it´s been a while....

So I’m just getting to Sevilla right now. The train ride is almost over and I must say…I quite enjoy the train…there are many things to see out the windows and many things you can learn from those around you. Every time I’ve taken the train out of Cádiz, I’ve noticed certain manmade channels that stretch for miles, but never have I understood exactly what they are for. So I figured, this is probably my last time going through here…I really should ask someone. So I turned around and asked the lady who was sitting behind me what they were…and she kindly explained that they were used to harvest salt from the sea. The channels were filled with water and then cut off from the ocean until they dried up completely and left all their salt behind. She also explained that all but a very few had been abandoned already. In her kindness she also went on to explain that not only had that area once been full of salt makers (there has to be a better term for that….I just can’t think of it yet…) but also water mills to grind the wheat produced in the region. But apparently those are all but completely abandoned as well and only two actually remain active in the area.

Another special treat on this train ride has been seeing all the sunflowers in full bloom; I bet mom would’ve gotten a kick out of that. Now that I have no home I’ve been eating a bit less and there’s no easy meals…as in…I make most of my food in an effort to save money…so I can’t wait to get home to mom’s and abuelita’s stellar cooking…honestly I think I will request to be brought directly from the airport to abuelitas house as being home and away from amazing food is worse than purgatory…it’s an all out hell…so yes…that is my one request…when I get home…have good, non-spanish, food waiting for me :D

I’m telling you this right now Danny…if our parents buy you a laptop and if you decide to travel like me…get a small one…lol…15” max…

But I really do like this laptop…it’s a great machine…just a massive one as well….it’s my friend though…and when it dies I will surely feel it from the very depths of my soul…or not…but I will be upset surely.

I’m sort of nervous about this whole journeying through the world with nothing but my shadow for company thing…I can’t wait until I get my camping backpack as that will be such a wonderfully…wonderful…commodity I could simply…chuckle…

I apologize for the extremely laid back nature of this post but I’ve been journaling basically the entire time since I got in the train and so I’m kind of all serious’d out….I’ll make a better…serious one later….oui?

Da

Buna ziua mon amies (sp?)

Sevilla - Take Two

"Flowers in a Sevillan Park"

As the culminating event of several weeks of growing boredom I took the train to Sevilla at 7PM on the 21^st of March 2008, Good Friday. The initial plan was rather straightforward and thoroughly uncomplicated; go to Sevilla, see the holy week processions, don’t die. Some might call this poorly thought out, but what I’d come to find is that you can truly think an idea to death and sometimes it’s best to throw caution to the winds, just making it up as you go along.

The train arrived at quarter to nine, or rather a mere 15minutes after the tourism office had closed for the evening. Seeing as I barely had money enough for the return train buying a map was out of the question and a Taxi even more so. Thus I had no idea of where I was in a city I’d only briefly seen once before and one which was currently so woefully packed with tourists (due to Sevilla’s famed holy week festivities) that asking for directions wasn’t much use either. After 15minutes of fruitless asking about within the train station I decided the best course of action would be taking a lap around the building in an attempt to get my bearings.

From the interior the train station seems impossibly large, but this isn’t so much because its true size is really that staggering but rather because the architecture is so simple it just makes the whole place look considerably larger than it is. What I mean by this is that the interior of the train station is about as complicated as an airplane hangar. It’s big (with at least 20meters from the station floor to the ceiling) it only has 2 floors, and the second only covers the last quarter of the building despite being the only location for shops and ticket sales.

Upon exiting the station I lapped the pyramid like building, stumbling over lovers and lost tourists alike, all taking haven in the inviting shadows the building provides. Directly in front of the main entrance there’s a “Corte Ingles” (Spain’s only department store) and I guessed (correctly thank God) that the center of the city would be in that general direction and even if it weren’t I’d still at least be able to find a map to consult in a building that large. ‘Alas I’d forgotten that it was Good Friday and NOTHING was open. Desperate now, I decided to just follow two young folks in the hope that they, like most of the city, would be on their way to the city center. After a few hundred meters I saw a sign that defines Spain as a tourist nation but does help tremendously when you haven’t a bloody clue of where you are or even in what direction you should be headed.

