Eat sleep and fútbol

Friday 5/27- Sunday 5/29

Friday afternoon

Quinten, Allan, and I decided that instead of the customary afternoon beach visit we would try our luck at the basketball courts.  The Zona Deportiva was definitely a busy place, but we found a good pick-up game with some locals and kids from Iowa.  The results of our games weren’t as favorable as we would have liked, but I blame it on the shorter goal, stiff rim, and wobbly backboard.  We are going to start playing more often since it was such a good time so we will polish our skills.

At night we went out to the sea front (I wish I could just call it the ocean because sea sounds weird, but that would be wrong.) off to the side of the pier and sat on some huge rocks and drank wine while looking out over the water.  It’s technically illegal, but the other night a police guy came right next close to us and didn’t bother to check anything out (that would be too much hassle!).  We did discover that right next to us where we thought was just more rock was huge masses of moss piled on the rocks.  It was all very squishy and bouncy like nature’s trampoline!  We had fun for like 2 minutes jumping the crap out of that stuff.  The rest of the night was finished in style at some bar/dancing clubs (I feel like most popular places are bars with a good amount of room for ridiculously crowded squirming (dancing) (E).

On the rocks!

I have definitely gotten to try a good amount of wines so far.  I haven’t found a cheap pink wine yet, but I have realized that I definitely like white over red.  I like my wine sweet, like my women (E).  Haha, I just thought of that because there’s a great line in the movie Airplane! Where two kids are having a conversation where the straight-faced girl gets her coffee from the flight attendant and says to the boy “I like my coffee black, like my men.” (M) Anyway, back to wine… because it’s made so close it’s really cheap (1-4 Euros for the low grade per bottle).  It’s funny though because all the shops are supposed to stop selling alcohol at 10 or something and we always get it after that.  The shopkeeper either blocks it with a blue tarp that we pull up or last time I had to go behind the counter and duck down away from the window to make my selection.  The 24 hour shops are much more $ than the Mercadona grocery store (3 Euros as opposed to .99, oh my!) though so we are going to try to go there when necessary.  You know, when you are spending money all semester instead of making it, every bit counts!

Saturday

I still missed sleeping in today because we had a meeting with our directors to give a progress report on our internships at 11.  I wasn’t bad b/c I got home around 3:30, but my friends who stayed out until 7ish were dying.  Next up was walking through the commercial district with lots of the shops.  When I think I have a handle on the city, I realize there are whole parts where my daily ventures do not lead me at all.  We visited a Nike outlet and they have all sorts of stuff like specific Air Jordans that my friend Quinten wants to buy that they quit selling in the States.  Also, we thought it was hilarious when we learned that they pronounce Nike without the ‘e’ sound at the end, but it’s actually just how the word looks.  I also took a gander at a Corte Ingles, which is their huge all-in-one stores (like Wal-mart but expensive and multi-level).  There are actually four of them within about a four 8 sq. block area.  I was perusing the book section and found the complete guide to witchcraft.  If you didn’t know the only way to perform proper witchery is to be naked because everyone in the pictures were nude.  I’m going to suggest they re-film the Harry Potter series.  I bet Daniel Radcliffe would love that suggestion, I hear he has some experience.

I asked mamá to pack me a lunch because we went by Tram straight to La Playa de San Juan, which is a huge beach 10km north of Alicante.  We found it was cleaner, nicer, less populated, less likely to get your stuff stolen (the beach at Alicante is horrible for thieves picking on tourists), less full of vendors, and much bigger than the beach right by Alicante.  We met some friends their and filled our day with laying, goofing off, doing stunts, swimming, and even playing with a Frisbee I brought.  We had to rush back to town in order to eat shower and leave again for the big soccer game that night. 

It's a Beachin good time!

From the far end: Abby (English), Olivear (French), Anushka (Dutch), me, Allan, and Quinten.  Amid (Tenn.) is taking this wonderful picture.  You can see all the great space around us.

A couple of studs we found on the beach, oh wait that's us!  The waves in the Med. Sea aren't great, but today was windy so there were some.  It was really cool going out to sea like 50 meters and seeing nothing in front of you but undisturbed water.

No idea what Amid is doing, I just like the foreground arrangement.  One of my favorite beach activities though is running around in circles in the sand and seeing how horizontal you can get to the ground.

We did cartwheels while looking into each other's eyes.  They were prolly the fast cartwheels I've ever done because we took like a 40 meter running start. 

