I have heard about Osama bin Laden’s death and have many thoughts and ponderings on the topic. I could try to tell you all about them, but for a much clearer picture of my views, I think my brother Rick has painted a clearer picture with his own words. If you’re interested… check out his blog in the link below.
http://rickferrera.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/dancing-over-death/
Córdoba (Fri-Sun)
Segovia (Sun)
Salamanca (Mon)
Toledo (Tues)
Valencia (today/ Wed-Sat am)
It’s impossible to say which Spanish city is our favorite. They are all so impressive in many different ways. Whether it be the architecture, landscape, food, people, beach, etc. I’d have to say though… Córdoba is pretty high up on our list. We had the pleasure of visiting three cities surrounding Madrid (our hub was Madrid for three days) which were gorgeous and we’ll do a more in depth blog post about our time there soon.
But now, we are in Valencia. We knew Valencia was a bigger city… but it’s huge! It’s very modern but still has the old-time Spanish history and culture to it, which we really love. Last night, to add to the city’s grandness… was a soccer match between the two most popular teams in Spain: Real Madrid and Barçelona. This match was for La Copa del Rey… or The King’s Cup. The King and Queen were in attendance (along with SHAKIRA… love her) and gave medals to the teams following the game. I’d say it was similar to the excitement of Super Bowl Sunday in the States. Apparently some 45,000 fans traveled to Valencia for the game.
The city was alive with the clammer and hubbub of excited (almost neurotic) fans. You could see people decked out in their team’s gear starting in the early hours of the day. Walking past pubs you’d see them full of Barça fans or Madrid fans… rarely did they mix. There was heightened security at the game and around Valencia… policemen on horses, four-wheelers, motorcycles, AND in helicopters. These soccer hooligans are known to get incredibly rowdy.
We strolled around the stadium and the surrounding pubs the hour leading up to game so we could take in the insanity and culture of the fans. You could hear the yells and cheers from the stadium blocks and blocks away. Once it started nearing game time we found a pub a little farther away from the stadium where we could actually find a place to sit… and watched as the two amazingly talented teams fought for the cup. Real Madrid won 1-0 in overtime. It was SO CLOSE.
Though we’re not true fans… we find ourselves to be cheering for Barçelona because of the despicable behavior of some of Real Madrid’s star players. Soccer in Spain is a different world. It was really interesting to see the culture that goes along with it.
Anyway, more later about our vacation. We have one more full day in Valencia and then will be heading back to Albox on Saturday.
Today marks our first day of our Holy Week vacation. Holy Week, known as Semana Santa in Spanish, is Spain’s most popular week for traveling. Bus, train, and plane schedules are doubled. After traveling so much during the lull of the tourism season over the past few months, we have definitely noticed a more lively and vibrant buzz around this country.
To follow suit with the traveling trend this week… Kevin and I are in Córdoba! You can find little-old Córdoba nestled directly south of Madrid, in Spain’s southern-most region of Andalucía. This city is known for it’s ancient mezquita (mosque) built around 700 AD. As you could assume of a city with a structure of such an age, there is a rich history and culture that envelopes the city. Winding streets covered with bold flowers, white-washed buildings, Islamic-influenced architecture and hidden plazas are abundant.
We took this afternoon to get oriented to the city, enjoy a typical Córdoban dish of Salmorejo, and decide what we want to do in this beautiful city tomorrow.
As I wrap this post up for the night, we can hear the clammer of voices, dishes, and music from the large plaza below our hostel window. Our ceiling fan is on high and our window is wide-open. It was 80-some degrees today!
The last two weekends have been true displays of openness and generosity on the part of our new Spanish friends. Two weeks ago, our friends Juán and Sonia invited us to spend the weekend in the costal city of Garrucha. Juán ( a native of Cartagena, Murcia) is a teacher at my school and lives in Vera Playa, next to Garrucha. Sonia (a native of Alicante) is a friend of Juán’s and a teacher in nearby Macael. She lives on the third floor of a sea front apartment complex in Garrucha. Before our trip, Juán told me at school “From Sonia’s flat, it is impossible to see anything else but the sea.” And he was right.
Amy and I stayed for two nights in “Hotel Sonia,” spending our time getting to know our good friends. On Friday, we started the day with lunch at a nice little restaurant called La Taberna Alcatifa, enjoying some salmorejo (a thicker, creamier gazpacho), couscous, and various pasta salads. We spent the rest of the day in Sonia’s apartment, watching the fishing boats come in and discussing music, culture, school, and useless facts (one of my interests, as well as Juán’s). For instance, Juán told me that tapas were invented in the Spanish city of Jeréz, Cádiz. Jeréz is famous for its wine-making. Way back when in the wine bodegas, fruit flies and other bugs would commonly hang around because of the damp conditions. When the wine makers tasted the wine, they would often cover their glasses with pieces of bread of cheese to keep the flies out when they were in between sips. Thus, this common accompaniment of food with alcohol became what we know as “tapas” today. Anyway, the evening was spent playing Trivial Pursuit (in Spanish…we got stomped…though I did know that Marilyn Monroe’s second wife was Joe Dimaggio and that the order of nuns named after “La Virgen del Carmen” are the Carmelitas) and watching a movie.
