’m not sure if the girl quite new what was going on, especially since she just got there. It’s interesting because it seems that the kids from European counties only really come for a bout a week and I feel like even five weeks is too short of a time, I am not sure what one could learn in one week.

It’s funny because my host mother will also asked me about the other Dickinson student who is living with her sister, but I am pretty sure she has her confused with someone else because she asked me about a girl with a completely different name and she says that she never goes out, which I also really isn’t true about my Dickinson friend, so I found that a little strange.

Anyway today I had a really excellent time on the beach, since now I feel freer since I am done with my tests for the week. I’ve been reading Tender Is The Night and it’s been good but I like The Great Gatsby much better. Nothing really seems to happen in Tender and I don’t feel any attachment positive or negative to the characters. One of my Dickinson friends had the new Carlos Ruis Zafron book, which I didn’t even know existed so I plan to borrow it although he said it wasn’t as good as Shadow In The Wind. It was super windy in the beginning today on the beach, so much so that every once in a while there would be this huge gust of wind would come and blow up this HUGE dust storm, to the point where we couldn’t see, which was actually kind of cool to see. But the wind died down and it was great. I actually did some swimming instead of just bobbing. For some reason the beach was especially relaxing, probably because my mind was temporarily free of stress.

More of a laid back weekend...

This whole week I have been sneezing like crazy. I thought at first I was having an allergic reaction to something but last night my sinuses started hurting and I woke feeling pretty terrible, having a headache and my throat hurting and I was not sure what to do, since I was suppose to be taking a day trip with my friends today. At first I was planning just to go anyway no matter how I was feeling, I didn’t want to lose any opportunity to travel. What would my friends say, what would my family say that I’m not actually taking my opportunities here, so I tried to get up and go but then it took me a really long time just to do the simplest getting ready activities. I started thinking about how I would feel all week and being sick all week, during my tests and during the trips that I actually have to go on. It was so early and I thought that it would probably be better in the long run to try and get better now instead of being kind of sick all week. I think that I logically I made the right choice but I still can’t help feeling overwhelmingly sad about the whole thing. I feel like it could be just a general malaise of being sick and partly because I have no one to confirm that I made the right choice. It seems that every time I have to make a decision that I don’t want to make I always feel like in my head the retribution of everyone around me is much stronger than reality. I can’t give myself a break for being human. A large part of me is unforgiving, even if I did go I’m sure I would have a good time but then I would be mad because I would most likely get sicker.

So this whole weekend was kind of a bust. I spent a lot of it sleeping, studying, reading and just feeling kind of crappy. I did end up going for a walk along the beach after grabbing lunch and I ran into a small open market which was cool. It was an interesting thing to watch and I saw a lot of things being sold there that I wouldn't expect, like bed sheets, socks and underwear. There were some stall that had piles and piles of clothes that women were looking through, shoes, fruits and vegetables, candy and one stand that seemed to be selling nuts and olives. There were also selling jewelery and a lot of the same stuff that I see people trying to sell every day on the beach.

Today I was feeling a little better but now my stomach was bothering me. Whenever I feel physically ill, my emotions seem to follow a similarly negative path. I started feeling a little homesick and like I was not enjoying myself. But I still went to the beach with my friends, and of course they had a marvelous time and met all these crazy people and kept telling stories about how crazy it was. I know I made the right choice, that I would be regretting it all week if I didn't stay home but I always hate it when I miss out on things like that.

So for the rest of the night I am going to be having the exciting task of studying for my two exams in the next two days. Hopefully next time I update I will have better news...

Sorry I’m Late (No Not Just With My Blog, Another Shirt I Saw On a Man)

