Whew. It's getting pretty messy here. Barely one page into my first of two ten-page papers and I'm already tired of this crap. It's tough when teachers keep giving us new short-term assingments in these last weeks of classes, so I never get a chance to work on my final projects which need the most time. My goal for today is to get through 5 pages of this paper (my history paper). The fact that we can use a picture per page almost, but not quite, makes up for the fact that it has to be 1.5 spaced instead of double. I, unfortunately, won't have this graphical advantage for my Lit paper. I guess I'll use poetry excerpts instead to fill the space. I also signed up to perform some kind of something-or-other in front of my entire program next Wednesday for extra credit. I think I decided I'll write a poem about Spain or Alicante and present/perform. I'll try to make it ridiculous and entertaining. It shouldn't be that hard but it's something else to add on to the pile. I also have my Language final on Monday and Tuesday which requires some preparation as well. So yeah. Whew.
Everybody - my friends, my madre, even my teachers- has been telling me to not stress out or work very hard at any of this, which is kind of baffling, but I'm trying to take their advice. What I can't understand is if my teachers are saying not to work too hard, then why the hell do they assign so much hard work? I'd be happy to sit back and not give a crap about any of the work I have to do, but my grades are transferring back to Northeastern so I need to do at least pretty decent to maintain my GPA.
I'm also trying to work on being employed in the UK for the summer and make post-program travel plans, on top of trying to maintain a somewhat decent social life. These are my last couple weeks in Spain, and I would like to enjoy them at least a little bit. This is turning out to be one of the busiest end of the semesters I've had in my entire college career. This is also partially because my access to the internet is limited to a small number of daylight hours, so I can't chug away at a paper in the wee hours of the morning - the time when I'm generally most productive. I borrowed someone's laptop and checked to see if there is an open wireless connection floating around in my apartment, but no dice. I have to rely solely on the computers at school and the internet salons to get my research done.
OK, I think I'm done. Got all of it out. I'm not constantly stressing about all of this, really, but it is a constant nagging that I can't get rid of. I just need to get this crap done. I wish I could write this things in English, is all.
Planning to head to Granada with Nicole after the program ends, then I'm gonna go up to Barcelona with her for a couple more days, since there are more things I definitely wanna see there. Afterwards, I'll be heading back to the Land of Assless People (aka, England), and staying with Matt in Southampton until the 31st. He has to prepare for exams that entire week, so I'll probably wander around on my own the whole time looking to see if someplace will hire my American ass (at least I have one, hope that doesn't intimidate them). It's looking less and less like I'm going to have the proper paperwork for employment, so I'm hoping some place can put me on the payroll without it being too official.
The weather has been less than stellar lately in Alicante which is making me not regret being able to get outside so much lately. I'm actually praying it'll pour the entire weekend so I have no incentive to go out at all. Laura is coming down from Madrid to see Alicante next weekend, which is gonna be tough to manage in, but by then I'll have everything done except for my Lit paper, so I should be able to have some fun.
Lately, I feel like my conversational Spanish is improving a bit, or at least I'm less inhibited about speaking. I'm getting slightly better at talking about abstract concepts as my vocabulary is improving. I know I would be able to reach fluency, or something very close to it, if I had another four or five months here, but oh well. I've learned enough at this point that if I ever need Spanish in a tight situation, I should be able to call it up without too much trouble. If I find a way to be immersed in an entirely Spanish speaking environment for more than a few weeks, I have no doubt it wouldn't be too tough getting back to the level I'm at now. And at least now I can watch Spanish soap operas on Telemundo. Hooray.
Seems like it's time to dive back in, so I'm going to go ahead and do so. I'll get those other Spring Break pics up eventually. I'll try to at least get the rest of the Holland ones up this weekend.
Besos all around
Friday, May 05, 2006
Saturday, April 29, 2006
Netherlands Pics up
I put up my photos from Holland on my Flickr Page. For some reason, only 74 of the pictures uploaded when it should have been more like 120. I´ll figure this out at a later date, but for now, you can look at over half of the pics I have planned to put up from the Lowlands.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Spring Break 2006: My Odyssey
So I've returned from Spring Break, and it was indeed an incredible time. I'll try to recount everything that happened as best I can, but it might be hard to recall all details for the entire week and a half. I have over 400 pictures to unload from my camera and then upload to Flickr, so the visual aids might come at a slightly later time. I might repost this entry with hyperlinks if I find the time, but I can't make any guarantees at the moment. Here it goes
Wednesday night (12th), Eric and I arrived in Amsterdam on the late side. We sort of left without any kind of planning whatsoever. Basically, we forgot to write down which airline we were flying on, how to get to the hostel once we arrived, and even which hostel we were staying at (there are 3 different locations for the one we booked). We ended up having to take a taxi which was ludicrously expensive, and the driver took us to the wrong Flying Pig (our hostel). Rather than blowing more money on another taxi, we navigated our way to the other location on foot, which was downtown. We arrived sometime before 1am, and found an extremely tired, jetlagged Greg waiting for us. He had been in Amsterdam since 7am, and had been walking around all day already. He quickly went to bed, while me and Eric stayed up for a bit and enjoyed our new surroundings.
The Flying Pig was incredible. By far the most professional, well-run, yet extremely fun hostel I've ever stayed in. It was voted as one of the best hostels in the world by the www.hostelworld.com website, and it totally surpassed my expectations. There is a bar when you walk in as well as an area with carpets and pillows where you can sit on the floor. Drinks were cheap, not that I was doing much of that anyway. In the basement was another "happy room" as it was called, as well as a huge flatscreen TV. There was also free internet, breakfast, and linens. The entire place was huge but really well kept. It was cleaned daily and kept in incredible shape. The beds were surprisingly high quality too, which isn't something I'd generally expect from a hostel. They also provide you with comprehensive guides on how to get around and what to see in Amsterdam. They really had everything you could possibly need. If you ever visit Amsterdam, I would highly recommend staying at the Flying Pig Downtown.
Anyway, we went to bed and got up at a semi-decent hour. We checked out a coffee shop/breakfast place called Barney's Breakfast Bar. I got a full English Breakfast which was incredible and hit the spot perfectly after not having eaten a real breakfast since I left the States almost 4 months ago. We proceeded to check out the city in earnest.
Amsterdam is a beautiful place. I was really blown away at how much character it had, despite being overrun with stoned tourists. It really all seems like a hazy fairytale dream with the cobbled streets, snaking canals, and thousands upon thousands of bikes everywhere. I was reading that the roads in the city were designed with bicyclists in mind first and foremost, and this is easily seen as everything is bike paths, bike paths, bike paths. It's a bit scary because half the time you think you're safe on a sidewalk, but then suddenly there will be 5 bikes flying at you (they just ring their stupid little bells at you instead of braking), the notoriously soundless Tram will zoom past your face, or you'll be standing in the middle of the road since it´s at times impossible to tell the difference between sidewalk and street. Crossing the street was a very harrowing experience often and required us to be on guard constantly.
