Barcelona, because Barça is just the soccer team

Okay team, take a deep breath and get ready to dive into the craziness of last weekend.

Friday through Sunday: we excursion-ed to Barcelona, a six, seven-hour bus ride to the north of Alicante. So we spent the majority of Friday in the bus, one of a caravan of three that schlepped 120-some-odd CIEE students of all three program levels from downtown Alicante at 7:00 am, and rolled into Barcelona around 5:30, 6:00pm. To be fair, we did stop at a bodega on the way.

The bodega//winery was called Cordiníu, the family name of the founder (though the next few generations passed the business down through the daughters, so the family name changed quickly). And yes, the date on that pillar (outside the front gate of the winery) is 1515. That's how long this place has been around.

They make cava here, a sparkling wine that's made exactly the same way as champagne, but as Lluis, our tour guide, informed us, European regulations state that only wines from the Champagne region of France can legally be called champagne, so this bodega makes cava. Lluis explained the process to us, but I don't remember the details. He walked us around the lovely grounds of the winery, and through the old processing building, which is now a museum where you can see old wine presses, ancient wine bottles, "the oldest bottle of cava in the world" (which we knew was a joke but didn't know how until we turned the corner and saw the big amethyst geode shaped like a wine bottle). I touched wine barrels from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. There were wine barrels everywhere, stacked against walls, and in whole rooms, but Luis told us that their primary purpose these days is aesthetic. They don't keep the wine in them anymore because the wood affects the flavor, unlike the specially pressurized metal containers they use now.

He took us down to the cellars, full of green glass bottles covered in varying layers of dust. He explained the process of getting the sediment out of the bottles down there - how the bottles are stored upside-down at an angle, and rotated occasionally to bring all the sediment down to the neck of the bottle. (Remember this, Dad? I knew about this, so I must have watched something on Food Network with you?) They then used to uncap the bottles by hand, literally with a thumb over the bottle opening, and expertly release just enough pressure to send the sediment at the top spewing out without emptying the bottle. Lluis informed us that he'd tried it, and it had been a complete disaster. Today, technology has again taken over, and now they have a machine that freezes that wine and sediment at the very top, so when the bottle is uncapped, the little cube of ice pops out, and the rest of the wine is left intact, without sediment.

The cellars were huge, with signs on the walls that were effectively street signs, so that you don't get lost. To impress us even more by the expanse of wine storage, Lluis told us that the cellars hold 100 million liters, or 30 kilometers of wine! We got a glimpse of those 30 kilometers in the form of a short ride on a golf cart train through the low-ceilings passageways lined with dusty racks of bottles. Several of us agreed later that it was strongly reminiscent of Gringotts:

We exited the cellars by way of the tasting room, where we got to try two different varieties of cava, one rosé made with pinot noir grapes, that was light and floral and delicious, and a white that was decidedly drier, and seemed to be more strongly carbonated, and was also very good. After a quick picnic out in the parking lot, we headed back out on the road for the last few hours until Barcelona.

We had free time upon our arrival, so after checking into the hotel, a gang of us wandered around the streets near our hotel, one of which is named after me (not really). "Passeig de Gràcia" is Catalán, the traditional language of the region of Cataluña, and it is a much more prominent part of daily life in Barcelona than Valenciano (the equivalent here in the region of Valencia) is in Alicante. Many people in Barcelona speak Catalán more frequently than standard Castilian Spanish and it appears (in some cases exclusively) on almost every sign I saw. "Passeig de Gràcia" translates to Castilian: "Paseo de Gracia", or English: "Avenue of Grace".

As it got dark, we formed a Whitman gang, and met up with two more, temporarily Barcelonian Whitties in Plaza Cataluña, which is enormous and filled with pigeons by day, and enormous and prettily lit at night. It's surrounded by giant buildings of varying ages and styles, as seen in the background of this picture. The oddly sleek Corte Ingles (which is a sort of superstore chain) was definitely an odd man out, architecturally speaking.

