While I continue to work on my other blog about Madrid which happens to be taking a long time because I don´t have pictures to job my memory, I will write a little bit about more recent things. First of all I was elected by my the chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia as president of the chapter for the 2008-2009 school year! I was definitely not expecting to be elected as such and it really makes me feel good about everything I´ve done in PMA. This past year was a difficult one in terms of planning and paperwork, not to mention brotherhood... but I strongly believe that I´ll be returning to a very well organized and strong group of brothers. I must say it´s a difficult thing to create a real strong dfeeling of connection to lots of people when you lead busy musician lives and there aren´t very many manditory kinds of service or actions or whatnot... I guess you really have to want to be there. Because of said issues, this semester there was no rush process, all time was spent between the brothers. Of all I read from the chapter this semester it looks like people are really making an effort to be involved and to want to do things together, a good sign is definitely heavy interaction with another group - the women´s music fraternity Sigma Alpha Iota (ee-yota). I really look forward to being able to oversee the functioning of the chapter and keep everything together as best I can - I guess there´s still plenty I´m not sure that the President does, I´m curious to see what I don´t know.
Another thing is my consideration of Tau (taw, like the vowel of 'clog') Beta Sigma. Having been dating Bethany for nearly two years, I consider myself to have been (for a non-member) heavily involved with Tau Beta Sigma, the music service sorority that she is a strong member of. I have thoroughly enjoyed the large amounts of service they do, and the sisterhood events that they have, and the great traditions they have accumulated... not to mention the outstanding organization and participation (all of these things I somewhat envy, and in part have shamelessly plagiarized into the work of PMA... with full knowledge and consent of Bethany of course... so I guess it´s not plagiarism?). As it just so happens, Tau Beta Sigma is in fact a coed fraternity, and I figure having helped Bethany with finances, participated in sister events and fundraising and lots of service - I might as well just join and know all the behind the scenes stuff too. This presents just one problem: timing. All of our meetings happen to be at the same time. You might have been thinking it would be wierd to be the 'sister' of my girlfriend, but KKY brothers date each other so I suppose it´s not as wierd as it could be. Then I suppose there´s the whole denomination of 'sister' for me, which is perhaps a little less normal than a girl being called a 'brother' of a professional fraternity. I´m sure exceptions could be made, I would consider myself a brother anyways. I guess that whole business is a little strange but the bottom line is that I love the work that TBS does and I love the way they do it, not to mention the girls are awesome... although perhaps I´m a little biased.
It was a little while ago that I got a package from Bethany including none other than homemade cookies and treats! I shared as much as I could before scarfing it all down... it seems like no mothers here really make desserts, no cookies or brownies or cakes or anything - they buy all that stuff. I think that´s a real shame, and rather prefer the American home-baked dessert tradition. And I was rather excited to have gotten a baked treat from my far away sweetheart.
Then the other day I got a package from home!!! Thank you very very much mom, dad, sister, d-daddy, Dana and Mountain View! Right when I got them I shot into the pancake mix and maple syrup. I don´t think my madre liked me taking over the kitchen so quickly to make some pancakes, but I cleaned up everything and even shared my precious maple syrup :-). I have also bit into the Thin Mints and downed a bunch of Reese´s. I look forward to playing with the spices and tons of goodies! Thank you guys, I´ll keep up my practice in the kitchen. My next project is chocolate chip cookies!
Another thing that was very exciting for me was the experience of teaching a class. In my political science class, every Wednesday a student must present a scholastic article about Latin America to the class, and this past Wednesday was my turn. I was of course given the economics article which made me a little bit nervous about getting it all right since it is my major after all. But I got up in front of the class and I really felt good about what I was saying and while sometimes less clear I thought I had some good examples and really tried to explain the article and thereafter my thoughts on why it was wrong and misdirected. My favorite part of it was definitely adding my own commentary and analysis. To give a short version of the presentation, I presented my personal thoughts and ideas in Spanish (or whatever I could manage of Spanish) and the details of the article in English (since it was written in English). D.C. economist John Williamson in 1989 wrote an article outlining a set of reforms that he considered to be common agreement in D.C. that Latin American countries should adopt for the betterment of their economies. This list included 1. Fiscal discipline (balancing the government budget) 2. Public expenditure reorganization 3. Tax reform 4. Market determined interest rates 5. Competitive exchange rates 6. Trade laws liberalization 7. Liberalization of laws on foreign businesses buying or merging with internal firms (Foreign Direct Investment) 8. Privatization of state enterprises 9. Deregulation for ease of market forces and 10. Security of property rights. Then Latin American countries tried to enforce some of these ideas, which failed miserably. Williamson himself noted that there was little specification and no organization to it, and further that it was crazy of countries to adopt something written in an article without more research or discourse. My personal argument was that these were all meaningless reforms since the majority of work in Latin American countries is corrupt and black market. No matter how much you dress up the written economic work, if noone follows the rules in the first place you´ll get nowhere. The only way to improve these conditions would be to improve worker´s rights and protection and enforcement of business laws. As unnecessary as it might sound, the higher ups really do need to be paid more to avoid the temptation of bribery and further oversight of leaders and decisionmakers is never a bad idea. Without the education and protection of workers and leaders alike, no economic reform will do good for the country.
That´s the shortened version of my presentation, and I got the feeling as I was standing in front of the small class pointing at my chalkboard notes that I actually enjoyed that. It was an exciting feeling to have people taking notes on what I was saying and writing! I must have been channeling the teacher abilities of my dear Bethany. Afterwards some of them noted that if things didn´t work out I should work as a professor, 'I´d definitely take your class.' That made me feel good.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Depende
This past weekend (well... now a long time ago) was the trip to Madrid. But the night before we left, we went to see a concert - a group called Jarabe de Palo(s?) which means strangly enough Stick Cough Syrup. I don´t know, maybe there´s some cultural significance that I don´t understand - ah the meaning is roughly to cure a problem with a beating. How uplifting, no?
After meeting as a large group under the clock stationed high in the stone facade of the northeastern wall of the Plaza Mayor. The pigeons tend to be unconcerned with the constant human presence, on the contrary they must enjoy the crumbs and treats we leave behind from our churros and bocadillos (sandwiches). Many of them, actually, have grown fat in the winter months, stocking up on these morsels and one supposes resting a great deal.
Talking all the while with Jesús, our program director, we made it finally to the performance place - it was a nondescript large building that apparantly had a concert hall inside. So we went in, and after finding our seats (and several people finding drinks), the lights dimmed and up came a video of someone looking like a somewhat more attractive Spanish Michael Moore. This, it turns out is Pau Donés, the composer for the group, and he gave an introduction to the group and all throughout the performance he was in little video clips inbetween the songs.
Apparantly Jarabe de Palo is a very popular group here, because almost the whole audience except for us was singing along with their songs, very enthusiastically. The group consisted of your basic rock group - guitars, bass, drums and then later the pianist in a very dramatic way came in acting drunk. The performance was pretty much half show and half music. He should have just as well stayed out drinking, I think. Dad, you know how much I dislike the abuse of keyboards - he molested the keyboard sound. The band in general sounded pretty bland to me for the first half. I forgot to mention that they had a saxophone player in the group. There were never bridges, there were never forms to the songs - one key, jam and keep playing. The saxophone never played more than pentatonic or simple showy trills or sustained notes. I was musically uninterested although most of the crowd seemed very entertained and enjoyed it quite a bit, and really isn´t that the point? These guys were obviously not there to create musical masterpieces, but to entertain - made more clear by their theater-istic antics. And so much the better. I could tell that the musicians did know what they were doing, but I suppose in interest of appealing to as many people as possible, they kept the music more or less simple. Oh, and the one thing that got to me in the first half is that every one of their songs was 120 bpm. No change in tempo, no change in form, no change in sound, just a couple of lyrics different here or there. I don´t even have a comparison in mind to describe what they sounded like, it was just like a kids show where the music didn´t matter, maybe they were singing songs about the color blue and the sound that a sheep makes. Ah, but the last song in the first half they played a very Spanish song that sounded awesome! Until the keyboards came in. Why? Why do hispanic keyboardists feel the need to play that descending octave pattern that´s popular in Latin American music? One of the songs that the band played was really catchy - Depende. It was a very basic rhythm and the chorus was mostly just 'depende'. So from now on whenever I hear someone say the word 'depende', I can´t help but think of that song, although I only remember 2 seconds of it.
But you know I´m glad to have gone, it was an extremely Spanish experience, and I was sitting next to a man from Mexico who was studying neuro-surgery at the University of Salamanca. He explained some of the meanings of the songs and how the band had gotten lots of awards and nominations for stuff and how it was interesting that the band was playing on the main stage usually reserved for concert pianists and much more "high-class" performances, and he also noted with a touch of admiration how surprising it was that Herbie Hancock won the grammy for best album. Now that caught me off guard, and made me want to listen to it.
So, it was generally interesting and good Spanish learning experience, but I wouldn´t go see them again. Then afterwards we were turned loose to hunt for our own dinner. I was feeling like pizza and wandered the dark city for at least an hour looking for it. Then I thought Kebabs would be nice, and searched for that, but alas all I could find was unsatisfactory. Being picky can make for being rather hungry. Finally deciding that I should finish the cycle of having had McDonalds in Paris and London and Lisbon, so I found instead a Burger King to mix it up. Welll.... the bun was soggy and the burger had that tinge of burnt - I should have learned by now I don´t really like Burger King. Attack of the missing memory once again. The fries were great.
So by the time I got to bed it was about 1am, since we got out of the concert at something like 11:30. Guess what time we had to be at the bus stop to leave for Madrid? 7am. Hooray for planning! Well we got what sleep we could, then showed up to get loaded and get what little sleep we could on the ride before we arrived in Madrid.
Madrid is very much what I was imagining Salamanca being like - a real city. It was reminiscent to me of Manhattan, NYC - huge buildings on all sides, crowds of people, lots of monuments and museums, beautiful and sketchy people everywhere, Starbucks... Our first stop was the Prado! Tired and a little bit spaced out, we all got out to this beautiful courtyard in front of the large stone building and went around the side to see lots of school children waiting and two members of the policía en caballo - or horseback police. The Prado was full of all kinds of incredible old pieces of art. We were basically set loose after a little while of touring the old pieces we needed to see. I thought of the space as very similar to a wing of the Louvre, just in the space and the kinds of old pieces. It seemed at times like a Catholic anthology - so many pieces depicting Catholic leaders and Christian themes. This makes sense since before they didn´t have cameras it was a matter of documentation and also the Catholic church had the most money in the middle ages and afterwards, so most works of that age would be Catholic - in Europe anyways. So tired of that when we were set free and I found an interesting scene that I drew and wrote about for an art class assignment. There was a girl painting a copy of a painting on display in one of the wings. It seemed like a fairly nondescript old roman scene of a waterway emptying out in the ocean - huge pillared architecture and mostly naked men going ab out their business. Just remembering the Platonic ideals of art as being worthless copies of reality which really exists in forms which we might now characterize as ideas. We have an idea of something, which Plato considered the most pure form, then the real object is a copy of that form, then a painting is a debasement of a copy of a copy and so forth and so on. I was fascinated at something that Plato would have considered an abomination was a very gentile and calm scene, of a woman very patiently and I must say masterfully going about her business of copying the work on display.
I grew tired quickly of the Prado, our next stop was the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. It was gorgeous. I would go back there in a second. There was a wide collection of 19th-20th century works that were very secular and tons of impressionist and some very interesting surrealist work by Dalí and others. But I really couldn´t get past the impressionist art - it fascinated me so much how they could manage to up close have such a nondestinct plotting of basic strokes and vague forms, but when I backed up it became a living picture. Perhaps since it was so vague up close, from a distance my brain filled in what wasn´t there and to me it became more lifelike, more organic, more... versatile. I thought it felt more real than the realist works that worked out a scene to every small detail, those were capturing a specific moment, an exact feeling and time. The impressionist works seemed to me to be adaptable to however I might have felt when I looked at it, it was more an idea that evoked a little imagination - who was going to walk onto this scene next, what is that character thinking? I enjoyed it quite a lot.
