Madrid Tour 2009

Finally I got around to editing my Madrid Tour footage from last year, where I went to Madrid, Segovia, and Toledo. I wanted to make a multi-video series on my entire semester abroad, using this one as an introduction. Enjoy.

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.

EVEN MORE Videos!

Here are the rest of 'em!

Again, all are also viewable on youtube at youtube.com/missy8888

And may I remind you that sometimes the best part is at the end...so be sure to watch them all the way through.


Music at the Plaza de Espana in Sevilla:



Alex laughs for a LOOONG time. I don't even know why this happened, or how. Cameras capture the best moments.


May and Natalie comment on a fried, dead lizard they find on the streets of Sevilla.


Foodism: May explains her new religion: food. In Real Alcazar de Sevilla.


Labyrinth in Real Alcazar de Sevilla. Alex has the camera this time...


"Authentic" Flamenco in a Granada restaurant. There are quotes there b/c it's pretty touristy.


Go Johnny Go in Granada. El Mirador de San Nicolas in Granada, near our hostel, hosts some interesting people. Like hippies who play Chuck Berry.


Steel Drum in Barcelona. One of the many unique musicians encountered in Parc Guell in Barcelona.


In Parc Guell, these guys seemed to be playing all the hits of the 90s, including Champagne Supernova


At Parc Guell again, this time Fastball's Outta My Head


Lute Player in Parc Guell More music we came across in Barcelona


Si Fuera un chico in a durum restaurant in Barcelona: AKA Beyonce's "If I were a boy" but sang by her in SPANISH.


When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Especially if those lemons are crazy street dancers in Barcelona, and making lemonade means taping them. On Las Ramblas in Barcelona, we encounter this man, performing for no audience but himself.



Universong (name of the band) on the streets of Barcelona. We are walking around this maze of old streets when we turn a corner and find this. SO COOL.


On the plane back to Santander from Barcelona, there was a leaky ceiling. Natalia tries to tell the story, but when they re-enact it (hence Ana's weak "achoo" at the beginning), they can't handle themselves


Natalia asks the question that she knows everyone will ask her when she gets back from Barcelona...and she's prepared to know why.


Santander airport needs better decor.


Teleporter AND Hand Dryer! Ana being weird in the bus station in Santander.


Megan shows us around the Sagardo Eguna, or cider fest, in Irun.



New, Not necessarily Bad... Alex comments on art in the Catedral de Burgos.

More Videos!

Here's some more from my youtube!

In Sevilla, the hooded people walk the streets in a somber procession to begin Semana Santa (Holy Week: The week of Easter)


A bit of info: They apparently won't let you purchase alcohol after a certain time during Semana Santa (or maybe just every day), but Alex did a little Spanish convincing and paid the guy in cash and he let her have a 40 of beer. I don't know whether or not that money he took went into the register...we were hiding from the security camera of the store so his boss wouldn't know. Oh well!


More to come!

VIDEOS!

So I uploaded a bunch of miscellaneous footage from my travels on youtube. These are unedited tidbits that I captured from everywhere I went. This includes Burgos, Barcelona, Sevilla, Granada, Porto, Lisboa, Lagos, and Irun.

Some of the footage you may recognize from the Spring Break and Barcelona videos. Some of it is new, though! And I am still making videos with all the footage I have, trust me.

They are all pretty short, under 2 min each. Check them all out either here or on my youtube page, which is http://www.youtube.com/missy8888.



A man, dressed as the Sandeman Wine logo guy, gives us an explaination of what Porto wine exactly is. From my Spring Break footage.



We went walking around Lisboa, Portugal, and took a tour of this castle. A man inside played music. Alex approaches to find a CD for a friend.



A sign warns against falling! In Lisboa, Portugal, in an outdoor castle



In our hostel in Lisboa, Portugal. Cassi has the camera. When she says "take two" she is referring to the previous botched attempt when she ran out of tape.


When in Lagos... But really, when in Lagos, Portugal, the girls (Alex, May, Cassi) decided to hop in a random dude's boat. Jordan later joined. The commenting in the background is Natalie, Tyler, Mike and Chris (who we met in the hostel, who are from Texas and studying abroad in Sevilla for the semester). We later caught up with those three boys when we moved on to Sevilla after Lagos.


At midnight on Easter morning, the bells rang out at the Catedral de Sevilla!

Spring Break 3/3

Spring Break 2/3

Spring Break 1/3

Regalos Video!

My parents wanted to know how my host parents reacted to their gift.

In their own words...

(well, translated)

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.

Tortilla de Patatas

Okay, so I will be honest and say that I am not putting full effort in this b/c it is 1:48 AM and I have to wake up early tomorrow. You'll have to deal.


Okay, so last week was my last cooking class. We had normal class on Tuesday, which is when the class normally is held, but then we met again Thursday to take our final.
First, we showed up and instead of meeting in the kitchen as usual, we met upstairs in the second dining room, where we were given the test. We previously received a copy of the test so we could study, but the copy we had received had way more questions on it than the actual test.
This fake test we got also had tons of errors. All of the questions were in Spanish, and one question asked something along the lines of "What ingredient is indispensable in ajorriero" or something like that. Ajorriero, or so I think it's called, is made with ajo, or garlic, as well as about 2 pounds of cod. There are other things too. The answer options were: garlic, cod, onions, and cream. Obviously, if something is made with 2 pounds of cod and that is the main part of the dish, other than the garlic of course, wouldn't you think that was also indispensable? Anywho, I asked Patricia before the test and she said that it was in fact an error, since obviously you couldn't make a dish without the garlic or the bacalao. She told me not to worry since it wasn't on the test, though.