From Plaza Cataluña, we went in search of cena//dinner, deciding to opt for a restaurant known to Amy, one of our Barcelonian companions, as a place for traditional catalán food. We ate a regional specialty, called calçots, which are grilled second-sprouted greens of onions. To eat, you peel off the charred tough outer layer, dip the green in a tomato-base sauce, and awkwardly lower it into your mouth from above. We also ate toasted bread with tomato and alioli (garlic mayonnaise) to start, and finished with crema de catalunya, a custardly dessert that sort of resembles creme brulée, but is flavored differently - with orange, I think. The entire meal was the sort of affair where a picture is worth a thousand words, so I give you these:

Calçots and Pan con tomate:

Charlotte, following the steller examples of Amy and Brian, tackles the eating:

Marybeth enjoys crema de catalunya:

I've neglected to mention the assorted meat platter that came between calçots and crema, not because the tiny steak, lamb chop, turkey, and traditional catalán sausage weren't delicious, but because we really didn't look funny eating them.

Moving on: Saturday morning. We kicked off our only full day in the city with a walking tour of the older center of Barcelona. We started with the obligatory introduction to Gaudí. Meet Antoni Gaudí, architect, 1852-1926, and pretty much the biggest deal in Barcelona. And, to be fair, it's well deserved. We started our day gawking at his impressive Casa Batlló (that's Catalán too, and no, I don't remember how to pronounce it). There are lots of stories and interpretations regarding the design of this particular house, but my favorite is the Saint George and the Dragon version. Not unlike Gaudí, George is also a big deal in Barcelona, and small representations of him slaying all manner of dragons can be found in the detailing on buildings all around the city. Gaudí went a little more abstract with his depiction: see the dragon in the roofline of the house? He's just hanging out up top there, while all the oddly shaped balconies? Do they remind you of skulls with bone columns at all? Because after all, the dragon ate a lot of virgins before George came along. (The happier interpretation, our tour guide informed us, is that the balconies are party masks, and the colorful mosaic behind them, which doesn't show up so well in photos, is confetti.)

The rest of the tour is best highlighted in photos:

La Rambla: teaming with tourists/thieves' hunting ground:

The streets get narrower the farther into the old city you get:

Window of a church:

A weekend market in a plaza hidden in the labyrinth of the old city:
A wall in the old Jewish barrio//neighborhood near the synagogue:

Stone man, real bird:

Inside the Cathedral of Barcelona:

Street musicians - she was playing Pachelbel's Canon:

This is all that's left of what used to be a Roman temple:

La Iglesia de Santa Maria del Mar//Saint Mary of the Sea:

After the tour, we were on our own for a few hours to get lunch. Three of us ventured to la Boqueria, the most epic farmers' market you can imagine, and loaded up with bread, cheese, ham (obviously), fruit, veggies, nuts, and the most spectacular fresh juice. We set up picnic in Plaza Cataluña, and enjoyed it all immensely.

After lunch we headed to Gaudí destination #2: Parç Güell (basically, our friend Antoni's playground):

Gaudí's house, which we walked through, but wasn't that cool. We did get to see his bathroom...

The view down and out from the enormous plaza. It was breathtaking despite the slight haze. On a clear day, I imagine it would be spectacular.

Underneat that same plaza. The acoustics down here are really cool...

...as these musicians demonstrated.

This style was fairly typical of the rest of the grounds:

Gaudí's style is very organic, and fits into the landscape in an interesting and unique way. Parç Güell is a fascinating place to wander around. It's also home to what was, I think, the most expensive Coke I have ever bought, which, in a country where Coke can be cheaper than water, is saying something.

For dinner, we wandered back down to the part of the city we had toured earlier, noting cool lighting and shadows, even though it decided to rain for a while. We ended up bypassing tapas bar after tapas bar and ate at a little stir-fry restaurant called "Wok to Walk". The cooks were Asian, and we had a mish-mash conversation of English and Spanish mixing Barcelona culture with American stereotypes, and generally having a fun time.
Sunday: morning - la Sagrada Familia; afternoon - bus.