After a little break, that night we went to see La Bella y La Bestia - 'Beauty and the Beast'! As we entered it was very much reminiscent of broadway style theater - large amounts of seating in a relatively small place, lots of people dressed up in their very best, some not so much - lots of concessions and gifts. Honestly, I was not expecting a lot from them, and it wasn't broadway quality but they really did a good job. The acting was incredible from the whole cast, the scene of Be Our Guest was OVER THE TOP!! They had lots of showgirls huge set pieces, even some pyrotechnics. There were just little details that didn´t quite work out, for example Gaston had kind of a high not so manly voice and the fight with the wolves was more like an interpretive ballet dance... not a fight. Actually kind of amusing. Anyways, I was definitely pleased with the performance and the singing voices were very beautiful! As it just so happens, Bethany was playing in the pit orchestra back at home to Beauty and the Beast, so I got her a little momento from the Spanish version.
So after being up so late, we were of course dragged out of bed nice and early the next morning to go off visiting things. I believe our first stop that day was at the Palacio Real. Huge building, noone actually lives there anymore - crazily ornamented with beautiful views and a peacock! What? I don´t know. Most of us were feeling sluggish and tired, and afterwards we went to see Reina Sofía collection of Picasso pieces. It was extremely fascinating, but what I enjoyed most of all were the drawings that Picasso drew for himself. Before all of his major works (and many of his minor works) he did study paintings just to get the feel of what he was trying to capture and to try out different ideas to see how they work. I particularly enjoyed pencil sketchings of himself and some erotic work (two figures and a cat... two of them going at it and this cat curiously perched on the side of the bed... very curious). I took the free time they gave us to sketch some of the works I enjoyed most, including psychelic reworkings of some portraits by El Greco and study drawings of Las Meninas by I think it was Velázquez. Needless to say the works of Picasso were not the random playings of a little kid, rather a play on perspective and color in an intellectual jest on classic works, not to mention the development of his own unique style that transcended the realism of the pre-photograph world. Interesting stuff.
That day we were released into the wild rather early - allowed to romp around the town as we saw fit. Kristen and I went out and took a short tour of the Plaza Mayor and had fun diggin up things we liked in a little gift shop (I got a bullfighting poster! woo!) and looked around the Plaza Mayor a bit after getting some Starbucks that she was wanting so badly. As we walked up the Calle de Preciados north of Puerta del Sol, we saw all kinds of street... performers. Living statues, they all had some sort of dress-up to distinquish themselves, some more interesting and tolerable than others. My favorite was this goofy kind of guy dressed up like an American western cowboy, but in all black. He had some sort of whistle in his mouth and made funny noises and played with his toy gun and took pictures with people, he was interesting. Others didn't really do much, I don't know if they were really expecting to get any donations... Madrid seemed to me (as previously mentioned) very much like New York City... and I liked it. I enjoyed that there was so much life to it, things to see, places to go - always spectacles and something artistic. That night we all retired to the hotel and ordered in pizza - at least I did with a bunch of girls. It was a good time, and nice to finally get some hang out and pizza time. That night, however, upheld that the Spanish just don't know how to make a crust for anything.
The next and final morning in Madrid the schedule changed AGAIN! Much earlier still. Thanks for making a good steady schedule. Anyways this day would be spent going to El Escorial, which was a large complex that included a monastery, a small palace, a huge library, a huge cathedral and a royal crypt. It was interesting to note the austerity of the place and the contrasting scale of the palace to even the cathedral. In a time when Spain was arguably the most important country in the world, the king chose to live in tiny quarters in a christian fortress of sorts. The library was stunningly beautiful - marble floors, huge wooden bookcases (all the books were turned spine inwards for preservation reasons, I had never heard of that before) and curiously enough completely mythical and non-religious frescoes on the cieling. The royal crypt was also an interesting thing - a marble and goldbasement that reminded my oddly of a storage area, how all the sarcophagi were just lying stacked on these giant shelves, as if they were holding valuable documents or something. Also it's interesting that the kings were always buried in full royal detail... with their mothers. I guess they were halfway serious about that commandment - honor thy father and mother. Everyone says good things about their mother and defends their mother's honor... which is definitely a good thing and called for by all means... but what about the father? Assuming that the father did a good job and supported a family well, he deserves a lot of credit too. Oh well, can't argue with those royal types.
We were again released into the wild for lunch this time, and so we wandered the small town ouside of el Escorial (it is a little distance from Madrid, up on the side of a nearby mountain) looking for something reasonable and filling. What should we come across but Chinese food! Actually we passed by it in checking out various cafés we were interested in, but ultimately I said hey, if you guys (actually they were just girls... why am I always just with girls? not complaining or anything) don't pick the next one, I'm going back to that chinese place. And then they decided since one of us actually wanted to go there that why not, let's just go get chinese food, it had been a while anyways. GOOD CHOICE. That was amazing, some chinese stir fried pork and vegetables and sticky white rice. I love that sticky white rice. It was still strange to see Asian people speaking fluent Spanish, but it goes to show how still uncultured we are. It was delicious and enjoyed every bite, down to the inexpensive price. Lovely. Afterwards I decreed that we must go to the pastry shop across the street. Unfortunately I don´t have with me at the moment the notebook that I wrote down all these details in, but this was a perfectly lovely little shop. The shop worker was nothing but helpful and patient and the pastries were just heavenly. I got two kinds of pastries - a kind of creme filled pastry roll and this thing that was kind of like a a minibar of a gooey (local, he said) and positively fulfilling creme, and a very soft cake layer, then a soft and delicate but powerful chocolate layer. Delicious. They made the ride home pretty sweet. Was the trip the best it could have been? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I go back? Depende.
After meeting as a large group under the clock stationed high in the stone facade of the northeastern wall of the Plaza Mayor. The pigeons tend to be unconcerned with the constant human presence, on the contrary they must enjoy the crumbs and treats we leave behind from our churros and bocadillos (sandwiches). Many of them, actually, have grown fat in the winter months, stocking up on these morsels and one supposes resting a great deal.
Talking all the while with Jesús, our program director, we made it finally to the performance place - it was a nondescript large building that apparantly had a concert hall inside. So we went in, and after finding our seats (and several people finding drinks), the lights dimmed and up came a video of someone looking like a somewhat more attractive Spanish Michael Moore. This, it turns out is Pau Donés, the composer for the group, and he gave an introduction to the group and all throughout the performance he was in little video clips inbetween the songs.
Apparantly Jarabe de Palo is a very popular group here, because almost the whole audience except for us was singing along with their songs, very enthusiastically. The group consisted of your basic rock group - guitars, bass, drums and then later the pianist in a very dramatic way came in acting drunk. The performance was pretty much half show and half music. He should have just as well stayed out drinking, I think. Dad, you know how much I dislike the abuse of keyboards - he molested the keyboard sound. The band in general sounded pretty bland to me for the first half. I forgot to mention that they had a saxophone player in the group. There were never bridges, there were never forms to the songs - one key, jam and keep playing. The saxophone never played more than pentatonic or simple showy trills or sustained notes. I was musically uninterested although most of the crowd seemed very entertained and enjoyed it quite a bit, and really isn´t that the point? These guys were obviously not there to create musical masterpieces, but to entertain - made more clear by their theater-istic antics. And so much the better. I could tell that the musicians did know what they were doing, but I suppose in interest of appealing to as many people as possible, they kept the music more or less simple. Oh, and the one thing that got to me in the first half is that every one of their songs was 120 bpm. No change in tempo, no change in form, no change in sound, just a couple of lyrics different here or there. I don´t even have a comparison in mind to describe what they sounded like, it was just like a kids show where the music didn´t matter, maybe they were singing songs about the color blue and the sound that a sheep makes. Ah, but the last song in the first half they played a very Spanish song that sounded awesome! Until the keyboards came in. Why? Why do hispanic keyboardists feel the need to play that descending octave pattern that´s popular in Latin American music? One of the songs that the band played was really catchy - Depende. It was a very basic rhythm and the chorus was mostly just 'depende'. So from now on whenever I hear someone say the word 'depende', I can´t help but think of that song, although I only remember 2 seconds of it.
But you know I´m glad to have gone, it was an extremely Spanish experience, and I was sitting next to a man from Mexico who was studying neuro-surgery at the University of Salamanca. He explained some of the meanings of the songs and how the band had gotten lots of awards and nominations for stuff and how it was interesting that the band was playing on the main stage usually reserved for concert pianists and much more "high-class" performances, and he also noted with a touch of admiration how surprising it was that Herbie Hancock won the grammy for best album. Now that caught me off guard, and made me want to listen to it.
So, it was generally interesting and good Spanish learning experience, but I wouldn´t go see them again. Then afterwards we were turned loose to hunt for our own dinner. I was feeling like pizza and wandered the dark city for at least an hour looking for it. Then I thought Kebabs would be nice, and searched for that, but alas all I could find was unsatisfactory. Being picky can make for being rather hungry. Finally deciding that I should finish the cycle of having had McDonalds in Paris and London and Lisbon, so I found instead a Burger King to mix it up. Welll.... the bun was soggy and the burger had that tinge of burnt - I should have learned by now I don´t really like Burger King. Attack of the missing memory once again. The fries were great.
So by the time I got to bed it was about 1am, since we got out of the concert at something like 11:30. Guess what time we had to be at the bus stop to leave for Madrid? 7am. Hooray for planning! Well we got what sleep we could, then showed up to get loaded and get what little sleep we could on the ride before we arrived in Madrid.
Madrid is very much what I was imagining Salamanca being like - a real city. It was reminiscent to me of Manhattan, NYC - huge buildings on all sides, crowds of people, lots of monuments and museums, beautiful and sketchy people everywhere, Starbucks... Our first stop was the Prado! Tired and a little bit spaced out, we all got out to this beautiful courtyard in front of the large stone building and went around the side to see lots of school children waiting and two members of the policía en caballo - or horseback police. The Prado was full of all kinds of incredible old pieces of art. We were basically set loose after a little while of touring the old pieces we needed to see. I thought of the space as very similar to a wing of the Louvre, just in the space and the kinds of old pieces. It seemed at times like a Catholic anthology - so many pieces depicting Catholic leaders and Christian themes. This makes sense since before they didn´t have cameras it was a matter of documentation and also the Catholic church had the most money in the middle ages and afterwards, so most works of that age would be Catholic - in Europe anyways. So tired of that when we were set free and I found an interesting scene that I drew and wrote about for an art class assignment. There was a girl painting a copy of a painting on display in one of the wings. It seemed like a fairly nondescript old roman scene of a waterway emptying out in the ocean - huge pillared architecture and mostly naked men going ab out their business. Just remembering the Platonic ideals of art as being worthless copies of reality which really exists in forms which we might now characterize as ideas. We have an idea of something, which Plato considered the most pure form, then the real object is a copy of that form, then a painting is a debasement of a copy of a copy and so forth and so on. I was fascinated at something that Plato would have considered an abomination was a very gentile and calm scene, of a woman very patiently and I must say masterfully going about her business of copying the work on display.
I grew tired quickly of the Prado, our next stop was the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum. It was gorgeous. I would go back there in a second. There was a wide collection of 19th-20th century works that were very secular and tons of impressionist and some very interesting surrealist work by Dalí and others. But I really couldn´t get past the impressionist art - it fascinated me so much how they could manage to up close have such a nondestinct plotting of basic strokes and vague forms, but when I backed up it became a living picture. Perhaps since it was so vague up close, from a distance my brain filled in what wasn´t there and to me it became more lifelike, more organic, more... versatile. I thought it felt more real than the realist works that worked out a scene to every small detail, those were capturing a specific moment, an exact feeling and time. The impressionist works seemed to me to be adaptable to however I might have felt when I looked at it, it was more an idea that evoked a little imagination - who was going to walk onto this scene next, what is that character thinking? I enjoyed it quite a lot.
