Traveling Library

Home Sweet Home

2010-09-22T17:11:00.002-07:00

Enough said.

We are home after over 7 months of Traveling!!!

Thanks for all that followed the blog while we were traveling. Talk to you all soon.

Since we do not have phones yet, if you want to get in contact with us, email us at Jordan.Book85@gmail.com or Kbook6@gmail.com

Indianapolis, Indiana

2010-09-19T16:04:00.006-07:00

This is a picture of the plane we took to Indianapolis. 13 rows of seats with a total of 50 people, super small!!!

We arrived in the afternoon on Wednesday and found our friend Stacie waiting for us right away. It was great! We then went to the restaurant where she works to have some free lunch which was yummy, then we headed back to her place. She lives in a town-house with her friend Dana, and her dog Bella. Dana is so graciously sleeping in Stacie’s bed and letting us use her room. So we went to Stacie’s parents house for dinner, we have been planning this since Costa Rica, and her mom made us chicken enchiladas.! We met her parents and brother, played a few games of what they call “corn-hole” and we call bean-bag-toss, then we all enjoyed very yummy enchiladas!

Thursday we drove around downtown Indianapolis for a little while, took a few pictures, and just saw the city. This is the only day Stacie had to work in the evening, so we drove her to work, headed back to her place, and then went and ate dinner later at the restaurant.

Friday was a relaxing day. We stayed home, relaxed, went into downtown again for a little bit. We went over the the NCAA hall of fame. Here are some pictures from that.

Early morning Saturday we drove to Chicago. Check out the Chicago blog before this one. Sunday we drove home from Chicago, relaxed and went back to Stacie’s parents house to have another nice dinner, and watch the Manning bowl #2. It was the football game of the Colts (Payton Manning) vs the Giants (Eli Manning). It was very fun, especially being around all Colts fans.
We went to bed that night to prepare to wake up super early for our 6am flight. We will be home in Arizona bright and early in the morning just before 7am (because of the time difference). We can’t wait to see all our family and friends!!

Chi-town

2010-09-19T15:46:00.010-07:00

We headed to Chicago early on Saturday morning, and arrived before noon. It was Jordan, me, Stacie our friend from Costa Rica, and her roommate Dana. We started at Millennium Park.

This is a large park with a few museums, a large fountain, some tourist sites, and a very large stage for concerts. We wanted to see “the bean” which is a famous part of Chicago. Here are some pictures with the bean!

After walking around the park for a little while, we walked down Michigan Avenue and through downtown Chicago. We walked to the Willis Tower, which is the new name for the Sears Tower. It was super cloudy and not worth it to go up, so we didn’t, but here are a few pictures of it.

We then went over to Navy Pier. There was a lot to do there, but we just walked around and ate some lunch.

Chicago has a free zoo!! So of course we went to that. It’s called Lincoln Park Zoo. Here are a few pictures there. They actually had a lot of animals, it was fun.

After the zoo, I was lucky enough to get to see my aunt, uncle, and cousins from Wisconsin again! We met up for dinner at Uncle Julio’s and it was yummy tex-mex food. Here are a few pictures with my cousins.

Back at Millennium park is the Buckingham fountain that has a light show and music each hour. It was very nice to sit and watch, and we actually had some fireworks in the background during which was nice. I got a few good pictures of the city at night as well.

Us in the hotel room

We headed back home in the morning after seeing Stacie’s college. St.Francis University near Chicago. We hit some rain but it wasn’t too bad. Chicago was a little bit cold but I am sure we will have a big change when we get home to the heat of AZ.

Newfane/Buffalo, New York with my Grandma

2010-09-16T06:48:00.017-07:00

Buffalo

We arrived to Buffalo on Saturday around 6pm, and my Grandma and Aunt were patiently waiting for us at the station as we arrived 30 minutes late. We had a nice ride back to my Grandma’s house through the scenic route, and it is so beautiful out here in Newfane, New York!

My Grandma and Aunt Cheryl live about 1 mile away from each other and it was very nice to see both of them. I hadn’t seen my aunt in about 15 years, since the last time we were in Newfane. The last time I saw my Grandma was in Arizona last year when my Grandma and Grandpa drove out to visit for a little bit. Unfortunately, my Grandpa passed away 1 month ago, so we didn’t get to see him, but it was very nice looking at pictures and talking with my Grandma about him.

Sunday we attended church with my Grandma and Aunt. My grandpa had attended this church since he was a young boy, having grown up right down the street from the church. Immediately following the service there was free pizza because this was the first Sunday of Sunday school for the children. On the way home we stopped by the cemetery that my grandpa is buried in. Jordan spent the remainder of the day watching football and my cousin Stephanie and her husband Frank came over and visited us. I hadn’t seen her in over 15 years.

Monday, my Aunt Cheryl picked us up and we headed to Niagara Falls. We went over to the Canadian side because it has a better view of the falls and it truly was a beautiful sight to behold.

Tuesday we helped my grandma clean up her garden by picking potatoes and weeds.
Wednesday morning was another early travel day as our flight left at 815am. We will be in Indianapolis by 115pm. Our last stop until Phoenix!!!!

Morristown, New Jersey

2010-09-16T06:30:00.017-07:00

We spent the majority of our time in New Jersey at our friends house relaxing. Literally, laying around the house watching tv and doing nothing.

We first met Brad and JoJo on our honeymoon in Cancun. They were staying at the same hotel as we were and we incidentally did an all-day excursion together. From there, we spent most of our dinners together and lounged around the resort together. They have 2 adorable and rambungsish kids, Alex and Jack. Alex is a 7 year old 2nd grader and loves to play soccer. Jack is a 5 year old about to start kindergarten and is very protective of his older brother. They are both very affectionate and are always ready for some cuddle or snuggle time.
Jack and Krystle

Alex and Krystle

How cute!

Their house is gorgeous and I was ready to move in upon seeing it. It was conveniently located at the top of a miniature hill which provided a city on a hill type feeling. Only was a problem when the basketball rolled down the hill and into the street.

Brad and I spent half of our morning one day trying to get a rope for a swing over a tree branch in his backyard. Even once we got it up there we had to spend additional time to take a knot out of the rope. It was quite an endeavor.

One night we went with our friends to a dinner party to celebrate the Jewish holiday Ramadan. It was an amazingly big house and very beautiful! We met a lot of people and had a very nice dinner.

Here we are in the kitchen!

Brad is an excellent photographer and took some pictures for us.

Brad and the family drove us to Newark Penn Station to catch our bus early on Saturday morning. According to Brad it “isn’t the best part of town,” and we knew that already from when we picked up our bus tickets. It sure was interesting the people and conversations we heard at the station. But finally, almost 30 minutes late, we got on our bus and were on our way.

New York City part 2

2010-09-13T16:58:00.044-07:00

A few days in New York City we just hung around the house and decided to take it easy after a long day of walking. The second day that we walked around was Labor Day Monday. We purchased our tickets to the Statue of Liberty early so that we could for sure get them. We woke up early and headed to the subway.
After a long subway ride and then a little walk we got in line to pick up our tickets for the Statue of Liberty. After that we waited in line for the ferry and got aboard. Here are a few pictures from the ferry.
NY day 2-4

The beautiful symbol of freedom, the Statue of Liberty

After taking some pictures from the outside, we went inside to see the museum and look out from the pedestal. We had some great views of the city!

Then we headed back on the ferry to go to Ellis Island. Here is a great picture from the ferry.

Ellis Island

Inside the Ellis Island museum. Here is a picture of some of the currency that was collected and exchanged for US dollars.

This is the waiting hall where everyone waited for their name to be called in order to be screened for entering the US. This was full of people everyday!

So the Statue of Liberty was great and we were very happy to see it. We then walked around the area for a while. We saw this, which is a piece that was on top of the world trade center and is now here after the attacks on Sept 11th.

This is the wall street bull, with tons of tourists around it I might add.

Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial

The Brooklyn Bridge

Wall Street

Ground Zero

The site of the new mosque, literally one block from Ground Zero

There were no protesters today because it was Labor Day, but apparently every other day the sidewalk is packed with protesters.

One Tuesday we were meeting up with our friend Brad who lives in New Jersey. He works in New York City, so we planned on meeting up with him in the morning to put our bags in his car, and then walk around the city for the day, then head home with him after work. It worked out perfectly. Before we met up with Brad, we were walking through Times Square and were able to catch part of the morning show being filmed live. Here are a few pictures.

We walked to see the Chrysler building.

From the movie “Big,” here is the famous FAO Schwartz toy store! It had so many toys inside.

After that we just relaxed a lot inside Borders, catching up on some reading and just relaxing. Then we met up with Brad and headed into New Jersey where we would be staying for 4 days with Brad, his wife JoJo, and their 2 children, Alex and Jack.

New York City

2010-09-07T08:16:00.018-07:00

Day 1 Manhattan

Downtown Manhattan is unreal! Having been in two very large Spanish cities, Barcelona and Madrid, I thought I was prepared for the sheer size of New York City but I was mistaken. The city is enormous, breath-taking, and awe-inspiring.

From the metro station we blazed a trail through the city to see as many free stuff as we could. The first was the Empire state building. Which was a wee bit over the budget to justify going to the top. But it was quite an impressive view from the ground. Let alone the city itself at this point.

After that we also went over and saw Madison Square Garden.

There is a very special Burger King called the Whopper Bar. Quite comical really.

Then off to Times Square. I can only imagine this place full of people during New Years or other special events.

There was a very conveniently placed recruitment center in downtown. Woot Woot for our Armed Forces!

Amen for all those that protect us. Thanks Tony and Josh.

We walked around the Rockefeller Center and saw an impressive set of buildings and businesses. And thankfully there was also a Chipotle nearby. For that matter, if you check google maps, there are like 25 Chipotle’s in the Manhattan area of New York City, and none in Queens, the area we are staying in. Sad…

The Museum of Modern Art is also in one of the Rockefeller buildings. This museum is dedicated to modern contemporary art. We took advantage of Friday Free Afternoon’s and got in for free. It has some nice pieces but our favorites were actually of some famous Spanish artists (In Barcelona we were going to go to a Dali museum to see the melting clocks painting, then we searched online and found out it wasn’t even there and so we searched for where 4
it was and found that it was here in NY and we were excited, knowing we would travel to there next).

This was an interesting sign in the lobby of the Modern Art Museum

This is for you Josh and Rachel.

We at lunch in Central park. It was beautiful and very relaxing in comparison to the endless activity on NYC.

We saw some more classic places such as City music hall and Carnegie hall.

There is just so many people and so much to see that just when we thought we had seen it all this is what we found!

Sorely missed while away in Costa Rica and Spain!

Day of Travel

2010-09-04T03:21:00.003-07:00

Here are our playing cards that we bought in a store in Costa Rica and have played everywhere we have gone.

Traveling is never easy. It wears on your body, mind, and soul. Regardless if it’s by train, bus, metro, plane, car, donkey, bobsled, or Canadian dog sleds.

However, returning one’s country soothes that majority of that pain.

Hello United States of America! Are we glad to see you!!!!

Last visit to Barcelona

2010-09-03T05:18:00.004-07:00

So we arrived in Barcelona from Amposta by train on Saturday. We leave Barcelona to head back to the states on Thursday. We have 5 nights and about 4 days to soak in the Spanish culture for the last time on this trip and then we are back in the states. This time we stayed in a different part of Barcelona and we are near the Plaza Espana and the main train station. We are staying with a couple from Holland (the girl)and Chile (the guy) and they live on the top floor of an apartment building. They have a great view and also the top terrace is all to themselves, so we have enjoyed eating up there with the beautiful views and listening to music and just relaxing.

We walked over to Plaza Espana on a few different days to check it out. Its pretty incredible. Here are some pictures of it…

We met up with another Spanish couple, Maite and Jon, that we met at Pueblo Ingles. The actually had 2 Aussies staying with them, who had also been at Pueblo Ingles, and we went Tapa Bar hopping. It was super enjoyable. You select the tapa (a small portion of a specific food) and then hold on to your toothpicks and then they add the toothpicks together and you pay per toothpick.

Amposta

2010-08-30T03:00:00.008-07:00

Now that our time at Pueblo Ingles is over, I mean who can survive 15+ hours a day speaking, we retreated to a small pueblo called Amposta to stay with our friend Amaya. With a population of around 15 thousand it was ideal for refreshing our minds and souls while giving our mouths a much needed rest.

We met Amaya while at Patim in Castellon. Most likely the best benefit of our time there (also for meeting Sanja from Serbia who we plan on visiting someday in the future). We took an overnight bus from Madrid to Tarragona and then a train from Tarragona to Amposta. While waiting in the train station for Amaya we busted out our playing cards for more rounds of Phase 10 and Skippo.

During the restful week in Amposta we also hiked 2 mountains. Despite already having our breath taken away by the climb itself the views were also breath-taking and marvelous.

We spent a mourning at the beach one day while Amaya had to work. We were the first to arrive at this small local beach but within 20 minutes the whole beach was covered. I got a great run in and Krystle got a darker shade of white. Upon returning to the city, we walked around and saw the river nearby and the bridge to the city. Another day we traveled down the river to the sea on a tourist boat.

We had the wonderful opportunity to have lunch with Amaya’s parents. It was a sight to see has 3 languages were being spoken during this meal. Krystle and I occasionally in English with Amaya practicing English skills she learned in primary school but has not used since. Her parents spoke many Catalan, trying to accommodate us with speaking Spanish. In the Catalunya area, Spanish is actually the second language in the small towns and rural areas because Catalan is the primary language.

