Well, rats. (Jolín...)

2.21.13


It's happened.  I've finally gotten sick in Spain.  I knew I couldn't avoid this for an entire 9 months... Sigh.

I've been in bed all day, and I'm that kind of bored where you know you shouldn't do too much and make yourself worse, but you also can't possibly sleep anymore.  So far, intermittent with the sleeping, I've watched Casablanca (finally), African Cats (a Disney documentary narrated by Samuel L Jackson, where, of course, by the end, you feel like all the animals are people), and Roman Holiday is playing now.  I've also been (finally) reading A Clash of Kings, which marks a return to my Kindle after I took a break after reading all 7 of the Harry Potter books in a month.  And... yeah.  I'm bored.  So, I'm on here.

There's not much to write about; I only had a two day work week (ridiiiiculous... but really a blessing I guess, since apparently I was getting sick) because all the ESO students went to a "discurso" (a "talk" about a power plant... so, really a field trip) in Ferrol yesterday.  I would have gone with them, just to see more of Galicia, but they were going to be gone till 8 or 8:30 at night and I had private lessons. 

I did have my first Spanish dubbing movie experience last night.  It was Die Hard 5, or, as it's known here, "La Jungla: Un buen día para morir" (instead of "Die Hard," the franchise is called "La Jungla de Cristal"; literally, "The Crystal Jungle."  I don't know why it's so poetic in Spanish... because "Die Hard" is really laughably un-poetic).  Dad and James, I feel like you should be proud of me for going to see this haha.  And I understood it all!  Perhaps not such a great feat, since it's an action movie where the dialogue is not-so-important, but still.  I felt proud.  Although it was hard to not just try to read the actors' lips... Especially when you just know they're saying "what's up" or "whatever," and other common Americanisms.  In Spain all películas are dubbed into Spanish.  I don't know why, but they are.  And really famous actors have the same person that does their voice-overs in all the movies they're in.  So, in Spain, Bruce Willis is essentially some other guy entirely.  I also saw a preview that had The Rock and Vin Diesel in it, and it's extremely weird... hearing other peoples' (Spanish) voices coming out of their mouths.

Also, I have been seeing storks.  There is only one type of stork to be found in Galicia (according to Ana, one of the teachers I work with), and it lives in Africa for most of the year.  When you see it here, it means spring is coming.  Yayay.  I ready to be DONE with winter, that's for sure.

Also also, (and I've this thought a couple times but never remembered to put it on here), when, for a change, the nights are not cloudy, it is easy to spot Orion and the Big Dipper.  I saw Orion again the other night, and it occurred to me that "Whoa.  I used to look up at this from my front yard in Galesburg... I usually look at it from the west coast of Florida... And here I am, seeing it in Spain."  I don't know why, but it blows my mind.  It's not like I'm in the Southern Hemisphere and looking at a completely different sky (which, for the record, I want to do someday), but still it seems incredible.  Oh, little Sarah.  You've come so far.  Hahah.

That's all I got.  Here's Humphrey Bogart:

Oh, wait, I lied.  I would also like to add that Julia is an amazing roommate who made chicken rivel soup and shared some with me because I feel so icky!  Possible highlight of the day jaja.

Lo siento, pisha... no to' er mundo pué' ser de Cai...

2/9-13/13

Rough translation:  “Sorry brah, not everyone can be from Cádiz.” Man, I wish I could be, though!

Seriously, blog-readers, me enamoré el fin de semana pasado. I fell in love. How do I even begin to explain how wonderful our weekend in the south was? I'm sure my impression of it was greatly affected by the fact that it was Carnaval (which, it turns out, is pretty much the greatest party in the world), but it was also lovely to be somewhere warmer, in the sunshine, by the water. And the people there really are so different. The gallegos were all telling me before I left “Oh, Andalucía is like another country, it's so different from Galicia. We don't understand their accents, and they're always dancing and singing in the streets...” plus some slightly derogatory opinions, because there is definitely something of a north v. south mentality here in Spain. And, partially because of this, I didn't really expect most of what they told me to be true. I was, needless to say, surprised.

I think the easiest thing I can do for myself is to start at the beginning, when we (Julia, Lucy, and myself) left Lugo at about 1:15 pm last Saturday and started making our way to the Costa de la Luz.