Spain is a country with as few street signs as Mexico City (none and impossible to find) but what it does have are directional signs that are clearly designed to augment the country’s tourist based economy. These signs point to either a landmark or a hotel and the one labeled “Centro Ciudad” (City Center) turned out to be my Godsend. So it was these signs that I followed right into the historic heart of Sevilla. I followed the signs as the streets began to narrow and the buildings shrank with smaller windows and shorter doorways. I followed the signs as the streets became more crowded, I followed the signs all the way until I could hear the somber drumbeat of the holy week processions.

…so now it’s been 6 weeks since that weekend and I still haven’t finished this bloody paper trying to describe it…so I feel like I’ll summarize the night a tad bit more…

After getting downtown and indeed walking through the whole darned thing I came to the conclusion that I was hungry and that I would be absolutely no fun whatsoever if I didn’t get myself fed. So that’s exactly what I did. I worked my way back to a Kebab I’d seen (cheap, filling Turkish food…reminiscent of Greek gyros). While ordering I struck up a conversation with the two folks who worked there as they were both young and obviously foreign. The young man seemingly Moorish by descent and the girl Polish or something of the sort. As it turns out, the guy was Moroccan and the girl from St. Petersburg, a city which according to her, reaches -30 degrees Celsius in the Winter! That’s really cold…

A few minutes into the conversation this Italian guy next to me butted in and his girlfriend also joined the conversation and so when the Kebab folks had to go back to work I joined the two Italians on a step where we could eat our Kebabs. One thing led to another and when they found out I was all alone without anything to do they invited me to go out with them and their friends, an offer I could hardly turn down seeing as I had nothing else to do and nobody else I knew.

After hitting a few bars and not being allowed to buy my own drinks (the Italians insisted on buying them for me) we made our way to an underground Flamenco club. The place was really cool with the outside looking like a crappy bar with worn wooden doors and an old bearded bouncer with a beret. The Italians said hello and we worked our way inside what seemed to be half building half cave. There was music and everyone´s attention was fixed at the far corner of the room where a man was singing flamenco and utilizing his body as a sort of percussion instrument. Stamping his feet, slapping his thighs and chest and clapping his hands he was his own band, with his own vocal accompaniment and his friend next to him adding flamenco guitar to the mix it was really a sight to see. Now don´t think you´d get bored after a few minutes of this because just when tedium began to set in a lady in a beautiful gypsy dress (Flamenco dress) got up and began to dance around on the stage. All of this was clearly a demonstration in improvisation and was all the more impressive for it. Unfortunately even the greatest musicians become weary after a while and so a good half hour after I’d arrived the musicians called it quits for the evening and everyone went to the bar in the next room where I was once again invited to a beer by my ever generous Italian hosts. At this point it was quickly approaching 3AM and as the Italians had to work the next day they announced their early departure. Before doing so however they inquired as to my sleeping arrangements. When I informed them that...well…there weren´t any and that I would be perfectly fine sleeping at the train station they were absolutely adamant that this could not be and insisted that there was no problem whatsoever with me crashing on their couch. Now ecstatic comes just short of describing my absolute elation at God´s gift to me of running into Sevilla´s most hospitable resident Italians.

So when they left I left with them and crashed on their couch watching TV unable to fall asleep, and just as I began to doze off I was re-awakened by their Roommate´s arrival and so I turned on the TV and pretended to be awake as I was in the dining room and didn´t want her to feel prohibited from using the kitchen in the event she needed or wanted something from there.

As it turns out she did and after making herself spaghetti…at 4AM she sat down with me to eat it and we ended up talking until…11AM

Me + someone who talks as much as I do = no sleep

But that’s not entirely true, I got about an hour and a half of sleep before the Italians woke me up by coming downstairs and telling me they were leaving for work and then another 2 hrs of sleep before I got up and brought the Italians the keys they’d left me to lock up when I left (now that’s trust). I brought the Italians their keys and ate something at the restaurant they worked at before leaving to go around town on a picture taking expedition. I ended my time in Sevilla by meeting a guy from Milwaukee and then sprinting off to the train station so as to avoid missing my train. Not a bad weekend for only having had to spend €20 :D

