Of malls & walls.

11.25.12

This weekend was pretty relaxed for me.  Thanksgiving was definitely the high point.  There are just two small things I could touch on here today.

Yesterday, Saturday, I went to As Termas for the first time with another auxiliar.  That's the centro comercial (mall) here in Lugo.  It wasn't very big, but it had a decent amount of cool clothing stores... I definitely want to go back sometime in January, after the rebajas have started.  (There is a period for about 2 months at the beginning of the year where, apparently, everything in Spain is on mega-sale.  I'm very excited for this.)  There is also a movie theater (almost said cinema... All the British English here is starting to get to me...) and McDonalds there, which is definitely good to know.  Any McCraving I get is going to have to be pretty extreme though, because getting to this mall, being there, and getting back seems to be an all day affair; at the very least not something you can do in less than 2 hours.

I was happy to see when we got there that this mall, like malls all over America by now, was decorated for Christmas.  Although the decorations were kinda... weird.  And not necessary that Christmas-y, which was surprising, because, as Jill pointed out, Spain is a country that still claims to be overwhelming Catholic-- I've had several Spaniards tell me that "there aren't any Jews in Spain."  Which is weird... And uncomfortable... Especially since Spain seems to be so tolerant and progressive in other aspects.  It will be interesting to see how the Christmas/holiday season progresses here.

Anyway, if anyone can figure out what this is, I'd like to hear your theory:

Two trees poking out of a purple ball. Ah, yes. Nothing says Christmas better.

There was a big tree, and also this slightly spastic polar bear band:

Ooh, ooh! Also, this is silly, but did anyone know that there was a sandwich called a McIberia? Jajaja. There totally is.  A McChicken is also called a McPollo.

That sandwich in the middle on the right is the McIberia.

Also, today I went jogging up on the wall for the first time in about a week (it is getting so hard to make myself go exercise... The air is getting so cold that it burns my lungs :[ ), and I saw the most SPECTACULAR sunset.  The whole sky was red at one point, and from some of the points on the wall you could see it over the mountains... Oof.  Bellísimo.  Sadly, by the time I had run back to the stairs close to my apt, run home, gotten my phone, and run back, I only caught the tail end of it :(
Here's what I got:

But now my new goal is to be up on the wall for as many sunsets as possible, and get some exceptional ones on camera.  Hopefully this will be motivation to at least go walking more ;)

Love from Lugo to you all <3

Thanksgiving in Lugo

 11.23.12

First, this:

 
Yeah, The Peanuts theme song.  'Cause the holidays are officially here, & I'd like you to read this post with that song playing in your head ;)

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day!  And my first Thanksgiving in Spain.  I honestly thought I would be melancholy all day because I was missing my family and wishing I could see my loved ones in Florida, but I actually had a much more lovely time than I expected.  I was blessed to spend the evening/night with several other auxiliares; mostly American, although 1 Scottish and 1 Irish girl also attended for their very first Thanksgiving ever :)  It was a great time.  We all cooked something and brought it all to the wonderful Ryan & Maris's apartment, and there was an abundance of food, drinks, and laughter. 

In a way it's hard to describe, but I feel like celebrating Thanksgiving here, so far from home & all of our families, really brought out the spirit of the holiday.  Everyone was so grateful to be here in Spain, to have met so many lovely people, and to be able to gather to enjoy each others' company and actually express our thanks.  It brought us back to basics, in a way.  I think it is very easy, especially when you are within your comfort zone (e.g. home), to take things for granted and to get caught up in things that really shouldn't matter... Commericialization of the holidays (cough black friday cough), worrying about things being "perfect" for dinner & company, even petty arguments or disagreements.  Although I did miss my family very much yesterday, I am glad to say that I passed an extremely enjoyable evening with some extremely enjoyable people, and it did exactly what the holiday is supposed to-- remind me to be thankful.

Heh, perhaps that's enough introspection on that topic... here are some pictures!  I didn't get too many, but as soon as I find one of the group shots that was taken on facebook, I'll put it up here, too :)

  My contribution to our feast was baked butternut squash (and 2 bottles of cider ;) ).