So, la Sagrada Familia. It's a church - I guess that's the place to start? It was Gaudí destination #3, and is considered (completely accurately) his masterpiece. The construction was begun during his lifetime, but when he realized that he wasn't going to live to see it completed, he started working up models and drawings of the whole thing so that they would know what to do when he was dead. The drawings and models themselves are spectacularly beautiful, and the real thing is just awe-inspiring. The thing is, it's a good job Gaudí foresaw the potential length of the job because, just to refresh your memory, he's been dead for 85 years now, and guess what. His church? Still not done. They're currently aiming to have it done for the hundredth anniversary of his death. We'll see. There's still scaffolding everywhere. However, they did recently finish the interior, in time for the Pope's visit last year, so it's only relatively recently that visitors such as we have been able to see the inside as well as the outer façades.

Perhaps the most striking thing about la Sagrada Familia is the sheer number of things that there are to look at. The entire building, inside and out, is covered in spectacular detail and chock-full of a symbolism that Gaudí intended to be intelligible to the general public. Two opposite sides of the church bear representations of the birth and the passion respectively, and the interior walls, floor and ceiling are covered in artistic symbols that are just begging Dan Brown to set his next book in Barcelona.

This might be my favorite example:

The betrayal of Judas. Note the devil in snake form sliding around on the bottom right, and take a good long gander at the cryptogram on the left. Keep adding numbers, and see how many times you can come up with 33, Jesus' age when he died.


Then you walk indoors.
It's like walking into a great marble forest, with pillars every which direction, geometrically arranged but with the sense of being completely natural. The church itself is shaped in a cross, with (per the orientation of this picture) the altar in front, main entrance - as yet incomplete - behind, Mary's doors to the Passion on the left, and Joseph's doors to the Birth on the right. Their respective figures guard the side doors. Four central pillars support the center, two of them appearing in the foreground of this photo. The colored lamps near the top bear the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Catalán, and the two secondary columns nearer the altar have lamps for Peter and Paul. The altarpiece itself hangs, suspended, crucifix under a canopy above which grows wheat and under which hang grapes, representative of bread and wine. The whole thing appears to be ascending up into the gold-tinged light streaming down from what will be, when completed, Mary's tower, bearing on the outside a silver star and a crown in homage to the Queen of Heaven. It's not finished. On the inside however, it lets in the light into which a crucified Jesus ascends, up toward the more strongly colored gold triangle near the top. That's God, our tour guide says. The whole thing is shockingly beautiful.

The last thing I saw before we left, in search of lunch before the bus ride back to Alicante, was the school. It's in a corner of the enormous block where the church lives, and it's been in use as a school for the children of the workers. It's open as a museum now, with Gaudí's workshop displayed in one room, old black-and-white photographs of the classroom with colorful drawings done by children hanging in another. It's an open, cheery, comfortable building - an interesting contrast to the staggering awe of the structure that shadows it.


After a quick lunch in one of the many cafeterias in the few blocks around la Sagrada Familia, we were back on the bus. Several playlists, a short uncomfortable nap, and a stop in an impressive Spanish rest stop later, we were only a few hours out - just enough time to enjoy Gladiator, dubbed in Spanish, of course, with Spanish subtitles. The only distracting thing was that they didn't match up. Which seems a totally anticlimactic observation with which to end a weekend so full of new and beautiful things, but there you have it. Russell Crowe mouthing one thing, speaking another, and having it written out differently still was pretty odd.

Well, check that off the bucket list...

My host family and I went fishing in the Mediterranean today. No big deal.

After a late morning breakfast, we got dressed, gathered things, made sandwiches, etc, and were off. We drove up the coast a few minutes to a town called El Campello and walked out to a rocky point that I was assured was chulisimo//very cool. We were excited by the weather, which in Alicante (and indeed when we got out of the car in Campello) seemed perfect. Warmer than it's been since I got here, sunny, not a cloud in the sky... well, a picture's worth a thousand words:When we got out to the rocks, it was a slightly chillier than perfect. Of course, compared to the Pacific Coast, it was practically tropical, but my host sisters complained of the cold first thing. The wind was the real problem. My sister Ali explained that Alicante is sheltered by the surrounding hills and mountains from the brunt of wind and weather that hits other places along the coast, and indeed, it was much windier just ten, twenty minutes north than it had been in the city. Nevertheless, we made the best of it, throwing bread into the surrounding sea to tempt any cruising fish. My other sister Andrea set herself up with a long pole that she called valenciano, in reference to Valencia, which is the name of a city, but also this particular region of Spain. She hooked a piece of stale bread onto the end, and perched happily on a rock, the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up against the wind.

