Camp

Well, first of all, I did not realize it’d been SO long since I last posted. Crazyness has ensued since then, starting with the Tae Kwon Do Tournament in Spain, and the exhibition there that I participated in (on my birthday!!), which was quite cool… The following day, I flew home from Spain to Pittsburgh, where we (dad & I) stayed at a friends house for the night. Got to see my old friend Jessie, which was very cool.

Then on the 15th of May I drove down here to S. Carolina to start work.. The camp is beautiful. Way up ontop of a mountain in the Blue Ridge, it has some amazing views. And, of course, its simply awesome to be with/around Kevin again.

My horses finally got here this Monday (21st), and so, ever since I’ve been riding and taking care of them. Which is awesome. They’re all pretty good – both looking, and fairly well trained. I’m actually extremely impressed with their overall quality (especially for camp horses!!). Went on a trail ride today, did some crazy exploring and getting lost (which was, as always, fun). Tommorrow is the first time we’ll actually give rides, so I’m kind of nervous about that. But it should be OK. I hope…

The kid I’m working with (the “assistant director”), seems pretty clueless. Apparently, he didn’t realize that you need to clean the barn. Apparently, I have to tell him such things, or he just doesn’t know. He also gives me the impression that he’s scared of horses (takes 3-5 minutes to catch one in a box stall… and another couple to kick each one out after feeding. But, then again, I’m not really surprised about this, just highly disappointed. Was hoping to have somebody with a clue. The other kid is apparently a bit slow. Supposedly they also just hired a girl from Spain, though it sounds like she’ll only be here for the first half of the summer. Which sucks. But, you’ll have taht I spose.

Anyhow, thats about all thats new with me… We saw the DaVinci Code, which was pretty good, and then yesterday we saw Over the Hedge, which was hysterical. Hammy kicks ass… I think thats about it.

Advertisement

Spain!!

Wow. I really don´t know what to say. I´m going to be coming back to spain in the fall, sometime in September for another year. I´m soo incredibly excited, I can´t even begin to explain. Its amazing.

On other notes, I´m now going back to the states on the 8th of May, so that I can particpate in the World Tae Kwon Do Championships which are being held in Caceriz, just a couple hours away. I´m not going to be competing though – I´m going to be in an exhibition!!! How cool!! SO yeah, thats pretty amazing. I can´t wait.

Also, FC Barcelona (the soccer team of Barcelona), is in the finals, playing Arsenal in Paris, for the league cup. Which is awesome. Its like the World Series of soccer, more or less. So thats pretty amazing. I totally want to see it, but as they´re playing on the 17th, I don´t know if I´ll get to. But I really hope I get to see it, and that barça wins. It´d be amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Thats about it, really. Lots of crazy cool news. Lots and lots of awesomeness. Totally excited to get home for the summer – but absolutely thrilled that I´ll be coming back. It´ll make the summer just that much better. Now I just have to figure out how Kevin can come here to spain too (or at least, to europe!!)

Two more weeks…

Wow, I can´t believe that I only have two weeks left here in Spain. Spain, Salamanca more specificlly, has become home, something that I really wasn´t sure it would be. But it has… I now feel more at home here, wandering around Salamanca, then I ever did in the 2.5 odd years I lived down in Nelsonville/Athens. I know that I still haven´t fully realized that I´m leaving in two weeks, and not coming back for who knows how long. I´ll come back to Spain, to Salamanca someday I know… I just don´t know when.

There´s also a growing realization that of all the things that I want and do not want to do… I really just don´t want to go back to Ohio, go back to school in Athens… it just doesn´t sound like fun to me anymore, at all. So, I´m looking around at other schools, trying to find something that would/could be interesting, fun even. I still don´t really know what I want to study, though I´m leaning farther and farther away from the whole biolgy/natural resources thing, honestly. Am thinking more and more about International Studies or somesuch. It´d be a good bit more buisnessy (which sounds boring), but at the same time, could lead to a job in which I got to travel more. I don´t really know. I´ll just have to wait and see… see how this summer goes.

Travelin’

Wow… what an incredible past few days.

I went down to Granada on Tuesday getting in there around 2am on Wednesday morning. Long train ride, but totally worth it. The next day (Wednesday), I went and saw La Alhambra, and ended up having an absolutely awesome day. Right away I met a couple who had just graduated from some college out in Portland, Oregan. They were/are traveling with his parents, little sister and two of her friends. I ended up hanging out with them all day long and having an absolute blast.

It was, really, the first time I’d spoken much english in a long time, and whats more about really geek/environmental stuff. It was just really cool. They totally reminded me of my old compu-high friends.

In anycase, we spent the better part of the entire day (from about 11:00am-7:30pm), wandering around and seeing all the palaces, gardens, mosques-converted-into-churches, actual churches, etc. Then in the evening we all went out for tapas for a couple hours together. Twas lots of fun.

Then the next day and a half I spent wandering around the city of Granada itself, checking out the other churches, parks etc which are not actually inside the Alhambra. On Thursday night I ended up going out with a some old English guy, and another guy from sweden… we met some other old Scotish guy who’s actually a poet (apparently he used to have a buisiness, but he sold it, and now just ‘write poetry and drink beer’).

On Friday I took my Uncle Elfego’s advice and went to see Ronda – what an awesome little city!! I totally wish I’d had a good 2 or so days to really explore it better. Definetly a place I wouldn’t mind going back to. That night I then took the bus up to Sevila…

In Sevilla yesterday I just wandered around for the most part, seeing the sites, etc. My favorite places in Sevilla are definetly the Real Alcazar and the Parque de Maria Luisa. The Real Alcazar is the old muslim palaces/gardins and is just really really pretty. The Parque de Maria Luisa (or something like that), is the botanical gardens which were donated to the city by (you guessed it), Maria Luisa. Or something like that. In anycase, its huge, and very very cool. They have all kinds of different trees and plants from ALL over the world, all labeld with both common and scientific names, what the name means/where its from, and other random, general info on the species. And theres a little island with ducks, peacocks and chickens in the middle of a pond which has lots and lots of fish – mostly goldfish, but I think there were some carp or something in there too.

