Burn, Old Man Winter!!

Dearest Beloved Readers, thank you for following me on my journey. It is amazing how easy it is connect in real time with people on the other side of the globe!

I will start this post with a story about a celebration I happened upon this week, and then get organized by explaining my life in Cáceres, some exciting events, and my plans for the future.

On Friday morning I caught the bus down to the university to hand in some paperwork and get registered for some more classes. I walked back to town, a few kilometers distance, since it was a beautiful sunny day. I walked through the old city to get home. As I started to enter the old city, I walked right into a swarm, a river, of small children all dressed in traditional Spanish peasant clothing. They were so cute! I would guess that the crowds that I walked through were between the ages of 5-7.

When I got to the Plaza Mayor there were several other groups of children all dressed up. Each group had a banner with the name of their school. I asked someone what was going on. They told me that this was a festival of the flag. I didn't understand but I decided to stay.

I found a spot where I could watch and tried to take some pictures, though my camera's batteries were dying. An older gentleman came to stand next to me. I asked him how soon the festivities would start and we started to converse about the celebration. I learned that they were going to bring a straw man in on a donkey and burn him. The festival was started by the women of the town years ago. In February the woman had to wash the clothes in cold water and started the festival to make the warm weather and the rains come for a plentiful harvest. So, the little girls were dressed as those washerwomen.

 It is a festival of spring, celebrated to end the winter and to bring to good weather so that they would have food for their families. It was also a day that the women could take a break from their work. I struggled to get a few pictures with my dying camera. Here you can barely see the donkey carrying the straw man-

This year they had several straw men because each school had made one. They set them all up together and lit them on fire. They burnt quite well. The last photo that I could coax out of my camera was towards the beginning of the burning, but you can see the flames-

Before the burning I had an enjoyable conversation with the older gentleman about Cáceres, Extremadura, festivals happening in the region this spring, and places that I ought to visit. It turned out that he was actually Italian, his wife was from Cáceres, and he had retired here. He was at the festival to see his granddaughter, who was one of the school girls.

I love Cáceres. It's a small city, 95,000 inhabitants, and the center of the city is quite walkable. For example, I live on one end of the city, and can walk to to the other end in about half an hour. I have not taken many photos yet, but I will take a class about the history of the old city. So, I will take a lot of pictures then, and will be able to explain the pictures well.

My classes started last week. I am taking three full university courses. All of them are History of Spanish Art, together they will cover Spanish Art for the last 1,000 years. The classes are "Spanish Art in the Lower Middle Ages", "HispanoIslamic Art", and "The Renaissance in Spain". I am also taking a Spanish for Foreigners class, and I will take two short courses to fill the credits I need. The first one is Baile Flamenco, and the second is called "Know your City" (Conoce tu Ciudad), in which I will study the history of Cáceres and we will take several excursions around the city.

At first the classes were extremely difficult for me. I had to take notes on lectures given at a university level in Spanish! But, by the end of the first week I was catching almost everything. I am sure it will continue to get easier for me and that I am going to learn a ton. What an adventure! It feels a bit strange to attend classes in Spanish, but I am gaining confidence daily.

I started classes at a private Flamenco academy. I love it. I also went to a nearby city this weekend for the Carnaval festival.  It was intense. The streets were packed with people wearing costumes. I spent the day with other international students from my university. I am very happy to be making friends. They are from all over the world- Brazil, Turkey, Belgium, Slovenia, Italy, France, Gabon. Our shared language is Spanish. I delights me to communicate with people from so many places. It reminds me of how similar people are all over the world. I have been thinking about how language separates us, and how easy it is to communicate and connect with people.

I have a room in an apartment with a Spanish girl, Silvia, and an Irish girl, Jade. They are sweet and I am happy to live with them. They both work, so we don't spend too much time together. But, as I mentioned in my last post, all of Cáceres shuts down every day between 2pm-5pm. So, we come home each day at that time to eat lunch a relax together. It's lovely.

I have gotten to know most of the major grocery stores, though I do a lot of my shopping at smaller shops. I have a butcher (carnicería) that I prefer as well as a frutería where I buy my produce. Bit by bit I am creating a life here. I have been in Cáceres more than two weeks now, and I have four and a half months left. El tiempo pasa volando!

I need to wrap up now so that I can go buy a bicycle before the shops close for siesta. Then I have Spanish class tonight. Tomorrow I hope to ride my new bike out to a wildlife park that is about 20 kilometers from town. I also have Flamenco class tomorrow evening.

I will try to upload some more photos to my albums this week.

Os cuidad mucho, hasta pronto! Take good care!

Photos

This link will take you to my photo albums. The link will not change as I update the albums. If I run out of space on this website, I will have to move to another site and will share that link as well.

https://picasaweb.google.com/108130257872901649119

Waiting to Settle In

And... I'M IN CÁCERES!!! I'm so delighted to be here, at last! But, I intend to share my final impressions of Switzerland before leaving it behind. So, this post will bring us all up to date.

