Going Out!

This week was fun! I went out Wednesday, Thursday, AND Friday night!! Here's a bit about my adventures.

It's crazy how late people go out to socialize here. In general, going out at midnight is acceptable but kind of early, around 2 is when things really starts, and most places close at 5-6 or so... even on weeknights, before classes the next morning. It's hard to believe, but fun. On Wednesday night I met some other Concordia girls at about midnight and then went to a DJ battle event at a place near the Ciudadela. We hung out, talked, and danced until about 2:15 or so and then Kristen and I took a taxi home, went to bed, and got up at 6:45 to get ready for class! Overall, it was a fun night. There was fun music and a good crowd...

On Thursday night, I went to the international student open mic night at the Long Island Bar near the Yamaguchi park (which is really cool! It has a lake with a gazebo on it,and a planetarium!). I couldn't believe the weather- it was windy but definitely in the 50s with a clear night sky and beautiful... I got to the pub around 10 with my violin and was one of two events that night, playing the Orange Blossom Special :) It's a fiddle piece and is really fun to perform. (For those of you with Facebook, I put up a video of my performance!) There were lots of international students there and I knew quite a few of them. Long Island was sort of reminiscent of an Irish Pub and was more spacious than other places I've been... it was a pleasant change of pace and overall a fun experience.

(Yamaguchi Park)

 

 (at Long Island Bar)

  

(playing the Orange Blossom Special!)

  

 

Last night, before going out, I went to Valentine's Day with some Concordia friends (a movie that takes place in LA and maybe NY? But there's a TON of famous actors and actresses in it!). That was my first movie theater experience here and was really neat. The original English voices were dubbed over with Spanish voices, which was kind of tacky at first, but eventually I got used to it. I understood pretty much everything, and was able to understand so well that I could actually get involved in the plot. It was fun to see places like LA and see actors that I know, and it temporarily brought be back to the U.S. a little bit... kind of a nice break. The movie was pretty silly, but entertaining and really cute :) After going home for dinner, I met a few of my friends from Taiwan at Ensayo along with a few of Basilio's Spanish roommates (I also knew quite a few friends from school there too!) and hung out there for a while before going to a Dominican Republic-Puerto Rican latino bar. It was super fun because they play exclusively latino dance music, versus the normal selection of pop, and had a neat atmosphere. There were a lot of locals who were actually dancing real latino dances too! I learned how to dance Bachata and Merengue- it was a lot of fun. I got home at 4 a.m. I'm thinking that last night was my favorite going-out experience so far :)

(the movie theater)

 

(at Bar Ensayo)

 

(at the latino bar)

Overall, I'd say I got a good taste of the social life here this week- and I plan to take advantage of it before I go home, where people go home at 2 instead of leaving to start the night! It's quite the contrast.

Olite

Yesterday, I took a day trip with some friends to Olite, which is a small pueblo south of Pamplona in Navarra. It only took about an hour (via bus) to get there, and there is a castle from the 1400s in the center of the city. In addition, Olite is the wine capital of Navarra with a wine museum and three major bodegas (wineries). Navarra is the wine country in Spain, and especially in southern Navarra there are lots of vineyards and bodegas! Olite is a really fun place for a day trip!

I went with my roommate Kristen, another girl from South Carlina, and her friend who's from India but is currently studying in France. The bus ride was pretty, and we went by various mountains, rolling hills and pastures, small towns, and vineyards, arriving in Olite around 11:30 a.m. and proceeding to find the castle. We chose the perfect day to visit- it was sunny with blue skies,  and the temperature got up into the 50s in the afternoon! The town was really quiet, so there were hardly any people there and it seemed like more of an authentic experience than the bigger tourist destinations...  The town itself is really small and authentic, with narrow alleys lined with old tall Spanish-style housing and shops.