After enjoying a typical meal of Catalunya which included a delicious cooked turkey we explored the city a little. We saw her mother’s clothing store, makes expenses dresses for special occasions, and went to see the bull ring. It is constructed each year for the one week festival and then dismantled afterward. The bulls are not killed and the locals are the ones in the ring running from the bulls.. craziness. On the last day they also have fireworks which was another kick for us as we missed the 4th of July fireworks back home.

We also enjoyed some coveted Mexican food.

Here was our goodbye at the train station.

Day at sea

2010-08-30T02:52:00.005-07:00

A friend that we made at Pueblo Ingles just so happened to be vacationing near us the following week while we were in Amposta. David and his wife Virginia were going to be staying in Port de Salou, which is where apparently everyone from their town, Zaragoza, goes to vacation.

It is about a 45 minute drive from Amposta where we were staying. Our friend was nice enough to come out of his way to pick us up and take us home. They own a skiing boat that they take out in the Mediterranean Sea everyday while on vacation. So it was just us 4 out on the boat. They took us to an area, that was “the most like a lake” so I could try to ski. First David went on 1 ski. It was his first time ever getting up on one ski!! Congrats David. He was it was because we were lucky, and that we would have to return again the next day so he could ski again. Haha Then his wife, Virginia went, and she was amazing, apparently she has been skiing in the sea since she was 5 years old, and you could definitely tell. Now I know how to ski because my dad has a boat and I ski a few times a year, but I have never skied in an ocean or sea. It was sooo different! It was windy and super wavy. I luckily got up on my first try and skied for about 5 minutes, then decided to be risky and go outside of the wake. That sure wasn’t happening as it was super wavy, water filled the skiis and I did a nose-dive into the water almost immediately. I had a good time though and now I can say I skied in a sea!

The rest of the day we just relaxed on the boat, swam in the water, and talked in both English and Spanish which was very interesting and fun. After the sea, we had lunch at the Nautic club which Virginia’s parents belonged to, which was very nice. Then we relaxed at their place for a little bit and enjoyed the beautiful view. Here are a few pictures of the view.

More English

2010-08-30T02:33:00.008-07:00

Party night was Monday night and there was a lot of fun music and dancing among everyone. Here are some pictures of our party!

Don’t ask what we are doing, "dancing"…

One night we had a demonstration of “Quemado” This is a very common Spanish drink from the North West part of Spain. There is a little bit of a magic/witch spell type stuff that goes along with it, and we had a few of the participants acting as witches and saying the poems. Brian, our MC (master of ceremonies) the guy who talked all week, was making the drink while the witches talked. It consisted of almost pure alcohol (smelled like rubbing alcohol) coffee beans, lemon grind, apples, sugar and maybe more but that is all I can remember. Then he cooked it, burned it, for about 15 minutes to lessen the severity of the drink. We all had some at the end, and it was NOT good. Here are a few pictures of the ceremony and us trying the drink..

Here is the last night of hanging out.

We were trying to get a picture of the guys jumping in the air… it was very difficult.. but this is what we got

Closet to success we ever came to

Here is us with Brian, the Master of Ceremonies, we had a great time with him

The rest of the days flew by with talking and activities. I (Krystle) lost my voice about the 3rd day because we were talking for over 15 hours a day, and it was very difficult to continue doing all of the activities. The head person Laura gave me a little bit of extra free time which was nice, so I could sit and NOT talk! Anyway, it was a great experience and now we have many friends in Spain that hopefully someday we can come back to visit!

Here is the whole group

Pueblo Ingles

2010-08-30T02:24:00.005-07:00

August 12th starts our time at Pueblo Ingles. Pueblo Ingles is an organization that runs camps for a week for Spaniards to be fully immersed in English. They get “Anglos” who speak English as their first language to come be volunteers for the week and in exchange for our speaking English many hours a day, we get a free place to stay and free food for the week! So it is great for us!
August 12th we had a welcome luncheon and got some information before we started the next day. After the yummy lunch we ate with a lot of typical Spanish food, we got a nice Flamenco show! Jordan and I hadn’t planned on spending the money to go to one, so it was great to see the local show without paying for it! Here are a few pictures of the Flamenco dancers…

We met our bus at 1pm and headed off to Los Panascales for the week. We sat with a Spaniard on the bus, and our speaking time began. We pretty much talked for 10-15 hours a day. Everyday we had at least 5 “1 to 1’s” which means one Spaniards and one Anglo talking for an hour. Sometimes they switched it up and made it 2 to 2’s. We also had a lot of activities and theatre.

We had an excursion today and we went to a close-by village called El Escorial. This is the home of a very important monastery called San Lorenzo de El Escorial. Our whole group of about 50 decided that we all wanted to see this. We had 2 English speaking guides and split the group. It was a long tour, but very interesting. The most interesting part was the crypt where we got to see the tombs of most of the late kings and queens of Spain. It was pretty neat. There were a few missing because they were in a different area where they “get ready” for the crypt for like 25 years. Not sure exactly what takes 25 years to do, but it was interesting to say the least. Unfortunately we couldn’t take any pictures inside, but here are a few pictures of the outside areas. It was very nice and a good change from speaking so much English.

A different area of tombs with prince’s and princesses 137

Apparently, I did not know this, but Jordan is an actor. The second night of being here, we had some theatre. Jordan was asked to be part of the theatre, and did a great job. Jordan was playing a stupid tourist (commonly referred to as a "giddy" in Spanish) who gets robbed by these 3 girls. It was very funny and Jordan did a great job exaggerating his part. Everyone had a good laugh, and he kind of set the tone for the rest of the theatre performances.

Cordoba

2010-08-23T06:55:00.007-07:00

We had planned on going to Cordoba while on our way to Portugal but that did not work out. We originally thought of hitting Cordoba for a few hours, heading to Seville to catch a bus to Lisboa (Portgual), then back to Madrid. However, we found out that only one bus sells out in advance to take off… Cordoba! I do not know why, the only thing interesting is the Mezquita.

The Mezquita has identity problems. First it was a Christian church. Then a Mosque. Then again a Christian church. Now it’s just kind a mix. While there are still masses that Catholics worship the Living God, the building itself is just a beautiful example of a time long gone. It’s gorgeous red and white arches provide just an unreal atmosphere. Standing inside the Mezquita (church/mosque) makes one recognize how many people stood exactly where I was, whether worshipping Allah, Jesus, Muhammad or the Pope. What were they like? Did they worry about how history would remember them? Did they think about the tourist money this temple would someday bring? If so, no wonder the Catholics recaptured it again. Anyways, it was super interesting standing inside a spiritual site of such significance for many people over such a long time.

Check out the beauty!

Some more Mary worship for you.

The Lord

Counsels of bishops, cardinals would meet here, as well as for ceremonies

Guys with the keys to heaven I guess, maybe Peter!

Random picture:
Sombrero!

Portugal

2010-08-23T06:47:00.006-07:00

Bem-vindo a Lisboa. Welcome to Portugal.

So we decided that we had to see Portugal on this trip, because we probably wouldn’t ever be headed there again. So we bought 2 overnight bus tickets and got a place for one night in Portugal. We headed out after being out for the day in the city of Madrid at about 11:45pm. We were exhausted, so that was good as we both slept a lot of the way, of course waking up during the trip due to being uncomfortable sleeping on a bus. We have no idea when we crossed the border because there was no stop, no checking of passports or anything! I remembered this last time I was in Europe, as I guess it doesn’t matter when you are traveling from one EU country to the next.
We didn’t understand a thing that was said in this country even though it’s supposed to be very similar to Spanish. I don’t know it it’s because people talked really fast or what, but the guy we were staying with said that most people there like to cut many of their words short, so that may be it. I knew 3 phrases in Portuguese because of when I went to Brazil. Disculpe is how they say excuse me or sorry. Obrigado/a is how they say thank you, and I did use this word a few times. And “no fallo Portuges” is “I don’t speak Portuguese” haha

We got to Portugal, found our bus and took it to the stop of the people where we were to be staying. When we finally got in the house we took a 3 hour nap because we were exhausted. Then we headed out to explore the city. We walked from where we were staying to a place with a great view of the whole city. Well most of it. Here are a few pictures.

Then we headed down the hill to check out some of the touristy things. Here is another great view with the water.

We saw a Palace/Castle whatever you want to call it, but we didn’t go inside because there was a long line and we didn’t feel like waiting.

We saw a church that Jordan went inside to check out, while I sat down outside. It had some beautiful stained glass.

Then we kept walking down the hill and saw their main plaza or square.

They have this tram that goes up and down and around the hill all day and is very popular and more than 100 years old. It actually went right in the front of where we were staying as well. We didn’t take it because we just walked everywhere, but it looked cool.

So, we walked around a lot of Lisboa, Portugal and saw a lot. Jordan thinks, and I agree, that it is like a dressed up Panama. There were a lot of places old and run-down, but not as many as Panama. It wasn’t very pretty, at least we didn’t think so. The water and views were great, but I don’t think something to live in a city for. We both just realized that we don’t like the big city life, and could never live in a touristy place like many of the places we have been.

Anyway, our second day we had all day to explore and walk around, then we were catching our bus back to Madrid at 8:30pm. So we took our time, walked around and then sat down in a park. We decided we wanted to eat McDonalds, so we were on a hunt for one. We probably walked more than 4 miles that day and didn’t find a McDonalds. I guess God didn’t want us to eat that.. lol

Here are a few more pictures of us walking around.

Then we went to a Corte Ingles (the only department store with everything you could possibly think of) to get some air conditioning, food, and relax. They had this star wars exhibit that Jordan enjoyed.

(Jordan) It was quite impressive and I was very fascinated with the collection itself. However, there were so many useless items that I found myself transported back in time to see my cousin Paul’s unopened collection of G.I. JOE toys (which I was so impressed with as a 10 year old I almost opened some of them up). I mean, seriously people, what is the point of toys if you do not play with them. Our society will not survive if we continue to center our lives on such material possessions that hold zero value in promoting Mankind. But enough of the rant, Star Wars rules!!!!

They had actions figures for everyone; miniature action figures, regular size action figures and man-size action figures. There were the metal and plastic lunch boxes from all the movies, most older than I am. They had video game consoles set up to play current Star Wars games. There were Legos, that one could build starships, cruisers, and individual characters such as Darth Vader and Chewbacca. They had posters of many of the movies, many of which looked like the originals. They were in both English and Spanish. Quite cool.

Toledo

2010-08-23T06:42:00.005-07:00

We took a day trip by bus to Toledo one day. The bus ride was about an hour and a half and was very easy to us considering the other bus rides we have taken. Upon arriving in the city, you can just tell that it is an ancient but well preserved city.

It has some well preserved walls and is mostly known for its swords. Almost every store had some swords and knight armor which was very interesting.
Here are a few pictures inside the stores.

We asked the tourist people if there was a sword factory we could go look at and there was one. We didn’t take any pictures inside to respect the guy working there, but it was a very small little workshop with a few different rooms and lots of swords! We saw the furnace where they heat and mold them, it was cool to see the different stages of that. Then of course we saw many of the finished product. If we had more room in our bags we would have brought a few back as souvenirs! Toledo was great for a day trip, then we headed back to our home base for the night.

Segovia

2010-08-23T04:35:00.011-07:00

Segovia is unreal. Wanna know why? It’s got a Roman aqueduct running through its downtown. It’s not even hiding, it’s right in plain view.

Those that love Roman mythology, here is a neat little tribute to Romulus and Remus. The story goes they were raised by a wolf. Anyways, woot woot for mythology!

While I thought about climbing up it, I stopped knowing that it would simple lead to an international arrest record. But seriously take a look out how beautiful and huge this structure is.

Now I’m a little bit of a cynic when it comes to my next topic. It’s amazing to me the size and grandeur of one building in each ancient city. The cathedral. I mean there are really cool but does every city need one that by sheer size is bigger than most castles and can encompass the housing districts of most of the cities. I don’t think this is what Jesus meant when he said “feed my sheep”. I mean shouldn’t the tithes of a church be used to help it’s actual people, not just have enough ceiling space to fit a fleet of hot-air balloons.

Anyways, we next headed over to the castle of Segovia. A-MAZING!! I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

This castle has served a multitude of uses over the years. It was a prison, artillery barracks, and now obviously, a tourist attraction to make the government money! Here are some pictures of the inside.

Views from the castle

War!

Library of the mathematics involved for using cannons accurately

Madrid

2010-08-23T00:24:00.006-07:00

Our first full day in Madrid was a Sunday, the first one of the month, which just so happens to be the day that a lot of Museums are free. So we decided to hit the 2 that we wanted to see. First we went to the Reina Sofia. This is the modern art museum, which was actually built as a hospital, and then later modified into what it is now. We saw a lot of art. One specific painting by Picasso that I like, its called “Guernica” not sure what that means but look it up to see a picture of it. It was pretty cool, but you know, you can only see so much art…

We didn’t take any pictures inside, but here is a picture of the outside.