So what else has been going on with my life in Spain? One thing that I’ve noticed is that when I plug in electronics sometimes I will get small shocks, like if I plug in my iPod into my computer when it’s plugged in and then I touch my iPod I will feel a very very small shock. I’m not sure why this happens, but now I have to be very careful in which order I plug thing in.
I have tried a new fruit!! It is unusual for me to come across fruits I haven’t tried and the last time I attempted to try a new fruit (a quince) I learned that it was basically uneatable and only used in jams and pies. But my host mother gave me a great new fruit called a Nispero or a Loquat in English, which is about the size of a plum, is orange in color, is peeled and has two to four pits. It is hard to explain how it tastes but it has a pretty unusual texture and a somewhat tart sweet flavor and is fairly juicy.
Earlier in the week, I was really stressed about what to do for my free weekend. Spain is very close to Morocco and I really wanted to go there for the day. Once I started doing research into it I realized that it would basically take three days to take a one-day trip and cost a lot of money. I didn’t know what to do until I called home and my Dad told me that seeing the port town would be very touristy and would not be a good representation of Morocco and that it was basically just to get a stamp on their passport so they could say they’ve been to Africa. After I realized this I didn’t feel so urgent to get there and it felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I decided not to go and everyone who I was planning this with was fine with it (I was worried they would be mad at me for backing out). So instead of going to Morocco, my group is going to Gebralter and Turifa for the day on Saturday, so we will see how that goes.
Luckily my language professor moved my test to Tuesday instead of Friday so now I can go out tonight! I can’t really go out this Friday because we have to leave Saturday at seven in the morning. Going out is much less stressful than in the beginning now that I am more aware of how it works. I’ve been out twice now really, dancing and going out and weirdly enough both times on Thursday nights because we always need to get up earlier on the weekends to go somewhere. We usually start the nights by someone needing to get something to eat and then we go to the bars for awhile, but we start our nights earlier because the buses start running weirdly around 11. So afterward we usually end up at a discothèque, much earlier than we should be because we are not really use to the timing of going out here. The club usually starts getting packed around twoish and then we end up staying till around four so we can catch the 3:55 bus which is always late, but at that point it is the last bus for about an hour. I end up getting to bed around 4:30 and then I get up for class at 8ish or that’s when I set my alarm but I usually actually get up at 8:20.

Jesus Loves Me and My Tattoos- Pictures From Sevilla

1. Me, Arielle and Mara at our new favorite restaurant, where the cheese stands alone!












2. Me in front of Roman ruins.




















3. Flamenco dancer from the show.












4. View from the bell tower of part of the cathedral and the city.












5. Me at Reales Alcazares.

I have a bunch of pictures without people but I feel like you guys would be more interested in the couple I took with me in them... Maybe later I publish some more of the scenery/architecture shots.