After a little break, that night we went to see La Bella y La Bestia - 'Beauty and the Beast'! As we entered it was very much reminiscent of broadway style theater - large amounts of seating in a relatively small place, lots of people dressed up in their very best, some not so much - lots of concessions and gifts. Honestly, I was not expecting a lot from them, and it wasn't broadway quality but they really did a good job. The acting was incredible from the whole cast, the scene of Be Our Guest was OVER THE TOP!! They had lots of showgirls huge set pieces, even some pyrotechnics. There were just little details that didn´t quite work out, for example Gaston had kind of a high not so manly voice and the fight with the wolves was more like an interpretive ballet dance... not a fight. Actually kind of amusing. Anyways, I was definitely pleased with the performance and the singing voices were very beautiful! As it just so happens, Bethany was playing in the pit orchestra back at home to Beauty and the Beast, so I got her a little momento from the Spanish version.
So after being up so late, we were of course dragged out of bed nice and early the next morning to go off visiting things. I believe our first stop that day was at the Palacio Real. Huge building, noone actually lives there anymore - crazily ornamented with beautiful views and a peacock! What? I don´t know. Most of us were feeling sluggish and tired, and afterwards we went to see Reina Sofía collection of Picasso pieces. It was extremely fascinating, but what I enjoyed most of all were the drawings that Picasso drew for himself. Before all of his major works (and many of his minor works) he did study paintings just to get the feel of what he was trying to capture and to try out different ideas to see how they work. I particularly enjoyed pencil sketchings of himself and some erotic work (two figures and a cat... two of them going at it and this cat curiously perched on the side of the bed... very curious). I took the free time they gave us to sketch some of the works I enjoyed most, including psychelic reworkings of some portraits by El Greco and study drawings of Las Meninas by I think it was Velázquez. Needless to say the works of Picasso were not the random playings of a little kid, rather a play on perspective and color in an intellectual jest on classic works, not to mention the development of his own unique style that transcended the realism of the pre-photograph world. Interesting stuff.
That day we were released into the wild rather early - allowed to romp around the town as we saw fit. Kristen and I went out and took a short tour of the Plaza Mayor and had fun diggin up things we liked in a little gift shop (I got a bullfighting poster! woo!) and looked around the Plaza Mayor a bit after getting some Starbucks that she was wanting so badly. As we walked up the Calle de Preciados north of Puerta del Sol, we saw all kinds of street... performers. Living statues, they all had some sort of dress-up to distinquish themselves, some more interesting and tolerable than others. My favorite was this goofy kind of guy dressed up like an American western cowboy, but in all black. He had some sort of whistle in his mouth and made funny noises and played with his toy gun and took pictures with people, he was interesting. Others didn't really do much, I don't know if they were really expecting to get any donations... Madrid seemed to me (as previously mentioned) very much like New York City... and I liked it. I enjoyed that there was so much life to it, things to see, places to go - always spectacles and something artistic. That night we all retired to the hotel and ordered in pizza - at least I did with a bunch of girls. It was a good time, and nice to finally get some hang out and pizza time. That night, however, upheld that the Spanish just don't know how to make a crust for anything.
The next and final morning in Madrid the schedule changed AGAIN! Much earlier still. Thanks for making a good steady schedule. Anyways this day would be spent going to El Escorial, which was a large complex that included a monastery, a small palace, a huge library, a huge cathedral and a royal crypt. It was interesting to note the austerity of the place and the contrasting scale of the palace to even the cathedral. In a time when Spain was arguably the most important country in the world, the king chose to live in tiny quarters in a christian fortress of sorts. The library was stunningly beautiful - marble floors, huge wooden bookcases (all the books were turned spine inwards for preservation reasons, I had never heard of that before) and curiously enough completely mythical and non-religious frescoes on the cieling. The royal crypt was also an interesting thing - a marble and goldbasement that reminded my oddly of a storage area, how all the sarcophagi were just lying stacked on these giant shelves, as if they were holding valuable documents or something. Also it's interesting that the kings were always buried in full royal detail... with their mothers. I guess they were halfway serious about that commandment - honor thy father and mother. Everyone says good things about their mother and defends their mother's honor... which is definitely a good thing and called for by all means... but what about the father? Assuming that the father did a good job and supported a family well, he deserves a lot of credit too. Oh well, can't argue with those royal types.
We were again released into the wild for lunch this time, and so we wandered the small town ouside of el Escorial (it is a little distance from Madrid, up on the side of a nearby mountain) looking for something reasonable and filling. What should we come across but Chinese food! Actually we passed by it in checking out various cafés we were interested in, but ultimately I said hey, if you guys (actually they were just girls... why am I always just with girls? not complaining or anything) don't pick the next one, I'm going back to that chinese place. And then they decided since one of us actually wanted to go there that why not, let's just go get chinese food, it had been a while anyways. GOOD CHOICE. That was amazing, some chinese stir fried pork and vegetables and sticky white rice. I love that sticky white rice. It was still strange to see Asian people speaking fluent Spanish, but it goes to show how still uncultured we are. It was delicious and enjoyed every bite, down to the inexpensive price. Lovely. Afterwards I decreed that we must go to the pastry shop across the street. Unfortunately I don´t have with me at the moment the notebook that I wrote down all these details in, but this was a perfectly lovely little shop. The shop worker was nothing but helpful and patient and the pastries were just heavenly. I got two kinds of pastries - a kind of creme filled pastry roll and this thing that was kind of like a a minibar of a gooey (local, he said) and positively fulfilling creme, and a very soft cake layer, then a soft and delicate but powerful chocolate layer. Delicious. They made the ride home pretty sweet. Was the trip the best it could have been? No. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Would I go back? Depende.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
El Razón de Vida
Today as I was walking to class, there were lots of Guardia Civil guys (police) everywhere around the university - as it turns out the Prince of Spain was coming to Salamanca University today. I have no idea why or exactly where, but noone could go within a certain perimeter. I found it very interesting. The Prince is the heir to the throne of the kingdom of Spain, which is a very important role here. In Britain we have become accustomed to seeing the King of a modern country as simply a symbolic figurehead, but the King of Spain is far more than that - as recently as 1980-something he personally stopped a coup led by a colonel who held the Spanish parliament hostage for over 24 hours. He also confronted President Chávez on television, asking him '¿Porque no te callas?' or 'Why don´t you shut up?'. King Juan Carlos I was nominated by dictator Francisco Franco himself but has interestingly turned out to be perhaps the most consistent supporter of democracy in the recent political development of Spain. King Juan Carlos I speaks Castillian (what most call 'Spanish'), Catalán (an indiginous language of the Eastern edge of Spain) and Portuguese, including the language Gallego, which is said to be a variation of Portuguese and belongs to the region of Galicia in Northwestern Spain. The King is revered within the country by most as a just and formidable leader, and since he is growing old (very recently turning 74), the country will soon enough be handed over to his son, Prince Philip - who happened to be visiting Salamanca today. There is a lot of question whether or not he´ll be able to do as well as his father at leading the country, but we´ll only know when he takes the reign(s).
This morning I also went to a café called El Café Don Quixote. I had some coffee relatively cheap at €1.10, which turned out to be many times stronger than I´m accustomed to. Thereafter I was wired as I don´t remember having been in a while - there must have been enough caffeine in that cup to kill a small woodland animal. My body ordinarily can accept caffeine without any unnatural effects, many times without any extra energy either - which can be disappointing. Not so this morning, all through art class, I could not stop moving or asking questions or drawing like a madman. Nor through siesta could I sleep at all, which is incredibly unnatural. So during my siesta time I watched a video on my iPod, a movie called Waking Life. I hadn´t watched it in a long time and it asks lots of philosophical questions and discusses lots of subjects:
What is the difference between waking and sleeping life and how does it blur?
The character in the movie described how there is some mental mechanism that distinguishes between a mental thought entity of something and an actual extra-personal entity of 'reality' so that we are not frightened by our ideas like we would be of a real hungry lion right in front of us. But when we sleep, this mechanism is suppressed so that we can actually believe that something is happening while we are sleeping. I am kind of alienated off the bat simply because I never really remember my dreams except for once every rare rare rare blue moon, which is to say I only remember dreaming 4 or 5 times. Ever. So I´ve had about as much experience in the dream world as I´ve had in political affairs of Japan. So it makes me curious to consider the idea of this lucid dream world, I must satisfy myself with daydreaming, which I suppose I tend to do often. But my lack of dreaming makes me wonder if I simply actually don´t remember it, which wouldn´t surprise me, or if I simply don´t dream. I wouldn´t be able to tell.
Can existentialism, or self determination, deliver us from the eternal mechanics of prepackaged function?
This last semester I took a class which ended up being 90% discussion on Free Will. So it looks like each of us have histories and influences that have determined the majority of our lives and unless we can decide that at any point we made decisions that were spontaneously and independently invented by us to the determination of our future decisions, we are just results of previous actions. What can occur to us is that perhaps it´s a state of mind? Existentialism is the idea that we each create our own humanity, future and state of being - our essence. How can we all of a sudden decide to brush aside our influences, well we can´t, but we have to take into account this interesting thing we call the mind or spirit. It´s such a non-physical entity, the causal laws of the physical world, one supposes, don´t necessarily have to apply to it. So in the case that we have an intangible mind possibly indenependent of the causal strains that apply to our limited corporeal selves, we can determine our own lives and futures, and thus take responsibility for our own lives. This is my impression of Existentialism, and sounds reasonably good to me.
So what does this mean to meaning in our lives - we go about our business, we love, we work, we play, we consume... where is the humanity and meaning? Can we just live for the sake of living, or does the have to be some meaning to our existence? Personally I have come to be of the opinion that the meaning of life is to love and be loved in return - thank you Moulin Rouge. What is love, you may ask? Humanity itself. Not the physical act of living, but the happiness derived from experience and perspective of a community and outsiders. What can we achieve in our lives but to understand more about ourselves and the people around us and be happy? Some people seek happiness only in themselves, how happy do they turn out to be? Some people seek only the happiness of others, which some exalt that - unless you personally derive pleasure, what kind of life is that either? There is a balance, and the important part is the passion and all-consuming interest and almost physical need that extends outside the self. The most recent experience I´ve had of this was to visit Caroline - I found such fulfillment in being able to relate to someone in a complete and wordless way. It was what I understand to be a familial love, to happily give freely without necessarily wanting. To have been able to relate to her feeling of international isolation while at the same time enjoying the new experience of being there and seeing those things - not to mention hearing and speaking new things. What made it complete to me was to be able to cook for Caroline and her family. You all know about me that I have a compulsion for cooking and food, it perhaps goes a little beyond obsession into a sort of addiction that can be fulfilled healthily and I arguably selflessly. Actually selflessly isn´t correct because I get so much gratification out of cooking for someone. But it was that moment that Caroline and I sat down to the barbequed chicken and seeing her host Madre cheerfully bite into the spinach salad that I could see the meaning of my life. Everything happened in that moment - innovation, discovery, understanding, acceptance, love, friendship, happiness, freedom, reason. What´s the meaning of your life?
p.s. this is a two-way informational medium, I welcome responses and arguments alike
This morning I also went to a café called El Café Don Quixote. I had some coffee relatively cheap at €1.10, which turned out to be many times stronger than I´m accustomed to. Thereafter I was wired as I don´t remember having been in a while - there must have been enough caffeine in that cup to kill a small woodland animal. My body ordinarily can accept caffeine without any unnatural effects, many times without any extra energy either - which can be disappointing. Not so this morning, all through art class, I could not stop moving or asking questions or drawing like a madman. Nor through siesta could I sleep at all, which is incredibly unnatural. So during my siesta time I watched a video on my iPod, a movie called Waking Life. I hadn´t watched it in a long time and it asks lots of philosophical questions and discusses lots of subjects:
What is the difference between waking and sleeping life and how does it blur?
