Differences

So I posted earlier about how walking on the street in Spain is different than walking on the street in America. Which led me to dig out another post I'd been working on since I got to Spain, which is a list of the differences I've noticed while I was there. Some of them are interesting, some of them aren't, but I feel like it merits posting because it describes some of the daily life that I forget to mention in my normal posts.

• You always wear socks & shoes in the house. Always. You want to go to the bathroom across the hall? You wear your flip-flops.
  
• There is graffiti everywhere and it doesn't seem to be a very big deal. It's on the garage doors over closed shops, abandoned buildings, walls of the city… everything. Some of it is artsy, a lot of it is scribbled words, kind of like the USA.
  
• As a foreigner, you get to walk that tricky line between taking large amounts of money out of the ATM to avoid too many fees and then being hated by cashiers for handing them 50 euro bills when your coffee & pastry comes to a grand total of 3.20.
  
• ALWAYS turn off the lights, because electricity is so expensive here. The government controls it, and they keep raising the tax on it. María likes to talk about this. A lot.
  
• People don't go over to one another's houses very often. Houses are for family and close friends. I wouldn't even ask María if a friend could come over to the house to study or watch a movie. Everybody does those things in town. I once had a conversation with my host brother about the kind of house parties that happen in the USA, and he can barely wrap his head around the idea.
  
• They don't use dryers. Which is probably really good for my clothes… it's just annoying when it rains for two weeks so when you pack for Morocco, half your clothes are wet and you have no idea how to pack.
  
• People don't sit at cafés by themselves. If I'm wandering around town on my own, I usually get coffee to go and find a library or some other location to sit at in lieu of taking up a whole table to myself.
  
• People are much better at conversations here. There's a lot fewer awkward pauses when everyone just decides to get on their phones because the topic ran out. That's something I'm going to miss. Plus they all talk over each other, so following a conversation is like trying to watch a crazy ping-pong match, I'm surprised I haven't gotten whiplash yet.
  
• Lunch is the main meal of the day. You know how in America (at least in my world) kids tend to eat lunch with their friends or out of the house, but for dinner you go home and eat with your family? In Spain, you go home and eat lunch with your family, it's the biggest meal of the day. Dinners are much, much lighter (María just eats fruit or something little), and if you're going to eat out with friends, it's usually at dinner.
  
• They have ham-flavored potato chips.
  
• They also have paprika-flavored Pringles.
  
• Pharmacies here are like going to the medicine aisle of Target. If you're sick, you go in, you tell them your problem, they give you something to fix it. Even if you just need something like Nyquil or Ibuprofen, you still go talk to the pharmacist.
  
• Dinner isn't until 8 PM at least, which means kids don't leave to go out with their friends until around 10, depending on the age. I meet my friends in the Plaza around 11 most nights.
  
• It hasn't snowed here. And some of the trees still have leaves. It's rained like nobody's business (although I've been told repeatedly this is not normal…), but I've seen no snow.
  
• Gyms are expensive. So I haven't been to one for months, given that when I asked about a pass for the month, I was told it would be 75 euro–50 for the gym + pool, and a 25 euro joining fee. It's nonsense. I tried to do push-ups and stuff like that, but there's so little space in the apartment. I really can't wait to go back to the gym at home, even if it will be overrun with people who just made the New Year's Resolution to work out more.
  
• The food… is just not same. Don't get me wrong, I love María's cooking. And they do breakfasts right, especially at the hotels we've been staying at on our excursions. I don't know exactly how to describe the difference, because the only words that come to mind are "bland" and "heavy", and those ones sound so negative to me. They just use a lot fewer seasonings, and a lot more olive oil. And especially coming from Colorado where people are stereotypically in love with salads and anything fresh-tasting, and believe fats and anything fried is food of Satan, food with this much oil just makes me feel heavy.
  
• If you go out to eat, there is rarely a host to great you. Depending on the caliber of the restaurant, you either just seat yourself or a waiter will snag you between waiting tables to tell you where to have a seat.
  