The following day, we went to the mercadillo (little open air market) a bit further inland in Vera Pueblo and later met up with Juán’s brother and another colleague of mine named Camacho (Camacho is actually one of his last names, but apart from his family, everyone knows him as simply “Camacho”). We all met at a little authentic Italian restaurant on the shore aptly named Little Italy. It was quite the group- Amy and I, Juán, Sonia, Camacho and his wife Mercedes, their two daughters Ana and Belén, Juán’s brother Ful (his full name is Fulgencio, a typical Cartagenan name) and his wife Miriam, and their adorable 4 year old daugter Olivia (I love having conversations with Spanish children). Lunch was spectacular! One thing I love about Spanish lunches, that I may have mentioned before: When Spaniards go out to eat, they don’t skimp on anything…Salad and appetizers, main course, dessert, coffee, and a digestif to top it off (we drank aranchino…it is basically the orange version of Limoncello). The rest of the day was spent at Camacho’s family’s home, in a nice condo complex near Sonia’s house. We sipped on some fine Spanish liqueor, watched some of the Barcelona game, talked about everything from soccer to movies, played some padel (a hybrid of tennis and raquetball that apparently exists only in Argentina, Spain, and southern France…Amy and I played Ana and Sonia…they won 9 games to 8 ) and after a while we ate yet again! Camacho prepared a delicious, tapas-style seafood dinner with some fine wine. Amy and I went home exhausted from all the food, fun, and Spanish.
Before leaving town the next day, would you believe it?….we got together for another big lunch. It was a place recommended by Camacho called La Cenachero. Of all the eating that weekend, this meal left me in a daze….migas (traditional dish of soft bread crumbs served with meat and peppers), patatas bravas (potatoes with a zesty tomatoe and garlic sauce), patatas a lo pobre (potatoes sauteed with peppers and onions), alitas de pollo (chicken wings), caracoles (boiled snails with a paprika-like flavor), cebollas fritas (fried onions), berenjena frita con miel (fried eggplant with honey), boquerones (small sardine-like fish), calamares (calamari), bacalao (cod), croquetas (fried roll of dough and fish), tortilla de huevos de codorniz (scrambled quail eggs), and the list goes on…After eating lunch or dinner in Spain, I typically don’t reach the threshold of being full. Believe it or not, this is rare. I attribute it the fact that most often dishes are shared amongst the table, and the portions are usually moderate in size. But that Sunday, we ate ourselves into a daze.
The exhaustion after a weekend of not only stuffing yourself with food and wine, but also listening, speaking and understanding Spanish is truly indescribable. All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and we owe it all to our Spanish friends! When we finally got home to Albox on Sunday night, “Estamos hecho polvo” (We were beat).
As I am typing this, I really don’t know where I’m going with this post. That being said, today I glanced at the kitchen calendar (a generous gift from the Chinese buffet in town), and realized that Amy and I have a measly 71 days left in Albox. Though the original plan was to come home on Friday, June 3rd, we will be changing our return trip to Friday, May 13th. As Amy mentioned in her previous post, we are heading home for Chris and Sarah’s wedding on Friday May 20th. Amy wants to be home a week ahead of time because she’s a bridesmaid, and there will be plenty of weddingish stuff to do the week prior to the big day, no doubt.
Only 71 days…unbelievable. So cliché I know, but it seems like just yesterday my mom dropped Amy and I off at O’Hare, newly married, with our lives for the next 9 months neatly packed into one red, rollable piece of luggage. I feel like only days ago I was eagerly rocking back and forth in my seat on the airplane, Spain-bound, unable to sleep and thinking of more and more questions I could ask the British Airways flight attendant just so I could hear his accent.
I know Amy and I tend to blog about popular cultural traditions and events to provide perspective on how drastically different our lives are in Spain. We also have blogged quite a bit about our excursions to other parts of Europe. But reflecting, it’s the ordinary, routine parts of our lives here in Albox about which we should have written more. Our trips have been superb, but I think we will look back most fondly on our adventures here in Albox on Calle Duque de Ahumada.
