laundry day

Mondays in Sevilla are a very important day in my apartment here... Mondays are laundry day! All of our dirty clothing from the week accumulates in bright blue garbage bags, and then on Mondays our senora takes on the task of washing all of it in her little tiny washing machine. Then, on Tuesdays and Wednesdays they are all hung out to dry. If we go to the roof on these days, which we often do, we see all of our clothes hanging by clothespins and perfectly organized. I think it looks like something out of a little kids’ book. J I will miss this very much when I am back at home, holding out as long as I can to do laundry in order to not use up all the money on my laundry card. 

flat Rodrigo!

The other day, I received a very cute little package in the mail from my almost seven year old brother. Inside, there was a paper "flat Rodrigo!" I am now supposed to take this little Rodrigo with me to wherever I am traveling, take pictures with him, and then record in a journal what we saw or did. I am excited to help out with this project! Flat Rodrigo will be going to many places in Spain and Italy with me.

halfway pancakes

In order to celebrate our "halfway point" in Spain, me and Kayla went out to have an American pancake breakfast!! We are now a couple weeks after halfway, but our date kept getting postponed... The pancakes were a little different than they are at home, but they were still delicious and familiar enough to make us feel American for the morning. :)

more about Morocco!

After trying to explain the more serious side of my trip to Morocco, I will now tell you a little more about the more light-hearted side. As I stated in my other post, we spent a LOT of time in a bus or on a boat. Driving through the mountains was absolutely gorgeous, but sometimes terrifying. There were times when I thought our big coach bus would fall right off the side of the cliff it was driving on.

The hotel we stayed in was a four star hotel, and it was actually very nice. We got to have Moroccan-style buffet a few times, so it was fun to try the different foods. On Saturday night after spending the whole day in Medina, Kayla and I went with some other girls out to dinner. At the restaurant, the very friendly owner, named Abdul (all of the men that I met in Morocco were either named Muhammad or Abdul!), was very helpful and made our evening quite enjoyable. It was really fun to be able to talk to a Moroccan man and learn a little bit about his life in Fez.

On Sunday, the highlight of my day was my ride on a camel. When I heard there was a camel ride included in this trip, I got super excited about it and could not wait to have that experience. I was imagining a one or two hour ride on a camel into the sunset in the Moroccan desert…

Well, that didn’t exactly happen. When it came time for our camel ride, our bus pulled over to the side of a highway and met up with a man standing in the middle of a field with two sad-looking camels. We all lined up, and then two by two we took our turns riding the camels for approximately two minutes. Basically, we got on the camels, they got pulled around in a circle by the Moroccan man, and then we got off. Haha… not what I had originally pictured. It was still pretty fun and now I can proudly say that I have ridden a camel!

We thought the "McArabia" was pretty funny... 

people in Morocco

Here are some of my pictures from inside Medina. Like I said, it is really hard to capture my experience using pictures, but hopefully these can give you a better idea of what it was like.

Balak!

"Watch out!" is one of the two phrases I learned in Arabic, the other one being "La", which means "No." These were very fitting phrases to learn, since both were used frequently in the markets we visited. We heard "Balak" when a taxi (which in this part of Morocco is a donkey) was coming through, and we needed to use "La" when street venders were pestering us to buy things. 

My Moroccan adventure this past weekend was unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life. I am not going to post pictures just yet, even though I do have some great ones, because they don't do justice to the Moroccan culture, landscape, or people I encountered. Actually, words can't really describe it very well either but I think they might do a better job. I know that sometimes it's easy to skim over words when there are pictures to look at, so in doing this I'm making sure that you actually read what I have to say. :)

We spent most of our time in the city of Fez, which is one of the largest and most important cities in Morocco. Actually, back up... we spent most of our time in a bus or a boat trying to get to Fez... We spent the second biggest amount of time in Fez itself. The city has two distinct sections: the old part, called Medina, and then the new part. Medina is a walled off area where there are 400,000 inhabitants, 9400 streets (if you can call them that when they are only about 4 feet wide), 375 mosques, 80,000 shops, NO cars or motorized vehicles, and lots of donkeys. 

When we were walking through Medina, there were all sorts of smells drifting around... fresh fruit, dust, raw meat and fish, perfume, donkeys, cigarette smoke, spices, and people... Lots and lots of people. There was also a flurry of sounds all around. People speaking in Arabic and French, babies crying, donkeys' hooves on the ground, meat sizzling on the stove, people bartering to lower prices... The streets were dirty, and in general the people were poor. There were men, women, and children begging on nearly every street corner.

