SPAIN! (part one)

Spain. Was. Awesome. I can’t believe that four days can go by so fast. I am a journalist, so I will try and tell you as many details as I can and, keep in mind that that means this post (or possibly the next few posts, if I decide to break it in parts). I am also safely back on the ship and we’re headed to Gibraltar to refuel – I hope we get to see it from the deck.

We pulled into port Wednesday around 7 a.m. and I woke up early enough to get breakfast and watch the ship pull into the dock in Cadiz. I was so grateful to see something other than ocean, then, to actually to be able to get off the ship – that was even better! If you’re planning on traveling overnight off the ship, they recommend that you take your passport, so they call people by “seas,” which are like floors – I’m in the Mediterranean Sea – and after that you are allowed to disembark the ship. As soon as we were called I was packed and ready to go. I met Jordan and Shannon, who I was traveling with, in line to get off the ship and shortly after found Sara and Jane, who we had also planned to travel with. Sara and Jane are roommates on the ship and Jordan and Shannon are boyfriend/girlfriend from Connecticut. We walked through Cadiz and stopped to get some coffee, or café con leche, before heading to the train station. Then we got the train from Cadiz to Seville. On the train, a girl sat down near us while we were practicing our Spanish with a Spanish/English dictionary. Then she joined in on our conversation, which was a lot of fun! Her name was Cristina and she is a student in Seville, but is from Cadiz. She was helping us with our Spanish and we helped her with her English. She told us that she learned English after taking 9 years of English and French in grade school. So we talked then, when it was time to get off the train she even was nice enough to direct us to a taxi. That left all of us feeling good about our next few days in Spain.

We then settled into the hostel, which was actually really awesome. It was pretty modern with white marble-like floors and glass and steel stair railings as well as three computers with free internet, a nice lobby with lots of travel information, and a kitchen and rooftop terrace. We stayed in a room with three sets of bunk beds, so it was just the five of us until we came back from dinner and another girl traveling from South Korea took the sixth bed. Each bed also had a small safe in a bank of them outside each room that you could set a code to open and close. I really enjoyed our night there and was only disappointed that we couldn’t stay longer. We ventured out to see some sights in Seville, but ended up just wandering for most of the afternoon. We did see the Plaza de Espana, a huge building in a semi-circle shape that opens into a tiled plaza with a fountain, man-made waterway and bridges crossing them. Then we walked through one of the gardens of Seville to the cathedral there, except that we didn’t make it there before it closed at 5 p.m. But the outside was impressive by itself. We got some dinner and came back to the hostel after walking for a long time through the streets of Seville. We visited a department store, called El Corte Ingles (literally “The English Cut,” as in the English cut suit) that has a supermarket in the basement with housewares on the two upper floors. We bought some bread, queso manchego (“cheese of La Mancha”) and drinks and went back to the hostel. We enjoyed chatting and eating for a while, before deciding to go out again for some more tapas and retiring to the hostel once more.

On Thursday, we decided to go to Cordoba. We took the train from Seville to Cordoba shortly after getting some breakfast. After that we found the hotel, which was only a few more euro than the hostel. There we had two separate rooms, one that was a double and the other was a triple – and the bathrooms had bidets in them! (I meant to take a picture, but forgot). We wandered through Cordoba for a while, until finding the Mezquita (the “mosque”), which is actually now a cathedral. It was mind-boggling. The mosque was originally built in something like 732 and taken over as a cathedral in the 1200s. Really? I can’t even wrap my mind around something like that. They were doing some sort of work on one section of the building, so it seems like they’re continuously working on it. The sheer age of everything just is incomphrensible. The building is also enormous and is about 10 degrees colder than the outside. The huge arches throughout the entire inside are really cool looking because they’re striated in two different types of stone. If there’s anywhere Uncle Al is looking to vacation I would definitely recommend Spain, just for the religious relics and buildings. The entire building is also bordered on the inside by altars or shrines to matyrs and saints. Most of them were amazing portraits or statues in these sort of alcoves blocked off with wrought iron gates. The Mezquita also had a beautiful court yard with orange trees and this patterned stone pavement. It was probably the best thing I saw in the last four days.

