Sunday, April 24, 2011

No he muerto!

yyyy... estoy disfrutando monton aqui en Holanda! Miguel, si estas leyendo esto, por favor des saludos a Paco y Paqui (y Luna)... Salgo el Martes a las 19:00 para ir a Londres. Que estais disfrutandoos!

hi family! just letting you know that i am in fact alive and enjoying my time in the Netherlands! It's a great time; i leave tuesday for London. (and no, i haven't patronized any of the special "coffee shops", thanks for asking).

Monday, April 4, 2011

DOS ACTUALIACIONES! EN EL MISMO DIA!

That's right, I'm posting not one, but two updates in the same day. Note the lack of Spanish on this post; it's because like 2 people read this thing total, and of those who do, none of them are fluent in Spanish (or are lazy and just read it in English anyways). If ya want Spanish, lemme know. I'm thinking I prolly get more accidental visitors who just type random things into the address bar with the domain name "blogspot.com". So to all you bored internet nerds out there, hi. Also, I just wasted a paragraph of your life talking about things that do not pertain at all to Spain. Also, hi to all the cousins. I know the the Sorensons and the Starts (Kara, Alisha, and Julia) read this complete waste of time and brainpower, and maybe Ethan and Natalie, the Witties, and the DeVries'.



Anyways, getting back to all things Spanish, last weekend I went with some friends to the Oceanografico in Valencia. As you probably gathered, it's a oceanographic park, and it's very cool. We saw a very unique dolphin show, but I didn't get any good pictures of it. However, there were several tunnels underground with an aquarium above and on both sides of us, one of which included all sorts of sharks. I was preoccupied the whole time with the fact that if the glass broke in even one spot, the tunnel would instantly flood. As if being up to their necks in water wasn't bad enough, visitors would probably have close encounters with startled and rather unhappy maritime carnivores. Yikes! Also, for Amanda (Joy) Witte's benefit, there were a whole bunch of penguins.

FALLAS!


Si no habéis adivinado, me gustó las fallas más que un poco. Dígame, que puede ser mejor que lanzando cohetes y petardos en las calles, paella GRATIS, y las quemas de esculturas gigantes? En cada pueblo en la Comunitat Valenciana, hay fallas. Las más grandes, por supuesto, están en Valencia, dónde yo fui ese Sábado para verlos. Usualmente son caricaturas o parodias de eventos actuales. Vi temas como el turismo, helado, el infierno, etc. Las fotos os dicen el cuento…

If you didn't gather, I liked fallas more than just a little. What could be better than launching bottle rockets and throwing firecrackers in the streets, FREE paella, and burning gigantic sculptures? In every town in the Valencian Community (Denia included), there are fallas. The biggest, of course, are in Valencia, where I went that Saturday to see. Usually they're charicatures or parodies of current events. I saw fallas with the themes of tourism, ice cream (that should appeal to the Start-gene sweet tooth), hell, etc. The photos speak for themselves...




 
 Me preguntas: “Por qué hay un globo de aire caliente?” la respuesta es que no tengo ninguna idea. Los falleros usualmente tienen fiestas gratis y abierto al público con música, el bailar, comida, y, en este caso, un globo en que se podía ver las vistas de la ciudad. 

You might ask: why in the world is there a random hot air balloon? Really, I have no idea. The falla kings and queens usually throw free parties open to the public, with music, dancing, food, and, in this case, hot air balloon rides.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Cosas Aleatorias


Otra vez, soy demasiado perezoso deciros lo que he hecho desde Barcelona. Fuimos a Madrid pero me puse enfermo de mala comida y pasé la mayoría del tiempo durmiendo en el hotel. También he pasado tiempo en unas cuevas en el área del Montgó. Aquí hay unas fotos. También saqué muchas fotos de las Fallas (si no sabéis qué son, prepárate para ver una maravilla), pero no los he descargado de mi camera así todavía no los hay en mi blog. 

