Covadonga, Llanes, Leon, and Salamanca

Plaza Mayor in Salamanca. This plaza is from the 18th century and is one of the main attractions for both tourists and Spaniards. It's basically just a big flat plaza enclosed by this 4 story building/wall with lots of shops and restaurants along the bottom. It was constantly filled with people while we were there, during the day and most of the night. by the way, we had some of the best kebab wraps of our entire lives in salamanca at these restaurants called doner kebab, so delicious. 

The weather in Leon and Salamanca was quite odd. We were in Leon for 2 days and each day was really warm, with temps in the middle 70s. At night, however, it would drop to the 40s (not 100% sure but it was cold). Then when we went to Salamanca, it was cold pretty much all day and night. We even had some random bouts of hail and snow while in Salamanca. That didn't stop me from taking my skateboard out one day, and without too much searching I found a really small skate park and had a short session in the hail. 

This is the view from our room on the 7th floor in a really nice hotel in Leon. 

This is part of our group at the top of a mountain trail in Covadonga. Covadonga is an area in Picos de Europa with some really big lakes surrounded by huge mountains. It was pretty warm that day ( i was wearing a t-shirt and pants) but there was still snow on parts of the trail we walked on. In this picture (from left to right): Gonzalo and Greta (our teachers/group coordinators), Emma (Greta's daughter), Lauren, a professional photographer from Asheville (Greta's friend), somebody being blocked by a bookbag, and Nadia.

One of the Covadonga lakes.

A great view from the trail in Covadonga.

MACBA

Here it is! Lauren took this video of me ollieing the MACBA 4. This 4 stair is one of the most famous skate spots in the world. It's about the size of a 12 stair and the roll up and landing are perfect. Right around the corner are a slew of nice marble ledges that are equally famous in the skate community. Enjoy!

This is Camp Nou, home field of FC Barcelona. This game was the main reason we came to Barcelona in the first place, and it was quite an experience. We got the cheap seats (30 euros) and were on the very top row of the entire stadium.
There were a lot of these trees at Parque Guell that had parrots (i think) flying around and making a lot of noise. 
This is me doing an amatuer-class trick at one of the many world-class skate spots in Barcelona 
This is a giant sculpture of a spider, located right outside of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, pretty creepy looking thing.

This is just one example of the cool modern architecture around Bilbao.

This is my friend Seth striking an epic pose in Playa de Somo (near Santander).
This is my board! Full and Cas (Spanish brand) 6'3''. It got a little crack in it the second day i took it out, which bummed me out, but I'm going to get it fixed soon enough.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

So I’ve started getting kind of slow with the updates. I’ve done a good amount of traveling over the past two weeks with trips to Bilbao and Barcelona. I went to Bilbao 2 weeks ago on a group excursion (one of the trips planned out for us ahead of time). Bilbao is the major city of the Basque region, which boarders France in the Northeastern corner of Spain. The Basque people speak Euskara, which is an incredibly unique language that cannot be traced back to any other language (like Latin, for instance). The Basque culture is very rich and deeply rooted, which is one of the reasons why the Basque separatists want to be independent from Spain. The Euskara language is filled with lots of ‘k’s and ‘x’s, and is not really that close to Castillan Spanish, which we are learning. Luckily for us, pretty much every person in Bilbao speaks Castillan Spanish, as well as more than a little English.

 

We were given a brief history of Bilbao along with our tour. Apparently, not too long ago, Bilbao was very dirty. The river that runs through the city was incredibly polluted with sewage waste. Bilbao had a bad reputation of being a grimy port city. So, the city officials decided the completely revamp their image, cleaning the river and the city as well. They also won the bid for the construction of the Guggenheim Museum, an incredible work of architecture which is now the main tourist attraction in the city (with good reason). Since this city-wide revamp, Bilbao is now filled with modern art sculptures, statues, and modern architecture. Bilbao still has an older part of town, with narrow alleyways speckled with small shops and 5 or 6 story apartment buildings, which seems to be common of many European cities.

 

The Guggenheim was definitely an interesting experience. The artwork inside was a mix of giant geometric obstacles to walk through on the first floor and some really crazy sculptures and artwork by the Japanese artist Muruagi on the 3^rd floor. Muruagi’s work was a mix of pop Japanese culture, anime, and graffiti. In one room we watched the video Muruagi made for Kanye West’s song Good Morning. In another room a full size naked anime girl transformed into a fighter jet plane and some sort of robot. Crazy.

