I realize I haven't written in a while. Apologies, but it was on purpose. As you've probably come to notice, my posts on my travels are long, and with finals looming and papers to write, I decided to save summaries for my trips to places for a cohesive effort when I'm back in the US and can reflect a little better on Paris, Barcelona, and Jaen.
Tomorrow, I have to leave Granada at 6 pm to grab a bus to Madrid. My flight leaves at the extremely inconvenient time of 7 AM from Madrid Barajas, and when you factor in traveling time, plus subway hours, this is unfortunately, the best way to go. I leave the Kingdom of Spain and Debbie will pick me up at the airport at 6:35 PM on Saturday, where for the first time since August, I can say "hi" to her horse, the cats, and Timmy (of course).
However, I do want to say this is my last night in Granada, and I want to give it a goodbye, both on my blog and when I go out tonight in a little bit. Although I've done a lot of moving around a lot this past year, Granada has been an amazing experience, and one I will doubtless recall many times for the rest of my life. I was clearing out my room in the Residencia when I came across the study abroad guide that Brandeis gave us. I started flipping through it until I came to the page about the 5 stages of studying abroad.
1. Entry
2. Euphoria
3. Irritation
4. Adjustment/Biculturalism
5. Re-entry
Most of this is nonsense, but the bicultural part rings true. Although I've only been here for 3 and a half months, there's something about taking an extended stay in a different culture that does change the way you think, if only a little bit. Its like I've developed, or I am developing, a Spanish way of thinking and an American way of thinking. I don't know if it'll last when I return to the states but its kind of interesting.
Anyway, I am looking forward to going home. As awesome an experience as this has been, this hasn't been my real life. I'm taking easier classes, and although some are interesting, I kind of feel like I'm sort of treading water on a lot of important things.
Thus, I head out in a few to bid Granada goodbye and give it one last hurrah before I put it up on the shelf of my little pantheon of nostalgia. Tomorrow Madrid, and then at 7 am Saturday morning, my flight leaves for London and from there, to home.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home. It sure as hell doesn't feel like Thanksgiving here (i.e., I almost forgot).
I'm leaving on a jet plane tonight, so enjoy the turkey without me.
I'm leaving on a jet plane tonight, so enjoy the turkey without me.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Notice
Quick note:
I promised a post today, and I started composing a draft, but I really couldn't finish due to schedule/course load. I have it about half-finished.
On a side note, I bought stamps today at the post office, so some of my lucky readers will be receiving post cards soon. The rest of you will have to wait until after I return from Barcelona.
Goodnight!
I promised a post today, and I started composing a draft, but I really couldn't finish due to schedule/course load. I have it about half-finished.
On a side note, I bought stamps today at the post office, so some of my lucky readers will be receiving post cards soon. The rest of you will have to wait until after I return from Barcelona.
Goodnight!
Voyages through Other People's Memories
Hola, Salut, Shalom, Salaam 'Aleikum
Gracie, i aprenc el catala, tambe.
I'm expanding the international vocabulary, slowly but sure, especially Catalan before I fly to Barcelona. I still think its a mistake of history that Castillian became the language of the Spanish empire instead of Catalan. Catalan is a more fluid language, and easier on the ears to boot.
Anyway, recap time.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been to Cadiz, Jerez de la Frontera, and Jaen. Of the three, gotta say Jerez is my favorite.
The Saturday before last, our school organized all of us who'd signed up for the trip at 7:30 AM and we departed for the coast. Spain may not be as big as the U.S., but don't be fooled: It's still the second largest country in the EU. We arrived at a horse farm outside of Jerez 4 hours later, and naturally, I slept the entire way through.
The horse farm in Jerez wasn't that special for me, a) having grown up in the Midwest, farms are old hat, and b) since living with Debbie, horses are even older. However, I will say this. Debbie, if you read my blog, get excited. I saw some real-life Andalucian horses, and they are every bit as cool as their reputation. Their gate was extremely distinctive: on a human, it would be called a military march. I haven't seen horses with that much dignity and natural distinction in my entire life. So in that sense, I wasn't entirely bored while all of the girls went "OHMIGOD LOOK AT THE PRETTY HORSES".
