In Sevilla and off to Aracena also a recount of Ronda

I am in Sevilla now and have been here for a little over a week now. My original plan was to go to Salamanca for 6 weeks, but for various reasons that didn´t work out. So here i am and it´s fun; I´m glad it worked out this way. However, I should backtrack a bit and give an account of my time in Ronda (the trip I took a couple of weeks ago).
Here you can see the bridge that divides the old part of Ronda from the new part.

The night we spent in Ronda we decided to hit up the bar scene as you can see below. You may notice that the tap looks awful close to the customers, as if maybe we could pull our own beers. In fact, it was that close, and we did. Actually every table had their own tap with a meter on top that displayed the number of liters drunk and how much we had spent. In the background you can see a scoreboard. The green bars mark how well each table is faring relative to the others. Yes, the concept is mindblowing. Could you imagine opening one of these bars on a college campus in the states!?! If it weren´t for the numerous deaths and lawsuits that would ensue you would probably be a millionaire in a week. Naturally Cody and I, decided to compete with every other table in the bar, including a table of 10 that just sat down next to us. We held on pretty well until that table went for the second round. We ended up leaving the bar in a strong second place and barely able to see straight.

The next day we headed to Malaga to see part of the Feria that was going on there which can be seen to the left.

That´s pretty much it for that trip.


Sevilla´s been fun. Here´s a picture of my roommate Yuan from Sweden making our nightly coffee brew that gets us going before we hit the bars and clubs. This fine concoction is made by buying the cheapest coffee in the supermarket, putting it in a filter, and pouring boiled water through it into a cup. Repeat the process until you have enough coffee for all those in your group. Dirk, from Germany, is another cool roommate of mine who apparently was not taught compound words when he learned English, so he sounds like a robot.

Last weekend I went to Aracena for a couple days which is a small mountain town an hour north of Sevilla. There was some cool stuff there. I went to the Ham museum. Ham´s really big here. I´ve eaten more Ham here than any other meat. They have ground pork here, not ground beef. The area of Aracena and particularly Jabodu (Jabogu, Jabudo?) believe they produce the best ham in the World. and it might be true. The ham was really good. But I´m not experienced in tasting ham, and as I mentioned earlier, I´m just happy when i get some food. I also saw some caves there and a castle. The area of Aracena would be a good place to spend a few days driving between all the different towns. You can learn a lot about ham and pigs and castles.

Where's the Beef?

Hey, if you´re really fat and you want to lose some weight you should come to Spain, they have no food here. For people like me it´s not so good, I think I´m nearly eligible for UNICEF proceeds. Actually I was thinking about UNICEF last night as I was walking around trying to find a single restaurant in this city where I could get a meal of some sustenance, and recalled that the back of the box would say something like "for just 5 cents you can feed a family for a week" and "for 25 cents you can buy the family a cow or a goat so they can supply themselves with milk for the rest of their lives." It should say, that if you´re going donate all of 25 cents then you really need to donate 50 because that first cow is going to be torn apart and eaten raw by the family that receives it. Maybe after that, if the neighbors don´t discover the newly acquired food source, you can consider milking the cow and maybe breeding the cow.

Finding food in Spain is nearly impossible. Sometimes I think, "boy, I´d really like a nice sandwhich that might hold me over til dinner" So I go to the meat shop and receive one slice of ham between two pieces of french bread. This is obviously not enough to hold me over so then I have to spend much dinero for a meal at a sit down restaurant where for 9€ I get three pieces of asparagus, a slice of ham, and a small wedge of potato pie. It all tastes very good, the ham and asparagus are some of the best I´ve ever had, but it´s hard to enjoy when immediately after finishing I´m looking for grubs and berries that might be edible. I tried eating some of the olives off the trees here. I don´t recommend that. I forgot my card for transferring photos onto the internet, so sorry. See ya. Will

Corrida de Toros

This entry graphically describes Una Corrida De Toros. A bullfight is probably everything you thought it would be, but if you care to know for sure read on.

