Def should probably be sleeping right now (12:06 here) butttt writing this post. Today I went to the Lladro Factory, which manufactures all the Lladro porcelain and is the only factory in the entire world...and it just happens to be located in Valencia. They showed us the process to make one simple piece. It's ridiculous. The people who make them have to be trained for 3 years before they are allowed to work on even the simplest pieces. It's really too bad they wouldn't let us take pictures inside the room because it was really neat. and for anyone who hasn't seen Lladro pieces (which I really hadn't so I'm betting you haven't either) they are gorgeous. The pictures really don't do them justice. For example we saw the woman making flowers. She made every single one of them by hand. Amazing. I really liked one that was a flower cart. Unfortunately it was a few thousand euros. NBD of course compared to the one that was 120,000 euros. Let's not even try and think about what that costs in american dollars. Luckily for those of us who are at times more frugal, they have a locked other store where they have the "defective" pieces at lower prices. Many of them did not have flowers, sadly, but they had some cool stuff. I really want to go back next session.

Today I met my intercambio, Andrea, in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento. I think my spanish has improved soooo much more than I expected it to because we basically talked fluently in spanish for 40 minutes. Nonstop. I mean she translated some words for me, but still. Impressive I must say.

Yesterday I went to the Cathedral for the thousandth time, but this time for the tour and the Holy Grail. Sooo the Valencian Cathedral is basically REALLY legit. It has the relic arm of San Vicente Martir (ironic that it's in the Cathedral because the church dedicated to him is literally 50 yards away) and none other than the HOLY GRAIL. The actual Holy Grail. I feel so accomplished that I have seen it. Who would think that it's in Valencia? I forget the reason that it's here, but I bought books on it from the Nun in the bookstore. She was nice. I like Nuns. Also there are just random works of Fransisco Goya hanging in the Cathedral, no big deal. He wasn't important at all. Its basically like a giant art museum. Gotta love the Catholics...or the patrons of the Church 500-600 years ago.

Last night I went to a class on how to make paella. SO NEAT. Ok I have seriously tried to upload pictures to this blog/facebook but there is some sort of server failure when the uploading finishes and it will never work. So paella valenciana - the staple Valencian dish - has rice, vegetable, some type of bean unique to Spain, assorted spices and broth, chicken and rabbit. Rabbit does not taste good. It is noticeably tougher than chicken and there is a conejo named Thumper that lives in our kitchen here. Needless to say I did not eat any rabbit. We also made some sort of black rice squid paella and a blood sausage and squash paella. And flan and sangria. It was really good. I am not a chef and cannot do any justice in descriptions, hopefully my picture will upload at some point in the near future.

Oh and just an fyi for all you world cup fans, Spain has redeemed themselves after the disastrous outcome with Switzerland (i think) and beat Honduras yesterday night. Viva Espana.

This past weekend I went to the beach all weekend instead of Barcelona...best decision ever. Less intelligent decisions of recent noteworthiness include typing this entry when I need to get up in 6 hours. Oh before I publish this, stay tuned for my thoughts on Coke Zero. Why does everyone drink it? I am trying it tomorrow...i.e. today.

Que vaya bien

I will make this post as quick as possible (and without pictures) so that the 2 people who have asked me about this will be satisfied until I can make a satisfactory post. Wow, I'm such a bad blogger! But that's ok! In the time that has elapsed since my last entry I have done many thing. Allow me to list them

1). Went the Granada and the Alhambra in Andalusia.

2). Went to the City of Arts and Sciences Aquarium and saw the dolphin show.

3). HAD MIDTERMS.

4). Went to the beach a lot (always fun times).

5). Painted some spanish fans.

6). Went to the Museum of the Fallas and saw actually fallas being created.

7). Went to the Modern Art Museum - IVAM.

8). Walked the streets of Valencia numerous times in various incorrect attempts at following map directions.

9). Went to an authentic paella restaurant.

10). Discovered coca cola CON CAFEINA at mercadona.

I am sure there are lots of things I am forgetting but let this be a preview for descriptions to come. Here is an overview of the rest of June. Tomorrow, Monday is the cooking class where we get to make paella in hugeee pans and apparently some other types of typical valencian cuisine. Tuesday I am meeting Andrea, my Intercambio (spanish student learning english) to practice speaking and such. She seems SUPER nice i'm quite excited. Wednesday I'm going to the beach and cramming, barring inclement weather. Thursday I have a semi-final. Friday I have 2 finals, comida de despedida (even though I didn't sign up for it and am not actually leaving Spain I still had to mark pollo o verduras so not exactly sure what's going on with that). Saturday Claire and I are going to Madrid until Tuesday night when I will come back to Valencia for round 2 of summer school.