Our program director managed to pry the girls back onto the bus and we headed towards Jerez proper for lunch. Jerez is a very old city (like every other one in Spain), but not a very big one. The main square stretched lazily outwards, and the main avenues connected to the expansive center almost as an afterthought. Unlike Granada, which has very few wide streets, I found a cafe to have lunch with Lauren that was smack-dab in the middle of one of the main roads leading off of the plaza. The restaurant was nice, (can't beat a salami bocadillo), and we rendezvoused back up with our group to go the big attraction of Jerez: The sherry company.
As I mentioned in the post before last, Jerez is the home of sherry, the fortified wine that is internationally famous, thanks to the large Irish colony that lived in Cadiz (only about 20 miles away) for centuries. The Irish of Cadiz were very wealthy, and leveraged their business contacts with the Spanish Main with their native ties to the British Isles to make huge fortunes. Part and parcel of doing business, of course, is wine, and sherry quickly made its way from Cadiz to London and Dublin, and from there, the English-speaking world. The winery was cool; they toured us around on a toy train and at the end of the visit, we got to sample some sherry and port. Was not impressed by either, but I acknowledge that my wine palatte remains undeveloped. Then, after being in and out of the gift shop, we got back on the bus and headed to Cadiz.
Now Cadiz, I was looking forward to the most, and I guess that's why I was relatively disappointed. It wasn't just a lack of famous historical sites; that's not so important to me if a city has a good vibe. Cadiz reminded me of Venice, especially in its peculiar geography. Cadiz is on a small, isolated spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, and at one time, was an island.
To this day, the medieval wall shoring up the far end of the peninsula still stands, although the Gaditanos (the demonym of the citizens of that old city), have cleverly remade the old wall into a beautiful arched gateway:
Our hotel was located in the heart of old Cadiz, but still. Something wasn't quite right, although I couldn't put my finger on it.
I had dinner with some friends and the program director joined us. It was pretty cool to talk to Javier; he's an interesting guy. Born in Galicia, got his doctorate in the US at the University of Kansas, married a Kansan, and taught at Washington State before moving back to Spain to run a study abroad program, first the one in Madrid, and then 2 years ago, starting the one in Granada himself. Certainly, I have a lot of respect for his wife, who agreed to move to Spain knowing almost no Spanish. She seems to be fitting in all right, given that she accompanied Javier on our trip.
Next day, we went to a Spanish National Park at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river (interestingly enough, that name is a distortion of the Arabic "Wadi Al-Kabir", the Big River, or as the Spanish say, the Rio Grande) and we got a tour on ATVs. It was really cool. We didn't get to see any lynx, but we saw several wild boar. Quite an experience.
After that, we piled our tired bodies back on to the bus and headed back for Granada. With 4 hours ahead of us, I managed to chat with a few people and finished my cultural history of Al-Andalus (some of which provided fodder for my own reflections on Andalucia).
This past weekend, I spent most of my time here in Granada laboring on various papers, but on Saturday, my friend Hillary and I set out for Jaen. And actually, I can get real pictures of Jaen, so I'll write about it in a joint post with Barcelona.
*Exit state left*
Gracie, i aprenc el catala, tambe.
I'm expanding the international vocabulary, slowly but sure, especially Catalan before I fly to Barcelona. I still think its a mistake of history that Castillian became the language of the Spanish empire instead of Catalan. Catalan is a more fluid language, and easier on the ears to boot.
Anyway, recap time.
In the past 2 weeks, I've been to Cadiz, Jerez de la Frontera, and Jaen. Of the three, gotta say Jerez is my favorite.
