Trip to Andalucia Feb 4th-10th, 2008

About a week ago I got back from my trip to Andalucia. The first four days were with my class as an organized "excursion" and then for the weekend a few of us went to Carnaval in Cadiz. That was an adventure for sure. Andalucia is a city, but I'm referring to the province in Southern Spain. We went to Cordoba, Sevilla, and Granada (and then Cadiz). So here are my reflections and notations on the trip.


Drive down south:

I don't know what I was expecting the plant life to be like but it certainly wasn't what I saw: A lot of it was desert and reminded me of driving from Los Angeles to Dallas through the rocky, mountainous desert. We were driving through rocky terrain, there was no soil, and there were cacti. In retrospect I SHOULD have expected this because southern Spain is just a hop away from North Africa and the Sahara. Also there were FIELDS AND FIELDS OF OLIVE TREES! That's what I expected to see when I go to Greece, but apparently Spain is the #1 producer of olive oil in the world (even over Italy). So that was interesting.

Cordoba:

We only stayed here for the day. Cordoba is important because during the 800 years that the Arabs ruled Spain, Cordoba was the capital for them in Spain and North Africa (the Caliphate). So the sense of it's former days as an Arab capital was really obvious. We toured the Mezquita (mosque) where construction began in the 700s. There was a cathedral built within the Mezquita after the Reconquista (when the Christians took over again in the 1200s). The cathedral wasn't that impressive but the mosque was. It was HUGE and there were tons of columns everywhere. For 1000 years it was the second largest Mosque in the world. (now I think it's the third.) The gypsies in Cordoba were more aggressive than in Madrid.

Sevilla

Late that night we drove an hour and a half (barely) west to Seville. This place was BEAUTIFUL. Now the scenery changed to tropical. There were palm trees and orange trees all over the place. Orange trees lined every single street and they were in full bloom. The next day (Feb 5th) we took a tour of the Reales Alcazares, which was where four royal palaces were grouped together to make a huge complex of luxury. These Alcazares were mostly used by the Arab kings when they ruled, and then later some of the Christian kings lived here too. Since a Muslim garden is supposed to be like paradise and be a treat to every sense, they were beautiful! Full of plants, birds, fruit, fountains. etc. Also, because this is where Columbus came when he returned from the new world, all the gardens are decorated in tropical plants that he brought back with him from the indies. (ex. birds of paradise, all kinds of palm trees, fruit trees, ficus trees, etc.)
Feb 6th- We stayed in Sevilla two days, so on the 6th, which HAPPENED TO HAVE BEEN MY 21ST BIRTHDAY, we got to go to a Flamenco show. It was a really beautiful, intimate setting. I'd never seen Flamenco before and it was not what I expected. The dancing was, but the singing wasn't. It was a lot more tribal wailing than I figured. Beautiful none-the-less. Later that night we were hitting the town and a few of us stumbled upon this bar in an alley that turned out to be a really cool underground place (kind of like Churchills in little haiti, for my miami buddies). There turned out to be an impromptu flamenco show! And that was REALLY cool because we were seeing what the locals see.
*Note: I also climbed the Giralda tower and got to see the grave of Christopher Columbus.

Granada

Next day we made the drive even further to Granada for our last stop. Basically all we saw in Granada was La Alhambra, the AMAZING ruins of a city within a city in Granada that was a great fortress of the Arabs. (means "city of the red brick" in Arabic) It was huge and beautiful. If there's one thing I've learned about Arab architecture is that it seems more intricate than any other I've encountered. The carvings and tile work must have taken SO LONG to do....I can't describe it in words. You'll have to look at my pics on facebook. We also made a stop at the Capilla Real and saw the tombs and coffins of Isabel and Ferdinand. That was pretty interesting.