Between going to 2 museums, we decided to take a rest and eat and walk around in the biggest park in the center of the city. Park El Retiro. It is the most popular and widely visited park in Madrid. It was originally built for the Spanish King Phillip IV as a hunting and relaxing area, but was then opened to the public in the 1800’s. It had a few museums in it, a large and small pond, one on which you can use a paddle boat, many street performers, restaurants and small stands for ice cream, and of course people selling goods. Here are some pictures of us at the park.
Just before eating our lunch and relaxing in the grass

The Crystal Palace

The large lake

We later went to the Prado museum, which is another older art museum, and one of Madrid’s top cultural sites. It is the largest art gallery in the world! I read that they have more than 8,600 paintings in it, but only showcase around 2000 because of space. Wow! I thought there was a lot, but apparently there were even more! It has old and new art from all over the world, and it was very interesting seeing all of the different art. It also had sculptures, coins, and other works of art. We were very exhausted after walking a lot and being in the sun for a lot of the day, so we headed home to go to bed.
Some of the other days were spent relaxing at the house we are staying at, or walking around shopping a little bit. There is also a nice park near the house we are staying at, so we went there a few nights to walk around and played some cards. It was very relaxing.
The day before we left for Portugal we spent walking around the city again. We went and saw the other sites that we wanted to visit in Madrid which included the Palace, Plaza de Espana and a few other big/famous shopping squares.

Here is us stopped at a park.

The Palace

A man played an accordion. Pretty much everywhere you go in Madrid or Barcelona and some other places, there is someone playing an instrument asking for donations, or just someone asking for donations. These people are in the metros too! Here is a very common man playing an accordion. Of course it was nice to hear while looking at the pretty palace, but its definitely not something needed…

Here is me sitting down relaxing after a lot of walking.

Plaza de Espana

And we walked over to Madrid’s river. It was super hot this day so we found a place to sit in the shade and play some cards. Here is a picture of the river and one of the bridges.

Avila

2010-08-20T00:46:00.005-07:00

Avila was another city with an impressive Roman structure still in good condition. The original wall of an ancient city was maintained in Avila.

Though I would love to know, with all these ancient structures, how they looked before they remodeled the broken parts it really was quite cool to see a glimpse of the ancient world. I mean it was such a different world then. That wall was built for protection against other foreign enemies, and in reality, the unknown. This people did not have the instant travel, the instant communication over internet and instant news to tell them exactly what is going on in the other side of the world let alone the city just a 50 miles away.

Cool lion!

Final Day with Patim

2010-08-19T07:56:00.005-07:00

After Krystle’s workshop we were done, other than doing some closing thoughts and discussion over what they learned and what they thought were good activities and should be repeated and which were not and should be discarded. We spent time with the patients at the community and prepared to say goodbye to them and to each other. It had been quite a learning experience, one that we will not forget for a very long time.

We got all the patients a small gift. This had to be a reasonably cheap and useful gift. Sadly, we also selected an unhealthy one. For the ones that smoked we gave them a lighter, which was all but 2 of them, those that did not received a hand-made bookmark.

We also made a special apple pie from Serbia. It was delicious.

I burnt my hand. Funny story. I set the pans on top of the ovens, where it shouldn’t be hot. And I guess there was a spot where hot air left the ovens, which just so happened to be underneath one of the corners of the pans. So when I picked it up, ouch.

Day 13 and 14

2010-08-19T07:55:00.001-07:00

We met with the President of Patim today and it was to put it nicely a waste of time. Ultimately in my opinion, we spent 2 hours writing a mission statement for him, for what International Volunteering meant. He mooched our ideas and beliefs and then had a girl from our group write the notes he dictated so he could use them later. Needless to say, Weak.

I, Krystle lead my workshop on STDs.
This was very interesting to say the least.. I decided to talk about something I actually knew something about in English, so it would be a little bit easier in Spanish. And this was also one of the topics that was listed in the book we got. Anyway, I did some myths and facts about STD’s and had everyone write if they thought they were true or false. It was very interesting to me how many of them they got wrong. It was actually pretty sad. In the first group, of course, they wanted to argue all of them. In the group at the treatment center, a few of the people told me that they learned a lot after my presentation. That was rewarding at least.
So after the myths and facts, and then talking about all of them in detail. I had a few pictures of STD’s and had them guess which ones they were. This was disgusting as well as funny at how they were disgusted. Jordan didn’t even want to look at them, but for me it was no big deal because I have already seen them all in books, and I have seen a lot worse. Anyway, all of the groups seemed pretty interested and it seemed to go well for the most part. Of course during the discussion, Amaya took over part of that, and when people had questions for me, Sanja had to translate. It was a success overall, and I was very happy to be done when it was over.

Day 12

2010-08-11T05:59:00.005-07:00

Monday is the same in every country. It just drags on. People who had bad weekends take it out on everyone around them. That’s what our first group of the day did as we spoke about Sexuality. They once again fought us on every point we made and were once again disrespectful during the session. I said once again as the group ended, “Here’s your fish thanks for coming today”.

The other groups went well again and discussed amicably the differences in philosophy of sexuality and who’s role it is to teach sexuality to children. Whether is was the responsibility of parents, the government and it’s schools, or the streets. It was quite interesting to hear individuals recount how they learned things on the streets (which means with friends or experimenting in a couple), a few facts in school from the younger generation and nothing from schools from the older generation.

I present this next story because it is true and while difficult to hear it provides the perfect example of why Fathers and Mothers MUST talk to their children about what is truth and what is wrong in everything but especially SEXUALITY. If you do not tell your kids, someone else will.

Luis, recounted a story from his childhood that was difficult to hear and I had enormous compassion on him. He told us that when he was young he had feelings of homosexuality and asked his father about it. His father unsure of what to say or do took his son to the Priest to get spiritual guidance and counseling. The priest sodomized and abused the young man, thus sending his fact-finding quest about his sexuality into a downward spiral convincing him that he was homosexual. The young man did not tell his father and they went home, the father thinking he had been healed or received the answer he needed from the priest.

This story reminds me of the statement; “Only you can prevent Forest Fires”. Why. Because communication of what’s true, regardless of how difficult a topic, perpetuates truth and provides a stable society and atmosphere for progress. The actions of this priest our despicable. TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT WHAT IS TRUE. About sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. The easy parts and the difficult parts.

Day 10 and 11

2010-08-11T05:57:00.002-07:00

The weekend was another peaceful time at the beach. This time we went both days and really soaked in the rays and enjoyed the cool Mediterranean Sea. We did our laundry and cleaned our room up-which with 3 women in such close quarters was quite extensive. :)

At dinner on Sunday, there was an interesting conversation. So I was talking with Sanja in English about politics and the issues faced in the US and Serbia. One of the patients, Rafa, became agitated that we were speaking in English instead of Spanish. I explained I was unable to express myself sufficiently in Spanish over this topic and that’s why we were speaking English. Well, Rafa would have nothing of it and untactfully told us to stop. So I began to engage him in conversation about Spain politics. He immediately began complaining about the lack of unity in Spain due to the regional pride within the northern provinces. This was ironic since he had just forced us to comply with his request of not speaking in English which contradicts the mentality of the northern provinces which want the right to speak their local dialects and teach it in school. He was unwilling to give me that same right and respect that he for himself (He was from Valencia); just interesting to say the least.

Day 8

2010-08-11T05:56:00.003-07:00

Today was the day. Today I, Jordan, was going to lead a workshop on the importance of a Healthly Relationships. Well, trying to emphasize and focus on solutions instead of the problems my designed purpose of the day was to talk about effective communication methods between couples. Specifically communication about expectations. This presented as a hard topic to handle because of the language barrier.

In the first group, which was a bunch of vacas (or cows), just wanted to vent about the things that are wrong with society and how they each have it figured out. Yet again, another group with them that they did not want to look in the mirror and understand how to apply truth to their lives. They were not receiving government money for unemployment because they had life all figured out. Needless to say, this group validated my belief that hand outs ruin people. I frequently told our group, in English, this group just comes each day to get their “fish”. The “fish” is in reference to this old adage: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, feed him for a lifetime.

The second and third groups went well and had some splendid self-reflection and self-application of how to better their lives (I might add these people were not getting paid for attendance or participation, whereas the first group was). They really engaged in the topic and understood how unless the communicate what they want and expect beforehand they not ever begin to expect those desires to be fulfilled.

Day 9

2010-08-11T05:50:00.002-07:00

Today we went to a ceremony for 25 years of Patim at the ayundamiento in Castellon. This was at the main government building, so that was pretty neat to be inside of that. Here are a few pictures of that.

So Patim has been around helping people for 25 years, since we were born. The ceremony was not very exciting, but we just sat through and listened.

After the ceremony, we did a little shopping in town. Jordan found a favorite book of his in Spanish, Libro de los Sombras Contados (Book of Counted Shadows) which has a different title in the English version called Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. (Read it!)

Playing Rummikub!

After getting back to the community later, us 3 girls decided to get in the pool while all of the patients were in their meeting for the day. We figured we had at least a half an hour. So we ran to change into our bathing suits and then jumped in the pool. It was a nice change. Of course, about 2 minutes after we got into the pool, we heard voices and all of the guys started walking over. We were not wanting to be seen in our bathing suits so we quickly ran out of the pool. Bummer, but oh well.

Today we are going to tell you about Marie and Luis. Luis is a homosexual and very proud of it. Every meeting they have he is talking about it and very descriptive – too descriptive, and I am glad I don’t understand it all. He is a super nice guy and was very helpful when it was his turn to take charge of the laundry.

Marie is a grandmother and at the beginning was very withdrawn from us. After a little while she wanted to talk more. I think she was struggling with some stuff, so it was difficult for her. On one occasion she wanted to tell Jordan how to tell time like the English do (from England), and that was very funny to him as she was saying instead of thirty past 8 for 8:30, the English people say eight past thirty… don’t know where she learned that, but was very adamant that it was correct.

Day 7

2010-08-11T05:43:00.006-07:00

Today our friend from Serbia, Sanja presented about “Salud de hombres” Health of Men. So each group had to split into 2 groups, and draw the silhouette of a man on a large piece of paper. Then they had to write some qualities of a man as well as diseases that this man might get during his life. We talked about all of these in detail and had some great discussions. Of course, as always the first group was a struggle, but we made it through and they all went ok.

Sanja, Jesus, Krystle

Luis

Two more of the men in our treatment center were Javi and Quique. Javi is a 21 years old that is very loud and outgoing, and really liked Jordan. He was always talking to him and this brought about the word of the week “Claro” Javi had a different accent, and seemed to increase his tone at the end of all of his words. It was funny and interesting to us. Also, when he was very sure about something, he would always say “claro” which literally means clearly. But its more like a for sure. Anyways, all of the guys ended up saying that, and Jordan included, they liked to say it more like ccclllaaaaarrrrrooooo(with the accent on the o). It was funny.

Javi and Alberto

Quique is about 33 and has a 3 year old son that is very cute. He and Javi arrived at about the same time, and were always hanging out. Quique liked to make bracelets out of beads, and made about 10 for Sanja and 5 for me. I think Sanja had one in ever color and size, haha. Quique was very calm and liked to sit around and watch us play Rummikub.

Quique, Sanja, Krystle

We taught him how to play so hopefully he can teach other guys and they can enjoy
doing that when we leave.

Before going to bed this night, we were talking to Amaya in English a little bit. She understands a lot of English, but doesn’t speak as much. So I taught her something that we say at night, “bed time”. Then we were also saying “good night.” So as we turned out the lights, and were ready for bed, Amaya said “good bed.” And we all started laughing, and she joined in once we explained what she said. So this became something we said before going to bed every night, just as a little joke. 

Sanja, Krytle, and I waiting in Amaya’s bed.

View from the top bunk.

Day 6

2010-08-11T05:42:00.003-07:00

Today was the first taller (workshop) lead by Stephanie. Her topic was gender and the word hombre (man). She had each person write on a piece of paper the first word that comes to mind when you say the word hombre, and them tell the group their names, their word, why they picked it, and then crumple it up into a ball and throw it to someone else, and the next person to the same, etc. It ended up into a big ball and all different types of words. It was pretty neat and a good introductory idea.

The 3 different groups were completely different though. So our first group is at the integration center with a group of 8-10 people mixed men and women. These people are literally getting paid by the government to attend these workshops and stay all day in the center. Most of them were very opinionated and thought their ideas were the only right ones and wanted to yell about everything. Imagine people all talking over each other in a language that you don’t understand well, when you can’t hear anything due to everyone talking at the same time. That is how I felt all 5 days in this workshop. It was very frustrating and I just wanted to yell in English to tell them to be quiet!

The second group is a group of men at the day center. These men come for the day to learn stuff and look for jobs. This group was completely different from the first. They were much more calm, and wanted to learn and be involved in what we were talking about. There were a few younger guys that didn’t seem to understand a lot, but after patience and explaining a little bit more to them, they were great. We enjoyed this group, especially after the first group!

Lastly, we have where we were staying, at the drug addiction long term treatment center. All of these people have either mental illnesses, and/or drug addictions (or alcohol) that they really want to get over. This is a voluntary center, so everyone there actually wanted to be there, or at least they were supposed to. These groups were normally very fun and interesting. They had a lot to say, some people more than others, and they were interested in all of our topics. Some of the days we had to split them into 2 groups, just because they were too big of groups, and they also had their own classes to attend. They were normally split between the people who have been there longer and the new ones. The new group seemed to be a lot younger and so they were always a louder group.
We are going to explain a few of the people that we lived with for 16 days in each post. Today I am going to talk about Jesus and Angel.
Angel is very calm and quiet and likes to read. He is one of the only 2 people there that don’t smoke, so he is off on his own a lot. He seemed nice from the one time I talked to him for a while, but who knows what he did or didn’t do to need to be there. He won’t be there much longer, and you can tell as he is a lot quieter and relaxed than many of the others.
Jesus is the first that will be leaving in a few weeks. He seemed very calm but interactive with us. We all thought he was so nice! He had a “vacation” got to leave for the weekend, our second weekend we were there, and ended up coming back the next day. When asked what happened, apparently he was sick on the train and threw up then fell asleep, and couldn’t find his ticket, and was woken up by police officers after he missed his stop. He got in a fight with the officers and ended up back there. So that changed out idea of his attitude and how nice he was. He was still very nice and calm with us, but that just shows that any of them could snap at any moment… a little scary.

