You Can't Open a Can with a Nutcracker

In case you were wondering, it's been 70-80 degrees out during the day this week.  I don't think this is real life.

These past few weeks have been all about adventuring in Sevilla, which has been fabulous.  Adventures included: exploring Ronda with JYS, trying to go hiking, tapa - hopping,  and venturing into the frightening land of my host mom's kitchen to bake a pie on the one day that Sevilla succeeded in tricking us into believing it was fall.  This past weekend we were all vaguely haunted by the fact that exam week is this week (one exam  Monday, two exams + 1 essay today) but when Marie and I attempted to engage our brains and go to the public library for a little bit on Saturday it was already closed.  And closed on Sunday.  And the university library is closed all weekend.  So as you can see we live in a really academic environment.

Also, this past Thursday we didn't have school because there was a student strike.  I only have one class Tuesday/Thursdays, and on Tuesday our teacher gave us the choice of having class or not having class.  He said that if we wanted to have class, since it was the class before the exam, he would come, but just so we knew there was a chance that a) we wouldn't be able to get to school because of the blockade and b) if we made it to our room there was a chance it would be invaded by screaming protesters and c) that the students would probably hate us for not supporting their cause.  Which is still ambiguous.  Needless to say, we slept in on Thursday.

Ronda

Way back two weekends ago when we didn't have a school-related care in the world, JYS took us to Ronda.  Help me, Ronda, help help me, Ronda. Ronda is a mountain town situated on both sides of a very deep ravine about two hours outside of Sevilla. During the bus ride there I was only briefly awake due to having slept barely at all the night before because of a directionless 4 am bike ride home from a dance club with Marie and Emily during which we went so far out of the way that we discovered the outside wall of the old city that no one had even known existed.  I thought it was really cool at the time. Everyone else thought I was weird.  Anyway, during the the time that I was awake on the bus, I realized that, surprise! there are some big mountains really close to Sevilla!  Who knew!?  Ronda is a very old town built right in the middle of this gorgeous mountain range.  We explored the city, the plaza de toros, and both the old Roman bridge and the newer neoclassical bridge traversing the deep ravine.  Despite my fear of heights I did manage to peer over the edge of the ravine. There was a wee little river running along the bottom, with flocks of dark birds perching on the rocky ledges below the houses, which appeared to be on the point of toppling into the ravine.  I can't think of a scarier place to live.


We were so excited about finally seeing mountains / nature / anything green that Marie, Reed, Marissa, Rachel and I decided to go hiking the next day.  Which proved to be slightly more difficult than we had anticipated.  There was distressingly little information about local hikes, despite the proximity of the sierra norte.  There were also distressingly few buses, so we weren't able to leave until 1:30 pm. Which gave Marie, Reed and I plenty of time to make the most fabulous bocadillos (Spanish sandwiches) you could ever want.  Think turkey, brie, avocados, red peppers and mustard on a baguette.  We were weirdly excited to be making our own food for the first time basically since we've been here. #homestayproblems. But not actually a problem because Marta's food is awesome. Speaking of which, here's a pic of one of my favorite dishes, col con garbanzos. Which is cabbage with garbanzos.  I'm not even kidding, I like it so much that I braved the awkwardness of taking a picture of my food at lunch in order to share my newfound cabbage-joy.

Back to hiking.  Our bus dropped us off about an hour later in a tiny little town at the foot of the sierra norte.  We awkwardly paraded back and forth along the main street in front of the groups of seated elderly folks at the saloon-style bars while we debated where we would be if we were a hiking trail.  I voted the direction of the mountains.  This turned out to be wrong, according to one of the bartenders, who we finally asked. He pointed in the opposite direction, so instead of heading up into the forested mountains, we went and found a trail leading through what was basically someone's livestock pasture. It was like my gastronomoía class had sprung to life, complete with acres of olive orchard, every kind of farm animal and acorn-laden oak trees (the food of the famous Iberian pigs, who remained mysteriously in hiding).  Despite being surrounded by mountains, our "hike" led us meanderingly through the flat, dusty pastures of this Spanish campo.  We didn't mind though, we were all just happy to be finally out of the city and away from the odors of cars, dumpsters, cigarettes and fish.