Barcelona was playing Manchester United in the championship of the Champions League.  My mamá is a huge fan and was just watching it alone on her tiny tv so I decided to stay for the first little bit and watch some with her before leaving to watch the rest in the barrio.  My timing was awful though because as I was in transit both Barca and Man. U. scored.  I knew when it happened because you could hear people yelling out windows, honking horns, and it was on in every restaurant/café I passed.  When I finally got to the spot were my friends were I found that we weren’t going inside the restaurant at all, but were watching the game in the alley on screens they mounted in the windows with hundreds of people.  You could barely move through the alleys at some points (I know because I was standing on the corner at just the right pace where everyone came by and I had to shuffle out of the way.  When Barcelona won everyone went nuts for a good while.  Today on the tv I saw thousands of people in the Barcelona streets to welcome back their new champions during their parade. It’s too bad we don’t have that kind of atmosphere in the US.  After all the hubbub, we went back to our seaside spot before another night of fun and dancing.

The streets were packed with people watching the Barcelona v. Manchester United game.  There were a lot of fans from each side and each had equally enthusiastic jeers, cheers, and chants.

Another street filled with people.  Btw, the streets are not for cars in the barrio, just for walking and sitting outside restaurants.

Us watching the game.

Sunday

With the Lord’s blessing I finally got to sleep in!  He woke me up right in time to hurry to mass at 12 at the famous San Nicolaus cathedral.  Mass is much shorter here at only 47 or so minutes (it might be because they don’t sing anything but the song and the organist just does a lot of solos).  After exploring a new way back home I went with Quinten and Jack to play b-ball again at la Zona.  Sadly, nobody was at the courts. Maybe it was because they were all watching the soccer leagues that were going on beside them (there were a lot of people watching these random games).  Without a ball we had to give up the dream (I think each one of us is eventually going to get a different sport ball so we can play when we want).  Instead of going home I actually left the guys and visited the fútsol courts nearby to jump into a pickup game.  Fútsol is basically soccer played on a basketball court with smaller handball goals (which I saw in a sports highlight and didn’t realize ppl. actually played) and a smaller heavier ball.  My team seemed really young; Fabia was about my age, but Hasim, Carlos, and Nevil were 16, 14, and 13 and we were playing against guys mainly 20 and up.  We def. held our own and went 2-3 on the day while I was there.  Our best player may have been the 13-year-old b/c he scored like 6 goals and was not afraid to get pelted in goal either.  Their footwork totally trumped mine, but I contributed my fair share and scored 2 goals.  I couldn’t hear exactly what the people on the sidelines said, but I heard yellow (my shirt color) and tigre (a Mizzou shirt), which I think meant I was going after the other team’s ball handlers like a tiger.  In the end I had a great time and will definitely feel comfortable going back and hopefully seeing some of the same players.  It’s cool how universal and welcoming pickup games are, but how they for sure had their own little caveats and rules (the last one to touch the goal posts after a goal or game had to be next goalie).

This is a crappy picture of the fútsol game.  I didn't want to look like a 100% American tourist and take an awkward sideline snapshot (I need to build my street cred.) so I took it from up the hill and got pic of mostly those beautiful trees.  Maybe a better pic will come.

I played longer than I should have so I had to run home and shower before going out to meet David and Pepi again.  After the shower it was so humid I thought I would never get dry (ugh).  I think I’ve mentioned most houses/apartments don’t have AC so the inside today was actually hotter than outside.  We are also told it’s always very humid in Alicante (which is hard to get used to coming from the lovely state of Missouri (psych! I can never escape the humidity).  At least here there’s sometimes a lovely sea breeze wafting your way.  I had a great time visiting with David and Pepi at their house.  Apparently, it’s customary for hosts to give visitors a tour of the dwelling, so as we did that we quizzed each other about all the names of different household items and wrote them down to memorize them.  We talked in Spanish and English about all sorts of things and sipped on some delicious mango smoothie type drink.  We’ve decided we are going to watch a movie some night this week with subtitles so we can all practice our languages.

Back home I’m now catching up with some friends and gearing up for another fabulous week in the lovely, humid, lax-lawed, soccer-crazy, seaside city of Alicante.

Hasta Luego,

Cóle

No pasa nada!

