Letter 3

And finally the latest one, sent out earlier tonight:

Buenos dias amigos y familia –

It’s been quite a while since my last letter and plenty of things have happened. I haven’t kept up with the blog, but I have some more pictures up once again. I just returned from my 11 day trip with Greg to Berlin, Prague and Amsterdam, but unfortunately I don’t have any of those pictures yet. I think I took about 800MB worth and Greg still has them all on his computer so it’ll be a bit before I get them posted… However I do have new pics up from the castle towns I’ve been to (a lot of the pictures are pretty nice if you view them full size):

http://community.webshots.com/user/hodag09

This last month has been a whirlwind of traveling and sightseeing. School has taken a backseat to experiencing the countryside and Spanish lifestyle (which I expected, but I’m getting pretty behind in my studies – the exam weeks in January are going to be wonderful).

A few random stories before I get to sharing the traveling news. Shane, a fellow Hodag, came to visit one weekend and it was a blast. We wandered around the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias one day, got in some Frisbee at the beach and had several late night Spanish lessons from my mentor and his friends. These are always the best – it’s oddly hilarious to the Spaniards whenever we learn their slang. If you want to know more about his visit (i.e the Red Bull and/or Marine stories) just ask.

I walked out after bartime one night (around 4am here – right before people leave to dance at the discotecas) to find about 30 guys playing soccer in the middle of a plaza downtown. I played with them for about an hour, and the experience was heightened by all the spectators who gathered and heckled the players every time they messed up or did something cool. I love that this Plaza de la Virgen, one of the more popular religious areas in Valencia, is used for both weddings and late night sports.

There’s been a noticeable difference in my figure since I arrived, thanks to Nutella and all the delicious but deadly bakeries around. I wanted something to stay in shape for Frisbee in the spring (one thing I can’t get at all here, it’s brutal) so I ended up joining the track team. It’s been quite relaxed so far – we actually don’t have real meets besides cross country until the spring so I don’t get to compete, but the workouts are making me feel better. It’s a great way to talk with people outside of class, and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. I also got on an indoor soccer team with some Germans and other Americans, and we have our first game tomorrow. I get to play goalie; it’s going to be reminiscent of my middle school days… except because the goal is so small in indoor soccer, the preferred tactic for scoring is kicking the ball through the goalie instead of past him.

My eating habits here, besides trying to sample as much as possible when I eat out, involve mostly bocadillos de jamon serrano and pasta (the most economical and tasty options). I’ve learned to love the bocadillo – basically sub sandwich bread with any manner of meats/cheeses. They’re easy and cheap and when you get them hot they’re unbelievable. I see this pretty often but it’s still amusing; a typical lunch is a bocadillo and a liter of beer to help you through classes. I really enjoy the meat based diet here, although they do eat some wildly strange cuisine in my opinion. You have to be careful what kind of meat you buy at the supermarket, and the local markets on Saturdays are ridiculous. The first time I stumbled upon one I definitely wasn’t prepared for it. Josh and I wandered around looking at skinned rabbits and random animal heads/brains (I thought one stand was keeping a cow with a lettuce necklace under the counter until I realized it was just the head) The fish stands sell creatures from the deep that I never thought would be edible - I definitely lose my appetite when the squid is bigger than my head, or the fish looks like one giant toothy mouth. Although I think the most culturally shocking one was the horse meat stand. This was the best because behind the counter they had several posters of stallions running wild through the mountains: and their meat in right front of you… ugh. But this aside, most of the more common meats (especially jamon – I’m going to miss that quite a lot upon my return to the States) are fantastic. The Spaniards love their jamon, chorizo and salchichon. The attached picture is an advertisement for jamon I saw while visiting Morella several weekends ago. Their faces say it all – they take it seriously here (haha).

I’m surrounded by historic towns here, and I’ve visited 3 ancient castles so far this month. 9 other students and I took a trip one weekend to visit 2 of these towns, Morella and Sagunto. Morella is an entire fortress town on a hilltop (almost all fortresses are on the highest ground around for security’s sake) surrounded by over 2 km of walls and overlooked by an old castle. It’s apparently one of the oldest continually inhabited towns in Spain. We rented two cars and drove the 3 hours through the mountains to the north to find this place, and it was definitely worth it. The scenery getting there was pretty spectacular (reminding me slightly of New Mexico with the shrubs and desert landscape), and the town itself was inspiring. The pictures that I have hardly do it justice; it’s impossible to explain how intimidating it looked upon approaching, or how historical (for lack of a better word) it felt inside the walls. It was just like I would have expected an old town in Spain to be – thin streets lined with high white buildings and lots of local bakeries and restaurants filled with people. It got a bit touristy in places but that didn’t take much away from the old time feel of the place. I don’t have many pictures from the top because we had to sneak past the construction and couldn’t go near the edges – we would have been kicked out if they found us.

