Despedidas

So, all in one post, I'm going to put some crazy fotos of our numerous goodbye get-togethers, and in general, I'm not going to comment. Because it's more fun to make you wonder. Insert evil laugh here. Also I'm lazy and am trying to finishing all my postings before I leave for the Camino de Santiago. Right. In 2 days I'm leaving civilizations for a month to do the Camino de Santiago, a pilgramage across Spain to end up in Galicia, the most beautiful part of Spain. I believe I'm doing around 500 kilometers, and all with my great awesome wonderful friend Janel, who, as I type, is on a train to Valencia, coming from Thailand! There, now you are fore-warned. No more posts for awhile.

Extremadura

Her little pueblo: Pasarón de la Vera

My last weekend in Valencia with my group...I ran away to Extremadura with my good friend María to her pueblo (little town where she grew up). It was a 6 hour car trip, but so much fun. On the way we hit a huge traffic jam near Madrid, so, naturally, we had a little fiesta in the car jamming to the Beatles and making people driving next to us look over with quizzical faces, all while eating our delicious sandwhiches of tuna and red peppers. Yes, we ROCK at multi tasking.
We finally got there around 1:30am, where we took a paseo (walk) through her town, which took about 10 minutes. It's pretty cute. Her family has an awesome house and we had it all to ourselves. After throwing our stuff from the car inside and our little walk, we hit the sack.

we be going hiking!

true hiker, zip off pants!

the result of zip off- must play with the bottom part

The next morning we woke up early (10am, hey, for us, this is early), drank some café, and headed out for a hike. Her village, Pasarón de la Vera, is a village in a valley, and one of the mountains lining the valley has a sweet tradition: when you get to the top, you take down the banner/flag of whoever was there last and put up your own. We went trudging up and up and up, on a path that was super old and disappeared sometimes completely, but hey, we made it. And wow. Wow. So beautiful.

the tippy top!!

our flag, which says "Anna- la americana, Maria- la valenciana, and together= Las Payasas! (the clowns, or super goofy people, whichever translation you wanna use)

wow. wow.

It was a drop dead gorgeous sunny day and we snacked on a sandwhich and just basked in it. Afterwards, we made our bandera (flag). Sadly, we couldn't figure out how to get the other flag down, so we just added to the collection. I think our flag was made out of an old potato sack because we forget something else. Classic. After hanging out awhile we headed back down to eat some lunch.

ummm...almost...

the plaza in the village, complete with a perching bird ontop of the tower

For lunch we went to La Garganta La Olla, another village next to hers. There we shared some plates and I ate the BEST cheese EVER in my LIFE. O man. Melted white strong goodness. Extremadura is famous for it's jamon (ham) and lomo (lamb) so we chowed down on some of the best I've had here. After stuffing ourselves we took a little walk around the town and then headed back to Pasarón, totally exhausted and smelly silly from hiking and strong cheese. Some of Maria's family was in town and we got ambushed by her cousin to go have dinner (we spent awhile in Garganta), so we both jumped super fast in the shower and went to another town to eat some pizza, where her cousin quizzed me on so many stereotypes of the United States that I had to try really hard not to laugh. My favorite question was if the firemen really opened the fire hydrants when it was a hot day so the kids could play in it. Nevertheless, we slept SUPER well that night.

wheeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!

The next morning we left before lunch to do some more sightseeing and went to another valley to the national park "El Infierno" (hell), where we attempted to climb another mountain but I had a little asthma attack because of the high altitude and all my allergies, so we cut our losses and just headed back to Valencia.

Morella

The second to last weekend in Spain the group did one last excursion, this time to Morella, a small town about 2 hours outside of Valencia. The purpose of the trip? To relaxxxxx, take it easy. (that last sentence is underlined and a different color, which means you should click on it, by the way) It was a gorgeous day and the girls and I headed out to do some exploring. This was the kind of spanish town that if we had a map, we would just get more lost. It was small enough that eventually we would magically end up in the same spot we started at. hmmm....

large phallic object we later figured out was a sundial

We spent the first part wandering, luxuriously standing in the sun, giggling, enjoying purposefully forgetting our 40 pages we had to write and 2 presentations we had to do for next week exams. Maybe that's why we were so happy.

besos!

plaza de toros (bull ring)

Hilary, Lisa, Katie, and I found a lovely grassy hill, kicked out shoes off and rolled around in the grass until we started itching all over. After that we decided we should check out the castle. Up up up up up the hill we went. Wow. Best castle we've been to yet. It wasn't totally renovated, which made it so much better. It felt...real. I know that sounds wierd and odd, but it felt old. Really old. The other castles just felt like someone put them there for tourists. This castle was a castle.