Since Lugo does not have an airport, and Cádiz is equally airport challenged, our first leg of the trip consisted of a bus ride to Santiago. This passed ridiculously quickly, mostly because we were so excited to leave. I'm pretty sure we all had trouble sleeping the night before the trip; it was like Christmas was coming.  To add to the general stokedness was the fact that whenever any of us told our gallego friends co-workers or students where we were going, everyone responded with intense jealousy and excitement.  The time we spent waiting for our flight there was the most downtime we had while traveling. There are really only three things I'd like to mention about that airport experience: 1. You only had to take your shoes off for security if you were wearing boots... Which I thought was weird, and I wonder if it's like this everywhere in Spain or only at small airports (I don't have a very clear memory of my flight out of Madrid for Christmas... I was pretty tired); 2. I paid way too much money for a large chocolate bar because apparently you needed your boarding pass to purchase anything at the airport store, and I had to make the cashier wait while I went to fetch mine, & I felt too awkward/embarrassed to not pay for the chocolate after all that; 3. Julia got such a big bocadillo that a strange man walked by and told her that he “didn't know they let you play harmonicas at the airport.”

The flight to Sevilla was quick and very smooth; it was my first flight with Ryanair and I have to say I had a good experience. The planes' colors are kind of ugly (think LOLHS blue & yellow, only the yellow isn't even trying to be “gold”) and you don't get complimentary refreshments... But if you arrive on time to your destination, they play a little trumpet call/charge, which is pretty gracioso. (When we got to Sevilla, we thought it was a little fanfare in honor of Carnaval... that would have been cooler.) Also it was really nice to fly with other people, since, for some reason, I've started to get pretty nervous about flying (I am upset about this. I never used to get anxious, just excited). Oh, yes, something worth noting: when you board or get off a Ryanair flight, you have to walk quite a ways either out to the plan or to the airport. Like, across the tarmac. It feels a bit sketchy, but I suppose they're saving on some kind of docking fee that way. And then you have to walk up a little staircase into the plane, but I actually thought this was kind of cool (mostly because it made me think of Arrested Development jeje). 

(Aside: I'm writing this post sitting at an outdoor cafe in the Praza Maior with Julia and Ryan, two people I never would have met if I hadn't come to Spain, surrounded by the hubbub of lucenses relaxing on a Saturday afternoon. It's been a gorgeous, feel-like-Spring day, the people watching is in its prime hour, and it's all very charming. And very European. I'm going to miss this when I'm back in Land O Lakes.)

After landing at the very tiny Sevilla airport, we caught the only bus for the city/Santa Justa train station. We had a minor hiccup here where we somehow missed the train station stop, but we were able to walk there easily enough. Spanish people are usually very friendly when you stop and ask them for directions.  I'd say it was then that the magic of Carnaval really started to make itself known. Everyone at that station was in the SUCH a good mood. The guards, the ticket people, the other passengers... everyone. They searched our bags to make sure we weren't bringing any alcohol on the train and opened them to find nothing but glitter, masks, and feathers. So, in retrospect, we should have expected this, but that train was like a party train. We were some of the first people on, and at first we actually imagined we would nap (it was about a 1 hour 45 min ride)... but then everyone else arrived. EVERYONE was in costume. And the differences between andaluzes and gallegos were immediately apparent. For one thing, the andaluz accent is so nasal. And they quitar (drop) a good quantity of the letters in their words, and just about every “s;” S's don't stand a chance in Andalucía. Also there was the fact that everyone kept bursting into a flamenco-style of singing, chanting songs about carnaval, and there was a constant clapping to accompany this singing. It was just so merry. There was one chico in particular, dressed as a pirate, whose accent we kept trying to imitate, pretty much all weekend. He was talking about his disfraz (costume), and at one point said, “Me ha costado dos euros” in reference to his hat or something; only that's what he meant to say. What he actually said was, “Me ha co'tao do' euro'.” jajajaja.

Party train.  Not pictured: Fabulous pirate.

The train's arrival in Cádiz led to a mass exodus of people into the already overflowing streets and plazas. There were street carts selling food, music pounding, and just masses of people EVERYWHERE, all in costume. Not half-assed costumes, either. Most looked homemade, and a lot of groups had coordinated. (For some reason smurfs seemed to be a really popular choice.) Basically once we saw that, we knew that tonight needed to be the night we went all out (or as all out as we could with the costume supplies we had brought) and we couldn't wait to drop off our luggage and join the party. 