The character in the movie described how there is some mental mechanism that distinguishes between a mental thought entity of something and an actual extra-personal entity of 'reality' so that we are not frightened by our ideas like we would be of a real hungry lion right in front of us. But when we sleep, this mechanism is suppressed so that we can actually believe that something is happening while we are sleeping. I am kind of alienated off the bat simply because I never really remember my dreams except for once every rare rare rare blue moon, which is to say I only remember dreaming 4 or 5 times. Ever. So I´ve had about as much experience in the dream world as I´ve had in political affairs of Japan. So it makes me curious to consider the idea of this lucid dream world, I must satisfy myself with daydreaming, which I suppose I tend to do often. But my lack of dreaming makes me wonder if I simply actually don´t remember it, which wouldn´t surprise me, or if I simply don´t dream. I wouldn´t be able to tell.
Can existentialism, or self determination, deliver us from the eternal mechanics of prepackaged function?
This last semester I took a class which ended up being 90% discussion on Free Will. So it looks like each of us have histories and influences that have determined the majority of our lives and unless we can decide that at any point we made decisions that were spontaneously and independently invented by us to the determination of our future decisions, we are just results of previous actions. What can occur to us is that perhaps it´s a state of mind? Existentialism is the idea that we each create our own humanity, future and state of being - our essence. How can we all of a sudden decide to brush aside our influences, well we can´t, but we have to take into account this interesting thing we call the mind or spirit. It´s such a non-physical entity, the causal laws of the physical world, one supposes, don´t necessarily have to apply to it. So in the case that we have an intangible mind possibly indenependent of the causal strains that apply to our limited corporeal selves, we can determine our own lives and futures, and thus take responsibility for our own lives. This is my impression of Existentialism, and sounds reasonably good to me.
So what does this mean to meaning in our lives - we go about our business, we love, we work, we play, we consume... where is the humanity and meaning? Can we just live for the sake of living, or does the have to be some meaning to our existence? Personally I have come to be of the opinion that the meaning of life is to love and be loved in return - thank you Moulin Rouge. What is love, you may ask? Humanity itself. Not the physical act of living, but the happiness derived from experience and perspective of a community and outsiders. What can we achieve in our lives but to understand more about ourselves and the people around us and be happy? Some people seek happiness only in themselves, how happy do they turn out to be? Some people seek only the happiness of others, which some exalt that - unless you personally derive pleasure, what kind of life is that either? There is a balance, and the important part is the passion and all-consuming interest and almost physical need that extends outside the self. The most recent experience I´ve had of this was to visit Caroline - I found such fulfillment in being able to relate to someone in a complete and wordless way. It was what I understand to be a familial love, to happily give freely without necessarily wanting. To have been able to relate to her feeling of international isolation while at the same time enjoying the new experience of being there and seeing those things - not to mention hearing and speaking new things. What made it complete to me was to be able to cook for Caroline and her family. You all know about me that I have a compulsion for cooking and food, it perhaps goes a little beyond obsession into a sort of addiction that can be fulfilled healthily and I arguably selflessly. Actually selflessly isn´t correct because I get so much gratification out of cooking for someone. But it was that moment that Caroline and I sat down to the barbequed chicken and seeing her host Madre cheerfully bite into the spinach salad that I could see the meaning of my life. Everything happened in that moment - innovation, discovery, understanding, acceptance, love, friendship, happiness, freedom, reason. What´s the meaning of your life?
p.s. this is a two-way informational medium, I welcome responses and arguments alike
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Café con Leche
The University of Salamanca has a program called Intercambios, which more or less means exchanges. The program is kind of a lingual eHarmony.com... without the creepy spokesman or anything romantic, in my case anyways. What they do is they ask your name, your age and waht you study, then what language you speak and what language you want to practice. They then put you on a list of people with the same lingual qualities and match you to the exact opposite, which is to say a person who speaks the language you want to practice and wants to practice the language you speak. Then they print you out a list of everyone who you are matched to with their names, ages and information and then you are free to contact any of them. The office is a little place right across from the Catedral Viejo (old cathedral... a major point in Salamanca which is easy to see from anywhere because of the huge spires and towers), with large old wooden doors that lead one into a stone passageway and to the left is an office with a rather beautiful and interesting modern two-way swinging glass door. As I walk in, I say 'Intercambios?', which apparantly is vague since I then had to define further lingual intercambios, but the nice lady sat me down and asked me the information then printed me out the names and stuff. The next day, nothing. Some other people who had done it got e-mails within the first several hours. I had nothing. But the next day I had 7 e-mails from people for meetings! Gotta wait for everything I guess.
Since I tend to have an easier time talking to strange women than strange men, I responded to several Salmantinas (Salamancan girls) somewhere around my age and set up meetings, the first of which was today! I got an e-mail in somewhat poor English describing how she, Natália, would be wearing a red jacket and jeans and to meet her under the clock in the Plaza Mayor at 16:30. So at 4:20pm I walked slowly into the plaza under my umbrella, attempting to keep as dry as possible as the rain nonchalantly showered all over the old tired stone. There was a little bit of a mist around the ground where all the rain droplets impacted and rebounded a little bit of moisture. It was surely wet, but it wasn´t overpowering or even cold, just rainy. So under my umbrella I watched around for this red jacket and jeans. Some description. There were lots of people running around with all kinds of red jackets and jeans - I saw some red P-coats, some red snow jackets, some red wind breakers, some red wool coats, all sporting the Salamancan fashion of jeans and some form of boots or flats.... or boot flats. But there was only one girl with a vaguely red coat wearing jeans under the big clock in the plaza. I personally think it was closer to orange, but I decided I might as well ask and so I walked up and asked her in Spanish, '¿Perdona, se llama Natália?' (Excuse me, do you(respectful form, usted) call yourself Natália?) Sheepishly she smiled and said 'Yes, and you are Kip?'. I put out my hand to shake hers, and she seemed a little confused but unconcerned. Then I remembered that it´s normal in Spain when meeting anyone to give a kiss to the left and the right. Oh well, both smiling we agreed to get some warm coffee out of the rain in a café in the plaza. Into a café we went and after asking for some café con leche we talked. The café as always was brought to our table in little mugs on tiny platters with a spoon and tube of sugar on the platter. There is always about 3/4 inch of really dark strong coffee in the bottom, and after the waiter has passed around all the coffee cups with the coffee in the bottom, he pours from a metal pitcher hot steamed milk to the brim of the glass, creating the lovely café con leche which is very soothing and relaxing while not too strong at all. It seems reasonably clear to me that she does not speak English as much as I speak Spanish, but oddly at the same time she has perhaps a wider vocabulary in English than I do in Spanish because she explained that she is taking an English writing class right now, but they do not speak English in class which I found a little strange. We talked about what we like to do in our free time and after a while I figured out that she plays racquetball and works in a sports equipment store on the other side of the river from Salamanca. Extremely friendly and attempting very hard to understand my English, she stared in a very focused manner at my lips (as I assume I do to Spanish speakers) as I told her about what group I´m with here and what our classes are like and where everyone likes to go at night. She was very amused by the cheap and tourist-oriented places that the Americans visit regularly and then proceeded to describe various places that she goes with her friends. It would be fun, I think, to go out with some Spaniards and hear normal conversations of people our age instead of literary Spanish and proper forms like we always practice. After we finished our coffee, we looked outside and the rain had very determinedly started coming down harder. Natália unfortunately had forgotten her 'paragua en el coche', so having tons of free time I decided it would just be more time to practice Spanish to just walk with her to let her use my umbrella until we got to her car. So we walked and talked about boyfriends and girlfriends and here´s to hoping that Bethany gets better, unfortunately she had to miss work today with 102ºF fever. While it´s nice to not have to go anywhere, a 102ºF fever rest assured does not assure rest. Anyways, we finally got to her car in the northwest of the city, with which I am still unfamiliar and she offered to drive me to the JMU office where I would write this and print out some homework, as long as I could give directions. Ah this will be fun, I thought. We only took one or two days to talk about directions in the first two weeks of intensivo. So I did the best I could to count blocks and describe landmarks and turn here turn there, and finally we did make it there. With the standard Spanish kiss to the left and right we promised to meet again for coffee to talk some more and here I am.
It was a nice experience and I do look forward to another encounter of the Salmantino(a) kind. I wonder what I can learn about Spain from these intercambio meetings? Perhaps things about food or customs that I might have questions about, for example Spanish people never moving out of the way, perhaps Natália can explain that. Perhaps she can also explain the European idea of kids making out in public. Strange but not always a bad thing. Ah well, any excuse for another cup of café con leche I suppose.
Since I tend to have an easier time talking to strange women than strange men, I responded to several Salmantinas (Salamancan girls) somewhere around my age and set up meetings, the first of which was today! I got an e-mail in somewhat poor English describing how she, Natália, would be wearing a red jacket and jeans and to meet her under the clock in the Plaza Mayor at 16:30. So at 4:20pm I walked slowly into the plaza under my umbrella, attempting to keep as dry as possible as the rain nonchalantly showered all over the old tired stone. There was a little bit of a mist around the ground where all the rain droplets impacted and rebounded a little bit of moisture. It was surely wet, but it wasn´t overpowering or even cold, just rainy. So under my umbrella I watched around for this red jacket and jeans. Some description. There were lots of people running around with all kinds of red jackets and jeans - I saw some red P-coats, some red snow jackets, some red wind breakers, some red wool coats, all sporting the Salamancan fashion of jeans and some form of boots or flats.... or boot flats. But there was only one girl with a vaguely red coat wearing jeans under the big clock in the plaza. I personally think it was closer to orange, but I decided I might as well ask and so I walked up and asked her in Spanish, '¿Perdona, se llama Natália?' (Excuse me, do you(respectful form, usted) call yourself Natália?) Sheepishly she smiled and said 'Yes, and you are Kip?'. I put out my hand to shake hers, and she seemed a little confused but unconcerned. Then I remembered that it´s normal in Spain when meeting anyone to give a kiss to the left and the right. Oh well, both smiling we agreed to get some warm coffee out of the rain in a café in the plaza. Into a café we went and after asking for some café con leche we talked. The café as always was brought to our table in little mugs on tiny platters with a spoon and tube of sugar on the platter. There is always about 3/4 inch of really dark strong coffee in the bottom, and after the waiter has passed around all the coffee cups with the coffee in the bottom, he pours from a metal pitcher hot steamed milk to the brim of the glass, creating the lovely café con leche which is very soothing and relaxing while not too strong at all. It seems reasonably clear to me that she does not speak English as much as I speak Spanish, but oddly at the same time she has perhaps a wider vocabulary in English than I do in Spanish because she explained that she is taking an English writing class right now, but they do not speak English in class which I found a little strange. We talked about what we like to do in our free time and after a while I figured out that she plays racquetball and works in a sports equipment store on the other side of the river from Salamanca. Extremely friendly and attempting very hard to understand my English, she stared in a very focused manner at my lips (as I assume I do to Spanish speakers) as I told her about what group I´m with here and what our classes are like and where everyone likes to go at night. She was very amused by the cheap and tourist-oriented places that the Americans visit regularly and then proceeded to describe various places that she goes with her friends. It would be fun, I think, to go out with some Spaniards and hear normal conversations of people our age instead of literary Spanish and proper forms like we always practice. After we finished our coffee, we looked outside and the rain had very determinedly started coming down harder. Natália unfortunately had forgotten her 'paragua en el coche', so having tons of free time I decided it would just be more time to practice Spanish to just walk with her to let her use my umbrella until we got to her car. So we walked and talked about boyfriends and girlfriends and here´s to hoping that Bethany gets better, unfortunately she had to miss work today with 102ºF fever. While it´s nice to not have to go anywhere, a 102ºF fever rest assured does not assure rest. Anyways, we finally got to her car in the northwest of the city, with which I am still unfamiliar and she offered to drive me to the JMU office where I would write this and print out some homework, as long as I could give directions. Ah this will be fun, I thought. We only took one or two days to talk about directions in the first two weeks of intensivo. So I did the best I could to count blocks and describe landmarks and turn here turn there, and finally we did make it there. With the standard Spanish kiss to the left and right we promised to meet again for coffee to talk some more and here I am.
