Cordoba

I have been living in Cordoba for a month now. I spend my days walking along the urban pathways to the edge of town where the university is. I avoid dog poo and squished oranges… Cordoba is covered in orange trees; they are on every block. They provide a citrus scent and asthetic coloring, but the oranges are inedibally sour. my classes are simple. My grammar teacher treats us like kindergartners and my history teacher is an apparition of all girls fantasies (he’s ridiculously attractive, intelligent, sweet…), and Spanish becomes a second language- all of a sudden I can understand mostly all of it. When I watch movies in my film class I find myself realizing that I am actually getting the details of the story without needed English subtitles, and then when I start thinking in English I have trouble understanding all over again. I dream in Spanish sometimes, even think it sometimes. And yet some days I’m still tongue tied and awkward, feeling like I’m not making any progress at all, and ridiculously frustrated with the strong accents of Cordoba.
No Pase Nada- I’m having a fucking good time. Staying out until 3 or 5 or 6 am, going to bars, clubs, boutallans- meeting the Spanish, joking with the Spanish, learning Spanish. It seems as if the more alcoholic drinks I’ve consumed, the better my Spanish gets. But that’s probably just because the Spaniards have gotten drunk and thus are speaking slower and simpler. I have had some awesome field trips- The Mezquita, a building that was made from a culture that existed before Christ. Ruins from muslim and Christian kings, roman conquerors. History that surpasses anything in the U.S. by thousands of years is pretty much everywhere. The Antigua part of town astounds me with it’s little streets and patios, untouched by modern culture. Pictures of the Mezquita and ruins can be found on my facebook website.
My host family is interesting. My Senora is a bit of a nutcase. She is generous, a mother hen, and open minded enough to accept my cultural differences most of the time and to let me go out and do whatever I want. Some days she is in her robe all day and she yells at me about random things like having milk and fruit in the same day, other days she is chipper and happy with jasmine perfume teaching me how to dance flamenco. I have a host sister who I suspect is just as crazy or assumes my Spanish is worse then it actually is. She talks to me really loudly and repeats everything three or four times. She is 41 and getting married to her husband in the Mezquita- which is epic.
Cordoba is a semi conservative city. There are hippies, I have been able to find the weed smokers here, and when the sun comes out they flock to the parks and hang on the lawns. But mostly it is conservative Spaniards, wealthy ones with families and traditions such as naming your first daughter after yourself and waiting until marriage to bone (or trying to- my host sisters fiancé has snuck into her room a couple of times in the middle of the night). The bars are full of aged pig legs- jam iberico- and tapas and flamenco dancers and guitar players and tuna bands. There is the modern world here, the malls, he constant need to shop, the fashion influence, and the partying students that go to the university here. But the old way of living is still very evident here and sometimes it makes us Americans stick out like a sore thumb.
Coming from Santa Cruz, it is definitely a different and perspective changing experience.

More Barcelona Pictures

sorry these pictures are big but i'm too pissed off with technology to deal with it right now... if you click on them you will be able to see the full photo of all my large pictures.



this is more of the student protest. the fire breather is up on top, and the one on bottom is the closeup of the protest sign.


Below are bictures of Casa de Battlo. This house is beautiful and intricate and modern looking. It's sort of like a palace that belongs on the moon.




Below are picture of the Semana Familia Cathedral. It's gigantic, gothic, epic, beautiful. I wish my pictures captured how awesome it was.





Here are more EPIC MARKET pictures:






More of Barcelona:

Barcelona- The Mad Arrival

I denied that I was going up until the very last second. I convinced myself that the plane would crash, that I would never successfully land in Spain. It didn´t feel real that I´d be spending 5 months of my life alone in a different country. I drowned my fears of flying with the accomodating alcohol of British Airlines, trying not to have panic attacks and mental breakdowns. Psychologically, I did not feel prepared to face this journey alone. I hadn´t really been by myself in 4 years, maybe even longer. I had lost touch with myself, not really sure who I am or if I was even capable of such an adventure. Alas, the planes did not crash and on January 29th, 2009 I landed in Barcelona, Spain alive and well. I had all the information I needed to get to the couchsurfing family I was going to stay with, a little Spanish to get me through alright, and enough money to situate any emergency situation. It seemed like nothing could go wrong... or so I thought.
I knew I was in trouble when I had to pick up my luggage. British Airlines was nowhere to be found. I was exhausted, I had a whole adventure of finding my way through a city I didn't know alone ahead of me, and bags were now impossible to find. Desperately, I asked a young man who I recognized from my flight from London in very poor Spanish. He said he didn´t know but he would help me. We kept getting directions and yet seemed to go in all the wrong ways. After about a half hour of going up and down the airport, we found the terminal with our luggage. I was trying not to laugh out loud- trying to bury the shock that this is real, that I´m really in Spain... let alone clueless as to where I´m supposed to go.
The boy said I should take the train with him, and that the train would get me to Plaza Universitat- my needed destination. I couldn´t believe that I had put my trust into someone and was lucky enough for it to be such an honest and awesome human being. He was also extremely pleasent to talk to, with our awkward Spanish and English jokes, talking about our ventures and our lives as we walked to the train station- him still politely carrying my bags. On the way we met a guy from Mexico who was studying business in Barcelona, and knew more English and helped translate the things I didn´t know how to say. We sat on the train and finally had the time to get eachother´s names. David the Spaniard, Manuel the Mexican, Aliyah the American. We swapped e-mails. Manuel called us the ¨piezas de mi ojos¨, which is a term said in Mexico for the friends you make and trust while traveling. It seemed as if I had stepped into the awesome world of traveling immediately, and only good things laid ahead. Until...
We realized I was going the wrong way. They literally got off the train to show me where the metro that I needed to take was. They literally spoke all the Spanish for me and literally fought off the eager and desperate pocket pickers of the Barcelona underground system. They are probably the nicest strangers I will ever meet, and I hope to see them again.