Day 5

2010-08-11T05:36:00.001-07:00

Monday we had even more meetings, felt like work, haha. We were told that Stephanie, the Italian girl would be leading the first workshop, so we were all a little bit relieved there. We all 5 got together and prepared what we would be doing the next day.

We also went to the “reunion” for the 22 people living in the community. This is kind of what you would expect for an addiction class (the reason I know is because I actually had to go to some in Nursing school). Everyone goes around and says hello, and then tells how they are doing, how their day went, any frustrations or positive things that happened throughout the day. Sometimes they would comment on something that happened with another patient, and say sorry for something they did, or just talk about anything. At the end of all 22 people talking, the person leading the group would comment on what they said. If something needed to be resolved, they would talk about that, or they would just say they are proud of the person or something along those lines. It was difficult for me, because the patients talked really fast, and it was really hard to understand all that was said. So I just sat there and acted interested. The first day us 4 volunteers had to introduce ourselves and say a little bit about us. I was super nervous for this… But it ended up working out.

Some of the staff at the treatment center were very nice, as others were not nice at all. There were 2 younger staff, I am not really sure what their roles are, but they are there either during the day or night, and just talking and hanging out with the patients. The nice ones were Ferran and Asusanna. The thing that we didn’t understand, is that ALL of the staff is constantly smoking with their patients and talking to them like friends. I understand you want to have a good relationship, but many times it seemed like it was beyond a professional relationship. Whatever, not our problem. But anyway, some of the staff also seemed like they were threatened by us, or just not wanting us in their space. So we kept our distance from those people. The patients all definitely liked us, so they may not have liked that as well.

And tomorrow begins our work…

Day 4

2010-08-11T05:32:00.003-07:00

Today we hit the Castellon beach. We didn’t get much sun since it was overcast and windy which probably worked out to our advantage as we stayed there longer than we would have had it been hot out. I also went for a nice run on the beach and afterward enjoyed the cool sea.

The patients are given responsibilities each day, including cooking meals. While breakfast left me wanting as it was just “galletas” cookies/crackers with coffee or tea, the lunches and dinners were delicious. While each meal had a different main course they also came with fresh salads, bread, and fruit. Every Sunday we were there also they made Paella. Which is a Spanish dish of rice, meat, and vegetables. It was delicious!

We also ate our lunch, usually bocadillas (sandwiches) out here.

Two of the other patients were Toni and Nacho. Toni reminded me a lot of my Uncle Doug. Also jesting around and knows how to enjoy a good laugh, one that is not at the expensive of others and helps you just enjoy the day and being alive. Nacho was also a joker and in the way of occupation similar to my Uncle yet again, in the fact that he was a truck driver. They both were excellent cooks and let us sample Spanish food at its best.
Here's Nacho with a praying mantis.

Kyle Smith was also in Spain over this weekend but we were unable to connect up. This reminded us how much we are missing family and friends. We have not smelled the sweet air or touched the free land of the U.S.A. since Feb 11 (6 months).

Day 3 Sat

2010-08-04T13:01:00.005-07:00

Saturday was a day of relaxing. We sat around the property resting and preparing/organizing for the workshops. At times Krystle and I felt of little use to the other 3 because they were able to articulate their thoughts and opinions in Spanish about this topic much better than Krystle and I.

We watched some videos that were going to use in the workshops and though about how we would like to use them in context of the groups we were going to lead. As a group, we were to lead 6 workshops 3 times a day. The first group was at an integration center with men and women. The second group was a day center of only men. The third group was the patients at the treatment center.

It was also the day of realizing exactly what it meant to share a room with 3 women (not just hair everywhere). I guess living with multiple women would not be as difficult if I could go to other rooms and have some alone time as well as the ladies to do the same, however, staying in one room with 3 women is not something I would recommend to any man.

My women

Roommates!

Thankfully they had a workout room

Day 2 Friday

2010-08-04T12:55:00.003-07:00

The comunidad is a treatment center for alcohol and drug abusers as well as a few people with certain mental illnesses. Not exactly the homeless shelter we had expected but none the less great. Our room was in an isolated area of the property, thankfully which allowed us some privacy.

The property was surrounded by some large orange fields. This was an excellent change from the large cities that we have stayed in and made me miss Northern Arizona near Payson. I want forests! Anyways, the property also had a conglomeration of mismatched buildings and plants.

We were introduced to the patients or at least tried to introduce ourselves. At this point we were overwhelmed with the Spanish since it had been almost 2 months that we had spoken just Spanish with people. By the time we left, we were right back into the swing of things and comfortable with speaking Spanish for most of the day.

We also headed back to the main office for additional briefing as well as to meet the president of Patim. His name was Paco and he spoke incredibly fast about a difficult topic. The reality is it one things to be able to speak the basics of a language it’s another thing to speak the particulars about a specific topic. Such as parts of vehicles or medical terminology, things that have specific words with special context. So at times, Krystle and I understood very little of what he was trying to say. This is also where we realized or found out some of what they were expecting of us.

They wanted us to lead “tallers” or workshops over the topic of “machichismo” “genero” “masculindad”. The purpose of changing the culture and perspective of men-dominated culture, gender, and what it meant to be a man or masculine. Yet again a little bit of a surprise of the focus of our time here.

Meeting room at the comunidad

Here we are in town.

Patim day 1

2010-08-04T12:42:00.004-07:00

Thursday 7/15
Well our uncertainty about finding Patim was at least unfounded. Not that we found it on our own either, since luckily their was another volunteer waiting for us at the train station. Her name was Stephanie and she was from Italy.

Our greatest fears negated upon arrival in Castellon we now headed to the Patim office to find out more information about what was expected of us. We arrived, met Javier our contact person/volunteer coordinator who was also a very kind man that was very helpful throughout our time with Patim.

We met the other volunteers that were also there with us. Sanja, from Serbia, spoke Spanish, French, and English perfectly and also spoke a little Russian and Italian on top of Serbian. Amaya, from Spain (Catalunya area), who had learned English a long time ago in school but had not practiced in a very long time. Each of us was to be here for 15 days while Stephanie was a long term volunteer at 3 months.

Amaya, Krystle, Jordan, Sanja, Stephanie (Left to right)

We got some initial details and then headed off to the “communidad” which is where we were going to be staying. Sanya, Amaya, Krystle and I were suppose to share a bedroom which was about the size of some walk-in-closets that I’ve seen. It had a bathroom and shower thankfully as well as just enough room to fit one dresser for the 4 of us.

What was going to happen

2010-08-04T12:39:00.003-07:00

We headed down to check out Barrio Gracia. It is an old district that was an independent town until 1897. It has narrow streets and small squares and is supposed to give you a feel of the real Barcelona. We walked around for a little and looked at stuff, but headed back home after an hour or so due to the heat.

We just relaxed the rest of the day and tried to figure out stuff for our next excursion in Castellon. We are very unsure of everything for our volunteer project at this point. Hope it works out!

Pictures of the train and station.

7/11 Park Guell

2010-08-04T11:59:00.004-07:00

We walked around Park Guell. This park was designed by Gaudi and still had many of his original works in it.

Picture of the Sovereign Lord's art.

We have enjoyed some beautiful scenery as well.

We had a refreshing dinner. We made pasta with mushrooms, peppers, and peppers, along with bread, and Spanish red wine!
029, 031

7/12 Tibidabo

2010-08-04T11:49:00.005-07:00

Pictures of the Tram

We took the Tramvia Blau to mount Tibidabo, the highest point on this certain mountain in Barcelona. It has great views of the city, and you can pretty much see everything.

Views of the city

It was neat because we saw a lot of stuff that we saw on our bus tour, so we were able to point a lot of things out. It was also fun getting there, first we took the tram that is over 100 years old and then this thing called a Funicular, its basically like a cable car on the ground. There is an amusement park at the top, but we decided to skip that. We just looked at all the great views, enjoyed our lunch of sandwiches that we brought, and went in the church. Here is a picture of the church.

This image was in the church at the top of the mountain. I believe that’s it the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus, with an angel to her left and right, and unrepentant sinners burning in hell. Nothing says Jesus loves you like this.

Check this church stainglass!

At night we went up to the terrace with the lady we are renting from. It has a great view up there, and Jordan and I enjoyed a yummy ice cream while up there.

7/10 Game time

2010-08-04T01:43:00.003-07:00

We headed into the center of Barcelona early because the house we were did not have a tv and later we found out, that our host did not even watch the match! Unbelievable, I know! We wondered around the city, bought our train tickets to Castellon which is where we will be volunteering for two weeks.

We had planned on doing some shopping in the center and enjoy some air conditioned buildings as our unit does not have the sweet taste of cool air. However, unbeknownst at the time, most stores even in the highly tourist regions are closed on Sundays. I read later that is illegal for many shops to be open beyond 72 hours in one week and they must be closed Sundays. This government restriction is suppose to assist in the free market and the small businesses who are unable to compete with larger companies. Not sure how government restrictions help free market but that’s just me I guess. But I guess the Spanish economy should demonstrate how well their socialistic programs are working as their unemployment is hitting 20% in certain industries.

The restrictions did not apply to the port, as shops were open 24 hours 7 days a week. Which was great because I found a pair of shorts that fit and would be good for our volunteering and eventually Pueblo Ingles.

We scoped out a great bar and seated ourselves in the air conditioned bar about 4 or 5 hours early. Luckily some British sports were on beforehand as I got to watch some sports I had never seen before. Google the sport hurling, it’s pretty impressive. Seems like a mix of baseball, golf, lacrosse, and ultimate Frisbee.

The bar filled up, with tourists all dressed in Spain jerseys. Quite comical actually, especially since we fit this category too. Granted our $5 jerseys from Panama cost a little less than the $50-65 Euro jerseys sold here in Spain, but we were still the pitiful tourists supporting the country we were traveling in (Go USA Soccer)!!!

It was a great match. With a ridiculous amount of yellow cards, I think the Dutch team got 15 yellow cards! The match ended wonderfully as Spain won.
1-0 Spain!

We were so excited!

After the game the streets were packed!

In the streets of Barcelona!

Barcelona!

2010-08-04T01:24:00.003-07:00

Barcelona 7/9 – 7/15

Back in the city of Barcelona. We are planning on being in this city for 3 different trips. The first we stayed very close to Las Ramblas. This time we stayed close to Parc Guell. And the last time we will stay near the Plaza Espana.

Our unit was on the back side of the mountain/hill that Parc Guell is on and let me tell ya, it is such a nasty hike up this mountain that they have installed escalators up the side of it.

Pictures of our walk up, although this does not do it justice…

So part of the way the tourists and locals ride up escalators to save their legs and feet. And when we walked this the first time with our backpacks on, ouch..

We arrived at perfect timing because the lady we were renting from arrived at the exact same time. Annie, originally from the UK, has been living in Spain for 10 years, 8 in Barcelona and 2 in Madrid. She was an interesting character to say the least. For instance, can you name this plant that was growing on her balcony?

We unpacked and just rested from a long day of traveling.

Castellòn

2010-07-22T11:20:00.002-07:00

We are currently volunteering at a community center in Catellòn, Spain. So we have been unable to catch up on the blog as much as we would like. However, we finish this program on the 30th of July and prepare yourselves for some interesting updates!

Nos vemos! See you soon!

Pamplona, day 3

2010-07-13T08:12:00.005-07:00

7/9

The race was just as crazy the second time. This time we sat further up on the course and had a much better view of the runners. Did they run or what?! Many start running as soon as the run begins (a firework signifies the start) and are not even close to ever seeing a bull face to face. Others wait for it to come and then run for their lives, literally! Talk about Russian roulette.

Our bus was at 9:20 am and we left the run without an hour to get back to our apartment, grab our backpacks, and get back to the downtown where the bus station was. We made it just in time and sat down to yet another 6 hour bus ride across Spain.

I did it!!

Not really but I did stand in the corridor once they passed!

Pamplona, day 2

2010-07-13T08:00:00.007-07:00

7/8

We got to bed around 2am or so and were back at it around 5am. Many people had not gone to sleep at all and where still out from the night before (including one of Cheny’s friends Miguel). We found a nice spot near the bull ring and waited for the walls to be put up.

The tradition is that bulls run through the streets to get the bull ring for bull fights later in the day. I think it’s about a kilometer of the city. For those in the race, I’m sure it seems like 50 kilometers. Two sets of walls are setup around 6:30am keeping the bulls in one corridor, the medical staff and police in the next and the spectators in the outside. The people who are going to run must be in the bull race corridor by 7:30am. We were able to snag a spot on the outer wall and waited for the bull run, which begins at 8am. This run consists of about 15 bulls. 12 bulls run first, 6 castrated, tame bulls (which means they are less violent and not used for the bull fight) and 6 wild, fierce bulls. After these bulls run through, the release 3 more castrated bulls to catch any stragglers of the wild bulls.