In retrospect, I think the first half of of our stay was a time of constant adjustment, especially after our trip’s luster began to wear off. Adjustment was not easy. I know some of you reading this may be from a small town, but at first it was a bit daunting to envision 9 months in a tiny pueblo, two hours from a major metropolitan area, with no car and an average grasp of the language. And it didn’t help that when we arrived, it felt like we were walking around with “OUTSIDER” printed on our shirts. During the first few months, we sometimes struggled to establish consistency in our day-to-day lives in this new culture. I know many people believe that routines are mundane and toxic in some cases, but at least a semblance of one can be comforting and grounding. During the first half of our stay, I personally found myself resenting certain parts of the Andalusian culture from time to time. I’d dwell on the conveniences of home, making me only live and think more like an outsider. Eventually, though I can’t quite pinpoint when, we accepted the rich, relaxed culture and achieved somewhat of a balance between those innately Spanish habits and our previous habits.
Like in the US, we still jog, eat oatmeal and Doritos, bring our nalgene water bottles everywhere (Amy and I have gotten so many questions about the contents of these bottles), watch movies and listen to music in English, and spend our time working. But now, we eat big lunches at 2 PM and small dinners around 9PM, enjoy loads of seafood and bread, drink our coffee sitting down together rather than on the run, sleep mid-day, walk everywhere, and slow down our general pace of life.
In my opinion, our stress level has plummeted, and we’ve come to find enjoyment in simpler things. For instance, it is a big deal for us when our clothes have finally finished drying in the atrium between the apartments or when we’ve washed a pile of dishes. It’s invigorating to pick up bread from the grocery store right before siesta time, when they’ve just put out a couple armfuls of fresh, warm loaves. It’s worth celebrating when we’ve made the 15 minute walk to the grocery store and returned with spoils for the next week or two. And it’s almost indescribable to get a freshly filled butane tank from the “bombona man” (the guy who drives his truck around town, delivering freshly filled gas tanks) so we can enjoy hot showers. I love that the owners of our favorite café know our names and know exactly what we want to eat and drink when we drop by. And I love even more that during a 5 minute walk through town, it’s inevitable that you will see a handful of people you know. That’s not to say that I still don’t occasionally encounter something that I truly dislike here, i.e. the free-for-all mentality of getting in/standing in line and the painstaking amount of time it takes to do something as simple as deposit a check or mail a postcard (Rick Ferrera once remarked that you could be the calmest, most peaceful person in the world, but the minute someone cuts in line you want to get them in a headlock. Ok, he maybe didn’t mention the “headlock” part, but I’m sure he’d agree).
As Amy mentioned, prior to our trip to Barcelona we stayed in Albox for over a month straight, saving money and enjoying our time together in our little Andalusian world. It was during this time I started to reflect on how we’ve changed and what we’ll miss. Just the other day, our friend Emmet brought up an interesting point. He said something along the lines of, “Have you noticed that we’ve stopped comparing other parts of Europe to the United States, and started comparing them to life in Andalusia?” I hadn’t really realized this until he said it. We are kind of “honorary Andalusians,” or “honorary Albojense.” Albox will always be the place that Amy and I had our first apartment, and the place where we spent our first year of marriage. Now, I won’t get carried away and say Albox is the best, most magical place on Earth. And to be honest, I couldn’t see myself living here for two years. But I will say that we’ve created a life for ourselves here, and we’ve changed. And though we have a few months left, it’s safe to say that Albox is special, and we’ll certainly miss it.
After a month and a half of staying around the Almería region we are taking our first trip to northeastern Spain. Our schools (all over Andalusia) are celebrating a long weekend… starting tomorrow. We rarely work on Fridays and this coming week we will have Mon and Tues off of work! We’re so excited for a little break. Those two days happen to be both my and Kevin’s longest days of the week (work-wise). So this is great, you guys.
The semi-scary part of our trip though, is that when we get back to Albox it will be March already! I can hardly believe that. Kevin and I are heading home in a couple months for the wedding of our good friends, Sarah Elmore and Chris Hutton. They’re getting married in May and have a wedding website up with a countdown til their big day (May 20). That day is only 80-some days away. Which means that Kevin and I have only 80-some days left in Spain!! Where did these past months go?
We’ve been doing a good job focusing on the here and now and not thinking too much about our upcoming return home. Some days it’s very exciting to think about going home (especially to see all of or loved ones) and some days it seems a bit sad that we have to leave this place. But if we stayed for more than one year we would start to miss everyone way too much.
Anyway… Barcelona here we come!
For the first time, I had a dream where I spoke completely in Spanish. It was so cool… and it’s one of those dreams where you realize what you’re doing which made it even better.
I was just talking to the lunch lady who works at my school so it’s not all that amazing… but it was still awesome. It’s kind of encouraging too, especially to remember it on the days when I feel like my Spanish comes out sounding like Chinese (also known as “lizard tongue”… this is what Kevin and I call our Spanish when it comes out sounding like our tongues have grown a foot and are flopping around in our mouth).