Thur 5/24- Friday 5/25

Thursday

Today I finished my analysis of the LD websites and wrote up my report.  First I shared it with Jose.  That took prolly about double the time it would’ve if I was speaking in English.  He liked a lot of my suggestions, so that was encouraging.  Then we sent it to the boss, Chema, but he said we had to drag him into our office so he would actually read it and be able to talk with him about it.  So again Jose and I went through the report and proposed our changes to the design of the page and additions to the content.  He liked some and nixed some.  He is one of those guys who you would say has a commanding personality and a powerful will, but at the same time he seems fun and easy-going.  That’s prolly what makes him a successful boss and an actor as well.  It was definitely a bit exciting to make progress on a project and present it to the boss and know that some of my work will be implemented to improve the company (M).

When I got off work I met with one of my co-workers, David, and his girlfriend, Pepi.  David was the guy who talked to me about meeting up sometime to hang out and practice English/Spanish with each other.  He told me that he and Pepi often watch English movies with subtitles to try and practice.  They said some actors were very hard to understand when they mumbled and didn’t move their lips, like Humphrey Bogart.  They also didn’t know what deer were.  They prolly do, but I couldn’t explain it well enough.  We walked around Alicante and stopped on the boardwalk at an ice cream shop where I had my first horchata.  Horchata is a desert/drink/ice cream made especially in Valencia.  It can be liquid or half liquid half shake.  It’s sweet and fruity, with an almost pineappley taste.  On the way back home they helped me figure out how to recharge (put credit on) my temporary cell phone.  It had been out of Euros since Tuesday so I couldn’t call or text anyone!  It’s not nearly as huge of a problem as it would’ve been in the US, but still quite annoying.  Btw, texting with those things takes me like an hour!  It’s like I’m back in 9^th grade.  I really enjoyed spending time with David and Pepi and they invited me to their house sometime if I wanted to have dinner or watch a Spanish movie.

After dinner I had to take care of some business.  For example, I was supposed to respond to an email interview about ASB before I left school and I just got to it.  It’s so easy to forget about everything back home especially during the summer when you are across the ocean.  I gotta try to stay on top of things though, because life goes on back home while I am in another world here. 

I have to use the Internet in the dining room because that’s as far as the borrowed WiFi reaches.  While I was working I think mamá was watching something like the Spanish version of Survivor except it was a lot more sketchy (E).  Mamá is also watching all kinds of different programs while I eat because she doesn’t eat much at all and usually eats before I do.  I’ve gotten quite used to the telenovela (soap opera) Victoria being on in front of me while I eat.  I usually don’t make out the words because I’m not paying close enough attention but it’s funny because I can always tell how dramatic the moment is by how slow the piano plays, how big the surprise by how strong they hard they hit the keys, and how villainous the character is by how dissonant the chords are.

Thurs. night I went out with my Mizzou friends to the one guy’s roof and then the barrio.  Apparently Thur. is when all the international students from the university go out because most don’t have school on Friday.  I on the other hand had work so I left to go home early at 3am.  I also wanted to go home because I had a cyber date with Elizabeth.  Unfortunately, I fell asleep on the coach in the middle of it (luckily it wasn’t video chat, that would’ve been a lot more embarrassing).

Friday

Surprise, Surprise it was really hard to get up this morning.  Luckily my commute is walking like 3 blocks.  Today I researched formats for the website available through the webpage building site Lucentum Digital subscribes to.  This would’ve been helpful to see when I was trying to think of how to improve the website design the other day, but no pasa nada.  You hear people say “No Pasa Nada” all the time here in Alicante (I think it should be the motto of the city).  It means no worries, or as Timon would say, Hakunnamatata (sp?).  Anyway, after Jose returns from watching a dubbing of his favorite show, Vampire Diaries, we will decide the final format.  Until then I am working on my next project of translating some text for descriptions of services in their English website.  It’s cool that I am doing so much work with the website, because I will be able to see and show off the fruits of my labor even in the states.

I decided I was going to give myself Friday afternoons off in my schedule, haha.  It’s really only 2 hrs that I am not returning for after siesta, but it will help if I ever wanna take a trip over a weekend.  We are working up some exciting plans for the weekend, so I’ll keep you all updated.  Until then,

No pasa nada,

Cóle   

I can feel the sand between my toes, and everywhere else!

Wed. 5/25

All five of the Mizzou interns: Me, Alan, Quinten, Kaitlyn, Jack out on the town.

Someone told me to get up and dance on the banister at some bar so I did (for like 10 seconds).  Allan looks half impressed.

I find dancing a great stress relief sometimes!  Especially if it's alone because no one will throw you off your groove ;)  People prolly thought I was schwasted, but I wasn't!