Besides taking in the generally cool ambiance and the friendly coffeeshops, we looked at the Van Gogh Museum. Eric thought he saw faces in all the paintings, but me and Greg are pretty certain he's full of shit, as we lacked his discriminating eye. We also checked out a cool park, and did more random wandering around. We didn't have much time in Amsterdam, so didn't really get all that much accomplished. It was also pretty easy to get stuck in the hostel, as it's uber-comfortable atmosphere, along with an odd (haha) total lack of motivation, made it a desirable place to just park ourselves for long periods of time. We took a quick jaunt through the red-light district just to say we´ve seen it, but decided against making any rentals.
Next stop, Rotterdam - 1 hour train ride.
We arrived at night sometime after 9 or 10 to a cute, but pretty ghetto budget hotel. It´s not that there was anything wrong with it, but it was just really old and... budgety. The people running it were nice enough, though, so we were comfortable there. Greg was feeling beat, so me and Eric headed off to bar in the area and relaxed with a few beers. At this point Eric´s friend, Ryan, met up with us but it was getting late and we decided to just get a kebab and go to bed.
The next day we were up and started off by just wandering around Rotterdam on foot following some weird Dr. Seuss looking map that Ryan picked up, which outlined many of the cool cultural and parkish type things to see and do. Notoriously absent from Rott was the coffeeshop culture so prevalent in Amster, but this didn´t bother us much as we actually felt like we were in a real city, not just some carefree tourist paradise. At night we found this incredible place to eat at that had a live band. I got an amazing stew and we went back to the hotel full and happy that night. I think we walked for over 8 or 9 hours that day, and at the end of it, Greg´s legs were hurting him bad which forced him to rest in the hotel the next day when we decided to check out Keukenhof, near Leiden (halfway between Rotterdam and Amsterdam).
Keukenhof is this giant perennial flower park/display/exhibition that runs 2 or 3 months out of the entire year. We heard good things about it so decided to check it out. On the whole, I found it to be pretty disappointing. It was nice and all, but not all of the bulbs had bloomed yet, there was a ludicrous number of tourists (it was actually Easter Sunday, so this may have contributed to the fact), and the arrangements were all-around plain and repetitive to look at. It was still cool to see, I suppose, and I probably won´t ever see an entire field of tulips again in my life, but it wasn´t quite what I was expecting. After this, Ryan and Eric chilled in Leiden for a while, and I headed back to Amsterdam, since we really hadn´t spent much time there (only two nights and a little less than two days). I managed to get back into the hostel and I chilled with some people there for a while, and then did more exploration, checking out a few more areas that we has skipped earlier. After I decided I had my fill, which was much quicker than I expected, I got on the train back to Rotterdam where I met up with Eric. Ryan had to head out, as he only had the weekend to spend with us (he is studying in London). Eric, Greg, and I hit up a bar near our hotel, grabbed a few beers, then hit the sack (not a terribly innacurate way to describe our mattresses).
The next morning we checked out this Hidden Garden we found on the Dr. Seuss map, which was extremely chill. It is basically a privately kept wooded park area that is open to the public daily for several hours. It was fairly small, but we spent a good amount of time in there just snapping pictures and enjoying the greenery and beautiful weather we had luckily been graced with. Soon after this, we decided it was time to catch a train to Brussels.
I suppose it´s worth noting that Rotterdam was just as bike-friendly as Amsterdam, although there weren´t nearly as many people using the paths there. We found Rotterdam to be much more multi-cultural than Amsterdam (it´s apparantly the largest port city in the world, not that anybody travels by boat these days), and there was a much wider spectrum of demographics there in general. I was quite surprised at how similar Dutch and English are to one another. Apparantly, Dutch is the closest language to English, even more so than German. The result was that absolutely everybody, including the bums muttering at us to give them money, spoke English. Even in Rotterdam which is much less of a tourist city, we never had any issues getting by with English. Even if someone spoke in Dutch, it´s actually not that hard picking up the jist of what their saying, even with no prior knowledge of the language. It was always surprising when watching TV in the hotel and suddenly a sentence that translates perfectly would pop out. It made me really want to learn Dutch despite my complete lack of a need for it, as I can imagine it´d be even easier than Spanish. Having spent the last months learning Spanish, I definitely have been paying extra attention to other languages, as it´s interesting to see how much I can absorb rather than to just shut my ears and try to get by with English. Next stop...
The Land of Beer - Brussels - about 2 hours away on train
Our hostel was only a few blocks from the train station, and was - for entirely different reasons than the Flying Pig - an incredible hostel. It actually felt more like a hotel than our budget hotel in Rotterdam did. It was entirely furnished by IKEA, but it was kept spotless by a crew of maids (something the hotel didn´t have), and was a very cool place to be in general. It also had a great location, as the city center was only a few blocks further down the road. It had a very "new dorm" feeling to it, but for the price I don´t think it could be beat.
Something to know about Belgium is that it is roughly half French-half Flemmish (people who speak Dutch), and there is quite a bit of rivalry between each. Brussels is mainly a French-influenced city (as of the mid 1800s), so that´s the language people use primarily (Flemmish people in Brussels bitterly lament this fact). While I enjoyed hearing Dutch all the time in Holland, Greg´s French-speaking skills helped us a lot in Brussels, which was definitely preferred at the end of the day. Greg had lived in France for 3 years when he was younger, and although he was rusty, he had more than enough to be able to get us around and not make us look like complete jackass tourists. We decided to take advantage of the French-influenced cuisine and sought out Moul Frite (mussels in garlic sauce with french fries). These were exceptionally delicious, and because of a good tip from the hostel owner, didn´t set us back terribly much. Also on his suggestion we checked out the mecca of beer bars, Delirium.
**as a warning, the rest of my post about Belgium will be pretty beer-snobby as me and eric and even greg to an extent are all big beer snobs. sorry, that´s just who we are**
Delirium deserves its own paragraph, as we did spend all four nights there trying to get through the 2,004 beers they had available. According to the Guinness Book, they hold the record for most commerically available beers. The menu, which was actually a book (and not a thin one), held 2,500, but they always guaranteed to have at least 2,004 in stock since inventory is a bit tricky in such an establishment. This bar not only managed to house a gigantic selection of beer and be rather huge in general, but also had an incredibly laid-back atmosphere. The bartenders were very cool and quite knowledgeable, the dress-code extremely casual, and the clientele ranging mainly from late teens to low 30s, with a few 40, 50 and even 60 plusses chilling around from time-to-time. We were there each night from Monday to Thursday, every day getting increasingly busy as the weekend drew closer. On Thursday there was a live blues/rock band that was managing to hold its own pretty well with a decent set of rotating musicians. It was awkward hearing the blues sung with a French accent, but was still highly entertaining. I can imagine weekends get pretty crazy there.
So after a tranquil first night in Delirium, we headed back to the hostel and slept for a long, long time as we were still exhausted from all the walking we had done in Holland. Since we had a late start, we didn´t get a whole lot done the next day, but we managed to take the best brewery tour I´ve ever been on: Cantillon. While the brewery is only a little over a century old, the building it was housed in was extremely old and had a very cool, homey atmosphere. Everything was hand done in small batches of course, and their process of brewing - while I won´t get into it here - was a bit different than your average brewery´s. The resulting beers they produce, Guezes, Lambics and Krieks can be compared more closely to wine than beer with their fruity flavors and sour after tastes. Deliciously different. I even bought a 3 pack to take home with me.