 

The week following Bilbao not too much happened. One of my friends on the trip had a birthday and we celebrated that night on the beach, which was fun. My computer also broke that week (the monitor went black) and took me a week to fix it (it works now). Other than that, pretty uneventful week.

 

This past weekend (March 5-8), I went to Barcelona with about half of my group. Barcelona was AMAZING. The city is huge but still holds an irresistible charm to it. This was my first time flying with RyanAir, and I’ve got a couple things to say about them first of all. We flew out of Santander Thursday night around 10:30 PM, in one of the windiest days that we have had here so far. I think every other airline would have delayed our flight or cancelled it altogether, but not RyanAir. We took off 5 minutes early, and after 30 minutes of smooth flying, we began our descent back to the ground, only to be bombarded with turbulence. Sitting in the plane felt like being on a dizzying roller coaster. It was really rough, but we landed safely and gave the pilot a round of applause. I don’t know if it was the wind or not, but we got to Barcelona 30 min ahead of schedule. 

I'll update more later.

Pictures

The first one is me, the second one is mi amigo Martin from Austria striking a pose.

SURFING

It's about time for an update. Since the last update, I have had a mix of some boring days and some non-stop, exciting days.

Wednesday (the 18th) was a boring day. I had class until about 12pm as usual, then went home and didn't really do much else for the rest of the day.

Thursday (the 19th) was much more exciting. I had class as usual until 12, then went home for lunch and a short siesta, and back to the university for some pick-up soccer. Every Thursday the main international group at the University, AEGEE, hosts a pick up game. Apparently they usually play outdoors on a field, but for some reason they couldn't get the field this Thursday, so we had to play indoors at the gym. It was great to play some real soccer again, it's been months since the last time I played. A lot of kids showed up to play, with varying ability levels. We played 5 v. 5 games and there ended up being about 6 different teams. After soccer, all the Carolinians met up at an internet cafe to discuss travel plans for the following months. We decided to go to Barcelona for 3 days to watch a soccer match and see the city. After the cafe, I ate some calamari and had a beer at a small bar in downtown, then headed to the beach to play what my friend and I thought would be a friendly game of ultimate frisbee. It turned out to be an organized practice for a small, local ultimate frisbee club. They players were really nice, they were happy to have my friend (Seth) and I join for the practice, but we had no idea what we were getting into. All we did was intense running drills on the beach, which was cold and very difficult. After playing soccer earlier in the day, Seth and I definitely did not have the energy for this intense work out. We parted ways and I went home for a good nights sleep.

Friday (the 20th) was another pretty busy day. After class I was running back and forth between my house and the school to eat food with my family then use the internet. I also walked down to the beach to check the waves (not very good) because I was dying to get in the water, but decided against it. Friday night I met up with a couple Carolinians and we went to an apartment of these Lithuanian kids we met during orientation. We had a few beers at their apartment, when a few other international kids met up with us and we went in a big group to a couple bars and dance clubs around the city. I stayed out with the group until about 4:3o am, when I finally had to call it a night and walk home. We had a blast going to a couple different places and dancing to a crazy mix of 90s and 2000s American and European music. 4:30 is actually fairly early to retire here in Santander, many people stay out until 6 or 7 am on the weekends. I can't make it that late...

Saturday (the 21st) I finally got to go surfing! My madre took me to a nearby town called Liencres to check out the beach over there. The waves are typically much bigger here than in Santander, due to the direction of the beach and the fact that it is not protected much from the Atlantic swells. There was a rental surf shop there, but it was closed until summer. We went back to Santander and saw that there were a lot of surfers in the water there and that the waves looked pretty good! I asked my madre to drop me off at the surf shop where I rented a 6'2'' rental board, changed into my wetsuit, and ran to the water. I met up with a guy from Austria named Martin who I had met the night before who surfs. We paddled out and caught some pretty fun waist - chest high waves! My friend Seth got a couple good pictures of us and when he uploads them on his computer I will post them on here for you all.

Friday and Saturday was the celebration of Carnaval in Spain. There were parades, concerts, and people dressed up in elaborate costumes everywhere. I watched the parades and concerts Saturday night for a while, which were pretty interesting to see. The parades and concerts were all over by around midnight and after that I went to a couple bars to meet up with some friends and have a drink.

