Granada

We had a three day weekend, and we had just studied the Alhambra in art history class, so we took off to Granada. Granada was the last stronghold of the Muslim presence in Spain and the place where Ferdinand and Isabella completed their Christian conquest. We saw the home of Boabdil and his concubines, and we saw the crowns and the crypts of Ferdinand and Isabella. <br><br>Granada today is cool too. It is a very diverse city, especially compared to Sevilla, I feel. We saw lots of hippies, backpackers, gypsies, and of course, tourists. People like me, but different. <br> ... See my Tabblo>

The day I ate five oranges: Feb 10

Rachel and I rode the bus (we are getting really good at riding busses) to Arcos, a cute little white pueblo with some history and some artisans. We sat in the plaza on top of the hill, next to the castle and the cathedral, neither of which we could go in. But that was okay because the blue sky and wispy white clouds that God suspended over the hills and the valleys and the orange groves was better than any architecture that gold could buy or decorate. We talked with a Dutch guy who travels all over Europe taking pictures for travel literature, and he said that my counting to twelef wasn't bad. After attending mass at another hilltop church, we bought a kilo (or was it two kilos?) of oranges and headed down into the valley. Once we got there, we realized that the dirt cheap oranges we had bought at the top weren't as good of a deal as the thought, only because the ones at the grove are even cheaper, and a little fresher too. Oranges are delicious here, and they are in season now. I ate four of them that day, one at each bench we stopped to gaze from. At supper that night, I sat down to find an orange on my dessert plate. It was yummy.

The day I went to Gibraltar: Feb 9

We went to Gibraltar, which is British. Gibraltar is a rock, a town, a trophy.

We went throught the town, following the bra trail.

We went to the end of the rock and flew (on our feet) through the wind.

We went inside the rock– through the tunnels, into the cave, deep within the siege mines.

We went to the top of the rock, where we ate our grocery store lunches and thought about what would happen if we were to fly an American flag there.

We went across the active airstrip.

We went to the bus station, where we met a permanent traveler.

We went by bus to our hostel. On the way we formulated plans to become permanant travelers ourselves.

for lack of words

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The day I went to Africa: Friday, Feb 8

This is not a summary of that day. That would be impossible. This is just an abridged version of an excerpt from my journal:

Next we went to the restaurant, another whitewashed building tucked back into the alley, that once inside, was surprisingly spacious. Rachel and I immediately recognized many elements of Arabian art. I especially liked the lacería. I have decided that if I ever own a house with a kitchen, I am going to decorate it with boldly colored azulejos en patterns of lacería. Indeed.

I ordered a Fanta, which came in a bottle, rather than water, and got ready to enjoy a delicious feast that I hadn't even expected to be part of the tour. Rachel decided to eat as well and save her bocadillo for supper.

By my watch, I noticed that they were feeding us lunch at typical Spanish time. Since the restaurant was basically deserted, I wondered when typical Moroccan time for lunch is.

We were seated with the Brazilian family. We were in for a treat.

The waiter came with our sodas and popped off the metal caps with style. Our first course was an opaque soup, in which we dipped triangles of the round bread that I had wanted to try in the market. The next course was skewers of savory beef pieces, and after that we had our main meal of couscous with chicken on the bone and the most delicious carrots ever and other vegetables. Everything was so delicious, but what was even better was the conversation.

I like languages.

The Brazilians, at least Mom and Dad, knew a little English and quite a bit of Spanish, as well as their first language, Portuguese. Rachel and I were fluent in English, but spoke quite a bit of Spanish as well. Actually, more than they did, although I'm sure they can hear Spanish better than we can. But we didn't know any Portuguese. And their son knew nothing but Portuguese and the basic words he had learned of other languages in school. In effect, we could not have a conversation in either of our first languages, which made us equals in the realm of Spanish.

We talked about languages, travels, plans, food, and school systems. This family was on vacation in Europe for an extended period of time. They really enjoyed the breakfast at the hotel where they were staying in Algeciras. We talked about breakfast for a while. In both English and Spanish, the word means "breaking the fast." In Portugese, it is "coffee of the morning: café de la mañá." And desert in Portugese is literally "sobre la mesa" and it sounds very similar. I said that if I were to invent a language, I would call desert "en mi boca" but I don't think that they got the joke.

In Brazil, many schools serve breakfast at school. They asked us if that was true in the United States. I told them that that was usually only the case in districts where many poor people whose parents can't take care of them live. "Poor people in America?" They scoffed. It's true, I told them. America is not what you see as a tourist or as a moviegoer. But then I thought about it from a Brazilian's perspective. In Brazil, a poor person doesn't have what a poor person in America has.