We did more walking around, got some supposedly famous frites at Fritland, although I thought the ones we got at some random shop in Amsterdam were better, and then headed back to rest up before we went out for the night. We met a group of Americans who were studying in France, and decided they´d be cool to go out with. We checked out another beer bar called Bier Circus, which while sporting a nice selection of beers (especially aged ones), seemed blatantly geared towards 30-something business types, so after a couple drinks we decided to make a move for Delirium. A very fun night was had, and we went back to the hostel happy again, with a slight hiccup along the way that doesn´t need detailing, as everything ended well.
The next day we got up pretty early and decided to check out Brugge, a city in Belgium that everybody and their mother told us to visit. It was a short, yet extremely expensive train ride there, and is apparantly the number one daytrip spot in Belgium, because it was packed to the brim with tourists, especially those gigantic groups from various Asian countries. The city itself was gorgeous. Almost all of the architecture was medieval and interlaced with canals. There was a picture to snap around almost every corner, assuming there weren´t a million people in frame to mess it up. We took a boat tour of the canals and just walked around enjoying the city. It was definitely marred a bit by the huge number of foreigners (not that I can say we were helping that problem), but I´m still glad we got out to see it. Apparantly at night, the locals of Brugge come out and reclaim their city, and generally don´t take too kindly to any foreigners who stick around to try to experience the nightlife, but we were back in Brussels before sunset.
Greg, who apparantly loved Amsterdam more than me and Eric combined, departed Brussels early that night because he wanted to get two more nights in while he was in the geographical vicinity. Eric and I continued on with another fun, yet mostly uneventful night at Delirium. The next day we checked out the History of Brussels Museum which was slightly on the dry side. We also saw the famous statue of the stupid little kid pissing. Also not terribly impressive, at least not after all the buildup we got about it. We decided to walk out of the center and check out some parks and the EU buildings (the European Union is based out of Brussels). It was cool to see something so important, but once again, there was nothing terribly riveting about any of this. I liked doing all of it at the time, but strangely, looking back, none of our last day in Brussels seemed that interesting. Maybe that´s why everybody I talked to doesn´t like Brussels. I don´t need to tell you what we did that night, as you already know.
The next morning we got some brunch, bought some chocolate and beer for the road, and went our seperate ways. Eric went off to France to meet back up with Greg, and I headed off to see my limey friend, Matt, in Southampton.
Southampton - 45 minutes to London by plane, 2 hours to Southampton by bus.
Finally nice to be back in country where English is the primary language and refreshing that 90% of everybody you meet is at least slightly witty. Matt was car-less because some assbag crashed into it a couple weeks back, destroying his front suspension enough to total it, so he was with Gema who graciously agreed to drive us around. We went to Matt´s parent´s house where we ordered a delicious curry, something my mouth has been watering for since that last time I was in England a year and a half ago, then hit up the neighborhood pub for a few hours and just caught up.
The next day I kinda of lazed around the house and hung out with Matt´s little brother, Nick, while Matt was out running some errands. We tossed the frisbee around for a bit and caught up. After, I went with Matt, his dad, and his grandfather to watch Nick´s roller-hockey game. They got spanked real bad, but it was cool to watch some hockey anyway. Afterwards, we gathered up all our stuff, and headed over to Matt´s house, which is closer to the University. All of his housemates were just returning from Easter Break so we decided to make a night of it. One of their parents decided they wanted to clean out all the crap they didn´t want from their liquor cabinet, and donate it to the poor students of Southampton University, so we had an entire table full of sketchy old assorted fruit brandies, schnappes, and a bunch of other crap I´ve never even heard of. Thus the night began with "dodgy bedroom cocktails" and pretty much everything took off from there. We met up with more of Matt´s friends before going to a really cool bar, and needless to say, it was an incredibly fun night. We all had an excellent time, and only half of us woke up the next morning with blistering hangovers. Having gone the entire time in Brussels without one, apparantly my body decided I was due, so my Sunday was a bit rougher around the edges than the others´.
Things were remedied to a degree once we got some Real English Breakfast in me. Real English Breakfast is so goddamned good because you get 7 or 8 different foods on your plate, most of them extremely greasy and/or salty. It´s really an excellent way to cure a hangover and a generally good way to start your day at least every once in a while. It´s by far one of my favorite aspects of British culture. I also got to meet Naomi, Matt´s girlfriend, who was very chill. We spent the day doing relaxed Sunday things like going to the park and sitting around Matt´s house watching TV and napping. We got an all you can eat Indian buffet that night which was fantastic, and guaranteed I got my fill of curry while in England. Monday, we got up and Matt had lectures so I followed him and sat through his Quantum Mechanics class which entirely and wholly flew over my head. After some lunch, I gathered my things and caught a train to Gatwick, where I flew back to Alicante. I got in damn late, and had class at 9 the next morning, which was pretty much zero fun, but ho hum.
All and all it was an amazingly great Spring Break, although my bank account might disagree with me. I really wanted to do some post-program travelling to places like Prague and Budapest, but it´s looking to be a financial impossibility at this point, so I might just settle for Granada, and maybe one other Spanish location. Being abroad and seeing so many different places made me realize how much I miss Boston, as well as how much I like living in Spain.
Also, being in England made me realize how much I want to live there this summer. Since the job I applied for in Barcelona doesn´t seem to be going anywhere, I´m going to attempt to find work in Southampton and stay in Matt´s house over the summer. Right now the biggest issue seemes to be finding out whether or not I will need a work visa, and if I do, whether or not I can find a job that will look the other way if I don´t have one. I started to look into what I needed to actually get a visa, but I don´t think I can go through the British Embassy/Consulate in Spain since I´m not a Spanish citizen, and doing everything by mail for the one in the US will take too long and might not even be possible in the first place without my physical prescence. Matt said he is asking around different places about the need for a work permit/visa, and he said he´d get back to me soon, so I´m crossing my fingers.
While living there, I might be able to check out one of the BBC´s offices and maybe, maybe even get myself an interview. Talking to Matt so much about graduating and finding jobs has had me thinking a lot about what I´m going to do when I´m done in school in December, and I think aiming for a job at the BBC would be an excellent first goal in my career path. Besides, it´s one of the only huge media companies that I don´t think is completely corrupt and morally bankrupt yet, so I wouldn´t have too many personal qualms working for them. While I know they have offices in the US, I´d much prefer to see if I can rope myself a job in the UK on a temporary work permit/visa, and after a few years decide if maybe moving out of the US permanently would be a good decision for me. An additional plus would be that with the exchange rate, paying off my college loans will be that much easier. I know it all seems like a long shot pipe dream at this point, but it´s the first realistic planning I can manage that would take me in a direction I want to head in. Having Matt´s support has been hugely helpful as he´s been pushing me along all throughout. He said he´ll continue to do everything he can to help me, and I owe him loads for that.
So although it sounds like my Spring Break was nothing more than a bingefest, it truly wasn´t. Sure we enjoyed ourselves at night, but I got to see a ton of stuff in 4+ cities, talk to lots of interesting people, and truly broaden my view of Europe. I think I´ve thoroughly been infected with the travel bug, now I just need to go make some more money so I can feed the virus.
