22-M

It's kind of sad that the Spanish news has something to say almost every day (if not every) about what's going on in the US, but it takes a week for US newspapers to bother writing up a story about Spanish goings-on (this time, a week of protests in Puerta del Sol). Anyway, elections (for regional and local governments) take place today, so the protests will presumably stop after the results are announced.

Lanzarote: volcanoes and camels and craters, oh my!

This past weekend I went to the island of Lanzarote, one of the seven islands in the Canaries, which belong to Spain but are off the coast of northern Africa. Lanzarote, like the other islands, is pretty small, only 40 miles from the southernmost to the northernmost points, and a maximum of 15 miles wide. It's also completely volcanic, and several of the beaches are "volcanic" and have black sand, which I think is really cool. It's also really hot and really humid, although it gets very little annual rainfall.

Playa Grande in Puerto
del Carmen

On the first day we just explored the part of the island where we were staying, Puerto del Carmen. There are several "golden sand" beaches there and a lot of touristy restaurants and shops. Tourism is the main industry in Lanzarote, and there are a LOT of Germans and British people that go on vacation there (so much so that the airport signs are first in German, then English, and then Spanish). Anyway, we sat on the beach during the afternoon, and then after that we went to explore the area a bit more.

Really pretty volcanic crater in Timan-
faya National Park

On Saturday (the second day), we decided to do a day-long excursion that took us all over the island with a tour guide, which was really great because although there are buses on Lanzarote (called guaguas), they don't go everywhere. The tour bus first took us to el Golfo, a volcanic rock/sand beach with a sea-level crater filled with yellow-green water that gets its color from the algae in it. Then after that we went to Timanfaya National Park, were you can see all the volcanic mountains up close, which may sound boring but they are actually really pretty and many of them are lots of different colors. There's also a restaurant on top of one of the volcanoes (a semi-dormant one), and they cook their food primarily with the heat of the volcano. After that we went to a restaurant in a nearby town for lunch. We had potaje, a stew made of vegetables and chick peas, which was really good. Then we had fish with potatoes with the two sauces typical of the Canaries, mojo picon and mojo verde. The first one is red and spicy and the second is green and really garlicy. After lunch we drove through some of the vineyards on the island, which are much different from what most people probably picture as vineyards. The vines grow really close to the ground and grow in the soil that is below the black lava sand/rocks. Apparently the wine industry is really challenging because of the lack of rainfall in Lanzarote. Severe heat waves as well as rain too early in

Vineyards

 the season can more or less destroy the crop. We stopped at a winery where we were able to try a couple of different wines, which I wasn't a huge fan of (they had a strange, gasoline-like flavor to them). But apparently the wines of Lanzarote have a good reputation (as well as a certain goat cheese, which I sadly did not have the change to try). After that we drove up towards the northern part of the island, first through the Valley of a Thousand Palms, where supposedly in the 17th and 18th centuries (I think), the townspeople used to plant one palm tree for every girl who was born and two for every boy (how rude). As a result, the area has the greatest density of palm trees on the island. Next we stopped at a lookout point on the northwest coast, where you can see another small island, La Graciosa, which belongs to Lanzarote. Unfortunately it was a really hazy day so the view wasn't too clear. After that we went to Jameos del Agua, which is basically a volcanic cave. That was the last main thing we saw on the excursion. Over the course of the day we saw various works of art/architecture that Cesar Manrique, a famous architect and artist from Lanzarote. Some of the things he designed were the restaurant on top of the volcano in Timanfaya National Park, various statues, (at the entrance to the park, at Jameos del Agua, etc.), a huge cactus garden (which we didn't get to see), windmills, and Monument to the Peasant. All of his works are pretty interesting, although some are really abstract (in particular the Monument to the Peasant).

On Sunday, our last day, we decided to go to the town of Playa Blanca, where the beaches have practically white sand (looked more like normal sand to me, but hey). It's also right north of another island in the Canaries, Fuerteventura (although we didn't go there). We spent most of the day on the beach or walking around the town. Unfortunately I only have a few pictures of Playa Blanca because that's when my camera pretty much full-out died...but oh well.

Que bien te lo montas

Well, the semester is over. I turned in a paper Monday, took one exam yesterday morning, and had one more this morning. It's kind of a big relief because I'm anxious and looking forward to getting back to my thesis, which I haven't really been able to give my full attention to much at all this semester. (Right now I have the rough draft for one of the 4 chapters done.)

plain

cinnamon raisin

Semana Santa was a great trip (London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Toledo), although I would really like to go back to London, there's a lot we saw there but a lot we didn't have time for. In other news, lately I've been trying to cope with the lack of bagels in this country, but due to my lack of success with that, I found a pretty good bagel recipe online and I've made them twice now, the first time cinnamon raisin and the second time just plain ones. Maybe if I wind up hating teaching next year I'll just open up my own bagel shop.