That night we drove back into the mountains, then off the road for about a quarter mile into a valley where we decided to camp for the night. We had just set up camp amongst the cow patties without thinking about it when we heard a bell clanging a short distance off. As I wandered over to see what it was in my bright red Wisconsin sweatshirt I discovered a massive black bull with a bell around its neck approaching our campsite. I was worried about being a giant target until the Germans told me that bulls are actually colorblind and what makes them angry is large amounts of movement. I took their word for it and we headed back while staying out of sight. Now we decided that it was going to be too much trouble to pack up and look for somewhere else, so we moved the cars into a V shape close to a fence so that we would have somewhere to hide in case the bull decided to disturb us. After a great grilled chicken dinner we went to sleep around the fire hoping that it would ward off our unwanted guest. Everything was fine until we were awakened in the middle of the night by a series of bell clangs and noises that sounded like the bull was either dying or trying to crush something close by. After a few minutes of wondering whether we would have to make a dash for it the noises subsided and the bull quieted down… Thankfully we didn’t hear from him or see him the next morning, but it was an interesting night sleeping a hundred yards away from such a massive animal.

The next day we checked out a town called Sagunto on the way home, which is about 30km north of Valencia. This one was a much larger castle but in worse shape, and the town below was much more modern. We arrived in the middle of a medieval fair and headed up the hill after watching an old man lead a parade of ducks through the crowd like a shepherd. The hilltop castles have great views from the top, but it’s quite a hike. I kept imagining myself having to storm this castle in full armor – I wouldn’t have lasted very long in my current shape. But in the year 2006 I managed to make it to conquer and make it to the top (see the victorious webshot pic).

The 3^rd castle that I’ve seen here is in a town called Xativa, and while it was still in very good shape it was also quite the tourist spectacle. I went on a day trip today to check it out, and I think that the scenery outside of the castle here was my favorite. On one side of the hilltop you had the old town and the other there was a valley with mountains in the distance. Surprisingly, the acoustics up at the top were incredible – we heard conversations that were happening almost a mile away at the bottom, and a crowd cheering a soccer game further away in the town. One off the main attractions of this castle was the prison, in which they apparently incarcerated plenty of famous people (oddly enough, they listed them all in the program they gave us). Out of the three, Morella had the best historic feel, but I liked Xativa the best because of the great views.

Well I’m off to catch up on some sleep before a lab tomorrow, I hope everything is going well back home. The Badgers continue their win streak, and the 49ers actually won a game so everything seems right in the world! I know Greg has already sent out details of our trip to some of you, but when I get the pictures I’ll write something to go along with them for anybody who hasn’t heard about it. As always, it’s great to hear from everybody!

‘ta luego,

Will

Letter 2

Here's letter number two, written about a month into the visit after I had kind of settled down in Valencia:

Hola todos -

It was great to hear from those of you who wrote back, thanks a bunch - I hope to keep hearing some news from home! So I think this email may be even longer than the first, but there are plenty of strange, interesting and above all hilarious things that have happened to me in the last 2 weeks. I also tried to start a blog – who knows how much I’ll use it, but hopefully I’ll keep up with it and won’t write essays every few weeks. I have some pictures online now and there are enough that it would be too hard to send them all through email. Here’s the websites for those that are interested:

http://community.webshots.com/user/hodag09

http://lokkevalencia.blogspot.com/

The blog is still pretty sparse – so far I only have one of the first letters home and part of this one, but I’ll add to it soon.

My last week in Gandia was awesome (after I finally received my last bag from British Airways); I’ll admit that I studied less for that course than I have for any other in my life. Everybody else was in the same boat, because as long as we passed, we got credit and grades didn’t transfer. Thus most of the nights left us with good memories and a lack of sleep. I was actually a little relieved to get settled down and moved into my apartment in Valencia. The only problem was that I hadn’t found one yet.