It definitely feels great to be back in Spain, although the mountain of work I´m facing is more than a bit worrying. I´m hoping around halfway through my first 10-pager, some sort of paper-writing wall will come crashing down in my brain, and I will just be able to flow onto paper. The rest of this week and the following Monday is vacation days, so I´ll need to resist just sitting on the beach all day under the beautifully blue cloudless sky. It is sorta refreshing to come back from break to a place that is wholly warmer than the places I visited. Being in England, however, made me remember how green a place can be, and how nice Spring can be after a cold gray winter. Definiely a sharp reminder of Massachusetts.
Alright, that´s about it for now. I said I probably won´t get much posting in during the next few weeks, but I might get a couple short ones in if I get too frustrated with work and need to vent into a keyboard. Any questions or inquiries about further details of my trip can be directed towards the comment board, or emailed directly to me.
In the words of the indelible Tom Waits:
Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my cham friends.
-Dani
P.S. I promise to inject more smartass sarcasm into my next post, really.
Wednesday night (12th), Eric and I arrived in Amsterdam on the late side. We sort of left without any kind of planning whatsoever. Basically, we forgot to write down which airline we were flying on, how to get to the hostel once we arrived, and even which hostel we were staying at (there are 3 different locations for the one we booked). We ended up having to take a taxi which was ludicrously expensive, and the driver took us to the wrong Flying Pig (our hostel). Rather than blowing more money on another taxi, we navigated our way to the other location on foot, which was downtown. We arrived sometime before 1am, and found an extremely tired, jetlagged Greg waiting for us. He had been in Amsterdam since 7am, and had been walking around all day already. He quickly went to bed, while me and Eric stayed up for a bit and enjoyed our new surroundings.
The Flying Pig was incredible. By far the most professional, well-run, yet extremely fun hostel I've ever stayed in. It was voted as one of the best hostels in the world by the www.hostelworld.com website, and it totally surpassed my expectations. There is a bar when you walk in as well as an area with carpets and pillows where you can sit on the floor. Drinks were cheap, not that I was doing much of that anyway. In the basement was another "happy room" as it was called, as well as a huge flatscreen TV. There was also free internet, breakfast, and linens. The entire place was huge but really well kept. It was cleaned daily and kept in incredible shape. The beds were surprisingly high quality too, which isn't something I'd generally expect from a hostel. They also provide you with comprehensive guides on how to get around and what to see in Amsterdam. They really had everything you could possibly need. If you ever visit Amsterdam, I would highly recommend staying at the Flying Pig Downtown.
Anyway, we went to bed and got up at a semi-decent hour. We checked out a coffee shop/breakfast place called Barney's Breakfast Bar. I got a full English Breakfast which was incredible and hit the spot perfectly after not having eaten a real breakfast since I left the States almost 4 months ago. We proceeded to check out the city in earnest.
Amsterdam is a beautiful place. I was really blown away at how much character it had, despite being overrun with stoned tourists. It really all seems like a hazy fairytale dream with the cobbled streets, snaking canals, and thousands upon thousands of bikes everywhere. I was reading that the roads in the city were designed with bicyclists in mind first and foremost, and this is easily seen as everything is bike paths, bike paths, bike paths. It's a bit scary because half the time you think you're safe on a sidewalk, but then suddenly there will be 5 bikes flying at you (they just ring their stupid little bells at you instead of braking), the notoriously soundless Tram will zoom past your face, or you'll be standing in the middle of the road since it´s at times impossible to tell the difference between sidewalk and street. Crossing the street was a very harrowing experience often and required us to be on guard constantly.
Besides taking in the generally cool ambiance and the friendly coffeeshops, we looked at the Van Gogh Museum. Eric thought he saw faces in all the paintings, but me and Greg are pretty certain he's full of shit, as we lacked his discriminating eye. We also checked out a cool park, and did more random wandering around. We didn't have much time in Amsterdam, so didn't really get all that much accomplished. It was also pretty easy to get stuck in the hostel, as it's uber-comfortable atmosphere, along with an odd (haha) total lack of motivation, made it a desirable place to just park ourselves for long periods of time. We took a quick jaunt through the red-light district just to say we´ve seen it, but decided against making any rentals.
Next stop, Rotterdam - 1 hour train ride.
We arrived at night sometime after 9 or 10 to a cute, but pretty ghetto budget hotel. It´s not that there was anything wrong with it, but it was just really old and... budgety. The people running it were nice enough, though, so we were comfortable there. Greg was feeling beat, so me and Eric headed off to bar in the area and relaxed with a few beers. At this point Eric´s friend, Ryan, met up with us but it was getting late and we decided to just get a kebab and go to bed.
The next day we were up and started off by just wandering around Rotterdam on foot following some weird Dr. Seuss looking map that Ryan picked up, which outlined many of the cool cultural and parkish type things to see and do. Notoriously absent from Rott was the coffeeshop culture so prevalent in Amster, but this didn´t bother us much as we actually felt like we were in a real city, not just some carefree tourist paradise. At night we found this incredible place to eat at that had a live band. I got an amazing stew and we went back to the hotel full and happy that night. I think we walked for over 8 or 9 hours that day, and at the end of it, Greg´s legs were hurting him bad which forced him to rest in the hotel the next day when we decided to check out Keukenhof, near Leiden (halfway between Rotterdam and Amsterdam).
Keukenhof is this giant perennial flower park/display/exhibition that runs 2 or 3 months out of the entire year. We heard good things about it so decided to check it out. On the whole, I found it to be pretty disappointing. It was nice and all, but not all of the bulbs had bloomed yet, there was a ludicrous number of tourists (it was actually Easter Sunday, so this may have contributed to the fact), and the arrangements were all-around plain and repetitive to look at. It was still cool to see, I suppose, and I probably won´t ever see an entire field of tulips again in my life, but it wasn´t quite what I was expecting. After this, Ryan and Eric chilled in Leiden for a while, and I headed back to Amsterdam, since we really hadn´t spent much time there (only two nights and a little less than two days). I managed to get back into the hostel and I chilled with some people there for a while, and then did more exploration, checking out a few more areas that we has skipped earlier. After I decided I had my fill, which was much quicker than I expected, I got on the train back to Rotterdam where I met up with Eric. Ryan had to head out, as he only had the weekend to spend with us (he is studying in London). Eric, Greg, and I hit up a bar near our hotel, grabbed a few beers, then hit the sack (not a terribly innacurate way to describe our mattresses).
The next morning we checked out this Hidden Garden we found on the Dr. Seuss map, which was extremely chill. It is basically a privately kept wooded park area that is open to the public daily for several hours. It was fairly small, but we spent a good amount of time in there just snapping pictures and enjoying the greenery and beautiful weather we had luckily been graced with. Soon after this, we decided it was time to catch a train to Brussels.
I suppose it´s worth noting that Rotterdam was just as bike-friendly as Amsterdam, although there weren´t nearly as many people using the paths there. We found Rotterdam to be much more multi-cultural than Amsterdam (it´s apparantly the largest port city in the world, not that anybody travels by boat these days), and there was a much wider spectrum of demographics there in general. I was quite surprised at how similar Dutch and English are to one another. Apparantly, Dutch is the closest language to English, even more so than German. The result was that absolutely everybody, including the bums muttering at us to give them money, spoke English. Even in Rotterdam which is much less of a tourist city, we never had any issues getting by with English. Even if someone spoke in Dutch, it´s actually not that hard picking up the jist of what their saying, even with no prior knowledge of the language. It was always surprising when watching TV in the hotel and suddenly a sentence that translates perfectly would pop out. It made me really want to learn Dutch despite my complete lack of a need for it, as I can imagine it´d be even easier than Spanish. Having spent the last months learning Spanish, I definitely have been paying extra attention to other languages, as it´s interesting to see how much I can absorb rather than to just shut my ears and try to get by with English. Next stop...