My host mom and I clambered around on the rocks, and she explained to me that this particular spot had been an ancient Roman village. There are a few scattered remains of walls and buildings up above, fenced off and open to visitors only during certain hours. But the rocks down by the sea were used by the Romans to form an old-school fishery. They shaped the rocks into pools, compartments where they could, with little floodgates, conceivably control the water flow and the fish populations. Very, very cool.
Other man-made holes in the rock have a more romantic story attached - one that gives it's name to this particular place: Los baños de la Reina//The Queen's baths. Story goes that in ancient (again, Roman) times, the queen would come here, of all the places in the Roman Empire, to hang out in the summertime. And looking around, wind aside, I can completely believe it. I can't wait to come back when the weather gets warmer, and swim around in the ancient Roman queen's pool.

We fished, picnic-ed, and ended up shivering. Andrea was determined to catch something, so we lingered, huddled on the lee side of the rocks, while Ali and I discussed her English class, the lyrics of popular songs in Spanish and English, how she finds starfish and octopi here with her cousin Dani in the summers, and how she wants to be a marine biologist. By the time we made it back to the car, we were all glad for its sun-baked interior.

Next on the list: actually catch a fish.

¡Que raro!

Welcome to the world of all-purpose Spanish phrases. The above is one such, generally used to express varying levels of disbelief or shock. In my experience, it spans the emotional spectrum from a semi-committal "huh, you don't say," to a freaked-out "whoa, dude, that's totally bizarre", and thus is appropriate for all manner of occasions, from the on-going saga of your host grandmother's allergy medicine (And none of the doctors knew what was wrong!? Que raro...), to a(nother) mysterious irregularity in the bus schedule (The 34 usually comes at 12:05 but today it came at 11:57? Que raro...). Lots and lots of things can be raro, which lends to it's all-purpose nature, and makes it an excellent opener to a blog post about some weird things that I've seen during this first month in Alicante.

I feel as though lots of people have been asking me that: What's the weirdest thing you've seen? What's so different in Spain than in the States? For the most part, it seems like it's been Spaniards who want to know - my host father keeps asking me if I recognize things, if we have something like this in the States. He seems almost disappointed that the answer is generally, yes. It's not as if things here are the same as they are at home, because of course it's different here. I'm in a different country, different culture, different history, different brand names (sometimes). But the fact remains that there have been very few things that I have noticed and thought - Wow, that's odd. (Que raro.) It's happening so infrequently, in fact, that I've been keeping a list of the weird things, adding one or two every five days or so. They're not all strange-weird. Sometimes they're just cool, like

1) the fact that postal workers here, the ones who drive around the big yellow vans and collect mail from the big yellow receptacles, wear normal clothes. Not only normal, but the postwoman I saw while waiting for the bus the other day was really nicely dressed. In the States she could have been going to work in an office, and a nice one at that.

But sometimes they're strange, like

2) the guy at the plaza, walking around the children's playground with his daughter, who was running circles around him. He was disposing of a cigarette (because as of January 1st it's illegal to smoke in children's parks, which people don't seem to be protesting nearly as much as not being able to smoke in bars. Go figure), but more importantly and noticeably, he was wearing pink pants. Okay, you're thinking, that's weird... but not that weird. Allow me to elaborate on the pants. They were unflatteringly tight, considering the man's less than svelte build, and appeared to be of a denim-esque material, although perhaps they only gave that impression because the fading on them was reminiscent of faded jeans. Except pink. And tight. And on a middle-aged man walking through a park with his daughter. Maybe you had to be there.

And then sometimes they're just funny-lookin', like

3) that other time at that other bus stop (because bus stops are prime observation posts) when a guy stopped his Vespa at a nearby traffic light. This in and of itself: not unusual. Well-dressed guy, probably in his late twenties or early thirties, leather jacket, motorcycle helmet, headed home for the midday meal on his snazzy little almost-motorcycle. And then I looked down, and the illusion was shattered by the enormous (and I'm talking enormous) package of diapers sitting on the Vespa "floor" between his feet.