Plaza de la Mina.  Take this as an example of how crowded it was everywhereeeee.

We made our way to the incredibly crowded Plaza de la Mina, where we met the guy whose apartment habitación we were renting, Quique (Kike). When we found him, he showed us how to get into the building and then around the piso; you could hear the noise of the partying coming in through the windows in the living room, calling to us jaja. 
We all lathered on as much glitter as we could, painted designs in different colors on our faces, and finally attempted to apply our giant, sparkly, and colorful fake eyelashes. Lucy's didn't make it out the door, but we got a lot of great pictures with them before we salir'd.

 Pretty good ones of all of us with the pestañas (eyelashes) & face paint :)

^^ Con mi roomie, Julia

Me & Lucy

First stop outside: rum and coke purchase. While we did this, we were clapped at/danced for by one of the men inside the window who exclaimed “Guapa' las tre'!” in his outrageous, nasal Andalucián accent, God bless him. We could not get over this for basically the whole trip & shouted it at each other way too many times afterwards. Next stop: hot street cart bocadillos. I still regret not getting one of these.

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And then we parked ourselves on a little corner next to a large group that was dancing to music that was coming from I don't know where. Oh, but before that, a couple guys wearing giant cardboard boxes on their heads with a portion cut out in front of their faces that said “Free Mammograms” came up to us and failed spectacularly to get us to try out their costumes. I asked one of them “How many women have actually done this?” and he said “...Ok, well, with the box? Zero. But it's because it pinches!” Jajajaja. Riiiight.  And basically after that, the night was a series of meeting people (mostly because of their costumes or ours and mostly from Sevilla for some reason) and getting pictures with them (the pestañas were a big hit) and making our way through all the different plazas.

Happy :D

An example meet n' greet/photo shoot.

We spent a lot of time in Plaza de la Mina and just kept attracting more friends:

My favorite of the three of us from that night ^_^

Carnaval amigos! jeje

And the last thing we did that night was to go see the main chirigota competition in another plaza whose name I forget.  Cádiz is famous for these small costumed groups of singers called chirigotas, who sing satirical songs that are usually full of politically charged quips.  The people of Cádiz are supposed to be quite witty.  And there we met even more people from Sevilla (surprise surprise):

 Ze stage.

Mais amigos!

Since we were tired from traveling that day, I think we got "home" at about 5:30 Saturday night/Sunday morning.  And we didn't really sleep in too much, either; the main parade was on Sunday and we didn't want to miss it.

That next morning when we walked outside, we realized that the water was right at the end of the street that we were staying on.  Of course we went to bask in the sun for a bit:

 So pretty! Reminded me a bit of St. Augustine... Which makes sense, of course. jeje.

After this we were pretty ravenous, so we went in search of food.  Sadly, lots of the food available seemed to be really greasy... There were stands selling various fried fish and seafood everywhere.  What we really wanted was a tortilla (like a tortilla española), so we got some "tortillas de camarones" but those things were NOT tortillas.  Mira:

I think this picture actually does the grease justice.

After this somewhat less than satisfying and deceitful meal, we went and found the parade and basically spent all the afternoon watching it and just walking around the city:

This was the group (not sure if it actually qualifies as a coro or a chirigota) that we came to first.

It's funnier when you know that everyone was smoking/drinking/taking shots while they did this and they still sounded incredible.

One of my favorites! For the colors :)

Julia y yo!

Jajaja, cross-dressing is always funny.  And kudos to any man who can pull off heels.

Plaza de España!  With a monument to Cádiz <3

Then we went home and relaxed a bit before turning into cats ;)

Our plan then was fireworks, food, and then repeat the experience of Saturday night... Unfortunately, since we didn't really know anything about Carnaval de Cádiz before going, that third goal did not really work out as planned...

But we did see fireworks :D

And also got the biggest baked potatoes possible from a street cart.