A list of Swiss things that I did not get pictures/ found interesting/ were awesome.
-Cows: each Swiss canton (I will explain cantons later in this post) has its own specific type of cow, with which they make their own cheese. In Ticino I saw shaggy cows, they were amazing!!
- Sheep: big woolly things. I saw more sheep than cows, actually.
- Bird-life: Water birds- swans, ducks, mergansers, coots, herons, cranes, and so many more. They were everywhere. Also, raptors, I'm not sure but I think I saw eagles and hawks, lots of them.
- Other wildlife: I was told that foxes are pests there because they have so many of them. I only saw one, curled up in a clear patch of a snowfield- SO CUTE! Deer- I didn't see tons and they weren't the same as the ones that I see in the U.S., so of course I loved them because they were new to me.

-Cheese: I ate some everyday because it was the easiest way to feed myself- bread and cheese. When we went to Gruyere (to Americans who know cheese, Gruyere is just the name of a kind of cheese) I thought the whole town stank at first. Then I realized the smell was just cheese, and eventually, I got used to it. But I never really got over the smell. When I was in Geneva, looking for a place to eat, I avoided places that smelled strongly of cheese. And remember, I am a cheese maker, but this was overwhelming for me.

-Waterways: The Swiss have strict environmental regulations (they strictly regulate almost everything) which results in the most beautiful lakes and rivers that I have ever seen. The snow on the Alps provides them with enormous amounts of water which they turn into hydroelectric power with dams. Every body of water that I saw was clean and clear, and a beautiful shade of blue or green. There were also tiny streams pouring down almost every mountain or hillside that I saw, flowing into bigger and bigger rivers.
-Waterfalls: I tried but I couldn't get any good pictures of all of the waterfalls pouring down mountain and cliff sides everywhere.
-Water: Switzerland is extremely damp. The trees are covered in lush moss, as are the rocks and even the buildings. I was one happy desert lady in a very moist place.

-Logic/Efficiency: Swiss society runs so smoothly. Trains are on time. There is no trash in the streets. I did not see any slums. They have thought of everything to make things work better. Examples: Little rubber things on the door handle instead of attaching something to the wall to stop the handle from doing damage. Super efficient wall gas heaters that you can easily hang clothes on to dry, but, many also have an insert that you can pull out to make a clothes rack! Ingenious!

-Gardens!!:  The Swiss work hard to use only Swiss ingredients in there food and source locally for all products. So, farms take up a huge part of the land and you can see signs on the barns that say SuisseBio, which means that they are providing organic food for the grocery store. Besides that, so much space is used for personal gardens! Little tiny plots of land in the city, between apartment building and the train tracks, between the highway and factory. Almost everywhere there is a plot big enough for a couple small gardens, they cultivate it. Apparently, the plots are divided up and get rented fast, and it's a highly fashionable thing to spend the whole weekend or vacation in the garden. Just another reason I love Switzerland.

The weather was moderate during my time there. Often raining at the lower elevations. Winter had not really come yet to Western Europe. When I woke up before 6am on my last morning there was snow on the cars. By the time my aunt and I got to the airport it was snowing hard. Our plane sat at the gate for more than an hour while they sprayed weird orange and green stuff on it to take the snow and ice off, and to make sure that no more would stick to it. After taking off we climbed above the clouds so I didn't get to see Switzerland from the air.

By the time we made it to Spain (less than a two hour flight), it was a beautiful sunny day. On the ground it was warm in the sun, though colder than it had been when I left 12 days earlier. It seemed the winter had finally come to Spain as well.

I met with friends over the next 3 days, went to a couple more museums, and enjoyed being back in a place where I could speak the language. I am so grateful to have friends here. Friends to go out of their way to make time for me. It helps me so much, linguistically and emotionally. I have been experiencing really low confidence about my Spanish. I guess I want to speak perfect Spanish, or I feel that I should. I am so blessed and fortunate to be able to come study in Spain for this time. To be able to take this trip. But, being on my own, in a new country, can feel lonely. When I see my friends though, I feel totally at home and so happy.

I am so glad to have made it to Cáceres! Speaking of being emotionally ungrounded, I think making a life, having a routine, staying in one place where I can make friends, and having work to do for my classes, should all help a lot.

My trip here took me through Trujillo, a beautiful and old little town. I am excited to go there, to Badajoz, Albuquerque, Manzanares, Mérida, and who knows where else.

I haven't taken any pictures of Cáceres yet, and I don't know which part of town I'll live in. So, you will be getting lots of info and images of this new place. But, for now I will turn to the questions that the La Puerta students have asked and then sign off.