We got the test. The question was the first question on this test.

I called over Patricia and told her, and she laughed and said I could put A and B since they were both technically right.

We finished the test fairly quickly. One kid in our class (Alec) didn't answer the entire back side of the exam and instead wrote: "Touching squid in the kitchen last week was MY 'A'"

They graded the tests and informed us that we the class was pass/fail and we had to get a 15/25 to pass. Two people failed. The aforementioned kid was one of them. As well as another girl. All of which was announced to the class. Then, the chef guy continued to read every single person's name and grade they got on the test. I got a 21, so of course I passed. I thought it was completely rude, though, that he read out loud everyone's grades. The girl who failed (Annette), for example, is only in Track 2 Spanish, which is like the equivalent of the Spanish level I had in high school about 5 years ago. Therefore, a class completely taught in Spanish about Basque culture would be quite hard for her to follow. Then telling the entire class she failed is just over the top. She didn't even understand him when he said she failed. Because it was in Spanish. But still, her face turned completely red when she found out and I felt angry for everyone that didn't want their grade announced, however good or bad it was.

Anyways, we moved on downstairs, where we had put our Tortillas de patatas. We had to do this in groups of three or so, where we got together and made tortilla de patatas, which is basically a type of egg omelet with potatoes. We had to just do it for a grade, and then, for fun, they had a competition to see whose was best. We were told ahead of time if we didn't follow the basic recipe (eggs, olive oil, onions, and potatoes) then we wouldn't qualify for the competition, but we'd still get a grade on it. The one I made with Cassi and Alex Ireland contained the traditional stuff as well as green peppers and chorizo. We made an extra one for ourselves to eat before class and it was DELICIOUS. So we got to taste everyone elses and some were good, some bad. One group, with a student (Alex Plotkin) who is ambitious to be a chef, put caviar and other stuff on top.

After we tasted those, we sat down for our formal dinner of some veggie stew, duck(?) and salad. In our end of the table, someone found the bladder of the duck on the platter and we all decided to be "daring" and each eat a chunk of it. It was dry and mushy.
We finished the dinner with some kind of flaming dessert that they finished off before us, where they lit some liquid on fire and poured it on top. It was very...foamy. There was fruit as well as some ice cream, but the ice cream was similar in color and texture to the foam, so it was hard to pick that out (b/c the flavor was of course different, the ice cream being WAY better). Ryan commented that the foam part was like jacuzzi foam. The flavor and texture was dead on, which was quite gross.

After coffee, our chef-teacher dude as well as another cook from the kitchen and some dude we'd never seen before came out in the dining room wearing some funny beret-like hats and gowns. They then called our names in threes and each gave us a certificate of accomplishment. Then they announced the winners of the tortilla competition. Apparently the rules of the "traditional" tortilla didn't apply since a lot of people changed the recipe to their liking. He announced third, which was Alex Plotkin's group, then second, then first. Cassi, Alex Ireland and I won first place! Cassi was so excited, you'd think she won $500. We went up and they gave us these blue aprons to wear and we posed for pictures. Then they told us it's traditional in something like this that the winners sing a Bertso, or a freestyle Basque poem. Of course we couldn't do that since we can't speak basque, nor freesyle poetry, so instead we sang the only song we knew in Basque, the Basque numbers song. The chef and them knew the lyrics too, since for them it's like some children's song like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." We sang, everyone sang along, they clapped, and we got to keep the aprons.

That's right, people, a BASQUE GASTRONOMIC SOCIETY said that our tortilla WAS THE BEST.

And if you wanted to know what song it was, I happened to make this great video for you to enjoy.



And here's the link to our Cooking class's photo album...where they have not yet posted pics of our "graduation," but still you can enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35262595@N02/sets/72157613605054986/

Long time no see, eh?

I know, I know, I haven't been on here in a while.

I can at least say I was THINKING about writing on here! That's worth something, right?

Well, wait no more. As I mentioned, I went to Barcelona with my friends Ana and Natalia and their friend Raquel.

I made a video with the footage we took (I took) and compiled it into a 20 minute movie. I broke it into 3 parts due to Youtube regulations of not being able to post anything over 10min.
BONUS: The video includes pictures as well, so that's just another bird with the same stone!

Here they are, make sure you watch them all, and sequentially, and ENJOY!

(More posts to come, later)

PS, the language is OCCASIONALLY a bit rated R, but what can I say, we are 20 years old.

Home Stay Tour

Here's a video I made last night touring my host family's apartment.

Enjoy!

Video Chat

The most effective and cheapest way to communicate with my family is on video chat. My dad made a screenname a while back and we tested it while I was still at home.

Whenever Eric gets on the chat, however, things take a weird turn. Especially when he uses the keyboard. Here's an excerpt of our conversation today. Note the LOST reference.

(click image to enlarge)

Touching down in Madrid Town

As you may have noticed, lots of the content of this blog is out of order. A prime example is this video I have of us landing in Madrid via airplane (taken over a week ago). It doesn't have audio, just fantastic visuals. Enjoy.

Tour de San Sebastian

Here is some video I took on the bus when we arrived in San Sebastian the first night. Our director, Patricia, had a microphone on the bus and therefore would narrate stuff we passed. I am handy-camming it, so don't get too nauseous from the shaking.


Part 1




Part 2





Part 3




Part 4





Part 5




Part 6



Part 7