But there weren't people all over the Plaza de España or the Plaza de la Mina like the night before... We were kinda crushed at first.  The next night we would realize that the party had just moved to a different area/zona, but Sunday night we went back to the apartment totally confused.  We decided to wait a bit longer before meeting up with some other Lugo friends who were gonna be in town, but everything was still pretty quiet in our neighborhood when we went to find them (although we were randomly serenaded by some men romancero style and invited to the baptism of one of their first born sons... jeje).  We ran into Kike and asked him where everyone was and he asked us if we'd gone to Barrio de la Viña (this is where the party was! we should have gone); we told him we'd tried to find it last night but failed.  It was also starting to rain a bit at this point (go figure; of course we'd bring the rain from Lugo with us), so he told us where we could find a little chino grocery store and we all went there to get some rum and limón.  Because of the weather, and because Kike was cool with it, we decided to just have a little party at the apartment.  It was a fun little reunion, and there was dancing, which always makes me happy ;)

Amiguitas de Luguito!

;D

The next day (Monday) was beach day!  We also watched more chirigotas and finally succeeded in finding Barrio de la Viña (and thus rediscovered the party). 

:D

Another one of my favorites!  They were all dressed as clergymen and women jaja.  I wish I could upload my videos on here... I don't know why that won't work for me :-/

After wandering around listening to different groups, we somewhat accidentally found the cathedral.  Which was so beautiful!!  And so, so different from the cathedrals up here in Galicia.  And then we discovered that the water and sidewalk to the beach were right behind it:

:') So light... All the buildings there were pastel colors...

Walking around to the back, we found some big-ass doors.

Walking down to the Playa de la Caleta.

Warm & happy ^_^

And once we got the beach, you know we had to talk off our shoes and frolic:

<3

Then, as it turned out, the Barrio de la Viña was right by the beach!  So we went and explored that, saw more parade-ing, and realized that this was where the party was now.  So we stayed till a little after sunset, and then went home to get dressed up and buy some tinto de verano before coming back.  Also one the way back, 1 euro empanadas were discovered.  Such éxito.

Another great group!  "Doctor" themed, I believe.

Then we made more Spanish friends!  And they took us, clapping and singing all the way, to this place called Carpa. Which was basically 2 giant tents set up like clubs.  One had a live band, and I met some of the chirigota guys there!

Carnaval 2013 <3

Fiestaa

I felt like I was meeting celebrities jaja.

This was the night we decided to stay out to watch the sun rise... Although of course this was also the only morning when it was cloudy.   But we still got some street sandwiches and talked with the guys running the caseta (who kept asking Lucy absurd questions about Australia... like, "are there beaches?")  And our final day there was the least eventful; we went and got some souvenirs (matching bracelets that have a bunch of Cádiz carnaval stuff on them and kazoos-- kazoos because all the chirigotas used them for some reason) and did a bit more sight seeing.

Plaza de San Juan de Dios

And then that night we had a little farewell dinner with Kike.  He made us this soup called "caldo" which was apparently totally "completo" jeje (i.e. it had veggies, meat, and pasta in it).  He said he makes it every year at Carnaval because it's good for your stomach after days of partying, and he was right.  We made some bruschetta and bought some licor café (taste of Galicia! jaja) to contribute, and then we spent the rest of the night playing card games with Spanish cards and learning about his insane ex-girlfriend.  It was a cute little evening of bonding.  And probably a better idea than going out, since we had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning.

Mmm, yummeh dinner.

It was not fun leaving the next morning... As Julia said, "I'm hating every part of this."  But we made it to the train station on time, had a nice, relaxing ride to Sevilla (saw the sun rise for real from the train!  Andalucía is so pretty).  And then we took an over-priced taxi to the airport because the bus schedule was no bueno, and met up with like 5 other people going back to Lugo at the airport jaja.  We landed in Santiago about 5 minutes before the bus to Lugo left, and we made it by literally running there (thank you, Hoo-lia, for being so determined!).  If we'd missed it, we would've had to wait at the airport for 3 more hours. Ay ay ay, no bueno.  So, all in all, everything worked out really well, and it was great to come crashing back into my bed.

Amanecer.

If you read this whole thing, felicitaciones/gracias.  It was basically one of the best vacations/weekends of my life, and I'm pretty sure I'd go back to Cádiz with Lucy & Julia every weekend if I could jaja.  We'll see what happens during Semana Santa... A mini-tour of Andalucía might be in order ;)