1- Mrs Erin asked how to finish a letter in Español.  I asked a couple people, I can ask some more, but this is the info that I got. Formally, you can finish a letter atentamente, informally you would finish it con cariño, un abrazo, un abrazo cálido, un abrazo fuerte, un beso, besitos, un beso grande. I have also ended formal letters with Gracias por haberme prestado la atención.


2- Phin asked if there are diamond mines here in Spain.
Phin, simple answer, no. There may have been some diamonds discovered in Spain at some point, but there have never been any big mines.

3- Zac wants to know if there is a gold mine.
Zac, yes, there is. But, from my own knowledge, the people from Spain who went to the Americas, went looking for riches and gold. So, that tells me that the gold mines in Spain can't be that big.

4- Anya asked if there are castles here and what they are like.
Anya, there are tons of castles. They are huge and made of enormous stones. They were built to by fortresses, so that who ever owned them could defend themselves from invaders. I will begin traveling and taking pictures of some castles for you soon.

5- Hezekiah asked if it is cold in Spain right now.
Hezekiah, as you probably just found out from what I wrote, it got cold this week and it is winter time. But it's about the same here as it is in New Mexico, or maybe a little warmer. But only a few degrees warmer; and I think the spring will come earlier, but we'll see!

6-Vincent inquired whether there is a place in Switzerland with a castle built on top of a waterfall like he saw in a Sherlock Holmes movie.
Vincent, I did not see one, nor could I find one on google when I looked. But maybe if you search on the internet you can find one. If you do, please send me a link or a picture or post it here in the comments on my blog.

7- Omar wants to know how it is over here, if it's nice and if it's pretty.
Omar, YES! I think it is so nice and pretty. It's really cool because most of the towns are really old, so the building and streets are made out of stones, and people have lived in them for hundreds of years. I also like it because it is different. The food is different, the language is different, the sky looks different, and the land looks different. But, the area that I am in also shares some things with New Mexico and since I think New Mexico is beautiful, of course I think it is beautiful here.

8- Mario wants to know if there are movie theaters in Switzerland.
Yes, Mario, there are. There are movie theaters in Spain, too. While I was in Madrid I saw a live theater production (like a play but it was a musical), but now that I am in Cáceres I wan to go see movies in Español hopefully about once a month. So, I'll report back to you about any differences between theaters over here from the ones back home.

9- Vincent also asked if I could bring them some Spanish coins.
Well, yes. I will bring home some money, but Spain no longer has its own money. Now most of Europe uses the same money. So I will bring home some Euros, which I will give to La Puerta.

Also, apparently Rio said that Rio Manzanares means the river of apple growers. Now, I think it means that Manzanares the place where the apple trees grow. So, awesome, I have some more research to do. It could mean both things!


Thank you kids so much for reading my blog and for asking me questions. It's nice to talk to you this way.

For anyone reading this, if you have something to add, a question or a comment, to correct a mistake, please do.

Hasta Luego, Cariños. Un Abrazo Muy Fuerte!!

Italian Swiss, Art Brut, and Skiing in the Alps

I'm back in Madrid now, so I'll do my best to wrap up my Swiss experience before this next stage becomes too exciting to allow me look back. Watch out! This one is another really long one!

I took a panoramic train over a very high and impressive pass in the Alps- Oberalpass. Well, let me start at the beginning. I began the morning, as always, in Lausanne on the shores of the lake. Lausanne is on the north side of the lake (Lac Leman, commonly known in English as Lake Geneva) ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Geneva ) and looks across to the mountain peaks in France on the south shore. The train took me east, to where the Rhone river enters the lake, and proceeded up the Rhone valley. I went through beautiful farm land with vineyards going up the foothills of the surrounding mountains.

The foothills were terraced, with old stone walls separating the vineyards. As the valley narrowed and the peaks became more impressive, I was amazed by the steepness of the gardens on the mountain slopes. The train took me to Brig. The river was strong and wide, and a deep blue color. The peaks clustered around, towering over the town and covered in snow. This is a picture from the Brig train station-

I had brought some food with me- some greens, bread, cheese, and fruit. In Brig I bought a sandwich and some juice. I wanted to be prepared, I was about to take a 5 1/2 hour train ride without any major stops.

The train itself was so cool. It was very fancy inside, and many people had reserved lunch tables. Their tables were set with white table cloths and fancy wine glasses. I heard at least five languages in my train car and all of the people who worked on the train spoke at least four. There were windows above our heads so that we could see the tops of the peaks as we climbed the narrow, steep valley up to the pass.

As soon as we started to climb, the snow started to get deeper and deeper. I had learned to see the depth of the snow as a gauge of my elevation. This may seem obvious, but I'm not used to make the fast elevation changes that I had been experiencing since my arrival in Switzerland.

