More International Music

When we were in the streets of Burgos, we came across this insane accordian and xylophone player.

I wish I had a longer clip, but my friends were embarrassed that I was taking video.

Random trivia: After I stopped the camera, there was an unrelated gunshot sound in the plaza that scared us all to death. It ended up being a firework.

Another random trivia tidbit: The same thing happened on our Madrid tour, with the whole fireworks/gunshot thing. Apparently Spaniards like setting them off in public places.

A few select pictures

Our school recently had a Study Abroad picture contest. There were four categories, which I cannot remember, and you could submit pictures to each one. There'd be a winner in each category and the prize was $50. You could only win one category at most.

So I compiled a ton of pictures from my study abroad experience, but I didn't enter the contest. Why? Because this semester is so unbelievably busy that it's ridiculous.

Here are some pictures I just love, some are repeats, but it's really the creme de la creme of the photos I have from my whole semester, which is a LOT.

A boy (or girl?) whistling to the tunes played during the parade on San Sebastian Day.

A child dressed as a leprechaun for the parade.

A group of girls in costume for the parade, banging barrels to the beat.

A young boy in a chef hat, blue and white (San Sebastian's colors) carrying a drum to play along with the La Tamborrada.

Overlooking the water in Lisboa, Portugal, from the castle entrance.

Raquel, Natalia and Ana sitting by the water in Barcelona.

Me and the lizard fountain in Parc Guell in Barcelona.

Cool rock archways in Parc Guell, Barcelona.

Weird Samurai man in Parc Guell, Barcelona. I watch him with a smile as he does some sword moves.

More kids from the parade from San Sebastian Day.

Entraince of Parc Guell, this man poses for pictures dressed as the famous lizard fountain.

Palm trees in a park in Barcelona

Obama's face...in a window of a sushi restaurant...in Barcelona...

Sleeping/laughing in the sun on the dock in Barcelona.

Raquel, Me and Ana in front of the water in Barcelona.

A view of Toledo, Spain as we drive towards it during the Madrid Tour.

The creek/river in Toledo as we drive over a bridge.

I just love how European I look right here, don't you? This is at Palacio Royal in Madrid.

View of Madrid as we drive from the airport to our hotel.

Raquel, Ana, Natalia and I scream as we are eaten by a shark in Barcelona

Fishies in the Aquarium in Lisboa, Portugal.

Interesting graffiti in Porto, Portugal.

Giant cider barrels in San Sebastian

View from the 2nd bridge with Ana, walking home one night from the bars.

Toledo? Ohio?! In Toledo, Spain.

Natalie, Me, May and Cassi in a garden in Sevilla.

The beautiful beach in Lagos (and the first time we saw great weather during spring break)

In the same garden as the previous group shot, in Sevilla, with May, Natalie, Mary Kate and myself.

View of Lisboa, Portugal from the castle rooftop.

Alex (or Mary Kate?), Natalie and Cassi in awe at Lisboa's aquarium.

Cassi, Becky, Megan and Annette walking in the fog on our 3 hour hike in Burgos.

I just love these pictures.

The pics from Toledo and Madrid are from the Madrid tour, the Barcelona pics are obviously from when we went to Barcelona over Valentine's day weekend, San Sebastian day was January 20th (some USAC students wore aprons for the celebration, but wrote "Obama" in big letters, too, as it was his inauguration that day), the Lagos, Sevilla, Porto and Lisboa pics are from Spring Break (Holy week) and Burgos pics are from the week after that, for our overnight trip with USAC.

Three pictures are worth about...20 words.

Since I mostly took video on the Burgos/Atapuerca trip, I only have a few pictures from the daytrip. And of the 10 I took, three are uninteresting, two are picture versions of what I already had on video of the super foggy hike, one is the unlit cathedral at night (but it might as well be a picture of a room with the lights off, since it's just black), and one is an out of focus picture of flowers.
PS: Click any picture to see a larger version

Therefore, that leaves me with this picture of the sign on our hike:



Along with this picture of a cool looking shrub.

It's swirly!



