Old-fashioned adventure

My mom and I happen to work in the same office.

We also happen to enjoy going on adventures together.

So when she saw an ad for Blickenstaff's in a Utah Valley magazine, we spontaneously left work and drove up to check it out. No worries, I worked overtime last week, we can afford it.

Blickenstaff's has a lot of fun things - and a lot of old-fashioned things, including games, toys aaaaaannnnnddd candy...

Like these, for example: 

We also enjoyed one of these, and I figured out how to make a moaning sound by blowing into a bottle... And I saved some for Ryan. He was happy :)

 And bought a gumball from a gumball machine that was taller than me...

Definitely more fun than working :)

Blickenstaff's is located in Riverwoods in Provo, sort of kitty-corner from the Provo Beach Resort. Definitely worth visiting, especially if you like old-fashioned candy!

Ready for spring

Yesterday was my last free day before spring classes start (sad day! although spring classes will be awesome, too.) Lots of good things happened:

• After much deliberating and shirking and dragging my feet, I finally signed a housing contract for fall - in the very same apartment I lived in last year - hehe. I liked it there. It was admittedly less fun to arrange considering I'll be starting over fresh with new roommates (since all the old ones have abandoned me for marriage or missions... growl) :D but hey, it will be a great adventure!
• Sewing success! This makes me happy beyond words, considering the epic Skirt Disaster or Apron Pocket Disaster or Pile of Unfinished Projects disaster. But, I am happy to report, the swimsuit top is now unique, attractive, and most of all, MODEST (hooray) and not to mention, the straps are the same width and length and the seams are straight (mostly) so I call that success!
• National Treasure 2. Other than Harry Potter, what better way to spend your last free afternoon than watching Ben and Abigail discover a giant golden city buried deep beneath Mount Rushmore? Seriously. Nothing tops it.
  
• And finally, library books! For all the free time I probably won't have :)

Good day. I'm ready for spring. Too bad there was a blizzard this morning...

The best feeling in the world...

Is finding out that you passed the test to get into your major and you made it, and you don't have to retake the test, don't have to replan your life, don't have to rework all your dreams, and the best part is that you prayed about it the night before and asked for God to guide you - and this was the answer.

I got into the Translation major. Green light to continue on the path I have planned!

Oh, and I also must share a bit more random trivia. I joined Sigma Delta Pi. We had a fabulous initiation ceremony where we stood in a circle and lit our candles from the club president's candle, symbolizing the light that shines within each of us, and then we put our lights out with our fingers. Although we didn't actually light the candles, because there's some pretty awesome fire codes about that. So it was all imaginary. I was then given some cords to wear when I graduate - in two+ years. Better not lose those. I also ate some strawberry cheesecake, met a bunch of people, and decided Sigma Delta Pi might end up being a lot of fun.

Second random story. I ate dinner tonight in the hallway of the JKB with the custodial night crew. Seriously. Apparently they have a potluck dinner every friday, and since my locker is in that hall, their overly friendly supervisor refused to let me gracefully exit and insisted I share in their feast. It was actually quite fun, once I got past the awkwardness of it all - I met four really awesome people at my table who I hope to run into again - they were cool.

Yay for super random days...

Castles and Conquerors

Trip 1: Merida, Caceres, Trujillo

We left early Friday morning on a bus. It took about three, four hours to get to Merida.

Merida is in the autonomous community of Extremadura. I think they call it Extremadura because the heat was Extreme... haha just kidding. It's on the southwestish side of Spain, next to Portugal.

Merida is home to the best Roman ruins in all of Spain. It was the coolest place I have ever been. (besides the heat, of course...) All those years of looking at pictures of Roman temples and columns and stadiums, well, now I've stood in one. It was amazing. Really amazing.

Remains of the Roman Forum in Merida - the forum is where they would gather to share ideas, have debates, cultural and political discussions, etc. Check out those columns. They're Corinthian Columns. Ha. I've learned something in these classes of mine :)

The temple of Diana - basically temples were for worshiping, and then in the outer area they would throw festivals and that sort of thing.

The "backdrop" of the stage in the theater at Merida - Probably at one time you would have been able to access the second story, I'm not sure. This photo is taken from the top of the seating area.

Me on the stage of the Theater in Merida - Note the HUGENESS of it! It was built in a semicircle formation, and it had surprisingly good acoustics!