The Saturday before last, our school organized all of us who'd signed up for the trip at 7:30 AM and we departed for the coast. Spain may not be as big as the U.S., but don't be fooled: It's still the second largest country in the EU. We arrived at a horse farm outside of Jerez 4 hours later, and naturally, I slept the entire way through.
The horse farm in Jerez wasn't that special for me, a) having grown up in the Midwest, farms are old hat, and b) since living with Debbie, horses are even older. However, I will say this. Debbie, if you read my blog, get excited. I saw some real-life Andalucian horses, and they are every bit as cool as their reputation. Their gate was extremely distinctive: on a human, it would be called a military march. I haven't seen horses with that much dignity and natural distinction in my entire life. So in that sense, I wasn't entirely bored while all of the girls went "OHMIGOD LOOK AT THE PRETTY HORSES".
Our program director managed to pry the girls back onto the bus and we headed towards Jerez proper for lunch. Jerez is a very old city (like every other one in Spain), but not a very big one. The main square stretched lazily outwards, and the main avenues connected to the expansive center almost as an afterthought. Unlike Granada, which has very few wide streets, I found a cafe to have lunch with Lauren that was smack-dab in the middle of one of the main roads leading off of the plaza. The restaurant was nice, (can't beat a salami bocadillo), and we rendezvoused back up with our group to go the big attraction of Jerez: The sherry company.
As I mentioned in the post before last, Jerez is the home of sherry, the fortified wine that is internationally famous, thanks to the large Irish colony that lived in Cadiz (only about 20 miles away) for centuries. The Irish of Cadiz were very wealthy, and leveraged their business contacts with the Spanish Main with their native ties to the British Isles to make huge fortunes. Part and parcel of doing business, of course, is wine, and sherry quickly made its way from Cadiz to London and Dublin, and from there, the English-speaking world. The winery was cool; they toured us around on a toy train and at the end of the visit, we got to sample some sherry and port. Was not impressed by either, but I acknowledge that my wine palatte remains undeveloped. Then, after being in and out of the gift shop, we got back on the bus and headed to Cadiz.
Now Cadiz, I was looking forward to the most, and I guess that's why I was relatively disappointed. It wasn't just a lack of famous historical sites; that's not so important to me if a city has a good vibe. Cadiz reminded me of Venice, especially in its peculiar geography. Cadiz is on a small, isolated spit of land jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean, and at one time, was an island.
To this day, the medieval wall shoring up the far end of the peninsula still stands, although the Gaditanos (the demonym of the citizens of that old city), have cleverly remade the old wall into a beautiful arched gateway:
Our hotel was located in the heart of old Cadiz, but still. Something wasn't quite right, although I couldn't put my finger on it.
I had dinner with some friends and the program director joined us. It was pretty cool to talk to Javier; he's an interesting guy. Born in Galicia, got his doctorate in the US at the University of Kansas, married a Kansan, and taught at Washington State before moving back to Spain to run a study abroad program, first the one in Madrid, and then 2 years ago, starting the one in Granada himself. Certainly, I have a lot of respect for his wife, who agreed to move to Spain knowing almost no Spanish. She seems to be fitting in all right, given that she accompanied Javier on our trip.
Next day, we went to a Spanish National Park at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river (interestingly enough, that name is a distortion of the Arabic "Wadi Al-Kabir", the Big River, or as the Spanish say, the Rio Grande) and we got a tour on ATVs. It was really cool. We didn't get to see any lynx, but we saw several wild boar. Quite an experience.
After that, we piled our tired bodies back on to the bus and headed back for Granada. With 4 hours ahead of us, I managed to chat with a few people and finished my cultural history of Al-Andalus (some of which provided fodder for my own reflections on Andalucia).
This past weekend, I spent most of my time here in Granada laboring on various papers, but on Saturday, my friend Hillary and I set out for Jaen. And actually, I can get real pictures of Jaen, so I'll write about it in a joint post with Barcelona.