People running means bulls coming

Once the run was over we headed into the bull ring to watch the “toritos”, or smaller bulls, as the Spaniards call them. The bulls in my opinion were by no means small, for while in comparison to the ones that did the run they were, but not when considering you are in an enclosed area with a wild animal. They had had their horns filed off or something placed on them so that they were not jagged/sharp any longer. Many of the people who had participated in the run were now in the ring with these smaller bulls. Let’s just say that some won this encounter while other did not.

A few special moments in the bull ring: many people would lay on the ground in front of where the bull came into the ring and let the bull jump over them… insanity. Others (those drunk, most likely) would grab the horns of the bulls once it was tired and end up on their backs by a sucker punch from behind as many of the Spaniards did not like this (it was against the rules to touch the bulls and considered disrespectful). The bulls were able to change directions quickly and sprint to the other side rapidly, one man was unprepared for this and got flipped upside down completely unaware. Other jumped over the bull as they were running at them; still others would simply duck behind the masses standing in the ring.

After this was over we walked the whole path of the run and took a look at the kennels the bulls were housed in before the race. We then headed home to catch up on our sleep.

The bulls that run each day are used in the bull fights later each day. Each day, other than opening ceremonies, the bull run, play time with the smaller bulls, and bull fights occur. Overall, an interesting local custom to behold and yet another crazy story to tell.

We slept most of the day away and then headed back into town to buy our bus tickets and take a better look at the city. We stayed in this night and got some proper sleep as we planned to watch the 3 minute race again the next day.

Look at this haircut!

Pamplona 7/7-7/9

2010-07-13T07:52:00.004-07:00

7/7
We had not expected our bus to take very long from Zaragoza to Pamplona, as they are most likely 1 ½- 2 hours distance from each other. However, we were not on the direct bus and stopped at every city in between and sadly took about 3 hours.

We arrived at a bus station full of people in white with red sashes around their necks and waists. We were met there by Cheny, the guy we were renting a room from. He is originally from Ghana but has lived in Spain since he was 14. He just got married and is set to move to Ohio in August. He had sold his car already and luckily had kind enough neighbors that one of them willingly drove him to the bus station for us. Which is where the festivities began. The neighbor decided to take us directly to an area with a bunch of horses, and these horses were all shapes and sizes. Literally I saw horses that I didn’t know existed they were so big and awkward (of which, we sadly did not get pictures of).

After this we got to the apartment and settle all our stuff into the room we were staying in. We got dressed in our white clothes and prepared for going out into the center of downtown to watch Spain Vs. Germany in the Semi-Finals and meet up with some of Cheny’s friends.

This was unbelievable! A huge screen was set up downtown for the people to watch the game, and the area around it was packed by the time we got there. So instead we began to look for a bar to watch the game in, and just our luck we found another Aussie bar to watch the game in (we spent a lot of time in an Aussie Bar in Denia). The bar was packed with Spaniards and at least a few Germans, all dressed in white and red mind you (though I heard a group of people speaking German only one girl had German colors on).

Almost the entire game the people were chanting various songs in honor of players and their country “Villa, Villa Villa. Villa, Maravilla” or “Yo soy Espanola, Espanola, Espanola. Yo soy Espanola, Espanola, Espanola.” (David Villa is a player for Spain, maravilla means marvelous, and the other is I am Spanish.

For those of you unfortunate enough not to catch the game I will recap for you. Spain dominated the ball against Germany. Appeared to control the tempo of the game and executed passes very efficiently. While they had multiple good attempts on goal, the Germans only had one and not until the 79th minute of a 90 minute match did Spain score. It was an excellent corner kick by Xabi and Puyol, a defender, came charging in to head the ball past the goalie and send Spain into the Finals for the first time ever!!!!

We waited an agonizing long time, 10 minutes regular time and 3 minutes additional time(for injuries, etc) for the game to end! Once it did the bar and all of Spain erupted. There was even more yelling and jumping up and down, drinks be thrown in the air, traffic laws being ignored, people running all around, and simply sheer bliss!

For the festival there are fireworks each night at 11pm. Tonight they were going to be extra special since Spain just won and the Bull Run festivities. This was great to see as we obviously didn’t get to see any for the 4th of July.

We grab a bite to eat and stayed around a little long in the downtown area before heading home since we had an early morning ahead of us to catch the running of the bulls.

Zaragoza

2010-07-13T07:01:00.004-07:00

7/6
Second day was more sightseeing in the city. We went to The Aljaferia Palace which was declared a national monument in 1931.
Pictures of the Palace

It has a lot of history and was used for many events in the past including the palace for the king and queen, but today it is being used obviously as a museum for tourists but also as the Regional Assembly of Aragon. Aragon is the province made up of 3 different cities, one being Zaragoza.

This regional assembly makes the laws and controls the actions of the government.
Here is one of the rooms where they meet.

There is a little bit of history for you…
We also walked around and saw a few more sites, here are a few pictures.

We were going to go into the church, but they charged too much just to see the same thing that we have been seeing everywhere. We thought that was quite comical, so we did not go see it.

We also bought some cheap white clothes for our time in Pamplona, so we started getting very excited for it.

We also went out later that night after watching a futbol game on tv. We wanted to see the basilica lit up at night, and it sure was a site. It was beautiful. Lots of lights. Pictures of the Basicila at night.

We also saw the people setting up a huge tv for the Spain game the following night. It is a very big game for Spain as they have never even made it this far in the world cup… Go Spain!! This ends our time in Zaragoza as we caught an early bus to head for Pamplona to see the running of the bulls!

Zaragoza 7/5 – 7/7

2010-07-13T06:51:00.004-07:00

7/5
So we woke up on the 5th at 7:30 am to get to the bus station. This is unheard of in Spain, as the Spanish normally wake up around noon after staying out until about 5am every night. Anyway, we had a nice walk, passed the Arc de Triumf of Barcelona and made it to the bus station.
Arc de Triumf

Here is a picture of what most of the bus stations look like, or something like this.

We arrived in Zaragoza about 4 hours later, and hopped on a local bus to get to our Bed and Breakfast. It worked out perfect and we found it with no difficulty. Our place for the next 2 days was called B&B Siesta. It is right across an old roman bridge from the old city and all of the tourist sites to see. It’s pretty convenient, so we will just walk both days to see the sites, and then come relax back in our room when we get tired.

This room has air conditioning, and we are loving it, in fact it is cold right now in our room! It has everything we need. We are able to use the kitchen and washer, which is great because we haven’t washed our clothes in about 2 weeks! We bought some pasta and sausage to cook for dinner and it was great.

The first day we walked around and saw the basilica and there was a mass going on while we were walking around. It was massive and ridiculously detailed. There sure was a lot of money and time put into making it.

We also saw the murallas romanos, the roman walls. Here are a few pictures.

There is apparently going to be some big cultural event in Zaragoza in 2016, and a lot of the buildings are being renovated, but we have no idea what it is going to be. Oh well.

Barcelona 7/3-7/4

2010-07-13T06:01:00.005-07:00

7/3
We slept in today, after a long day in the sun yesterday this was quite refreshing. We headed out for a nice stroll along las Ramblas and did some shopping. We grabbed some fresh fruit and bread and headed back to the house to watch some futbol (soccer)! We watched Germany blank Argentina and then a rollercoaster of a ride through the Spain vs Paraguay game. Spain won!!!

7/4
We celebrated Independence Day by getting up early and jumping in line for the Picasso Museum. It is free the first Sunday of every month and so we got there about an hour early to ensure we would get in. It was a solid plan as there was a line in front of the museum all day. It was cool to learn about Picasso and to see some of his art.

This is the line for the museum, we were in front!

We also visited some other museums. Such as the Museum on Catalonia, Natural History Museum of the city, and a Museum of North, South, and Central America. The museum of Catalonia provided information from the founding of Catalonia and its many changes from Visigoths, Moors, Christians, Franco, and present day issues. The museum about the city had the remains of the original Roman city Barcino and described the layout of the city as well as showed had the original artifacts of a wine and fish factory. The museum of America was quite small and had a few ancient artifacts from tribes of the Incas, Hopi, Apache, Aztec-we were not suppose to take pictures in here but I snuck a few.

Museum of Catalonia

American museum!

SPAIN WON!! Spain Won the World Cup!!!!

2010-07-12T04:11:00.004-07:00

in the 27th minute of additional time (which there are a total of 30 minutes) Iniesta scored the winning goal!!

2 Spaniards crying in the bar

After the game in the streets!!!

Barcelona

2010-07-10T07:53:00.007-07:00

7/2
The second day we did a full day tour of the city, or at least a bus tour. They have 2 companies offering multiple routes through the city of Barcelona. You can hop on and hop off at a number of spots to see sites such as original Barcelona districts, gothic district, a monastery, the stadium of Barcelona’s futbol club, the Sagrada Familia, and other historical masterpieces by Gaudi or modern day marvels such as Olympic stadiums from the summer of 1992.

Bus tour!

Olympic stadium

Barcelona Futbol Club

Church

By the port is this large monument to Christopher Columbus. He is supposedly pointing to the new world, while in reality his finger is pointed toward Africa-according to my compass.

We toured the Sagrada Familia while doing the bus tour. It was unreal. This is a catholic church being built since 1882 completely by private donations and my admission fee. It was the late Gaudi’s greatest dream. It is rumored to be completed by 2026, but I doubt it. It is one beautiful cathedral and I would love to worship Jesus someday in it.

Sagrada Familia

Gaudi Museums and Architecture

Funny sign

Barcelona 7/1 – 7/5

2010-07-10T07:42:00.002-07:00

7/1
Our first days in a new city are all the same.. another day of wandering around a new city.. while this time we did have a place to stay, it was simply a matter of finding it. Which according to their directions on their website, I knew exactly where it was. However, their map lied. Blatantly… haha. So we got to where the map said to go, and no apartment. We asked for directions and luckily I had written down other information from their site just in case this happened. A Spaniard was able to direct us in the right direction, which we also verified after finding a locutorio (internet place), and were quite overjoyed on yet again getting our huge backpacks off.

We were also very content with the location of our apartment. It is a block away from Las Ramblas, a famous street in Barcelona full of souvenirs, street performers, tourists, pickpockets, and more spoken languages overheard than anywhere else I’ve ever been. So we headed out into this chaos wide-eyed and ready for some excitement. We also found a place to buy groceries, as we are on a budget and fresh bread is the best.

Special Update!

2010-07-08T00:57:00.002-07:00

We have not yet had a chance to update you'll on Zaragoza and our travels there. HOWEVER, we had to provide a teaser for a post that is soon to come!!

~~~~~~~~~

Running of the bulls! Pamplona, Spain

Valencia 6/26 - 7/1

2010-07-01T12:04:00.005-07:00

I have decided and Krystle agrees, we have too much stuff. Let alone the stuff in storage back in the U.S. collecting dust, our backpacks feel heavier each time we wear them.

So we arrived in Valencia from Denia without a guaranteed place to stay. We had a nice gal that had agreed to let us stay with her for Saturday night through Wednesday night, but no money had been exchanged yet. Well, she never responded and we arrived there without a room and on the one of the biggest weekend’s in the year for Valencia. There was a huge Formula 1 race this weekend and every hostal, hotel and spare closet was already booked. So with our 50 lbs bags we walked around looking for any room to rent. We were quite fortunate to find a hostal that had had a cancelation that day and had a open room! Amen!

Downtown Valencia!

Another cathedral

We watched the U.S. lose to Ghana, disappointing to say the least and yet infuriating to the core. However, Spain beat Chile and then Portugal to advance to the Quarter Finals! Go Spain! This has the Spaniards quite excited and this makes us happy because it means that the country is full of nicer people, or hopefully so.

House of God!

16th Century Bridge!!!

A sculpture of a wailing parisher, comical

Valencia is a beautiful city. It has some extravagant museums, especially the City of Arts and Sciences. There are also some amazing old churches and a large Cathedral in the center of town. Around the center of town is a dried river bed that has many soccer fields, walkways, parks, and recreational areas which allowed for a quiet escape from the big city.

Funny looking museums!

We walked around one of the huge Spanish superstores (similar to Macy’s, I guess) called Corte Ingles. Massive! Despite it being the country's only department store, in my opinion it is way over the top. But it provided a nice area of air conditioning during one of our walks around the city. We must have walked down every street in the downtown portion of the city and I am very thankful for the large quantity of benches.

We saw 2 large towers that were part of the original wall around the city. I want a castle.. I will be starting a fund and you can all invest in it :) We walked across some ancient bridges built in the 15th and 16th centuries.
2 towers remain from the original city walls

Where's Jordan?

Another funny sign :)

Next stop Barcelona!

Denia 6/19 - 6/26

2010-06-30T14:11:00.005-07:00

Drive to Denia (near Alicante)-just ahead of us a large accident occurred as 2 vehicles were stuck in the side of the guard rail and had. Saw a Lamborghini, which zoomed past us at an absurd speed and then kilometers later was parked alongside the freeway looking at a map, apparently lost I guess.

Then later on we also missed an accident by perhaps 2 minutes. As we were driving along the freeway all the sudden we passed two cars lodged in the metal rail guard. One was facing traffic and we could see the guy in the front see as we passed them. We almost stopped but we realized we were not going to be a lot of assistance with our limited Spanish and no telephone.

We arrived at our hotel after a six hour drive safe and sound. We unloaded our bags and headed back into town to enjoy a dinner out while we still had the rental car. We stopped at what we thought was a nice restaurant. It was anything but. The poor waiter had about 9+ tables on this patio overlooking the Med. Sea and as we tried to order kept informing us that the items we wanted were not available at this time. Of a menu that a wide selection of food a fourth of it was actually available. It took about 20 minutes to get the bill once we were done eating. We were not fans.

Our place

Our rental unit did not have internet, and this we needed desperately as we needed to plan out our next excursions in Valencia, Barcelona, Pamplona, etc. So we walked around looking for a internet café for internet, with no luck. We did however, find an Australian bar with free wifi. Done and done. Called Sambori Bar with a picture of a kangaroo, it was quite comical situation. It was run by 2 Chileans and 1 Argentinean, and had signs for the famous Australian beer Foster’s, but did not even have it, in fact they only had Budweiser on tap! 3 South Americans, in an Australian bar, serving North American beer- amazing!

We quickly made friends with the Argentinean, who worked everyday, as we needed internet everyday and stopped by to watch a world cup match or two. Renè lives in Valencia about 1 hour north of Denia. He was very kind and helpful and gave us a great opportunity to practice more Spanish.

Our bar

Besides from our time using the internet we also went to the beach everyday to enjoy some sun and enjoy the freezing Med Sea. We took the bus into town one day and bought our bus tickets for Valencia and did some shopping. It was a nice change from the Southern part of Spain as there was more Spanish spoken than English and it wasn’t until the 4th or 5th day there that we even really ran into any Brits.

Our beach

Funny sign

Ronda 6/18

2010-06-29T02:11:00.005-07:00

This was our last outing with Uncle Tim and his family. :(
We miss you guys!

Ronda is the second to last stronghold to be held by the Moors in Spain (Granada is the first). After visiting the city I see why. It is on a hill perhaps even mountain and can see the entire surrounding valley. This would make it very difficult to assault/attack. Now it makes for incredible views and exceptional history as it provides a glimpse into why the Moors loved Spain so much; it’s beautiful rolling hills, great weather and peaceful landscapes.

Ronda and its bridge

Across the enormous gorge separating the new city from the old city is a gigantic bridge. This bridge has been rebuilt multiple times and even fallen into the gorge itself on an occasion. This 100meter deep gorge “El Tajo” draws many tourists to the city to its ancient design.

While in the city we toured a bull ring. We walked through the training areas for the matadors and bulls, holding cells, bull entrances to the stadium, and the stands of the stadium. We had some self-guided tour devices that played pre-recorded information about bullfighting and the stadium in Ronda. Inside the stadium was a gun collection by one of the Spanish kings and it was quite impressive. There were countless rifles and dueling pistols, some which came with a story about who died with it or who dueled with a specific pair.

Where's Jordan? Hiding from the bull

Bull ring

I don't even own a gun, let alone enough to necessitate an entire gun rack..

Kind of an old gun..

We toured a few different museums, old houses, ancient bathing structures, and the inside of the bridge itself. Saw a large collection of pig legs. The Iberian black pigs of Spain are everywhere, to be eaten that is, and often you find a leg clamped to a bar ready to be sliced for the customers. Delicious.

We restaurant hopped for dinner, eating a little bit of food at one restaurant before heading over to another to get paella, another Spanish delicacy of rice, fish or meat, mixed together with an assortment of vegetables and seasoning. Then of course, snagged some delicious soft-serve ice cream and then headed home again.

Ham! Yum!

Us and the bridge!

Bathing time!

The girls

Ferry from Tarife, Spain to Tanger, Morocco, Africa 6/17

2010-06-28T05:18:00.007-07:00

So this was our early morning, we had to be at their hotel at 6:30am to head out soon on our 1.5 hour journey to Tarife, Spain (the southern most tip of Europe). Along this early morning, Uncle Tim saved us yet again with his driving as a Semi Truck decided he wanted to drive in 2 lanes at the same time, while we were next to him. Tim deftly maneuvered into the median and dodged the Semi! Thanks Uncle Tim!
Ferry

Us in Africa!

After that we had to catch our ferry across the Mediteranean sea for about 40 minutes. When we landed in Tanger, Morocco in Africa, we met our guide Aziz and got into our van and headed out on our tour. We drove through the newer part of Tanger with all of the kings and rich houses. Then we went to the north-western most point of Africa and were able to look out over the Mediteranean sea and Atlantic ocean.

Us with our tour guide Aziz

This is a house of one of the princes of Saudi Arabia

This little burro is what brought Anna out of her nap on the tour bus

After that we headed down the coast a little ways and stopped to ride a camel. The Saviano girls (Katie, Maddie, and Anna) and I (Krystle) all rode our own camel, while Jordan, Uncle Tim, and Aunt Denise watched, took some pictures, and got to enjoy the beautiful view of the ocean. This is where Africa stole my jacket. We got back in the car later and it was gone, we stopped back at the same place, but of course it was not there. I am currently in the process of finding a new jacket, because you know me, I am always cold!

Camels

After the camels, we headed down the coast to stop at the famous Caves of Hercules on the shores of the Atlantic. We had this guide that showed us “Africa” carved out of the rock. That was neat, but then he proceeded to tell us that the whole cave had similar carvings and it just started to get a little too much. But that’s ok, we got some good pictures and it was pretty interesting.

Cave of Hercules. (It looks like the African continent backwards)

We then headed back up to our starting point to go on a walk of the old part of town in Morocco, Medina. We went into some shops and got some demonstrations in the rug store and pottery store. We went into the farmacie and had a little talk about herbs and what they sold, while Krystle and Anna both got a 1Euro massage with some special muscle cream (it smelled just like Bengay). But I felt so good, and it was nice for my hurting lower back. After this we headed for some typical Moroccon food. We all got either chicken or lamb and couscous, which was tasty. During lunch we got to enjoy a group of men playing their instruments, and Anna and I went up and played with them. Then we had some mint tea (famous in Morocco) and pastries. After this we headed back to the port to catch our ferry back to Spain. We had a great day in Africa, but were very glad to be back in Europe, and head back to our hotels to relax.

This tower does the call of prayer for muslims

Lunch entertainment

Muslim cultural clothing

Bonus material:

Obi Wan Kenobi evading the Imperial Stormtroopers

Gibraltar 6/16

2010-06-28T04:54:00.007-07:00

After making sure we all had our passports, we headed out for the 1 hour drive to a town (and apparently a separate country/territory owned by the Brits) called Gibraltar. This is home of the famous Rock of Gibraltar – in the commercials for Prudential Financial.

After crossing the border, we started to see London’s famous telephone booths and the rubbish bins of London. We felt like we were in London, it was pretty interesting. We saw the port with a cruise ship parked and many boats in the harbor.

After driving around for a little bit, we parked the car and walked down the shopping area. Once we got tired of that, we decided to take the cable car up the famous rock to see the famous Apes. Maddie is scared of heights and didn’t like this part, but she persevered through it!

Right when we landed on the top, we could see the apes, these are the only wild apes in Europe. We were told to watch our bags, because these guys like to grab plastic bags, so Aunt Denise put her plastic bag of cookies and candy into another bag and gave it to Uncle Tim. We listened to the information about the rock and the country on our self guided tour recording. We got many pictures of the apes, since they were so close. They sure were not afraid of humans! The day was somewhat cloudy, so we were unable to see the tip of Africa, but we still got some good pictures and had some great views.
We were getting ready to head down, and UT handed the bag to Aunt Denise so he could return all of our self guided tour listening things. Aunt Denise sat down next to Maddie, and next thing we know an ape comes out of nowhere! Anna yells “Mom watch out!” I see the ape grabbing her bag, and instead of realizing that this thing could hurt me, I lunge forward for the bag. I grabbed the bag and the ape ripped the plastic bag and got the outside of our cookies. Don’t worry, I saved the cookies and everything else in the bag, and the ape got nothing except the box. It was a pretty scary but very funny experience. We sure have a story to tell about the Rock of Gibraltar.

After heading back to the hotel to wash up and relax a little bit, we headed out for dinner in a town called Benahavis for dinner. This town is known for having the most restaurants in a small area, not quite sure the exact area. This was a very small town with very narrow roads, props to Uncle Tim for his great driving skills. We had a delicious dinner of tapas and wine for the adults.

In Spain, a bottle of wine with dinner is about the same price as each person ordering a soda, so of course we went with the wine. You would all be so proud of me too, I am actually drinking wine. I have been trying to like it since marrying Jordan because he really likes it, and it didn’t work up until my first sip of wine in Spain. Anyway, after dinner we headed back home and called it a night since we were going to be getting up very early in the morning.

Seville 6/15

2010-06-28T04:31:00.008-07:00

Anna enjoying the ride to Seville

Seville is the capital of Andalucia which is the southern province/region of Spain. This is the location of the majority of the tourism to Spain as it is sunny and has many beautiful beaches. Seville is about an hour away from the coast.

Krystle’s cousins were real champs as we walked around all day and saw the Alacazar Palace, La Giralda, bull ring, and other boring historical sites. Krystle had a crepe and the rest of us dined on delicious fried fish, calamari, and shrimp!

Uncle Tim pointing out a replica of the Christopher Colombus's ship

Tapestry of Spain, North Africa, and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Garden at the palace

La Giralda, the church

Seville has the 3rd largest temple in Christianity (Catholic), called La Giralda. It is unbelievable! An enormous It also has the body of Christopher Columbus within it.
The cathedral was built in 12th century and its architects built quite an impressive structure. It also had a high clock tower that we walked up and I got great pictures of the city from the tower.

The tower

Inside la Giralda (the church)

Tower views

Christopher Colombus body inside La Giralda!

A then a now look from the clock tower.
Then

Now

I guess the real highlight of the day wasn’t even an ancient part of the city. It was that a portion of the road around La Giralda was marked off for shooting of the movie Knight and Day. We were unsure if they were refilming a scene or adding footage, but Diaz and Cruise were no where to be seen. However, when we were leaving Seville at the end of the day, there was a large group of people and cameras outside a hotel that they were at. We knew they were there because we saw them being interviewed on TV with Seville in the background. Perhaps they were doing a special advertisement for the movie in Seville to promote the use of the church, city, and country in the movie.

Plaza de Espana.

Costa del Sol

2010-06-27T00:52:00.005-07:00

The Savianos and Krystle

This starts our time with my aunt, uncle and cousins. This is my (Krystle’s) mom’s brother, Uncle Tim, his wife, my Aunt Denise, and my cousins in order of age, Katie, Maddie and Anna. They live in Wisconsin, so we don’t get to see them much, and we love spending time with them, so this was perfect to meet up in Spain on one of their many travels around the world.

How precious!!

Monday we called Uncle Tim in the morning and he came over to check out our place and our beautiful ocean view.

After hanging out for a few minutes, we headed over to their hotel, the Marriott, which was about 15 minutes down the road from ours, to swim and relax. We just had a relaxing day spending time together, walked on the beach, and swam in the hotel pool. Then we headed to the close town of Marbella for dinner. Spanairds eat dinner anywhere from 8pm to midnight or later, so we tried to start getting on their time schedule. We walked around, saw some sights, took some pictures, then sat down at a tapas restaurant and all split some yummy tapas. Then after of course we got some ice cream (remember we are with Anna and she loves ice cream)

Uncle Tim and Anna

Pictures of Marbella

Just practicing my sand castle skills, what do you think?

La Alhambra

2010-06-22T10:11:00.005-07:00

White washed cities in Southern Spain

Moorish Artisan work