Lastly, on Friday I leave to go to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands for the weekend with two friends. Then it's just me and the thesis 'til the end of June...

Los menores en Cataluña desde la transición: el uso del catalán y del castellano

Well, the semester is wrapping up and with that comes (for the MA students in Madrid), the graduate student symposium. Basically it is a huge conference in which every student has to prepare a 15-20 minute presentation about his or her thesis up until that point in time. It was organized into three sessions over the course of five hours, with presentations going on in three different rooms during each session.

Before the presentations. Nah, not nervous at alllll.

My presentation went pretty well. It was on the longer side, around 20 minutes, but after I started I wasn't nervous at all. All of the other presentations that I saw were really interesting. People are researching a really wide variety of topics, from linguistic topics such as Spanish versus English terms of endearment to cultural and literary topics like post-modernization and the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao. My project looks to compare the the language uses in Cataluña between the younger people who have grown up since the end of Francoism in the late 70s and the older generations of people who grew up before then. (For those who don't know, in Cataluña there are two co-official languages, Spanish and Catalan, although over the past 30 or so years the people and government of Cataluña has put forth a lot of efforts to try to make Catalan the more politically and culturally dominant language.)

Brittany's a little rebel and was taking pictures 

during people's presentations. My advisor is

the guy sitting there...I don't think he liked my 

presentation much because I read too

much and didn't "improvisar."

Brittany and me!

Brittany and me with our mentor, José Pazó

Anyway, now that that's all over, we have only one week of classes left! I have one 20 or so page paper to write and two exams to take, then it's just thesis from then on through the end of June. I can't believe how fast this year has gone by, but this semester has been really busy so I guess that speeds things up.

I'll be posting my pictures soon from my spring break travels with Chris (we went to London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona, and various places in and around Madrid). For now I need to go to sleep and start pondering that 20-page paper that I need to start tomorrow...

[Photo credits go to Kat and Brittany, as I was too lazy to pull out my stubborn, semi-broken camera and take some of my own.]

Not an April Fools joke...

I heard that the Boston area got some snow last night so I just wanted to make you all feel better about that by telling you that its currently 77 degrees here!

T minus < 2 days

60 degrees on December 13th, I can dig that :)

One final exam down, one to go, plus one presentation and one already completed paper to be turned in.

T minus 6 days and approximately 21 hours

Well, well, it's been a while now, hasn't it? Where to start...

Not much happened during the rest of November. (How is it December already??) Our MA coordinator arranged a "study break/end of the semester dinner/alternative Thanksgiving dinner/anything else you want to call it" dinner on Thanksgiving at a nice restaurant near school. The food was not Thanksgiving-style, but it was incredibly good.

However, to resolve this lack-of-turkey feeling, one of my friends and I arranged a real Thanksgiving dinner (slash pre-Christmas party since none of us will have time for that between finals and going home for break) for us and our group of friends. Problem is that my friend doesn't have an oven...so I made a chicken (my senora's oven is tiny and I'm pretty sure a turkey - if I was willing to buy and attempt cooking one - would never fit in there), stuffing, sweet potatoes, and apple and pumpkin pies. Everyone else pitched in the other dishes and beverages. I learned later that apparently you can buy pre-made pie crust here (according to my senora, but I don't know exactly what this crust is like), but since I didn't know that I made pie crust from scratch, which actually isn't that difficult. Anyway, the food was good and it was a fun time.

Next up, last week - get ready, you're not going to believe this - it SNOWED. Granted, not a single flake stuck to the ground, and there were no snowmen to be built. However, it flurried for most of the day, and this is a rarity for Madrid. We beat you, Boston!

Now, if all this Thanksgiving and snow fun weren't enough, we just had a six-day long weekend. I know what you're thinking, but come on, we had class on Thanksgiving. We deserved extra days off. Anyway, this past Monday and today (Wednesday) were Spanish holidays (Constitution Day and some other religious but not really celebrated holiday having to do with the Virgen, as most Spanish holidays do), and it didn't make sense to squeeze class in on Tuesday. However, it's finals time, so I spent most of this past "weekend" working on two papers and studying for one of two final exams that I have. Fun, right?