*Exit state left*
Monday, November 19, 2007
Ten piedad para el ciego; no hay una pena mas profunda que ser ciego en Andalucia
"Ten piedad en el ciego; no hay una pena mas profunda que ser ciego en Granada."
"Take pity on the blind man; there is no deeper shame than to be blind in Granada."
The same really could be true of Andalucia.
Surrealism, the famous art and literary movement had its start here in Andalucia, and it is no accident. The Spanish relationship with reality has been touch and go since the time of Don Quixote, but modern Spain all the more so. To the untrained eye, Spain appears as an undifferentiated pillar of Western Europe: Another faded glory integrating itself yearly more and more deeply into the Holy Trinity of Modern Europe: The EU, Xenophobia, and Secularism. However, here on the ground, I have to admit I feel like reality is much thinner here. After being here longer than a week, you start to get the sensation that things aren't really as they seem. After another week, you begin to have the feeling that you're REALLY missing something. Soon, there's a quiet voice warning you that if you look closely, the facade could crumble around any corner at any moment. A lot of the sensation has to do with the realization that Spain isn't a real country.
Not real in the sense of France or the U.S. Spain is an amalgam of several different petty kingdoms, cultures, and languages. Even 500 years after unification, the bruising experiences of the Civil War, the dictatorship, the Inquisition, and the various uprisings, insurgencies, and foreign invasions that have been the sad, long story of this country since the Roman period have left a tell-tale mark on this land. No place more so than Andalucia, the poorest corner of Western Europe. Andalucia, where New Christians were especially targeted by the Inquisition, based in Cordoba in fact, and pork-eating was seen as a social declaration of your faith. In this place, where out of my window is a Carthusian monastery that was a former mosque, and I pass beneath the shadow of one of the mightiest memory palaces in the world every morning. The surreal is going to the Grand Mosque and being struck by the absurdity of graceful Muslim arches being adorned by plaster cherubs. Even within the walls of the Alhambra, the heart of the complex was razed and rebuilt as a palace for the Emperor Charles V. Not only is it jarring to see such an ostentatiously neo-classical edifice in what is obviously a Muslim structure, but it doesn't mitigate the sense of something amiss to find script from the Qur'an adorned on every wall.
The Grand Mosque is a good metaphor for Andalucians. The polish and veneer of Castillianess is not only completely unconvincing, but even a casual glance reveals the ineffectiveness at the attempts to remake Andalucia into just another version of Castille and Leon. It did not end even by the 20th century. Whereas in the 1500's, the good Catholics of Seville, Toledo, and Granada had to wonder if their neighbors were secret Jews and Muslims, in the time of the Franco dictatorship, the modern religions (fascism and communism) did battle, with the good old Guardia Civil wondering if the pedestrian who had just spat in their direction was a secret Republican sympathizer. (3 guesses which province Franco drew the most support from, and its definitely not here. I have never seen so much anti-Fascist graffiti in my entire life). It is telling that the hero of Granada isn't a general; its a gay playwright from the 1920's-30's who was killed by a fascist Falangist follower of Franco. The even named the airport after him!
(Is it any mistake that Don Quixote's windmills aren't in Castille and Leon, far to the north and the traditional heart of the Kingdom of Spain, but instead on the road between Granada and Madrid?)
Anyway, enough ruminating.
I wanted to share some thoughts with my readers on where I'm living; these past 2 weekends, I did some traveling around the province, to Jaen, Cadiz, and Jerez de la Frontera. Jaen, I doubt you've ever heard of. It deserves its obscurity. Cadiz is a bit more famous, as it has the distinction of both being the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, and as being the place where Columbus first set sail for the New World. Jerez de la Frontera is famous not because of history but because of its very name: most people in the English world know it as Sherry, the home of the eponymous wine. Additionally, Jerez is the home of Flamenco, and the famous Andalucian stallions. However, the "de la Frontera" part is important too. For 250 years, Jerez was on the border between the Castillian state and the rump state of Granada, the last Muslim emirate in Europe. Thus, if you travel in that region of Andalucia, almost every town bears the suffix "de la Frontera"= of the border.