Oh, and the picture of the stonehenge-like thing behind an "i-was-just-sleeping-on-the-bus-for-two-hours-can't-you-tell?" Melissa.




My friends took some good pictures too, but as of right now, I only have this wonderful picture, depicting us as a cross between construction workers and lunch ladies with our lice-shield caps and hardhats.


(From left to right: Angela C., Me, Cassi, May, Ana, Natalia)

Three Point Turn FAIL.

On our way home from Burgos/Atapuerca, our bus driver attempted a three point turn on a narrow street. The result was a 206 point turn, with each one getting us more and more perpendicular with the road until the windshield was a foot away from a tree, the back end was hanging over a ditch, and the back tires were dug deep into mud.


FUN!

Visual Proof:

They just keep getting better...

My skills, that is.

I learned how to use a bow and arrow on our recent trip to Burgos/Atapuerca.

At the end, it looks like the arrow I shot was the one in the fake animal's eye. As much as I'd like to say it WAS my arrow, that was the demonstrator's arrow. Mine is very close to the animal, on the right, in the ground, which I think is just as impressive.

Check out this awesomeness:

Burgos Video

By embedding the video directly onto Blogger, all problems were avoided. YAY!


You may recognize some familiar faces from my Barcelona video, like Ana and Natalia.

In order of appearance:
Ana (always creepin)
Maria (Girl next to Ana in opening scene, and one who speaks Norwegian at the end)
Sonia (girl asking how to do the handprint to the guide)
Jenny (leather jacket handprint girl)
Natalie (Trying to smell Maria's hand?)
Mary Kate (sneaking into the shot with Maria and Natalie)
May (making prehistoric tools out of rock)
Mary Kate, Dixon, May and Luke (throwing Javelins, one after another)
Cassi (playing Orlando Bloom with the bow and arrow, as well as 'translating' Maria at the end of the video)
Carter (making fire with the guide)
Natalia (The one who is 'not cool' according to Ana)
Jenny (appearing once again, fetching a ball that rolled under an SUV)
Alex Ireland (The girl who's just trying to figure out who this Jesus guy is. Have you heard of him? He's pretty famous, I guess.)
Megan (warning Dixon of moldy candy)
Annette (the Becky blamer)
Becky (The Annette blamer)
Angela (the one dancing on the bus, and who has to 'piss like a racehorse')
Peter (the one slowly creeping up to the camera with a suspicious look)
Lindsey (The one in the pink scarf, who claims she needed to sit in the back row of the bus b/c then she could have BRAIDED)
Lindsey (in the leather coat and hood, who mocks the fact that they could have braided.)


So here's what went down on the trip:
We got on a bus at 8:30am and drove off to Burgos. On the way we stopped in Atapuerca, where archeologists have found the oldest human fossils in Europe, belonging to the homo antecessor species. When they found them, they were able to identify this species, since they had not discovered it prior to finding the fossils. This chart explains a lot.


We went to a site where a friendly guide showed us the typical evolution poster, of a monkey converting into a human. Then, we went on a "tour" of history, as he introduced us to evolving inventions and ideas along the way. It felt a bit like a caveman version of Donley's Wild West Town, where I go with campers every summer.

Along the way, he told us about early tools made of rock, and that three "entry points" or breaks in the rock, show that it was intentionally broken to be used as something, as opposed to a regular broken rock, which would have one or two "entry points."
He told us about cave paintings, about early homes, burial rituals, making fire, hunting tools like javelins and bows and arrows, and other things.

Then we hopped on a bus to the Atapuerca dig site, which was about 8 minutes away, which is seen in the video as us wearing hard hats. We wore them and looked at some high stone walls with lots of cards with numbers and letters on them where we are told fossils were found. It wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. But I DID get to hold a real human skull, not just a reproduction of one. But it's not on my camera, so when Peter posts it, I will be able to show it to you.

We then ate at a restaurant (USAC paid for it), which had good lentil soup and flavorless, tepid fish. I didn't try the fish b/c it got to the other side of the table first and my friends described it as...well, flavorless and cold, so I wasn't really sold on the idea. But the prepackaged ice cream cups we got were good!