There’s a bit of an update, although that’s not the whole trip. I will continue in the morning because I need some rest.

Photos!

Hey all - We're in Espana and the hostel we're at has FREE INTERNET! It's like nursing an old addiction, so I set up a photobucket account and hopefully this works, but you should be able to see some of my photos from Spain and the ship here:

http://s673.photobucket.com/albums/vv92/staceyfederoff/

It should work - sorry that the captions are sparse, I was trying to be quick. Hope you enjoy!

We had fun - walked all day after meeting a girl from Cadiz on the train and speaking to her back and forth in broken English and broken Spanish. We are going out in a bit to get dinner, which is actually really late in Spain because they take time for tapas and then lunch and THEN dinner.

Perhaps in Morocco I'll post pictures from Spain? haha.

Land ho!!!

We stopped!! I got up early enough to see the ship pull into the dock and watch the sun rise over Cadiz. I'm soooo excited to get off the ship! Hooray Cadiz! It was so awesome to finally see the city lights and skyline this morning. They're starting to call people to get their passports, so I'm gonna get ready to go! Yay!

ESPANA manana!

So, I’m all packed and ready for our first port – ESPANA! Or, Spain, for those of you still in the Eastern Standard time zone. We should be arriving at the port at around 8 a.m., receiving our passports at 8:30 a.m., then we have to wait for the ship to be “clear” after everyone has them. So, I should be in ESPANA around 9 a.m. tomorrow and all of you guys – except for maybe Katie – will still be asleep. My group’s plan is to meet outside the ship off the gangway and walk to the train or bus station (which, we were told only takes a couple minutes) in Cadiz. There will be five of us, four girls and one guy – two girls who are roommates, a couple and me. From there we will hop on some sort of transportation to Seville. We plan to stay there for one or two days, depending on if we feel we’ve seen enough things there, if not we were thinking of going to Cordoba. Then, the last two days, we were going to save some money and just come back to Cadiz so we can sleep on the ship Friday night, go back out to Cadiz on Saturday and be prepared for the ship to leave Saturday evening. I’m so excited! I don’t know if I’m as excited as first getting on the ship, but I can’t wait to finally see land again! I packed tonight so I could get up in the morning and go get breakfast in order to hopefully catch sight of the sunrise or land when it comes in to view. We’ll see if that works.

In the last few days, I’ve just had some normal (if you can call it that – we’re on a ship! How’s that for normal!) happenings. Going to class, eating with friends, studying and continuously still meeting new people. There was a meeting last night about starting an a capella group. I went and really enjoyed it. We set up two groups, one that is all women (since there were more women interested) and one that is co-ed, which has three men and about eight women. I decided to go with the co-ed group, which christened itself the “Sound Waves.” Clever, eh? We just introduced ourselves and sang the Star Spangled Banner together, but the ship has some sheet music in the library and one girl is a music major, so she might arrange some songs for us to sing. It should be fun!

We also had mandatory meetings, which are pre-port cultural and logistical meetings about Spain, tonight and last night. The speaker talked a lot about food, some of the festivals (but we won’t be there for any of them) and the night life. On the logistical end, the water and food are safe to eat and drink, because we’re in Western Europe. We were told that there are some pickpockets and petty thieves that target tourists, especially around ATMs, so we have to watch out for that. Otherwise, Spain should be lots of fun. I have to remember to work on some of my projects for class – all three of my classes want us to observe and find out about certain things in each port to apply to papers and such in the subject matter. For example, in English as a Global Language, we’re supposed to take notes and talk to someone about the use of English in Spain (granted that they speak English at all, I guess! Haha). I also need to remember to pick up a few things – maybe some free maps, postcards, menus, etc. – for the Vicarious Voyage program.

Visitamos Espana manana! Hooray! Buenos noches!

