Leaving for Morocco tomorrow

We'll be there for 6 full days. Some highlights that I have to look forward to are:

- Sleeping in the desert
- Riding 4x4's (I think this means Jeeps but it might mean 4-wheel off-roaders) through the sand dunes
- 8-hour bus rides
- Probably being offered money/livestock by some of the Moroccans for some of the girls on the trip (apparently they like blondes)
- All sorts of stuff that I can't even imagine yet.


So wish me luck and excuse my lack of entries for the next week.

Hasta luego.

London, part II

So, I'm going to make a long story short on this one. I have to get up and go to Morocco tomorrow, and I'm not finished packing yet.

Monday was spent doing even more not-necessarily-touristy but perhaps even more fun stuff... though we did go see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey.


(When they say Big Ben is big, they're not kidding around. I got off the tube and looked up and saw it and just laughed. It's like a joke it's so big.)

Westminster Abbey:


I also got a haircut that day.. spending more money than I would have liked to but at least I got to speak English to explain it. I suppose I'm pretty happy.

Oh, and we went to Abbey Road. Here's me crossing the famous crosswalk (you can't tell from that angle it's the famous one, but it definitely is):



We were also able to get (relatively) cheap tickets for a West End (London's equivalent of Broadway) production of Les Miserables.... it was probably the best production of any play I've seen in my life. Really amazing.

So that was Monday, in a nutshell.

Now, our flight back was tuesday morning: early. 6:55 am. Out of Luton, which is an aiport about an hour outside of London. So we needed to catch a train at 4:22 to make it to Luton by about 5:15. Which meant we had to wake up at 3:30 or so.

Well we didn't.

We slept till about 4:30, both of us sleeping through our alarms, and then when I woke up we scrambled to the train station, caught the next train, and got to the airport about 5 minutes before our plane was supposed to leave. They wouldn't let us on. The next flight that had openings (this is on EasyJet, a really thriftily-organized and managed budget airline serving most of Europe) was 24 hours later.

We had to pay a "rescue fee" so that we wouldn't have to buy another flight altogether, and we had to book a hotel in Luton that night (because we didn't want to spend an extra $50 getting to London and back just to book a more expensive hotel there). We were afraid that the town of Luton was going to be a collection of like three buildings thrown up around the aiport... but it wasn't, luckily. It could have been worse, but it was still a very bad day. We got through it though, and had a little extra time to study for the exam the next day (I think I did pretty well. It was a big exam).

So anyway, eventually we got home safe, sound, and a little bit poorer than we would have liked. No worries, though.

London: a dream, a disaster, an experience.

Well, this is going to be another long one.

So about a month ago my friend Britt and I planned a trip to London, because the school gave us a long weekend (Friday-Monday) this week. We both would have liked for more people to have gone, but nobody else was interested, so we went it alone.

First of all, my impressions about the city:

1. It's the most expensive place I've ever been to in my life. The pound is so strong compared to the dollar, and the fact that it's a big city anyway exacerbates the problem. I ended up having to spend a lot more money than I was expecting to (this was partially because of the disaster part of the trip, which I'll get to later). So I'm going to have to try to do what's remaining of this semester on the cheap.

2. It was really nice to go to a country that speaks English. Functioning in society was just so much easier.

3. The city itself is great -- very stylish, very modern, yet at the same time very ancient and rooted in tradition. There are an endless number of things to see, and we only barely cracked the surface.

4. The people are really friendly and helpful. Also, there's a ton of immigrants there.

We left Friday morning, getting to the airport a little later than I would have liked because Britt forgot her passport and had to go back and get it, but early enough. We caught our flight and were in London by around 1. We wandered around a bit, got acquainted with our surroundings, and then left to try to find our hotel. It took a little while, because it's a really small place tucked away in Argyle Square, which is just a big complex of tiny hotels. It was definitely small and quaint -- the room was tiny and didn't have it's own bathroom; we had to go downstairs to use the very... minimalist toilet and shower facilities. But that was fine; we had been planning to book a hostel before we found this place (probably the cheapest "hotel" in London).