It was a nice experience and I do look forward to another encounter of the Salmantino(a) kind. I wonder what I can learn about Spain from these intercambio meetings? Perhaps things about food or customs that I might have questions about, for example Spanish people never moving out of the way, perhaps Natália can explain that. Perhaps she can also explain the European idea of kids making out in public. Strange but not always a bad thing. Ah well, any excuse for another cup of café con leche I suppose.
Le Poisson
Well the losses seem to accumulate, last night I thought about it a little bit and I seemed to be missing something? As I kept searching, I could not for the life of me find my beloved Irish cap! Well... joder. Whether by robbery or by simple absentmindedness, the thing that made me easy to distinguish, the thing that kept me warm, the perfect gift from my parents, the rain protection and fun accessory, my cap has left me. Fortunately, caps of that sort are very popular here as all old Spanish men wear them, so there must be cap stores somewhere. Perhaps I will go in search of a new one, or perhaps I´ll just wait until I get to Scotland. I don´t know, it´s a difficult thing to attempt to replace, lots of sentimental value - very similar to my camera. Ugh, why am I cursed with the ability to lose anything? I guess that makes me smart for deciding not to get a laptop... that would be gone.
To top it all off, last night I also discovered that I couldn´t find the adapter (€1 or less, not worried about that) to plug in my stuff to the wall, so I was going to take my iPod to the nightly internet café to plug into the computer to recharge. As long as the computer doesn´t have iTunes, the iPod should just recharge and not be messed up. But... it froze. It just stopped, right in the middle of an NPR Food podcast. I wanted to hear the rest of the story about faulty Chinese exports! Whatever would happen to that cut of tenderloin that is infected with the aviary flu? Well, I was not happy at all: no cap, no camera, and now no iPod. That was definitely the last straw. I went and walked around the city for an hour just to chill out and think about where I am. It was wet outside, dark but lit but lots of street lights. I had become familiar with the various routes and people that I might encounter. Frustrated as I was, it was also abundantly clear what kinds of habits Spaniards have in large groups - they never move out of the way. Ever. And they´ll stop in their tracks randomly, even if they´re in the middle of a crowd. And they´ll walk down the street in long lines next to each other, blocking the whole avenue, no matter who´s coming the other direction. I do not like this Spanish trend. I do not like it, Sam I Am. Others have advised pushing people out of the way, they don´t seem to mind and in fact seem to simply ignore being pushed out of the way. But my question is, why aren´t they just courteous enough to move a little bit so that I don´t have to push anyone? I guess the Spanish are more used to contact than Americans are, they´re ok with being touched by a stranger a little bit, but we definitely aren´t. Either way I still find it rude for someone to stand in my way when I´m very clearly moving that direction.
And right now it looks like I have about $888 at my disposal, having started with about $1,843 and $250 having very nicely been augmented by my parents and strangely $450 added by ORL - I just e-mailed them to make sure they´re aware of that issue and to see if/when they need that back. And if I have done my math correctly, $500 more should be coming along later to finish making up for the $750 that was subtracted from my account at the beginning of the semester to help pay for the semester. So all in all, subtracting ORL money, I seem to have spent about half of my total money and approaching halfway in my trip, that´s none too bad. I suppose as a poor college student I can always ask nicely from my parents for a little extra to finish off the trip, but realistically I´ll be with them for that finish so who knows, I may be just fine yet.
Oh yes, but I forgot one very interesting piece of international trade, at the beginning of the semester, we all paid that €100 ransom for our cell phones that will be paid back at the end of the semester. So actually depending on how things go, I could actually make money on that deal... very little, but still it´s an interesting concept, kind of a forward contract without any express interest except in the wayward possibilities of international trade within the currencies of the historically strong US dollar and the more modernly explosively strong Euro. I might make as much as $5, which would be cool, even just in theory. But that also means I´ve used less than half of my real total money, which is nice.
As far as the iPod goes, right now it is happily charging in this SalU computer lab, no problems at all. So at least I have my music. Last night I felt somewhat lost without music to listen to, I was about to whip out my penny whistle, or go in hunt for a piano. But alas there are no such things available at midnight. As long as I have good stuff to listen to, I really don´t feel much of an urge to play music. But I do have a strong urge to sing along, which is difficult to do here without some wierd looks. There just aren´t any places to let loose and belt out a fun song from a musical, which I can usually do in my car at home. I do really miss singing, particularly with the group, all us View Crew people (GH) . I can make do, however, just singing to myself willy nilly in the streets of Salamanca. Most of them have no idea what the lyrics mean and it´s fun just to let loose every once in a while, particularly since I´ll probably never see any of them again and definitely never talk to most of them. What do they care if I am singing 'Le Poisson' from Little Mermaid? They might even like the melody.
Right now it doesn´t seem like we´re doing very much in our classes - in Cultura e Identidad Latinoamericana (the class taught in English), we´ve been looking at the Spanish conquest of Latin America, using examples like food of the mix of cultures and what the great differences were between the societies. I quite enjoy the food aspect of it, particularly since I get to do a research paper on food in Latin America. In Political Science, we look all the time at political articles in the newspapers and talk about the Spanish political history and heirarchy. It´s quite interesting and I think I´ve learned a lot from our Argentinian teacher. Yesterday to distinguish the difference between someone working for the state as opposed to the government, we watched an episode of a British show called 'Yes, Minister' about a permanent state secretary working with an appointed cabinet member. We don´t have such distinctions in the US, President Bush can appoint up to 4,500 people, whereas the British Prime Minister can appoint only 100 and to popular demand that number is declining. It´s pretty ridiculous, right? In Spanish Civilization, we´re slowly learning about the layout of the country and what each region does and really what the country as a whole does as far as working and thereafter consuming. Quite interesting. In Art, we continue to look at the history of art and architecture throughout Spain, since before the Romans up to Dalí. Our teacher is very biased towards what he thinks is good art and therefore will not take much time to look at the works of either Dalí or Gaudí, a grand shame if you ask me. In my final class, Cine y Literatura, we continue plowing through our miles of reading and watching to discuss major literary and cinematic moments in Spanish culture, from the living in illusion character of Quixote to... well I don´t know to what, we haven´t gotten there yet. The only real work comes along in the great amount of reading for my film class and for Van Norman´s latin American class. But both look to be interesting, and the rest of the classes are generally pay attention in class and get an A. I just wish I could take a picture of something and keep my head warm, but at the very least I can sing to myself in the streets like a crazy person :-).
To top it all off, last night I also discovered that I couldn´t find the adapter (€1 or less, not worried about that) to plug in my stuff to the wall, so I was going to take my iPod to the nightly internet café to plug into the computer to recharge. As long as the computer doesn´t have iTunes, the iPod should just recharge and not be messed up. But... it froze. It just stopped, right in the middle of an NPR Food podcast. I wanted to hear the rest of the story about faulty Chinese exports! Whatever would happen to that cut of tenderloin that is infected with the aviary flu? Well, I was not happy at all: no cap, no camera, and now no iPod. That was definitely the last straw. I went and walked around the city for an hour just to chill out and think about where I am. It was wet outside, dark but lit but lots of street lights. I had become familiar with the various routes and people that I might encounter. Frustrated as I was, it was also abundantly clear what kinds of habits Spaniards have in large groups - they never move out of the way. Ever. And they´ll stop in their tracks randomly, even if they´re in the middle of a crowd. And they´ll walk down the street in long lines next to each other, blocking the whole avenue, no matter who´s coming the other direction. I do not like this Spanish trend. I do not like it, Sam I Am. Others have advised pushing people out of the way, they don´t seem to mind and in fact seem to simply ignore being pushed out of the way. But my question is, why aren´t they just courteous enough to move a little bit so that I don´t have to push anyone? I guess the Spanish are more used to contact than Americans are, they´re ok with being touched by a stranger a little bit, but we definitely aren´t. Either way I still find it rude for someone to stand in my way when I´m very clearly moving that direction.
And right now it looks like I have about $888 at my disposal, having started with about $1,843 and $250 having very nicely been augmented by my parents and strangely $450 added by ORL - I just e-mailed them to make sure they´re aware of that issue and to see if/when they need that back. And if I have done my math correctly, $500 more should be coming along later to finish making up for the $750 that was subtracted from my account at the beginning of the semester to help pay for the semester. So all in all, subtracting ORL money, I seem to have spent about half of my total money and approaching halfway in my trip, that´s none too bad. I suppose as a poor college student I can always ask nicely from my parents for a little extra to finish off the trip, but realistically I´ll be with them for that finish so who knows, I may be just fine yet.
Oh yes, but I forgot one very interesting piece of international trade, at the beginning of the semester, we all paid that €100 ransom for our cell phones that will be paid back at the end of the semester. So actually depending on how things go, I could actually make money on that deal... very little, but still it´s an interesting concept, kind of a forward contract without any express interest except in the wayward possibilities of international trade within the currencies of the historically strong US dollar and the more modernly explosively strong Euro. I might make as much as $5, which would be cool, even just in theory. But that also means I´ve used less than half of my real total money, which is nice.
As far as the iPod goes, right now it is happily charging in this SalU computer lab, no problems at all. So at least I have my music. Last night I felt somewhat lost without music to listen to, I was about to whip out my penny whistle, or go in hunt for a piano. But alas there are no such things available at midnight. As long as I have good stuff to listen to, I really don´t feel much of an urge to play music. But I do have a strong urge to sing along, which is difficult to do here without some wierd looks. There just aren´t any places to let loose and belt out a fun song from a musical, which I can usually do in my car at home. I do really miss singing, particularly with the group, all us View Crew people (GH) . I can make do, however, just singing to myself willy nilly in the streets of Salamanca. Most of them have no idea what the lyrics mean and it´s fun just to let loose every once in a while, particularly since I´ll probably never see any of them again and definitely never talk to most of them. What do they care if I am singing 'Le Poisson' from Little Mermaid? They might even like the melody.
Right now it doesn´t seem like we´re doing very much in our classes - in Cultura e Identidad Latinoamericana (the class taught in English), we´ve been looking at the Spanish conquest of Latin America, using examples like food of the mix of cultures and what the great differences were between the societies. I quite enjoy the food aspect of it, particularly since I get to do a research paper on food in Latin America. In Political Science, we look all the time at political articles in the newspapers and talk about the Spanish political history and heirarchy. It´s quite interesting and I think I´ve learned a lot from our Argentinian teacher. Yesterday to distinguish the difference between someone working for the state as opposed to the government, we watched an episode of a British show called 'Yes, Minister' about a permanent state secretary working with an appointed cabinet member. We don´t have such distinctions in the US, President Bush can appoint up to 4,500 people, whereas the British Prime Minister can appoint only 100 and to popular demand that number is declining. It´s pretty ridiculous, right? In Spanish Civilization, we´re slowly learning about the layout of the country and what each region does and really what the country as a whole does as far as working and thereafter consuming. Quite interesting. In Art, we continue to look at the history of art and architecture throughout Spain, since before the Romans up to Dalí. Our teacher is very biased towards what he thinks is good art and therefore will not take much time to look at the works of either Dalí or Gaudí, a grand shame if you ask me. In my final class, Cine y Literatura, we continue plowing through our miles of reading and watching to discuss major literary and cinematic moments in Spanish culture, from the living in illusion character of Quixote to... well I don´t know to what, we haven´t gotten there yet. The only real work comes along in the great amount of reading for my film class and for Van Norman´s latin American class. But both look to be interesting, and the rest of the classes are generally pay attention in class and get an A. I just wish I could take a picture of something and keep my head warm, but at the very least I can sing to myself in the streets like a crazy person :-).