Cadiz

That was an adventure in itself! The first day was really stupid and confirmed for me that it was just a huge waste of money. (Because the only reason I wanted to go was because I thought I was going to go to Morocco first, and that didn't end up happening.) The second day made it almost worth the money. We went to the beach (atlantic ocean) and while it was way too cold to get in the water, the weather was pleasant and eerily windy. That night though, was the Carnaval celebration...PARTY LIKE YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN! It was just thousands of people my age in crazy costumes, getting drunk. There were no bathrooms either...which I won't get into.... people were also doing debaucherous things. I actually saw a couple DOING IT in the middle of the street with 100 people around them. I couldn't believe it. I ended up having to leave the party kind of early (3ish) because I needed to go back to the hotel, get my stuff, then head to the airport because my flight was at 7:05. Have you ever been to the airport drunk? well...I can cross that off my list! Not to mention I was alone. It was just crazy. This was a tiny airport too. When I got there I was apparently TOO early and the airport was CLOSED! I sat outside with some Spanish girls also waiting for the Madrid flight. As we were sitting outside, we could see birds flying around INSIDE the airport and even a cat wandering around! I kept saying "How'd the cat get in??? Maybe we can get in!" Apparently backwardsness like that is typical of Andalucia. Just to add to it, when they finally opened security, I went through and put my bag on the xray thing and NOBODY WAS WATCHING THE XRAY MACHINE! If I'd beeped going through the metal detector nobody would have been there to stop me. And to top it off I had to walk onto the runway to get onto the plane. I guess they're not worried about terrorism...So eventually I got back to Madrid and went to bed at 9:30am on Sunday, Feb 10th. (avoided the senora ALL day)

What a trip!
I was surely ready for a normal week in Madrid.
I took 117 pictures and they're all on facebook if you want to look at them.

Rosalia, my crazy Senora.

I am not getting along with my Senora. All-in-all though, I've started letting it roll off my shoulders because I, and only I am in charge of whether or not this is a hostile environment. And nobody can 'make me feel a certain way.' I am in charge of my own feelings. And I'm going to choose that it isn't a hostile environment.

In any case, it makes a good story to tell what happened yesterday. This is a copy/paste of the email I sent my parents about it. I couldn't type it twice. It's pretty unbelievable. All of the conversations I've reiterated in English, but they weren't.
::
Last night my roommate and I were seriously yelled at! I still can't believe it. What happened was, earlier in the day we asked her if she wanted to go to church with us. And she said that she had gone yesterday (saturday) but that she'd go again so we didn't have to go alone. Jacqulyn and I were then like "oh we can go alone, it's not a problem" and she said "you don't mind going alone?" we said no, and then she gave us directions on how to get there. But apparently, we interpreted that as meaning that she wasn't going, when she still planned on going with us. So when it came time for us to leave, Jacquelyn and I walked out the door. When we got to the bottom we saw it was raining and went back upstairs to get umbrellas. When we got back up Rosalia (my senora) was there yelling "You left without me???!!! Well, if you don't want me to go, FINE! GO BY YOURSELF I DON'T CARE!" and Jacquelyn and I were shocked and we were like "I'm sorry I'm sorry, we thought you weren't going, of course you should come" And she continued saying "It is a real problem that you don't understand me when I speak; that we can't communicate! This is a real problem for me! You don't know any Castellano because you speak in English all day" (not true, by the way.) And she just kept saying "you don't understand me, you don't understand me!" (which is, by the way, her catch phrase) and we kept trying to insist that it wasn't the words we didn't understand, just that there had been a 'misunderstanding' and that it could happen even in your own language. but it was like we hadn't said anything at all. She was just yelling at us. "How could you leave without me! Why don't you listen to me!" As if we would ever be malicious towards her! I'm a little upset at this point about the way we were being treated and I said "The reason we thought this was because you asked us if we minded going by ourselves." Now, of course this whole thing is in Spanish, so I was paraphrasing her because I didn't know the exact words she'd used (which I probably should not have done) and she got six inches from my face and said "DO NOT SAY THAT I SAID SOMETHING THAT I DID NOT SAY!" And after an awkward pause, Jacquelyn and I just turned around and walked out the door and off to church. It was a ludicrous situation!