Sexy In Purple (Another Shirt!) – My Trip To Sevilla

So of course since I’ve last written a million things have happened, since here in Spain compared to my normal life we try to fit about two weeks of activity in a couple days. The biggest part of course being our trip to Sevilla, which was this weekend. We began the day early again, meeting down in the center of town at 8. This time one of the students was late so we actually left about twenty minutes late. But then we were off and we got to back to sleep for about two hours. I actually slept quite well, although not completely the whole way. One thing I noticed while we were driving is that a lot of the fields of sunflowers that was so amazing to see over and over again. It was so beautiful.
We then took a little break and stopped for breakfast as a roadside stop. The place we stopped at was completely nuts and full of people and so I got a sandwich and a fanta and just watched the madness of people. And then we were off again and ended up driving for about an hour before we arrived in Sevilla.
The first thing that we saw in Sevilla was the Reales Alcazares, which was incredibly beautiful but unfortunately the tour guide we had was hard to understand in that he talked very quickly and used a lot of words I didn’t understand. But some of the things that separated this palace from the others that we saw was they had some amazing tapestries, one that was a map of how they saw the world and one that was depicting the new world. This palace of course had some amazing gardens, fountains and tiles as well, but after seeing all these ancient buildings that were built in the same time period, it’s a little hard to tell them apart, especially with the lack of understanding of our guide.
The next thing we visited was the cathedral, which was built in the gothic period and is one of the largest gothic cathedrals in the world. One of the interesting parts of this cathedral is they have a large statue of the Virgin Mary, which they parade around the city during festivals and many of the churches and cathedrals have these different statues. We also saw Christopher Columbus’ burial spot, although after I told this to my mother, she said there are actually a lot of supposed burial spots of Columbus and they haven’t been able to prove the actual burial spot. I really enjoy looking at cathedrals now especially after I’ve taken art history because I feel like I know more about the structures and the art and sculpture inside and they are more than just pretty buildings. The last thing we did before was left the cathedral was go up the 35 ramps (which they continently labeled) up into the bell tower and we saw the most amazing view of Sevilla.
Afterwards we went out to lunch and I split off with two other girls and we walked around a bit looking for a good cheaper place. It took us awhile but we eventually found a great place and we got this great baked goat cheese and I got a glass of wine and chicken with a house of sauce. When we met up with the group and by this point it was raining a little bit and it was pretty chilly at this point, which was funny because the people I told that we were going to Sevilla they would always say how hot is was going to be and then when we were there it was cold and rainy on the first day. It wasn’t unbearable.
Then we went to the hotel, which was a great break. When we went into the room it was funny because it was a double room but the beds were pushed together, which my roommate and I joked about. Also the bathroom did not provide shampoo, there was soap but no shampoo and really really small towels. We talked for while and then ended up talking a nap.
We woke up refreshed and went down to meet the rest of the group. We all met up and ended up walking around Santa Cruz one of the most famous neighborhoods in Sevilla, because it’s one of the oldest in the city. Our professor from the University pointed out some of the interesting sites, like houses where writers lived and died, famous statues and squares. After walking around for a bit we go to a restaurant called “3 Oros” I had a sangria, gazpacho, white fish and crème Brule. It was a really fun time, mainly because we kept cracking jokes that really didn’t make any sense, like when the waiter said one of the options for dessert was crème de tostada, one of the guys said that was actually toast and cream and that he was going to give his parents cool whip on toast and said that it was something that we ate all the time in Spain.
After our dinner we went to a flamenco show, at a place called “Los Gallos” (Mom here is the website http://www.tablaolosgallos.com/) which was one of my favorite parts of the trip. The show was so amazing and lasted about two hours. The combination of the music and the dancing was so beautiful. The dancer would dance for about 15 minutes and then a new dancer would come on stage, with a new different set of musicians, which were three guys one who played guitar and two would sing and clap. There were both men and women dancers and one of the female dancers even sang. My friend told me that the music had a story line to it but I could not really understand it. I did notice the connection between the music between Arabic music and flamenco music and also a similarity between Irish dancing and flamenco dancing. At the end, all the dancers and musicians came back on stage, for a sort of grand finale and it was so amazing. Then we ended the night and went to bed.
We ate breakfast at the hotel and it was fabulous. They had some of the best bread there and I don’t know why but it seems like in Spain they just have better bread here. They have the sliced bread here but a lot of the times sandwiches are on that great bread that is more like baguettes, but the baguette like bread here is vastly better.
Next we went to the art museum in Sevilla called “Museo de Bellas Artes” which was very enjoyable and has one of the largest baroque collections in the world. One thing that I noticed about museums is that the structure of the buildings is very different here in Spain. It seems that a lot of the museums are in converted buildings like old houses, which usually have courtyards and gardens. This art museum was an old convent and one of the rooms had the magnificent ceiling of the church. I always enjoy a good art museum but I am not sure if I saw all the rooms, which made me a little sad. Damn my bad sense of direction!
The next place we went was “Italica” which is old Roman ruins from the first century. It was about a half an hour away from the city and the professor talked about how one of the bridges was built by Calatrava and mentioned the Milwaukee Art Museum. The ruins were found under a garbage dump and it basically contained a whole city, with an amphitheater and columns and some originals mosaics from the floors. It was so amazing to see and was actually a beautiful location.
We then had some free time for lunch and we actually went back to the same restaurant with a larger group of people and then we perused some souvenirs and I got some postcards and a poster for my room, which was only 3.50 euros! We ended up being a little late back, but it was fine.
Our last excursion of the trip was going to the Plaza de España, which was quite beautiful, but by this point I was pretty tired and got a little sunburned on my shoulders. But overall I loved going to Sevilla even though we did so much in such a short amount of time.