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Porto 2
After my lovely post-arrival nap, Caroline and I talked a little bit with her host-padre about my cooking and apparantly Caroline had been setting high expectations that I would be cooking there. Hehe, well I am not one to disappoint with food so I agreed one of the days to make an American meal and afterwards we headed out to Porto where Caroline was supposed to meet one of her friends.
After a long metro ride and some catching up Caroline and I arrived to find a tall thin blonde-streaked guy looking just a little younger than me dressed in a nice European style. This apparantly was Johannes from the Ferro Islands, which come to find out is a territory of the Dutch, with its own language and mythology and songbooks! We fascinated ourselves by taking a little tour of Porto complete with a trip to a coffee shop where I tried a Mokachok - served in layers, I think it included whipped cream (chantilly in Portuguese), thick thick chocolate and something else. It tasted like chocolate gravy, outrageously thick and chocolatey with a light and ever so slightly spicy flavor. I personally got a mixture of this chocolate drink with coffee, since I needed a good waking up.
After enjoying this refreshment, we toured around a bit. Porto I would describe as similar to the London of the movie Sweeney Todd just with more monuments - same sketchy people all over and really dark and dank with stone streets and buildings. Several times I asked the two of them where we were and very nonchalantly they would say 'eh, I have no idea... where does that alleyway go?'. I was not feeling good about this. But we stayed out of trouble and spent a good amount of time hanging out by the riverside, which was pretty wide open and nice. I liked having open space with good lightinig and not-sketchy looking people around. Across the river we could see the buildings of different Porto wine producers, and as well there were some boats in the river and as we crossed to the other side, we amused each other with international swear words and the various translations thereof. I think Johannes won out with his Ferroese phrase meaning something like 'damn you to the flames of hell'. It had a nice ring to it. But we circled around a couple of times, found some Spanish speaking girls from Catalunya to take pictures of us, got some Portuguese pastries (Johannes wanted chocolate cake... and he wanted it right then. It was very out of the blue... C: '...yeah, so I told him I wasn´t interested...' J: 'I want chocolate cake.' K:'What?' J: 'I want chocolate cake, is there a cafe around here?' ). We had a nice time walking around Porto and Caroline and Johannes even bought tickets to the Nightwish show in Porto for mid April.
I had told Caroline that I wanted Chinese food for dinner, but her host Padre had told us we needed to be back home by 9pm which in Spanish time is dinner time, so we just went home and discussed food options. Her host Padre of course was very friendly and pointed out some nice places we could visit along the seashore. Well we went out looking and toured around the beautiful plazas and seashore and eventually settled on a café reasonably close to her house that had pizzas. I got a pizza wth egg on it while Caroline got a tropical pizza.
The whole time we were walking and talking, we discussed what we missed from home, who we missed from home and crazy things for the future - for instance Micajah, he is the first child to kind of enter into our group at home, the 'View Crew' if you will (or VC for short... not VietCong, none of us is named Charlie... or Asian for that matter). In as short as 5 or 6 years, some of us in the VC may be getting married or even begin having children! That´s just too soon! We discussed it at length and heck I couldn´t even decide who my best man would be at a wedding. The point is, we´re getting older and even though we still get together as much as we can, the dynamics will continue to change and I don´t know if I´m ready to be called Uncle Kip, you know? We talked also about what it will be like when we got back to the US, and as we talked about it, there aren´t any hangout places or cafés in Forest. So Caroline and I talked at great length about a café that we would like to make in Forest, a place with enough space for a dance floor and a band, good tapas and snack foods for students and people on a hurry, good generally inexpensive coffee for people on the go (there is no such thing as a to go cup here, we miss that). My thought for the name was Iberia, but who knows. We could have pastries and scones and good bread and tapas and snack foods (not junk, real food), it would be an awesome meeting place and hangout place, especially if it were out by Sonic or Carol´s or something.
We entertained ourselves a great deal talking about that until we finally got home late and got some rest before the next day.
I was a little bit lazy after all my travels and so I got up about 11am to shower and be ready for the day. We resolved to be cooking lunch which could be ready about 2:30 and so we went out to tour the Vilha do Conde area. We went out to the seashore where we hungout on a pier above some rocks. We watched the waves and admired the shells, it was a beautiful and peaceful place, not to mention the pretty awesome weather. I commented that sometime we should come out for a little cookout of all the mussels hanging out on the shore. There were also tons of little gastropods such as limpets and tiny conch-like snails with curled shells. It was beautiful and peaceful, and we also went out to see a 16th century high seas exploration ship called the Nau. It had realistic mannequins inside that were for lack of better words creepy, but all in all it was an interesting boat with lots of robe and barrels and rocks in the bottom (supposedly for road paving in the 'New World').
When we got back, it was time to decide what lunch would be! We had already told them that we wanted chicken, spinach and a couple of other things, but we finalized the menu to: grilled barbeque chicken, roasted potatoes with onions, spinach salad and my fruit parfait dessert. There were two interesting things about this meal. First was my invention of a barbeque sauce, the second was their complete revulsion to the idea of eating spinach raw. To create a barbeque sauce, I pretty much rounded up everything in the kitchen that looked like it could fit and cooked it together for a little while. I think I used apple cider vinegar, ketchup, sugar, salt, black pepper, hot chile powder, oregano, and some other stuff I couldn´t name. But you know what, it actually turned out pretty good! I was very surprised and pleased with myself, it could have maybe used some mustard or brown sugar or molasses or cumin, but it worked! Then the host madre had already very nicely cut up the chicken for me, so I just let the sauce marinade with the chicken for a little bit while we prepped the potatoes. Caroline, of course was my very deft and helpful assistant every step of the way. I quite enjoyed being able to cook again and have my own dominion of flavors and construction of something delicious and beautiful. It was a very freeing and lovely feeling to be creative with what I know best. Caroline even added to the atmosphere by bringing down her laptop and playing some musical songs that we could sing along to. It was just like being back at home cooking :-). We cut the potatoes into cubes about an inch wide, along with semi-circle thin slices of onion and a dressing of olive oil, salt and this pesto that the family had (it could have used more salt all in all I think). That we just tossed together and put into the oven at 400ºF, which as it turns out is 205ºC. Then I made a little vinagrette for the spinach salad. The spinach, I should note, was much tougher and darker in flavor than American spinach. By itself I could understand why they were not very pelased with the idea of raw spinach, but I think with my dressing it was going to turn out just fine, and I was excited to have them try something completely new to them. I whisked together some apple cider vinegar with olive oil and honey to emulsify it, then I added some slices of tomato meat to give it some body and texture. Then it was time to face the chicken. Some of the pieces that were cut off the whole chicken were definitely not what we would be interested in eating grilled in the US - chicken ribs, the keel bone, the neck and several other things I could not even recognize. I asked the host dad if I could give the neck to the dog, and he very vehemently (though friendly) insisted that he would eat it himself.
I must point out that this family has a dog in their little back yard, he´s a very friendly golden retriever that generally seems to not be treated with love. The family hardly ever pets the dog, much less lets him in the house and never gives him treats and the host padre at least handles him very roughly, by the collar and with harsh words and always dismisses the dog from anything. Meanwhile, Caroline and I are generally hoping the dog can come over so we can pet him and give him little snacks and stuff. It was very different treatment from what I´ve even seen in Spain. All across Spain, dogs I´ve seen were treated very nicely, usually even without a collar, just running around free. All the while Spanish dogs are generally really really well trained to voice and signals to stay and come and get down and all that. Caroline´s host family seemed to really enjoy the trick of having the dog shake their hands... but other than that he only had commands to go away or get back in his little area of the yard or to be pulled over and chained to a tree. I did not really agree with the handling of the dog, but he is under their care and seemed to still like people and very healthy, so it´s not a great violation of anything I guess.
Anyways, after sifting through a couple of methods, the host padre showed me that they do have something similar to a grill - it´s very much like a cooling rack set right on top of a heating element, set overtop a pan to catch the runoff juices. Having the heating element set right underneath the rack on which the food was set made for lots of charring, but in general it looked very good and cooked nicely through. The smell of it and the music and the company of Caroline brought both of us back to our summer tradition of fourth of July festivities at the Ballard house, which we tried to describe to the host Padre who was most curious about our yankee culinary creations.
So there it was! We had a nice salad dressing for the spinach, which they seemed most curious about, as well as beautiful grilled barbeque chicken and roasted potatoes and onions. It made me miss my mother´s home cooking but at the same time I was satisfied to be there with this beautiful home food with Caroline to enjoy and also the wonderfully pleasant and welcoming company of Caroline´s host family. The entire family was very very receptive to the meal and even rather enjoyed the spinach salad, despite their preoccupations! Then it was time for dessert!
The night before they had brought out some frozen raspberries which were by this time thawed with some liquid. They then had some fresh strawberried which we sliced up. All of this we macerated in the liquid with a good deal of sugar and a little salt to taste, to let thicken and marinade (I guess) in the fridge. We then crushed up some portuguese cookies (important note here... the Iberian peninsula does not have soft gooey cookies. They do not exist. There is no such thing as a hot soft chocolate chip cookie to eat with hot chocolate or milk or whatever. It is a sad state of affairs, and something that everyone mentions from time to time missing from home. I think some day I may simply make a lot of soft chocolate chip cookies to bring to the JMU office. They will be gone in a flash, but it would be nice I think.) and we set the cookies in the bottom of single serving bowls. Then we whipped up some Portuguese natas, which I guess is like heavy cream into chantilly, or whipped cream. This was laced with sugar and a little bit of vanilla, then set on top of the crushed cookies. Then we brought out the macerated fruit and spooned that on top of the whipped cream, then topped it all off with a swirl of honey, just for that extra touch of home. If I do say so myself, it was my favorite part of the meal, and very well received by the family. In response, they told me that 'next time I come' I should bake some bread, too! I can definitely do that. I think they liked it, and I do dearly miss my bread.
The rest of the day we just spent walking around and discussing our future café for Forest and relationship stuff. It was just nice to have a friend to talk to who knows me well enough to finish sentences and knows exactly who I´m talking about and what I mean, not to mention what I miss. Then again Caroline is kind of a special case in any way since she´s my little sister, eu ermão or mi hermana.
It was sad to go since Vilha do Conde was such a beautiful and open place, not to mention friendly. I hope to go back sometime and actually I might be dropping by at the end of my spring break to Santiago de Compostela and then maybe later again on my last weekend free, the first weekend of April.
It´s nice to see your friends.
After a long metro ride and some catching up Caroline and I arrived to find a tall thin blonde-streaked guy looking just a little younger than me dressed in a nice European style. This apparantly was Johannes from the Ferro Islands, which come to find out is a territory of the Dutch, with its own language and mythology and songbooks! We fascinated ourselves by taking a little tour of Porto complete with a trip to a coffee shop where I tried a Mokachok - served in layers, I think it included whipped cream (chantilly in Portuguese), thick thick chocolate and something else. It tasted like chocolate gravy, outrageously thick and chocolatey with a light and ever so slightly spicy flavor. I personally got a mixture of this chocolate drink with coffee, since I needed a good waking up.