I began looking for my place in Valencia during the second week in Gandia. I had figured that it would be no problem, but didn’t realize that the University gives almost no help to students looking to find apartments, aside from a printout of the daily listings online. They have student dorms available, but the price is roughly 3 times that of an average apartment in the city! I’m surprised anyone stays in them, but apparently they get enough students to keep them running. The apartment market in Valencia is more intense than anything I’ve witnessed before. There are roughly 2500 exchange students at the Politecnica, and they’re all looking to stay with Spaniards in cheap housing. I must have looked at 20 different places within a week. This was a huge pain, especially because I had to arrange all the appointments on the phone – I immediately discovered that it’s really hard to understand Spaniards when they talk on the phone. I felt ridiculous every time I talked to someone, basically yelling in my 3^rd grade level Spanish, “OK GOOD, THEN I GO TO YOUR BUILDING AT 2 TODAY AND CALL YOU WHEN I AM CLOSE BY, THIS WORKS?”

I saw every type of apartment I could think of – from a 70’s style grandma’s apartment, to a sprawling penthouse with plasma TV (far too expensive), to a couple rooms barely large enough for a single bed and small dresser. In almost every case, the residents had a list of around 20 people they got to choose from, so I put my name down and never got called back. Finally, the morning I had to check out of my apartment in Gandia I put an ad out online saying that I was a student from the US who needed a place to stay – and it worked. That night I received a call from a Colombian guy and 2 german girls who were looking for someone fluent in English. It’s weird to be valued for my language, but it definitely got me a place to live for the semester.

So I’m living with Jorge, a Colombian engineering student who has been here for a few years, and two German exchange students Barbara and Sandrina. My room is big enough, and it’s close to the university and everything close by so I’m pretty satisfied. Although the two Germans are a little strange: they got excessively angry with me for leaving the toilet seat up a few times. Maybe that’s taboo in Germany, but it didn’t seem like a big enough deal to sit down and have a talk about the rules of the bathroom. Or perhaps it was their broken English/Spanish that made them seem angry, they don’t speak either very well… Whatever the case may be, I’m sure we’ll get along once we communicate better. I’m still working on forgetting English, but my Spanish is starting to come along much better. When I’m face to face with people I can have semi-normal conversations. It’s really good to practice with Jorge around the apartment. I feel like I’ll be speaking poor English and poor Spanish by the time I get back.

I only have 4 classes here, 3 engineering requirements and one Spanish language course (all in Spanish). The enrollment process is possibly the only thing more frustrating than finding an apartment. So far I’ve had about 5 visits to the international office to turn in different things: I hand in some papers then wait a few days to receive them back, then sign some more things and turn them in again and wait. I'm still not technically enrolled in any of my classes, and it's been 2 weeks. Everybody here is in the same boat, their system of incorporating international students is the tiniest bit disorganized... I miss the point and click method of enrolling at Wisconsin. The subjects are a little difficult, but the hardest part is understanding the teachers when they speak and explain topics quickly. I’m stuck flipping through my dictionary a lot of the time, feeling silly compared to everyone around me.

Anyways, I should cut this letter off: I have a tryout to get onto the swimming team here in about an hour. But in the next one I’ll finally share a bunch of awesome stories (and much less frustration/confusion) to tell about the fun I’ve had the past two weeks: playing soccer (both on a team at school and after bartime downtown), a fellow Hodag’s visit this past weekend, and going out with the Spaniards… Check out the pictures, leave comments if you’d like and please write!

‘ta luego,

Will

P.S. – This weekend I’ll be watching the Badger game (ESPN Gameplan = live games online, fantastic!) and grilling out in honor of PJ Hill’s Pregame Bash: I’ll miss that a lot, enjoy

Letter 1

Ok - many awesome times have gone down since that single post long ago. But I'm going to try to post more often now, so I'll start with a few of the letters that I've sent out, there have been 3 so far. They don't come close to telling everything, but it's a start and hopefully I'll keep it up from here. So without further ado, here's the letter sent my first week here in Spain:

Hola amigos!

I’ll be trying to write some emails every week or two with some interesting anecdotes/info and some updates from this semester in Valencia. Hopefully I won’t ramble on and on and bore you all and include pictures without taking over your inboxes. Perhaps a blog will be more appropriate so that anyone would be able to check whenever was convenient; I suppose I’ll have to decide that soon enough. But for now I wanted to keep in touch: I apologize if this first email is long, so much has happened in the first few days and I’m still really excited to be here.