So Friday was spent relatively relaxed -- we found a good Turkish restaurant nearby and had dinner, and then set out to find a place to go out, because Friday was St. Patrick's day. We went to a couple bars, and then found a really quaint, authentic Irish pub, filled with people celebrating their patron saint and singing Irish folk songs on the karaoke. It was a lot of fun -- having some beer, talking to Irish and English people. Britt said it meant a lot to her because she's a 2nd generation Scott, and apparently her family did this kind of thing all the time. The night ended with me singing my favorite savage garden song karaoke for the whole bar to hear. It was a song with a lot of lyrics really fast -- called "I Want You" if it sounds familiar to anybody -- and I sang them all without looking at the screen. I remember getting really into it; head back, eyes closed, microphone pressed to my mouth rock-star style. Apparently everybody in the bar was downright transfixed -- "who is this golden karaoke God?" When the song was over and I finally opened my eyes everybody was transfixed and started applauding and cheering.

Afterwards I asked a girl who was taking pictures if she could send them to me:



I know, I know, those people don't exactly looked transfixed. I must have just been warming them up.

After that we kind of stumbled around the streets of London, trying to figure out how the night bus system worked (the tube was already closed). It didn't work -- we had to take a taxi home.

(Editor's note: Unfortunately, I'm not going to have very many good pictures for this trip. As I said, the battery charger that I have blew a fuse the night before I left, and my camera was eating batteries like crazy during the trip. So I only have a few, and they're mostly of Britt cause she kept asking me to take pictures of her).

Saturday we went and walked around downtown, just to see what there was to see -- not necessarily going to any of the touristy spots. We walked through Picadilly street, around the theatre area (we tried to get half-price tickets but they were all sold out for that night). Britt got a haircut at a too-expensive salon, and we just did what we could find to do. We passed by a huge anti-war protest downtown, which apparently made international headlines.



Saturday night we went to a movie at the Ritzy -- a famous, art-house, independent theatre in London, and saw a movie that was okay, I guess.

Sunday we got up and headed down to all the cool spots: London Tower, the south bank, the Globe (a reacreation that is; the original globe burned down in the 17th century -- this one was built in 1997), The Tate museum, and so forth.

An exhibition inside the Tate:


The Tower of London (where Richard III had his nephews imprisoned and killed and where the crown jewels currently reside):


Tower Bridge (much more impressive than London bridge):


Sunday night was actually spent studying because we had an exam today covering basically the entirety of Spanish history, literature and society. I think I did okay.

TO BE CONTINUED... INCLUDING THE PART WHERE IT GETS REALLY MESSY. STAY TUNED.

Cheers, mate.

(PS we're leaving for Morocco Saturday. We'll be there for a week).

A very long day

Yesterday was a day that lasted about 22 hours -- beginning at 7:30 AM as I woke up to get ready for our day trip to the towns of Avila and Segovia, and ending at about 5:30 AM as I finally rolled into bed after a long night of bar-hopping, dancing, and intesive Spanish-speaking.

Avila and Segovia are nice towns, both very small. Each has its own prominent monument for which it is widely known -- Avila's is the medieval wall that has surrounded the town since I think the 11th century, protecting it from Moorish invaders. Segovia's is even more ancient and impressive than that -- gigantic Roman aqueducts, presumably dating from about the 2nd or third century.

Part of the Avila wall:


The aqueducts at Segovia:


Me and Britt marvelling at the aqueducts at Segovia:


We got back from that trip at about 7, having spent 2-3 hours in each city and a good bit of time on the bus in between. After I got home, I took a one-hour nap (I only got about 5 hours of sleep the night before), then got up and had dinner, and afterwards went with my host brother Dario to meet his friend Bruno and Britt to go bar-hopping. At the first bar we went to, which was way out of the way, I ran into one of my supervisors at MAP magazine, which was an incredible coincidences (of which I've already had numerous since I've been here). Then we went to another bar, then took a long train ride to another, where we stayed for a few hours. Bruno and Dario both have good taste in music, as well as an insider's knowledge of the best venues around Madrid. We stayed at the last one till it closed at 4, listening to 70's and 80's rock, asking the DJ to play some good songs, etc. The best part was just spending the whole night speaking Spanish with people who don't really speak English (although Bruno speaks a bit). It's the kind of practice that I really need and I'm glad I'm getting. Britt has actually had sort of a thing for Bruno since a couple weeks ago when we first went out, and they've been sort of courting each other via mix CD's ever since.