Today was exhausting!  I didn’t get much sleep last night because after going out on the town and then spending some much needed time to stay in touch with people back home (M).  Who knew working at 10 could be such a challenge!  I guess I could’ve gotten there later because it’s such a relaxed environment and they said I could get there whenever (but the boss gets there at 1030 so I needed to beat him).  I stuck with it though and worked my full day with a 2 hr siesta and mini-nap in the middle (I’m getting used to that ;).

The outside of the office.  It's a really nice office, but the street is kinda run down.

The mid-sized studio

The sound guy's (I dk what they are called) station with the window into the studio.

Being my first full day of work I had the chance to really get my hands dirty with the first project.  What exactly that first project was I didn’t really know.  My position and objectives are kind of vague right now so I’m hoping they’ll sharpen as we go along.  Basically I will be analyzing the website (lucentumdigital.com) and competition’s websites in order to make it completely streamlined and user-friendly while still offering the same mass quantity of information about LD.

I was going to spend the day in my single office, but then I got moved into Jose’s office so eventually I could collaborate with him on the website.  It ended up being a great change of scenery because now I had someone I could converse in Spanish with and easily ask questions to across the desk. 

My first "office" (it's really just one of their interchangeable workstations.

I sit at the big Mac that looms over Jose's little Macbook.

Jose is always smiling and is very patient when talking with me.  He talks really fast (like many other people in Spain) so the words all run together into a blob, but he’s been slowing down some for me.  That’s the real problem with talking in Spanish—you can never be sure what you are hearing and what people are saying because the words and sounds aren’t natural to you.  If I could read the words in little speech bubbles as they came out of their mouths, 90% of my problems would be solved!  Jose even invited me to see how they tested the dubbing equipment in their studio for the afternoon.  They dubbed over a 20 second clip of Monster’s Inc. in Spanish with remarkably precise timing after only a couple of tries (first they run through it saying the Spanish over the English, then they turn the English off when they have the timing down).  Even though the people at LD are great and the work isn’t stressful, I was happy when the day ended and I high-tailed it to the BEACH! 

Sadly, I usually can’t get there til like 6:30 (I know! Woe is me, so many troubles!).  The good thing about getting there late is that it’s not too hot, I don’t need sunscreen, and the sand v-ball court is less crowded.  Today I met Olivear and my German friend Steffan to play against these really good locals who are there every day.  You can just tell they are complete kings of the v-ball court, it’s their turf for sure.  Still, playing 3 on 2 we were able to beat them, but definitely not when just Steffan and I played them.  On the way home I feel like I brought the beach with me, the sand is constantly on the bottom of my feet and in my room no matter what I do.  

There's a massive sand castle and a random giant sand horse next to it on the beach.  This guy spent 3 days making this thing and just sits by it all day with a towel out for donations.  I threw him a Euro (they are so easy to part with when 1 and 2 Euro coins are just change in your pocket).

We were almost the last ones when we left the beach just after 9.  After another lovely dinner from mamá I decided to go to the free showing of Grease (Spanish version) in one the Plazas.  Being under 60, I was definitely in the minority crowd.  Afterwards I treated myself to some Teramisú gelato (E) and made the cross-town trek home once again.  We’ll see if I can get a few more winks of sleep tonight.  You can really fill up your day if you want to though (esp. when half of it is walking).  There’s just too much fun to be had and too little time!  

Adios,

Cóle

These are other cool pics I got off Facebook:

A good view of the bull fighting ring at the Plaza de Toros.

Part of Alicante at night.

On the pier there's this gaudy casino that clashes with all the other nice Mediterranean architecture.  It even has these tacky columns plopped in front of it to pay tribute to Mizzou!

The castle at night

View of Alicante through the columns and down the pier.

Those crazy visiting fans from the soccer match on Saturday.  You can see all the whacky stuff they were, but you can't see the crazy songs and dances. 

Long live España.

Hanging with our fearless teacher Armando after a hard day's work of walking around the city.