I <3 Night (Another shirt I saw walking around Malaga)

Ok since I have such spotty internet, I'll probably be posting a couple blogs in one day since I still have my computer and home and it's a nice break write everything down. I've also been keeping a paper journal, which I did back in the States as well but it's great to carry around because I try to update it on the bus when I'm heading into the centro or when I'm going to class.
We have two more new students living in the house I am staying at, two boys from Austria. So that makes five students in my house at the moment. The other man is an older guy from England who is doing an intensive course at the same university I am studying at. It was kind of funny when my host mother first told me about him, all she said was an older student from England was coming to stay, so I thought she meant maybe a guy out of college or someone in their late twenties. So when I came back exhausted from out day trip to Granada and I saw this older man sitting on the couch watching television with them I assumed it was some relative of hers, but no that was my new housemate. I usually eat breakfast at the same time as him, so we chat a little in Spanish and he’s just doing this because he enjoys the language, not because of work or anything and he finds his class overwhelming and his other classmates are from China and Russia.
Today was a bit difficult in class because in my language class we are doing the different between preterit and imperfect past, which I always find difficult. I understand the concepts of when to use them, but when presented with a sentence and asked to choose between the two it is a little harder. We also started our section of art history and I found that the language barrier is much more difficult than in history because there are some terms which I’ve just never come across in Spanish before and I am more interested in art than some of my other classmates so it must be even harder for them, since they have less motivation to try and understand.
Since I am sitting at my café, I am thinking about some of the differences between here are the states, like for one thing how you pay for things. Even if you go up to the counter and order a coffee you always pay after you are done, not when you get your drink. Also once you order something, the staff basically leaves you alone, which I really like because that means I can sit here for a while without feeling hassled. But I wonder if they lose any money from people just leaving without paying. Also because we are close to the beach, there are many people who come by selling a variety of things, clothes, sunglasses, purses, the usual. But what I find very strange is that they are allowed to go into the cafés and ask people if they want to buy stuff. I really can’t image people going into a Starbucks in the states and selling knock off purses. Another thing that is very different about going out is that a lot of the times you don’t get a menu to start off with. Most of the time the waiters will ask you what you want without seeing what the options are, even at places that serve more food. If you want to see a menu you have to ask for one, which is not always bad but at first I found this really overwhelming, especially since I have the most trouble talking with people in public, since they usually have thicker accents and talk much quicker.
Tonight a couple of friends and I are going out with the Spanish student who does our tutoritas. We are either going to go into the center part of Malaga or to another town. I’m kind of hoping that we stay in Malaga because then I have more control over when I leave. I feel like it’s important to experience the going out culture, since it seems to be a big part of student life, but I also like to sleep and I’m not sure how I’m going to do without getting at least some sleep. I feel like going out shouldn’t be stressful, but the whole thing about being in a completely different place and not speaking the language that well, it makes everything more stressful for me. I’m sure I’ll have fun but I can’t help worrying about it.

All Angels are Terrifying (June 3rd)

Ack…. So much going on with me, I feel like the pace of this trip is slightly overwhelming, with all the trips, museums and class work that we have to do, I am really feeling exhausted a lot of the time.
Explaining things backwards. Today we had an exam for our history class and I even got up early so I could study some more. I was quite worried about it mainly because we were expected to write one essay out of two choices in Spanish. I was worried that she would pick one of the more difficult topics like La Republica or the King right at the beginning of the century. Of course when I got to class, she told us that we could either write about the Civil War or about the dictatorship of Franco, two of the things I knew the best. I chose to write about the Civil War because it was a shorter period of time and I knew I could remember much more of what she taught us and remember how to say it in Spanish.
After I got home I ended up taking a nap, and I was so quiet that my host mother didn’t even realize I was here. Then we had lunch, which was very similar to chicken noodle soup, except that instead of noodles there were potatoes and garbanzos beans. Once I was done eating I met up with a lot of my classmates on the beach. This morning started out pretty cloudy, one of the cloudiest days I’ve been here but by the time I got to the beach it had cleared up. I then found out that we had tutorias today instead of tomorrow which made me kind of sour because I really wanted to relax. So during tutorias we went to la Plaza Mayoria, which is actually in Malaga but not in the centro. We actually took a train that cost about 1.45 euros which is very cheap and it took about twenty minutes to get there. Then we got ice cream and walked around a little. My tutor had her car there and we all squashed in there (there we five of us) and we had to put one of the girls on our laps and then we had to make sure no one saw her because we could get pulled over for that. Then my tutor, the other girl and I ended up shopping around a little and I actually found this great dress, that was a little expensive (30 euros) but it fit me so well and I think it was worth it (I’ll try to put up a picture once I wear it). It was perfect timing because we were all planning to go out tomorrow and now I have this great dress to wear.
One thing that I have been noticing while walking around is the English on the tee shirts that the Spanish are wearing, which seems to be a popular trend here. Sometimes it makes sense but sometimes you get shirts like “All Angels Are Terrifying”, “A Bathing Ape” and “I <3 Night.” All Angels are Terrifying was on a guy’s shirt and made me laugh so hard…
Yesterday we went to the Picasso Museum in Málaga. Picasso was actually born in Málaga and his children and grandchildren donated much of the work. It was an interesting collection in that it followed his growth and change over the years. His painting when he was 13 was so amazing and it made me feel like wow even at 13 Picasso will be able to paint better than I will be able, even if I work on painting for the rest of my life. It also has a lot of his other works in different mediums like printmaking and ceramics. After taking ceramics for a semester I really appreciate ceramics forms so much more now when I see them in museums. One of his pieces especially caught my eye, "Vase with Flowers and Plate with Cakes" because he used a mix of ceramics and metal, like nails and I was very curious on how it was fired, since I know that at least in our high fire kilm at Dickinson, metal will melt if you put it into the kilm. And of course after struggling to create basic forms on the wheel, seeing his large amazing wheelwork forms was a totally different experience because I know how difficult it is even to make the most basic small form. Honestly I’m not the hugest fan of Picasso but I did enjoy a lot of the works and I thought the museum is a good stop.

