Sevilla and Burgos

It’s crazy how time flies and all of the sudden I haven’t done a blog post in 10 days. After the first two weeks that I was here, I thought I had been here a month, and now I feel like I’ve been here for a year. It amazes me how you can get used to such a different day-to-day routine. The first couple weeks here I had a hard time picturing being here for 4 more months, but now my daily routine is all that I know, and it doesn’t phase me one bit.

Last weekend our program traveled to Sevilla, Spain which is the 4th largest city in Spain. It’s located in Andalucia, which is the southern province of Spain. Andalucia, in my opinion, is the stereotype that people give Spain. Beaches, warm weather, nice people, white houses, flamenco dancing, etc. I found all these to be true….except for the warm weather. The whole time we were there it was about 40 degrees or less—for those of you still in Minnesota, no I haven’t forgotten about what the weather is like, but when you walk outside for hours at a time and go “inside” to buildings that don’t have doors, it gets a little chilly :)

The trip was fun. I don’t think I enjoyed it as much as I had hoped because the city just didn’t seem too exciting. Someone told me it’s much more enjoyable in the summer just due to the atmosphere, but there didn’t seem to be much to do. One of the highlights for me was the flamenco show. Without going into detail, Flamenco is a very popular style of Spanish song/dance. There are many different types but it typically is VERY emotional. The show was in a small courtyard of a hotel, with about 50 spectators. I was absolutely amazed by the show. The amount of emotion expressed by the faces and movements of the singer and dancer cannot be described by words. We couldn’t take pictures or videos but I’m almost glad we couldn’t because there is no picture or video that could come close to describing what we saw.

One of the other things I enjoyed was seeing the Plaza de Toros, which is the oldest bull fighting plaza in Spain. It had a museum that showed the history of bull fighting. The topic of bull fighting in Spain is extremely controversial, and I really enjoyed learning about the history of it.

On Sunday morning, my friend Britni and I went on a walking/picture-taking adventure throughout Sevilla. It felt like we were walking through a ghost town as we saw very few people, and those who we did see were walking to church. It was such a peaceful and relaxing walk, and a good time to reflect on our trip so far. We stopped by a few churches that were hidden in the non-touristy part of the city, and also got to witness a group of people preparing for the Semana Santa processions. Sevilla is known to be one of the best places to spend Semana Santa.

The last week I spent catching up on some things. It turns out, as I expected, that once you being traveling every weekend, all the free time that I have during the week is needed to catch up. I didn’t think I would get to the point of needing a list of “things to do” while I was in Spain. Luckily , I have all of today to catch up on things like my blog, research for future trips, schoolwork, reading, etc.

Yesterday I took a trip with my friend Christine to Burgos, Spain. Burgos is about the size of Salamanca and is located north of Madrid. It is actually the location of the NDSU study abroad program and also home to one of the most well-known Roman Cathedrals in Spain. With the train schedules, it turned out to be a 22 hour trip, of which about 30 minutes I spent sleeping on the train. I thought it would be a good idea to test my limits a little bit on lack of sleep during trips, and also get a chance to take the train. Despite being a long, cold day, the trip was very enjoyable. I always love getting to know people on a personal basis, and I’ve learned that there’s no better way to do that than to travel with them.


Christine and I visited a castle located in a wooded area (even with snow!--reminded me so much of Minnesota) on the outskirts of town, the most beautiful cathedral that I've seen thus far, an art museum with the absolute worst modern art I’ve ever seen, some tapas bars and cafes, and also got the chance to go to a flamenco show. Burgos is a very beautiful city, similar to Salamanca, but after visiting I feel like I made the right choice by studying in Salamanca.

Next weekend we’re heading to Rome for 3 days on our international excursion for our program…I guess you could say I’m excited.

I feel like my vocabulary and descriptive writing beings to falter the longer my blog post is…so I’ll stop there. I hope you enjoy some of the pics I’ve put up. If you have any questions, I’ve started to put descriptions on the pictures on my flickr site. Until next time!

Nico

Portugal! A Quick Update

I've been quite busy lately and haven't had much time to update my blog. Last weekend I traveled to Porto, Portugal and this weekend we had midterms. About the time I have a chance to catch up on things, here I go traveling again this weekend to Sevilla, Spain. Sevilla is the 4th largest city in Spain and is located in the southern province of Andalucia. I was looking forward to the warmer weather but unfortunately it's supposed to rain most of the time we are there :(

The trip to Porto was very enjoyable. We flew from Madrid which meant we traveled 3 hours east to go 1 hour west which put is in Portugal (Salamanca hasn't turned out to be the best place to travel from). Porto is the second largest city in Portugal and is situated on the Douro River near the Atlantic coast. The Douro River Valley is internationally known for it's production of Port wines. That being said, we had a chance to take some of the famous port wine tours that are in Villa Nova de Gaia, which is located across the Douro River from Porto.

We also had a chance to visit Foz do Douro, which is a seaside community known for it's beaches, cafes, and shops. It was nice seeing the ocean for the second time in my life (the first being in Costa Rica), and the beach area was absolutely beautiful. I thought I remembered hearing somewhere that it was once one of the most dangerous beaches in the world due to its waves and rocks and...stuff (I obviously no nothing about the ocean and it's vocab). Anyways, it was beautiful, and we all really enjoyed walking around the beach and stopping to picnic on a nearby grassy area.

I found the whole Portuguese language thing quite interesting. As you may know, Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, but they prefer not to speak it. This was our first experience with a language barrier and it turned out quite interesting. We are all accustomed to saying things like gracias, hola, etc.-- some of which is the same in Portuguese, but some not. We were told by numerous natives to not speak Spanish, but it definitely slipped out of our mouths by habit. At one of the wine tours, someone responded with "gracias" and one of the workers told us to not say that unless we want to get killed (obviously he was joking but he explained more afterwards--turned out to be a really awesome guy). Luckily many people spoke English, but it was interesting trying to understand Portuguese. For me, understanding Portuguese would be like the following for English speakers..

-"bla bla bla when bla bla bla here bla bla bla ok?"
-"uh...sure"

So it was quite the experience. But I enjoyed the different culture, the cheaper prices, and of course the beauty of the seaside--oh, and the women were pretty cute, too...just sayin'

ANYWAYS...

here are some things that I've thought of for my "You know you're living in Spain when..." list

You know you're living in Spain when...

1. The dogs are dressed nicer than you
2. Everyone from ages 2-100 wear scarves
3. The milk is warm
4. You ask for a "cafe" and you get 2 ounces of espresso
5. Any woman over the age of 50 wears a $4000 fur coat
6. The least amount of space between parallel parked cars is 14 inches
7. Every child looks like a GAP model
8. There are pig legs hanging in a window every 5 stores
9. A bar or restaurant without the smell of smoke would just be weird
10. If you run outside (or probably do any exercise) in shorts, people stare
11. When 20 minutes of walking somewhere seems normal
12. When cars actually stop at the line where you're supposed to stop at a crosswalk
13. When you walk around at 7AM and still see groups of drunk people in the street.
14. When your English grammar deteriorates and you begin to say elementary phrases or spell things like you would in Spanish.

That's what I have for now.

I won't have time to put up pictures from the last week until after I get back from Sevilla, but if you'd like to check out my pictures from Porto, check out my flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/nickjwelch

Miss you all!

Nico