My room.  My window looks into a courtyard/cavity of sorts.  I messed up the rolly reed blinds the first day and mamá had to fix them so now I just try to change fast and never close the blinds

Alicante: an international hub of sorts

Sunday 5/22 to Tuesday 5/24

Sunday

So we left off where I took the siesta… I always feel like I wasted a day when I take a nap in the middle of it, but that’s just what a lot of people do here in Spain during siesta so I guess I should get used to it.  The rest of Sunday was pretty uneventful.  I woke up, ate dinner, and went on a long walk through the neighborhood around my house.  My mamá always asks me if I’m going out, so I feel like it’s the normal thing to do and I shouldn’t say know.  She realizes at least that it’s boring for me if I stick around the house.  I hadn’t seen much of it because everything happens in the center of the city and I basically only knew the part from my house to the beach (which is a good amount of ground).  Anyway, I felt like I should get acquainted with all parts of my neighborhood.  There was nothing very spectacular except a lot of fenced off fútbol courts with basketball hoops over them and a scuba diving place with murals of the scuba flags and Nemo and Dori.  It was strange because that was the first night I didn’t go out with my friends and I don’t know anyone who lives close to my neighborhood.  Hopefully I’ll meet people, but for now it sometimes feels like I’m on an island. 

Monday

We were finally going to start work at our companies today.  The last piece of the puzzle was appearing.  The five of us had different times to meet with Armando so he would escort us from a meeting point to the company and introduce us to the employees/boss.  I was all psyched up to go and then Cynthia, one of the directors, called and said that I couldn’t go in to see my company until Wed. because my boss was out of town and couldn’t tell me what to do.  I was very disappointed, and I told her that I would still like to visit the company today.  So, she met me at my house and we walked to this place called Lucentum Digital (LD for short).  It’s only 3ish minutes away from my house so that kinda makes up for the extreme distance of my place from everything else.  When I got to LD, the receptionist Rebecca (who is American, but has lived in España for 12 years) showed me around and introduced me to everyone.  It’s a relatively small company with 2 floors, 7 offices, 3 studios, and 8 employees (including 2 interns), but it does a large scope of work.  LD does video and audio productions in several languages for textbooks, voiceovers for commercials and movies, dubbing for shows and movies in other languages, promotion videos and multimedia websites for companies, and dubbing and interpretation classes for aspiring actors, an prolly some other stuff that I forgot.  Basically, they have their hands in a lot of businesses, and in many of the businesses they don’t have any competition.  All other audio and visual production companies are in Madrid or Barcelona. 

Anyway, after the introduction an actor came in and I got to sit in on the recording they did that afternoon.  It was funny because they were recording some listening exercise for a textbook and I remember loathing those when I was in Spanish classes.  It was very interesting to see how much work goes into producing those things though.  LD has a whole database of actors in Alicante with different accents in order to mix up the exercises.  During the recording I chatted with David, the producer, and we ended up exchanging emails so we can meet up later for him to practice his English and me to practice my Spanish.  Then, I left work in time for lunch at 2.  Eventually I got down to the beach with some of my internship friends after we were all done at our companies.  The other four are working with a study abroad enterprise, fertilized chicken egg exporter, information clearinghouse for entrepreneurs, and an ad agency.  At first I was disappointed because I got neither of my two first choices (entrepreneur business and ad agency) even though they were the most Spanish intensive and I was told I scored well on the language pretests.  But I think my internship with LD will be a great experience because it definitely is the most interesting and dynamic of all the companies.

At the beach I managed to play some volleyball (the one net is always busy) and met some pretty cool dudes.  One guy named Olivear was from France and introduced me to his friends he had met when he arrived a day ago at the Spanish language school from Switzerland, Holland, and the UK.  They all spoke pretty good English, so getting to know each other was easy.  My friends and I met up with Olivear that night to introduce him to the barrio and we got some ice cream.  He is only 17 and came to Spain alone, which I think would take a lot of guts.  He said he also had an old lady host mom and wants to meet people, so I can empathize.

Tuesday

Today I didn’t have to go in to LD until 1 because that’s when Rebecca said the boss would be back to explain my tasks.  With all that extra time I took a nice long run to explore another sector of Alicante.  Every once in a very long while (especially when there are places to explore) runs are tolerable.  I went past the soccer stadium and visited the Zona Deportiva (a big park with gravel running paths and soccer pitches).  There was even another castle that I ran through (basically a lot of stonewalls, open pits, and stairs with graffiti all over). It was only very long because I ended up getting lost on my way back (despite my utter confidence that I had a handle on the city), but just when all hope was lost I ran right into the street where I live.

When I went to work I talked with the boss about my purpose at LD and finally got some direction.  At first it seemed like there weren't many things planned for me to do, which seemed like a red flag (who wouldn’t accept free labor and just make up random things for them to do so they could be 10% productive?).  Then he told me that I needed to revise the English version of their website to cure it of all flaws and make suggestions to improve the user experience as well as create a brochure in Spanish using InDesign for their new salesman to promote LD around Alicante.  He explained all this to me in perfect English to avoid confusion.  Truthfully, I was a bit disappointed to see that my job would require the use of so much English, but at least it will be less stressful.  He also told me that I could set my own schedule, the dress was casual, and overall seemed like a very chill boss. 