• People are much more direct. This is something I was personally prepared for from everything I'd learned about Spanish culture and from having a native Spanish professor, but my family was not. It came to light one night at dinner, when my English-speaking family was under the impression the waiter was annoyed with us, when to me he seemed just a little rushed because he had a lot of tables to get to.
  

Family Visit: Part 1

12.22-23: Madrid

Oh, my jet-lagged family. Nothing like trying to find a coffee shop in the middle of the overpacked center of Madrid because people are so tired they can barely stand. After visiting the Cathedral and deciding the Palacio Real was too expensive for tours, my brother literally fell asleep at the table when we stopped for coffee near the Plaza Mayor. Jet lag? Jet lag. At least he didn't snore that time.

On Saturday, Jake was still in Madrid as well, so he and Cordis could at least keep each other entertained with football talk (of which I understand nothing, since I've been away from the sports news for so long!) and the new game they made up just for Spain–scarf spotting. Jake absolutely refuses to get a scarf… Cordis wanted to buy one while we were waiting in the train station when we left Madrid.

Trying Mom's scarf on...

Sunday was museum day. Lucky for us, museums are free on Sundays! We visited the Museo del Prado and the Reina Sofia for free. Win. Win win win. So I showed my parents La Guernica by Picasso, Las Meninas by Velazquez, Goya's dark period, the family portrait of Carlos IV's family where they painted in a faceless woman for Carlos V's wife (he hadn't married yet), religious paintings by El Greco, and we looked at a lot more art than I'd seen on our big group tours. Quite the day of paintings, but I guess four months in Europe makes you a lot better at surviving the art museums!

Prado Museum... may have gotten in trouble for this photo. Oops.

12.24-27 Salamanca

On the morning of Christmas Eve, we embarked on the train to Salamanca! Our hotel was right next to the Catedral Vieja, and the room Cordis and I were in had the best view of it. It made me so happy.

Merry Christmas!

On Christmas Eve, basically everything was closed, as could be expected in a largely-catholic country that takes a daily nap time break. It was like a ghost town. We managed to find a place that sold empanadas for lunch, and ate them in the Plaza Mayor.

I took Cordis scarf-shopping (since we didn't find one in the train station…) and we found a reasonably-priced one at H&M on Calle Toro. I'd like to just put this into the universe–I got my brother to go shopping at a store he'd normally avoid like the plague, a place that sells skinny colorful jeans for dudes. I feel that should be stated for the record. We did find a pretty spiffy scarf though, he looks very European (and enjoys saying so at every opportunity).

European Munchkin

Dinner was at a cafeteria I've walked past every day, so I finally got to see what the food was like! The Cafeteria Casino is delicious, just so you all know. We all got food we were quite pleased with, and since we eat really early by Spanish standards (we tend to be the first people in the restaurant after it opens…), we were able to get out of their hair before it was obnoxiously late for the employees to go home to their own Christmas festivities.

Christmas involved a lot of sitting around, walking around aimlessly, and sitting around some more. We bought snacks at the supermarket before, so we had a feast of pistachios, chocolate, and "gourmet" potato chips. And Fanta Limón, the drink I will miss so much when I go home! But more places were open for dinner at night (for the Spanish, Christmas Eve is very family-oriented, while on Christmas Day it seemed to be more acceptable to go out), so we found a place from Mom's guidebooks on Rúa Mayor, where we had fantastic food! I got some kind of mystery cut of pork, I still don't know what the menu item translates to, but it was delicious.

The next day we finally got to have our tourist day, soooo we did everything! We went to my favorite coffeeshop, the famous Mandala, for breakfast, where I discovered that my favorite coffee comes in a large size instead of the little baby one I usually order. Too bad I won't get to take advantage of that… but who needs that much caffeine anyway?

We explored the Cathedral and I showed my parents the human arm that's in one of the chapels along the sides. Main attraction. Still don't know why it's there.

