Blogs from Cádiz, Andalusia, Spain, Europe - page 8

Hi Everyone! Sorry this is going to be a short, informational blog. :) If you are planning on sending any packages please send them before November 15th or 16th, because I will be leaving for Christmas vacation on December 21st so if something were to happen and it was slow on delivery I may not get it before I leave. I also may not be living with my host family next semester, so if it gets here after I leave, I may never get it. In January I will send out my new address. Letters are sort of the same story, but they get here a little faster, so you can send letters up until Thanksgiving. Thanks to everyone who has sent letters and packages I really, really love them! It makes me feel so much ... read more

Happy November All! It’s pretty exciting that it’s November already. Actually, I can’t believe it’s November already. Just two months ago I was thinking that Christmas seemed so far away, and here we are and it is just around the corner. Many of you are probably thinking, “Whoa now, Devin. We haven’t even gotten through Turkey Day yet.” Well, ha! We already had Thanksgiving before I left for Spain, so Christmas IS just around the corner for me! :) It was nice being back in Cádiz, Natalie and I spent all day Sunday together walking around the parts of town we hadn’t really seen yet, including walking out to the lighthouse, which we learned is gated off, so we sat outside the gate and talked for a while and also set my flower free that I ... read more

Hello All, Well, Today I am leaving Cádiz for a northern province here in Spain called Galicia. I came up with this wacky plan to do part of El Camino de Santiago. If you’ve ever taken a Spanish culture class you may know what that is, we talked about it a lot in high school I feel like, if you haven’t, well, here’s a little background info. El Camino de Santiago is a pilgrimage to the Cathedral in the city Santiago de Compostela where it is thought that the apostle Saint James the Great was laid to rest. It is said that his remains were carried by boat from Jerusalem through northern Spain to Santiago. During the middle ages it was very popular to make the pilgrimage, then because of all of the ruckus with the ... read more

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011 When we got back to Cádiz on the 23rd we went to La Hotel Victoria so Mom and Dad could check in and put their backpacks down. Naturally, everything except for a few restaurants was closed down because it was Sunday, but we walked around so I could show them New Cádiz. We ran into what I would consider the Spanish equivalent of tailgating. There was a Cádiz soccer game tonight so everyone was dressed in yellow and blue jerseys. We headed back towards their hotel so we could walk along the shore while the sun was setting. It was cloudy so it wasn’t the ideal day to watch the sunset, but it was still pretty. We couldn’t settle on a place to eat in new Cádiz so I suggested that we ... read more

Monday was entertaining, because we had a discussion in class about the evolution of gender equality over time. I learned that men and women both get maternity leave in a lot of countries. In most of the countries the maternity leave is significantly shorter for the men, however in one country, both the mother and the father get 4 months! That seems a bit extreme to me… but to each his own! Our professor also took a poll on how many of us had grandmothers who went to college. I was shocked to see that only one student besides myself had a grandmother with a college degree. A girl in the back of the room said “well it is different for her because she lives in America”, which made me realize how many more opportunities ... read more