In Malaga yesterday I went to a bullfight. I was not disgusted by it because, generally, the bull is held in great esteem. What is difficult to watch is when the matador doesn't make a clean kill on the first try. Unfortunately this night there were novice bullfighters and so I saw a couple unfortunate ends. In each corrida there there are six fights; six bulls and three matadors. The bull is truly an awesome beast and It´d be a good fight to see a lion and a spanish bull duke it out. Generally the fight is broken into four parts. The first is where the bull parades around the grounds and a few matador-like people come out and taunt him run at their muleta (cape) to show the speed and strength of the beast. Occasionally they had the courage to sidestep the bull's charge at the last second, but more often than not they waved the muleta and then behind the guardwalls as seen below (I don´t blame them):



Next comes the first bloodshed when the picadores come out. Don´t read further unless you´re interested in bullfighting and want to read the details. The picadors are the men on horse back that stab the bull in the neck with a lance type deal. All the wounds to the bull are in the gigantic neck muscle that can be seen in profile in the first picture. The picadors lance stabs about six inches deep into the bull. I became aware at this time that the bull is not the only casualty of the bull fight, often the horses don't make it either. Before the horses had padding, without fail the horse would die a gruesome death in the ring from wounds given by the bull. Despite heavy armor that now covers the side of the horse, on occasion the horse will die from internal bleeding. It seems that two picadors come out, but only one of them is used, whomever the bull selects first.



After the picadors come the three banderilleros. Each banderillero has a pair of barbed, colored banerillos (short spears) that they attempt to lodge in the bulls neck. Each banderillero gets one attempt to stick both their banerillos in; rarely were they successful with two. the photo below is the second banderillero taking a go:

Finally the matador comes out and does his show and after 15 minutes or so kills the bull by sticking his sword in between the shoulder blades right through to the heart. After the fight the bull is dragged out of the ring by a couple extravagantly ornamented horses

From what I´ve read in Hemingway´s treatise "Death in the Afternoon" and heard from professors at school, the matador is frequently trying to show his confidence and mastery over the bull. Often this includes a lot of strutting around, fighting the bull from his knees, turning your back on the bull, and always trying to make his chest as big as possible. While perhaps seeming acts of arrogance, the bullfighter has enormous respect for the animal.

Bueno, that´s a bullfight and I´ll write more later on the excursion to Ronda and Malaga in general.

Graffiti and an Update from the Amistad

Above is just one example of the multidude of the incredible graffiti found in this city. There seems to be some respect on the street for it because nobody has tried to tag over these artworks. On the same wall was the following painting of Dalí

Unrelated, and merely because it just popped into my head, I´ve got updated information on St. Nick. There´s a guy from Holland in my conversation class. Good guy. Anyway in class we seemed to get onto the topic of national holidays and the story of St. Nick came up again. I asked him about whether his "helpers" really were all black and he said yes, that was the story, HOWEVER, in the last couple years the government has acknowledged that it´s not quite the most PC story and, as officially as they can with a children's myth, said that helpers of any race, color, or creed are now eligible for employment at St. Nick´s. All very amusing.
This weekend I´m going to the city of Ronda where, if you have read "For whom the Bell Tolls" is the town where a number of people were masacred and thrown into the chasm that divides the city. On a lighter note, after that we´re going to Malaga for their annual Feria.

hiking in the mountains

Here´s a group of people I went to the Sierra Nevada´s with last week. It was actually a ski resort in the winter months so unfortunately the ski lifts made it seem a little less rugged. Nonetheless, it was great to get some fresh mountain air.

Near this photo we have a bit of the wildlife that lives in the mountains here in Spain. This is an Ibex. This xenophobic race is much like Sand People that inhabit deserts on my home planet of Tatooine. The ibex are territorial by nature and fearful of strangers. This photo was taken only moments before he engaged his projectile rifle and fired a few warning shots in our vicinity as we buzzed by on our landspeeder. Upset that he missed he let out a few cries of frustration and shook his rifle in the air furiously. Thankfully R2 was able to navigate us back to the hostel without further altercations.

Alright, well this page is all screwed up. I can´t see any of the photos I´m attaching and I don´t know where they´re going on the page so I don´t know what this post will look like. Somewhere on this page is a stature of Mary and her kid. This is probably one of the coolest statues I´ve ever seen. This was on the ski mountain.



The next picture on here is of me and mi amiga Daria de Alimania. For those of you don´t habla español that´s spanish for Daria of Germany. Who knows whether this photo attached or not, I don´t see it anywhere on
the page here. Anyway we went to Cordoba for the day and viewed many cool things like this staircase. As it turns out this staircase looked a lot more grandiose on the tourist map than in reality. I think the city was feeling a little short on attractions so they just started projecting random locations into 3d on the tourist map and giv them majestic names like "La escalara de dios" We saw many other mapped attractions as well thanks to Daria who had created a checklist of stops to make. My job was to navigate ourselves around the city; though really my job was to keep a confident look on my face and say ´yes´when she asked if I knew where we were going.
Mike, I´ll do my best to find some photos of some pechagonas, but typically they don´t allow me to bring my camera into the room; I don´t know, house rules I guess.

Tenemos photos

Había olvidado me cable USB para mi camara, pero hoy compré otro y debo poner photos en esta página.