Tomorrow I will update this for realsies (I hope?). Expeditions for the day include finally going to see the Holy Grail at the Cathedral. I have tried 3 times and every time it is either closed for siesta or actually closed. tragic. But tomorrow's the day. In other news I am doing what I do best - which is studying. More to come. Besos.

Hello blog followers! Today marks the "approximate" end of 1/4 of my stint in Spain - meaning midterms! I had 2 tests and an oral presentation today (ya that presentation wasn't so hot but whatever) and I woke up at 4 am to study. For those of you - meaning all of you - who are in America, that would be about 10 pm your time. Anyways that's all over now, and I'm updating this before I go to the Fallas museum! Fallas is this awesome week long parade unique to Valencia (in March) where everyone gets dressed up in traditional costumes and they show these beautiful floats...and at the end of the week? They BURN all their years worth of hard work in a massive bonfire. Why they do this I am not exactly sure, I will investigate and post with the answer. But the museum should be really neat!

What else. I have recently become a fan of the ONLY fastfood place (or kind of fastfood place) in Spain - Pans & company. It is basically like a fast food sandwich shop. Here all the people eat are bocadillos - kind of like french bread sandwiches with the weirdest stuff. I just put ham and cheese (but ham here is not like regular american ham). Combinations people have gotten include - avocado and eggs, spanish tortialla, tomatos and some sort of cream cheese, etc. Not exactly the most normal lunch. Anyways I like this pans place because you can get regular sandwiches. I have found (and this was also the case in Argentina) that spanish speakers LOVE ham. Love ham. Which I actually did love at 5 years old, but I no longer sport the same affection. Anyways that's enough about food. Except for the fact that I found a cafe (the place with the wifi) that sells...Smoothies! Valencia orange, banana, and strawberry smoothie? quite exciting seeing as they are my staple back in hooville. Unfortunately I asked Paloma if she's ever had one and she didn't know what it was. So I took that as a no.

My adventures for this week have been quite limited, aside from some shopping excursions. I didn't do anything under the pretense of studying but didn't really study either. I actually have no idea what I did with my time. I have noticed in my short (or long) stay here that the Spaniards wear a lot of really baggy, kind of unattractive/plain clothing. This was somewhat surprising to me because I always thought Europeans were really with fashion. Then it dawned on me that they really are, because their accessories ROCK. I am serious. They just deck themselves out. Shoes, belts, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, scarves. They have got it down. I decided to explore a new road yesterday, which ironically happened to be where the mall was - the mall meaning this giant department store called "el corte ingles" (aka super-macys) which I had been in before to buy my 19 dollar atrocious phone. Anyways I have never seen so many accessory stores in my life. Based on what I saw popular stores here (that I have walked into at some point) include: Zara (obvi, it's actually a spanish store and apparently a lot cheaper here than in the US), Stradivarius (which is I guess some pun on the violins???), Pimkie, Mango, and Blanco. For weeks I have seen every female ever carrying bags that say blanco on them, and I finally discovered why. It's basically Forever21. There were tons of stores I haven't investigated yet but will get to eventually, you can count on it. Basically while I am here I am going to STOCK UP on green and white accessories for my future-not yet a KappaDelta-little.

In other news - I am officialy going to Madrid between the 2 Sessions here! So exciting for me. Ok I will put up my pictures once I come back because now I need to shower/change/go see gigantic floats that will be burned next March/and eventually go eat paella with my new friendsies to celebrate surviving this horrendous day of testing. Hasta pronto!!!