So what did that teach me? It taught me that you can never be too hospitable, the Italians taught me that there´s no need to hurry through life, and it taught me that travel doesn´t necessarily have to be expensive. Not to mention that this weekend was such a blast it encouraged me to get out of the house..or well…the city a lot more than I otherwise would have. Since then I´ve seen 5 different Spanish cities/towns and enjoyed every last one of them immensely, not to mention I’ve got a ton of nice pictures from all the places :P

Okay I don’t think anyone is reading this…but at least my mom…and maybe Rachel are still reading it so at least it’s worth something more than mere documentation J

Time to go…byebye

-AE Herrera

Semana Santa

This week is Holy Week and the entire Spanish ¨Community¨ (the communities are like states) of Andalucia (the southernmost community of which Cádiz is a province) goes crazy over this festival. If anyone had any doubts that Catholicism may at times be guilty of idol worship they need only come here during holyweek and observe the somber processions that have a fanatical following all across the south of Spain. Essentially, these are the most somber parades you could ever hope to attend. All the major parishes of the city turn out with everyone from little kids to grown men decked out in those uniforms that we as Americans instantly recognize as being the kind that the Ku Klux Klan wear.

As the procession approaches the first thing you hear is the marching band despite the fact that they´re situated at the very rear of the procession. Slowly they come into view, a band of masked, hooded, and robed people (each procession has it’s own colour scheme) carrying great silver staffs topped with candles. Supposedly the uniform is meant to project the wearer´s spirit to Heaven so that they may be closer to God while wearing it. They´re covered from head to toe in this garb and even their hands are hidden by white gloves meaning that the only part of their flesh that´s at all shown are their eyes through the little slits in the hood. After this great mass of hooded people you are all of a sudden confronted with an enormous float carried by a score of men underneath it and 4 men on each of its corners. The float is a shrine to some sort of religious person or scene. The most common are the grief stricken, but remarkably stoic, virgin mother, the last supper, and the resurrected Christ. Immediately behind the float there is the parish´s marching band, outfitted in what almost look like military uniforms (like most marching bands to be fair). Though the atmosphere and most especially, the floats, are very somber the marching band continues with a victorious sort of song. Which I suppose, taking into account the biblical story that has inspired this week, makes sense.

An interesting custom that most of the little kids and some older women partake in during these holy week processions is the gathering of large ball of wax. As the floats have to stop every few minutes to let them carrying rest, the progress of the processions throughout the city tends to be very choppy. So in these brief but frequent intermissions little kids and older women go out and ask the hooded kids/men to pour wax on their hands from the candles they’re holding (keep in mind…that really has to hurt). After they’ve got a good amount of wax on their hands they roll up the still malleable wax up into a ball and then proceed to ask someone else for more wax so that the ball may grow. By the end of the week many people have balls of wax at least as big as a baseball, some even approaching the size of a small melon. To be completely honest, that’s probably something I would have been very into had I been a youth here =P.

So it's been a while...

And really…it’s just that whenever I sit down to write one of these things it’s cuz I’m bored and when I’m bored I tend to view everything as boring so these posts become long ramblings that, believe me, nobody would want to read nor would I want them to read lest they think me a terrible bore.

But here I am…only semi-bored as I’ve just woken up in the darkness and rain so there’s not much to do outside and if I don’t write this now I fear it will simply never get written.

So it’s been 6months and 2 days since the last time I’ve seen anyone from home…and..well a few days more than that since I’ve seen anyone but Madi my Mom Dad and Dan. Anyone miss me yet? Well I know my mom does at least as she was notably upset at me when I announced that I wouldn’t be returning until August 1^st…but hey, I’m in Europe and don’t know when I’ll be back so I’ve got to take advantage of the opportunity to see as much as possible!

Anywho…in the last few weeks a lot has happened. To those of you who don’t know, I’ve just moved from Burgos (2hrs N. of Madrid) to Cádiz which is on the southern tip of the peninsula. The city is an interesting and historic place seeing as over 3000 years have passed since it was first settled. The City is the Capitol of the province by the same name and is situated on what would be an island but for an extremely narrow strip of land that connects it to mainland Spain.

The city prides itself on the fact that the 1812 constitution was written here and that this was the birthplace of resistance to the Bonaparte occupation of Spain. In that sense it has a relationship to Spain correlative to that of Philadelphia and the United States.