THEN!!!!!! THEN!!!! We were in church and when I turned around to pass the peace ROSALIA WAS SITTING BEHIND US! She'd come to church anyway! So I felt better when I saw that and thought "oh she realized we didn't do it on purpose and decided to come with us." but the real reason was to spite us, which I figured out when she dashed out of the pew at the end of service and wouldn't walk home with us. And so Jacquelyn and I are walking about 20 feet behind her discussing whether we should catch up to her when she turns around (I guess to see where we were) and I waved. She stared at me, and then TURNED BACK AROUND as if she hadn't seen me! So then we HAD to catch up because we couldn't act like we were ignoring her (even though that's what she was doing to us) and so when we were walking next to her, Jacquelyn made some small-talk remark like "oh, it was a different priest than last time" and she wouldn't respond! She gave us the silent treatment the whole time except when she said "When I was young I went to mass everyday." Then when we got back to the apartment it was dinner time and she sat with us at dinner and acted like it never happened!!

Doesn't that sound like a horrible situation!!!!??? How could she possibly think that we'd done it on purpose? Not to mention that every single time that I don't give her a response that's verbal enough she puts on a high-pitched and loud voice "No me entiendes, no me entiendes!" which is starting to get me so annoyed because I DO UNDERSTAND! I understand 99% of what she says, and the other 1% is the occasional vocab word, which I'll ask her (but God forbid I ask her twice...) The one thing I really needed to work on here was being comfortable speaking and she enforces the exact opposite in me by making me feel like I can't speak at all. I would consider myself almost completely fluent, and she acts like I don't know a word. Even just 30 minutes ago she called me in to tell me that the entire collection of Picasso's work from Paris is on display at the Reina Sofia museum until March 8th. And I said "Ya lo vi" and she promptly put her head in her hands and repeated to herself loudly "no me entiendes, no me entiendes!" because she couldn't possibly think that I had understood her because I hadn't been to the Reina Sofia. NEWS FLASH, ROSALIA! I went three weeks ago and saw it and we talked about it at dinner! So I had had enough and said, quite forcefully, "Yes, I do understand you Rosalia, there is a picasso exhibit brought from France to the Reina Sofia until March 8th. I saw it already." and she just looked at me and said "well, there are a lot of picasso's because half of them are just little drawings." and I said "si." and went to my room.

This is what I have decided: That I can not allow her to intimidate me from speaking Spanish because she makes me feel like an oaf, and lowers my self-esteem with my speaking capabilities (and Jacquelyn too!) I can't even ask her to repeat something (like directions or anything) without her saying "WHY DON'T YOU LISTEN TO ME WHEN I SPEAK TO YOU!!" She is frustrated so easily by us, for NO REASON. This is really not the position for her if she gets mad at us for asking questions. The point is, it's HER and not US and so I have decided to let it not upset me, because it's just too irrational to be taken seriously. If this is what 60 year old Spanish women are like, I'm glad I'm not ever going to be one. And don't worry, I'm still perfectly pleasant and polite to her and put on a cheerful face, because I don't want to influence her to make things worse for us.

I am pretty cheerful, because I just can't let an irrational person bother me, because it would be a waste of my emotions. Plus, I leave to Andalusia in the morning and she's already gone to bed, so I'm not going to see her until I get back next Sunday. so haha.

What I have done:

• Bought bus ticket from Granada to Cadiz
• Bought plane ticket from Cadiz to Madrid
• Paid my roommate for my half of the hotel room
• Booked my round-trip ticket to Amsterdam
• Booked my ticket from Amsterdam to Madrid
  
• Booked my round-trip ticket to Greece
• Booked my Amsterdam hostel
• Booked my Greece Hostel

What I still need to do:

• Book the flight from Madrid to London
• Book London to Amsterdam
• Book Hostels for both those places.
  
• Call the Gap about my last paycheck.
• Make up something fun to do for the English lessons tomorrow where I teach them clothing vocabulary.
  
• Read "Bodas de Sangre"
• Write my paper on "Luces de Bohemia"
• Mail those postcards
• Call my mother/brother.