Segovia Y La Granja

              So I need to explain something very unique to the city that I live in.  In Alcalá de Henares, every bar that you go to serve something called Tapas.  In Spanish the word “tapa” means a lid, top, or seal.  The meaning of the word is distorted a little in this context because whenever you buy any drink, anything, they give you a small meal for free.  Between all the bars in town they compete for who can offer the best tapas to the customers.  It is a big deal, and it is actually a great deal for us being the customers.  So a group of us went and got tapas for our first time.  We each got a little soda, and got to order something for dinner.  I ordered an ensalada de longosta or “lobster salad.” Very interesting, it tasted just fine, and I drank my soda, and I got it all for €2,50 or a little more than $3!  Pretty cool.  We did that on Thursday evening, then went to the Young Single Adult Institute and studied the book of Esther in the Old Testament.  That was a little difficult to understand, first because I haven’t studied Esther in several years, and second because our teacher spoke very quickly and honestly was a little strange.  

Ensalada de Longosta

                

                Also, interesting to me, they collect garbage in a unique way here.  They have these medium sized Dumpster bins on the streets everywhere and people just walk over and throw out the garbage.  No individual trash bins, or alleys or even a dumpster for an apartment complex, just a whole bunch in the street.

              

Trash bins in the street

 

               On Friday we had our first excursion of the program.  We went to a smaller town called Segovia.  Segovia is about two hours away from Madrid in a more mountainous area.  On our way up we went through several tunnels, one of which lasted several minutes.  It was a really big deal because we all tried to hold our breath while going through it and nobody could make it!  It was a very long tunnel!  Segovia has one of the famous roman aqueducts.  It is so huge and just looks so strong and sturdy!  No kind of concrete is used in the structure, all just stone cut and locked together.  The aqueduct was actually still in use even until the 1930s!  There for it has been well cared for in the last several centuries and is in great condition still.

Getting on the bus

The Aqueduct

 

Katie Willis and I  at the top!

                    The holes were made to be able to grasp the blocks                  with giant tweezers and lift them up

   The city was built on a hill and so everything inside the city leads up to the castle.  The city was so cool! Cobble stone roads, beautiful architecture and extremely detailed designs in the exterior of almost all of the buildings.  At the top of the hill, just before the castle there is a huge Roman Catholic Cathedral.  Like ginormous cathedral of late gothic design, that was built bigger and bigger over three to four hundred years.  It was a cold day, and we stopped and bought fresh baguettes from una panaderia “bakery” and they were delicious!

Looking down on on the city

Segovian seal

Amazing exterior designs

The cathedral of Segovia

                Next we were able take a short tour of the castle.  Built so that all but one side is surrounded by cliffs, and the other side has a 100 ft deep mote in front of it with a bridge.  Pretty cool.  There was so much gold in the castle!  All the ceilings of the kings chambers and his families chambers were done with very intricate designs all leafs with gold. I show a picture below were one of the ceilings they used over 60 kg of gold on the ceiling!  In perspective that is 132 lbs or 2112 oz and at $1600 an oz today, that ceiling is worth well over $3 million!  Holy Hannah!  That is an expensive ceiling!  But that is the thing, all the ceilings were gold leafed! That is a lot of wealth!  That had some very cool displays of knights armor, and we got to up to the top of the central tower where you can see for miles and miles around.  It was a pretty cool escalera de caracol “spiral staircase.”

The Segovian Castle

Inside, some of the amazing crown moldings

Gold ceilings

Up to the tower

                After leaving Segovia, we went to La Granja, or The Royal Palace of La Granja de San Ildefonso.  A summer home/palace formerly used for the kings of Spain.  I can’t begin to describe to you how intricately designed and how big it is! There were so many rooms! And every single room had vaulted ceiling with various different molding and murals on the ceilings, and sculptures, tapestries, paintings and anything else that might be a priceless piece of art in history.  Some of the tapestries there were 30 ft high and 60 feet long!  And they were like paintings! So many details and stories being told, they were just absolutely fantastic!  Then the property outside in the back yard was incredible! Over 1500 acres of land with intricate fountains and pools that spread several hundred yards, gardens, trees, a maze, benches, and an orchard.  It was incredible.  It is too bad that we are in early spring or my pictures would have much more color and beauty to them.  Plus we got some pretty heavy rain as we were leaving and we all got pretty wet!  But it was such a cool experience and an awesome start to all of our amazing excursions!  

This is what it looks like in the spring

I Love Spain!

Alcalá de Henares

    Well I have been here for a little over three days now!  There is so much to see!  Like I mentioned before, it is a beautiful city but plagued by trash and graffiti.  Our host family says that it should be cleaned up and controlled, but the city gave up when they tried the first time because whenever they cleaned, more would come.  So below I have included several pictures of graffiti.   

Graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti

Graffiti

  So now I am going to take you on a walk through town for a bit.  If anybody has ever visited Boston, try to imagine an even older Europeanized Boston, only with fewer people and you can imagine something similar to Alcalá de Henares, which means "Citadel On The River Henares".  It is a town of 200,000 people, and has been built and rebuilt many times since the first century BC!  Its and old city! It is located about 20 miles outside of Madrid, the capital of Spain.  While the center of the city, where my university "Alcalinguas" is located, has been preserved in its historic state, the outskirts of the town have been hap-hazardly expanded and built with no sense of efficiency or order.  Hence, there are rotundas or roundabouts (however you call them), at nearly every intersection.  It is amazing that there are so few accidents!  At one intersection that I saw, there were seven different directions of traffic and they all seem to move right through the rotunda and still stop for pedestrians!  Most people do walk, and actually, pedestrians really have the right of way everywhere.  As long as you are semi polite in your crossing, and it isn´t like a huge street, all the cars will stop for you without getting angry, and without honking their horn either.  Otherwise you wait for the cross walk symbols and then cross at the designated time.

Typical Roundabout

    As I commented in my previous blog, everything is made of brick and stone.  All the buildings, side-walks, fences, park walks, even some of the streets.  Some of the brick is newer but most of it looks like it is ancient, dating back well over a hundred years even.  Even at my university, they have taken the old building and basically tacked up the electrical cabling to the ceiling so that it could be modernized.  The brick on the outside is very old and worn.

Beautiful Walk Ways

Brick Side walk

    Most of the streets are lined with trees, some newer and smaller, and others ancient and ginormous ones.  Many have even been pruned and tied in such a way that the branches grow across the walkway and form a canopy that provides shade in the summer time.  Most places around this part of town use an interesting system for a drinking fountain.  It’s a double sided faucet that is lower to the ground with a pan to catch the water.  This can be used to fill up your water bottle or to let your dog drink out of the pan.

Covered Walk Way In The Summer

Water Fountain

    There are also so many parks here!  On my way to school I pass by at least six and I only live fifteen minutes away!  I think because no one has a backyard really, and how they all seem to have dogs, the parks are where they go to walk the dog and get outside.  Most of the parks are well kept for the most part, and there are always people there. But due to the relatively high population of dogs in the area, and the apparent lack of yard space, there is dog poop everywhere!  You have to be careful where you step!  It is kind of like the geese in Chicago!  They just go where ever they want and no one wants to clean up after them! It seems like the people here really enjoy just a simple life style.  They are happy and content with walking the dog, going to the park, walking to the store and sitting and talking on a bench.  The city is so quiet.  No airplanes, not a lot of cars, not a ton of traffic, just the sounds of people, birds, and the crosswalk signals. 

The Cities Attempt to Clean Up the Crap!

Plaza de Cervantes Again

Typical Park

Add caption

    Yesterday I walked home from school a different way than I usually do.  Lately I try to take a few different ways each day so that I can see more of the city.  It is not like I don’t have the time.  Anyway, on my way home I stumbled across this old, little, beat up, dirt soccer field.  I have included the picture below, but I stopped and watched the kids play.  They were probably eight or nine years old, and every single one of them could handle the ball better than I could.  They were using their chests and their heads and their foot work with both the left and the right was marvelous!  I just stood there and watched for like fifteen minutes.  Unbelievable, but I guess a lot of kids in the united states can play football or baseball really well before they turn ten years old. 

Entrance to Soccer Field

Dirt Field

    So a couple more random things: On Tuesday night we met up with the young single adults here in Alcalá and had FHE with them.  That was pretty fun, four of the five guys there had mission calls, with one RM and 2 of the five girls had served missions and one has her mission call right now.  Pretty cool.  that was at the institute building located near the Plaza de Cervantes, and went back again on Wednesday night to watch the Real Madrid-Bayer (Munich) game with some of the single adults.  Real Madrid lost! After overtime and penalty shots!  Ridiculous!  It was interesting because they went into overtime but the score was 2 to 1, and so we asked why they game kept going and it is because they use an interesting scoring system here, where each goal counts as a certain amount of points for your team in the league, and it is worth a different amount if the game is away or at home and stuff.  And so Bayer was tied with Real Madrid even though the score was 2 to 1 in favor of Bayer.  It was very interesting, especially because we went into overtime and penalty shots too. 

   At this fútbol game, our friends brought out potato chips and pizza.  Guess what flavors? The chips were ham and garlic flavored! Very strange but they tasted good.  The pizza was creamy with white sauce.  Again both tasted fine, just not what we are accustomed too in the United States.

    We started class on Wednesday. I have one class a day Monday thru Thursday.  Just two classes repeated twice a week.  I don’t think that they will be very difficult.  At least that is my feeling so far.  It is really cool to be in class and be taught by native Spanish speakers especially ones so educated.  I am studying the introduction to Spanish Literature and Iberian Civilization (History of Spain).  It is pretty interesting; I think I am going to have a great six more weeks!

Tomorrow we have a day trip to Segovia then Monday we go to Leon, then Wednesday to Barcelona!  (Next week is a holiday)  Its going to be a packed week and it will be awesome!  Expect some amazing pictures!