Beyond that they are really quite as vulgar here as in the rest of Spain though I feel like they just don´t see the way they speak as vulgar. What I mean by this is that, unlike in the North, where swears were used as expletives, here they´re just a common part of speech. And it´s not really that they´re even swearing…they just use certain parts of the human anatomy frequently in common speech. I will not elaborate further as I´m not entirely sure who, if anyone, is in my audience but really, if you use your imagination a little I´m sure you can get an idea of what I´m saying. Oh and one further thing, they use these words instead of ¨dude¨ or ¨girlfriend¨ or whatnot, so I don´t know…it´s just a bit odd for an outsider be they Spanish, Latin American, or anyone else.

3 months

You believe it?

5 days makes 3 months that I´ve been away from home, away from the language, the food, the cars, the liberty, and of course, all the people I love. From all that i´ve been surrounded by since infancy...never before have I been away for more than 7 weeks...and here I am...doubling that in just a few weeks....and more than quadrupling it by the time I get home....

At this point I´m homesick intermitantly...the christmas season doesn´t help anything...that old Presley song "Blue Christmas" is basically my anthym at this point...seeing as....well it doesn´t snow here and it´s so cold in the mornings that the fields look blue with all the ice while I walk to school....annnnnd there´s snow in Chicago...yet not here....so yes...y´all will be okay with your christmas of white....but me, I´ll be missin everyone with my blue christmas....

haha depressing

but most of the time I still manage to be in pretty good spirits :D

so yea don´t think i´ve become all emo and whatnot over here....it´s just a tad hard being away from home...and some things are harder to let go of than I would have thought...and that just makes existence over here all the more uncomfortable...

=/

but hey hey hey now...now I´m depressing myself...haha okay lets be happy

so on saturday i get to see a pig killing! :D

despite the fact that i´m sure this is going to gross out a lot of people back home and make them wonder at my sanity and morality

hey...i like Bacon...and a lot of things that come from pork...and i duno...tho I feel kinda bad for the pig....I´m genuinly excited to go see the pig killing....hahahaha...blame my parents...something just probably went wrong while i was little that they haven´t told anybody about...and that´s why i´m this weird....

Beyond that I´ve been quite excited to get a package from aunt jenny and company and to have gotten a letter from uncle david and aunt meg, and to be getting a visit from my dad during the holidays :P

that´ll be really nice :)

and It´ll be nice to get out of Aranda...get a breath of fresh air and see what the rest of Spain is like :D

School is something that´s more frustrating and monotonous every day...but soccer is still going well...adn I´m still getting along with people pretty well

The gypsies have settled down a little bit for various reasons....which I may write about at a later date but as is I don´t have a whole lot of time to finish this :(

mmmm so I feel like this is a depressing blog entry and for that I apologize....but hey...I´ll write something more upbeat later...and I´m not crying myself to sleep or anything...so no worries :P

talk to you all soon

Your....friendly blogger?
Andrés Everardo

just to clear some things up

I didn´t really want to advertise this to the world

but apparently that´s been done for me already

sooo i might as well clear up confusion as much as I can....

So i´ll copy and paste the letter I sent the organization onto this blog and hopefully people will get an idea of what happenned that delightful saturday night.

"As I´m sure you´ve heard, I was assaulted Saturday Evening/Sunday Morning without provocation of any sort. The attack occured around 1:30 in the morning when I made the mistake of simply LOOKING at a gypsy while I was smiling. He rolled down his window and asked "que coño miras" to which I responded "pues nada" as I was more confused than anything as to why he should be so upset as I was merely walking by the car he was in. Apparently however, even that innocently confused response was enough to provoke the innebriated Gyspy further and he got out of the car he was in at which point I began to walk faster towards my friends who were just a couple of meters in front of me while the Gypsy demanded of me, "PERO QUE COÑO MIRAS CABRON!". To this again I responded "pues nada!"

Perhaps my exclamation, although absolutely warranted, may have been unwise. But I cannot stress enough that I´ve never encountered Gypsies before in my life, and I was never warned about them when coming over here, neither by CIEE nor by Interhispania which just seems illogical as every Spaniard here understands to be weary of the Gypsies. I thought their concern to stem more from racism and social misunderstanding than anything so I didn´t take them as seriously as I should have, but I must say that it would have been very much appreciated had the organization told me SOMETHING of this threat to my safety.