This past weekend, Marie and I decided to treat ourselves to a night out with... ourselves.  Perks of having a great roommate.  Our ingenious idea, inspired by our host dad, Juan Luis, was to tapa-hop.  Because why would you pick one awesome Spanish tapas restaurant when you could have many! We bounced from place to place, ordering a wide variety of copas and tapas to satisfy our cravings for the food Marta doesn't make.  Dad - I ate a squid with tentacles.  I hope you're proud.

To add to the food themed weekend, we decided to bake a pie.  Because one of the saddest parts about being abroad fall quarter is missing Thanksgiving.  Which, true, is still a month away, but celebrating early never hurt anybody.  After getting permission from Marta to use the sacred grounds of the kitchen, we headed off to the tiny American food store nearby to buy canned pumpkin. Which, thankfully, they had.  Along with a funny mix of semi-American products including USA themed utensils and decorations, Frontera salsa, granola, Betty crocker box cakes, jumbo marshmallows and root beer. Back at home, we ambitiously set about crafting our own homemade crusts and making a floury mess of the kitchen which we luckily managed to clean up before Marta got home.  The biggest hiccup in our Barefoot Contessa afternoon came when we had to open the pumpkin cans.  An easy feat, you would think. However, you have probably not tried to open a can without a can opener.  We found a strange, roundish metal object in the drawer with some promising looking sharp edges and spent 20 minutes trying to finagle a way to pierce the top of the can, before giving in and asking Borja (who was watching soccer in the living room) for help.  The promising looking metal thing turned out to be a nutcracker. Which explained the struggle, but did nothing to improve our baking-in-a-foreign-country confidence.  After many hours of making ice water, refrigerating dough, kneading, scrubbing, finally finding an old-school rusty can opener, mixing, converting cups and tablespoons to millileters, mixing and realizing we had bought the wrong type of sugar and using it anyway, the pies were in the oven creating the most glorious smell.

the oldest-school can opener

notice our fake potted plants

And it was a hit!! Even extra-picky Juan Luis loved it, despite saying he was scared to try tarta de calabaza after the cooking adventures of a previous American student.

is it Thanksgiving yet? 

Homemade crust with walnuts on top, for a twist.  A little bit of home all the way across the ocean.  We brought the other pie over to Marta's parents and Reed and Donald next door.  Well, actually we only brought half of the second pie because Marta and Juan Luis liked it too much.

PS. Marie and I have been crafting our Halloween costumes all night.  In the style of the time I dressed up as the ring from Lord of the Rings with a giant yellow inner-tube.  Get excited.

Lisbon

morning in Lisbon

Following my tradition of writing about everything a week or more late, here's a description of my weekend in Lisbon. 14 girls. 16 hours in bus. The #1 medium-sized hostel in the world. A winning recipe right there.

To begin: the bus ride. Our supposedly 6 hour (already long) bus ride from Sevilla turned into nearly 8 hours.  As our ETA approached and passed, we were still driving through the boonies of rural, hilly Portugal, leading me to note every gas station we passed for when we escaped from our kidnappers.  Only kidding, parents.  When we finally spotted the lights of Lisbon we were more than an hour and a half late and going stir crazy after an agonizingly slow drive and an unnecessary number of pit stops.  Hoping very much that Lisbon would be worth this entire day of sedentariness, we ventured into the dark to find our hostel.

Entering the Home Lisbon Hostel (voted #1 for a reason) was like walking into a birthday party full of strangers that were expecting us.  A disco ball was glittering on the ceiling, and crowds of people were chatting, eating and drinking at long wooden tables all over the front room.  The concierge (is that what its called in a hostel?) cheerfully welcomed us, and gave Marie a free shot of Portuguese cherry liqueur for organizing the payment. Our top-floor rooms reminded me of berths on a ship - large wooden bunk beds with fluffy comforters and dark curtains you could pull across if you wanted to be antisocial and/or have a good night's sleep. Finally.