Or there's irony, like

4) the sloppy graffiti adorning the side of a building adjacent to a vacant lot along the bus route from the university to el centro. It reads "No tirar basura."//"Don't throw trash."

And then, the raro to end all raros, there's

5) Kung Fu Fighting. As in the song.* Every afternoon, periodically, one can hear, clearly, from my room, strains of that epic musical piece, played over some sort of loudspeaker at such a volume as to be heard, I would suspect, by the entire neighborhood. Not the whole song, just part of it. Then, a few hours later, the ritual is repeated. Twice, sometimes three times a day? My schedule is such that I haven't been able to pin down exact frequency or timing, nor have I ascertained location. It's all quite a mystery. And it's (in the Spanish tradition of repeating words for emphasis) raro raro raro.

*For those of you unfamiliar with this essential piece of culture, I attempt to include as an example, this (provided I actually know how to attach a video to a blog post):

My New Neighborhood

So amigos, it's official. If and when I move to Spain, I've found my neighborhood. It's possibly the most adorably storybook place I've ever seen in real life. It's called the Barrio Santa Cruz, and it sits at the foot of the picturesque Castillo de Santa Barbara, unspeakably quaint with its maze of streets and stairways that don't allow for any cars. It's just gorgeous.

We must have been walking around too early for the American tourists (if indeed there were any to be found) because while we encountered plenty of meanderers with cameras, they were almost all Spanish, with a handful of younger British men who passed us on their way up toward the Castillo. We meandered with the best of them, spending a luxurious amount of time admiring the view from the overlook in front of the little church, which, just as an example, looks something like this--------->

We wandered past dogs, old ladies in folding chairs, and too many flower pots to count, though some were notably cooler than others.





It also probably helped that the weather was just about perfect: look at that sky!!

Not bad for a sunny Saturday on the Mediterranean.

Comida//Food, etc.

So I've already had some pretty fantastic encounters with edibles here. See previous posts for reference to ham haunches hanging from the ceiling, sheep and pig heads in the central market downtown. Tapas for three days straight, delicious coffee, chocolate, and frozen yogurt.

I was finishing dinner with my familia and mi padre happened to mention that they usually make the paella we had had earlier that day with rabbit - they had opted for chicken that day because of me. I quickly informed them that I had no aversion to eating bunnies, so they're putting in the conejo next time, but this led to a discussion of Spanish food and the various ways that my particular family has, wittingly or not, grossed out the American students who have come before me. I mentioned our jaunt through the market with the sheep and pig heads, and my padre, with a worrisome smirk, asks me if we didn't also see any cabezas de caballo//horse heads.

Well.

I flatter myself that I'm pretty good about trying strange foods. There are a few foods (I know, Mom, olives) that I do dislike, but I also enjoy things like raw beef and oysters, so I feel like I'm not really a hard sell when it comes to trying different foods. Apparently unlike other students who have stayed in this house, I didn't bring a list of foods a mile long that I am refusing to eat. But horse. It threw me for a bit of a loop. I probably had a pretty funny look on my face as I tried to process the shocking information that not only do Spaniards eat the animal that carried the men who shaped the American Dream, they think it's pretty damn tasty. My host parents spent the next several minutes sparing me from having to comment by raving about just how delicious horse is. Before you go, they've told me several times since, we're going to the market and bringing back two big pieces of horse. We'll cook it up and you'll see just how delicious it is. Vale, I said. Okay. As long as it's not tomorrow and I have some time to prepare myself, I'll try horse.