After that, we went to the automotive museum, and I'm so sad Jake was too sick (and I was too busy) to make it to this, because he would've loved it. 100 cars, 60 motorcycles, and a whole lot of old stuff. The greatest delight for anyone who loves both history and cars. Like my dad!

Next, the Cathedral towers. Unfortunately, it was super foggy, meaning my family didn't get to see the amazing view from the top that I was hoping for. Plus they're restoring the bell tower, so there's scaffolding up all over the place. At least it's pretty enough that all this didn't totally ruin the experience! I love the top of these towers.

And then, they got to meet María! This was a little more difficult than when Jake met her, because my family speaks about 20 words of Spanish all together. But body language and gestures will get you halfway there! And I got to eat María's tortilla one last time (she makes the best tortilla!).

Both my mamas!!

And last but not least, we went to the building of the old Universidad. Sofia from ISA was a much better tour guide than I, but I remembered a fair amount of her stories from the tour I took before! Plus, my dad loves reading museum descriptions, even I learned some things.

Boyfriend Visit!!

Madrid

So a very tired Corinne picked up a very tired Jake at the airport on Saturday morning, and we managed to find our hotel in the city without too much trouble!
From there, we decided to explore the city, given that we had very little time in Madrid. We went to see the Puerta del Sol, Plaza Mayor, and the Cathedral of Madrid. Puerta del Sol and Plaza Mayor were insanely crowded, given that it was Saturday during the holiday shopping season. The Plaza Mayor also had a Christmas market set up, where they were selling everything from Nativity scene characters (they have really complex nativity scenes here…) to bubble guns. Because of this, it seemed like roughly half the population of Madrid was in this square. Extremely overwhelming.



To get away from the epic mass of people, we went to visit the Catedral de Madrid, and to see the Palacio Real. Unfortunately, the Palacio Real was closed for tours by the time we got there, but we did get to see the cathedral, one of my favorite parts of the city!



On our way back to the hotel after the cathedral, we spotted a Wyoming Cowboys sticker on one of the cars!!

That night was a bit of a trip. First, we both slept only two hours and felt like it was the whole night, and then I kept waking up every two hours… because I'd gotten food poisoning from either the terrible sandwich I ate earlier or the raspberries I'd bought afterwards to make up for the terrible sandwich. In any case, poor Jake's first night in Spain involved taking care of his sick girlfriend. Slightly unfortunate!

Toledo

Toledo unfortunately began with a missed train and a very grumpy Corinne. Not a good deal for Jake. Plus, I was still sick and Jake was jet-lagged. Not good conditions to travel in, not at all! I literally have no pictures of this day… Sorry team. I was pretty miserable. But we at least got to see some cool landmarks in Toledo, and had a pretty decent lunch in the city.

Salamanca

Sunday night we headed back to Salamanca, since I still had classes and finals during the week. I wasn't sure where to go for dinner after our bus finally got to town (I barely eat out because María cooks so well!), so we went to get kebabs at a restaurant called Isatis, where my friends and I go a lot when we're out in Salamanca. It's basically a gyro, for those of you who are wondering. But it's simple and only 4 euros, so we were happy.
It was also at this point that Jake started feeling sick… and we eventually decided (based on the ever-reliable internet) that he had strep throat. But because Jake's insurance doesn't carry internationally, we tried to get by on over-the-counter medicines for a few days. On Thursday we finally bit the bullet and went to the doctor's office, and she gave us an antibiotic for strep throat, after we'd navigated the maze of the Spanish medical system.
Before that though, he spent most of the days sleeping–which was a slight blessing for me because I still had finals to do (one of which was a surprise my professor dropped on me on Monday! SO much fun!). And I was a frazzled mess trying to get it all done, so at least Jake wasn't impatiently waiting for me to finish… Even if that did mean he was sick. Plus, he's now the only person from home who's seen where I have classes–that's cool, right?
We did make it to the big things in Salamanca though. The old university facade, the cathedrals (and towers), and the plaza of course. He also got to meet María, which was quite the experience! She's just so full of energy and he was still feeling sick… nothing like that mix of energy levels to make a visit interesting!