The Land of Beer - Brussels - about 2 hours away on train
Our hostel was only a few blocks from the train station, and was - for entirely different reasons than the Flying Pig - an incredible hostel. It actually felt more like a hotel than our budget hotel in Rotterdam did. It was entirely furnished by IKEA, but it was kept spotless by a crew of maids (something the hotel didn´t have), and was a very cool place to be in general. It also had a great location, as the city center was only a few blocks further down the road. It had a very "new dorm" feeling to it, but for the price I don´t think it could be beat.
Something to know about Belgium is that it is roughly half French-half Flemmish (people who speak Dutch), and there is quite a bit of rivalry between each. Brussels is mainly a French-influenced city (as of the mid 1800s), so that´s the language people use primarily (Flemmish people in Brussels bitterly lament this fact). While I enjoyed hearing Dutch all the time in Holland, Greg´s French-speaking skills helped us a lot in Brussels, which was definitely preferred at the end of the day. Greg had lived in France for 3 years when he was younger, and although he was rusty, he had more than enough to be able to get us around and not make us look like complete jackass tourists. We decided to take advantage of the French-influenced cuisine and sought out Moul Frite (mussels in garlic sauce with french fries). These were exceptionally delicious, and because of a good tip from the hostel owner, didn´t set us back terribly much. Also on his suggestion we checked out the mecca of beer bars, Delirium.
**as a warning, the rest of my post about Belgium will be pretty beer-snobby as me and eric and even greg to an extent are all big beer snobs. sorry, that´s just who we are**
Delirium deserves its own paragraph, as we did spend all four nights there trying to get through the 2,004 beers they had available. According to the Guinness Book, they hold the record for most commerically available beers. The menu, which was actually a book (and not a thin one), held 2,500, but they always guaranteed to have at least 2,004 in stock since inventory is a bit tricky in such an establishment. This bar not only managed to house a gigantic selection of beer and be rather huge in general, but also had an incredibly laid-back atmosphere. The bartenders were very cool and quite knowledgeable, the dress-code extremely casual, and the clientele ranging mainly from late teens to low 30s, with a few 40, 50 and even 60 plusses chilling around from time-to-time. We were there each night from Monday to Thursday, every day getting increasingly busy as the weekend drew closer. On Thursday there was a live blues/rock band that was managing to hold its own pretty well with a decent set of rotating musicians. It was awkward hearing the blues sung with a French accent, but was still highly entertaining. I can imagine weekends get pretty crazy there.
So after a tranquil first night in Delirium, we headed back to the hostel and slept for a long, long time as we were still exhausted from all the walking we had done in Holland. Since we had a late start, we didn´t get a whole lot done the next day, but we managed to take the best brewery tour I´ve ever been on: Cantillon. While the brewery is only a little over a century old, the building it was housed in was extremely old and had a very cool, homey atmosphere. Everything was hand done in small batches of course, and their process of brewing - while I won´t get into it here - was a bit different than your average brewery´s. The resulting beers they produce, Guezes, Lambics and Krieks can be compared more closely to wine than beer with their fruity flavors and sour after tastes. Deliciously different. I even bought a 3 pack to take home with me.
We did more walking around, got some supposedly famous frites at Fritland, although I thought the ones we got at some random shop in Amsterdam were better, and then headed back to rest up before we went out for the night. We met a group of Americans who were studying in France, and decided they´d be cool to go out with. We checked out another beer bar called Bier Circus, which while sporting a nice selection of beers (especially aged ones), seemed blatantly geared towards 30-something business types, so after a couple drinks we decided to make a move for Delirium. A very fun night was had, and we went back to the hostel happy again, with a slight hiccup along the way that doesn´t need detailing, as everything ended well.
The next day we got up pretty early and decided to check out Brugge, a city in Belgium that everybody and their mother told us to visit. It was a short, yet extremely expensive train ride there, and is apparantly the number one daytrip spot in Belgium, because it was packed to the brim with tourists, especially those gigantic groups from various Asian countries. The city itself was gorgeous. Almost all of the architecture was medieval and interlaced with canals. There was a picture to snap around almost every corner, assuming there weren´t a million people in frame to mess it up. We took a boat tour of the canals and just walked around enjoying the city. It was definitely marred a bit by the huge number of foreigners (not that I can say we were helping that problem), but I´m still glad we got out to see it. Apparantly at night, the locals of Brugge come out and reclaim their city, and generally don´t take too kindly to any foreigners who stick around to try to experience the nightlife, but we were back in Brussels before sunset.
Greg, who apparantly loved Amsterdam more than me and Eric combined, departed Brussels early that night because he wanted to get two more nights in while he was in the geographical vicinity. Eric and I continued on with another fun, yet mostly uneventful night at Delirium. The next day we checked out the History of Brussels Museum which was slightly on the dry side. We also saw the famous statue of the stupid little kid pissing. Also not terribly impressive, at least not after all the buildup we got about it. We decided to walk out of the center and check out some parks and the EU buildings (the European Union is based out of Brussels). It was cool to see something so important, but once again, there was nothing terribly riveting about any of this. I liked doing all of it at the time, but strangely, looking back, none of our last day in Brussels seemed that interesting. Maybe that´s why everybody I talked to doesn´t like Brussels. I don´t need to tell you what we did that night, as you already know.
The next morning we got some brunch, bought some chocolate and beer for the road, and went our seperate ways. Eric went off to France to meet back up with Greg, and I headed off to see my limey friend, Matt, in Southampton.
Southampton - 45 minutes to London by plane, 2 hours to Southampton by bus.
Finally nice to be back in country where English is the primary language and refreshing that 90% of everybody you meet is at least slightly witty. Matt was car-less because some assbag crashed into it a couple weeks back, destroying his front suspension enough to total it, so he was with Gema who graciously agreed to drive us around. We went to Matt´s parent´s house where we ordered a delicious curry, something my mouth has been watering for since that last time I was in England a year and a half ago, then hit up the neighborhood pub for a few hours and just caught up.
The next day I kinda of lazed around the house and hung out with Matt´s little brother, Nick, while Matt was out running some errands. We tossed the frisbee around for a bit and caught up. After, I went with Matt, his dad, and his grandfather to watch Nick´s roller-hockey game. They got spanked real bad, but it was cool to watch some hockey anyway. Afterwards, we gathered up all our stuff, and headed over to Matt´s house, which is closer to the University. All of his housemates were just returning from Easter Break so we decided to make a night of it. One of their parents decided they wanted to clean out all the crap they didn´t want from their liquor cabinet, and donate it to the poor students of Southampton University, so we had an entire table full of sketchy old assorted fruit brandies, schnappes, and a bunch of other crap I´ve never even heard of. Thus the night began with "dodgy bedroom cocktails" and pretty much everything took off from there. We met up with more of Matt´s friends before going to a really cool bar, and needless to say, it was an incredibly fun night. We all had an excellent time, and only half of us woke up the next morning with blistering hangovers. Having gone the entire time in Brussels without one, apparantly my body decided I was due, so my Sunday was a bit rougher around the edges than the others´.
