Tavira, Portugal!

30/05/2010

El domingo 30 de mayo alquilamos un carro y manejamos a PORTUGAL! Ana F. que gracias a su padre y querido honda civic (rest in peace) sabe manejar de cambio y fuimos las dos con tres otras amigas del grupo a Tavira. Fue como dos horas en coche para llegar y cuando llegamos tuvimos que montarnos en un barcesito que nos llevo a La Ilha (la isla). Hubo vistas estupendos y lo pasamos muy bien. Lo mejor de todo... ni una gaviota! Las fotos dicen lo de más...

Segunda Semana en Sevilla!

Hi Everyone!

Our second week in Spain has come to end :( but it was a lot of fun of course. The week went by really really fast!

We had our first full week of classes... our three hour film class is pretty hard, especially to stay awake in!

Esta semana hicimos un paseo en bici (bicicleta). Ana RC aprendió como montar bici!!!! Todos estamos muy orgullosos de ella por que lo hizo tan bien. Solo tuvo que practicar un poco antes y después las dos Anas se quedaron atrás del resto del grupo para que Ana no choque con nadie.




También salimos con los amigos y pasamos mucho tiempo con la familia.

The best part about this week was the greatest discovery we have ever made and its called "RAYAS." It is probably the best ice cream place we have ever been to. We are obsessed!!! We even got it for our Señora's son this week after he got his wisdom teeth taken out (it worked out because we wanted some too ahahah!)

El Sábado fuimos en nuestra segunda excursión a Cordoba. Visitamos a la Mezquita que se convirtió en Catedral durante el reino de Isabel y Fernando que hizo que el catolicismo fuera la única religión. Our tour guide was ... interesting. She liked to wave around her abanico to get the group to follow her. También visitamos el Alcázar que tenía jardines increíbles! Nos tomamos muchas fotos. Al final de la visita tuvimos tiempo libre para explorar y da la causalidad que visitamos a Córdoba a finales de su feria. Por lo tanto, fuimos a ver una feria española autentica. Vimos muchas muchachas vestidas en el flamenco. Habían muchas "casitas" donde podías entrar y comer y beber. Lo pasamos muy chulo y era muy guay (very cool).






Tenemos planes de ir a Portugal el domingo por el día con unas amigas... veremos si lo hacemos :)

Cádiz... Sonría

5/22/10 - 5/23/10

On Saturday we went on our first excursion with the program. After very little sleep the night before we had to wake up at 7 a.m. to catch a bus to Jerez. Es una cuidad conocida por su vinos, especialmente el jerez (cherry). Vimos una demostración ecuestre fabuloso! El caballo supo bailar la sevillana! Vale. Después nos llevaron alrededor de la bodega Williamson and Humbert (o Las Medinas). Nos enseñaron como se fermentan los diferentes tipos de vinos y nos dieron algunos para probar. Se que nuestros padres están muy celosos :)





Nos fuimos de Jerez y el bus nos llevo a Cádiz, una cuidad playera... "Sol y Playa." Subimos una torre de la catedral para ver unas vistas espectaculares. Dicen que una parte de la cuidad luce mucho como La Habana, Cuba, se puede ver en las fotos que tomamos. Era impresionante y maravilloso. Pasmos el resto del día en la playa aunque hubo mucho elevante (viento). El agua estaba super super fría pero todavía nos metimos un poco. La pasamos muy bien y regresamos bien cansadas.






On Sunday we decided to go to mass at THE Cathedral in Sevilla... the third largest in the world! It was pretty awesome even without music. The archbishop gave the mass and according to Sevillanos it ran a little long at 45 minutes. After we went to Ana RC's family friend's for almuerzo. Marita was very nice and went met her whole family and a few friends, there were 14 of us in total! The best part was they showed us how they make paella! The Anas were very nervous about trying the paella marinero (full of different sea creatures... ahhh!) Good news... WE LIKED IT! I think that is the farthest we will be going with sea food in Spain. Later that night our family served caracoles... "bichos que tienes que chupar..." enough said.