Valencia - mi ciudad adoptiva

Hello mundo! This will be a picture-less post, i kind of need to update on what i actually do here in spain! Ok so first of all, i LOVE it here. it took a little while to get acclimated to their siesta and find places where i can eat at normal times, but seriously. It's the best. Por ejemplo, I have been having problems because a lot of the cafes that only have wifi make you sit down and order before you really can use their internet (awkward story about this in a moment). So I have been searching and searching for somewhere where i can use the computer and do homework that has wifi (starbucks ironically does not have wifi here....????) and today i found it. There are these cafe s called cafe y te that have free wifi all over the city, and in the plaza de ayuntamiento one is located right next to a burger king. BK doesn't care if you don't order anything and use their tables! and you get the free wifi access. IT WAS THE BEST. i literally sat 20 feet from this huge fountain facing gorgeous buildings as the sun was going down writing a paper "in the modernist style of observation" for my lit class. So legit. These 2 older women were sitting there for a long time to, we kind of had a silent bond going on. i think they thought i was weird because at one point i was skyping without sound and i was making random hand and facial gestures at the computer screen. Also, they don't really have apple here - meaning my computer is a bit of a novelty. and of course everyone is interested by the kappa delta sticker. i am going back there tomorrow to study (now that i know how it's done). i finally bought a converter that FITS in the plug (who knew that all the plugs in valencia are formed in circles instead of squares?) that was $2.50 euro so i can take camera pictures tomorrow.

Ok so now for random anecdote of awkward cafe story. Today I had about 2 hours to kill before I had to go back to the uva school to meet claire and discuss our plans to go to madrid at the end of june. i was searching for wifi, internet addict that i am, and sat down at a table in this cafe y te place. next to me was some guy using a laptop and drinking coffee. after about 5 minutes this waitress comes over and asks me what i would like (in spanish). i am confused, because i didn't realize i had to order - valencian cafes actually care about your buisness? what? anyways i stammer "agua" and this woman says to me "orange juice?" in english. and i say "no agua....como agua regular????" then she was like ohhh you want AGUA? not my most shining moment in terms of spanish. anyways so this guy observes the interaction and says in english "oh are you visiting spain?" he actually spoke semi decent conversational english but then as he divulged his life story (a venezuelan pilates instructor whose mother is from valencia who instructed me to go to a rando bar in madrid his friend owns...he gave me a sketch note about it) he defaulted to spanish. talk about forward men, his opening line after the obvious oh you speak horrible spanish was "you have very beautiful legs." literally. seriously? his name was Miguel, probs won't be seeing him ever again. anyways i will now avoid that particular cafe between the hours of 2-4 on a regular basis.

Other life updates - i went shopping the other day (surprise) and bought the MOST awesome red shoes. i wore them today, it was so exciting. my madre said that a lot of the stores have sales at the end of june/beginning of july so i will look for those reductions in prices when the time arrives.

what elseeee. it's hard to remember everything because i haven't posted in SO LONG. school is moving along, kind of nerdy of me but i really enjoy attending class and i don't know what i would do with myself if i was just chilling at home. well i wouldn't be just chilling at home, but still you get the drift.

This friday I am going to Granada to see the Alhambra so that is exciting. We went to Pensicola last weekend (gorgeous, though kind of touristy beach). I have to say, and this might just be a personal opinion, i thought that the pictures of peniscola were actually a lot neater than seeing peniscola itself. I don't know why. I think i just really liked the castle at Xativa and Peniscola is a lot smaller and less intense. Altho who knows, my camera was uncharged and so i didn't take pictures - maybe that adversely affected my enjoyment. I will probably go back next session - since it's already paid for by UVA.

Now I am off to do work (which fills me with mild excitment?). can't believe it's basically already midterms. Still over 50 more days to go in Spain though. Soooo excited. More to come when interesting things happen to me - which is literally all the time. Seriously, my life is that random. Ok besos hasta pronto

ok so now would probably be a good time to update this.

Espera hasta manana, ahora estudio

There are lots of things I have done that merit blogging, however I must refrain due to the fact that I have homework (?!?!?!?!). Observe 1). a paper comparing the portrayl of the campo (countryside) in the movements of realism/naturalism in spanish lit 2). a story and some poems to read 3). preparation for a presentation I have to give on june 10 for an author I have never heard of (excuse, poeta) 4). find 2 pictures of valencia that represent classicism and romanticism for art and explain why I choose them and 5). MIDTERMS are on Wednesday. Fun times. So I will wait to blog about my epic adventures to the Lonja and the giant-man slide until tomorrow. However, for a quick preview (for the few people who actually read this and care...)
This is a picture of Parque Gulliver, which is a park/playground in the shape of a giant man. Why don't we do creative things like this in the states? Anyways back to that paper. hasta pronto and que vaya bien (the valencian equivalent of "hope things go well" or something like that).