Things were remedied to a degree once we got some Real English Breakfast in me. Real English Breakfast is so goddamned good because you get 7 or 8 different foods on your plate, most of them extremely greasy and/or salty. It´s really an excellent way to cure a hangover and a generally good way to start your day at least every once in a while. It´s by far one of my favorite aspects of British culture. I also got to meet Naomi, Matt´s girlfriend, who was very chill. We spent the day doing relaxed Sunday things like going to the park and sitting around Matt´s house watching TV and napping. We got an all you can eat Indian buffet that night which was fantastic, and guaranteed I got my fill of curry while in England. Monday, we got up and Matt had lectures so I followed him and sat through his Quantum Mechanics class which entirely and wholly flew over my head. After some lunch, I gathered my things and caught a train to Gatwick, where I flew back to Alicante. I got in damn late, and had class at 9 the next morning, which was pretty much zero fun, but ho hum.
All and all it was an amazingly great Spring Break, although my bank account might disagree with me. I really wanted to do some post-program travelling to places like Prague and Budapest, but it´s looking to be a financial impossibility at this point, so I might just settle for Granada, and maybe one other Spanish location. Being abroad and seeing so many different places made me realize how much I miss Boston, as well as how much I like living in Spain.
Also, being in England made me realize how much I want to live there this summer. Since the job I applied for in Barcelona doesn´t seem to be going anywhere, I´m going to attempt to find work in Southampton and stay in Matt´s house over the summer. Right now the biggest issue seemes to be finding out whether or not I will need a work visa, and if I do, whether or not I can find a job that will look the other way if I don´t have one. I started to look into what I needed to actually get a visa, but I don´t think I can go through the British Embassy/Consulate in Spain since I´m not a Spanish citizen, and doing everything by mail for the one in the US will take too long and might not even be possible in the first place without my physical prescence. Matt said he is asking around different places about the need for a work permit/visa, and he said he´d get back to me soon, so I´m crossing my fingers.
While living there, I might be able to check out one of the BBC´s offices and maybe, maybe even get myself an interview. Talking to Matt so much about graduating and finding jobs has had me thinking a lot about what I´m going to do when I´m done in school in December, and I think aiming for a job at the BBC would be an excellent first goal in my career path. Besides, it´s one of the only huge media companies that I don´t think is completely corrupt and morally bankrupt yet, so I wouldn´t have too many personal qualms working for them. While I know they have offices in the US, I´d much prefer to see if I can rope myself a job in the UK on a temporary work permit/visa, and after a few years decide if maybe moving out of the US permanently would be a good decision for me. An additional plus would be that with the exchange rate, paying off my college loans will be that much easier. I know it all seems like a long shot pipe dream at this point, but it´s the first realistic planning I can manage that would take me in a direction I want to head in. Having Matt´s support has been hugely helpful as he´s been pushing me along all throughout. He said he´ll continue to do everything he can to help me, and I owe him loads for that.
So although it sounds like my Spring Break was nothing more than a bingefest, it truly wasn´t. Sure we enjoyed ourselves at night, but I got to see a ton of stuff in 4+ cities, talk to lots of interesting people, and truly broaden my view of Europe. I think I´ve thoroughly been infected with the travel bug, now I just need to go make some more money so I can feed the virus.
It definitely feels great to be back in Spain, although the mountain of work I´m facing is more than a bit worrying. I´m hoping around halfway through my first 10-pager, some sort of paper-writing wall will come crashing down in my brain, and I will just be able to flow onto paper. The rest of this week and the following Monday is vacation days, so I´ll need to resist just sitting on the beach all day under the beautifully blue cloudless sky. It is sorta refreshing to come back from break to a place that is wholly warmer than the places I visited. Being in England, however, made me remember how green a place can be, and how nice Spring can be after a cold gray winter. Definiely a sharp reminder of Massachusetts.
Alright, that´s about it for now. I said I probably won´t get much posting in during the next few weeks, but I might get a couple short ones in if I get too frustrated with work and need to vent into a keyboard. Any questions or inquiries about further details of my trip can be directed towards the comment board, or emailed directly to me.
In the words of the indelible Tom Waits:
Champagne for my real friends, and real pain for my cham friends.
-Dani
P.S. I promise to inject more smartass sarcasm into my next post, really.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Back but Busy
Here´s the deal...
I´m back and safe in Alicante, and am currently in the process of writing a massive account of my travels, but it´s taking more than one sitting, so I´m holding off on posting it until it´s done. As the university is closed for the rest of the week and some of next week, most of the time I have on a computer is precious and will be costing me money, so my priority at the moment is getting through the ludicrous amount of research I need to be doing for the ludicrous number of assignments I have due. Consequently, pictures probably won´t be up for a while, or maybe I´ll just try to post them in chunks, but unloading, editing, and uploading them all to the web is an extremely time-consuming process and I can only do it from an internet salon anyway.
I´m well aware that I´m currently not fufilling my journal requirement of two pages a week for NU, and generally keeping my (many) loyal readers in the dark, but tough. Too much important stuff to get done right now to be blogging. If I do manage to rope myself any free time, I won´t be spending it on a computer, I´ll be at the beach, since it now fully feels like summer here. I´m told it gets way hotter, which sort of makes me glad I´m leaving in a few weeks as it´s starting to already get sweaty at night when I´m asleep. No A/C or fans in the house either. Yuck.
OK, enough for now. You´ll get my mega-post soon enough (maybe).
I´m back and safe in Alicante, and am currently in the process of writing a massive account of my travels, but it´s taking more than one sitting, so I´m holding off on posting it until it´s done. As the university is closed for the rest of the week and some of next week, most of the time I have on a computer is precious and will be costing me money, so my priority at the moment is getting through the ludicrous amount of research I need to be doing for the ludicrous number of assignments I have due. Consequently, pictures probably won´t be up for a while, or maybe I´ll just try to post them in chunks, but unloading, editing, and uploading them all to the web is an extremely time-consuming process and I can only do it from an internet salon anyway.
I´m well aware that I´m currently not fufilling my journal requirement of two pages a week for NU, and generally keeping my (many) loyal readers in the dark, but tough. Too much important stuff to get done right now to be blogging. If I do manage to rope myself any free time, I won´t be spending it on a computer, I´ll be at the beach, since it now fully feels like summer here. I´m told it gets way hotter, which sort of makes me glad I´m leaving in a few weeks as it´s starting to already get sweaty at night when I´m asleep. No A/C or fans in the house either. Yuck.
OK, enough for now. You´ll get my mega-post soon enough (maybe).
Thursday, April 20, 2006
No time, no worries
I´m alive and as I predicted, have no time to update the blog while I´m on Spring Break. Oh well. I´ll be back in Spain on Tuesday and will post then. Things have been great, but I´ll tell all about it when I get back. Currently in Brussels and headed off to England tomorrow to see Matt for the weekend. After that I´ll have a major post and lots of pictures. So far I´ve taken around 350 and thats after I´ve already gone through my camera and skimmed out the bad ones.
Uhhh, I guess that´s it for now. Time to go see some stuff.