I'll give a more detailed account of my travels tomorrow. Also, dear readers, this Thursday, I will once more be paying homage to Catalonia and I will fly to Barcelona Thanksgiving night.
"Take pity on the blind man; there is no deeper shame than to be blind in Granada."
The same really could be true of Andalucia.
Surrealism, the famous art and literary movement had its start here in Andalucia, and it is no accident. The Spanish relationship with reality has been touch and go since the time of Don Quixote, but modern Spain all the more so. To the untrained eye, Spain appears as an undifferentiated pillar of Western Europe: Another faded glory integrating itself yearly more and more deeply into the Holy Trinity of Modern Europe: The EU, Xenophobia, and Secularism. However, here on the ground, I have to admit I feel like reality is much thinner here. After being here longer than a week, you start to get the sensation that things aren't really as they seem. After another week, you begin to have the feeling that you're REALLY missing something. Soon, there's a quiet voice warning you that if you look closely, the facade could crumble around any corner at any moment. A lot of the sensation has to do with the realization that Spain isn't a real country.
Not real in the sense of France or the U.S. Spain is an amalgam of several different petty kingdoms, cultures, and languages. Even 500 years after unification, the bruising experiences of the Civil War, the dictatorship, the Inquisition, and the various uprisings, insurgencies, and foreign invasions that have been the sad, long story of this country since the Roman period have left a tell-tale mark on this land. No place more so than Andalucia, the poorest corner of Western Europe. Andalucia, where New Christians were especially targeted by the Inquisition, based in Cordoba in fact, and pork-eating was seen as a social declaration of your faith. In this place, where out of my window is a Carthusian monastery that was a former mosque, and I pass beneath the shadow of one of the mightiest memory palaces in the world every morning. The surreal is going to the Grand Mosque and being struck by the absurdity of graceful Muslim arches being adorned by plaster cherubs. Even within the walls of the Alhambra, the heart of the complex was razed and rebuilt as a palace for the Emperor Charles V. Not only is it jarring to see such an ostentatiously neo-classical edifice in what is obviously a Muslim structure, but it doesn't mitigate the sense of something amiss to find script from the Qur'an adorned on every wall.
The Grand Mosque is a good metaphor for Andalucians. The polish and veneer of Castillianess is not only completely unconvincing, but even a casual glance reveals the ineffectiveness at the attempts to remake Andalucia into just another version of Castille and Leon. It did not end even by the 20th century. Whereas in the 1500's, the good Catholics of Seville, Toledo, and Granada had to wonder if their neighbors were secret Jews and Muslims, in the time of the Franco dictatorship, the modern religions (fascism and communism) did battle, with the good old Guardia Civil wondering if the pedestrian who had just spat in their direction was a secret Republican sympathizer. (3 guesses which province Franco drew the most support from, and its definitely not here. I have never seen so much anti-Fascist graffiti in my entire life). It is telling that the hero of Granada isn't a general; its a gay playwright from the 1920's-30's who was killed by a fascist Falangist follower of Franco. The even named the airport after him!
(Is it any mistake that Don Quixote's windmills aren't in Castille and Leon, far to the north and the traditional heart of the Kingdom of Spain, but instead on the road between Granada and Madrid?)
Anyway, enough ruminating.
I wanted to share some thoughts with my readers on where I'm living; these past 2 weekends, I did some traveling around the province, to Jaen, Cadiz, and Jerez de la Frontera. Jaen, I doubt you've ever heard of. It deserves its obscurity. Cadiz is a bit more famous, as it has the distinction of both being the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe, and as being the place where Columbus first set sail for the New World. Jerez de la Frontera is famous not because of history but because of its very name: most people in the English world know it as Sherry, the home of the eponymous wine. Additionally, