Las Fallas & More

I arrived back to Granada from yet another trip this past week. I know it seems like I don't do anything but travel, haha. But no worries I am in school and I have been keeping up with my work even though I still don't really know what is going on in my university classes. One thing I do know is that the lectures could not be more boring so that being said I find it really easy to pay attention, haha.

Where to begin. The Sevilla airport. Back a few months ago when my friend Sarah and I were planning this trip we were looking at flight to Valencia and trying to avoid a long bus ride. I had the bright I idea to fly out of Sevilla and just sleep in the airport, so when I saw really cheap tickets, I bought them. This was stupid. Number one being that we had to take a bus from Granada to Sevilla, which is about three hours away. We could have just taken an over night bus to Valencia and avoided changes in modes of transportation. So we were stuck with this. The number two reason why this was poorly planned was that the airport closes. I guess with all of the success and fun I have had with my airport sleeping, I did not think to check to see if it it would close. Luckily the weather was tolerable, there were some other people in the same boat as us, and we found a nice comfortable cardboard box to sleep on.

After a long night with little sleep we made it to Valencia to find our couchsurfing host. Couchsurfing.com is a website for people who travel and want to find people to stay with for free. We thought that it would be interesting to test out so we found Ignacio (Nacho) of Valencia and went for it. He was working in his tool shop so we went there to meet him, drop off our things, and check out if he was a creep. After meeting him we felt comfortable so we left our things and explored a bit. He wanted to eat lunch with us so we came back to his shop, met his friend Rodrigo from Brazil, and went back to his place to eat. His apartment was really nice, big, and had a rooftop patio so we were quite happy with this arrangement. He had to work after lunch so Rodrigo went around town with Sarah and I. I could tell he was cool so I invited him to continue travels with us since he was on break from school as well. He said he had a friend that lived in Benidorm which is also on the coast and that we could possibly stay with him, score. More to come on this...

So we passed the next day in Valencia checking out the festivities and Las Fallas (pictured above). There are more than 700 throughout the city and they all have different themes. They are all made of paper mache so they can burn the shit out of them at the end of the festival. Apparently the really big ones take all year to design and build, which is crazy since they destroy them. Sadly we did not get to see hundreds of hours of work and euros go up in flames because we were there for the start of the festival, but I am sure it's fun.

Sarah and I in Valencia

All seemed to be going well with our buddy Nacho. We decided to make some food and drink some beer at his place before going out to watch the fireworks. Then things started to get a little silly. My friend Sarah was having one of those never ending bad luck moments. I can attest that these are not fun but really not controlable. She spilled her drink, then spilled some beer, and then when she was putting the seasoning on some toast with tomato the top came off and all of it fell out. I, of course found this hiliarious just because her luck was so bad. Nacho did not think it was funny and rather than salvage the spice he could and save some of the food, he threw it all away. He left the kitchen and Sarah, Rodrigo, and I gave each other frightened looks ans started laughing. After some time all was well again and we were enjoying our drinks when Nacho decided it was time to talk about politics and about everyone's favorite president. This is never a fun discussion for me, espcially in another language. He finally stopped only to continue again when we were out at a bar later. After the bar back at the house all seemed to be well again. Everyone went to bed I stayed up with Rodrigo to figure out our plans for the next day and listen to him sing the alphabet in English which was priceless because took him about 15 minutes since he was intoxicated. So the morning rolls around and Sarah and I are getting ready to go. Nacho asks what we are going to do and I say that we are going to the beach with Rodrigo. Well he though that we were staying in Valencia to go to the beach and upon realizing that we were leaving and going some where else he seemed angry. He drove us to Rodrigo's and we had a really awkwardly silent car ride and angry goodbyes, well from his end. He was sooo pissed at us but we had no idea why. We had done anything disrespectful. After talking with Rodrigo we decided he was jealous that we did not invite him to go and that we liked his friend a lot more than him, haha. Really though, overall it was a good experience and FREE. Valencia is a cool city, it's really different than Granada. There is a lot of modern archeture and some really great parks which is probably one thing I wish Granada had more of.

Rodrigo, Me, Nacho, and Sarah

Nacho seems to be happy here, less than 8 hours later, not so much.

From Valencia we went to Benidorm and stayed with Adriano, Rodrigo's friend from Brazil for two nights. It was really relaxing and we cooked which was a lot of fun. I realized how much I missed cooking this past week. It's been so long that I have been able to decide what I want to cook and eat. From Benidorm we went to Albacete to stay with some of Adriano's friends. We really did not do much anything there as well besides laze around and eat. The only sights I saw where the two clubs I went to and the hamburger place outside one of the club's we ate our 7 in the morning snack at. We slept for about a half hour and then got up to catch our bus to Cartegena for couchsurfing experience part two.

Benidorm

Sarah and I with our Brazilian amigos Adriano and Rodrigo

We were more or less dead and disgusting from lack of showering due to slothness. We went to our new buddy's apartment, Pako, to meet him, drop off our things, and go to the beach to sleep. We had intended to catch a bus back to the center at 6 pm (it was on the schedule we got) but one did not come for over 2 hours so that was really cool. Our friend Pako was working and we ate some fantastic taps as his place for half the price and finally went to bed (after night number 2 with out sleep). The next day it was raining all day so we walked around for a bit before we decided to go back to Pako's place and lay around, without him there, haha. He was working and gave us the keys so we could get our things when we needed them. So we watched Godzilla in Spanish before we dropped the keys off at his work and this time at a meal for free. So needless to say this was a really good couchsurfing experience. Pako was great to us. After Cartegena we caught a bus to Sevilla for our 3rd sleepless night on our trip.