In anycase, I’m now in London. I took the bus from Sevilla back to Salamanca last night, got into Salamanca at 4:30, woke up at 8:30, got a shower, and ran off to the bus station to fly here. Long day. But its been fun.

I’m going to goto Prague this Wednesday, so that should be good… Tommorrow I’m exploring london though =). When I finally get back to Salamanca for another quarter in a week or so I’ll start uploading pictures…

One quarter done!!

I can´t believe I´ve already been in Spain for another whole quarter, already. It seems like this quarter went super super fast – although thats also true for the one before. In anycase, I´m done with school for a couple weeks. In case anybody´s wondering, I got a C in Spanish Grammar (its grammar. its hard.), and B´s in Spanish Literature, Communation and Oral Skills. So I´m pretty happy overall. In anycase I have another 6 or so odd weeks to perfect my spanish, so tis all good.

In anycase I´m looking forward to these couple weeks off I have before April. I´m gonna travel around Spain, though I think I´ll just “play it by ear” as such – not really have any plans. I want to visit Granada, Sevilla & Cordoba, but aside from them, I really don´t know. Ask around and see what little cities are cool to visit.

Spanish Stuff

Just thought I´d let everyone know that I finally got around to creating a little site where I´m uploading all the random little essays, reports, speeches, etc, that I´ve written for my classes here in Spain.

There´s a perma-link on the right (“Essays and Reports in Spanish”), or else you can just click: http://emilyyrose.googlepages.com

MySpace nomore!

Well, I am officially changing my blog over from myspace.com to blogger for one simple reason: it turns out that myspace is little more than farce of a site setup so that they can collect demographic info and such like. So yeah. As a result, I am no longer posting on myspace, nor having Any of my biographical info for them to see. Bastards.

ANYHOW, I´m still having a blast over here in Spain. Barcelona was awesome, and if you like you can checkout pics (at http://emilyrose.smugmug.com, as always). I could still go back and hang out there for hours on end, its just such an amazing city, especially with all the Gaudi and other modernist architecture… Park Güell, La Sagrada Familia, Casa Batállo, La Piedra, La Palacua Musica, etc. They´re all amazing works of art.

Classes are going overall pretty well, like my teachers (2 out of the 4 I´ve had before;), so that always helps.

Meh, thats about it. I´ll post more when/if something interesting happens=)

Crazyness

Well, its a crazy feeling right now – I have less than 2 weeks before I come home for christmas. I can`t in all honestly quite believe it. But its true. I`m still having a blast here in Spain, and am absolutely amazed at how much I`ve already learned.

Lately I`ve been hanging out with a couple of guys from Morocco (sp?), who are all very cool – Omar, Sidi & Alli. They all speak 3 languages – Arabic, French and Spanish. Crazyness. But its a blast to hang out with them, since they`ve lived here in Salamanca for 6 years now and so know it better than I ever will… Going to bars with thems great, since they know just about everybody=) But, whats probably best of all is that since they don`t speak english, I *have* to speak spanish… which is super good for me (though occasionly it makes for difficulties…). Still, generally its a blast.

Whats most crazy at the moment though is that I now only have 1 or 2 more days of class left before my exams (today and friday for Art History, Communications and Culture, and today, friday and monday for grammar!!). We`ve gone over SOO much stuff, as my grammar teacher says, we`ve apparently covered basicly every part of the spanish language… crazyness.

But… yeah, I can`t wait to get home and see everyone again.

Tapas

Well, friday night was quite fun. Went out for tapas (apetizers), with my entire grammar class. Was quite fun… we went to two different places, both of which are very close to where I live… the first one (El Lechón), I have been to before, but the other one (Mares del Van Dyck), I had not… and it is both very good and cheap (just 1.50€ for a tapa and small beer or sidra (cider). I personally opted for sidra, as I love it… and its very good there. Also, its tapas are apparently typical of Galacia which means that they´re almost all seafood related (mussels, clams, calamari, shrimp, etc)… quite yummy.

After tapas, we ended up going to a Salsa bar. Which was tons of fun. I ended up dancing with some guy from Argentina who was very good, which made it quite a lot of fun as I just kind of had to “follow” as it were… got tired after awhile.

Also I finally found a book to read. Imagéns en Accion (Moving Pictures), by Terry Pratchet. Its pretty good, and I am happy to say that I understand it well enough to understand at least some of the humour=)

class, class and more class

Well, this week was back to normal (almost) here in spain… Except of course that monday was Halloween and Tuesday was well, I´m not honestly sure what the holiday was, the day of the dead, or something. Which meant that we didn´t have school… which was nice. But, whats not been so nice is that today, and yesterday I have/had 8 hours of class. Ugh. 4 hours in the morning, and 4 hours in the afternoon. And after class? Tae Kwon Do=) Makes for long days…

On the bright side, apparently, as long as the music is in spanish, you can listen to music in at least one of my classes. Which is super cool. So, now I´m on the hunt for good rock music in spanish. Should be interesting… Whats cool though, is that one of the little shops that sells music will let you listen to different CDs before you buy them, so that you can decide if you actually like them or not. Tis quite nice (so, yeah, I broke down and bought one CD, Jarabe de Palo “Depende.” Now I just have to get it on my iPod ).

Anyhow.. thats about all thats new/exciting around here. Mostly just lots of class atm. But yeah. We have/are starting Subjuntive conjugations… which are actually, thankfully, pretty easy.