Well it was a great week... on to a new week...

Las Anas

Culture Class Assignment

Tuvimos que entrevistar a algunos españoles en las calles de Sevilla sobre los tópicos de España y los problemas sociales. Los vídeos están en youtube!

Beinvenidas a Sevilla!

5/17 - 5/21


It´s Friday! The Anas first week in Sevilla has been amazing and full of activities. We arrived on Sunday evening and met our host family, Familia Pedros-Belanga. Our mom´s name is Maripaz but she likes for us to call her Pacita. Her husband´s name is Jesus Manuel and they have three kids: Chus, Reyes, y Jesus Manuel Jr. They are great!!! Cocinan estupendamente (Pacita loves using that word). We have had dishes like tortilla española, gaspacho, all kinds of verduras, and tonight we are having fish and they want us to eat caracoles... ahhh! We are nervous but we are trying EVERYTHING! They serve bread with every meal... we haven´t eaten so much bread in our whole lives... not so good for digestion =/

We have a really great group of friends and we have done a lot of fun things this week. Here are a few of the things we did...

1. Tour of Sevilla: we went around Sevilla on Monday and saw La Giralda - an ancient arab tower, part of a fort, La Catedral - the third largest one in the world!! It even had 50 individual chapels inside, was the burial place of Cristobal Colon, and you could, technically, fit Notre Dame inside it. We hope to attend a Sunday mass there one of these days. We also saw a very beautiful palace, with the most beautiful gardens... El Alcazar. We will be spending lots of time there studying.






2. First day of school: We had our first classes on Tuesday, starting with cultura española contemporánea in the morning, then we walk back home for almuerzo with our family and possible siesta, then back to school in the afternoon for our Latin American Film class. We walk A LOT! It is especially brutal walking back to school in the afternoon, the hottest time of the day. It's a good thing we both brought so many wipes with us.




3. On Wednesday one of Sevilla's fútbol teams played for the championship against Madrid's Atletico. WE WON! Salimos con unos españoles a ver el partido y después fuimos a la puerta de jerez en el centro de la cuidad para celebrar. Fue una experiencia muy divertida.
(photos and videos to come...)

4. On Thursday we did piragüismo (kayaking) in El Río. Our guide was Santi and he took a bunch of pictures and video of the group. It was a lot of fun. The Anas kayaked in a double and after a little circling and splashing we got really good at it... Here is a link to the pictures and video.

www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=24258&id=112954242051729&ref=mf



5. On Friday we took a dance class and learned how to dance Sevillana. It is really difficult to learn but it was still very fun.

On Saturday we are going to the bodega in Jerez for a wine tasting and then to the beach in Cádiz! So exciting...

-Las Anas (as we are known here)

TOLEDO!!!

5/15/10

Las fotos servirán como la entrada este día...

It's cold in May!?!?!

5/14/10

We have finally started adapting to the time change and made it to breakfast, we haven't however gotten used to, nor are we are we prepared for, the freezing, windy, rainy, unlikely weather that has hit us this weekend. We have managed to wear all of the two sweaters we have brought and had to use Ana F's mom's brilliant Tide in the sink packets to wash them.

Today we headed toward Toledo but stopped at El Escorial, an amazing summer palace built by Felipe II. Ana RC jumped on the bus first and managed to get us the best seats, where Ana RC was able to RICE her broken toe. Before we reached El Escorial we saw el Valle de los Caidos... a monument commemorating the fallen soldiers. Once there, we took a tour lead by Fernando Fernandez (no joke, that was his name). He was a great tour guide and through his humor made everything really interesting. We now know that even though Felipe II was only four and half feet tall he was able to have 4 wives, a real-life Don Juan. Felipe II built this palace as a vacation home and told the architects that he wanted "un palacio para Dios y una choza para mi." For this reason, the basilica that was built was very ornate and amazing and his palace was much more humble. We also got to visit the second most important library for the Catholic church. The tour on a high note in the royal crypt. Awesome. We learned about el cuarto de los podridos... this means exactly what it says, rotting bodies of royalty waiting to buried... gross!