Originally my senora was going to be gone this long weekend, she was going to Belgium with a friend. However, the air traffic controllers at Madrid's airport, Barajas, decided to go on strike last Friday and didn't return to work until Saturday afternoon. Flights were cancelled and delayed and all that chaos that you might expect ensued. Long story short, my poor senora wasn't able to go to Belgium, but she did wind up taking a day trip to Valladolid instead (I still felt really bad for her, but she didn't seem horribly disappointed). I'm still not exactly sure what the air traffic controllers were on strike for, because I read and heard on the news that some of them make an absurd amount of money. The government got all involved and threatened to arrest them if they didn't get back to work, which evidently worked. I can't imagine being that unhappy with a job that you would purposefully screw over you entire country by ruining so many people's holiday travel plans (this long weekend is a very popular vacation time). Anyway, if you're interested in reading more, here are some articles:

CNN
Telegraph
Some news source I've never heard of before
Daily Mail

Two of those articles are from British papers...the British were pretty angry about this situation because they too love to vacation in Spain.

Anyway, I think that's about it for now. At this point, I've got one paper to finish and two tests next week, and then I'm home free next Wednesday!

Salamanca: la ciudad dorada (the golden city)

Last Saturday, two friends and I took a day trip to Salamanca, a small city a few hours west of Madrid. The weather was perfect and it is probably my favorite Spanish city that I've visited so far (aside from Madrid, of course). It's possibly most famous for its university, which is the oldest in Spain and one of the oldest in Europe. The old university buildings, built in the 15th century, have been converted into a museum that tourists can visit, but the modern university is still running and gives the city a sort of college-town feel to it.

The cathedrals of Salamanca from across the Rio Tormes

Se me olvidó

I completely forgot in my last post to mention that on Saturday night in Sevilla, a couple of friends and I went to see flamenco (a type of music and dance) that Andalucia is so well known for. It was pretty good, but we got there at the end, so we only saw the last part. I took a few videos with my camera, though, which I've posted below. The first two are kind of crappy quality and the last one is really short because I finally discovered a way to make the video slightly better quality, but apparently that comes at a price.

Córdoba and Sevilla

So NYU takes us grad students on one weekend-long trip each semester. Last weekend we all went to Cordoba and Sevilla, two major cities in the region of Andalucía (mainly most of the southern part of Spain). Next semester we'll go to Basque Country (Bilbao and San Sebastian) - which I'm really really excited about, but thats months away.

Anyway, we left before the crack of dawn on Friday to drive by bus to Cordoba. There we saw a few of the main attractions - the Roman style bridge, the mosque-turned-cathedral, and also the Jewish quarter with one of the oldest synagogues still standing in Europe. These buildings also represent the coexistence of three cultures/religions in the Iberian Peninsula at the time (under Islamic rule): Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. (This all came to an end in 1492 when the Islamic government surrendered to the Catholic kings, Isabel and Ferdinand.) Aaanyway, I'd seen this stuff all before when I was last in Spain (with NYU, too), and I wish we'd had more time to see other things in Cordoba (example: the Alcazar), which was the capital and a pretty important city during Islamic rule and the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, we continued on to Sevilla after a few hours in Cordoba. That night we had free time to do whatever, since we got there at about 8 p.m., but since we'd all been up so early in the morning, we just got dinner and went to bed.

Saturday was a packed day. We started by visiting the Alcazar, or the Royal Palace, which is HUGE. The buildings themselves, along with some courtyards, are pretty extensive, and the gardens keep going on and on as well. I really liked the gardens - there are a lot of flowers, plants, trees, etc., and there's also a labyrinth! Pretty sweet, huh? After visiting the alcazar, we saw the cathedral. Now, this is a very nice cathedral, inside and out (though still not as pretty as the one in Segovia), but we were in there for about two hours, listening to our professors go on and on about lord knows what (pun semi-intended), including about half an hour inside the Royal Chapel (which we got to visit even though it's not usually open to the public). I like visiting churches, but I'm still going to need a while before I can stand to see another...

After the cathedral and lunch, we visited the Hospital de la Caridad, which was, yes, a hospital that was built in I think the 15th century. I think we visited it because the architecture (in particular of the church in the hospital) is Baroque style, but quite frankly I was so tired and bored at this point that I don't really remember much of what we were told there. (And also, for some reason old buildings that were once hospitals creep me out a bit.) Then we passed by the Torre de Oro and the bullfighting ring (one of the more important ones in Spain), where we were told about bullfighting in Spain...fun.

Then free time, thank god. A friend and I walked through the Barrio Santa Cruz for a bit. Later one we went to see the Plaza de Espana, which is really pretty and probably would have been equally nice during the day also. It was built in 1928, along with the Parque de Maria Luisa that surrounds it, for a world's fair the following year (Ibero-American Exposition of 1929).

Sunday we visited a convent, the Convento de Santa Paula, which is still in use but open to the public at some hours of the day. I think it was originally built in the 15th century, and there's a little museum inside that shows its history. Interesting, I guess...not sure I fully understand the point of going there but it was definitely interesting. After visiting the convent, it was back on the road for the six-hour drive back to Madrid...