I wished that I had brought a pair of sunglasses. We quickly found ourselves completely surrounded by snow, with the sun refracting at all angles off the peaks through the many windows of the train car. Eventually, we climbed over Oberalpass and went through many ski areas, including Andermatt which is one of the most famous resorts in Switzerland.

The mountains were enormous and went on for hours, building up and up. There were always more peaks beyond the ones I could see. I had started the morning in a French area, as I traveled up the valley it became German, and after I started down the other side of the pass I entered a Romanisch area. I had also begun in the valley of the Rhone river, and came down in the other side of the mountains into the Rhein valley. Those are two of the most important rivers of western Europe. This means that they provide water to a large number of the farms that grow the food that is eaten here.

As we came down the east side of the mountains and entered the beginning of the Rhein valley, we went through a dramatic area where there had historically been a gigantic landslide. Over thousands of years, the river had carved a route through the soft dirt. It reminded me of New Mexico landscapes, a big surprise in this wet country.

I arrived that afternoon in Chur (pronounced Coor), once again looking at mountain peaks crowding around the town. I had been told that although Chur was in the area of Switzerland that is Romanisch, it is German speaking. But, upon arrival I saw signs in German and Italian. So, I got the feeling that this area is probably more linguistically mixed, instead of being so clearly divided as had been the German/French parts that I had visited.

I caught a bus to visit a friend's (Iren's) son, Marco, and his family in the Italian area. The busdriver spoke to the passengers in Italian and German. The bus was mainly filled with Italian speakers. We started down a valley spotted with some German and some Romanisch towns. I could tell the difference by the name of the town, and the language of the signs.

We climbed to the top of another pass and started down into the Italian area of Ticino. It was a dramatic descent into a narrow valley. We spent a lot of the trip in tunnels of various lengths and crossing bridges back and forth across the steep valley.

The bus was full of Italian Swiss soldiers who were speaking a Swiss Italian dialect that I could understand pretty well. I was so happy to be in a place that I could understand some of the language even if I couldn't speak it. The bus ride ended at the train station in Bellinzona where I caught a train to Locarno.

Marco's wife, Sarah, picked me up at the train station and took me to their house. It was dark, but I could see from their windows that Locarno sits on a lake with mountains around it. I had a wonderful time talking with Marco and Sarah until bedtime and was excited for the morning so that I could see the view in the daylight.

It was so beautiful to see the sun rise light up the mountains and the boats crossing the lake early in the morning. I got to meet Iren's grandkids, who were great. Sarah took me into the center of Locarno where I walked around until it was time to get on the train home. I saw several old castles that were built there to defend the area during its past.

Ticino (the Italian area of Switzerland) had buildings with brighter colors that I had seen yet. They also had tons of great Italian food.

The next day was Saturday. I stayed in Lausanne for the first time that week. I walked to an incredible museum- the Musee de Art Brut- http://www.artbrut.ch/ . Art Brut is 'rough' art, instead of 'fine' art. But, after having spent a bunch of time in 'fine' art museums recently, I didn't see that much difference. Art Brut is made by people who are in difficult circumstances. People who are deaf-mute, have autism or down's syndrome, are in prisons or asylums, are homeless, or have been through some traumatic experiences.

It was so incredible and emotional. Much of the work was the most detailed that I have seen in my life. Each artist's work was accompanied by a plaque with their biography. Each one's work was so different. Many of the artists had to make do with almost no materials to create some of the most detailed, honest, sincere work I have ever seen. Much of it was made out of found objects, pieces of paper sewn together, and colors made from plants or other things.

The museum was four floors high. I got tired before I had seen all of it, but I had to stay to see every piece that they had. I am so glad that I got to go see this museum. There was a a group of young people with disabilities there who were very excited by the museum. The whole experience just delighted me.

That night my family made an amazing birthday dinner for me, even though the next day was my birthday. I had suggested that we do it a day early since we were going skiing on my birthday and I knew we'd be beat after a day on the slopes.

Sunday morning we left early for the mountains. I have never seen a ski area so huge. Really it was three different ski areas at the bottom that all met at the top. Or, how else could I explain it? It spanned several peaks, with many lifts going this and that direction. Before getting down to the bottom we had to watch the signs to make sure that we were headed towards the lift where our car was parked. We took three lifts to arrive at the highest point that we got to. At that point we got above the clouds that had been over us the rest of the time. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen, the valley blanketed in clouds and the peaks rising above them all around us.

I had rented skis. I had not skied since I was 12, that is to say, in 15 years! So the morning was hard for me. But, I was so happy by the end of the day that I had remembered how to ski! I really enjoyed my birthday, and in style. Skiing in the Alps! The conditions were great and the setting was stunning.

I'll do one more post tomorrow, wrapping up with Switzerland and answering the questions that the La Puerta students have asked.

Thank you!! Hugs!