On to Toledo... Olé! We checked in and immediately took a bus to el centro where we explore the historic city on our own for a while and had probably the best dinner yet! We ate family style like how we do back at home (Thanks Norm!) so we got to try a little bit everything. We ate it too fast to take pictures... sorry Mimi! Amazing nonetheless.

Finally time for bed and as the Anas look forward to a good night's rest... ACHOO!! ACHOO... ACHOO.......... ACHOO!! and ACHOO! No not us, these hotel walls are really thin. Vale.

Until next time... Anas

So That's Why the fries are yellow...

Jueves: 13-05-10

“Early to bed, early to rise” is not a true statement. We thought the jet lag wasn’t all that bad but we were wrong. After managing to set our alarm at 7:30 P.M. instead of A.M. and being one of the unlucky few who didn’t receive a wake up call, we overslept. Thankfully we got ourselves together really fast and ran through el Paso del Prado to meet up with the rest of the group that was waiting for us outside of the first museum of the day.
We first visited El Museo del Prado, one of the three museums that make up el trianglo de arte. This museum housed the oldest artwork of Spain from artists like Goya, Velasquez, and El Grecco. Fue impressionante! After, we went to the third museum of the triangle, El Reina Sofia, which contained the more contemporary art of Picasso and Dali. We liked el Prado most. After several hours of tours, we had free time to explore the city of Madrid. It was raining outside so a group of us decided to take the metro to Sol, an area with a bunch of shops and un corte ingles, Spain’s Macys.
The Anas had their first experience with menu del día – a common meal combination at lunchtime in Spain, with primer plato de ensalada, pasta, or judias (Spain’s frijoles) y un segundo plato de alguna forma de proteina. While having lunch it began to hail outside! Apparently we brought with us some uncommon Spring weather. After lunch the group went their separate ways and we went exploring. We decided it would be a good idea to walk back to the hotel… wrong! We got lost for two hours in Madrid and walked around asking for directions and receiving different directions every time. This wasn’t all bad though because we were able to see and experience a lot. We ran into what we thought was a cathedral because to us it was really picturesque and big, turns out it was just la iglesia de San Jose, impressive nonetheless. Once we FINALLY got back to the hotel (we decided to just do a complete circle around el parque retiro until we found it), we ran upstairs, got dresses and were picked up by Maria Jose and Javier, friends of Ana RC’s family from Spain. They took us to a great, authentic taberna called Casa de Lelo where they fed us and gave us wine! Of course, as good tourists we were determined to try everything… uh oh! The first plate that came out was pulpo… raw octopus EWWWW! We felt bad saying we didn’t like it so we kept eating it! Everything else was really delicious, especially the dessert, a typical dessert in Galicia called torta de almendras… awesome! The Spaniards like to have dessert with more alcohol of course a little drink called a chupito. We tried it but it was way to strong for us!
It was a long day for us and another long one ahead…

P.S. we are dehydrated because they never give you water in Spain!

Arrival in Spain

!Today the Anas got to Spain after a few delays due to the volcano erupting in Iceland... awesome! It turns out we were actually quite lucky, other than the four hour delay everything went very smoothly. We can't say the same for some of our fellow students on the program =/.

After making our way around Madrid's GIANT airport, we finally met up with people from our program and took a shuttle bus to the hotel, NH Nacional. It is such a nice hotel! We have a balcony in our room over looking the city... its a great view! Of course, we weren't in our rooms more than half an hour before we mangaed to blow the circuit and lose all the power in our room trying to charge our phones. Very embarrassing, but hilarious! We took a short tour of the city and then had a meeting with the ISA staff. Finally, we explored the city a little and found a nice little restaurant where we had tapas, sangria, and watched the soccer (fútbol) game. We are so exhausted but slowly getting used to Spain time.

Exciting days ahead of us...