After enjoying this refreshment, we toured around a bit. Porto I would describe as similar to the London of the movie Sweeney Todd just with more monuments - same sketchy people all over and really dark and dank with stone streets and buildings. Several times I asked the two of them where we were and very nonchalantly they would say 'eh, I have no idea... where does that alleyway go?'. I was not feeling good about this. But we stayed out of trouble and spent a good amount of time hanging out by the riverside, which was pretty wide open and nice. I liked having open space with good lightinig and not-sketchy looking people around. Across the river we could see the buildings of different Porto wine producers, and as well there were some boats in the river and as we crossed to the other side, we amused each other with international swear words and the various translations thereof. I think Johannes won out with his Ferroese phrase meaning something like 'damn you to the flames of hell'. It had a nice ring to it. But we circled around a couple of times, found some Spanish speaking girls from Catalunya to take pictures of us, got some Portuguese pastries (Johannes wanted chocolate cake... and he wanted it right then. It was very out of the blue... C: '...yeah, so I told him I wasn´t interested...' J: 'I want chocolate cake.' K:'What?' J: 'I want chocolate cake, is there a cafe around here?' ). We had a nice time walking around Porto and Caroline and Johannes even bought tickets to the Nightwish show in Porto for mid April.
I had told Caroline that I wanted Chinese food for dinner, but her host Padre had told us we needed to be back home by 9pm which in Spanish time is dinner time, so we just went home and discussed food options. Her host Padre of course was very friendly and pointed out some nice places we could visit along the seashore. Well we went out looking and toured around the beautiful plazas and seashore and eventually settled on a café reasonably close to her house that had pizzas. I got a pizza wth egg on it while Caroline got a tropical pizza.
The whole time we were walking and talking, we discussed what we missed from home, who we missed from home and crazy things for the future - for instance Micajah, he is the first child to kind of enter into our group at home, the 'View Crew' if you will (or VC for short... not VietCong, none of us is named Charlie... or Asian for that matter). In as short as 5 or 6 years, some of us in the VC may be getting married or even begin having children! That´s just too soon! We discussed it at length and heck I couldn´t even decide who my best man would be at a wedding. The point is, we´re getting older and even though we still get together as much as we can, the dynamics will continue to change and I don´t know if I´m ready to be called Uncle Kip, you know? We talked also about what it will be like when we got back to the US, and as we talked about it, there aren´t any hangout places or cafés in Forest. So Caroline and I talked at great length about a café that we would like to make in Forest, a place with enough space for a dance floor and a band, good tapas and snack foods for students and people on a hurry, good generally inexpensive coffee for people on the go (there is no such thing as a to go cup here, we miss that). My thought for the name was Iberia, but who knows. We could have pastries and scones and good bread and tapas and snack foods (not junk, real food), it would be an awesome meeting place and hangout place, especially if it were out by Sonic or Carol´s or something.
We entertained ourselves a great deal talking about that until we finally got home late and got some rest before the next day.
I was a little bit lazy after all my travels and so I got up about 11am to shower and be ready for the day. We resolved to be cooking lunch which could be ready about 2:30 and so we went out to tour the Vilha do Conde area. We went out to the seashore where we hungout on a pier above some rocks. We watched the waves and admired the shells, it was a beautiful and peaceful place, not to mention the pretty awesome weather. I commented that sometime we should come out for a little cookout of all the mussels hanging out on the shore. There were also tons of little gastropods such as limpets and tiny conch-like snails with curled shells. It was beautiful and peaceful, and we also went out to see a 16th century high seas exploration ship called the Nau. It had realistic mannequins inside that were for lack of better words creepy, but all in all it was an interesting boat with lots of robe and barrels and rocks in the bottom (supposedly for road paving in the 'New World').
When we got back, it was time to decide what lunch would be! We had already told them that we wanted chicken, spinach and a couple of other things, but we finalized the menu to: grilled barbeque chicken, roasted potatoes with onions, spinach salad and my fruit parfait dessert. There were two interesting things about this meal. First was my invention of a barbeque sauce, the second was their complete revulsion to the idea of eating spinach raw. To create a barbeque sauce, I pretty much rounded up everything in the kitchen that looked like it could fit and cooked it together for a little while. I think I used apple cider vinegar, ketchup, sugar, salt, black pepper, hot chile powder, oregano, and some other stuff I couldn´t name. But you know what, it actually turned out pretty good! I was very surprised and pleased with myself, it could have maybe used some mustard or brown sugar or molasses or cumin, but it worked! Then the host madre had already very nicely cut up the chicken for me, so I just let the sauce marinade with the chicken for a little bit while we prepped the potatoes. Caroline, of course was my very deft and helpful assistant every step of the way. I quite enjoyed being able to cook again and have my own dominion of flavors and construction of something delicious and beautiful. It was a very freeing and lovely feeling to be creative with what I know best. Caroline even added to the atmosphere by bringing down her laptop and playing some musical songs that we could sing along to. It was just like being back at home cooking :-). We cut the potatoes into cubes about an inch wide, along with semi-circle thin slices of onion and a dressing of olive oil, salt and this pesto that the family had (it could have used more salt all in all I think). That we just tossed together and put into the oven at 400ºF, which as it turns out is 205ºC. Then I made a little vinagrette for the spinach salad. The spinach, I should note, was much tougher and darker in flavor than American spinach. By itself I could understand why they were not very pelased with the idea of raw spinach, but I think with my dressing it was going to turn out just fine, and I was excited to have them try something completely new to them. I whisked together some apple cider vinegar with olive oil and honey to emulsify it, then I added some slices of tomato meat to give it some body and texture. Then it was time to face the chicken. Some of the pieces that were cut off the whole chicken were definitely not what we would be interested in eating grilled in the US - chicken ribs, the keel bone, the neck and several other things I could not even recognize. I asked the host dad if I could give the neck to the dog, and he very vehemently (though friendly) insisted that he would eat it himself.
I must point out that this family has a dog in their little back yard, he´s a very friendly golden retriever that generally seems to not be treated with love. The family hardly ever pets the dog, much less lets him in the house and never gives him treats and the host padre at least handles him very roughly, by the collar and with harsh words and always dismisses the dog from anything. Meanwhile, Caroline and I are generally hoping the dog can come over so we can pet him and give him little snacks and stuff. It was very different treatment from what I´ve even seen in Spain. All across Spain, dogs I´ve seen were treated very nicely, usually even without a collar, just running around free. All the while Spanish dogs are generally really really well trained to voice and signals to stay and come and get down and all that. Caroline´s host family seemed to really enjoy the trick of having the dog shake their hands... but other than that he only had commands to go away or get back in his little area of the yard or to be pulled over and chained to a tree. I did not really agree with the handling of the dog, but he is under their care and seemed to still like people and very healthy, so it´s not a great violation of anything I guess.
Anyways, after sifting through a couple of methods, the host padre showed me that they do have something similar to a grill - it´s very much like a cooling rack set right on top of a heating element, set overtop a pan to catch the runoff juices. Having the heating element set right underneath the rack on which the food was set made for lots of charring, but in general it looked very good and cooked nicely through. The smell of it and the music and the company of Caroline brought both of us back to our summer tradition of fourth of July festivities at the Ballard house, which we tried to describe to the host Padre who was most curious about our yankee culinary creations.
So there it was! We had a nice salad dressing for the spinach, which they seemed most curious about, as well as beautiful grilled barbeque chicken and roasted potatoes and onions. It made me miss my mother´s home cooking but at the same time I was satisfied to be there with this beautiful home food with Caroline to enjoy and also the wonderfully pleasant and welcoming company of Caroline´s host family. The entire family was very very receptive to the meal and even rather enjoyed the spinach salad, despite their preoccupations! Then it was time for dessert!
The night before they had brought out some frozen raspberries which were by this time thawed with some liquid. They then had some fresh strawberried which we sliced up. All of this we macerated in the liquid with a good deal of sugar and a little salt to taste, to let thicken and marinade (I guess) in the fridge. We then crushed up some portuguese cookies (important note here... the Iberian peninsula does not have soft gooey cookies. They do not exist. There is no such thing as a hot soft chocolate chip cookie to eat with hot chocolate or milk or whatever. It is a sad state of affairs, and something that everyone mentions from time to time missing from home. I think some day I may simply make a lot of soft chocolate chip cookies to bring to the JMU office. They will be gone in a flash, but it would be nice I think.) and we set the cookies in the bottom of single serving bowls. Then we whipped up some Portuguese natas, which I guess is like heavy cream into chantilly, or whipped cream. This was laced with sugar and a little bit of vanilla, then set on top of the crushed cookies. Then we brought out the macerated fruit and spooned that on top of the whipped cream, then topped it all off with a swirl of honey, just for that extra touch of home. If I do say so myself, it was my favorite part of the meal, and very well received by the family. In response, they told me that 'next time I come' I should bake some bread, too! I can definitely do that. I think they liked it, and I do dearly miss my bread.
The rest of the day we just spent walking around and discussing our future café for Forest and relationship stuff. It was just nice to have a friend to talk to who knows me well enough to finish sentences and knows exactly who I´m talking about and what I mean, not to mention what I miss. Then again Caroline is kind of a special case in any way since she´s my little sister, eu ermão or mi hermana.
It was sad to go since Vilha do Conde was such a beautiful and open place, not to mention friendly. I hope to go back sometime and actually I might be dropping by at the end of my spring break to Santiago de Compostela and then maybe later again on my last weekend free, the first weekend of April.
It´s nice to see your friends.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Porto 1
Having already bought my bus tickets, I was prepared on Friday to head off to meet Caroline (Ballard) in Porto, Portugal. I had class as usual until lunch at 2, and afterwards I took a long long siesta before meeting up with Katie for some coffee and a walk. We tried something really interesting - MacDonalds café con helado (coffee with ice cream). It was good until the ice cream all melted and the coffee was cold, I think that idea still needs some tinkering. Katie and I walked all around the city, looking at some interesting points on the western side of the city, along the protective wall by the river. After the river, we found a big interesting cathedral, I believe the one that I accidentally walked into in the middle of a mass one time. We were admiring the incredible carvings on the front of the façade when we turned down a path to find a little convent, and we saw an open door. Katie was very skeptical as to whether or not we´re supposed to go inside, but generally unafraid I walked right on in and found another open door, and upon going inside I saw a couple of directional touristy signs, so I knew I wasn´t anywhere I shouldn´t be. But as I walked in, a nun came through the door, apparantly just ready to close the place up. Very nicely she informed me that the visiting hours were coming to an end and Katie and I went on our way. Around the corner, we found this incredibly little shop that sold lots of wine and hams and specialized ciders and lots of cookies (so naturally Katie was all over that) and after enjoying some of the cookies, we made our way back to the plaza mayor where we parted ways. After that I don´t quite recall what I did, except probably wander the city a little bit, taking my time to get back home for dinner at nine.
Madre was making some filets of white fish! She had a delicious tomato sauce with it too, and I was getting really excited watching her dish it into this glass bowl for service when all of a sudden the bowl exploded. Glass shards popped every which way, the fish falling among the dangerous pieces. Well we had leftovers that night, which were good. And at the dinner table Ian and Austin and I had some good natured joking and talking, and all was well. After dinner I went as is my general custom to a local internet café to talk to Bethany for an hour or so.
I try to talk to Bethany just about every night, it´s kind of my time to talk away my worries and feel connected to someone and to get some positive feelings.