After the siesta at 4 I went back to work and reviewed the business plan and websites for a couple hours before heading to the beach.  It’s great that it’s light so long because I get to the beach 6:30 nd can stay until 9 no problem when I need to go home for dinner.  I met up with Olivear and his two friends at the beach and we got in on a volleyball game.  It’s funny that you will see the same people around the v-ball net every day and some are crazy good.   Despite being a mish-mash of players (Spanish, French, German and American) we won in 3 games!  I also met some people from Germany and Arkansas.  The beach is just a great common ground especially for international students to go and meet and see each other day after day. 

Tuesday night was capped off with a BP tourney at one of the local bars of about 48 teams.  They have this tournament every Tues., and apparently it is a huge draw for a lot of Americans and international students.  I met people from Vanderbilt, U. of Tenn., Iowa, England, France, Italy, and Germany.  It’s crazy how international Alicante is, and it seems like we all find ways to connect very easily.  It really makes it easy when most everyone can speak English.  In the last two days I feel like I've met a boat load of people from across the world, and it definitely eases the tension of living in a new country.  I still feel guilty for not finding native Spanish speakers to converse with. 

I’ve been writing every 2.5ish days, but I think the point of a blog is to have more numerous and shorter posts so I am going to try to write every day during siesta (just FYI for all you on the edge of your seats reading this).   

Hasta luego,

Cóle

Culture Shock?

The board walk with part of the Alicante skyline and some guy in the picture!

Friday 5/20 to Sunday 5/22

Friday we got up to a beautiful spread of breakfast foods at the hotel.  I took advantage of it because I know the usual breakfast in Spain is no more than a piece of sweet bread and some fruit, but I’ll talk more on meals later.  We then met up with our directors and had some orientation sessions about stuff like the typical family environment and how to act appropriately.  We also got our pay-as-you-go cell phones from the giant phone company here, Movistar.  They said international incoming calls (and possibly texts) are free to me so you can call me if you have free international calling or something, but for me to call the US it’s really expensive.

The big part of the day was when we met our host families.  My family is really just a host grandma.  Her name is Pilar and she must be over 70 because her son is 50 something.  She’s small and has a rough voice (prolly b/c she smokes).  She lives alone because her husband passed 5 years ago, except recently when her son moved in with her because he just got divorced.  However, he’s usually gone on work (diving to collect salt out of the sea I think? I didn’t really understand).  She has two little birds, loves Barcelona soccer (where she grew up), Formula 1 racing, and watches a lot of tv.

The apartment is nice and pretty spacious for Spain.  It’s got a real nice courtyard out front.  The worst thing is how far it is from the other intern students and basically everywhere I need to go in the middle of town or by the beach.  I have prolly gotten in more walking these past days than I did in a whole semester at Mizzou (mostly because I ride my bike everywhere).  I doubt I’ll even need to run while here because I get so much exercise walking!  At least once you get into the middle of the city everything is close. 

The courtyard in front of my house.  I'm on the 3rd floor straight ahead.

The street in front of my house

Honestly, at first I was a bit bummed because I was really hoping for my family to have kids who could show me around town, tell me the popular things to do, and introduce me to some locals.  Having at least two people in the house would have been nice because when it’s just me and mamá it’s hard to keep up a conversation because there are only so many things to talk about and it’s harder to improve my Spanish by both listening and hearing people explain things several ways if I don’t understand them.  The place really is much farther from everything (15 minutes to our typical meeting spot, 25-30 minute walk to the beach) than everyone else’s house and I’m the only one who doesn’t have a couple or kids close to our age or even other students at their house.  Also, I was surprised to hear that the host families are paid fairly well for hosting us and mamá has had lots of students in and out.  So we get catered to and serviced a lot more than I expected because the hosts consider it their job.  I was expecting more of a personal homestay, but felt like I was just the next paycheck per se.  Please don’t think that I’m a horrible person or that I think my home is horrible.  First, I realize that this is important to Pilar not just because it’s her income, but because by hosting students she gets something much more valuable: relief from loneliness.  Also, I think she really enjoys the chance to take care of someone and I’ve gotten the impression that she really does care for me and definitely wants me to be happy.  I’m sure we will soon both grow a lot closer.   

