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

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    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!