Friday, after cramming ourselves full of more eggs and rolls with nutella and jam than was really necessary at the (included!) breakfast, we ventured out to Sintra on the metro.  Sintra is a magical little medieval town nestled in the nearby wooded hills, historically the location of the palaces of all Portugal's rulers.  We climbed the steep forested path up to Palacio da Pena, one of the most fantastic palaces I have ever seen.  I think one of the Portuguese kings might have been pranked.  Why else you would paint a palace yellow and purple I have no idea.

Palacio da Pena

Later, back in Lisbon, Marissa and Lindsay and I went and visited Castelo de São Jorge.   A flock of obnoxiously friendly peacocks was wandering around the grounds.  From the ramparts we had a fabulous view of Lisbon's rolling hills full of elegant off-white buildings with coppery-orange roofs, the large bridge across the bay glittering in the background.

me, Lindsay, Marissa

San Fran? nope, Lisbon

Friday night we had dinner at the hostel, cooked by "Mamma" who ran the establishment with her sons. Delicious zucchini soup, salad, a large vat of Portuguese style rice with sausage, sangria, and fruit cobbler, followed by a guided pub crawl full of rowdy hostelers.  

Saturday we hit up the free guided walking tour of the city, which ended in a large flea market full of the most ridiculous assortment of random crap, from old keys to Portuguese comic books to underwear.  Don't worry, Dad, my inner packrat stayed hidden and nothing was purchased.  Later, we hopped on the tram to the neighborhood of Belém.  We might or might not have gone here entirely for the extremely famous pastry store.  Lots of pastéis de nata were purchased.  All were eaten. Oh, there was also a famous tower.  But the pastries overshadowed it.  Not literally, since towers are known to be rather large. 

at the Torre de Belém

After another fabulous dinner of bacalao, which is a necessary part of traveling to Portugal, half our group opted for the ridiculously comfortable beds instead of going out again.  Definitely don't regret that choice.  "I want our hostel beds back, I slept so well there" said no one ever about a hostel, except Marie when we got back to Sevilla. I'm telling you, Home Lisbon Hostel is the place to go.

Sunday morning was spent wandering around before our 6 hour bus ride. Which was 8 hours again.  Marie and I were reduced to making boredom induced alphabetical lists of all the countries in every continent.   We forgot to write Portugal.

However, this gorgeous country is anything but forgettable, and I thoroughly enjoyed my two trips here this fall.  It was so refreshing to visit a beautiful European city that wasn't overrun by tourists.  Visit Lisbon if you can! 

14 chicas in Lisboa

Barcelona

Two weekends ago I went to Barcelona with two other girls, Lindsay and Magda.  I haven't written about it yet because all of last week I was still in recovery from lack of sleep. Turns out a 21st birthday celebration with our whole group combined with a 5:15 am alarm for the airport shuttle don't mix well, especially when you don't finish packing the night before.  Yolo? Never again.

Anyway, I managed after sprinting around the Plaza de Armas bus station in the wee hours of Friday morning to locate the airport shuttle, manage to get on the same bus as Lindsay, and arrived at the airport in time to be in the very front of the line for our RyanAir free-for-all-seating bus with a backpack that felt far too light to be holding all the necessities of a weekend trip.  Thanks mostly to Lindsay's directional skills and partly to my vague familiarity with Barcelona from a family trip four years ago, we were able to locate our hostel upon arrival, drop off our bags, and begin our whirlwind exploration of the city.  

We arrived around lunchtime, but I wasn't very hungry, having eaten my bocadillo (sandwich) from Marta at approximately 10:45, my rebel side relishing eating at an hour much before our delegated 2:30 Spanish lunchtime.  This was probably a good thing because otherwise I would have been tempted to buy everything at the Boquería, Barcelona's famous market where we found ourselves first.  It is chock full of the most amazing display of colorful fruits, aromatic spices,  gawking tourists, a terrifying assortment of dead fish that like to glare at you with their dead-eyeballs, all topped off by a constant swaying of Iberian ham legs over your head.  Fantastic.  