 (Olite, with the castle in the background)

The castle in Olite is called 'El Castillo Real de Olite (The Royal Palace of Olite) and was built in the early 1400s. Later, it was converted into a palace, but was destroyed in the Napoleanic wars and since has been restored into a castle. There aren't many decorations inside, but all of the walls, floors, patios, gardens, moats, stairs, and towers are made of stone. When the castle was a palace, it apparently was one of the most luxurious palaces of Europe! The castle has three areas: the Old Palace (now a hotel), the ruins of the chapel of St. George, and the New Palace (where people can visit). It was really cool to see all of the areas of the castle (including things like the vaulted chamber, the chamber of arches, various towers, the keep, the king and queen's chambers and galleries, the ice well, and various patios). We had to climb lots of narrow stone spiral stairs to get to the top of the towers, and at the highest points of the castle we had fantastic views of other parts of the castle, the town, and the nearby countryside. It only cost 3.50 euros to get in (about $5) and was a really neat experience! 

 

 

After the castle, we went to a medieval-themed bar for lunch (Kristen and I had tortilla patata bocadillos (bascially an omelet sandwich) from Peñi so we didn't have to buy anything). It was a really neat place, and they sold locally made wine for only 80 cents a glass! There was a couple from the town that came over and started talking to us too- they were SO nice, and curious about what we were doing in Spain and in Olite! They said to come back and say hi to them if we see them. The people here are SO amazingly friendly- I love it.

Next, we waited in an old plaza with a view of the castle for about  half an hour until the wine museum opened after the lunch siesta at 3. The warm sun felt amazing, and it was fun to watch the kids playing on the other side of the plaza and to just relax and take in our surroundings. The wine museum was interesting and went through the history of wine, the process of growing grapes and making wine, and the various aspects of wine tasting. There are so many factors in making a good wine; reading about it will make tasting wine in the future a lot more interesting...

(near the chapel, with the plaza in the background)

(relaxing in the plaza)

(some Navarran wines on display in the museum)

Finally, we visited a small shop with locally made products such as chocolate, preserves and spreads, lotions, pastries, and other authentic items... I ended up buying a bar of chocolate made with honey that was made in Navarra! I'm excited to try it- I've never heard of putting honey in chocolate before! We ended our visit by getting dessert in a pastry and dessert café. The bus left at 5:30 and I was home by 7:00. The whole day didn't cost much at all, and was the perfect weekend day excursion :) I would highly recommend it to anyone who happens to be visiting Navarra!!

 (my dessert at the café!)

The City of Lights

PARIS

Overall, Paris was nothing short of amazing. It's going to be hard to do it justice with words and pictures... it's one of those things that you have to see to believe! Nevertheless, here's my attempt at describing it :)

DAY 1
Kristen and I left Pamplona at 1:45 p.m. on a bus and arrived in San Sebastian around 3:00. We then took a train to Hendaya (in France) and left on the TVG train to Paris at 5:22, arriving in Paris itself at around 11:15. Next, we took the metro to our hostel, which was about 10 miles outside of Paris, arriving at about 12:30. We had amazing luck, with no troubles at all and overall a very smooth journey! Paris is about 560 miles from Pamplona, but surprisingly, it went fairly quickly. Peñi (my host mom) packed Kristen and I a huge bag of food (2 sandwiches, 8 pieces of fruit, juice boxes, water, and extra meat and cheese) so that we wouldn't have to buy so much, so that was nice too! We pretty much went to bed after arriving at the hostel so that we'd be ready to go in the morning!

(a French town I saw from the train)

DAY 2
We left the hostel at about 9:45 in order to get to our walking tour that started at 11:00. Our tour guide was English and really cool. On our tour, we saw Notre Dame, the Louvre, the Eiffel Tower (from a distance), the Arc de Triumphe, la Concorde (an obelisk taken from the Egyptians- and they ask for it back every year but France keeps refusing!), among many other things. The tour was about three and a half hours long, (minus a 45 minute lunch break at Starbuck's) and was really fun :) That specific tour company gives free city tours in many major European cities and asks for tips at the end... I would highly recommend it! After the tour, Kristen, me, and two other Concordia girls that were visiting at the same time went down Champs-Élysées (huge shopping street that ends with the Arc de Triumphe). It was really cool... there were all kinds of shops, from Gap, Toyota, McDonald's and other common European shops, to expensive shops such as Louis Vuitton (selling items such as a 40,000 Euro watch!). Very cool. After, we walked around a bit and ended up at the Musée d'Orsay, which is a really neat art museum in a building that used to be a huge train station. By the time we got through the museum it was time to go back to the hostel. We walked about 10 hours the first day, and Paris was unusually cold during our visit, so we were quite tired. Overall though, an amazing day :) 