Uhhh, I guess that´s it for now. Time to go see some stuff.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Semana Santa or Jesus Built My Vespa
I don´t have enough time to post really, as prophesized, because I´m too busy with schoolwork before I go away for Semana Santa (basically Spring Break). Semana Santa is actually a big Catholic whoop-de-doo, with lots of solemn processions and the general praising of the Passion of Christ (not the movie, the actual Passion). So instead of doing all that, I´m going to some very non-Catholic areas of Europe. I think I´ve outlined the trip before, but here it is again, with feeling.
Greg, my former spunky roommate from NU, is coming along for the adventure because he wants to and because he can. The other member of our party is Eric, who is from Colorado and likes kebabs.
First stop, Amsterdam for 2 nights - Mostly for the prostitutes, but I hear they have some nice museums as well.
Second stop, Rotterdam for 3 nights - Don´t ask me why we´re going to Rotterdam for 3 nights, I just figured it´d be cooler and less touristy than Amsterdam. Everybody keeps telling me that it´s lame though and I shouldn´t waste my time in Rotterdam. Whatever, screw ´em. We might rent a car anyway and then go out into countryside or back to Amsterdam, or maybe some other cool places.
Third stop, Brussels for 4 nights - If we do have a car, we´ll drive here, if not, we´ll take a train. Brussels is supposed to be great, but so is the rest of Belgium, so it´ll be ideal to have a car or to take day trips by train to check out some of the other cities and the countryside. It´ll mostly be beer and waffles while here. If they have other culinary offerings, I´ve never heard of them thus far in my life.
Final stop, England for 3 nights - I break off from my party and visit my friend, Matt, in Southampton. Won´t be going to London, as I´ve done that in the past and it´s a wallet buster. I like just hanging out with Matt and his friends and family anyway, and I´m really looking forward to getting back into England as it´s a place I´ve grown to love. I return on Monday, the 24th.
I think Eric´s friend is also going to be joining us for one leg of the trip (either the Rotterdam or Belgium part), which is cool because the more, the better.
It´s gonna kinda suck to be leaving Spain for the sake of my Spanish, which I´m really starting to get comfortable with. It´s hard to explain, but I´ve started to reach a level where I don´t feel so awkward speaking Spanish. I´m not where I consider to be fluent or anything, but the rate at which I´m improving has increased a lot since I got here. Hopefully I won´t lose too much of that while I´m on vacation.
Other than that, I´ve just been trying to get the massive amounts of work I have done. Just about to write up the report for a book I just read. It was a book written for people learning Spanish, so it didn´t have a very complex plot or even many polysyllabic words, but it did fit the requirement of our assignment, so I´m just gonna do it and pass it in tomorrow. Even though that´s only the tiniest amount of the load I have to do, I´m going to go away and forget about the rest since there´s no way in hell I´m doing any of it there. I´ll save the headaches for the last week of April.
OK, enough chatter, time to get to it. I´ll try to get a short update in here and there during my travels, but it might only be a brief recounting of events. Pictures will probably have to wait til the end to be put up, but I promise a mega-update once I get back, regardless. Oh, and Graham saw my blog and told me I wasn´t sarcastic enough, and therefore it´s boring, so I´ll try to be more sarcastic when I get back. Maybe I´ll even come off as witty, if I´m lucky, but don´t get your hopes up.
Happy Passover and Easter. Maybe that rabbit will see his shadow this year.
Greg, my former spunky roommate from NU, is coming along for the adventure because he wants to and because he can. The other member of our party is Eric, who is from Colorado and likes kebabs.
First stop, Amsterdam for 2 nights - Mostly for the prostitutes, but I hear they have some nice museums as well.
Second stop, Rotterdam for 3 nights - Don´t ask me why we´re going to Rotterdam for 3 nights, I just figured it´d be cooler and less touristy than Amsterdam. Everybody keeps telling me that it´s lame though and I shouldn´t waste my time in Rotterdam. Whatever, screw ´em. We might rent a car anyway and then go out into countryside or back to Amsterdam, or maybe some other cool places.
Third stop, Brussels for 4 nights - If we do have a car, we´ll drive here, if not, we´ll take a train. Brussels is supposed to be great, but so is the rest of Belgium, so it´ll be ideal to have a car or to take day trips by train to check out some of the other cities and the countryside. It´ll mostly be beer and waffles while here. If they have other culinary offerings, I´ve never heard of them thus far in my life.
Final stop, England for 3 nights - I break off from my party and visit my friend, Matt, in Southampton. Won´t be going to London, as I´ve done that in the past and it´s a wallet buster. I like just hanging out with Matt and his friends and family anyway, and I´m really looking forward to getting back into England as it´s a place I´ve grown to love. I return on Monday, the 24th.
I think Eric´s friend is also going to be joining us for one leg of the trip (either the Rotterdam or Belgium part), which is cool because the more, the better.
It´s gonna kinda suck to be leaving Spain for the sake of my Spanish, which I´m really starting to get comfortable with. It´s hard to explain, but I´ve started to reach a level where I don´t feel so awkward speaking Spanish. I´m not where I consider to be fluent or anything, but the rate at which I´m improving has increased a lot since I got here. Hopefully I won´t lose too much of that while I´m on vacation.
Other than that, I´ve just been trying to get the massive amounts of work I have done. Just about to write up the report for a book I just read. It was a book written for people learning Spanish, so it didn´t have a very complex plot or even many polysyllabic words, but it did fit the requirement of our assignment, so I´m just gonna do it and pass it in tomorrow. Even though that´s only the tiniest amount of the load I have to do, I´m going to go away and forget about the rest since there´s no way in hell I´m doing any of it there. I´ll save the headaches for the last week of April.
OK, enough chatter, time to get to it. I´ll try to get a short update in here and there during my travels, but it might only be a brief recounting of events. Pictures will probably have to wait til the end to be put up, but I promise a mega-update once I get back, regardless. Oh, and Graham saw my blog and told me I wasn´t sarcastic enough, and therefore it´s boring, so I´ll try to be more sarcastic when I get back. Maybe I´ll even come off as witty, if I´m lucky, but don´t get your hopes up.
Happy Passover and Easter. Maybe that rabbit will see his shadow this year.
Thursday, April 06, 2006
Explosión en mi cabeza
As usual, the theme of my life here in Spain has been busy most recently. Much too busy, in fact. It´s obnoxious how things are structured with all of our huge deadlines immediately following the 2 and a half (or is it a full 3?) weeks of vacation and holidas we have...
Mi madre described April as The Month of Festivals in Spain, and with apparant good reason. The last three weeks of it are completely packed with holidays and parties and fun crap. This is all well and good, except for the fact that as soon as that´s over I have a book report, two 10-page papers (completely in Spanish), and two huge finals. Oh and just to add to the fun, the papers are 1.5 spaced, not double. Madre mía. I haven´t quite figured out how I´m going to manage this load, but I´m sure I´ll have some stroke of genius soon. This sucks especially hard since it´s getting hotter than ever and the beach is that much more appealing.
Something else to add to the stress column is how there´s been a ton of mosquitos getting into my room every night and buzzing around in my ear making it impossible to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time. I wouldn´t care if they came in and just bit me (which they do anyway), but they seem to feel the need to fly directly around or in my ear too. The result is that I´m exhausted during the day and can barely focus or speak Spanish in any sensical manner. Apparantly I need a good night´s sleep to be able to think in Spanish even a little bit. Someone mentioned there are mosquito repellent devices that you can plug into the wall, so I´ll have to be looking into that soon. It´s too hot to sleep with the windows closed.