After the club closed we took a night bus to Plaza de Cibeles, where the whole network of night buses connects, and I took another one that took me right to the casa. An eventful and really fun day.

In other news, I quit my second internship, with TBS The Broadsheet, after not having gone in for a couple weeks and finding not having two jobs very relieving.

Now it's time to study.

In other news

My Spanish continues improving, but it's a very, very steep uphill battle. And slow. I actually started a language exchange the other day with a guy named Alvaro who's studying English on his own. We're doing two hours a week... An hour of English, an hour of Spanish. This should help, although not enough of course. I just need to keep finding as many outlets as possible to practice.

I've also been inspired to take up another language (since, all things considered, my Spanish is very good), so I think when I get back to AU I'll start French classes. Learning another language is actually one option I have for a requirement for my major, so it will even count toward something.

Things are going pretty well here, but I've pretty much settled into a routine. Wake up late, class all day, home at 9, dinner at ten, reading and playing on the computer till about 2, then sleep. Of course, the week is only four days long, and I spend a significant amount of time going out. So I'm not complaining.

I finally got in touch with the bank to give me my PIN number for my debit card (I wish I had known it was as simple as sending an e-mail a month ago). So that crisis is finally resolved (I believe) and I have access to funds now.

Speaking of routines, it's time for dinner.

Hasta luego.

Andalucia, part II

Here's a very late continuation to a late update. My bootlegged Internet connection at my casa has been playing tricks on me, so I haven't been able to update this thing or upload any more pictures. So to continue...

After we left the flamenco show I started feeling pretty sick and delirious, so I went home and went to bed while other people went out. The next day I woke up, continued to feel pretty bad, and slept all the way to Cordoba. We only stayed in Cordoba for a few hours, visiting the gigantic mesquita (mosque), which is the third-largest mosque in the world, and spending some free time wandering around the town.

The mosque, Like so many other pieces of historically-relevant Spanish architecture, was a center of Muslim life, grandiose and elegant, for centuries, until the Christians showed up and converted it for their own uses. (Though, to their credit, they didn't destroy it altogether). As a result, by turning your head 90 degrees, you can go from looking at this:



to looking at this:



Somewhat contrasting styles. The Christians kept using the mosque as it was (top photo) for quite a while, but eventually some king or bishop decided a gothic choir (second photo) needed to be built. I didn't get any other decent photos of the Muslim part (although it used to be open to the light, when the Christians arrived they built walls all around the perimeter so there's not enough light for anything to show up on camera), although it's beautiful, but here are some more of the Christian part:



Here's a picture of the mosque/cathedral from the streets of Cordoba



After that it was another several-hour drive to Sevilla (Seville), where we got in at around 8 and spent the rest of the night in the hotel because it was raining out. The next day we were guided around the city, going first to the Plaza de Espana building, whose purpose I don't really remember:



but it was used in filming one of the new Star Wars movies:



And then after that we walked through a Muslim palace:



the garden of which had some very, very large trees:



After that it was back on the bus and 7 hours to Madrid, with a stop to eat lunch. We had to leave early cause there was a big deal marathon going through Sevilla and we didn't want to get stuck in traffic and not be able to leave.

Oh, also in Sevilla we walked by the third largest Cathedral in the world but we didn't go in:



So basically the trip was: drive drive Muslim Muslim Christian drive Muslim Muslim flamenco sick sick sick Muslim Muslim Christian Muslim sick Muslim drive drive drive drive sick Muslim.