Travel To Spain

 No matter what I do, whenever I have to catch a flight my alarm does not go off and I get behind.  That is what happened Sunday morning. I set my alarm Saturday night and was going to get up and eat breakfast, but when uncle Byde came down fifteen minutes after I was supposed to get up, I had no time!  Luckily it all worked out and I got to the airport with plenty of time and got on my flight.  I even had an apple in my backpack that I ate for breakfast.  I know the Lord will always make things work out if I can just continue in perseverance and diligence until the end. 

I had an amazing start to my study abroad that Sunday morning!  Going through security, there was a latino woman in front of me going through the radar things that scan for bombs and stuff, and after you walk though you have to get padded down in the areas the machine says you might have a bomb.  Well the poor woman was being told by the airport security that she needed to take off her belt and for the life of her this woman could not figure out what she was talking about.  So I stepped in and asked the women if she spoke Spanish, which she gratefully responded “Si!”  Immediately the airport security asked me to tell her that she needed to take off her belt and that they had to pat her down where the screen said etc.  So I was explaining all these things to her and was humbled by how little airport terminology I knew!  But in the end both women were very grateful that I had helped.  It turned out that the latino woman was from Argentina and was a member of the church.  She had come to the states to see one of her daughters get married.  Pretty cool start to my Spanish immersion for this spring term.

It was a long day for me.  I flew from Salt Lake to Denver then to Philadelphia, then to Madrid.  Luckily I slept during each flight.  But each lay-over was delayed a certain amount of time and each one was located a terminal and several gates away! It can be a little nerve racking when you have to catch an international flight!  In Philadelphia we actually boarded the plane and were stuck just sitting there for an hour and a half while they fixed the air conditioning!  It was very uncomfortable.  But on the plus side, the vast majority of the plane was full of Spanish residents that had all come to the states for a work convention.  I was able to talk to many and really be able to practice my Spanish and learn from them, even before getting to Spain!  We made some friends that have told us to call them after we get settled in so that they can give us some great activities to do in Madrid, and one woman that basically talked to me the whole flight over, invited me and a few others over to dinner at some point during our program.  Another man said that he had a very good friend that is a practicing civil engineer and that he would probably love to speak with me and answer any questions that I had!  There is just something incredible about all Spanish speaking cultures that I have come to know.  They are all so kind, humble and friendly.  Anyone of these people would have taken the coat off their back and given it to us if we had need of it.  What causes this mindset in these people? There were probably 35 or 40 natives surrounding us that all seemed to know each other and talk like they had been friends for a long time.  It is just amazing to me.

            I also had my third in flight meal ever.  It was actually very satisfying given that all I had eaten was an apple for breakfast and by the time that we left Philadelphia it was already 8:30pm!  I think I would have eaten anything!  Luckily the international flight was not completely full and there was a little bit of extra space to spread out a little and actually get some “decent” sleep.  

Our international plane - airbus 320

When we finally got in, we had to wait at the airport for another two hours because the last group of kids in our program got lost in the airport and we could not find them!  But eventually, we got on our bus, and it took us to Alcalá, a suburb to Madrid, and where our university Alcalinguas is located.  There we met our host families at the Plaza de Cervantes. 

Plaza de Cervantes

 My host is a single woman named Teresa Escuderos.  She is pretty easy to get along with, but definitely lives different that either me or my roommate are used to.  Very small town house type home, and everything spotless, and placed a specific way.  She has a lot of systems to get things done, and set times for meals, and bedtime.  Not our bedtime, but hers and we must stay very quiet when she heads to bed at about 10pm so we will have to learn to be careful.

Waiting at the airport

Getting on the bus

Our Host's Home while we are in Alcalá

The Neighborhood

The sky here is so beautiful and clean!  It seems so clear and pure!  There is such gorgeous landscape and sunshine!  But there is also a lot of graffiti and trash that doesn’t get cleaned up.  I feel like everything is in slower motion here.  The people walk, drive, clean, read and do everything very relaxed and unhurried.  It is a very interesting phenomenon that I will continue to look into and learn of.

Downtown, Alcalá

Besides the graffiti though I am amazed at how many parks there are!  Every block seems to have another one.  All with plants and benches, many with playgrounds, and some still with fields for soccer and such.  Every building you see has brick architecture.  Every single one, different patterns and stones sometimes but always bricks.  Even the sidewalks are made of bricks and stones.  Many of the streets are paved with bricks.  And I would say that over 60% of all the cars here are basically the same small coupe/sedan style that can practically fit into any little gap between cars.  It is actually kind of funny to watch them parallel park cause they actually tap the car behind them with their bumper and then pull forward, sometimes knocking the car in front of them too!  I'll try to get a video so I can show you.  It is kind of funny. 

My roommate and I are jet lagged and tired but we are going to have a fantastic time here!  Orientation is tomorrow and classes start Wednesday.  Then we leave for Segovia on Friday morning!