So once we were set with the car we headed from Malaga to Granada to see the ancient Moorish stronghold called La Alhambra. Historically this was the last Moorish (Muslim) stronghold in Spain. (the other being the city of Ronda which we also visited). The Alhambra had been modified by each Moorish Sultan and even later on my the Spanish Kings. It was an impressive sight to behold and we spent about 5 hours there exploring the grounds. We saw the Sultan’s palace, church, beautiful gardens, and tall towers that had views of the entire valley. Additional portions of the fortress are still being restored, which also made it interesting when considering which parts of the fortress are seen as is and which are restored and are not the original stone and artisan work.

The fortress was a joy for me to see, because this was the last location of Moors in Spain. This fortress was conquered by the Spanish Christians (Ferdinand and Isabelle) the same year Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas in 1492. The Arabic influence can be seen parts of Southern Spain still today as many signs in the cities were in Arabic and Spanish. Though I don’t know how many people in Spain speak Arabic but it’s not totally surprising that an influence can be felt considering it has only been about 500 years since their removal.

View from a tower

Wall surrounding the city

The door is 5x as tall as Krystle!

A beautiful girl in a beautiful garden

A view of the main palace and fortress

Main church in Granada

First moments in Spain

2010-06-21T10:41:00.002-07:00

This is us in the metro, when we left the airport to get to the bus station

Chaos of a day! Having arrived in Spain, with little sleep, we headed out to yet another brave new world! We stopped by multiple information desks obtaining various maps of the city, metro, county, and having acquired the best method of getting to our bus station we were now in search of an ATM. While in Costa Rica for whatever reason most of the ATMs would not except our debt cards. So we had a routine of stopping by a certain ATM in the mall to get our money. Luckily in Spain this has not been the case, as every ATM we have stopped at has worked. However, they practically only give out 50 Euro bills, which is extremely frustrating when a vendor/restaurant is annoyed that you don’t have any smaller bills, oh well..

So despite lacking energy, we now had Euros and maps for beginning our Spanish adventure. After getting change to buy a metro pass, we jumped on board our first metro. We had to change metros once, which was a maze in it of itself as we had to walk around one of the stops to get to the correct metro. It was my first metro ride ever, so it was quite fun!

Our final metro stop was our bus station and gave us a big sigh of relief as we were concerned that we would have to walk far to find our bus station. We checked in and were told we were set and now had 6 hours to kill before our bus left. We asked around if there was a bar and found a Irish bar to sit, eat lunch, and watch the US vs England world cup match!

It was a little cold and a small drizzle of rain welcomed us as we hurried back from the bar to the bus station. We were quite early and watched the rest of the match in a cafeteria in the bus station. Boarding our bus, we put on our eye covers (from our British airways flight from Miami to London) and tried to get some sleep on our 11pm bus ride to Malaga. We caught a little sleep and arrived in Malaga about 5am. From there, we found a taxi and headed to the airport.

When traveling abroad and probably even when there isn’t a language barrier, it seems like every taxi driver is ripping you off. There were two numbers on the meter in this taxi and unbeknownst to us at the time one was an extra fee for transport to/from the airport ($8 Euros!!!) So we haggled with the taxi driver for a bit and finally paid him, annoyed at feeling ripped off especially when we were tired from 2 days of little sleep.

It was just about 6am and we had about an hour and half to wait for our rental car company to open. When waiting for something you want, it’s definitely an eternity! So when it finally opened we were set, and headed off to Granada to see el Alhambra!

Last days in Costa Rica

2010-06-21T10:30:00.003-07:00

Here is a cloud in our front porch

Some pretty sunsets!

After Charlene left us in Costa Rica, we had about 10 days left. We decided to spend them relaxing, reading, and searching for information for Spain. We went into town a few days to get some extra groceries for Spain, and spent some time with Bob and Deb, the people we were renting from. They are both very nice and gracious, and helped us out with a lot of things. Here is a picture of us with our adoptive grandparents, Bob and Deb.

Our friends, Caleb and Jerlyn came to visit us one more time, and we had a great Sunday with them, playing Phase 10, making yummy food, and just talking in Spanish. Jerlyn loves guacamole, so we made some more of it, and then had a dinner of pasta and salchichon (sausage).

Here is us playing phase 10

After our relaxing few days, we headed to the airport on Friday morning June 11th. We were very sad to be leaving our home for 4 months of Costa Rica. We had a great time, some great memories, and definitely plan on coming back in the future. Our journey to Spain consisted of a flight from Costa Rica to Miami, then Miami to London overnight, then London to Madrid. We landed in Madrid at about 3:30pm local time. And now begins our time in Spain…

Us with Bob and Deb, our hosts for the last month

Time with my sister Charlene

2010-06-21T10:18:00.003-07:00

My sister stayed with us for an additional week. We spent this time relaxing, sleeping in late, staying up late, and eating well. We played Phase 10 and Skippo which poor Krystle could never win. We used the remaining time reading and watching movies from the extended collection that Deb, lady we were renting from maintained. We tried to watch the Suns on occasion but of course only ESPN worked and the Suns were on TNT.

Orphanage
We went twice to an orphanage to play with the kids. It was a very touching moment hearing about the conditions that these kids are subject to. It reminded us of the many blessings we have and to be thankful for every opportunity. It will stand as a challenge to bear in mind the blessings we can bestow on others.

The kids were attacking me as I had a bowl of grapes for them!

Charlene leaving

Horse Back riding and zipline

2010-06-20T13:44:00.004-07:00

Borinquen was pretty much in the rainforest, so we decided to go ziplining there. We picked a tour that had a 2 in 1, so we got to go to the waterfalls and zipline. To get to the zipline, we rode horses through the countryside. This was absolutely amazing! We have all ridden horses before, but never like this. We were all walking scattered around, you didn’t have to stay in a straight line, and they actually encouraged you to go faster and gallop a little bit. We all had a great time getting our horses to run. Charlene decided to make her horse run a little faster than normal after following Dad’s horse, then Krystle’s horse followed. Only, Charlene decided to put her feet up and was almost out of control. She almost gave our guide a heart attack, as he thought she was going to fall and he was very scared. Charlene was just laughing the whole time though, so luckily she couldn’t tell that she was close to falling.
Anyway, during our horseback ride, we went through the countryside, saw amazing views, saw some wild animals, and really enjoyed a different type of horseback riding. After horseback riding for over half an hour, we got to our first destination, a beautiful waterfall. We took some family pictures, then got back on our horses for the second waterfall. All this time we were walking up and down hills in the middle of the rainforest.
Then we got to our destination for the beginning of the ziplining tour. It was great! In total there were 11 lines and all were very different lengths and speeds. We had to brake on our own, as we were wearing a glove with a thick leather pad to stop with. Mom was very scared to do it, and decided to go with a guide the first time. The second time she went with a guide he made her do the breaking, so she realized she could do it and was off on her own the 3rd time around. She did a great job and really enjoyed it, although she didn’t want to go upside down or do superman like the rest of us, we were really proud of her. It was a great tour and we all had a great time.

3rd day- Borinquen Hot Springs and Resort

2010-06-09T06:44:00.007-07:00

Enjoying the pool

Our last moment with the beach.

Beautiful nature shots!

In front of our casita!

Here is us enjoying our last few days on the beach and at the pool in Playa Flamingo.
Krystle and I woke up early and played some tennis. And boy what it hot and humid! Being so close to the ocean made it extremely humid and once done we were quite ready for the air conditioned rooms!

Next desination was Borinquen Hot Springs and Resort! This is up in the Rincon de la Vieja, in the Northeast portion of Costa Rica. The hotel is located on some natural hot springs at the bottom of a volcano. One nice perk is that this is the country's off season for tourism because of the raining season, so we saw a couple in another room and a family enjoying the hotsprings for a day.

HOT SPRINGS!!!!

And first thing we did upon arrival was go get our nature bath! It had 4 steps.

First 15 minutes in a natural sauna/steam room.

Next apply mud to your bodies.

Let the mud dry.

Wash off the mud and get into natural spring spas (3 different temperatures).

After cleaning up we got ready for dinner, at the one restaurant on the isolated property. The town was an hour away and there was not much of an option to drive to to town because it was pitch black in the countryside and driving at daytime is dangerous enough with tico drivers.

So we got to the restaurant and there was only one other table occupied; by people that is. They had left multiple windows and doors open and there were bugs everywhere. As we scanned the menu for edible options, bugs covered the glasses and plates on the table. We ordered our selections and as our annoyance and initial shock wore off a little it became a comical in a pitiful kind of way of the quantity of bugs. We muscled through this experience, swatting bugs that flew by to close, brushing off bugs from the table, and picking out the additional protein in our water glasses. We enjoyed our food and decided we would need alternatives to dinner.

invasion..

2010-06-01T07:59:00.003-07:00

Here's some more killer bugs and animals!

Can you carry 4x your body weight?

Lizards!

Skinny Cows!

Nasty looking horse fly or something..

Tarantula

So much for marching 2 by 2, i think this is 6 by 6.

Pterodactyl

Crab

Those black mounds are swarms of little black bugs... disgusting.

Some beauty for you, a butterfly.

Brasilito and Flamingo

2010-06-01T06:52:00.001-07:00

Day 2
We arrived in Brasilito well after dark Sunday evening. It is a small town nestled between Tamarindo and Flamingo. While roughing it a little and getting the first real dose of insects and coastal humidity, we hid in our hotel room enjoying the air conditioning. We awoke early and saw the beautiful playa conchal!! This is the beach Krystle and I had previously visited that is made of sea shells.

Hotel Brasilito

Hotel Flamingo

We then headed to Playa Flamingo and a sunset cruise we had scheduled. This ended being a so magical!

We arrived at the dock, or really a small beach near the dock, and the 1st mate of our boat picked us up in a small boat. We were taken to a beautfiul sail boat, called the Shannon. http://www.flamingobeachcr.com/sunsetcruise.htm

Our captain had been in Costa Rica for over 8 years and had some exciting stories to share about his sailing trips. My favorite was a story about 2 different whale sharks he has seen. On one trip some surfers asked to be taken out to some deep water and some waves off of rock point normally unreachable by foot. As they were about to jump in the water, the whale shark swam by and the surfers were terrified because such an enormous fish had swam by in the water. On another trip, a friend of his was steering the boat while he was up front entertaining a large group of tourists when his friend yelled at him to take the wheel and tell the tourists to grab their cameras as he jumped into the water. A few minutes later he rose to the top of the water holding onto the dorsil fin of a whale shark. Unbelievable!

On this trip we went snorkeling and got to a gorgeous sunset. A few of us had to overcome anxiety about what is lurking beneath the water. We all jumped in and began to search for fish. We saw a few schools of fish, some eels, blowfish, and dad and I were fortunate enough to see a manta ray!

As we were heading back to the boat, an unwelcomed fleet of jelly fish swarmed the waters around the boat. Some of us were stranded in the water waiting for an opening in the jelly fish ranks.

We also enjoyed some delicious watermelon and pineapple on the boat and some fresh guacamole/salsa and chips as we headed back for the harbor and a good view of the setting sun.

Catching up on missed time

2010-05-27T08:15:00.003-07:00

It has been a wonderful and busy 2 weeks!!!

So here's why... My parents and sister came to visit!!!!

Here's the first beautiful sunset we saw

So saturday the 15 of May, my parents and sister arrived in Costa Rica!

So Krystle and I got a ride into San Jose at 8am. We walked around and enjoyed a park in Sabana Norte. Once the room was ready at our hotel we checked in and did the waiting game as their flight arrived in the evening. Krystle stayed at the hotel and I left to meet them at the airport.

My father was looking for the cultural experience, so I planned on initiating this enjoyment first thing. I found a bus that would take me to the airport and remembered it color and company so that we could take the same route home.

I waited outside the airport for a while and eventually their plane arrived (they were late because someone had to be taken off the plane in Sky harbor, after everyone had boarded!). So we hugged, teared up and headed out to the bus stop! We were very fortunate, a bus arrived within minutes! We loaded our bags on to the bus and were on our way to San Jose!

We got Krystle and went to dinner at the Rosti Pollo! Delicious chicken!!! We caught up on what we had missed and went to bed early in order to start off early in the morning!

My dad and I woke up early and walked in downtown San Jose. I showed him some interesting churches, businesses, people, and explained what I had understood about the culture and people of Costa Rica. We then got our rental car and went to the church we had been attending. My parents and sister got translators, Alex (husband of Krystle's teacher during language school) and a college student from the University of Costa Rica who was learning English, while Krystle and I continued to practice our spanish!

Here's 2 ticos!

Here's the translators with the gringos

Here is us with our Tico friends

We then drove to Brasilito and our first desination in Costa Rica!
Krystle and Charlene in the car

Coming next.. Hotel horrors

Bugs!!! Love it!!!

2010-05-12T05:00:00.002-07:00

The other night we had one of our protectors doing his job!!

Spider!!! Catching it's dinner!

Then last night we were watching a movie and from beneath the door to the patio crawled this guy!!!

Check out this horned beetle!! Escarabajo en espanol!!

Panama

2010-05-11T08:16:00.005-07:00

So I'm finally getting a little caught up..

We went to Panama for 4 days!

On the bus into Panama there was a nun riding with us. I found it something very interesting. She was wearing a gucci purse (not sure if it was real or fake). However, my point is this.. Isn't the whole point of being a nun, monk, or pastoral staff is to resake worldly living and serve the LORD more closely by separating oneself from the world.. Thought it was a interesting paradox and definite contradiction.

Panama Canal
The canal was amazing! This is definitely a site that everyone should see at some point in their lives. Even better would be to float through it on a boat. We saw multiples boats go through: 3 sailboats tied together, a big gas hauler, and other cargo ships.

Pictures from the Canal

Hostel
The layout of hostel we stayed in had 4 levels, had a shared kitchen that anyone staying at the hostel could use, had a movie room-huge projector and screen with a uniquely constructed multi-layered couch, a room for relaxing with hammocks and couches, a computer room with 4 comps, a bar, a outside patio for relaxing, book exchange, ping pong table, and a balcony that one could enjoy the views of the city and harbor.

Pictures from the Hostel

Humidity is fun for no one... I prefer and enjoy a dry heat any day of the week. We stayed in Panama City which was extremely humid, probably due to the fact that our hostel was 20 feet away from a fish dock and the ocean.

