The Next Day

Conil was a blast. The city literally explodes with night life around 1 am, with people flooding the already crowded plazas and narrow cobblestone streets to enjoy the paradise-like weather. We began our adventure on the beach, worked our way through the city, ate some tapas for dinner, found an outdoor concert (where I was thrown on stage by some extra-friendly Spaniards, and coerced into singing "Stand by Me" with the band) and danced until dawn at a few different clubs. We asked for red bull, they literally gave us cans of Toro Rojo. (Torro Rojo translate literally to Red Bull in Spanish)

Heads up, these are expensive. You're probably better off buying your drinks for the night beforehand.

Word of the Day: Aventura - Adventure
Tuvimos una aventura en Conil anoche. We had an adventure in Conil last night.

Conil de la frontera

Originally, we wanted to go to Sevilla this weekend to see a flamenco show, bullfights, and some castles and what not. Our Spanish friends advised us to not follow through with this trip, and instead told us to visit a town named Conil. Apparently a lot of the college age Spaniards go here to read and study spanish and talk about math all night or something like that. We're taking the bus in tonight, leaving at 7 am , this should be interesting.



Word of the Day: Bailar - To dance
Bailaremos en Conil por todo la noche. We will dance in Conil the entire night.

Final Field Trip

Today we went on our final excursion to the small village of Zahara de la Sierra. This place, besides being old, and important in the Crusades, is famous for it's white villages and panoramic views. We hiked to the top of the castle on the top. Later we toured an olive oil factory where we 'sampled' wines, cheeses, and olive oil. For some reason they had us start 'sampling' beer too. Let's just say I learned a lot.  I don't remember having this much fun on field trips back home.

This program is going way too fast. 

Word of the Day: Aceituna - Olive

Las aceitunas de Zahara son muy sabrosas con vino tinto. The olives from Zahara are very tasty with red wine.

Learning the Language...

I thought I had a pretty solid grasp of the Spanish language before I came here; smiling and staring blankly at the teacher in most of my classes helped me slide under the radar of the last five years of Spanish classes. Living in a different language however, is a completely different challenge. The easiest errand can become the most difficult and impractical chore, and at the same time, a seemingly impossible task can become the most simple if you just ask someone politely. The accent here in Cadíz is supposedly the most difficult to understand in all of Spain; these Andalusians leave out "s," they lisp, they speak really quickly, and they use abbreviations like they're going out of style. You can't really comprehend the difficulty in understanding idiomatic expressions and slang until you try and learn them in a different language. For example, the expression "oh, that girl doesn't have a grandma" is meant to describe a girl who needs excessive praise and compliments, because here in Spain, the grandmas usually shower their granddaughters in compliments about their looks. I learned to just nod and smile until they caught on and finally explained it to me. Luckily, they're all really friendly and relatively patient. The fact that we're from California also helps win them over. Just the other day, we taught a few kids (Miguel Angel and Antonio) how to play frisbee. While a few things might have been lost in translation, I'd like to think that they had fun. The kid has quite the arm. I talked to his mom, and he's getting a frisbee for his birthday at my request.


Word of the Day: Guay - Cool
El partido de frisbee de ayer fue muy guay. (The frisbee game from yesterday was cool.)

Jerez & Sherry

Today we went on a field trip to Jerez de la Frontera, a city known for it's famous Andalusian horses, Sherry, and historical significance as an ancient Muslim outpost. After touring a castle, we toured the Tío Pepe vineyard. At the end, they let us 'sample' two different types of sherry. Sherry packs quite the unexpected punch.Then we saw the final Harry Potter in Spanish. It was good, but I'll be honest, Malfoy didn't look too good as a dad.

Word of the Day: Resacón - hangover
Tuve un resacón despues de la siesta porque bebí mucho sherry en Jerez. I had a hangover after siesta because I drank alot of sherry in Jerez.

Took a placement test, ate a few live shrimp, and jumped off the pier during high tide. I could feel the legs of the shrimp on my tongue while I bit into it. Don't worry, it was his time to go, I made it quick and painless for the little guy. He tasted like a pretzel. That was alive. And juicy. Time for some sleep, it's siesta after all. :)

Here's a picture I took of the view.

You should see it at sunset.


Word of the Day: Viaje (pronounces Vee- ah-hey) - meaning: trip, vacation

Noche Buena

Still recovering from Jet lag, I made sure to get my two hour nap during siesta, waking up right before our tour of Cádiz. I'll talk about how much I love siesta in another entry because America really needs to adopt  a mandatory nap session right after lunch. After eating dinner, we played some soccer on the beach, and after that we jumped in the water and bodysurfed a bit. Now we're going to find a drink. Does it get any better?

Word of the Day: Divertir - to enjoy, have fun (It's starting to make sense why the Spanish have so many synonyms for "enjoy") 

Divertimos mucho en la playa (We enjoyed ourselves alot at the beach)

July 12th, 2011: First day in Cádiz

With layovers, the whole trip lasted somewhere around 23 hours or so. We had a flight to Chicago, a flight to Madrid, a flight to Jerez de la Frontera, then a bus ride to the train station, a train ride to downtown, then a walk to the school. 

The beaches are topless, the Spanish speak really quickly, and I can see a really old cathedral outside my window. Sick.

July 9th, 2011: Last Day at Home

    It took two van-loads to move me into my apartment this last September, and now I have two suitcases. Since I can't really drive my van to Spain, I'm limiting it to the essentials; meaning no wolf-shirt, no baseball hats, and sadly, no guitar. Apparently, Spaniards don't wear flip-flops or shorts, and Spanish students get dressed up for class, meaning my flip flops and shorts will scream 'American,' and my sweats and tank tops might need to stay at home on school days. My plane leaves tomorrow morning at 9 A.M. from SFO, and after an hour layover in Chicago, I'll be on my way to Madrid. Landing in Madrid sometime on Monday morning, I take a connector flight to a city called "Jerez de la Frontera."From Jerez, we'll hop onto a bus that will take us to Cadíz, where I'll be spending the first month of my year, for a language immersion program to help me with my classes in Barcelona. 

   Being one of the oldest cities in Europe, Cadíz sits in the South-West corner of Spain, on the Atlantic Coast, where it once served as a port city for ships entering the Mediterranean some 3,000 years ago.         

Cadíz, with the cathedral's iconic golden dome in the center.