 

 It might betray some ignorance, but I had never really been conscious of what a butternut squash looked like fresh & uncooked (I always picture an acorn squash, for some reason).  I had NO IDEA how difficult they were to cut and peel.  That knife was stuck for a while...

 This was after I had finally succeeded in carving up the little one, and had just sliced the big one in half.  All using only that big-@$$ knife and spoon.

 One hour and several blisters later-- finally all cubed!

After it finished baking with garlic, olive oil, and some seasoning; I like that you can see some steam rising in this picture ^__^.  That's Julia's green bean casserole in the background, before it went in the oven.

This was my view from the end of the table; hard to get everything that was happening!  But we had a good-sized group :)

 Action shots ;)  We opted for 2 chickens (a la Meg) instead of 1 turkey, because those you have to special order and we wouldn't have gotten it in time.

 Gwen (Annia's husky) was so good!  She didn't try to steal anyone's food, even though she could have easily reached all the plates.

 Tina, Laura (our Irish friend), and Mary :)

 Julia y yo

Annia & Meagan (I met Meagan for the first time last night; turns out she studied exactly what I did in college! Linguistics, TESL, and Spanish. Funny.)

 Champagne & desserts!

 Lemon cheesecake... mmm.

That table was practically as full of desserts as it was of food!

I don't know how accurately the pictures have captured it, but it was a very warm, happy, good-for-your-soul night :)

God bless, everyone!  I hope that you all had a love-filled Thanksgiving as well <3

A Glorious Reunion. Also known as "My realization that I practically live in the North Atlantic Ocean."

As per popular demand (wink, wink), this post will not actually be new-news, but rather a re-cap of my mini-adventure to Madrid a couple weeks ago.  Enjoy! :)

I have not really ventured out of Lugo much yet.  It has already become my new, safe, little bubble-place.  I went on a half-day excursion to Ourense one of my first weekends here, which was only about 1.5 hours away, and till the 9th, that was it.  Then I reached my maximum tolerance of missing Roxy, and something had to be done.  Roxy & I applied for this program together at the exact same time last year, but, wouldn't you know, we ended up getting placed about as far away from each other as geographically possible -__-  She's in a town called Úbeda in Andalucía, and I'm up here in

Galicia. Quick visual: 

 

So, yeah, meeting up in Madrid was about the most logical/exciting plan we could come up with for a regular 2-day weekend.  & hombre, was it exciting!  Not so logical, but definitely exciting ;)

After a 6 hour bus ride (I finally feel the pain of all my friends who had to take a bus home to Miami from Gainesville), I got to Madrid at 2:30pm on a Friday & saw my lovely friend.  I like to think exhaustion was the only thing keeping us from leaping into each others' arms.  Also the fact that we needed to sit/eat/re-group pronto because we had quite spontaneously, and somewhat accidentally, arrived in this fantastic city without even a shadow of a plan.

Fortunately, we do pretty well at planning together (Lord knows we've had practice, between the ELI & the TESL internship), so we quickly found a place called Cat's Hostel, and even managed to navigate there on the metro!  Excitement.  It was pretty swanky as far as hostels go, I have to think; I'm afraid I might already be spoiled on hostels.  Here's what the common room in the center looked like:

There was also a huge stained glass skylight/ceiling.  Apparently this place used to be a palace?

 

After getting to the hostel (and overcoming the minor obstacle of Roxy not having her passport, which really turned out to be a good thing, because we have pretty much started a life-long friendship with Sergio the deskman now), we went out for coffee/treats at what we thought was a Dunkin' Donuts, but turned out to be this place:

Yep. That says "Bake Place."  And no, they don't have toasted almond coffee.

 Once we'd had our fill of Dunkin' posers coffee & donuts that cannot really be described as "donuts" but rather as "rosquillas," we got some direction from our BFF Sergio and set out in search of tapas (yum) and música latina (of course).  Despite knowing which "zona" (barrio) to go to, we still wandered around aimlessly and without seeing anywhere truly promising till Roxy spotted a little beauty of a bar called "La cabra en el tejido."  It was small, cozy, and funky, and I will definitely be going back someday.