Arriba: La Cueva Tallada. Abajo hay 2 fotos de Vall de Laguar y 1 de Toledo del otro lado del Rio Tajo
Above: A cave cut out of stone in the Mediterranean. Below are two pictures of Vall de Laguar and one of Toledo, Spain (not Toledo, Ohio) from the other side of the river. 


Again, I'm too lazy to recount what I've done since Barcelona. We went to Madrid but I got food poisoning and spend most of the weekend sleeping in the hotel. I also spent time exploring some caves in the Montgo area. Here are some photos. I also took a bunch of pictures of Fallas (if you don't know what Fallas are, prepare to be amazed), but I haven't gotten them off my camera yet so they aren't here yet. 

Monday, March 14, 2011

Soy perezoso

Como os he predicho, he sido perezoso y no he cargado nada a mi blog. Entonces aquí es una revista de algunas de las cosas que he hecho en el mes pasado. El último fin de semana de inero, fuimos como grupo (con un grupo de jóvenes del Instituto Chavás) a Barcelona y Tarragona. No hay espacio contaros todas las cosas que vimos y hicimos, pero había unas partes más interesantes. La Sagrada Familia es una iglesia que acaba de proclamar el papa como basílica católica. Fue diseñado por Antonio Gaudí en estilo moderno, usando formas hipérbolas (eso es para todos vosotros frikis de ingeniero o matemáticas) Sí me gustaba sus obras, pero la parte más interesante para mí es que murió cuando una tramilla le atropelló. Es un fin más humilde por ser un arquitecto muy famoso. También visitamos una casa (la Casa Milá) que él diseñó. Era tan impresionante, especialmente el techo. Mi parte favorita del viaje era el estadio Camp Nou, donde juega el equipo FC Barcelona. Yo no era fan de fútbol antes, pero después no puedo no ser fan. Es el estadio más grande de Europa, sentando más que 99.000 personas, y han sido multitudes de más que 120.000 antes, cuando las normas de fuego no eran tan estrictamente impuestas. Se podía ver todo, incluyendo el campo su mismo, los vestuarios, la sala de la prensa, etc. También visitamos un sitio dónde se produce los vinos espumosos (champagne) llamados “cavas”. Eran tan buenas, pero muy caras. Hicimos mucho más pero de nuevo, soy perezoso y no quiero escribir más sobre esto.  
 
Like I predicted, I’ve been lazy and haven’t uploaded anything to my blog. So here’s a brief review of some of the things that I did in the past month. The last weekend of January, we went as a group (with a group of students of Chavás High School) to Barcelona and Tarragona. There isn’t space to to recount all the things we did and saw, but there were a few very interesting parts. The Sagrada Familia is a church that was just proclaimed by the pope to be a Basilica Catholic. It was designed by Antonio Gaudí in a modernist style using hyperbolic shapes (that’s for all you math and engineering geeks out there). I did like his buildings, but the most interesting part for me is that he died when he was run over by a tram. It’s a pretty ignominious end for a famous architect. We also visited a house (the Casa Milá) that he designed. It was very interesting, especially the roof. My favorite part of the trip was the Camp Nou stadium, where plays the soccer team FC Barcelona. I wasn’t really a fan of football before, but how can you not be after visiting something that impressive? It’s the biggest stadium in Europe by far, seating over 99,000 people. It has hosted crowds up to 120,000 in the past when fire code wasn’t such a big deal. We could see everything, including the locker rooms, press room, and the field itself. We also visited the Cordorníu (which just SOUNDS snotty) winery where they make champagnes called cavas (cave wines). They were really good, but also really expensive. We did a lot more on the trip but I’m lazy so I’m done writing for now. Sorry about the shoddy quality of English; I’m having to translate this all to English. ALSO: Shoutouts to all the grandparents (Grandpa and Grandma Start, Grandpa DeVries and Grandma Nell), as well as Ann Fachi and Spindler. Love ya guys!