Me with the Amphitheater in Merida - the amphitheater is where they would have gladiator fights. It is an oval shape, with large doorways at either end for the gladiators, etc, to enter. The indented part in the middle used to be an underground chamber, filled with animal pens, rooms for gladiators to prepare in, etc. It would have been completely underground with the arena smooth overtop of it (meaning it would have been excavated much deeper than it currently is, as well. )

Here's a better picture of the layout of the amphitheater.

Caceres:

We spent the night here. We also did a night tour of the old part of the city. See my Picasa album for some excellent architecture shots :) Caceres isn't super famous, but it has some excellently preserved walls, towers, and buildings. The old part of the city is kind of up on the hill a bit, and there are really narrow streets in between tall buildings. It totally made me think of movies like Les Miserables, the Count of Monte Cristo, Zorro, etc, with the city walls and narrow, cobbled streets. I can't even express how incredibly COOL it was!!!!!

Me on top of the tower. We also went on top of the other tower you can see behind me, in the left of the picture. Amazing. And it was sunset time. Even more amazing.

Narrow streets. TOTALLY Les Mis. Around the inside of the city wall, there is a narrow street that goes all the way around. It is built that way to more easily facilitate the movement of troops from one point to another along the walls, unencumbered by people and citizens that crowd the inner streets of the city.

Trujillo: We went to Trujillo Saturday afternoon. Trujillo is fairly small, somewhat insignificant, but it has this amazingly amazingly fabulous castle up on the hill. It also has a cactus tree. We ate cactus fruit and got stickers all over our fingers. We then proceeded to charge at full speed up the hill - in the Extremadura heat - to "conquer" the castle. We are legit like that.

Statue of Francisco Pizarro in Plaza Mayor - he conquered Peru.

Me on the wall of the castle overlooking Trujillo

What the inside looked like - it was basically a big square with an open courtyard in the middle. More a fortress than a palace, definitely. You can walk all the way around on top of the walls - it's about four feet wide, and the walls on the side are four feet tall or so, with gaps to shoot arrows between :)

What it looked like from down the hill a bit.

The delicious fruit of the cactus...

After Trujillo, we got back on the bus and headed back to Alcala. This is basically what everyone was doing:Somehow Ken managed to sleep two hours on a bumpy bus without dropping those cards. Way to go man. You're my new hero. :D

Oh, hey Madrid...

On the wall in my apartment last year, there was a poster with many hilarious quotes, phrases taken out of context, etc, etc. One of said quotes read, "You can sleep when you're dead!" (yes, I did say that, to illustrate the overrratedness of sleep when social activities were ocurring). Here in Spain, I have modified my slogan to, "You can sleep in the States, you can eat hamburgers in the States, you can watch movies in the States, you can talk in the States..." (pretty much anything generic that should not take precedence over uniquely Spanish activities). With that as a preface, let me recount the events of yesterday:

Melanie and I were in our little room, surfing Facebook, talking about nothing in particular.
Melanie mentions we've been here almost two weeks.
I yelp, "TWO WEEKS?!?!"
She says yes.
I slam my computer shut with, "Why the heck are we wasting time sitting in this little room! We're going to Madrid!"
Melanie senses the urgency and seriousness of the situation and immediately agrees with me.

Ten minutes later we're on the train:

Thirty minutes later we emerged from the Metro station into the Puerta del Sol, where we proceeded to walk past six ice cream stands in order to arrive at the specific one that we wanted, then we went to at least ten souvenir stores in search of a Barca jersey for me, (didn't find it, but I WILL! haha), then we ended up at the Mercado de San Miguel eating overpriced and very delicious trufas (truffles), and finally walked through the Plaza Mayor, which is undoubtedly so far my favorite place in Madrid.

The trufas were good.

VERY good. Mine is just quivering with fear, though.


I might also mention that I successfully rode the Metro for the very first time - I've never even seen a subway before, it was pretty sweet.

And as a side note, I'm pretty sure that any doubts Melanie had in her mind regarding my sanity have now been confirmed. Hopefully she's cool with having a completely crazy roommate, who randomly decides to go on soccer-jersey searching adventures in big cities and who likes to make faces at dogs, mirrors, and truffles, who has two different colored shoelaces and often talks to herself without realizing it, and who has absolutely no sense of color-coordination for her outfits... Hey, it's all good, life is more fun this way!

This is why I study abroad...

Primer dia de clases!