(a chocolate-filled croissant)

DAY 3
Kristen and I started out the day at the Louvre. (after finding an amazing little pastry shop for breakfast!) We spent about 2 hours there and got in free, since we're students of the European Union! The Louvre is ... beyond words. It's massive, and the palace itself is a gigantic work of art... I guess it was built about 800 years ago and would take 64 days to see all of the art inside. We saw the Mona Lisa, a small sphinx, mummies, many statues, paintings that were 20 feet high, ballrooms, remnants of the medieval Louvre... it was incredible. And of course, we got to enter the museum through the famed glass pyramid! After the Louvre, we grabbed lunch at the same shop that we bought breakfast at, then made our way to Montmartre, in the northern area of Paris to see the Sacré Coeur basicila and to take a Montmartre tour. I loved the Montmartre area, because it was more reminiscent of traditional French towns than the center of Paris, where all of the big things are... there were Crepe stands, artists, small shops, and restaurants everywhere. It was really neat. The Sacré Coeur was beautiful, and stands on the highest hill of Paris with a beautiful view of the city. At six, Kristen and I started our tour of Montmartre, which included seeing Moulin Rouge, a bit of the Red Light District, Van Gogh's house, Paris's last authentic vineyard, Picasso's studio, and lots of other cool things. The tour ended at around 8 with a glass of red French wine! After the tour, Kristen and I battled the cold and made our way to the Eiffel tower. It's SO huge in person... I had no idea until I got there exactly how big it really is. We could only go halfway up since the elevator to the top was broken, but it was still amazing. We even got to see the light show that happens every hour while we were on the tower itself! It's hard to believe that I actually was in the world's most recognized structure.

(the Louvre)

(inside the glass pyramid)

(a room of statues in the Louvre)

(another room in the Louvre)

(the view from Sacré Coeur)

(Moulin Rouge)

(a view from the back of Sacré Coeur, at night)

(the Eiffel Tower)

DAY 4
On Saturday, Kristen and I started out the day with Notre Dame. First we looked around the inside (which was swarming with people) and then stayed for noon mass, where we got to hear a sample of the cathedral's world-famous organ. The church is beautiful, and it baffles me how it was built... apparently it took 200 years to complete! Next, we went to the Luxembourg park and palace, which was really neat but covered in snow. I imagine that it's absolutely gorgeous in the summer and would love to come back some day to see it. After the garden, we went to a major shopping mall in the middle of Paris, looked around a bit, and got 'peopled-out' ... so we basically spent the rest of the day having a nice dinner at a small French restaurant near the train station, talking about our trip, and going to a McDonald's (a good place to rest for free) to relax and journal about our experiences! My dinner was really good... I had roasted chicken with rice and ratatouille, amazing French baguette bread, and a 'floating island' for dessert! (basically a dish of vanilla cream with merengue 'floating' in the center with a dark vanilla syrup on top!) It was a fun and delicious way to end our journey to Paris. Our train left a little after 11 p.m., and we ended up in a cabin with beds! There were 2 3-level bunk beds in each cabin, and Kristen and I were on top. I actually slept most of the night and woke up around 6:30 a.m. near the French border... it was a quick trip! A small walk and a bus ride later, we were back home in Pamplona around 11. 

(Notre Dame)

(Notre Dame on the inside)

3 days in Paris seemed about perfect. It went slow and fast at the same time, and I will definitely have to visit the City of Lights again sometime in my life... like another guy on my walking tour who's now visited three times said, Paris just never gets old. Everywhere you turn, there's some amazing structure or piece of art... an incredible city and an amazing way to spend a weekend :)

Un día increíble!!!

Today was quite the day...

