Blogs from Spain, Europe - page 1204

If there's one thing that I love most about Spain, it's the need the Spaniards feel to take a break from their already relaxing lives. If there's a holiday on Thursday, they take Friday off, too. The calendar is sprinkled with one holiday after another, so many that I feel like I've been off work more than I've been at work. Last week we celebrated White Week, a holiday I'm still struggling to understand. You see, all the towns in Andalucía have a local festival once a year to celebrate life according to local tradition. It's called a feria and always includes dancing, drinking, staying out all night and eating lots of local foods. And to ensure that one can take advantage of all the ferias in the region, the celebrations are spread through out the ... read more

Hola! Que Tal? Hoy vamos a esguiar. Esta mucho divertido. Yo esquio y Laura snowboard. Si, es mismo palabra en espanol y ingles. Ella es muy bien para premiera vez. Las montanas son muchos guapos. (Does that combination go together?...muchos guapos?...yo no se.) Estoy atendidos una fiesta ahora en mis amigos apartamientos. Son muchos gentes aqui! Y uso una computadora de una amiga. Yo pienso ir a casa ahora. iYo quiero voy a cama! iYo muy cansado para esqio hoy! Hablo mas contigo luego. iOs Amo! In English.... How are you? Today I went skiing. It was a lot of fun. I skiied and Laura snowboarded. Yes, it's the same word in Spanish and English. She is very good for her first time. The Mountains are much beautiful. ( does that combination go together?...much beautiful?....I don't ... read more

Dinner was absolutely wonderful! We had quite an international contingent - we were American, English, German & Spanish, with some who had switched countries! Everyone was great - one of our dinner companions is a small man, dressed casually with a dedicated love of football (the European kind, mind you), while his wife was impeccably dressed (matching handbag and shoes), and an admitted shopping fanatic (though I don't know too many women who aren't!). She seemed to sense my nervousness and stood right next to me in a protective manner, which she kept up throughout the night, whenever she would inquire about what I had ordered, how I was enjoying it, or how I was generally doing. It was clear over the course of the evening that she and her husband were very well traveled, but ... read more

Hola all, So. Derek and I are trying to figure out where to go next. I know we´ve only been here a week but this isn´t really our farm. The other WWOOFers are grand. Except of course Alex, one of the German WWOOFers, I think he drives everyone a little bonkers. He says the same thing over and over around 5 different times, just in different ways. He likes to look over everything that someone does and tell them how to do it better or how we are doing it completely wrong. Or worse! He´ll go and do over what you just did. He also snores very loudly. He´s probably one of the only people in my life that I´ve actually seriously thought about telling off. ... Eeek. Then there´s Pere. He´s never around, despite the ... read more

After chocolate in Brussles, Dionne and I headed south to meet up with fellow ISU Spanish major Kyle in Paris. We didn´t have the best of weather in Paris (it was quite windy the whole time and on and off rainy) but apparently the wind wasn´t nearly as bad as in central Europe: trees downed across rail lines, semis blown off highways, really crazy stuff. Had we planned on leaving Prague a bit later, we might not have been able to. We thought we´d take a quick look at the Louvre museum. This is impossible! We spent maybe 4 or 5 hours there and only made it through Italian Renaissance painting, Greek and Roman cermaics, a bit of classical sculpture and Mesopotamia. We went through most of Egypt on accident to get to Mesopatamia (we were ... read more