This morning my roommate, Melanie, got up to go running. Before she returned, I got up, and discovered the electricity was out and it was very, very dark. Then, a minute later, someone knocks on the door. I go and look out, and it's Melanie! Her key won't work. So I scramble to find mine in the dark, come to try to unlock the door (you have to have a key from both sides) only to discover Pilar's keys are still hanging in the keyhole, and that's why she couldn't use her key. So then she stumbles in in the darkness, and we try the lights again. So we go to wake Pilar, who shows us the fuse box. Turns out that for some reason the braker tripped while Melanie was out. Weird. Very weird. Definitely a great start to the day, though!

I have two classes MW, one class TTh.

One of the classes is basically whatever we want it to be. Attendance doesn't count if we're sick or whatever, we can read something different if what we're reading is boring, the final will be "as easy as possible..." love it. This will make the trip much more enjoyable. And with tiny classes (6, 7 people) it will be a lot more interesting.

After classes, today I got a little more "culture." I went with my host mom, Pilar, to the bank, because I needed to use the ATM, but didn't know how. We were waiting in line, and then it appeared to be our turn, so I start walking up, then the man starts talking to me in rapid Spanish, and Pilar is responding, and I'm just standing there, then she turns to me and explains it's not my turn, he was waiting for something. I felt quite silly... especially after he's looking at me like I'm crazy, and she says, oh, it's okay, she's only been here two days.... haha! At least after that he was much more friendly and sympathetic, once he knew why I was blatantly ignoring his instructions to "wait a minute"!

After the bank, we went shopping for almuerzo. Almuerzo is lunch, but it's the equivalent of dinner in the US. It's the BIG meal. Three or four plates. Everything in Spain closes up between 2 and 4 or 5, and everyone goes home to eat and take a nap during the hot part of the day. Literally. Nothing is open. At all. Anyway, Pilar and I went to the "fruteria" which is the fruit market. It was a little shop full of produce - vegetables and fruits. Just like the produce section of the grocery store.

After that, we stopped in the "papeleria" which literally is the paper shop. They have magazines, books, notebooks, pens, postcards, erasers, pencils, paper, everything paper related. Melanie and I are going to go back there sometime soon... they have some little notebooks with 101 Dalmations covers that will be perfect for recording random vocabulary in.

Today after classes, we also stopped at the "pasteleria" which is the dessert shop... :) We're celebrating a couple of birthdays tonight at FHE, so we bought a cake that has shaved chocolate on the top. I think it might've been a tad overpriced.. but it looks reaaaaaallllly good.... so that's okay... :)

As you can see, in Spain there's a lot of little specialized stores, especially in smaller towns like this. They do have supermarkets, of course, Correfours is similar to WalMart, only a bit smaller. But most of the town is apartment buildings, where the street level is little shops, then all the apartments are on the upper floors. I really like the setup. It's a lot more personal than going to WalMart all the time. You see your neighbors more, get to know the shopkeepers, etc.

Viva Espana!

Tres Elegante...

Tonight our ward had our "Grammys" presentation for the FHE group music video competition. Ours, a puppet version of Kiss the Girl, was awesomest, if I say so myself. The best part, though, was getting all dressed up and being escorted there by the best home teacher in the ward!

A very happy unbirthday... very, very happy.

So remember that post from way back whenever that I wrote a whole paragraph about how sad it was that no one ever celebrates my birthday?

Well, tonight they did. I was the shocked recipient of one of the best surprise birthday parties I have ever seen, complete with streamers, balloons, a giant birthday card, two cakes decorated with a guitar and the Spain flag, and more people than I ever thought would come to a party for me. I was completely, totally surprised. I started crying when I came in the door. I've never had a surprise party, ever, and it was perfect. Completely perfect.

For the last couple of weeks I've kind of felt like I failed this school year. I had all these goals to make friends and live it up and be the kind of person I really wanted to be, and I thought I'd failed. I didn't think I really had made friends at all, and I was feeling really down about it. The fact that about 20 different people showed up at a party on a Tuesday night, just for me, completely shocked me. I guess it kind of teaches me a lesson, in a way.

We talk a lot about the "ripple effect" where things you do have bigger consequences than you realize. It's a lot like in It's A Wonderful Life. You don't realize just how many lives you've touched, people you've affected. It can feel like you're nobody at all, when in reality, lots of people know and care about you. I guess that's something I struggle with realizing a lot, and I hope that I can keep remembering how I feel tonight, knowing how many people care about me. Because friends are what makes life worth living!