You know I think I´ve learned some things about myself while I´ve been here - what I miss. What I miss from home tells me what´s important to me, it tells me what things mean to me and what I like and want. What I miss most from home is Bethany. Our relationship has grown really strong and she´s really my best friend, the person I would run to with anything and talk about anything. I can´t wait to meet up with her in Rome and have fun adventures together! The next thing that I miss is self determination - saying hey, friends are coming over to my place right now or hey I want to eat out tonight or I think I´ll spend the night at my friend´s place or let´s watch a movie at your house or my house or someplace. It kind of feels like we´re back in elementary school, go home for everything and only in special circumstances get to have people over or go play for long times. And it´s really kind of lame how little the JMU office is open - 4 hours, 4 days a week. Anyways, the next thing I miss is cooking. I want to play with my food. I want to be able to sleep in on a Saturday and make a loaf or two of bread. I want to come home and make eggs and bacon. I want to throw together a fantastic meal just for the heck of it, but I have to eat whatever madre gives us - which is usually awesome but not always what we want, you know? Give us pizza one night or chinese food or sandwiches or something other than Spanish ham. Yes it´s good, but so is variety. And I miss just the act of cooking, while I´ve been here I eat a lot of oranges because it gives me a chance to prepare something - peel and clean and neatly pick apart. People think it´s wierd and why would I just not eat oranges if it´s that much work? Well, I just like working on food. The next thing I miss is being able to joke with people. I just don´t know Spanish enough to be able to be funny, and it definitely makes it less fun. You may be wondering why I haven´t missed music yet? I think JMU burned me out on music, I just love listening to good music, I haven´t really had any cravings to play it. Whatever, I´m going to need to play next semester, so it´s not the end or anything.
So I talked to Bethany and then went back and got prepared for the trip. I left rather abruptly at around 12:45 so that I would be on time, and I got there and waited for a while - I had brought a large blanket that Bethany made for me, and it kept me very nice and warm, I´m very glad I have it with me :-). And I got on the bus no problem and sat next to a quiet guy who slept the whole time. The entire trip there was a movie playing in English with subtitles in Portuguese, a lame ´80s movie with Steven Seagal called Above the Law. Anyways it was a long trip and I was probably asleep half of the time, or at least half asleep most of the time.
When we finally arrived in Porto, it was still pitch black and they just kind of left us there in this little plaza. So walking with my somewhat heavy backpack and messenger-style backpack. First I asked some cab drivers where the metro was, and I tried to follow their directions, then I came along two guys walking, one of them about my age, one of them kind of old. The guy my age asked for a cigarette, but I didn´t have any. I asked them in Spanish where the metro was, and they seemed nice enough to want to show me where it is. So I was following them and talking to them as best I could about where I was from. I couldn´t understand a lot of what they said, but they kept talking to me and we got to these stone steps that led down to a stone path and a bridge across a stream to another road. I figured they must know the quickest way to get to the metro apparantly was through this shortcut.
When we got to the bottom of the stone steps, however, the old guy stopped me and started asking me for a little donation for the trouble, so I gave him a Euro, but then he said that he needed more than that for coffee or cocaine. Ah, we seemed to be getting to the heart of the matter. I emphatically told them no money for drugs, and then that I simply had no money. The younger guy seemed to be distracted and not very interested in asking me about anything. As I tried to walk away, they got in my way and wouldn´t let me pass. But the older guy seemed to be very impatient about asking for money and all of a sudden grabbed one of the straps around my chest and would not let go despite my continued demand for him to let go. Then he began making slicing motions and I think was telling me if I didn´t give him the money he would cut me. The younger guy to the side seemed somewhat disinterested but still involved in keeping me there. The older guy began to reach through his pockets, I suspected for a knife. Fearing the worst I began to reach for my multi-tool to try to get the knife, but this seemed to distract him from his search and he began asking what I was looking for. Then he lost his patience and started pushing around and I fell to the ground. While the younger guy was not really that involved, the older guy was trying to push me around and grab at things, so I then started to really fight back and push him back and around and I tried to grab him and turn him around. I felt right then more afraid than anything else, so I completely forgot everything that would make sense to do - trip and push down, break one of his arms, break his nose, knee in the groin. All I did was wrestle off the old man to the ground as best I could and made sure the younger guy understood I didn´t want to fight him and ran off. As I was running away I realized that there was a puncture wound on my left index inger and a large scratch on my middle finger. The only casualties I was sure of.
Later I could not find my camera, which perhaps may have been left on the bus to Porto. Either way, apparantly they don´t make that kind of camera anymore, nor the charger nor a PC cord... so even if they did steal it, the camera´s no good to them. Some small conscious compensation.
Even as my heart was racing, I walked around the city for a while trying to find the metro station, asking some shop-keepers who were really friendly and eventually finding that I had gone to the right place and turned around once before. But I got to the metro station and made it out to Vilha do Conde where Caroline was living and when I arrived there was a map right there. So already having her address I just decided to find my way to her house, even though I had told her to meet me at the stop what would be an hour later.
After a wrong turn or two, I found her house and rang the bell. I wasn´t sure to expect since by then it was bout 8:15am. Caroline´s host Padre answered the door and very kindly let me into a very very modern looking house with broad colors and clean smooth surfaces. He very nicely asked me to put my stuff down and brought me coffee and bread and butter and went to wake up Caroline. So I, sweaty, heart still beating a little funy and tired as anything first saw Caroling sitting at her table drinking coffee as she surprisedly looked up at me in her PJs. After hugging and saying hi and everything, she was nice enough to let me go sleep for a while. So I went up into a guest room of sorts and woke up to Caroline´s nudges at about 11am, whereas we went out to see Porto after some discussions with Caroline´s very nice family. Her mother is rather attractive at her age, very friendly and her father as well is very distinguished and speaks Spanish very fluently, so I had no trouble communicating with the family. Caroline´s host sister seemed very friendly and pleasant and her host brother seemed a difficult teenage boy but nonetheless an interesting and generally friendly guy. This was going to be an interesting trip, stay tuned for more!
Madre was making some filets of white fish! She had a delicious tomato sauce with it too, and I was getting really excited watching her dish it into this glass bowl for service when all of a sudden the bowl exploded. Glass shards popped every which way, the fish falling among the dangerous pieces. Well we had leftovers that night, which were good. And at the dinner table Ian and Austin and I had some good natured joking and talking, and all was well. After dinner I went as is my general custom to a local internet café to talk to Bethany for an hour or so.
I try to talk to Bethany just about every night, it´s kind of my time to talk away my worries and feel connected to someone and to get some positive feelings.
You know I think I´ve learned some things about myself while I´ve been here - what I miss. What I miss from home tells me what´s important to me, it tells me what things mean to me and what I like and want. What I miss most from home is Bethany. Our relationship has grown really strong and she´s really my best friend, the person I would run to with anything and talk about anything. I can´t wait to meet up with her in Rome and have fun adventures together! The next thing that I miss is self determination - saying hey, friends are coming over to my place right now or hey I want to eat out tonight or I think I´ll spend the night at my friend´s place or let´s watch a movie at your house or my house or someplace. It kind of feels like we´re back in elementary school, go home for everything and only in special circumstances get to have people over or go play for long times. And it´s really kind of lame how little the JMU office is open - 4 hours, 4 days a week. Anyways, the next thing I miss is cooking. I want to play with my food. I want to be able to sleep in on a Saturday and make a loaf or two of bread. I want to come home and make eggs and bacon. I want to throw together a fantastic meal just for the heck of it, but I have to eat whatever madre gives us - which is usually awesome but not always what we want, you know? Give us pizza one night or chinese food or sandwiches or something other than Spanish ham. Yes it´s good, but so is variety. And I miss just the act of cooking, while I´ve been here I eat a lot of oranges because it gives me a chance to prepare something - peel and clean and neatly pick apart. People think it´s wierd and why would I just not eat oranges if it´s that much work? Well, I just like working on food. The next thing I miss is being able to joke with people. I just don´t know Spanish enough to be able to be funny, and it definitely makes it less fun. You may be wondering why I haven´t missed music yet? I think JMU burned me out on music, I just love listening to good music, I haven´t really had any cravings to play it. Whatever, I´m going to need to play next semester, so it´s not the end or anything.
So I talked to Bethany and then went back and got prepared for the trip. I left rather abruptly at around 12:45 so that I would be on time, and I got there and waited for a while - I had brought a large blanket that Bethany made for me, and it kept me very nice and warm, I´m very glad I have it with me :-). And I got on the bus no problem and sat next to a quiet guy who slept the whole time. The entire trip there was a movie playing in English with subtitles in Portuguese, a lame ´80s movie with Steven Seagal called Above the Law. Anyways it was a long trip and I was probably asleep half of the time, or at least half asleep most of the time.
When we finally arrived in Porto, it was still pitch black and they just kind of left us there in this little plaza. So walking with my somewhat heavy backpack and messenger-style backpack. First I asked some cab drivers where the metro was, and I tried to follow their directions, then I came along two guys walking, one of them about my age, one of them kind of old. The guy my age asked for a cigarette, but I didn´t have any. I asked them in Spanish where the metro was, and they seemed nice enough to want to show me where it is. So I was following them and talking to them as best I could about where I was from. I couldn´t understand a lot of what they said, but they kept talking to me and we got to these stone steps that led down to a stone path and a bridge across a stream to another road. I figured they must know the quickest way to get to the metro apparantly was through this shortcut.
When we got to the bottom of the stone steps, however, the old guy stopped me and started asking me for a little donation for the trouble, so I gave him a Euro, but then he said that he needed more than that for coffee or cocaine. Ah, we seemed to be getting to the heart of the matter. I emphatically told them no money for drugs, and then that I simply had no money. The younger guy seemed to be distracted and not very interested in asking me about anything. As I tried to walk away, they got in my way and wouldn´t let me pass. But the older guy seemed to be very impatient about asking for money and all of a sudden grabbed one of the straps around my chest and would not let go despite my continued demand for him to let go. Then he began making slicing motions and I think was telling me if I didn´t give him the money he would cut me. The younger guy to the side seemed somewhat disinterested but still involved in keeping me there. The older guy began to reach through his pockets, I suspected for a knife. Fearing the worst I began to reach for my multi-tool to try to get the knife, but this seemed to distract him from his search and he began asking what I was looking for. Then he lost his patience and started pushing around and I fell to the ground. While the younger guy was not really that involved, the older guy was trying to push me around and grab at things, so I then started to really fight back and push him back and around and I tried to grab him and turn him around. I felt right then more afraid than anything else, so I completely forgot everything that would make sense to do - trip and push down, break one of his arms, break his nose, knee in the groin. All I did was wrestle off the old man to the ground as best I could and made sure the younger guy understood I didn´t want to fight him and ran off. As I was running away I realized that there was a puncture wound on my left index inger and a large scratch on my middle finger. The only casualties I was sure of.
Later I could not find my camera, which perhaps may have been left on the bus to Porto. Either way, apparantly they don´t make that kind of camera anymore, nor the charger nor a PC cord... so even if they did steal it, the camera´s no good to them. Some small conscious compensation.
Even as my heart was racing, I walked around the city for a while trying to find the metro station, asking some shop-keepers who were really friendly and eventually finding that I had gone to the right place and turned around once before. But I got to the metro station and made it out to Vilha do Conde where Caroline was living and when I arrived there was a map right there. So already having her address I just decided to find my way to her house, even though I had told her to meet me at the stop what would be an hour later.
After a wrong turn or two, I found her house and rang the bell. I wasn´t sure to expect since by then it was bout 8:15am. Caroline´s host Padre answered the door and very kindly let me into a very very modern looking house with broad colors and clean smooth surfaces. He very nicely asked me to put my stuff down and brought me coffee and bread and butter and went to wake up Caroline. So I, sweaty, heart still beating a little funy and tired as anything first saw Caroling sitting at her table drinking coffee as she surprisedly looked up at me in her PJs. After hugging and saying hi and everything, she was nice enough to let me go sleep for a while. So I went up into a guest room of sorts and woke up to Caroline´s nudges at about 11am, whereas we went out to see Porto after some discussions with Caroline´s very nice family. Her mother is rather attractive at her age, very friendly and her father as well is very distinguished and speaks Spanish very fluently, so I had no trouble communicating with the family. Caroline´s host sister seemed very friendly and pleasant and her host brother seemed a difficult teenage boy but nonetheless an interesting and generally friendly guy. This was going to be an interesting trip, stay tuned for more!
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