Segovia

OK, this is actually a good part of the trip, I promise! Jake was finally not sick, I was done with my finals and didn't have food poisoning, no one missed a train, and we got good food! There was a short chunk of time at the beginning where there was a chance of Jake getting sick on the bus… that's what I get for forgetting my boyfriend gets carsick. But we made it there without incident, and the hotel was right next to the bus station!
We made to all the big tourist spots in Segovia, those being the Alcazar, the aqueduct, and the plaza mayor. It's a small town. But I think this one was Jake's favorite.
The aqueduct was pretty simple–walk down the street and find the giant stone thing. Woo!





The Alcazar was really cool to see again. I didn't quite remember everything I'd learned on my tour (it was in October, after all) but I remembered just enough to make it a little more interesting! If y'all remember my previous post on Segovia, there's a painting in the palace of Isabella leaving the church after her coronation in Segovia, and in this mural no one actually has eyes, which makes it a little creepy. When Jake and I saw this painting, it was sunset and the castle was essentially empty, which made it a whole lot creepier. Two rooms later, in the king's bedroom, we saw a girl who looked just like Isabella from the painting, with similar hair and wardrobe. We're pretty sure we saw Isabella's ghost. (She did turn out to be a real person… but it was a freaky moment!)

In any case, the place was pretty great. We climbed the tower, which was a lot easier this time, I think because the weather wasn't swelteringly hot outside!
Plus, I got to have a little square of ponche segoviano in the Plaza Mayor again. I still don't know what's in this dessert, but I'm pretty sure it's magic. And possibly a whole pound of butter and sugar… But if you come back from study abroad rich and skinny, you did it wrong. So I'm going to eat my ponche!

Ponche Segoviano in a bakery

Plaza Mayor lights

For dinner, we found a pretty good traditional-Spanish place, and got a pretty great meal. The town was all decorated for Christmas too, it was so pretty!

Madrid (again)

Saturday morning we headed back to Madrid to meet up with my familia! Our day with them was kind of a repeat of Jake's first day in Madrid… but with better food at least! For dinner we went to a place recommended by the hotel where we had some super classy food that Jake and I never would've had if we'd been on our own. Yay for family vacations!

And on Sunday morning, Jake went off on the Metro to catch his flight, and I began my family vacation!

This city. #salamanca #lastnight #christmaslights

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/TehgKuoVa9/

I mean, travel and strep throat will wear a guy out @rostan21 #naptime

via Instagram http://instagr.am/p/TeLVWfoVUn/

12.12.12

• I developed what I'm now calling the Salamancan plague, since being sick with the plague sounds far more legit than being sick with a cold. It's much, much better than the Moroccan plague, on the bright side. Just a cough and a runny nose, but it made me feel very sorry for my poor classmates who had to sit next to me when I started coughing up half a lung in the middle of the front row. Nothing like being the sick kid. Especially when you're already the foreign kid…
• I got better! Moving on.
• My classmate decided we were going to speak English more often–which led to me teaching her curse words. In my defense, she said them first when we were talking about our presentation. But the really fun part about this was that I have a much better personality in English than I do in Spanish–mainly because I actually have a personality when I speak in English, and my Spanish personality is a very simplified version.
• We had a magical palindrome day! Which meant that my American brain could relax and not worry about messing up the date when I wrote it on my Spanish notes. It's the little things. Happy 12/12, everyone.
• I started writing an essay about cancioneros del renacimiento–which basically translates to "song books of the Renaissance." That basically translates to me metaphorically banging my head against the internet for a million years (I exaggerate during finals week, get used to it) and hoping something that sounded vaguely like an intelligent Spanish thesis. Minimal success, owing largely to the help of a few classmates. Note to future study abroad students–if you decide to take the hard classes, MAKE FRIENDS. They will keep you sane and afloat come finals time.
• I also drank a lot of coffee–Mandala, Pancake, university café… This also means I consumed a lot of sugar, since I put so much in my coffee.
• Fake New Years! Basically, since Salamanca is chock-full of international students who go home for the holidays, the Salamantinos decided to start doing their own New Year's celebration in December, before everyone left. This way, the international students get to see how the Spanish ring in the new year (it involves grapes), plus they never turn down a chance to celebrate.
  