Being in and among the people of Medina was my favorite part of the trip. It wasn't necessarily my favorite because it was fun, but more because I was able to see firsthand a culture that I previously knew little or nothing about. Parts of it reminded me of Spain. Parts of it reminded me of the Philippines. However overall, Morocco was completely distinct from any other place I've been. 

It was hard to be in such a poor place and see people who are barely getting by. It made me evaluate the priorities in my life and realize how blessed I am. However, there was something even harder for me than witnessing the poverty. 

I was SO close to the people... smelling them, touching them, being squished in between them... and yet I felt a huge disconnect with them. When I would make eye contact with people, it was like there was an understanding between us that we don't understand each other. Their lives are so different from mine! I want to know how to connect with them and learn how the world looks through their eyes. It was extremely difficult for me to accept that this was not going to happen during my short trip and probably won't ever happen to the extent that I want it to. The barriers of language, religion, and location are HUGE. In order to know them in the way that I desire to, I would have to learn Arabic and live among them for an extended period of time. 

Because of all of these thoughts, my trip ended up forming many more questions in my head than it answered. I did learn a lot, but one of the things I learned is how much I still don't know.  

mi primer media maraton!

The half marathon that we ran in Cadiz was a blast! It was my first one ever, but it made me want to do more and maybe even a whole marathon someday. (??) We'll see. As you can probably see from the picture of all the runners, we were extremely outnumbered when it came to the male-female ratio. When we got to the registration on Sunday morning, we stuck out like sore thumbs because we were a group of FIVE American females amidst a crowd of dark-haired, Spanish men... It was pretty funny. We did end up seeing about eight or ten Amazon-looking women, but in general I think Spanish women don't run. All of the men that we talked to were really nice and it was fun to talk to some of them during the race. It was a super encouraging and low-key atmosphere, which I loved. There were people who cheered us along pretty much the whole time with phrases like "venga, muy bien, animo, and vamos!" After the race, we got some sweet (free!) t-shirts which definitely made the 13 miles worthwhile!

weekend in paradise...

This Saturday, I felt like I was living in a dreamland! We went to Cadiz, a city a little less than 2 hours from Sevilla, where we spent all day Saturday at the beach and then ran a half marathon on Sunday. The beach, ocean, and city were incredibly beautiful, and we were really fortunate to have perfect weather on both days. (sunny and calm on Saturday for the beach and a little more cloudy and breezy on Sunday for the race) 

Since it is only March, the beach was not too crowded (even though it may look like there were quite a few people there in the picture). Apparently when it gets really, really hot, the beaches are PACKED and you can barely even walk through all the people laying out. This was my first experience at a European beach, so I was slightly taken aback when I found out that it's completely normal for the women to go topless. I got used to the idea after being there for awhile, but I was pretty shocked the first time I saw it!

Kayla and I had a great time looking for shells, playing in the sand, and trying not to get too wet from the freezing cold ocean water. I also loved just sitting in the sun, watching little kids run away from the waves, and listening to the ocean. 

Saturday was Kayla's birthday, so that night we went out to a cute tapas restaurant and then a creperia where we demolished our crepes in a matter of minutes. My favorite had nutella and bananas inside and then whipped cream on top. I had never tried crepes before, but I have decided they are delicious!

The hotel we stayed in was really nice, and it was a good change from the sketchy hostel we stayed in on one of our last trips. After dinner and crepes on Saturday night, we pretty much went straight to bed so we could get a lot of sleep before our big half marathon on Sunday (which I will post about at another time).

As wonderful as this weekend was, I will say that I missed people from back home quite a bit. I love to be in all of these amazing places, but it is really people and relationships that make experiences meaningful. Know that I am thinking of all of you and wishing that you could be here experiencing it all with me!

warm waffle + mountain of whipped cream + chocolate goodness = GOFRE

For a little treat the other day, we decided to stop by a wonderful little stand by the river to get some gofres. Gofres are a gooey mess, but they are SO delicious. :) They are also something that I could probably replicate pretty well back in the states, so let me know if you ever want to try one.

This next part doesn't have anything to do with gofres, but I just thought I would let all my wonderful blog readers know about some news I got today. I received my acceptance letter for the Bethel nursing program! Earlier during my time here, I started getting all sorts of emails about how my portfolio wasn't complete and I needed this transcript and that medical form and all sorts of things handed in. After frantically emailing, filling out forms, faxing, and doing whatever else I needed to (thank you mom and dad for all your help with that stuff), I got everything in... 10 days late. I was a little nervous about the whole thing, but I can rest easy now and know that starting this fall, I will be on my way to earning my degree in nursing! 

toledo

Toledo is a beautiful city. The narrow, cobblestone streets and small-town atmosphere were a nice change from the city life in Sevilla. I went with my whole group (about 55 people total) from Friday morning until Saturday night. We toured a church, a monastery, and a cathedral, and also had lots of free time to explore the city on our own. 

