Portugal, Valencia & Prostitutes.

Wow, I haven’t written in a while - sorry! My schedule was pretty tightly packed these last couple of weeks, so I’ll try to recap as best as I can and tell you what I’ve been doing!

So our Portugal trip was wonderful! Well as wonderful as it can be when you’re traveling with 38 other people, but we did get some alone time. First we went to Coimbra, a university town like Salamanca. The students look like Harry Potter students or vampires because they wear long black capes!! And most students decide to wear it everyday! There’s a picture of Jen and I somewhere where we got a girl in the background wearing this standard uniform. The weather in Portugal was all rainy or misty by the way. So we walked around a bit, saw the most beautiful library of my life (I have a postcard and will show it to you later), awesome Portuguese ceramics, etc. I even talked to some people because I had to interview Portuguese about Spanish people and I was understood, but the Portuguese are also used to understanding Spaniards, so maybe not such a victory. Then we went to Batalha and saw a lovely monastery; it was huge with gardens and a tomb of an unknown soldier, where there were scary Portuguese soldiers guarding it. We make it to Lisbon to book into our hotel and have the night to ourselves. We ate and walked around a bit, but were really tired. Some people went out and even threw up on the bus the next day! Woohoo. We went to Sintra as a day trip, the place where I will be living when I grow up. It was Ireland or Wales maybe because of all the green, hills, it was BEAUTIFUL. We didn’t have much free time so I didn’t get to go into this estate that had a fancy house, lakes, caves!, labyrinths! And other stuff to see. I have to go back to this Quinta Regaleira. We visited a palace there with small doors (of course) and awesome Arabic tiling. In Lisbon we saw another monastery (not as good as the other one) and couldn’t see much of the bridge, giant Jesus statue or view from the Navegation monument. Lisbon wasn’t as modern and cool as I was thinking it would be, but then again, the rain prevented me from really exploring. I also associate Lisbon with this scary BRAZILIAN restaurant we went to with 10 different kinds of meat - I tried the first 4 I think. Ew. Leaving for Salamanca, we stopped at Fatima, the scariest catholic place ever. There was a huge scary service going on when we got there while we checked out where the Virgen Mary came down and told some kids 3 secrets. The little girl went on to be a nun. I don’t believe the stupid secrets (like predicting WWII) because obviously the kids had to reveal them after all this shit went down, so…Portugal = awesome (excluding Fatima where people crawl on their knees to beg the Virgen for help).

Lunes de Aguas (Monday of Waters) was April 20 - this is where the prostitutes come in. Back in the day, Salamanca was made up of a ton of priests/religious male students and prostitutes. And before Lent, Padre Puta (Father Whore) would give the sign that the prostitutes had to leave so as to remove temptation, and they put them on boats across the Tormes River to the other side. After Lent, Padre Puta would make the sign for them to return. So apparently people (or the guys) celebrated and ate hornazo, this disgusting 3 kind meat filled empanada. During Franco’s rule, he changed this Padre Puta name to Padre Lucas because he didn’t think the first name was appropriate. Just look at the holiday! Anyway, so IES had a picnic, it was nice out, and I tried looking for the prostitutes (never saw them).

Over the weekend I didn’t do much, relaxed, ate picnics, drank wine, put on sunscreen, etc. Emily and I went out one night hardcore, meaning me getting back at an 8:30 am - yikes! We were awesome because we went to a lot of places, some with foreigners, some with just Spaniards and danced it up. And then we hung out with some 30 yr old guys who were celebrating their friend getting married, but it wasn’t exactly a bachelor party or we wouldn’t have joined! We danced it up and impressed them with our Spanish. The next day I was DEAD and slept the whole day while Emily and Jen called me up thinking I was really in trouble. No, just in my bed, not being able to hear the vibrations of my phone.

This past week was blah because I had my talleres, or conferences/speeches for my university gender class. Themes were women and film, domestic violence, health and education. It was really boring, like super boring. The only good thing was the first day when we watched a short film by a Salmantina about a Bulgarian immigrant working as a prostitute in Spain, and the short won a Goya Award (Spain’s Oscar). Otherwise, I just got a ton of information that was basic and dumb. Smoking and lung cancer, who knew! I think Spaniards don’t get as much of an education dealing with smoking’s effects, I mean they knew, but they had some stupid questions. So now I have to write an 8 pg paper this week describing my reactions to such new and controversial information, blah.

Valencia! This past weekend Jen, Emily, Andrea and I went to the East coast to soak up some sun and see a different part of Spain. We went to the aquarium, which is the one with the most different species in the world. We were kind of cranky because of all the people and expensive food, especially after a ridiculously priced ticket. But I liked the sea lions, walruses and beluga whales. We also saw a dolphin show, which Andrea was super impressed by. The rest of us rated it as a normal dolphin show, ahaha. The architecture of the buildings are really cool, and I’ll post the pictures soon. In the science museum was an exhibit on X-MEN and Marvel heroes. I was the only one out of us who knew most of the characters there, what Sentinels were and wanted my face painted. Thanks to growing up with Mark and Andrew, I could appreciate it! Oh well. We were going to go out that night (Jen never does), but then a 40 yr old man showed up to stay in our room. We had booked an all girls room because it was Jen’s first (and only) hostel stay and she was already on edge because of the dirty, gender-blind bathrooms and not being able to sleep due to annoying French teens. So we debated about going out and decided on a drink and came back early to protect Jen. The guy came back late, slept and packed his shit up outside the room and left soon afterwards. It wasn’t bad. We also met a girl from Indy who came to the beach with us on Sunday. Sunscreen! I got burnt on my hair-part and a sliver on my left leg/ankle. Everyone else had more, and because they didn’t reapply, it was kind of splotchy in some areas. I swam in the Mediterranean Sea!! All of me, not just my legs. It was pretty cold, but I wanted to go all in. Afterwards I was super salty and my hair didn’t feel like hair. I also accidentally flashed my boobs to the world/surrounding people, but it obviously isn’t a big deal when there are young and old women topless around. Valencia was beautiful, lots of palm and exotic trees. Horchata is also big there which is strange since it’s not Spanish. We tried Agua de Valencia, a really good alcoholic drink. Overall, it was a good weekend.

So this/next week I’m writing a paper, studying, taking finals, partying it up like none other and preparing to leave Salamanca. I still have 3 weeks, but it feels really surreal that things are coming to an end.

A few observations:
1) French teens are the worst of all!! My host mom agrees actually. Groups in Salamanca are disrespectful, don’t listen, are loud, etc. Groups in hostels are loud, think they’re the shit, dry their hair at 3 in the morning and boys stare in the mirror while helping each other with their hair. My host mom says they’re smelly, dirty and really annoying to host when all they want to do is go out, ahaha.
2) Everyone is blaming Zapatero, Spain’s president, for the crisis and not doing anything to help. My host mom says you can’t just blame the government and that everyone is in crisis around the world. Poor Zapatero. People better not vote Partido Popular because of this.
3) Valenciano, a dialect of Catalan that they use in Valencia, is weird. It looks like Spanish and French mixed. I don’t think many people speak it, but the government has decided to label streets and plaques on buildings with it.
4) The bat or murcielago in Valencia is the symbol of it’s futbol team, it’s crown/corona emblem and on monuments. We asked a lot of people about it, and they were just like, “Yeah, it’s the symbol of the soccer team.” Finally someone told us that there is a park where bats fly around all the time. I wish we had had time to go see them!