Sunday (the 22nd) I went surfing again! Martin and his friends from Europe picked me up in his "surf bus." This thing is the classic surf-bum vehicle. They named it Charlie, which they wrote in green marker on the back of the van. The inside has a wide open cabin for boards and many rips and signs of wear and tear. Apparently they drove it from Austria to Spain, a trip that lasted about 2 days. I felt honored to be included in this sweet crew. We went to Playa de Somo, where the waves were about head high but breaking in really strange places. It was hard to surf, and the couple waves I caught closed out on me pretty quickly, but it was fun nonetheless.

Okay I'll post some pictures to accompany this in a couple days. Until then, hasta luego.

Feb 12th

This is the best picture I got of the surf 2 days ago. It was an amazing day, this wave is probably 12-14 feet tall. This picture shows the rocks that jet out into the middle of the beach and the lighthouse on the small island in the background. I can't wait to actually get in the water.

This shot is from a long strip of shops right on the beach. They all seemed to be closed for the winter, and the graffiti covering every inch of the wall made the place look pretty sketchy. Even so, I found this yellow guy hanging out by the entrance. He seems pretty happy just to be here.




These are all pictures from my casa. The first is a really old violin that my madre said was used by her grandfather. Above the violin is a pretty intense head-statue of Beethoven (I think). The second picture is of the Huidobro family shield. Huidobro is my madres surname and I thought this shield was really cool. I wish I had a Peifer shield.


Ok so the last update was kind of short, considering I have now been here for 5 days. Each day has been busier than the last. We have been introduced to the University of Cantabria (UniCan) where we will be taking classes. It's a pretty cool place, tiny compared to NC State. The classrooms are about the same as ours in the States, with the same uncomfortable desk-chairs. There is a small dining hall in the main school building that serves beer, which I will take advantage of soon enough.

We have been going on some orientation excursions for the past 2 days. They are very tiring and touristy, but we've gotten to meet and get to know the other international students. So far I've met people from Australia, Belgium, England, Mexico, Slovakia, Italy, and France (and Florida). They all seem pretty nice. I spent today walking around with 2 of the Mexicans, Barco and Mayra. They barely speak any English, so we had a lot of small talk in Spanish.

We've gone to some beautiful places on these excursions the past 2 days. I will upload some more photos in my next post, but right now I've got to get home for dinner (it's 9pm here, usually dinner is around 9:30 in my house).

First Post: 02/11/09

Hey everybody, I made it successfully to Spain. I took a flight on Friday, Feb. 6^th from Charlotte airport to Newark, New Jersey, and then to Madrid. The flight to Newark was not bad, only about 2 hours. We had about an hour layover and then hopped on a much bigger, more luxurious plane for the 7.5 hour ride to Madrid. Each seat on the plane had it’s own TV screen, but mine didn’t work, so I slept a little and read a lot.

This is my friend Lauren from NC State. I've known her for about a year now. I signed up for this trip not expecting to know anyone else on it, so I was pleasantly surprised when I found out she was going too.

This was the first time that I had actually met and talked to the majority of my study abroad group. It went much better than I had expected, we all got along really well and found plenty to talk about. Everybody was equally excited about finally getting this trip started. I tried to learn everyone’s name, but with a group of 16 students I knew it would take me a while. I have to admit that I still don’t know quite everyone’s name.

For some reason the 3 hours of sleep that I got on the plane were enough to give me some surprising energy, or maybe it was just excitement that we had finally arrived in Europe. Either way, I got off the plane with everybody else ready to GO. We still had a bit of a trek to go from Madrid to Santander, a 5 hour bus ride to be exact, but I knew there would be plenty of things to see en route to the city to make it enjoyable.

The impression that I got from Madrid was interesting. There was so much graffiti. It seemed like every blank wall or solid fence was covered in graffiti. It was a mix of legitimate tags that people put a lot of thought into and just random phrases or names. I also saw the biggest lot of cars I have ever seen before, it must have been a huge dealership or maybe a factory? I don’t know.

I'll update this more later. I still don't have internet access at my house yet, so I'm using an internet cafe in the downtown area. Hopefully I'll get it fixed at my house soon though. Until then, here are some pictures of the surf that I'll be getting on in a few days now.....