I'm All Thumbs

Today was another day at sea – got up on time, hooray! I went to breakfast and then to both of my morning classes. I came back to the room and set my stuff down and went into the bathroom. In a moment of absent-mindedness I grabbed the door jamb to keep my balance and…the door swung back and jammed my thumb. Oh, man…what an idiot – they warned us the first day about this. The doors are heavy so that they do swing shut, for safety and all that. The captain actually told us that people lose fingers that way. That was my first thought as I was trying to run cold water over my throbbing thumb but, thankfully, it was moving OK. My next reaction was to run down stairs to the second deck where the medical clinic is. But, of course, they were closed, so I ran up to the fifth deck at the Purser’s Deck, where we’re supposed to go in case of an emergency. They paged the physician who came and looked at it and said, “Yeah, you can move it so it’s not broken. Take some Advil.” So, that was reassuring. I kept ice on it for the next couple hours and it didn’t seem to swell too much and it’s actually not extremely black and blue, even though it still hurts a little bit. The funniest part about the whole thing is that the next time I checked my e-mail, Mom had sent me a message asking about a cough I had last week when I left: “How is your cough? You know how I worry.” Haha. So, no worries, right, Ma?

This evening there was a meeting about the “Vicarious Voyage” program that the SAS program runs. They have K through 12 classrooms that we correspond with over the course of the semester and send fun things from the ports so the kids can learn a little more about each of them. You were given the opportunity to be matched with a classroom near you before the trip began, but I just signed up the other night at the activity fair they had on the ship. Here, it turns out, one of the guys I know who is also from Penn State, Colin, was signed up with a group from Pittsburgh. He saw me without a group and suggested I join his. I looked at the address of the school – it’s a Pittsburgh address, but the teacher’s email address is “phsd,” so I think it’s in Penn Hills. How cool is that? So, we’re required to send them three “cultural packets” in 11”x14” envelopes and they’ll also send us some mail. It should be fun.

I also made some plans with some of the people I met the first night in the Bahamas – I didn’t really make too many plans for Spain, because there wasn’t anything in particular I wanted to see. There are four girls, including me, and one dude, who will be in our group. We plan to go to Seville for one or two days, maybe make it to Cordoba, then spend our last two days in Cadiz, the port city where the ship will be. There was also a presentation tonight by one of the professors about dining in Spain, so he gave us some good tips and Spanish vocabulary words that we can use when we get there. I think they should be pretty helpful!

I saw another ship today on the horizon, which was odd, because there hasn't been the sight of one the entire trip. Someone else mentioned another ship today too. I need to remember to take some sunrise/sunset at sea pictures for Dad. We’re moving the clock forward again tonight, so I will now be four hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.

Adjusting, even though this is a weird place to adjust to

Guess what? I got up on time today! It was great – I got up, got a shower in our tiny little bathroom and went to breakfast.

The bathroom is as big as a good-sized closet. And because we’re in one of the refurbished crew cabins, the shower is only separated from the bathroom in one corner by a 3-inch high piece of metal meant to stop the water and the shower curtain is attached to the wall on one side. The first day I didn’t realize it wasn’t that good at keeping the water in the shower corner and my shirt sitting on the floor of the bathroom got soaked. But, I hung it on the bunk bed ladder and it did eventually dry.

Anyway, it was nice, because the sun was just rising as I was sitting down for breakfast. I might forget that I’m on a ship every once and a while, mostly while I’m immersed in some reading or something like that, but every time I look out and see the churning water and endless horizon, I honestly can’t believe this ship even exists. How can we be eating breakfast sausage and eggs in the middle of the ocean? They have a frozen yogurt machine on the seventh deck. And a computer lab on the sixth deck. And treadmills on the seventh deck. How is that even possible! We’re in the middle of the ocean! It just really makes me appreciate the crew and the staff and everybody running this 24 ton ship. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that food just magically appears for every meal, yet there’s no land visible for days in any direction. It’s crazy and amazing. And I can’t believe I’m a part of it.

There was an open mic night tonight. A bunch of people played guitars, a couple sang, one kid who I met at dinner a few nights ago played a melodica, which is like a flute-like harmonica thing with a keyboard on it, and he was hilarious. One girl rapped and one of the kids on the ship sang a Dean Martin song, which earned him a standing ovation from the nearly full Union – it was really cute. The thing that impressed me – and echoed the Executive Dean’s words on the first night – was that everybody was really positive about the people performing. Even when a couple of the kids screwed up or forgot the words to the song, everybody clapped and cheered. It was great. This whole environment as been positive and outgoing and friendly, I love it.