Some pictures

So I came to the cafe to work on my journal that I have due on Wednesday... and of course I've not done anything of the sort, since my brother was up early I skyped with him and it was great to "see" him. Honestly Skype is so great since if both people have it is free! I actually bought a phone in Spain to talk to my classmates to make it easier to meet up and there is something you can do where you can have a "favorite country" and then it's only .18 euro a minute to talk to the states but free is free and although I have to go to the cafe I enjoy being able to see people on the video and talk without having to worry about my minutes. We also have a "friend's plan" here, where you can chose a group of people and then it's only .06 cents a minute to talk to each other which is great for us because that is all we really need. I am kind of suprised they don't have this option in the states.

Today I had paella for lunch along with salad and something called tortilla de gambas, which are shrimp fried in this special batter, which were honestly my favorite thing I had here. One thing that is different here is that my host mother actually has a frier built into the counter top, like one that you would see at a fast food restaurant but a lot smaller and none of the appliances have clocks in them. Anyway today during lunch my host mother offered me a beer, which she has never done and said that beer is the only thing to drink when you are eating paella, since it tastes better that way. During lunch I met her two brothers, which I did not know she had... one of her sisters is also hosting a student in my program.

Anyway here are some pictures of what I've been doing:
The first one is a picture from our first excursion, and is a great view of the city of Malaga.

The other photo is my house's patio and you can kind of see the view I have. My room is on the right side of the patio.

The third one is in La Alhmbra, close to Granada, in front of one of the many gardens/fountains.

From 5.27

Here's an email I sent out to my family explaining my first couple days in Spain... My brother suggested I write here instead, so that anyone can read what I write but I guess the whole blog thing is just unusual for me... I'm much better at email.

Sorry to send a mass email but I've been away from my computer for awhile and I wanted to communicate with everyone as quickly as possible... I found a cafe close to my home called Namaste- right down the street that has free Internet. I asked the woman in Spanish if she could help me with it and she responded to me in English, which is a little disappointing but that is definitely where I have the most trouble is in stores and with people who are not students or professors because of their accents and also my vocabulary in that department is a little lacking but I did manage to buy a notebook completely in Spanish. Another minor culture foible I made, is when I was being introduced to one of my host sister's friends. She asked me what my name was and I told her but then she moved closer, so I thought she couldn't hear me, but in reality she was going in for the Spanish double kiss on the cheek greeting, not that bad overall.