I was then rendered speechless again by the conversation turning, as it often seems to here, to the Chinese, and not in a particularly complementary or politically correct way. The Spanish don't often seem to worry about being what Americans would consider politically correct - not in a necessarily malicious way, but they do love their stereotypes. You know, my host mother says conspiratorily, los chinos eat cats and dogs!! Just imagine! How horrible is that? She turns to the couch where the family cat is, predictably, curled up asleep. If she's not asleep on the couch, she's curled up on or under my bed. I don't mind, and at this particular moment, I resist the urge to comment on how Mini el gato wouldn't make a very satisfying meal, given the lack of meat on her bones, because Mini's sweet, she really is, and I can't figure out how to say it in Spanish fast enough. I do mention, several minutes later, that for Americans, eating horse is not really that different than eating cat and dog. My padre shrugs, and says something to the effect of: well, to each his own.

The conversation broadens, and he asks me, half-watching the Spanish news story about Obama's meeting with Hu Jintao, why Americans are so reluctant to open their minds to other cultural experiences. He's already asked me about American gun laws, and why someone as crazy as Jared Lee Loughner was allowed to get his hands on a semi-automatic. I find myself trying to explain the American ideal to someone who clearly thinks (though he's too polite to say so outright) that it's sort of close-minded and self-indulgent. I also wonder about the sort of people who have traveled here before me, and what he has experienced that has led him to create this perception. One of these days, when I have time and energy to concentrate on thinking and speaking at the same time, I'll continue the conversation.

I can't believe it took me almost a week to see the Mediterranean.

So it's official: as of Friday, I've been in Alicante for one week, and Thursday night was the first time I saw the Mediterranean (because I decided that out of the airplane window doesn't really count). That's really terrible. This city is ON the Mediterranean. Not near - the sea is really right there. I've been a less than five-minute walk away from it at least eight times this week. I've just never walked down that far.

So, Thursday evening ended up being the end of a really fantastic day, seeing the sea for the first time. We had class in the morning (as we have all the mornings this week), and sitting through four hours of grammar review... well... some things don't really merit blog space. After class, I bused home for la comida, the main meal of the day, around 3pm. My madre's sister and father joined us, so I met my tia//aunt, and abuelo//grandfather. Friday afternoon, her other sister and nephew joined us, and Saturday afternoon I met the other nephew, and my abuela//grandmother. I think I've got the whole family straight now, but who knows. More might appear at the next meal.

But back to Thursday. After comida, I bused downtown to meet up with some Whitman girls and some Spanish student friends we had made during the program orientation. The original plan was to go tomar un café, or get coffee, which really means sitting in a cafe for several hours, only several minutes of which are spent actually drinking coffee. We actually ended up at a new frozen yogurt shop called "Sweet Yoghurt," which I still haven't quite figured out how to pronouce the Spanish way. "Yogurt" doesn't sound the same when the Spanish say it. Regardless of how to pronouce it, the frozen yogurt was DELICIOUS. I think they put less sugar in it here, so you can still taste the bite of the yogurt, and with strawberries and chocolate sauce on top... wow. Apparently Alicantinos don't really eat ice cream or gelato or frozen yogurt in the wintertime, but we sat out in the street under space heaters, and it was incredibly pleasant.

Afterwards, we walked down to la playa//the beach, and we were crossing the street about a block away when we ran into a fellow student from the program, just coming from the beach. Alicante suddenly reminded me really strongly of Portland - it's big enough to feel like a city, but small enough that you can run into anybody on the street by chance. It was a really comfortable, familiar feeling, which is kind of funny if you think about it, because I was actually with people that I know really well, and yet running into someone I've only known for five-ish days made me feel at home.

We continued walking toward the beach, inviting our incidental companion to join us, if he cared to be the only boy with a gang of girls. Pobrecito. We made it to the beach right at dusk.
We walked out past a very nice-looking hotel to a rocky point sticking out parallel to the beach. Looking back in the other direction as it got darker, the Castillo de Santa Barbara was all lit up and lovely at twilight. Other people, being more photographically minded than myself, suggested that we take a group photo, which is something I always wish I had suggested, but rarely do. It is, however, wonderful to have a photo of Whitties and friends in Spain, backed by a picturesque castle and a strip of the Mediterranean.
Really, all things considered, this picture is a pretty good representation of how great Thursday evening was, especially considering that it followed on the heels of Wednesday, which was probably the most stressful day I've had here so far (not, of course, counting the travel day...s?). It think that was what culture shock feels like: I was just acutely aware of exactly how much effort it takes to perform a daily routine in a second language and in an unfamiliar place. How much attention I had to pay to every single detail of everything that I did. I jokingly told a friend that afternoon that the night before I had even showered in Spanish. We laughed, but later agreed that it was not an unrealistic representation of the stress build-up we were accumulating. Since Wednesday it's been much better, due in part, I think, to the Thursday evening feeling. This place is amazing, and I can feel comfortable and relaxed here. It was a really excellent reminder.