Our couchsurfing host in Cartegena, Pako

Sevilla is only about 3 hours from Granada but I somehow had not been there yet and now I am very happy that I have seen it. It is a really pretty city but packed with touristis. It is famous for Semana Santa so this past weekend was especially busy. I stayed the night in Carmona with my friends that I met in Egypt. Not all of them were around, but it was good to see some of them. I really hope they come to Chicago next summer, it will be really funny.

Sarah and I in front of Guadaliquiver River in Sevilla

The Cathedral in Sevilla

This time it's BUTTER

So I knew it was only a matter of time before Maribel would accuse me of something that I did not do and I was lucky enough to have that experience this morning. Since the jam incident I have been really nice, always saying hi and bye and kind of giving her a creepy smile, which I assume she does not like.

This morning I ate my breakfast and got ready to go to class, as I was leaving I said goodbye and instead of hearing bye back I was accused, this time of leaving the butter out. I almost could not believe it, I had thought she would at least pick a completely new thing to get angry with me for, but she stuck to the leaving things out of the refrigerator theme. Unlike the last time this happened, I did not back down and run out of the door because this time I was not the least bit surprised. I immediately came at her and said it was not from me and I did not use it and then asked her why she always has a problem with me. She ignored that and continued to accuse me saying that the butter was still cold and the sandwich maker was still hot, and that her family had left a long time ago so it had to be from me. She refused to believe me. AHHHH! I was so angry because like last time I did not even use the butter or the sandwich machine, nor did I pay attention to the fact that they were left out. I took care of my breakfast and cleaned up after my self and left. To top it off her mom and brother left 45 minutes before so it is completely possible that they used it. Anyway I continued to ask her what her problem with me was and what I had done to her all of which she ignored and refused to speak to me. I also told her that I knew she did not like me from the day I got here and accused her of always looking for something that I have done wrong. I think she was really surprised by my reaction this time and that is why she did not have much to say because she knew she was wrong.

So this of course bothered me all day today. I thought about weather I should tell Paqui and I decided not to because I did not want to worry her. It's not her fault her daughter is a huge bitch and I am an adult and take care of it on my own. Well that did not work out because Maribel had told her about it by the time I got home. Luckily her reaction could not have been better. I am sure Maribel had the intention of making me look like a bitch but it blew up in her face. Paqui apologized to me, told me that she was very mad with Maribel, and that she is not a nice person (anitpatica). HaHa. So overall I feel better about it.

I am leaving for a trip today and I know I won't see Maribel until I get back so it will be interesting to see where this goes.

I'm off to Valencia and then working my way down the coast and to Sevilla. Semana Santa (Holy Week) starts this Saturday so I am sure I will have a lot of interesting pictures.

It's getting really hot out!

I Heart Lisbon

My last minute trip to Lisbon last week was a success. The overnight bus from Sevilla to Lisbon was probably the worst part. We arrived in Lisbon at 5:30 am and I could not catch my train to Sintra (about an hour outside of Lisbon) until after 7:00, and then I could not drop my bag off at the hostel until Noon and there was no where to store bags at the train station so I was a zombie for a few hours. I spent one day and night in Sintra and went to see the Moorish Castle and the palace. Both were really pretty sites and there were great views of the city. I went to Lisbon the following morning, but first went to the coast, called Azenahs do Mar. From the picture I saw, I thought it would be a nice, lively coastal town and although it was nice the town was absolutely dead so I got off the bus, took pictures, then caught the next bus back and went to Lisbon.

Azenhas do Mar

I LOVE LISBON!! I think out of all of the big European cities I have seen it is my favorite. It is really colorful, lots of hills (kind of like San Francisco), not full of tourists like Paris, Rome, etc., there is a castle which adds to the already beautiful scenery, free wine tasting, cheap, decent food, and they have their own version of The Redeemer. Who wouldn't love a city with Jesus watching down on them?

In the Castle of São Jorge


Here is a view of Lisbon with São Jorge in the background


I was lucky enough to meet some great people as well, more importantly great Brazilians which meant I did not have to speak Spanish and pretend to understand Portuguese when they were around. The Portuguese accent is so different from the Spanish accent it is crazy. I could get by reading some basic things and a few times I did understand my Brazilian amigos but overall the accent is really hard, I can't even impersonate it. But like Italian, the similarities between Spanish and Portuguese do interest me, perhaps enough to study it in the future, I guess that is if I ever get my Spanish down, haha.

Amigos

On the Granada front, it's snowing in the Sierra Nevadas right now and therefore much cooler than it has been in the two weeks. I am still lost as to what I need to do for my university classes, and my lectures this past Tuesday were extremely boring which kind of disappoints me and makes it hard to pay attention. I now know that we need to do "trabajos" for both classes so although I mentioned my teacher said I could write a paper if I want (Perhaps I misunderstood the if you want part) I think I will have to, which is fine, but I still am not sure exactly what to do. Pablo is the same as usual and Maribel and I are best friends (JK).

My housing with Paqui ends in the first week of May and it is really expensive to stay here another month, about the same it would have cost me to leave my bags here except I would actually be here, consuming. So the 600 euros it would cost did not seem worth it to me and I have already found a place to stay for May. My friend Sarah is dating this guy from Morocco and she is going to stay with him for May and I am as well. I'll be staying in the living room, but I'll have a mattress so that's all I really need.