Alas, I got to the plaza I needed to get to and walked to the street the couchsurfers were living on. It just then occurred to me that everyone that lived in a Spanish city lived in apartments, and that I would need to know what floor they were living on. I stood at the bottom of their flat and pressed all the buttons I could whimpering ¨Pato y Pili?¨with no success. I almost broke down and cried right there. What was I going to do? I didn´t have a backup. Panic. I didn't even have a cell phone to call them. After trudging many blocks to get there, with my heavy pack and duffell, after the confusing metro system and the frightening slippery fingers of pocket pickers, sweating and tired and shocked and completely exhausted and completely foreign, I felt defeated.
Don't cry, I told myself. Don't freak out. Figure it out.

A young girl was standing near me, who I inclined to eventually ask in poor spanish ¨tiene un cellular telefone?¨and she so nicely let me call my couchsurfing hosts. Apparently I was at the wrong building afterall (and the couchsurfers were not a hoax- my biggest fear) and a small portly man came down and hoisted my bag up onto his back and we clambered up a million (seemingly) marble dark steps to step into a small flat that smelled of coffee and cigarrettes. A little girl sat on the sofa, reasurringly, reading a spanish kids book. Alas- I´m alive. I´m well. And I´m... in Spain?
The city itself is beautiful. Easy to walk around, the people were rediculously nice and accustomed to awkward fumbling tourists. There were things I never imagined could exist, like the markets, glorious amounts of food, and the ancient architecture of world famous cathedrals (Semana Family cathedral).
Theres something different about traveling alone. You are much more inside of yourself, observing people like they are in a fishbowl. At the same time you are undistracted, and you feel free to go anywhere and able to soak in all the feelings that the city creates inside of you.
It´s hard for me to describe my silent wanderings around this beautiful city, so I´m going to post my pictures here. They are not good- hastily done because I was embarassed about looking like a tourist (even though I was trudging around with socks and chacos that caught every Barcelonan´s horrified eyes... Spanish are very stylish and would not be caught dead in such footwear choices). So here are some pictures that will help me describe the city.

catalunya square- big and marble with old ladies feeding birds and people rollerblading about. it´s at the top of the main street that goes straight through oldtown.

{this was the beach. i'm sure its more glorious looking in the summer... besides i heard the prettiest beaches were north of barcelona on the coastline up to france. it was nice seeing the opal green blue of the mediterranean though, especially from the viewpoint of a cafe, sipping delicious coffee... spain knows how to do it's coffee. There was also a guitar player on the beach... he was singing those elegant moaning hymns that are found in Indian or Arabic music. But he was playing something that sounded like Bob Dylan chords. The day was windy and rainy, and the beach was mostly empty... it provided quite an eery feeling experience. }

there are a lot of street performers... most of them are lazy and dont stay still and smoke cigs and look pessimistic. edward was great tho- totally wouldn't move and when you bent over to give him a 10 cent, he would all of a sudden start frantically cutting your hair.

there was a student protest going on. with drums and fire breathers and jugglers and acrobats. the sign says something about being a unicycle. i think it was about art students. it was impressive though.

imagine all the fruit you've ever imagines in one place, sold for really cheaply. imagine them making smoothies for you. mouth watering smoothies...

now imagine all the hand made candies and chocolates you can ever imagine in one place... right next to the fruits. the markets of barcelona are like stepping into heaven.

pretty much all the fish you could imagine also.

note: more photos to come soon, like i said, the internet is very slow. i still need to post the pics of batllo house, semana family, and of the main street of cordoba.

I just want you to know that Pato and Pili are very generous and loving people. They had the type of love that illuminates everything. They opened up their house and offered me everything I could need. Their little girl was beautiful and adorable and loved helping me with my Spanish. We had limited conversations because of my language, and I felt like I could not truely represent or portray myself. It was frustrating. They were very aware of the issues of this world, and you can tell that it bothered them... especially with family in Argentina. They showed me great kindness, even with their differences they have with America and the culture that I came from.