Also, I did terrible on both my tests last week. Oops. While I suppose the language one was my own fault, I´m pissed about the Literature one, since my teacher wouldn´t review with us even though I asked her to the class before. This past class, she actually had the nerve to cuss us all out because we all did so terrible and didn´t study at all (which I´m quite certain we all did). She claimed the material was so easy, but if we didn´t know which of the 30 pages of photocopies to look over, how the hell were we supposed to know which specific definitions she wanted us to memorize? I was contemplating going to the program director and complaining as I did ask her for review and all (and it was 1/4 of my final grade), but I don´t think I´d be able to make my case unless more than one of us said something. Nobody else in my class seems that pissed off though, so I´m kind of on my own here. Plus I don´t want to do anything to anger the teacher more and make her like me less. She gave us some extra credit work to do to make up for the all around bad show, but I´m writing in my blog instead of doing it right now.
Alright, enough bitching, there are other things going on as well.
There was a protest being held yesterday on campus. I followed all the noise to its source and found Arantxa, my intercambio, in the crowd. I asked her qué pasa about and she explained that the school wanted to disintergrate the English Studies program and force all of its participants into a new European Studies program. Basically what this means is that all of the students studying English language and culture (a set "major" or course of study) will have to stay in school for an extra period of time and learn additional languages to fufill the new European Studies requirements. The people in the English Studies program like the current program because they can focus solely on English and England- a country that actually has a real economy (unlike Spain) that they can move to and get a job in after they graduate- and don´t want to be concerned with having to learn German, French, Italian, or whatever other language that they have no intention of ever using. I don´t understand why an English-specific program can´t be maintained for those who want only to deal with England and only have to be in school for 3 years, but I´m sure the entire situation is a lot more complicated than I understand it to be.
It struck me hard, however, that the students actually cared enough to protest about something like that. Protests practically never happen on college campuses anymore in the States, and it´s hilarious to think one ever would occur because the school decided to eliminate one major to create a new, similar, one. Students are so apathetic back home I feel. Tuition at Northeastern gets raised several hundred dollars a year, something that I think is legitametely worth protesting over. Yet the most you ever hear from students (even those that are paying for their entire education themselves) is a whiny complaint to their friends. They could eliminate the Pharmacy major at our school and I don´t think they´d get more than a half dozen angry letters. A protest? Are you kidding? The kicker is, my History teacher told us that this was strangely the first protest this year and usually there are at least 2 a month, and even more during the warm months. Maybe this doesn´t get you going as much as it does me, but it´s certainly food for thought.
I´m gonna cut this short while I´m ahead, so I can actually get a little bit of work done before class. Hopefully this won´t be my last post before I head out for Spring Break, but I´m pretty much up to my ears in work until the end of the semester, so from here on out, posts might be sparse in number and short in length. I´ll try not to let this be the case, but as my computer time will be more and more limited, I´m going to need to spend most of it researching or typing papers- especially since the university will be closed for most of the month, and I´ll have to pay for every minute I have at an internet salon.
Be good.
Mi madre described April as The Month of Festivals in Spain, and with apparant good reason. The last three weeks of it are completely packed with holidays and parties and fun crap. This is all well and good, except for the fact that as soon as that´s over I have a book report, two 10-page papers (completely in Spanish), and two huge finals. Oh and just to add to the fun, the papers are 1.5 spaced, not double. Madre mía. I haven´t quite figured out how I´m going to manage this load, but I´m sure I´ll have some stroke of genius soon. This sucks especially hard since it´s getting hotter than ever and the beach is that much more appealing.
Something else to add to the stress column is how there´s been a ton of mosquitos getting into my room every night and buzzing around in my ear making it impossible to stay asleep for more than an hour at a time. I wouldn´t care if they came in and just bit me (which they do anyway), but they seem to feel the need to fly directly around or in my ear too. The result is that I´m exhausted during the day and can barely focus or speak Spanish in any sensical manner. Apparantly I need a good night´s sleep to be able to think in Spanish even a little bit. Someone mentioned there are mosquito repellent devices that you can plug into the wall, so I´ll have to be looking into that soon. It´s too hot to sleep with the windows closed.
Also, I did terrible on both my tests last week. Oops. While I suppose the language one was my own fault, I´m pissed about the Literature one, since my teacher wouldn´t review with us even though I asked her to the class before. This past class, she actually had the nerve to cuss us all out because we all did so terrible and didn´t study at all (which I´m quite certain we all did). She claimed the material was so easy, but if we didn´t know which of the 30 pages of photocopies to look over, how the hell were we supposed to know which specific definitions she wanted us to memorize? I was contemplating going to the program director and complaining as I did ask her for review and all (and it was 1/4 of my final grade), but I don´t think I´d be able to make my case unless more than one of us said something. Nobody else in my class seems that pissed off though, so I´m kind of on my own here. Plus I don´t want to do anything to anger the teacher more and make her like me less. She gave us some extra credit work to do to make up for the all around bad show, but I´m writing in my blog instead of doing it right now.
Alright, enough bitching, there are other things going on as well.
There was a protest being held yesterday on campus. I followed all the noise to its source and found Arantxa, my intercambio, in the crowd. I asked her qué pasa about and she explained that the school wanted to disintergrate the English Studies program and force all of its participants into a new European Studies program. Basically what this means is that all of the students studying English language and culture (a set "major" or course of study) will have to stay in school for an extra period of time and learn additional languages to fufill the new European Studies requirements. The people in the English Studies program like the current program because they can focus solely on English and England- a country that actually has a real economy (unlike Spain) that they can move to and get a job in after they graduate- and don´t want to be concerned with having to learn German, French, Italian, or whatever other language that they have no intention of ever using. I don´t understand why an English-specific program can´t be maintained for those who want only to deal with England and only have to be in school for 3 years, but I´m sure the entire situation is a lot more complicated than I understand it to be.
It struck me hard, however, that the students actually cared enough to protest about something like that. Protests practically never happen on college campuses anymore in the States, and it´s hilarious to think one ever would occur because the school decided to eliminate one major to create a new, similar, one. Students are so apathetic back home I feel. Tuition at Northeastern gets raised several hundred dollars a year, something that I think is legitametely worth protesting over. Yet the most you ever hear from students (even those that are paying for their entire education themselves) is a whiny complaint to their friends. They could eliminate the Pharmacy major at our school and I don´t think they´d get more than a half dozen angry letters. A protest? Are you kidding? The kicker is, my History teacher told us that this was strangely the first protest this year and usually there are at least 2 a month, and even more during the warm months. Maybe this doesn´t get you going as much as it does me, but it´s certainly food for thought.
I´m gonna cut this short while I´m ahead, so I can actually get a little bit of work done before class. Hopefully this won´t be my last post before I head out for Spring Break, but I´m pretty much up to my ears in work until the end of the semester, so from here on out, posts might be sparse in number and short in length. I´ll try not to let this be the case, but as my computer time will be more and more limited, I´m going to need to spend most of it researching or typing papers- especially since the university will be closed for most of the month, and I´ll have to pay for every minute I have at an internet salon.
Be good.
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