First, Peñi made hot chocolate for breakfast! Kristen and I have grown quite fond of it... it's thick, unlike in the United States, and much better, in my opinion! To accompany the 'chocolate' we had peanut butter and blueberry jam toast. Kristen's parents sent peanut butter to us this week so that the family could try it for the first time ever. Peñi liked it but said it was really rich and that if she eats more of it she'll gain weight!! hehe, kind of ironic given all of the other food we eat here... but the food generally IS pretty healthy... Peanut butter tasted amazing though, after being so used to it and not having it for a really long time. Very good :)

After breakfast, I made banana bread with Peñi. It was kind of tricky figuring out how to measure ingredients... everything here is in grams or by sight so making banana bread here involved converting cups and teaspoons to grams, translating the entire recipe into Spanish, figuring out all of the necessary vocabulary to successfully communicate with Peñi on how to make it, buying a bread pan (which has different dimensions than the U.S.), hand shelling and crushing walnuts, and guessing how much salt and baking powder to use since a 'teaspoon' and 'tablespoon' is just a scoop using everyday spoons for place settings. (also, the recipe calls for baking soda, and they only have baking powder here, so I had to guess on how much baking powder to put in and hope it would work!) We tried the finished product after la comida (the mid-day meal) and it turned out really well! (minus the occasional fragment of walnut shell) The family just loved it too :) Antonio wants me to make apple bread sometime because he "really really likes apples. Yeah, apples are really good. Apple bread would be really good." hehe he was SO curious as to whether you could make bread with apples instead of bananas... so yeah, overall, success!!!

(Peñi and I with the banana bread!)

David cooked la comida today; his recipes (from his cooking class) were from all over the world. He made quiche (from France), some sort of fried African roll thing with ground chicken, onions, and cognac inside, eaten with powdered sugar sprinkled on top (quite good), and a greek casserole that had veal and potato cubes on the bottom, and cream and cheese baked on the top. Lastly, dessert was American banana bread. SO much food... but fun to try.

After la comida, Kristen and I met Fermín, who I share a stand with in orchestra, and one of his friends near Casco Viejo at 5. Once we finally found each other, we found some more of his friends near this café that has pool and fooseball in the basement where a lot of Spanish kids hang out. We played two matches of fooseball and it was really fun. Fermín seemed to be the oldest (he's 16), and the youngest in the group seemed to be about 10 or 11... so little. I'm amazed at how trusting the parents must be here... next we made our way to a 'bajera,' which is a space that a bunch of kids rent for so much per month where they can hang out if they want to be inside. It's a really interesting concept... you basically rent a store space and put stuff in there like couches, tvs, etc... and the one that we went to had a small skate deck inside!! The place was kind of run down with a lot of random old things in it and wasn't exactly clean, but still a pretty cool place. Kristen and I ended up watching the others skateboard for 1 1/2 or 2 hours; it was pretty fun. Fermín even showed each of us how to skate which was pretty funny, but amusing... I even went down a small hill... haha! The whole thing was a really cool, authentic exposure to the culture here. I got to see first hand what people do, how they act, how they talk to each other. After that, we all went to a 'cybercentro,' which is a room full of computers where you can buy computer time. There, Fermín set me and Kristen up on Tuenti, which is the Spanish version of Facebook! Finally, Fermín, Kristen, and I went to Corte Inglés, which is a GIANT European department store... it has 8 huge floors and all of the name brands, has an entire floor each for women, men, young people, sports, books and electronics, makeup and accessories... it's ridiculous. In the basement there's a full-out grocery store, along with a flower shop and gourmet food market... We looked around the grocery store for a bit, found peanut butter (!), which was about $6 a jar, saw lots of raw fresh seafood (the smell completely reminded me of Pike's Place Market in Seattle), and saw various meats... Fermín pointed out jamón ibérico, which is a high quality expensive cured pork. Some of the pieces were around 400 Euros, which is equivalent to about $600. I will never understand how a piece of meat could possibly be worth that much money, or could taste that good... some of it had been cured for four years. I guess the pieces with a black hoof (versus another color) are the most valuable... We took the bus back home a little after 9:30 to get back for dinner. Overall, a fun experience :)


Lastly, for dinner, Peñi made rabbit liver and onions for Kristen and I to try, to go along with the leftovers... (I wonder where that came from! We had rabbit yesterday or the day before...) I managed to evade it...