Un tour, una familia, y una aventura de autobus.

¡Hola amigos!

There has been soo much going on, I'll do my best to explain without rambling. We'll see. I'll also do my best not to slip any Spanish words in odd places, which is getting easier and easier every day - good for my language skills, bad for my blogging comprehensibility.

First of all: the tour of Alicante. It's Monday night here, and we toured the city back on Saturday, which is like a lifetime in the Me/Alicante relationship, so I'll remember the order of things as best I can. The photos will help.

We took a bus from the CIEE offices on the University of Alicante (UA) campus "al centro", to downtown. For many people, it was the same bus route that they now will take from their homestays to UA for classes. Downtown, we assembled in front of this building:

which houses el Mercado Central, a big market that has signs outside pointing you toward fish and seafood on the first floor, and meat and sausage on the second floor. Don't worry, you would know which is which with your eyes closed - the smells are incredibly strong, though not totally unpleasant. Well, if you don't like the smells of fish and meat, it would probably be hell, but I didn't think it was unpleasant.

In front of the Mercado we split our group of 60-something students into 5 groups of 12 or so. These groups are those with which we now have our two weeks of intensive language class. Each group was assigned a guide, a CIEE professor or staff member. Paco, the director of the Liberal Arts program (ours) came with my group, and we spent a few pleasant morning hours walking around downtown Alicante. We started with a walk through the Mercado. This was by far the grossest sight we saw:
Those are sheep heads, in case you couldn't tell. There were also pig heads, but those still had skin on them and so were not as creepy. There were also rabbits ("like Bugs Bunny," Paco joked), pig skin (just the skin of the head, with the nose shape still awkwardly there), pig hooves, and cow hearts. We didn't see any testicles, but apparently those are pretty popular too. That five-minute meander through el Mercado made me really glad that I'm not a squeamish eater.


From el Mercado, we walked up a few blocks to look at the Plaza de Toros - a bullfighting arena. There are no bullfights until the spring, and there was a decidedly mixed feeling in the group about going. Paco seemed to represent more or less the majority when he basically said that it was a valuable cultural tradition to experience, but we should also be prepared for a lot of blood. I heard that some of the other professors and staff condemned the practice much more strongly.


Since there are no bullfights right now, there are posters up for other events outside the Plaza, concerts and things. There's also a museum around the back that has displays and information about the culture and tradition of bullfighting, with none of the blood. Also, unlike the bullfights themselves, the museum is free. And open during the winter.

Walking back toward the main part of el centro, we caught several glimpses of el Castillo de Santa Barbara, one of two castles in the city of Alicante, that I'm pretty sure has been here since the Moors in the 12th(?) century. Clearly, I need to brush up on my Spanish history. I think that we're hiking up the castle this weekend, when we'll probably get some cultural and historical context, and also what is apparently (unsurprisingly) a spectacular view of the Mediterranean from the top.

We walked through el barrio, which is a length of narrow street, almost alleyway, that forms the center of Alicante's celebrated vida de la noche - nightlife. And nightlife is a big deal here. I think I heard someone say in the past few days that Spaniards have one of the lowest average hours of sleep per night of any country in the world. I have no idea where I heard that or whether or not it's actually true, but I would definitely believe it. Apparently it's perfectly normal here to salir//go out until 4 or 5 or 6 in la madrugada//the early morning. Then they get up to go to work at 7 or 8. It feels a little bit like "no rest for the wicked." "No sleep for the Americans trying to conform to Spanish cultural norms!" (On a total Google-induced sidenote, did you know that that phrase - no rest for the wicked - is derived from the Bible, but was popularized in the 1930s by the Little Orphan Annie cartoons? Do you care? This is the rambling I said I wouldn't do.)