We went to Burgos and went to the Cathedral. It was just like the other bajillion cathedrals I've been to since being here in Europe, but still there were some interesting parts. Apparently whenever there was any sort of damage in the church, Spaniards like to blame it on Napolean. Usually, they are right. But sometimes it's just old and crumbly. One thing he told us was that there is a stained glass window from the 1200's, and the rest are from much later, since Napolean and his gang tried to blow the place up and consequently broke all the original windows, except for the one. And then they replaced the broken ones.
Also, in the chapel part of the church, there was a Jesus statue, where the head was "articulated" (as you can see in the video by the guide bobbling his head around at the beginning). It had real human hair and other human things which I can't remember. It sounds a bit gross.
Also in this Cathedral there was an original DaVinci, which is seen behind the guide in one clip of the video as well.

After that, we got to the hotel and settled in. Of course, being college students, all of my friends went straight back out to the grocery store to buy vodka, boxed wine, and coca cola (Kalimotxos, which are wine and coke mixed together, are super popular in the Basque country).
I didn't want to be left out of this pre-party bonanza, so I bought myself some pineapple juice and oreos.
We went back to the hotel and "raged." And by raged, I mean "tryed tossing gummi candy into peoples' mouths," "got ready to go out," as well as "drank my juice and ate cookies."
Many hours passed, then I went out with the Lindseys, Jenny, and Tara to eat tapas as dinner. I just ordered a platter of Croquetas for myself. They taste like a mozzarella sticks, but instead of cheese inside, they taste like mashed potatoes and cheese and there's ham in the very center. I am not even sure if that's what they are made of. They just taste that way. And I like to keep thinking that, or it may ruin one of my only favorite foods here in Spain.

We ran into people like Dixon, Megan, Angela, Luke, Dave, and Cassi along the way to the bar area when we left, as well as friends I made on the Madrid tour from Bilbao (the overnight trip was for the SS program and the Bilbao program...we stayed in the same hotel and went to everything together), like Adam and Brett. It was great to see Adam and Brett (who you might recognize from my trip to Barcelona...they are in that video!). I haven't seen them since my trip to Barcelona at the beginning of the semester!

After a long night out, we went back to the hotel. My roommate was drunk and puking, and our hall neighbor (a USAC student) was trying to get into her room without a key by banging on the door hoping her sleeping roomie would awaken. (Note: We later found out no one was in the room, hence why no one answered.) My other friend was "sexiled" momentarily (exiled from their room b/c the roommate was having sex), until he was let back in about 20 minutes later.

So yeah, they partied PRETTY hard.

Oh, did I mention that there was an 8am 3hour hike the next morning? Yeah, well it was fortunately optional...only about 30 or 40% of the entire SS/Bilbao group went on the hike. 99% of those people were extremely hungover. Especially since people came home around 3am.

After the hike on the path to Santiago de Compostela (a famous pilgrim hike that allowed a free ticket to heaven if you did it from the start, literally. There are many entrances to the hike, since it can start from as far as Germany or France. I am not sure what the whole rules for that heaven deal was, but I do know that back then, no matter where you started from, you could get to the church and get a free meal and shelter for the night), which was a foggy, cold, wet experience, we got to a bar where we warmed up a bit before heading back to the hotel. Then we had a bit of time before our 3pm lunch at the hotel (a grand feast of spaghetti with red sauce, roast chicken and french fries, salad, and natillas[a delicious pudding type dessert]). I used the time before lunch to go shopping for souvenirs and then playing spoons in the hotel lobby with Luke, Dave, Natalia, Ana, Angela, and Katie.
After lunch, we hopped out, saying goodbyes to our Bilbao friends (probably for...forever, sadly).

And you might wonder how nice the hotel was. It was very nice. How nice, you ask? Well, when I asked for the oh-so necessary match box for our family collection at the front desk, they instead handed me a LIGHTER with the hotel name, number and address on it. CLASSY!