grassy hill
the convent

checking out Morella



the wee town of Morella

Mis Cumpleaños!!

my girl Hilary and I

For my 20th birthday my falla threw a huge party in the casal, complete with music (an AWESOME playlist I spent the whole day working on), 3 tables laden down with delicious food potluck style, and an open bar. Wow. I was allowed to invite whoever I wanted, so my girlfriends from the program (las americanas) and my valencian buddies came. After completely stufffffffffing ourselves with ridiculously good food and company we started dancydancing.

sooooo full and soooooo happy

I was a little nervous having so many people from different parts in my life (my american friends, my valencian buddies, and my falla) but everybody gelled together so well! My friend Bruno and Chris (my professor) did the twist together.

them sexy gurls in them sexy dresses

let the good times roll!

Chris and I!

my falleros, heading to the rodeo

When midnight came along (the party was saturday April 17th, because you can't party sunday night, the night of my real birthday) I put on "You Sexy Thing" to herald in a new decade in my life. Oh yes, you heard right you sexy thing. Everyone got together and sang it in eachother's faces. Such good times. Then the cake came out. Wow. Super chocolate fancy cake that said "happy birthday anna" in valenciano. Then the presents which I wasn't expecting. I got a ridiculous birthday hat from Vicenta, a dictionary between catalán and english (finally!) and castanets, real nice ones. This was the best birthday celebration I've ever had. Hands down. I was surrounded by crazy spaniards and friends that I absolutely adore and everyone was having a good time. The atmosphere was infectious!!!!

my sweet hat on Vicenta, looking suuuuuper excited for life...

:) Bruno, Maria, and I, with a face intrusion of Humberto on the right side

Granada

basically: "give alms, lady, there is nothing in life like the pity of being blind in Granada"

After a four days of constant bus rides, by the time we got to Granada everyone was absolutely exhuasted. 3 cities in 5 days is not even close to easy. We all crashed for a little bit, enjoying being horizontal and not in seats, and then Kaitlin, Cristina, and I ventured out to eat and watch flamenco.

sooooo tired

Granada, well, Andalucia in general, is famous for flamenco. Crisitina knew someone who was studying flamenco in Granada, so luckily we had connections and someone to go with who knew where to go. We had dinner in the ruta de tapas. Tapas, if I haven't explained before, are something scrumptuous that comes automatically with your drink, and in Granada they are particularly famous, as in you order a caña (a beer from the tap) and get a healthy sized sandwhich, all for the lovely price of 2 euros. yussssss! Before we went to flamenco we hit up an Irish bar for a Guiness, because it's everyone's weakness, then we headed to the bus stop to go to Salamanco (I think that's what it was called...) where all the flamenco is. Where was our flamenco? In a cave. Sweeeeeet.

our cave!

The preformers were all gitanos (gypsys) and all of the same family and all amazing. The audience? LAME. I had seen flamenco before so I knew what to do: clap along, get into the music. Flamenco is music and dancing of the soul, of feeling, and you shouldn't watch it like you watch ballet, it's totally contradictory. But of course, besides us, the room was filled with english tourists who just stared at the dancers' feet, whereas I, the crazy person you know, was clapping along, totally enjoying myself, and reveling in the evil glares I was getting from the tourists who just didn't get it. Good times. I loved every moment of it. Flamenco is the most emotional music you will ever see in your life. Te juro.

dancing with passion. this dancer ended with tears in her eyes.


wow.



La Alhambra

At 6:00am, Chris (professor), Lauren, Kaitlin, and I headed out to stand in line to buy tickets for the group to visit the Alhambra. If you don't know what it is, I'm knowingly and willingly going to send you on a guilt trip and say shame on you. It is one the 7 wonders of the modern world. Look it up. I'm giving you an assignment. Anyway, we walked to the palace at 6:00, stood in line in the freezing cold for 2 hours, then seperately bought tickets (groups bigger than 5 can't enter, so we cheated the system). The rest of the group met up with us at 8:30 (lucky ducks) and then we started are tour of the Alhambra. Wow. It's an entire city of wonders, like Aladin, but in real life. I can't imagine it in the spring when everything is flowering and everything is even MORE green. Every part of the castle was covered in ornamental carvings, absolutely breathing taking, and colorful. Wow. I spent the whole morning and afternoon in wonder.