But speaking of random references...

The ad is for a furniture store, and the speech bubble directs readers to the store, 20 meters away, where sales abound and apparently there's no interest for 30 months. Obama looks convinced, if not exactly ecstatic about the prospect of cheap furniture. There's really nothing more I see fit to say about this.

Moving on: I moved in with my host family yesterday afternoon. They're really wonderful! Una mamá, un papá, and two little sisters, who are ten and almost fourteen respectively. I like all of them very much, and I'm very optimistic that the next few months here will be great! The single drawback is that we live a little bit farther out that most of the other students' homestays. Now when I say farther out, let me put that in perspective: Alicante is really pretty small, and the main part of town is even smaller. Regardless, it's divided into barrios//neighborhoods, and my barrio is a little farther than a quick walk from el centro...

Which leads directly to the story of the day. Today was our first day of classes, so we gathered in two places in town at 8am to ride the number 24 bus to campus together for the beginning of school. Many of the other students will continue to take the 24 from their homes to UA and back, but I live in a different direction, and will be taking the number 34 instead. But I didn't do that this morning - I rode the 24 with everyone else. Four hours of grammatical review later, we emerged into the sunlight, clutching the bocadillas//sandwiches that our mamás had packed for us. We had several CIEE activities after lunch, and then many of us meandered (by bus) towards el centro. Some people were on their way to buy cell phones, other had other shopping needs (or wants). I needed notebooks, so a few friends and I walked to FNAC, a mid-sized shopping center downtown. Finding nothing in their book section, but receiving a recommendation for a nearby shop, we sat in the FNAC cafe and drank coffee con leche and I ate an empanada argentina, a savory pastry that was delicious, thought I suspect that "argentina" only indicated the presence of beef instead of ham. We found the little papelería that the FNAC guy had recommended, and bought notebooks for our classes. Success!

Then the real adventure began. I decided it was time - nearly 6pm at this point - for me to head home. Now theoretically I knew that the no. 6 bus would take me from el centro to mi casa, but I didn't at all know where to subir//get on or bajar//get off the bus. My wonderfully patient friends and I spent the better part of half an hour walking up and down the street and staring at bus maps, trying to understand why the bus stop for the 6 wasn't where it seemed like it should have been. Well we finally asked someone who knew - another bus driver, in fact, and he informed us that we were on the wrong street altogether, which we probably should have guessed, but that wouldn't have been any fun, now, would it? So we pulled out our maps and headed down a few blocks, only to find that, after close map examination, we had gone to far, so we retraced our steps (again) and were finally successful in locating the parada//stop of the no. 6 bus. Here my friends left me, it now being on the far side of 6:30pm and all of us being anxious to get home for dinner.

The no. 6 came and went, with me safely aboard, and having studied the route guide at the stop, I was relatively confident that I knew at which stop I should exit. A combination of nerves and lack of actual knowledge of the area led me astray, and I completely jumped the gun, watching the coveted no. 6 bus drive away from the stop and then looking around to realize that I had no idea where I was. So I turn around and study the bus map for another few minutes, trying to figure out where I am, where I need to be, and which buses connect the two. I'm well on my way past frustration and edging toward panic when a nice-looking older woman sits down in the bus shelter with her grocery bags.
"Excuse me," I said in Spanish, "but I think I'm a little lost. Can you help me get there?" and I pointed at the map. She could and did - she informed me that I had merely gotten off several stops too early, and said that she was taking the no. 6 too, so when the next one came, we would get on together and she would show me where to get off. She was as good as her word and as a bonus added stories about her daughters who love to travel, two of whom now live in New York. Also, Spanish is the second most widely spoken language in the world after English. Is that true? Again, I don't actually know. She was convincing, but understandably biased. She also has a nephew who is a sociology professor at UA, and praised my Spanish as I thanked her profusely for saving me from a more lengthy adventure.
"Until next time!" she called after me in Spanish as I exited the bus (thanks to her direction) at the correct stop. Running on adrenaline and nervous energy, I made the three and a half blocks from bus stop to casa in record time. Well, I kept thinking, at least now I know.