The main problem in Brazil, though, they said, is that there is such a huge wealth gap. There are a few rich people, they said, and then there are masses of poor, and there are very few people in between. They must be among the rich few. Maybe they consider themselves middle class. I don't know. Or maybe those people on our tour were famous or high up in the government. Maybe he is an embassador and feels he has the right to travel all over Europe and still comment on the sadness of the wealth gap. What gives me the right?

Their ten-ish year old boy was so fun. He liked to jabber, and I don't think he realized that we couldn't understand Portugese hardly at all. Being a bright little kid, he probably understood everything we were saying in our ultra-slow Spanish, so he wondered why we couldn't understand what he was saying. Or maybe he didn't even notice until later that we weren't understanding. It was super cute though, and his dad tried to translate some of it into Spanish or English if he knew it at all. It was fun to just play around with the languages, push them and stretch them, because we had nothing to lose.

At one point towards the beginning of the conversation, the dad was really trying hard to speak in English for us. Indeed, stuff like that is what he was learnign English for. But alas, he finally threw up his hands and shook his head and said, "I am just confusing myself. Let's stick with Spanish." Except he said that in Spanish. But I haven't learned to store Spanish tone and wording in my head yet, so there you have it in English.

We talked about learning languages, since that was obviously something that we were all involved in. How had they learned Spanish? School. And necesity for travel. How had we learned Spanish? School, and necessity for travel. What languages do they teach in schools in the United States? Do many people learn a second language? Mostly Spanish and some French, German, Japanese, and such, but sadly not very many people ever learn a second language. "Many people in the states never travel outside of the country and never pay any attention to what is going on in other countries." Rachel commented.

"But don't be to hard on yourselves. The same is true for Brazilians," Mr. Brazilian replied. "We don't like people from Chile [if that's right next to Brazil; I'm forgetting now] and people from Chile don't like people from Argentina. Just because. But we are okay with Argentina, for no real reason. People don't really know anything about each other, they just decide things and live their life however they want to. It's the same everywhere, that no one really cares enough to know."

"Podemos decir que todo el mundo tiene un problema porque todo el mundo no sabe nada de todo el mundo," I summarised. We laughed. But claro, we weren't including ourselves in that mundo of ignorant people. As we spoke (in three languages) we were seeing the world.

We finished the meal with "Whisky de Marruecos" which, alas, was not one bit alcoholic. It was syruppy sweat mint tea, with texture at the bottom, and it was absolutely delicious.

The beauty of being in Morocco was that suddenly I was a Spanish speaker as opposed to an Arab or Beréber speaker. In Morocco, hearing Spanish was like hearing English while in Sevilla. Not too uncommon, but special enough to say, "Hey, I understand that! That's my language!"

I was in Africa when I first could say of Spanish, "Hey, that's my language!"

Super fun. Language high. A trilingual table. Una mesa multilingüe. Don't ask me how to say that in Portuguese.

Field Trip

Here's some pictures that I put on Flickr earlier, now organized in a Tabblo.

I went with the other students in my Spanish Art History class to Córdoba on Friday, 1 Feb 2008. ... See my Tabblo>

Más

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Pass tea vents.

If you were to pass tea vents, it would smell good, I think. If you would like to see more pictures of passed events, take a look at this Tabblo about my day trip into Madrid with Becky and Avery on January 19.

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Consider yourself kissed.

At first, the Spanish custom of giving a kiss on each cheek as a greeting made me a little nervous. Not actually doing it (that's easy and not awkward at all) but the thought of it. I thought it would be awkward and that I would somehow mess up when I did it.

The first person I gave dos besos (two kisses) to was a little old man involved with the street evangelism ministry in Madrid. The last place I got dos besos was the Catholic church I worshiped at yesterday.

During orientation at the school here, they explained the practice of dos besos in detail. Often when a group of friends goes out or when a family gets together, they will all go around and give dos besos to everybody before leaving to go on their separate ways. But sometimes this is just impractical. Say you are saying goodbye to the fourteen friends that you've just discoed away the evening with. That's twenty-eight kisses. In such a case, it is appropriate to just say, "Dos besos para todos! (two kisses for everybody!)" as you wave goodbye. It's a way of saying, "consider yourself kissed."

Having so much to explore, so much to try, and so much to talk about makes me want to do two things: a) spend none of my time keeping in contact with people and b) spend all of my time keeping in contact with people. I hope to continue to use this blog as a sort of compromise. When you read these posts, imagine that we have run into each other on the street and chatted a bit. Consider yourself kissed.

I am happy to say that Tabblo seems to be working well again, so I have finally finished an old post on my time in Toledo with my ECA friends. It can be found here.
And here's one of my pictures from the parks. More photoblogs will be coming.

This past weekend, I spent a day in Morocco, a day in Gibraltar, and a day in Los Arcos. But since I've only journaled about half of one of those days and already have about four notebook pages, I won't be able to post anything until tomorrow. And I use 'tomorrow' in the Spanish sense, as in, 'not today.'

Dos besos para todos!