  In all reality, it involves packing 30,000 people into the Plaza Mayor, aaaaand it's incredibly crowded. The countdown was a lot of fun, and then we all dispersed and every girl in the world had to use the bathroom–meaning every bathroom in town had a super long line. It was sheer nonsense, and meant we went home pretty soon afterwards. The plaza part of it all was fun because they gave out grapes to eat during the countdown, which is supposed to be good luck! They had a giant stage set up and everyone counted down together to midnight, when our "new year" started!

• I packed up my suitcase a little bit and grabbed my backpack to go meet Jake at the airport in Madrid! And I ate my last dinner with Megan at our little kitchen in María's apartment–spinach tortilla. Yumm!

Salamanca Sunset

This photo does not actually capture how pretty it was the other night. And the christmas lights are up all over town, it's beautiful!

Lisboa!

The thing about going to a city when it rains all weekend is that it's much more difficult to get an idea of what the city is really like. You're not quite into exploring because, face it, you're going to be soaked at the end of it, like it or not. But we did get to see a decent amount of Lisboa while we were getting soaked. Downtown Lisboa is a combination of tall business-age buildings as well as older, more traditional and colorful buildings that remind me of the decor in Córdoba.

After dropping our things at the hotel in downtown Lisboa, we were bussed off to a giant plaza where the old royal palace used to stand. Unfortunately, as Portugal is basically the California of the Iberian Peninsula, there was a giant earthquake some years ago, which destroyed about 90% of the structures in the city. Rather than rebuild the city how it once was, the reigning monarch took this as an opportunity to re-do the layout of Lisboa into a more urban one. So the rubble was taken out of the plaza, and it's now a center of commerce which includes a wine-tasting room on one end and the Museo de Cerveza(Museum of Beer) on the other. Oh, Lisboa. But there's a large arch/gate where the palace used to stand, as a smaller tribute to the old palace. In front of this is a trolley stop–they have cable cars just like in San Francisco. The similarities just keep coming.

Unfortunately though, we opted to walk up the giant hill to our next destination, rather than find a way to cram roughly 60 students onto foreign public transportation. Maybe a better plan, but it definitely showed me that I really need to get back into working out…

Anyway, at the top of this giant hill was the Castillo de San Jorge. This was basically a giant compound of large buildings and things we could explore for a while, and get some photos of the amazing views. I believe this was once a defensive structure of some kind, given that it was at the highest point in the city and included very large stone walls.

After we were done climbing all over the castle, they set us loose for dinner. My friends and I managed to find this very typical Portuguese restaurant in a neighborhood called Barrio Alto, known for their restaurants. We lucked out, and had some of the best seafood we'd ever tried. I opted for salmon (always a safer option for me), but my friend got the regional delicacy–bacalao (codfish), which really wasnot bad at all. And my salmon was die-and-go-to-heaven good. We also tried vino verde (green wine), something else Portugal is known for. Finally, the restaurant had a singing show during the dinner, in a very traditional Portuguese style called fado. 

The next day we woke bright & early to go to Monasterio de los Jerónimos, a very famous monastery in the city, as well as the Torre de Belém.

The monastery was kind of cool because it had some fun details. For the most part, it was your standard catholic church–pillars, stone, altar, stained glass, cross-shaped layout… et cetera (The magic of the cathedral may be wearing off on me, which is actually really sad…).

But there were a handful of tombs in there. Some of them were for deceased kings and queens, but had stone elephants supporting the stone caskets, as opposed to the usual lions or just square bases. Apparently the elephant supports are one-of-a-kind in the world, but I didn't get a picture of them (sorry team!).

There was also a tomb of a famous writer as well as a famous explorer upon entry to the church. The explorer's tomb was decorated with the engraving of a ship, for obvious reasons.

