It can get cold in Spain?

Its December! Its cold.  I'm cold.  Our heater is temporarily broken so I've been packing on the layers and spending much more time in bed than I should. For some reason I had figured that Spain doesn't really get that cold.  I was wrong, when I visited Spain two years earlier in February, it was Burma in comparison to Germany, but I was also nearer to the coast, apparently here in the center during the winter months it stays around freezing.  Not cold enough for snow of course, but cold enough that I'm mad that there isn't any.

I went to El Greco's house! Lovely place

Michaela and I went to Toledo!  Its only about an hour or so from Madrid by bus, so it makes a lovely day trip.  As you can see, Toledo was wonderfully picturesque, all the buildings a varying shade of terracotta, and cobblestone streets. A very old city, Toledo used to be the capital of Spain, and is particularly interesting because of it was a city where Jews, Christans, and Arabs all lived together for centuries, which spurned a odd mix of architecture that you can still see today. Toledo is famous for its Mazapan, which I think is like Marzipan, but the difference was never clear to me.  There might be a difference in the sugar to almond ratio.  Michaela and I were rather confounded when looking to buy Mazapan, for there seemed about 100 different types. The city was beautiful, but my favorite part of it was by the river that surrounds Toledo.  We spent much of our time there.  There were old arched bridges, and crumbling stone buildings, the whole thing seemed much like a fairy-tale, or at least something that would inspire a fairy-tale.  I was so happy to hear how silent it was. Toledo also has a big sword reputation, and lots of armor. 
  I went and saw the Life of Pi in theaters!(English of course) absolutely amazing, hopefully this weekend I'll go to the Hobbit. I think Spanish like to go to the cinema more often than Americans, its quite common here. In a week I take the train to Germany!

FAIRY-TALE LAND!

 Its been a while! Life is going, faster than I expected, and I feel like I'm in a pretty good rhythm now. A few weeks ago there was a huelga general, general strike.  It was enormous, most people didn't go to work, didn't shop,and there were thousands on the street, grafitti everywhere.  The kids stayed home from school so I didn't go to the protests.

 I found a library! Oh joy! It has a substantial English section that should last me a few months, I read a lot here, for I spend a lot of time on the metro. I also met a Canadian who looked exactly like Tintin! He says that he doesn't try, but I don't believe him.

 

The other weekend I went with a friend to The Sierra, the mountains around Madrid.  We went on a good hike, it was very cold, and there were a lot of people on the trail.  It felt fantastic to get away from the cold and smog of the city. I am going to return this Sunday, my Australian friend hasn't seen snow since she was 6, so I'm hoping that there will be some.

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 Christmas time is in full swing now, there are very odd Spanish Christmas markets that seem to exclusively sell small nativity figurines and crazy wigs and hats.  The only food you can buy at them is potato chips or sunflower seeds.  Very different from the German Christmas Markets, which I love. The street decorations are also...interesting.

 A  American grocery store! The prices are quite ridiculous, but you can buy peanut butter, cake mix, baking powder, airheads, cupcakes, marshmallows, and Jones!  I have also been expanding my food experience, I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time, as well as brandy and macaroons.   

Godzilla goes to the opera!

I bought myself a blue christmas cactus

 As great as Christmas would be  in Spain, it just doesn't coincide in my head. Many of the au-pairs head home for Christmas, but its just too far and expensive for me. I am headed to the snow in Germany.  I have a good friend who lives in Dortmund (not the most beautiful city, but its near Cologne)and will be spending Christmas with their family. They are Polish and some of the most hospitable people I know, so it should be lovely! 

Morocco!

Stray Cat sitting on the tombs

We ended up buying way too many of these

Hello one and all!  To put it lightly, I'm exhausted.  My friend Michaela and I went to Marrakech, Morocco this weekend.  There was a holiday on Friday, so we grabbed the opportunity and got a flight.  Friday we hopped on the plane, after about 3 hours of waiting, lines and security of course, and had a two hour flight.  This is the first time I have been in a Muslim country, so this was very new and exciting for me. We had reserved a hostel in the medina (old part of the city) close to the Jemaa al-Fnaa, the largest square in Africa.  The bus landed us here, and by golly it felt like the biggest square in Africa. My senses were bombarded.  People everywhere, motorbikes almost running you over, horses pulling carriages, disorder, everyone trying to sell you things, beautiful colors and lights everywhere, there were a million things to look out for, and a million things to see, however we had a mission to find our hostel. This was rather like a treasure hunt, as street names are nonexistent we followed directions like turn left at the beautiful petal shaped doorway, go 45 seconds and turn into the alley after the orange seller on the right, til after the carpet-seller you come across a mosque-like building. We felt very proud after we found it, the hostel was absolutely beautiful, wonderful decorations and colors everywhere, a fantastic terrace, and of course, Moroccan mint tea with loads of sugar anytime we wanted it. We immediately went back to the square to explore. The Jemaa el-Fnaa is a rather touristy area, and there are boutiques selling everything and anything at a lovely inflated touristy price, but the first thing we did was have a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, which we had heard rave reviews about.  It was good.

It was hard fighting the urge to adopt it

 The square was surrounded by a labyrinth of traditional berber markets called souks.  There are areas dedicated to certain crafts or items such as leatherworking, spices, silver, etc, but its mostly all sort of jumbled together. The food from the vendors was quite yummy, we tried tanjine, some sort of couscous, snails, soup and had lots of nuts and dried fruits.  There was fantastic fruit to be had.  In the main square you couldn't walk two feet without being "invited" to come and eat at a stall.  They (for there was usually about 3 at a time) would use whatever means necessary to get you to come, promising free food, cheap prices, and calling you pretty and skinny.  Being young, blond tourists, Michaela and I attracted an amount of attention, especially since virtually all of the workers were men.  Most of this attention was purely to sell us things, though I did get a proposal! 