That first day was a little awkward, but we had some decent conversations and they have gotten better as we get more familiar and comfortable with each other.  Mamá doesn’t speak any English so I’ve had to work hard to understand her and then explain around things when I don’t know a word.  Surprisingly, I haven’t used a translation dictionary at all during any of my conversations.  First we ate our lunch and met a neighbor who gave us the password to his wifi network (whiffee as they say).  Then we walked to the Movistar shop to add some more Euros to my Movistar account, but we came back soon because Pilar can’t walk too far.  Then I walked around and explored the central part of the city by myself.  I love just reading all the Spanish signs.  I visited the bullfighting arena and looked through the small museum. I’m definitely going to get a ticket for a bullfight during the season (June 18-July 5).  I took a siesta and then mamá had dinner ready for me before I went out to meet my intern friends around 11:30 to go to the bar district.  I have a pretty good sense of direction, so even though I’m far away in the middle of a residential district I found my way around well enough. 

The bullfighting museum at La Plaza de Toros

Some bullfighters are very famous and everyone wants to go see them.  There is even a bullfighting school for aspiring young ones.

La Plaza de Toros.  It's in the center of a big roundabout.  I'm glad I don't have to drive through those, I just hafta worry about crossing through them!

Cool graffiti.  You might not be able to tell, but left picture is of a creature with a lamp shade hat and a gas mask riding a turtle! 

This was an Alice in Wonderland themed wall complete w/ Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.

This is more of the wall.  You can see the caterpillar was adapted to look a lot more sinister, but it still has its hookah.  The rabbit was depicted in the same way on the other side and had a gold tooth!

They have lots of graffiti.  Most of it's trashy tags and comments, but some is really cool art!

Armando says Spaniards are very individualistic and they will clean their house spotless, but many have no problem spreading graffiti or littering.

The night was fun and the Spaniards love to party.  We went to a pub with amusing paintings like Bush in a diaper playing with bombers and tanks (they don’t like him, but they like Obama apparently).  Next came an American 80s themed bar named Joplin, and then a open-air Hawaiian type place.  Although we found people spend much of the night just hanging in the streets/alleys (which are only for walking).  There are so many people and you can run into so many people at once because everything happens in the same “barrio” district.  They are all very touchy-feely (even the guys with each other).  The guys are also very aggressive (usually in a polite way) towards girls and they kept flirting with the one girl with us who they called “rubia” (blond) and asked for “one kiss” (on the cheek).  I think she was flattered.

Saturday

We had to wake up much too early for my liking to meet with Armando (one of our directors) at La Plaza de Toros to get acquainted with the city more.   The schedule in Spain is totally different.  People wake up later and start work/school around 9 they break for lunch and siesta around 2 and either have a very long lunch where they mainly socialize or eat and nap (my preference).  Then they go back to work/school from 4 or five til 7.  They eat 8-11 and nightlife starts at like 12 and goes easily until 4 am. 

Mercado Central-  The main market where everything is sold.  Seafood, meat and fruit and vegetables are the best here.  The fish smell pungent and there are so many varieties.  It's huge!

Street signs are on the corners.  La Rambla is the main street. It was built on top of a river

Armando loves walking so we did a lot of it. We went to the other main point in the city, La Plaza de Luceros and then ended up going to el Castillo de Santa Bárbara.  The castle is huge and is the only thing on top of a huge rock outcropping so you can see it from anywhere in Alicante.  You can climb like 30 flights of stairs to get to the top, but we took the elevator in the center of the mountain.  At the top you could see for miles.  We learned how it was built by the Christians in like 13^th century after they conquered the Moors in the area.  Cool stuff. 

The crest on the floor of the castle said: Alicante, the best land in the world.

They had a cell phone tower on top of the castle!

The north view overlooks all sorts of city we haven't been to yet.  I think they said it's actually another city right next to Alicante of the same size.

The beach on the left is very popular.  The row of hotels is in the middle and the marina to the right of that. 

This is the center of Alicante where we have walked around a lot.  It's really hard to tell what stuff is when you aren't at street level.

The picture above the door of Jesus they claim is the real likeness of him.  It's based off an image of Jesus' face people believe was left in a cloth that a lady wiped his face with as he carried the cross.  Relics are very important to the people and especially churches in Spain.    

This is the inland view of Alicante.  The bullfighting ring is on the right.  My house is up and a little to the right of that .5-.75 miles.

straight from the castle to the beach and ocean.