Oh, and on the way home we stopped at Dolmen de Aizkomendi (Egilaz) which is basically very similar to Stonehenge. It is a rock formation that dates back to way back when, when there wasn't the machinery to construct such a heavy, large thing. It was pretty small, but still cool.

Oh, and on the way out of the narrow path that lead us here, our bus had some MAJOR issues doing a three point turn. It turned into about a 213-point turn, most of which just wedged us more and more into a perpendicular position to the road, with a tree in front of the windshield and a deep ditch behind the back tires. We had to evacuate the bus so the driver could get us out of the rut. Literally.
He also may have wanted us to leave so he could get his bearings since everyone was fearing that we would fall into the ditch and then have no way back home.
And I know what you are thinking: YES, there is video footage of all of this going down. I will post the "failed 3 point turn" video as soon as I am done editing it, which should be soon.

Work for nothing

So I just spent about two hours editing a video last night about my trip to Burgos and finished it sucessfully. I uploaded it to YouTube so I could easily embed it here. The video was only about 4 minutes long, edited to the song "Love is Free" by Sheryl Crow.

I went online this morning to get the link to post on here, and received a message that says I have committed copyright infringement by using that song in my video without written permission from the artist. Therefore, YouTube muted the entire video.

Without audio, it's completely pointless, so I took it down. And it sucks because I edited the whole thing to that song, and some of the visuals match the audio, so I can't really replace the song.

So as for now, just know that I DID make a video, but conditions not under my control are preventing me from showing it to you.

Thanks, EMG Music Group, for making those two hours completely wasted.

Okay, who left the brown shoes?

In the USAC program, once you sign up for travelling abroad, it also entitles you to the two trips arranged by USAC in the semester, for no extra charge. The first trip was a day trip (left in the morning, returned late afternoon) to some place nearby with a Basque farmhouse. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend since USAC arranged it on a certain day, then told us they needed to change the day and during this confusion my friends and I booked our Barcelona trip. Of course, right afterwards, we find that the trip was scheduled on the same weekend.

But this time, the trip was overnight, and it was to Burgos and Atapuerca, which is southwest of San Sebastian in Castilla y Leon.


I don't have much time to go into detail now (I know, I know, I also haven't updated on my Spring Break either...but I will get to it eventually), but we did get this email today from the USAC office.

But before I show you the email, let me tell you a couple things as background info. We had to each pay a 20 euro deposit before the trip in case of hotel damages. We also made this trip with students in the Bilbao USAC program, some of which I already knew from the Madrid tour before the semester began.
When we got on the bus to head home on Saturday, Patricia said, "Guys, I have to say, the hotel was extremely upset this morning, telling us that there were many noise complaints and some damage to the rooms. However, we believe this is the Bilbao students' who did the damage, and therefore we will look into it further to get the specifics and pinpoint which rooms are to blame. Therefore, you will not be able to get your deposits back until we sort this out. But I will send you an email this week once we know more."


We got the email, and it is as follows:
______________________
Enviado el: lunes, 27 de abril de 2009 14:08
Para: us
Asunto: excursion deposit/brown shoes

Dear Students,
I am very happy to tell you that we will be able to return the deposit to all the students on the San Sebastian program. We have just heard from the hotel and have been able to determine exactly where the problems originated. Thank you very much for all of your cooperation. We certainly wanted everyone to have fun and were convinced that this is entirely possible without disturbing the other guests at the hotel. I am satisfied and grateful for the way things turned out, at least as far as our group is concerned.
Muchas gracias a todos. Espero que lo hayáis pasado muy bien. Podéis pasar por la oficina con el recibo para recoger el depósito.

Saludos, Patricia

P.D.
Alguien ha dejado un par de zapatos(¿zapatillas?)marrones en el autobus. Los tenemos en la oficina.
_______________

The first Spanish part says "Thanks to everyone. I hope you had a good time. You can stop by the office with the reciept to get your deposit back."

And that little PS part says "Someone left a pair of brown shoes/sandals on the bus. We have them in the office."



So in conclusion of the trip, we partied, but not hard enough to have to pay, and someone lost a pair of shoes.