Overall things have been really good but quite busy. On an ordinary day, I wake up around 8 and my host mother will leave some bread, jam and orange juice out for me. Sometimes she is there seeing her younger daughter off, so we talk a little bit. She is super nice and she is really good to talk because I tell her about my day and she really seems interested. Then I take the number 11 bus down to the center of town. Most of the people from Dickinson live around this area so we all end up on the same bus so I will usually see 4 to 6 people on the bus that I know and we talk, usually in a mix of Spanish and English. Overall in the group, which is 13 people, the boys seem less inclined to practice their Spanish and the girls seem more into talking in Spanish outside of class. We take the bus to the last stop and then we walk for about 10 minutes to the building, which is basically a building for people from different countries who are taking classes at the university. We have two different sections to our class, one that is split into three sections, history, art and culture and then a language section. We have history first and then we have about a twenty minute break where we either go to a cafe for coffee and juice or sit outside in the sun. Then we have our language class which is split into two sections based on skill. I really like this teacher a lot because she is very good at explaining what words mean in Spanish, without using English, just actions and other words. She is ok when we joke around and tells good stories that relate to our learning.

Then we are done with classes and recently we have been doing things like getting Spanish cellphones (we did it as a group and they are basically pay as you go phones and you put euros on them, but for us it's only .06 cents to talk to the group and about .60 to call the states after eight, so it's perfect for meeting up and keeping in touch with each other, although it's been a little difficult to set up- one of the girl had family from Puerto Rico and she's been handling it but I don't know what we would do without her.) I'm glad we did that because the two times I've tried to meet people on the beach I couldn't find them and had no way of getting a hold of them. Today I went to the store and bought some shampoo, soap and body wash and then a notebook for my classes and I went with a friend which was great because it was muy barato (very cheap) only 4 euros for the hygiene products (as opposed to someone who paid 12 euros because they bought them at the mall where we bought the phones.

Then I go home for lunch, which is always super tasty. I always get a salad, with different veggies in it and today I had garbanzo beans, sausage and rice in a broth. Then I will either nap or go walking around. Around 6 we usually have been meeting up as a group again and either meet with our turtoritas, university students who take us around the city or with our professora, who will take us to a cultural site of Malaga. We also do things on the weekend- this weekend we're going to Granada on Sunday and me and my friends are going to a market on Saturday.

The transition has been up and down because on the one hand it is so amazing here. I literally live on the beach, and my house has an amazing patio where I sit and write in my journal. Both my host family and my Dickinson classmates are really nice- my older host sister offered to let me use her computer when I could not connect to the Internet at their house and she was super nice to me on the first day I was there when my Spanish was totally broken and she was hanging out with her friends. My host mother is also really great and she makes me feel super comfortable, not like I am in some strangers house and I try to make an effort to tell her about what's going on with me and I think she really likes this. They also have a cute little dog named Bender, who has the happiest looking face and will stand on his hind legs and snuggle against me when I pet him.

On the other hand, the language difference seems overwhelming and sometimes I get frustrated because I have a thought and I literally have no idea how to express it, not even using the vocab I know. There is also a lot to learn about navigating the city and I find that to be incredibly stressful, although now I know where we meet so that is easier but I really don't see a lot of the city and I feel afraid to explore because the streets are super confusing, not at all gridded and the street names are very long, usually people's names and they are hard to remember. I also find it difficult that I can't communicate with all of you guys!! Before I met up with the group I felt very isolated and had my only moments of "I want to go home." The first night I had trouble sleeping, because I had so many things on my mind but now most of those problems like Internet, getting my computer to charge (my converter was so heavy it was falling out of the wall) and communicating with people is solved. Now I am very happy but also very tired, we've had a lot of activity in the past couple days.

The night before....

So I am all packed and ready to go. There's just a couple more odds and ends that I need to do before I can get to bed. I still have to figure out what to wear on the plane and check on some things to make me less nervous, like checking out the map of the city of Málaga. I think it's now just hitting me that I am going to be out of the country tomorrow. Besides doing the five week program, my parents and I are going to travel for about two weeks in Spain and in France. Unfortunately my Dad is not joining us in France, so it is just me and my Mom, which is not bad in itself except my Dad is fluent in French and neither my Mom or I speak the language, so I am sure I will have some interesting experiences there. Somehow the first leg of the trip seems more frightening, in I feel I am more alone in this part, even though I am doing this with other Dickinson students, since I don't really know anyone else going on the trip. I know it will be well organized, but going into the unexpected it hard.

Ok I probably should get to bed... we have an early morning tomorrow.