After lunch my friends and I met up at the playa (beach) and relaxed there for a while.  The water was pretty chilly because it doesn’t really get hot here until July (they say June is a beautiful month).  We found lots of interesting things at the beach: a huge intricate sand castle, men painted white standing as statues, people going around braiding hair and selling sunglasses Americans from several different places, and to our surprise multiple girls with their chests bare laying out in the sun. 

When we had gotten our fill of the sun and sand I made the trek home (uphill all the way) for dinner and went right back out to catch the last Alicante soccer game of the year.  Apparently the team isn’t great and everyone is bummed that they got moved down to the second tier league so the stadium wasn’t that full.  It was definitely still a crazy European soccer environment though with chants, signs (people got furious at security for taking an inappropriate sign and the whole place started booing), and crazy traditions (like kids running a huge stuffed gorilla all the way around the stadium and even our favorite, the wave).  Tragically, we accidentally got tickets in the visiting section complete with walls of bars and it’s own entrance.  It was the one option of the 10 or so on the board that we didn’t want.  Tickets were decent at 35 Euros.  Although the visiting fans were prolly the most energetic with weird songs and dances, and they were all adorned with ridiculous stuff like rainbow wigs.  Even more tragically the game ended in a 0-0 tie (typical soccer!), but we still joined in as the fans rushed field!  Then they turned on the sprinklers to make us leave. 

Our view from the corner visiting section at the Alicante v. Gijón game.  You can see stands aren't full and the pink in the bottom left is some guys' long-haired wig.

The four guys: Allan, Quinten, Me, and Jack.  Jack's holding his non-alcoholic beer they serve at games.  He didn't know that until afterward!

People running around on the field, mostly kids trying to take pictures with the players and stuff.

I did a pull-up on the goal, but then hit my head, haha.

Afterwards we chilled on the roof of one of our guy’s house for a while drinking wine (pre-gaming or botellón in a sense) and then we went out to el barrio the bar/club district for another fun night.  I don’t understand how the Spaniards do it though because both Friday and Saturday night we’ve been out until past 4 and I am dead tired now because I’m writing this instead of siesta-ing.   

Sunday

It’s already weird having to write this in English because I have been talking, reading, listening, and thinking in Spanish so much. I started to write Domingo (Sunday).

Today is regional elections for Spain so that’s been interesting.  People love to talk politics because they all have their own opinions and most believe Zapatera and the Socialist Party is doing a crappy job and they want to elect the Populist Party (the Republicans equivalent).  I’ve even seen some Communist posters in my neighborhood, but they aren’t very popular.  We met Armando again at the Plaza de Toros and walked around.  Today he spoke to us all in Spanish to make sure we understood everything and he also had us explain our homes and how they were so far.  It wasn’t very hard at all.  As long as people don’t talk to fast and I really concentrate I can get what they say.I also find myself thinking about how I would say different thoughts or phrases in Spanish a lot.  We visited the two biggest churches (San Nicolas and some other one that was very ornate and built on top of the grounds of a mosque).  Then we went to the two free art museums.  Armando teaches art at the University and knows a ton about it.  We saw original works of Dali, Picasso, Miró, and so many more.  It was hard to fully enjoy it because my legs were so tired and know the two others felt the same after a while.  Armando is a great teacher with everything about the city and Spanish culture/lifestyle.  I guess that’s good since it’s his job.  Finally we went to the Ayuntamiento (city hall) and saw the small market they have there on Sundays.  It had some great Spanish artifacts.

The church of San Nicolas.  The most famous church in the city.  It's huge and pretty plain on the outside, but it's right in the center of town.

The church of Santa Maria.  It's baroque style and very pretty.  You can see the section of glass in the middle of the aisle where you can look down at the old remains of a mosque.

Some cool painting of people praying to get into Heaven.

A neat organ on the wall.

The Ayuntamiento is the seat of the local government.  This was one of their polling places as well.

La Plaza de Ayuntamiento.  There is a grid of fountains that always change heughts and colors at night.  The Sunday market is held here around the square in the walkway under the arches.

So many things are different here, but nothing is terribly shocking or challenging to deal with.  I feel like after just a couple days I am pretty comfortable with the idea of living here for another 5 weeks.  My intern friends are great, but I really hope we meet some Spanish friends and we can really get immersed further in the culture through them.  Thanks for reading!  Btw, you can always let me know if there’s something you want to know more about or would like me to explain.  Now I’m gonna take a siesta!

Hasta Luego,

Cóle

.