El bueno, el malo, y el feo... good (beautiful old architecture that looked right out of Europe in the 1700s and 1800s), bad (old buildings that need restoring that have simply been boarded up-there was such a waste at times as countless men and women lined the streets trying to sell uselss tourist trinkets or "art" yet great potential laid next to them if they just worked hard to repair and rebuild houses that had simply been abandoned..) and the ugly (skyscrapers of Panama City-downtown Panama City was full of skyscrapers, yet within 5 miles was such extreme poverty and shacks after shacks-which granted is no different than the large cities of the U.S. but Panama City opened my eyes to how we ignore the poverty of others while pursuing our financial security)

San Ramon

2010-05-07T08:10:00.005-07:00

So Jordan and I are now renting a house in the pueblo of El Empalme, which is very close to the main town of San Ramon de Alajuela. We are about 30 minutes to the airport, about 45 minutes to downtown San Jose, and about 45 minutes to the beach. There aren't very many people around us, so it is very quiet and relaxing. We are renting from a retired couple whose names are Deb and Bob. They are very nice and helpful. They own a very nice house down the street, and then rent out our place, and 2 other places right next to us. The best part… they all have an absolutely amazing, breathtaking view of the country! On a clear day we can see the Pacific ocean and we have now seen 2 cruise ships at the ports. There is a town called Esparza that we can see all the lights at night and it is pretty awesome. Here are a few pictures of our 2 bedroom house.

Right now I am sitting at the table typing, I can look out and hear the sounds of night, see the lights of the town, and occasionally see some lightning. Supposedly it rains most days in the afternoons here, but we didn’t get any rain today or the past few days. Its been pretty clear most of the day. It is amazingly relaxing here. We love it!

Jordan and I are going to get in a routine of waking up early, going for a run in the country side, and then eating breakfast and relaxing, studying Spanish, and talking to the people who own our house. We also hope to meet some Spanish speakers in the area, and work on our Spanish with others. Jordan and I are using only Spanish with each other when other people aren’t around.

Here are a few pictures of the amazing view…

We will be here until June 11th when we leave for Spain. Jordans parents and sister are coming to visit soon, so that will be so great to see some family in person. We are very excited for the next month here, and then of course heading over to Spain!!

16 Hour bus rides!

2010-05-05T19:30:00.002-07:00

So we had to ride in a bus for 16 hours! Insanity!

It truly was a blessing as it was a cheap way to avoid having to pay for a hotel room as we planned our buses to leave at 11pm and arrive the following days around 5pm or so.

Thankfully the buses were luxurious enough to have air condicioning, despite it being turned up to high to the point that we were freezing on the buses.

The trip was a huge success as we were able to renew our visas in Costa Rica and see the beatiful countryside of Panama and learn some interesting tidbits about the Panama Canals!

Our time at church

2010-05-04T08:27:00.003-07:00

In front of the church:

Oh LORD Jehova, I have heard your word and I fear you.

Pictures of inside the sanctuary:

Here is Krystle and I with our friends Caleb and Jerlyn.

It’s interesting. We met a group of youth/young adults who attend church 4 to 5 times a week. They have services at night on all weekdays, a Saturday night service, and a Sunday morning service. They are getting some serious bible study in, as each service is on a different topic or even focus as some nights its all prayer or singing/worship. These services usually go for 2 hours total! Worship is involved, as well as brief socializing, while the majority of the time is taken up with the preaching! One Tuesday night, the pastor spent 1 ½ preaching on Nehemiah! It’s been super enjoyable practicing our listening skills with a topic that interests us, as well as leaving us dumbfounded at time because we didn't understand a joke or the context of something said! The people in the church have been extremely welcoming and often want to speak to us in Spanish and even test their English skills.

A running joke between most of them is to say that "Jose here speaks great English". When in reality he does not or is too shy to practice or say anything. It's been eyeopening to learn the cultural inferences and jokes that are prevalent between the youth. Makes me feel right at home!

Panama, Manana

2010-04-25T21:03:00.002-07:00

We are leaving for Panama tomorrow and will be there for the week! Said goodbye to our roommate Brenna from North Carolina (Elon University)! Sadness for sure!!!

Expect some more exciting updates once we return from Panama, since I will be unable to inundate you all on the exciting adventures as they happen because we will not have the computer with us!

But have no fear, the LORD still reigns!! Have a blessed week everyone!

Caleb's house

2010-04-22T14:26:00.002-07:00

Monday night we had dinner at another local Tico family’s house. It was at the house of are dear friend Caleb’s house, who we met in Montezuma during Holy week.

We met him downtown and then traveled together on a bus to his house. When we arrived, his mother and sister were standing outside. They were very sweet and welcomed us into their house. Caleb showed us around and then we hung out in Caleb’s room practicing Spanish, playing guitar, and chatting.

This is Caleb’s room.

Caleb works for Coca Cola, and wait for it…. Makes about 260,000 colones a month ($500 US dollars)! He takes 2 buses each day to get to work (each bus takes an average of 15-30 minutes depending on traffic). He is currently saving up to purchase his own house and eventually get married. He has dreams to visit the USA someday but it is difficult to get visas to visit the USA. He is an excellent guitarist and plays 5 nights a week at the church and on Sunday mornings. He has a girlfriend named Jerlyn.

The house itself is around 1000 sq ft. It has 2 stories and is not complete yet. Caleb said a house like this is worth about 20,000,000 colones (roughly $36363 US dollars). It wasn’t even until 2004 that they built the second floor. Caleb, 24 years old, has 4 siblings. 2 of which live outside the house. Living in the house are Caleb’s parents, his younger brother-20 years old, his older sister 32, and her son of 12 years (the father left when she got pregnant and they have not heard of him since).

Here is a picture from upstairs. The house is not completed yet and literally has an opening in the roof/wall above the kitchen!

We had a delicious spaghetti meal! They had some delicious homemade chili that I enjoyed! After dinner, Caleb gave us some of his Spanish music. Then we bordered the bus and headed home.

This is Caleb and Krystle in front of his house!

Lazy Week

2010-04-21T16:41:00.002-07:00

It's been a very, very lazy week here.. We have rented quite a few movies and are watches old Disney movies in Spanish. We've seen the Lion King, Bolt, Shrek, Monster Inc, The Incredibles, etc. It's like a whole new childhood! haha

For additional spanish practice, I have been reading a book outloud. It's only 120 pages, but because I'm reading it outloud in a foreign language I read about 5 pages in half an hour. It's ridiculously slow! This is very unenjoyable as I am I an extremely fast reader and enjoy flying through books; but it's teaching me alot about being patient and being more detailed.

Krystle has been arranging and planning the rest of our trip, or at least the parts after Spain. We have been locking down the places and people we will visit! We'll spend some time with friends in New Jersey, spend some time in New York City, then hopefully to Buffalo, New York to spend time with Krystle's grandparents and aunt, and then off to Indiapolis and Chicago to hang out with Stacie, our friend who we met here in Costa Rica.

Futbol y mas futbol

2010-04-19T13:04:00.006-07:00

Sunday morning was an eventful day as we watch our first live Costa Rican soccer match! Quite exhilirating! We awoke early, the first time in days, in order to arrive on time to the bus stop for Cartago. After allowing two buses labeled Cartago-San Jose to pass us because of our timidness and anxiety of taking the wrong bus, we motioned the 3rd bus labeled Cartago to stop and pick us up. We asked the bus driver to tell us when we arrived at the bus stop closest to the Cartago stadium, and immediately we found ourselves on a street covered with Saprissa uniforms and gear. We sat in the sombra, spanish for shade and enjoyed watching the Ticos enjoy the last regular season game! Speaking of playoffs, Go Coyotes (2-1 ahead of Detroit-1st round) and Suns (0-1 behind Portland-1st round)!!

We arrived an hour and a half early! It was a beautiful day!

Pregame walkout- supporting children's athletes!

Kickoff!!

After the soccer game in Cartago, we headed to downtown San Jose for a late lunch. After lunch we headed to the Alajuelita, south of San Jose, for a soccer game. Last sunday Krystle did not get the opportunity to play, so we set up a girl's game at the same field that I played at last sunday. Krystle's team won 14-4, a wondeful ending to a long day of futbol!

Krystle and the girls before their soccer game.

Krystle busting a move outside, which freed her up to score!!!

Final Day of the last week

2010-04-15T13:54:00.002-07:00

This is it.

School is over. Sigh of relief from everyone, I know! Especially me; it´s relief to be done. It´s like chapter of the trip being closed and aditional adventures being revealed. We have one last futbol game with the teacher today.

We received advanced II certificates. Que bueno! Now we are going places in this world!

Third day of the last week

2010-04-14T16:12:00.002-07:00

I spent today playing a game. I had the opportunity to talk all day. It was good practice however it opened my eyes to how much practice I need in verbal communication. Seriously, it's not easy. I know what I want to say, I even know what the words are, but I cannot construct sentences for the life of me. They are like one big run-on sentence. It's honestly quite funny watching the facial expressions of my teacher as I attempt to communicate. Patience; sigh.

Krystle tackled the "impertivo de subjunctivo" today. She has caught to me in Book 3 and is a force to be reckoned with. Surely made for a long day, but rewarding as we'll be able to practice this form during the next months we have left here in Costa Rica. Viva Espanol!

Second day of the last week

2010-04-13T19:57:00.002-07:00

Today I was destroyed by Imperfective de Subjunctive. Not fun at all. I have begun to realize the importance of thinking in Spanish. I often run into problems when I try to think in English and speak in Spanish. I need to think, speak, and live in Spanish! Oh how fun!

After school today we played soccer with some of the other students. It was exhausting. We only had 7 people, 6 guys and 1 Krystle. We played 3 on 3 and had 1 sub. Each time a team scored, the team scored on subbed a person out for the fresh person. It was an exhilarating hour.

First day of the last week

2010-04-12T17:10:00.003-07:00

Today was the first day of the last week of school!

We have done 2 months of spanish school. A month of 5 days, 5 hours a day. A month of 4 days, 3 hours a day.

After this week we have another week in San Jose, head to Panama for a week, then rent a house in San Ramon of Alajuela. My parents also come visit during May!

We have progressed into the third book (advanced) and are learning some intense history of Central and South America! We have been breaking down the complexities of the subjunctive tense in Spanish. In English we have 6 verb tenses, 3 simple, 3 compound. In spanish there are 14. 7 simple, 7 compound. The subjunctive is a special tense that uses emotions and feelings to express doubt, desires, beliefs, opinions, etc.

Today I did a presentation on global warming. My topic: The problem is not global warming, the problem is people serve themselves and don't care about others. It was alot of fun. I had 15 minutes to present and afterward my teacher and I spoke for 30 minutes on the topic.

Krystle got to explain why she goes to church and what values dictate the way she lives here life while using the subjuctive. Not a small feat by any means!

Futbol

2010-04-11T19:51:00.002-07:00

Played it up with some local ticos-some boys from The Tabernaculo and beat against another team!! Scored the first goal in a tight 12-11 game!

Krystle had planned to play and then we found out that she probably wasn't going to play. She would have been much better than I at handling the ball, and probably would have scored multiple goals!

We are having an extremely fun time spending time with the "jovenes"/young people that we met. They are making our time here so rewarding as they want to speak to us in Spanish, correct our mistakes, and practice "trabalenguas" in Spanish and English. They enjoy trying to say the "Sally sells sea shells".

Mi favorito trabalengua!

Si yo como como como,
y tu comes como comes.
¿Cómo comes como como?
Si yo como como como.

Tico Churches

2010-04-10T09:15:00.004-07:00

We are now attending 2 different churches. We have attended Ciudad de Dios and now are attending El Tabernaculo as well.

We went Tuesday night to a main service and friday night to a main service. Stacie went with us on Friday. A young man named Jose and his sister gave us a ride home on Friday, since it was about 10pm and we would have had to take a bus to downtown San Jose then to our home in Sabanilla. We stopped for ice cream at McDonalds and they practiced their english while we practiced our Spanish! Great times!

The sermon friday night was on 1 Kings 2:1-12!!!! Which i loved because I believe that the fathers and men, especially Christians, must stand up and mentor their children in truth, honor, and discipline. And not wait till your deathbed! Fathers/men, you have alot of wisdom-PLEASE SHARE IT WITH YOUR SONS (AND DAUGHTERS)!

The pastor spoke on how the people in our lives influence us. He asked the youth "is your girlfriend/boyfriend influencing you for good or evil"? He touched on the importance of being in the world but not of the world! It was awesome hearing this message of encouragement and strength preached in Spanish!

Here are our new friends!

Grandmama

2010-04-10T08:12:00.004-07:00

There's Grandma!

So Marilyn and Grandmama just finished their sight-seeing tour of Costa Rica.

We were fortunate to see them twice during the 12 days they were here. The day they arrived in San Jose and the day they returned from their travels. Traveling mostly in the Guanacaste region they stayed on average 2 nights at one hotel and visited the local sights, especially the birds, before heading to a new location. I was told they met many new friends in the group and had excellent guides in each of their stops.

Grandmama let me borrow her bandana but verified first that it looked good on her.

Here's our closeup.

Classmates

2010-04-08T06:04:00.003-07:00

The school we have been attending has a a wide assortment of students. Each week new students arrive from all around the world and others return home or head off to voluteer sites stationed around Costa Rica.

They has been a high amount of German women, while very few German men. Random young men/women from other countries: Sweden, Netherlands, Scotland, England, Italy, Switzerland,

A elementary school of students from Bermuda arrive this week. They are around 8 years old, very loud and obnoxious-just like kids should be!

There had been a U.S. group of students from a college from the Northeast U.S. They were traveling around Costa Rica on a study abroad program centered on biology.

We've also had some interesting characters in our classes. Krystle had a very talkative American woman in her class for 1 hour, but she removed herself from class and started taking 1 on 1 classes. She talked alot about her life instead of the material that the class was about. She had recently lived in Mexico and was very interested in flexing what she believed to be good spanish. At least it was good if you like Spanish with a southern drall.

I had a american woman studying at the University of Florida in my class. She came for a week to refresh her spanish. She was completing a master degree in Geography and had plans in October to travel to Venezuela and live with a local tribe for 2 months. She was going to study an economic role of a local product the woman of the village created. It was very interesting and she was very fluent. It was great practice for me to listen to her speak, because she spoke clearly enough for me to understand! That was a fun week!

Next week will be our last week in school. We are both close to finishing book 3, the final book of the school. It's exciting to work so far through the Advanced book as we will still be in Costa Rica for another 2 months after class ends and have plenty of opportunity to study the books in more detail and review important concepts.