cloudy Barcelona

It was a cloudy, drizzly, chilly day and there were actually colored leaves on the ground! After the perpetual summer of Andalucía, I was practically bubbling over with excitement just to have a fall day.  We next attempted to climb up the mountain (otherwise know as small hill to us Colorado folks) of Montjuic to find the castle at the top.  A simple task, presumably, but NO. The hill, in addition to being a strangely far distance away, also turned out to be full of the windiest pedestrian paths and most useless maps (in Catalan.. thanks Barcelona) that you've ever seen.  Consequently, we never made it to the castle.  Instead we popped out of the trees in front of the Catalan National Museum, which we were too stingy to pay for but which had some gorgeous fountains and proceeded to take a much shorter route back in the direction of the city center.  Lindsay and Magda headed to the Picasso Museum.  Since I had already been to this (amazing) museum and remembered it well and I was feeling so tired that I possibly would have just ended up finding a nice corner to sleep in anyway, I decided to pass.  I said I wanted to walk around, which actually meant finding a snack and returning to the museum to fall asleep in the courtyard against a stone wall.  

stormy skies atop the cathedral

After some more wandering in the glorious old Gothic quarter, we returned to our awesome hostel where I proceeded to nap through dinner. Our 12-bed dorm room was surprisingly not weird or dirty, which was nice.  We decided to be cool cats and go out with a group from our hostel that night, because everyone running the hostel and staying in it had impressed us with their friendliness.  They took us to a hilarious little bar where anything you ordered was likely to come with a show and some weird props, including but not limited to: fire, neon colors, marshmallows, tabasco sauce, candy fish, whipped cream, and blindfolds.  It was a hoot.  We made new friends from Australia, Germany, Brazil and Canada.  We also didn't really sleep much. Oops. 

Day two started bright and early anyway and turned out to have a Gaudí theme.  We hopped on the metro and headed to Parque Güell, which had an incredible view, crowds of tourists and some rocking street musicians.  We really should have bought their CD.  

Lindsay, me, Magda

The Gaudí day continued with the Casa Batlló, la Pedrera, and finally the Sagrada Familia.  Gaudí's candy-land cathedral was just as fabulous the second time around, and I was excited to note the significant differences from when I last visited four-years before.  It is the wackiest architecture I have ever seen, like children's-fairytale-meets-candied-fruit-meets-human-bones.

inside

After exploring the wonders of Barcelona all day, the balls of my feet felt like I was walking on a pin cushion with every step.  We finally took a break to have tapas at 4:30.  Correct, we didn't have lunch until 4:30.  Which meant I was running on nothing but a chorizo-filled croissant and three hours of sleep on a camp bed with a sweater over my head to block the light.  And correct, I was feeling like I was about to faint.  I refuse to be this tired again until Dance Marathon 2014. Slightly revived by sausage, potatoes and paella, we spent the rest of the night exploring the city center, chatting with our new hostel friends, missing a fountain show due to faulty information, drinking sangria and making friends with the guys at the empenada store.  All the while me inwardly wanting only my pillow and outwardly trying to be a chipper traveling companion.

Sunday we awoke at the crack of 7 am to hop back on the plane.  I felt my whole body heave a sigh of relief as we zoomed over the Giralda and my bed came closer and closer.  I proceeded to take the most magnificent nap ever, rising only for Marta's chorizo tortilla española.  Despite my sleep deprivation, we took Barcelona by storm and I couldn't have asked for better traveling companions or a more adventure-filled weekend.

Blue Means Azul

I would like to start off by mentioning that I was just serenaded in the shower at 10 pm by our building's resident cellist who has taken to practicing near a window somewhere at all hours of the day.  My life now has a classical soundtrack.

Now that I've been in real (ish) school for two and a half weeks I think its high time I gave a description of my classes.  For everyone out there that has anxiously been awaiting my updates, yes, I did decide to drop the mysterious Geografía Humana class.  Although this was the only normal university class with Spanish students that I was taking, I decided the trade off of not-understanding-much-but-making-Spanish-friends wasn't worth it when on day two nearly all the Spanish kids decided to ditch and understanding even the words on the powerpoints (let alone the prof talking) was hard.

