Thursday, February 19, 2009

Cream Cheese Poem

I Love Me Some Cream Cheese

Cream cheese on my Cheez-its
Cream cheese on my Wheat-thins
Now it's on my fingers, all over my face!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Awesome Part 3

Spain

When I first arrived in Madrid, my first thought was "Andrew, what did you get yourself into." Traveling abroad seemed like a cool idea in my head but I guess I didn't really know how it would really be to live in a different culture until I did it. The first thing I noticed about Spain was that it was not Mexico. I should have googled some pictures of Spanish people before or something haha. They look just like Americans except they speak Spanish. Location was everything to me and I was so happy with where I stayed and my senora was awesome.
This is "Plaza del Toros" right next to my house. Click on the pic to see!
So the program I went with provided a lot of excursions to different cities so I got to travel a lot on the weekends. Here's one of my favorite walls in Sevilla.

But out of all the cities i went to, I like Malaga the best. I couldn't have chosen a better city, it was like the LA or Miami of Spain, very laid back.

I went to a school especially for foreigners and it was actually pretty fun (minus my sometimes 30-40 minute walks to and from school). Here's my classmate with a little window I made.
I would always bring my little murse as my backpack and folded some construction paper to make myself a few small folders. I new the city pretty well because I walked around everywhere, I never walked so much in my life. I met some cool people from America, Korea and Spain. Speaking of my Korean encounters, one night stuck out when a couple of Korean Koreans and a couple of their Spanish friends and I went to watch "The Day the Earth stood still" (which was bad) but after, with the Koreans, I went with them to hang out with another set of friends who were Spanish people who wanted to learn Korean! It was so funny, they could speak a little and they were playing Big Bang in their car.

As far as Spain itself, it was beautiful and I would say Malaga especially is beautiful. While other parts of the country were freezing, it was nice and toasty in Malaga. There's a lot of cool churches and castles and forts in Spain (along with the rest of Europe). I did quite a few things in Spain but to name a few:
- went to churches, forts and caves
- met some Christian missionaries
- went to botellon
- skyped with family and friends haha.
- played soccer w/Spanish people and went to a soccer game (go Malaga!)
- went to art galleries
- visited some of the best beaches in the Andalucia area
-churros con chocolate and tea
-read "full metal alchemist" in Spanish
-flamenco danced in a restaurant
Spain was definitely cool but more than the things I learned in school, I think I learned a lot about people and that was one of the best things I took from Spain.

Italy
I went on here on a 3 day trip just to Rome but there was so much to see. The best part of the trip was the food though...we ate so well. I went with 3 other people from the program. Also, home to best and biggest gelato stores (see facebook vid).

From the basilica.


My favorite fountain and Spanish Steps.


Coliseum

On another note
I cannot wait until death is completely defeated. God is about life + resurrection and overcoming death (ex. Jesus). Also, am I not killing it on the blog scene? My last 4 blogs have been substantial (minus the long intervals). You guys must step yo game up!

Monday, February 2, 2009

Awesome Pt. 2

Gibralter

This was my first weekend trip in Spain. I didn't even know what Gibralter was before my roommate asked me if I wanted to go. You smarties might already know but Gibralter is territory of the U.K. and it is famously known as the "Rock of Gibralter". It has an interesting history, one that I never bothered to learn when I went. But it was sort of a war site. So it was me and my roommate and another girl in our program. A lot of the other people in our program went to Morroco this weekend but I'm glad I didn't go because so many of them came back sick. We rented a car, which turned out to be a good decision but it was also at this time I lost my camera in the parking lot of the car rental place somehow. But we arrived safely and got to visit some other cities on the way. The first day we settled in and at night we went out to eat. They wanted to go to a bar so we went and there we met these two nice British people.

So from left to right, my roommate, the other girl, Brit #1, Brit #2 Carly, Me, then another guy who was just there and joined. I liked Carly because whenever she was talking to me it was like she was telling me a story with a Julie Andrews fairy tale voice. She came later to Malaga to visit us. The two Brits took us across the border to the Spanish side and then we went to an English pub on the Spanish side. This was my first kind of bar experience when I realized it was not my scene. It's so crowded and loud, I don't understand why people would pack themselves in there like that. But it was really funny too. There's like old white neukihae men dancing all wierd but it was funny. Well it was funny until the me, my roommate and the other girl were walking back to the hostel and we realized the girl had drank too much. She spent like 20 minutes throwing up in the toilet after, it was not pretty. Nevertheless the next day we woke up and we traveled "the Rock" starting from the top. We took a cable car up and walked down and itw as quite a walk, I think like 10 miles (maybe?) because it was zig zagging but we got to see a lot of cool stuff. It had really beautiful views and monkeys!


Here is m
e, monkey and roommate chatting it up. But my favorite part of the trip was a giant cave where they held concerts during the war. The acoustics were so good and they were playing classical music (it was a familiar tune I'm sure Isaac would know). I was like moved because it sounded so good and the setting was so unusual.

What you see ahead of you is where they would play, kind of stadium seating. All in all it was a good trip.


Portugal

10 people came on this trip haha. We split into two groups of 5 and drove to Lisbon. Portugal was pretty similar to Spain as far as night life and how the people look but I think they really don't like eachother. It's funny when you watch the news because it's like Portugal doesn't exist.

haha. back to Portugal.
The sites at Lisboa were awesome and I honestly think it was because of the people I went with. One of my friends was an Anthro major and she was super interested in all of this stuff so I could not help but share in her excitement. We went to the Castle of Sao Jorge and the views were cool.

We also went to a humongous monastery but my favorite part was going to the aquarium. I know it's something you can do anywhere, but by this time I've already seen so many castles and churches.

Otter!
Another one of my favorite parts was going to see a live performance of "fado" which is their kind of national music. O, also, this was also a highlight, we got to go to an old King's kind of vacation spot but now it was a historical site and it was crazy! It was so different than other buildings, it was all colorful, looked like it just escaped from Disneyland.

So Portugal was definitely a cool experience too. I was going to post Spain up tonight but these small weekend trips are taking a little longer than I thought to write about.

Back to reality, today I finished up a midterm and this week of school shouldn't be too bad. And I want to leave this on a musical note so here's a song by Estelle ft. John Legend- You Are. This is like a feel good song and it'll make you want to dance. I'm not sure if you guys ever heard of her but I first heard Nellie McKay on my favorite radio program Radio Deluxe haha and when I youtubed her I had so much hope for her because she's pretty good at jazz piano and she plays the uke but when I listened to her other stuff I didn't really like it as much. But I really do like the song they played on the radio PS I Love You, which was on the soundtrack of the PS I love You movie. But here's an original song called "Clonie". I have the mp3 but I figure it's more of a listen once song.



Have a good week!