One of my favorite things about Toledo was the nun that I met and bought mazapan from. Toledo is famous for its mazapan, so I thought it would be a good thing to get. What better people are there to buy it from than nuns? Right when me and Kayla stepped into the little store outside the convent, the tiny Spanish nun's face broke into a huge smile. (I don't think she gets tons of business in the store...) She was so eager to show us all of the different types of mazapan and cookies that she had, and didn't try to pressure us at all into buying anything. 
Mazapan itself was a fun thing to try. There are lots of different kinds, but the main type basically tastes like really sugary, soft sugar cookies. Mmmm. 

Another one of my favorite things from the trip was simply sitting at the edge of a gorge and looking at the beauty around me. Since there aren't tons of people in Toledo, it was quiet and peaceful.

The windmills in these pictures were on the way to Toledo... I'm not sure of their significance or even their name. All I know is that we had a good time trying to take jumping pictures in front of them. :)

weekends in sevilla

The past two weekends (sorry it’s been that long since I’ve posted anything!) I have been in Sevilla. Although I haven’t been traveling the world, I have still been doing and experiencing new things right here in my “home town!" It would take forever to try to tell ALL of the fun things I did, but here are a few.

Last weekend, the big event was the Sevilla marathon. There were 4000 people running in it! There is a girl, Julie Ann, who works for Trinity (my school) and ran the whole thing. Me and Kayla and another friend of ours named Bethany thought it would be cool to run part of it with her. We calculated about what time she would be at the 32 kilometer point so then we could run the last 10 kilometers with her. As we were waiting at our meeting point, we cheered on lots of other runners. It was fun to make them smile in the midst of such a grueling race. Lots of them beckoned us to “vamos! venga!” and join them in running. It was such a cool atmosphere! When Julie Ann came by, we just jumped right in with her. It was a gorgeous day, and it was fun to see parts of Sevilla I’ve never seen before. When we reached the finish line (we didn’t cross – we let the real marathoners do that) we realized that we had forgotten the fact that we needed to get home somehow… None of us had money for a bus since we were in running clothes, so we only had one choice: run! We accidentally ended up running about 11 miles that day. It was good practice for the half marathon we are running in a couple weeks.

Another highlight from last weekend were the chocolate chip cookie sundaes me and Kayla created. We had lots of cookie crumbles that were delicious, but just hard to eat… We came up with the lovely idea of putting them on McDonald’s soft serve ice cream and having a nice treat by the river. J

This past weekend, one exciting thing we did was book plane tickets for some trips later in April. We are now for sure going to Switzerland and Ireland!

This Saturday, we did another long run by the river. The weather has been great for running, and it has been a perfect way to see a lot of the city! We ran to a park and were surprised to see that there was some sort of festival going on. It was a celebration for Andalusia, the province that Sevilla is a part of. There was a band, and tons of people singing a song about a “cucaracha” (cockroach) and then people painting the streets green and white striped like the Andalusian flag. It was a great thing to stumble upon and gave us a nice break in our run.

Speaking of cockroaches, we (Kayla, actually) found our first cockroach in the house! AH! As Kayla was walking into the bathroom, I heard an urgent “Kristin! Kristin! Come here!” When I walked in, she was just looking and pointing at the wall. Sure enough, sitting on top of the towel rack was a big, nasty cockroach. We both kinda freaked out a little bit, so our senora came to see what the trouble was. After she found out, she swiftly went to the kitchen, got a broom and a bag, and took care of the nasty thing.

Special K bars... kind of.

This Saturday, we got the chance to go over to the intermediate class profesora, Ana's house. We wanted to make Special K bars, and she graciously invited us to use her kitchen! In Spain, people don't really (ever) invite other people over to their houses, so it was really nice of her to let us come.

Me, Kayla, and two friends of ours, Bethany and Ellen, tried to find the ingredients we needed at the grocery store to make Special K bars. It wasn't quite as easy as we thought it would be. Corn Syrup, chocolate chips, and butterscotch chips were nowhere to be found. Therefore, we made up our own recipe! It ended up being kind of a combo of rice krispie bars and Special K bars.

Our creation worked beautifully and when the bars were done we sat and enjoyed them with cafe con leche and lots of talking! Spaniards LOVE to talk. I think they live to talk. Anyways, we stayed over at Ana's house for at least three and a half hours, just talking. 

It was so much fun to be able to cook something somewhat familiar, and also to spend time with an extremely sweet Spanish woman.