These are the classes I'm taking:

Cultura de la gastronomía en España - Spanish food culture, taught by a funny little man who gels his hair and lets us out early because he always thinks we look tired (9 am struggles).  This is great because I have time to go to the cafe and by a 90 cent café con leche  To my disappointment, he has yet to bring us any food to sample, though I'm holding out hope.  I now know more than I ever thought I would about olive oil, which is basically a celebrity here.

La imagen de España a través del cine - The image of Spain through cinema. I jumped into this class after my other cine class was cancelled (despite my best efforts at recruiting people.)  Within five minutes of my first day of class we were watching rather graphically sexual scenes in Carmen, which the class had started the week before.  Our teacher is a large, sweaty man who has a perpetually angry tone, as if it's our fault that Carmen portrayed Spain as an exotic, superstitious, undeveloped country. The opening scenes take place in our university though, so that was cool.  Yesterday we watched several more interpretations of Carmen (a famous book / opera set in Sevilla, FYI) including "Beyonce as Carmen in a hip-hopera" which was hilariously awful.

La proyección histórica de las tres culturas - The history of Jews, Muslims and Christians in medieval Spain.  Interesting, though its also at 9 am, unfortunately.  Our teacher is the tinniest, skinniest little man I have ever seen.  He spent half an hour today going over the foods that the Arabs brought to Spain and got really excited when he started describing the magic of eating a freshly picked fig in the early morning on his uncle's farm. Adorable. He gives us a break halfway through our two-hour class, which seemed thoughtful until we figured out its mostly so he can go smoke outside.

La historia de la Unión Europea - Hopefully self-explanatory, if you are a semi-intelligent person. This is the seminar I am taking with JYS, which I actually really like.  We each have to present one of the countries of the European Union over the semester, and I went first last week with Croatia because I have a weird fascination with this country and apparently I like being a guinea pig. Fun facts: Croatia is the newest member of the EU and Croatians invented the modern tie.  Now you know more about Croatia than all your friends.

So far, the only homework I have had was to write a 1-page summary of a movie we watched on the Mediterranean diet, and boy was that the worst.  I think we have some articles to read for my cine class but everyone has been casually ignoring them and they have yet to be mentioned.

Last week Marie and I scored a teaching job!  Marta's best friend has three little kids (ages 11, 8 and 4) and she asked us if we wanted to come every week and speak English to them and get paid.  We thought oh bummer, it's too bad we're not better at English. Kidding, its the best job ever, we get paid for a skill that I could do in my sleep (if I talked in my sleep.. which I don't.. I don't think) and we get to hang out with cute kids!  Last week they fed us birthday cake and we colored with them and spoke Spanglish and got sent home with a party favor from the little boy's birthday party.  The two older girls go to a bilingual school, so they are way better than your average middle schooler in a foreign language class, though they definitely need lots of practice.  Today we went back for the second time and I hung out with Enrique, the baby.  Their mom instructed us to only speak English, which was basically impossible since Enrique is still learning to speak Spanish, and if I speak only English maybe he will pick up an accent by osmosis but he won't understand a word.  I did my best. So far what has stuck is 'blue' because it's his favorite color.  Marie and I both love our new job; it's so fun to experience another Sevillan family!

Speaking of families, Marie's parents were here earlier this week and were kind enough to take me out to dinner twice!  The first night we went to dinner with Juan Luis and Marta as well, and the whole night was a fun translation game for me and Marie as we tried to incorporate both the English speakers and Spanish speakers into the same conversations.  And I finally tried jamón Iberico which I am planning on smuggling back into the states. Can't wait for my own family to come visit in November!  Hi guys!

L to R: me, Marie, Fernando, Juan Luis, Marta,
Marie's dad, Marie's mom, Borja

Shoutout to everybody at NU for rocking it during homecoming!  We all wish we could have been there for the game!  I tried to live vicariously through the facebook statuses, pictures and snapchats.

Happy birthday, Dad!!  Wish I could have been there to go hike with you.

We've only gotten cooler in the past 20 years

Coming up next: the overview of my weekend in Barcelona in which I eat lots of chorizo, stare down some dead fish in the market and am sharply reminded how little I can function without sleep.  You'll have to wait for that one though because I'm still recovering and I'm off to bed.

Buenos noches.