I don't really have any pictures of our experience after that, which was a truly weird one.  We walked over to the zona where most of the clubs are (our hostel was in a perfect, central location to all these places), and were immediately assailed by men & women from all directions trying to get us in to their clubs. (Not as creepy as it sounds, they were promoters.  So still creepy, but somewhat legitimately so. Somewhat.)  This is me in the plaza before they descended:

It ended up being a good night though.  We were able to go into about... oof, 5 or 6 different clubs, at least, hunting for music we liked and more often than not getting some sort of free drink with our entrance.  The two of us out & dancing really made me miss Gainesville!  & it felt a bit like home to hear a bunch of salsa/merengue/reggaeton songs that I know; I'm still not familiar with much Spanish music.  Called it an "early night" (by Spanish standards) this time & were back at home, sweet hostel by 3am.

Saturday was our exciting, sight-seeing day!  It was gorgeous & mostly sunny, and we had a perfect day/afternoon.  We set out for the Plaza Mayor to start with, and stopped for churros & chocolate (a typical Spanish "breakfast") along the way.  

 This was so sweet/fried that my stomach felt weird for hours afterward... Pero valió la pena ;)

 It had to be the place with the fluffy chairs.  We saw them the night before and just had to sit in them.

 After this little stop, we ended up witnessing a Moroccan civil rights protest.  It was pretty crazy, but I guess excitement just happens wherever we are.  It was very interesting to see, and we also got to hear some pretty cool live music as part of the protest.

The semi-confusion created by all this, meant we ended up wandering a bit before getting to the plaza, which was also fine because then we stumbled upon this really cool marketplace:

 And finally we arrived in the Plaza Mayor:

From the plaza, it wasn't far to get to the Royal Palace.  I'd been to the Palacio Real before, on the EF Tour when I was 17, but it was no less exciting going again.  Maybe even more exciting, because I don't know if I ever really believed I'd make it back!  There was also a giant, floral shrine set up to the Virgin of Pilar, because apparently the day before had been a festival for that in Madrid.

                                                                              

Unfortunately, pictures were not technically allowed in the palace, so we only got a few.  These are some of the best, and they're of the view & the ceiling when you first walk up the staircase into the palace:

Not too shabby, eh?


 Following our palace & Goya exhibit expedition (we gained entry to both when we paid for our tickets), we went out for Indian food for lunch.  "Ethnic cuisine" is super hard to come by in Spain, and in cities as small as Lugo it doesn't even exist.  Plus, as it was pretty chilly even in Madrid, it was kind of nice eating a lunch that made you sweat a little ;)

At this point, if you're still reading, congratulations.  It's getting late here & even my endurance for this post is wearing thin.  There's really just one more thing I want to include.  The flamenco show Saturday night!  Ay, ay, ay, this might have been my favorite part of the whole trip.  Actually, it probably definitely was.  We'd gotten a flyer for a show in the Plaza Mayor earlier that day, & ended up calling & making a reservation that afternoon.  They had a special deal where, with the cover charge, you could get a bottle of wine & tapas along with the show.  Basically perfecto.  Also we had a waiter that everyone (the performers and other waiters) called Patata (potato).  Which is just funny.

It was incredible to watch.  The dancers and guitarist were all so, so passionate, and also clearly incredibly supportive of each other.  The female dancer's father (who was apparently at the show) even got on stage at one point to dance with her (he is obviously the one who taught her to love flamenco), and the guitarist's girlfriend was also watching the show.  She was a dancer herself and got up to dance with them a bit at the end of the show.  It was just a wonderful time.  This is Roxy & I with the dancers after the show (we were at a table right by where they would enter/exit/change, & they were nice to enough to chat with us & take pictures afterwards :D).