I turned in my final paper to register for trip in the ports for the first half of the trip. I signed up for a few things. I figured if I decided to change my plans, they have a system to buy/sell day trips, so I wanted to err on the side of signing up for too many, rather than signing up for too few.
I’m sure I’ll tell you all about them when I do the trips, so I don’t want to give anything away!

We are now three hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, for those of you keeping track at home. Strangely we didn’t have to set the clocks forward tonight, but I should still get to bed so I can get my breakfast record to two days in a row!

P.S. Let me remind all of you to EMAIL ME! Emails are slowly weaning me from checking the internet constantly because it costs money, so I check my email religiously. I prefer medium to long messages, but a short email will do just fine – and I promise to email you back as soon as I can. :o)

Finally Some Normalcy?

Today really wasn’t that eventful, although it started out badly. I swear I set my alarm last night. I had it all planned out: I got a shower yesterday night so that I could sleep in at least a little bit before going to class again at 8 a.m. today. Well that didn’t work out so well when I finally woke up and it was 8:30. AGH! 8:30! Luckily though, unlike Penn State where everything is basically a 10- to 15-minute walk, this is just a climb up three flights of stairs. Thankfully, because this was our first B day, I didn’t miss much – our professor was just going over the syllabus, talking about sociology, etc. I still feel terrible about it – I’m not usually one to miss class, even though am I occasionally a little late :oP. After that the day improved. Nothing really noteworthy – I’m finalizing the trips I want to go on, since the paper is due tomorrow. I tried to do a little research about Spain. I was reading about Cadiz, our port city, and about Barcelona, since I think that might be where I’d like to go. I kind of was interested in seeing the Rock of Gibraltar, until I realized that the area around it is actually considered British land even though it’s on the tip of Spain. Other than that, I’m pretty much up for anything in Spain.

Did I mention that there’s one girl I met that has the exact same schedule as me? Her name is Blair and she goes to the University of Miami for…guess what? Journalism! She seems pretty easy to get along with, so I think I’m going to try and plan some things in Spain with her. Blair and I both signed up today to see a Flamenco performance with out English professor, one of the class-specific trips, or FDPs – field directed practica.

I also talked to a couple a few times, Jordan and Shannon, and I might try and see what their planning to do in port because they seemed pretty well traveled. They are from Connecticut and Jordan has couch surfed in Europe – which is where you find people on the internet who will let you sleep on their couch for a night or two while you’re traveling. They seem pretty open-minded, so maybe I can tag along with whatever group they’re getting together.

About that class, “Our Nomadic Urge to Travel in Peace.” The professor seems like the interesting English-professor type that won’t just lecture us into the ground, but he also was a little crazy spouting off obscure theories of teaching and quoting some random mystical stuff about ways of thinking. We’re going to be working on a “mulit-writing” project, which I understand to be more like a collage or a assemblage of writings as well as things we pick up in the countries all centered around a theme of some kind. It was a little overwhelming for the first day, but that’s how classes like his usually are.

Today’s Global Studies, which was before English, was far more interesting than the first class. We talked about the Caribbean and the three professors that spoke did a good job of covering the background of the island group briefly – talking about the discovery by Columbus, the sugar industry there, which eventually gave way to the slave trade. The class even discussed pirates (who, actually, did drink a lot of rum but didn’t bury treasure or make people walk planks). So it was interesting and informative (and infinitely more exciting than yesterday’s class). I did get a better seat right next to a monitor, so I could take notes more easily today.

It’s odd that our rooms are on the inside of the ship, so then it’s always pitch black without the lights, which is part of the reason I’m having trouble waking up in the morning. Our cabin, the little Hobbit Hole it is, doesn’t make for much of a comfortable place, but I wish I could come back to it for a little more of a haven. It also doesn’t help that my roommate, Liz, is never here because she’s usually with her boyfriend. I guess I just need to adjust and get more acquainted with people and everything will turn out well.