In any case, after I responded to the Gypsy the second time he came running at me, at which point I knew he was going to hit me and I braced myself for the innevitable blow I was to receive. He hit me and I backpeddled into a crowd of several dozen bystanders who DID NOTHING to aid me though the attack was clearly unprovoked. This ambivalence to my distress continued even after 3 other gypsies joined in. Though I quickly knocked my first assailent to the ground and out of the fight, I was soon grabbed from behind and not allowed to defend myself with anything more than my legs as the other three Gypsies continued punching me wherever they could.

As I couldn´t raise my hands at all in defence, not to mention the fact that I was still in a state of shock due to the speed and ilogical nature of the attack, I just lowerd my head to defend my face and kept spinning to keep them off balance, kicking one whenever and wherever I could. Thanks to God I had two good friends there who were not only good enough to help me, but strong enough as well, and once the Gypsies saw that it wasn´t 4 on 1 but 4 on 3 they lost their nerve like the cowards they are and ran. Before they did so however they called more gypsies to come back and really beat us.

Walking away from the fight I kept falling over as I was very dizzy from the innumerable blows I´d sustained to my head and at one point fell down right in the middle of a crowd of girls much to their concern and dismay. This state of disorientation and difficulty walking upright continued for the next 20minutes.

Due to my present condition me and one of my friends decided it was time to retire for the night and found refuge behind one of the local schools/churches only to be chased down by another group of Gypsies who almost ran over my friend and scared the living hell out of me. I dropped to the deck and hid in a field of tall grass while they commisserated behind the school talking nonchallantly as though they had not just nearly run my friend over (they would have had he not jumped the fence onto school property and continued onwards utnil he reached the Rio Duero) and my heart was beating so loudly I was almost afraid it was audible to the Gypsies despite their obvious drunken stupidity.

After laying low for at least 20minutes, the Gypsies left and I was able to come out fearing that I may find my friend run over in the field on which the Gypsies were racing their car. Fortunately that was not the case and we met up only to wait out the gypsies a good while longer and then leave the school grounds. By chance me and my friend lost eachother and as I´d turned off my phone and forgotten my pin code we weren´t able to find eachother again, so he went to the police to report what had happenned while I went home to fix my phone as half the world was looking for me at that point, and then to head to the hospital as I was still rather dizzy.

As I arrived home the father and son of the household (Sebas and David) were getting ready to come look for me, and the mother was quite concerned. Thankfully they called all those that were still looking for me and told them I was safe and then proceeded to take me to the hospital

I was very fortunate to not have any fractured bones nor any apparent permanent injuries and was released from the hospital about an hour after entering....

So the night ended with me taking painkillers and trying my best to find a comfortable way to sleep as there weren´t many places on my head that didn´t hurt from something or another. Not to mention most of the rest of my body was sore from the stressful evening.

I didn´t arrive home until 5AM and the attack had occured at approximately 1:30, the majority of the time inbetween spent running from those ridiculous people.

This I tell you as I´m pretty sure you need to know

I´m also obligated to report this incident to my embassy, my parents of course, and at my mother´s insistence I must ask that a contingency plan be drawn up to have me moved to a different city in the event that this rather unsafe and nervewracking situation doesn´t solve itself in the relatively near future.

Thank you for your time and consideration

Respectfully Yours,
Andrew Everett Herrera

PS. It must also be absolutely clear beyond ANY doubt that I did NOTHING to provoke this attack (neither that night nor further in the past) and I was not AT ALL innebriated during this incident."


I hope this serves to clear some things up...and it must be known that I´m not afraid of the Gypsies and if they come after me again I won´t be caught off guard like I was the first time. I´m physically able to defend myself and am no coward, and in the event they find me again, I won´t be the one who regrets it.

So there, I think all that needs to be said has been said, but regardless if anyone has questions I´m always happy to answer. (though i don´t think anyone´s ever had questions before...)