I really wanted to upload a video, too, but for some reason it won't work directly from my computer, and youtube told me it was going to take about an hour to upload there and I'm tired.  So, if you want & have access, you can see part of one of the last acts of the show on my facebook.  Sorry it's not also here, but I'm new to this blogging thing :-/

The rest of that night was given to dancing & merry-making (oh, yeah, and having an debit card be comido por una ATM machine...) & generally trying to rep latina culture here in Spain, 'cause that's how we do.  But I don't think I really need to go into all that, that's normal stuff for us. All the really interesting parts of the trip are already up here, as well as the pictures.  (After getting in super late/early on Saturday night/Sunday morning, suffice to say neither of us felt very photogenic the next day jeje.)

So, there you have it. Madrid, Take 1.  & many more adventures to come <3

Saturday night a la gallega

11.18.2012

Man.  Spain goes hard.

I don't know how aware of this you all are (whoever you are), but the average Spaniard, when she/he goes out, goes OUT.  Many of the bars here do not close until sometime between 6 and 8 in the morning, and some stay open till noon.  As someone who does not live in Miami or Las Vegas, this seems practically insane to me.  Last night I went to a small party, at around 10:30 (normal), and we did not even leave the apartment until after 3am (gasp).  I was lucky enough to be able to go out with some lucenses (people from Lugo) and got to experience some real gallego bars/music/drinks.  So much fun!  I felt like I was in a Spanish Ireland haha.  I liked the music and dancing a lot; it definitely sounds a bit Celtic, and most of it is more like rock than pop (pop is a ridiculously dominant genre here in Spain, in general).  There is a traditional/typical way to dance, but Iria (the girl I've been giving private lessons to, and my connection to this group) told me that you can really dance however you like.  This suits me ;)

While we were out, they requested that one of the bars play this song, which is very Galician:

"Sara, Sariña." Thanks for making me feel at home, Galicia.  Me gusta.

Goal for this afternoon (provided I can also finish my limited to-do list with so few hours left in the day): find more música gallega.

Oh, also, a very popular drink here is licor café.  This is essentially like Kahlua... but better.  I love this place.

Here goes nothin'

11.16.2012


Ok, so, I've never blogged before.  Not really, anyway.  So, if I'm not very good at it, you'll have to forgive me.  Honestly, I always thought it was a little silly before, but now that I am spending a year living in a foreign country, it seems that I finally have something worthwhile to share.

I doubt there will be many people reading this besides my family and close friends, but for those of you who don't know, my name is Sarah.  I graduated this past May with a BA in Linguistics from the University of Florida, and am currently living in Galicia, Spain and working as an auxiliar de conversación/cultural ambassador.  I came here to increase my ESL/EFL experience, and also because I have dreamed of living abroad for almost my whole life.  I don't know that I ever thought I'd actually be able to do it.  This whole experience, although it has really only just begun, is just completely, magnificently overwhelming for me.

In two days, I'll have been in Lugo for one month.  One month!  Part of me feels like it should have been three or four months already, and another part of me feels like I was just saying my goodbyes at the airport yesterday.

Since this is my first post, I don't really want to write too much.  I think I'll just settle for posting some pictures of Lugo and Guntín (the village I work in) for now.   It's a bit of a lástima that I didn't start this blog earlier, as I've missed some important occurrences at this point; pulpo in October, Halloween, a trip to Ourense, a trip to Madrid...  Perhaps I will go back and add some small posts and photos of these things eventually.  Perhaps.

 La Muralla Romana.  The pride of Lugo; it is the only city in the world to be completely surrounded by intact Roman walls.  My apartment is right across the street from it ^__^

 The Monasterio de Ferreira.  This is in one of the villages of Guntín.

 Ponte Cabalar (horse bridge) in Guntín.  This was also originally Roman.

 Not the greatest quality photo, but this is the luna llena over the Roman Wall (taken from atop the wall).

 The Río Rato.  This is a little river with a lovely trail that I go jogging on semi-regularly.  It's easier to do something that you hate (jogging) while looking at such pretty scenery!

 The view from Ronda das Fontiñas (the Río Rato is down there somewhere).

 The plaza mayor de noche :)  One of the nicest places in Lugo to just be. (& to people watch!)

And, of course, the cathedral.  I can see these towers from our living room window.  It's quite impressive, but apparently it hardly holds a candle to the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, which it was modeled after.