I just tried to put on the first photo I came to for a test and it turns out that this is a picture of Cameron and Alistair in Scotland. In the background you can see the grand estate that I described earlier. Space was a little tight when the band showed up but overall it was a nice abode. Okay, let´s see if i can get some more photos on here...

Here´s a photo of Cameron and his wife Andrea and a lone bagpiper in the background. Coolest thing about the Scottish get up you ask? No, not the hairy purse, it´s the knife in his sock that he´d shiv me with in the ribs if I referred to his sporran as a hairy purse.

For some this was a night to remember. For me it was not, fortunately it is also a night that I can´t remember. Although, I was informed that one high point was when some locals I was hanging out with pointed out that their was a deer in the road. I apparently felt the need to inform them of their local fauna and told them it was a Red Deer, a fact I had learned hours before from another local. They replied no, it´s a "Roe Deer" to which I replied "why, because it´s in the middle of the road!?" They all laughed and then told me the next deer the saw in the grass was called a "Grass Deer" to which I responded with a contemplative response of understanding "Ohhhhh, alright, I think I´m getting this..."

Aha, one more sucessfully attached. This is me in London with Ed and a couple of his friends. Ed´s the guy in the tie. I´m the guy in the green shirt. We´re all smiling because we´re happy and really drunk. It´s about 2:00am here and I´m the only one who doesn´t have to work the next day. There are some good museums and other stuff in London, but nothing beats getting pissed with a few locals.







My god, the power of photography. This is saving me at least a 1000 words each one. Here we are in London again a couple days later. And guess what, we´re doing more drinking. From left to right Diana, Adam, Ace, and Gary. Good to see some peeps from Whitman again. These guys all went up to play some golf in Scotland after this.

I should note here that all my photos from before arriving in the UK are stored safely on Alistair´s laptop so, unfortunately I can´t show the good times had in New England. (An update here, unfortunately Alistair's laptop was stolen and thus, so were all my photos.)

Aquí is a photo of some of the people going to the Don Quijote school of language. We were all

going to a club that night. Here´s the deal with a typical day in Spain. Eat lunch at 3, eat tapas (appetizers that come free with an alcoholic beverage purchase) and drink from 9-12. Then go to a bar, or in this case the school dorm, and drink until 2, the clubs open at 2 but really don´t get going until 3 or 4, party until morning, go to school at 9, finish school and take a siesta. Everyday has been over 100 degrees. I went to Cordoba, a neighboring city, and it was 120; I saw a guy spontaneously combust.

Well, now that we have color in this blog and I don´t have to write so damn much this is a bit more fun to update. I´ll post more frequently now, hasta luego. Will

Dinner and Holiday's Abroad

I had a great going away dinner with some friends who heading back to their respective countries. At one point we got on the subject of the different holidays each of our countries celebrate. We eventually got around to Christmas and I explained the story of our guy in the north pole and the elves and the 9 flying reindeer that help him distribute gifts around the world. I was then asked to recount the 9 reindeer which I did with a little help from my fellow Americans sitting nearby. However, one girl explained to me that Rudolph was actually not really one of Santa´s reindeer and wasn't a real one, it was simply made up for the song. I wasn´t sure what plane of reality she was coming from: ¨eight flying reindeer, yes, but one with a nose that glows in the dark, that´s a little far fetched¨, so I just agreed with her that Rudolph´s existence was unlikely. We then learned that many countries in Europe celebrate the 6th of December in much the same way that we celebrate the 25th except that their bringer of gifts is a man by the name of St. Nick. One of the girls was excited to explain the story behind St. Nick in her country. This was a young, gorgeous, blond from Holland who had exhibited nothing but jocundity (occasionally verging on naive charm) that made her all the more attractive throughout the trip. So, with eyes filled with a somewhat childish wonder and total innocence she explained that...

With eyes of wonder she began ¨St. Nick and his helpers come on a ship filled with gifts from Spain¨ (A land about as mysterious, undiscovered, and distant as, say, Santa Claus coming from Mexico).
¨And all his helpers are black¨
At this point I think my jaw dropped because I´m picturing the Amistad, and I think she must have noticed. So she, totally oblivious to the inherent weirdness of having a white guy command a boat filled with black people, thought maybe she had used the wrong term for black people and corrected herself:
¨I mean niggers¨
The whole table obviously lost it and we all had a good laugh and told her that was the worst word to use and then we each sat back with a contrived look of sagacity hoping that nobody would ask us what the politically correct term for 'negroes' was.

I´ve got to keep these entries short so that I update every once in a while. Will