I’ve been in Spain for about 5 days now and I’m still kind of getting situated. Internet access is hard to find, just a few internet cafes and hot spots for wireless, but hopefully when I get to my permanent address it will be easier. After saying leaving New York last Thursday I flew through the night to Heathrow in London. It’s still a disaster there, they have to cart everyone around the different terminals by bus, and every international flight has to be checked in through the rigorous security checkpoint again. Thankfully I didn’t miss the flight to Madrid, even though another student and I sprinted to our gate over 20 minutes late. When I arrived in Madrid, it turned out that British Airlines lost both of my bags, and so far they have only returned one of them and none of my calls. I still have no clothes except what I was wearing on the flight and several shirts and boxers I’ve purchased here. I stayed for 2 days in Madrid with the family of an exchange student we had stay with us a few years ago (Jose), getting my first taste of Spanish food and night life. Food here seems to center around meat and seafood with bread or rice. I went out for tapas the first night, a dinner composed of many appetizer sized plates that you keep ordering. I got my first taste of Spanish jamon Iberico (ham), solomillo con foie (sirloin with liver), stuffed salmon and even a type of steak tartar. I actually enjoyed all of it – this was probably because Jose wouldn’t tell me what anything was until after I ate it.

The second day I met up with my Spanish teacher from the spring and she took me around downtown Madrid. I really enjoyed the feel: very old/classic architecture with tons of people – including some street performers such as a matador and a man encrusted with mud so he looked like a statue. I saw the royal palace, a huge market and the Plaza del Sol which is kind of the central point of downtown. I had to go soon afterwards because I was waiting on my bags (only one of which arrived). The next day I took a bus straight to the beach in Gandia, on the Mediterranean coast just south of the island of Ibiza.

The program in Gandia is a 2 week long intensive Spanish course for the exchange students going to la Universidad Politecnica de Valencia in the fall. There are probably about 150 kids here, and about ¾ of them are from Germany including all 3 of my roommates for the 2 weeks. Apparently “double” and “single” rooms don’t mean the same thing as I had assumed: double means a double bed, not two in the same room. So I’ve been sleeping in the same full size bed as my large German roommate for the past few days, and will continue to for the next week and a half. Turns out he’s a really nice guy, we’ve had no problems and he speaks enough English that we can communicate. Most of the students here speak English pretty well; many of the Europeans know a lot of 2 or 3 languages. There are 7 Americans that I know of here, and 2 others from Madison. I see them enough, but have definitely been trying to spend time with the Europeans to practice Spanish a bit. I can get by speaking to locals in Spanish, but I’m still self conscious the entire time.

It still feels like I’m on vacation, because we only have 4 hours of class each day and spend the rest of the time on the fantastic Gandia beach. The Mediterranean Sea is amazingly warm; there’s been no cloudy days and beautiful weather in general. You can walk out into the surf about 60 yards and still stand in the clear blue water. I signed up for a windsurfing class, so I’ve been doing that for 3 hours each afternoon as well. The first day was incredible; before actually surfing we took kayaks way out into the sea and saw huge schools of large dark jellyfish as big as dinner plates, and some other random sea life. I saw no sharks but apparently some babies were spotted at one point - I’m a huge weenie when it comes to dangerous ocean life but other than that there’s been nothing to worry about. Windsurfing has been difficult but I’ve gotten good enough so that I can sail out a bit and come back without help. I’ve been really tired from the late nights – it’s kind of ridiculous how late the Spaniards stay out, most of them don’t show up to clubs or bars until around 4:30. There have been some hilarious times; more stories to come soon but this email is definitely starting to ramble and I need to get off the computer.

I don’t have many pictures at this point because I’ve only had my camera back for a short time, but I’ll send some of the beach, windsurfing and other good randomness soon. I’d love to hear from all of you, please keep me updated on your lives and about America in general – how are Wisconsin football and the fall semester going? I usually get a chance to check email once or twice a day so I’ll be able to write back soon.

Saludos,

Will

First time around the blog block

After the first letter home and lack of a better way to send pictures, I've decided to start this blog - mostly as a way for people to check in when they want and to avoid stuffing inboxes to their limits. I'll keep sending out the emails, but this blog will hopefully be a little more frequent with smaller enjoyable experiences! More will come soon, but I'm off to enjoy the last day of windsurfing and the subsequent sangria party :)