I feel like I learned SO much today. Tonight's the big night for everyone to go out and party, but I'm kind of worn out and plan to just sleep instead. Plus, I feel like I've experienced some really cool stuff already today that not a lot of people get to experience :)

¡Hola!

I left for Spain exactly a month ago today. That's hard to believe. It's flown by, but I feel like I've been here forever, and living at home seems like such a distant concept... I'm getting to the point where I'm pretty much used to my routine, to my surroundings, to the meals, to my classes... I've been getting a little homesick, but it comes and goes. I've heard that when you study abroad you usually get homesick too after going through the "honeymoon stage," aka after the first few weeks or months when everything is new and exciting. Then, when everything becomes routine, you might get a little homesick... and later, when it's time to go home, you don't want to leave! It gets exhausting constantly trying SO hard to understand what people say here... at home, I don't even think about communicating as a challenge. Simply talking shouldn't be hard, right?? Right, until you go to a foreign country... but I'm getting better at Spanish and I can usually get the gist of everything that people say to me. I've also heard from various people that I speak well (from the random bookshop keeper that Kristen and I talked to for awhile on Tuesday, from various orchestra members, etc...) so that's encouraging! I've learned SO much, but I'm so used the new knowledge that I don't even really realize I have it... Something familiar would be nice sometime, that I don't have to learn, that I've been accustomed to for a long time. Completely leaving everything you know works for awhile, but it gets to a point where you want some of your roots back... Kristen and I have seen two Domino's pizza shops here and we were joking that we should order sometime, just for fun! And tomorrow, Peñi (my host mom) and I are making banana bread! She hadn't even heard of it before I brought it up... that should be fun. :)

Europe is built for pedestrians. I've walked home from school three times this week, and it's about a 2.2 mile walk each way... it takes about 40 minutes, which is only about ten minutes more than taking the bus. AND it's free. Peñi told us that soon we'll be thin with all of that exercise... I was thinking about it, and America really is kind of lazy... like, I would have never thought about walking 40 minutes to school in Moorhead, but here, it's completely normal. Not a lot of people seem to have cars, lots of people take the bus, and tons of people walk. Even older people with canes walk... it's funny because sometimes in the morning on the way to the bus stop Kristen and I see this old short man with a cane who starts to run, cane in hand and hunched over, to make the bus! It makes me smile :) I guess in Minnesota though, the cold harsh winters make walking kind of impossible. It's not exactly sweatshirt weather there in January like it usually is here... I guess this winter has been a lot colder than usual, and the coldest it's gotten is 25 or 30 degrees! So weather does have an affect on overall health... today was nice (50s probably), and I spent about an hour and a half walking, between getting to school, going to the bookstore to return a book, and walking to the Carrefour (like a Wal-Mart) to get a loaf pan for making the banana bread. It's pretty amazing. I feel a lot more in shape now than when I arrived, and I want to keep it up when I get back. It's a way of life here though, so it's so easy to do...

Paris plans are ready to go for next week!! We leave early afternoon Wednesday on a bus after school, switch to a train around the French border, and have until Saturday night to experience an amazing weekend! We're staying in a well-rated hostel that's really close to most major attractions, and taking a night train, then bus, back to Pamplona on Saturday night. We plan to take the free city tour, visit the Louvre (free for European students!), see Notre Dame, and go to the top of the Eiffel Tour, among many other things! And, we'll get to see the romantic city right before Valentine's Day :)

Recent adventures with food (like, the last couple of days):
Fried, butterflied sardines (skin still on...)
Mussels in the shell
Whole large shrimp, in shell with legs and head
Rabbit stew, with bones and all (Peñi was eating a piece today that still had a rabbit tooth sticking out of it ... and she proceeded to say that she's the only one in her family that will eat the lamb's head when they have it...)
Gula (a substitute for the real thing (made out of eel), is in the form of a noodle, and is made out of fish) (yikes!)

The adventure never ends.


One last thing: I switched my computer's keyboard to the Spanish layout... so I'm still getting used to the different keys! It's nice though, because now I can use Spanish punctuation much more easily... just something random, and kind of funny :)

Pictures to come, especially after Paris!!!