Also, there were a few design details that were added to the church that I found interesting. A lot of the detailing on columns or arches consisted of a cable/rope design, borrowed from ships, as exploration was a big deal during the time the church was being constructed. Also, the "veins" on the support columns spread out when they hit the roof, partially because that helps distribute the weight of the stone in the roof, but also to make them look like palm trees. When you lack palm trees in your own country (those hadn't come over the ocean yet), make them out of stone!

Next, we wandered in the pouring rain to the edge of the river, to see the Torre de Belém. Belém essentially translates to "Bethlehem", and is the name of a suburb of Lisboa. This tower is part of an olden-days defensive system, and once had a partner across the river, so ships would have to move through this pinch-point on the river before they could reach the port of Lisboa.

Also, from the tower you can see another San Francisco imitation–the fake Golden Gate bridge. It was built by the same steel company that contributed to San Francisco, and is the same color. And like San Francisco, if the weather decides to literally rain on your parade, you will not get any good photos of it. So here's a photo I stole from my friend's Facebook, since it apparently didn't rain when she went a week ago. (Thanks Lauren!)

The rest of the day after these tours was free time. My friends and I went to a sushi place where I a) actually ate sushi and b) ACTUALLY LIKED IT. Which is new, in case you haven't been around my picky eating habits lately. I have a feeling part of it is that we were on the coast, and therefore I assume seafood will generally always be better than it is in Colorado (landlocked state problems). But we had a great meal where we just stuffed ourselves, because it was an all-you-can-eat deal. Why would any college student not take advantage?? The only thing was that this was the first time I've actually experienced a language barrier problem–we had an issue with our order, and our waiter didn't speak English or Spanish. I'm assuming here, but I think most of the waiters and waitresses were Asian natives who had immigrated to Portugal. Basically, picture an employee whose second language is English (in the USA), trying to speak Spanish or French to a customer. It was almost a big mess, but the table next to us saw our problem and offered their translation services since they spoke a little English–thank goodness!

We also took a taxi to Starbucks. Because we don't have overpriced, over commercialized coffee shops in Salamanca. And it was right by a plaza of town where we could do some souvenir shopping and explore the city a little bit, even in the rain.

Mmmmm Starbucks

Lisboa in the rain

Sunday, we woke up bright and early again to get back on the bus. We made two stops at some little towns on our way home, the first of which was in a town called Óbidos. The main attraction of Óbidos is that it has a giant wall–which of course we climbed. If there is a tower to be climbed and my friends Adrianna & Mila are in the group, we will absolutely be climbing it!

Óbidos

Town cemetery from above

We also got to experience something called gingja, which is an itty bitty amount of cherry liquor inside a chocolate cup. It was like a chocolate-covered cherry, but about six times better and not so overly sugary! 

Batalha has Convento de Santa María da Vitória, a church built as a tribute to Santa María after the Portuguese won an important battle against the Spanish army. Once again–stone, columns, etc. Architecture was pretty standard.

However, there were a few extras. One was a white-marble room for more graves of Portuguese monarchs (these were from around the time of Ferdinand & Isabel in Spain I believe, while the elephant-supported tombs in Lisboa are from a dynasty a few hundred years earlier).

The other was a monastery garden which houses the Portuguese Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. This tomb is not as grandiose as the USA Tomb, but it is a little more interesting when it comes to design. The headstone is more detailed with carvings of saints, and is capped by a lamp which is kept lit with olive oil. The changing of the guard, however, is much simpler than the USA's version.

Oh, and we found a fountain with fishes in it. These fishes are troopers, because that water was cold too!

And that, my friends is my trip to Lisboa! We passed the rest of the bus time with some movies that were put on the movie screens, and some riddles from an app I downloaded after we got very bored on the way to Lisboa.

So here's a riddle, in case you're bored.

With thieves I consortWith the vilest, in short.I'm quite at ease in depravityYet all divines use meAnd savants can't lose me,For I am the center of gravity

Maybe I'll just start adding riddles to my blog posts.