Soccer hurts

...so yesterday i was playing soccer and me and this other guy go up for a header and then BOOM he nails me in the mouth with his forhead...now i´m not sure who this hurt more for...but needless to say...it was less than enjoyable...but it wasn´t until my host mom saw me smile and erupted in uncontainable laughter that i suspected that i might look a tad funny...and though this picture doesn´t truly catch the full extent of that wonderfully swollen lip...i hope at least some of the humor is conveyed =P
...so yes...soccer hurts...yet somehow it´s worth the pain =D

maybe it´s the pain that makes it worth it? lol i duno

but I must say that the Spaniards are almost as bad at soccer as the Italians in the regard that they kill the sport by throwing THEMSELVES to the ground everytime somebody freaking touches them...and that´s not soccer

that´s why i love english league soccer...so much more brutal....beautiful to watch really....

it´s just annoying to watch grown men groan and scream on the field over a scratched knee....bahh

oh well...

yes...well i duno i´m pretty used to it now...like i´ve gotten to the point where i think i´d miss it if i left....so yayy!

now i just need to learn spanish...riight...

------------


So i didn´t have time to finish...so here´s some stuff i wrote during English today...woot for transcription...

¨So here I sit in English class once more...not quite bored yet...but the inevitability of it is really quit eunfortunate...so I´ve decided to put my time to relatively good use and write this blog entry =D

Currently en Historia del Arte we´re studying paleo-christian art which is most interesting as we get to see the pagan origin of the vast majority of Christian symbolism...

Now before anyone goes and decides this is so awfully hypocritical..it must be recognized that this was done mostly out of necessity as Christianity was a clandestine, illegal, and actively hunted religion...followers often being rounded up for slaughter alongside animals in the coloseum...or even more unceremoneously (sp?) but at the very least more dignified deaths in the streets of Rome.

So adopting pagan imagery and re-defining it with Christian symbolism was almost a necessary condition of a combination of their faith and the society in which they had the disfortune of living in.

So...now...2000 years later we learn about the origins of Christian symbolism after only having been educated in the modern significance of it all...and i must say that it´s terribly interesting...and that I was also tremendously amused when told that the dove, which we have known to represent peace, purity, and divinity, was actually a sexual symbol and was even included in the Roman saying that translates as ¨Es mas puta que paloma...or...she´s even more of a whore than a dove¨ =P

And then the Victorians lamentably made sex sinful...and that´s just not fun....thus I will never take to the name victoria...since between the transgressions of the Victorians against humanity...coupled with vicky from the television series ¨the fairly odd parents¨ (the best kids tv show since dexter´s lab =P) the name is one that I just can´t take too anymore...

----

Y ahora porque seguro que alguien se encabrea conmigo si no escribo algo sobre España...les cantaré algunas de las diferencias que he notado en mi tiempo aquí. Empezando con misconcepciones con las cuales llegue a España.

Okay so excuse my still somewhat inadequate Spanish...but let me just talk about the way people dress here versus what I was expecting.

Clothing:

With clothing I find the perfect example of a huge surprise I´d come to find in Europe...though I´d come with the expectation that I´d find people wearing designer Europrean brands or at the very least, a great amount of truly eccentric, borderline eclectic outfits...and of course I came with the thought that I would stick out like a sore thumb in my american clothing...

but none of this was to be found

As far as brand name clothing goes the most commonly seen are Converse, Quicksilver, Ecko, and sports brands such as Umbro, Addidas, Nike, etc.

Really the single greatest difference between the way people dress here and in Chicago is that the styles of dress that people adopt are much more varied here ranging from the eclectic, rebellious look of the 80´s to the punk movement of the late 80`s and 90´s, and the modern ¨gangster¨ look

But that´s in no way to say that these are the only fashions present...Everything under the sun can be found here...Some fashions that would make me swear the people were inuits rather than Spaniards...

So it really is quite interesting....and there have been so many people that have already confused me for being a Spaniard that I fit in much better than I would have ever imagined...And i do find it rather amusing that I fit in far better than the German girls here...partly because I look more Spanish...and partly because I my dress doesn´t really stray from the fashions present in Spain

I feel like this explanation was wholly inadequate and I´ve left whoever was unfortunate enough to have to read this without any idea of what i´m talking about...so if anyone has any questions regarding the dress in Spain I would be delighted to clear up any questions you might have...

I´ll also try to get back later and write a more concise and thorough explanation of the fashions here....

thanks for reading this...to whomever might actually be reading this =P