 The next day we went to the palace, but strangely, we could not find a way inside, we would walk into some portion of the wall, where a few guards would yell at us, then wander in another direction and repeat the process.  Very confusing.  I still don't know if or how people can visit it. Our next venture, the Saadian tombs, was more fruitful, per usual, there was a good helping of fantastic architecture and mosiac work.  Beautiful. 

I was amazed that when the dark fell, and things calmed down, the city was very quiet, a welcome change from the 6am parties and traffic of Spain.  You could also see the stars!  

We spent a fair amount of time in the souks, doing a bit of early Christmas shopping, and by the end I feel like I was getting fairly comfortable with haggling, and was beginning to find it fun, though exhausting. Michaela and I became enamored by the chameleons that they would sell for keeping a house bug free, and I considered trying to sneak it into Spain, but sadly decided against it.  Someday I will get one.  There were actually animals all over Marrakech, with about as many stray cats as people, turtles on the roof, people selling pictures with monkeys, snake charmers, chameleons, stray dogs, not to mention all the flies.  A very lively place. By the end of our long weekend in Morocco, we were exhausted, and surprisingly relieved to return to Spain, where there are street names, where we weren't tourists, and where we could function normally.  Now its two days later and I think I'm sick with food poisoning.  Great. I'm rather exhausted from all the travelling, and am looking forward to doing nothing this weekend. 

Just another incredible ceiling

Norway!

What a past few weeks its been! I traveled to Norway! The night before I left was Halloween, which is not as large of a holiday here, but still exciting.  In Europe you dress up it must be as something scary, not just anything like we do in the states.  As I was waking up at about 6 the next morning, I didn't go out to any of the many Halloween parties, but we did have trick-or treaters, and I showed Jose how to carve a pumpkin!  It was his very first,and I could tell he was quite impressed. Carving pumpkins is without a doubt my favorite part of Halloween. 

    

  

We carved Halloween Vegetables!

Aashild cut my bangs!

Drawing Katie's Tat

The next morning I started off for Oslo, my flight was out of Barcelona, so I had a 6 hour car-share with some lovely people.  Good flight and I finally made it to Oslo at 8 that night, where my fantastic  friend Katie was waiting for me.  She has been studying in Norway this semester, and we were so happy to see each other, thousands of miles from our homeland, its hard to explain the odd feeling of relief.  We made our way through the cold rain to our friend Aashild house. Aashild is a Norwegian friend we both know from Holden, and she is studying medicine in Oslo.   We had a lovely evening, in which Aashild cut bangs for me and Katie actually got a tattoo! Of a Orca whale that I drew.  Aashild is practiced at giving tattoos, and it turned out great. That night we also went to go jump in the ocean. I had been craving cold water for a good two months , and it was fantastic to jump into the atlantic, it was a fairly populated area, and we got more than a few stares as we stripped down to our swimsuits.  An eventful first night to say the least.  The next day I had lunch with some norwegian relatives, on my mother's side.  I met my third cousins and my second(?) aunt?  We had a fantastic time, and got along very well, they are lovely people.  I hope to return at some point to visit them and possibly meet the many more relatives we have scattered around Norway.  I am realizing more and more the importance of family ties as I go through life.

Katie's Tattoo!

Aashild!

A lovely coincidence, Restaurant Marrakesh in Oslo.

My 3rd Cousins and some sort of Aunt

Before Swimming!

After!

When planning this trip with Katie, we planned that we would travel to somewhere in Norway, but she would surprise me with where and why, and take care of all the preparations.  Sweet deal!  I was very excited, and love being surprised.  We boarded a train, and she informed me that we were headed to Stavanger!  Where?  Stavanger!  Ok, Stavanger is Norway's fourth largest city situated on the west coast.  The great thing about Stavanger right now is that there is the world's annual street art festival.  COOL!  I am a huge fan of street art (not name tagging with spray paint mind you), making ordinary, everyday things interesting and beautiful.  Needless to say I was very happy.  We arrived in Stavanger the next morning, and checked into our lovely B and B, and proceeded to explore.  Its really a lovely city, everything is beautiful and organized.  Our favourite was the old town, where there were small 200 year old houses lining cobblestone streets. They were all whitewashed and with flowers and plants everywhere.  We went to the exhibition for street art, and that was amazing, not to mention all of the fantastic works you could find all around the city.  We saw many, and got lost a lot wandering around.   We also took a ferry tour of the fjords, I was struck by how much it reminded me of Lake Chelan in Washington.  Norway in general was ridiculously beautiful, a bit like a dream now.  I had  a wonderful two days in Stavanger with Katie, and we boarded the night train back to Oslo.  My last morning in Norway I went to the Vigeland Park, which I absolutely loved, what a prolific artist!  It was and incredible sculpture park with a lifetime of works by Gustav Vigeland, they were all of people and they were just amazing.  My time in Norway was great, it was so interesting visiting the place I have heard so much about.  I intend to return at some point, hopefully for a much longer time, and to explore the nature more.  This next weekend I'm heading to Morocco!  Blog about that soon!

The Best Coffeeshop in the Universe

 

Vigeland Park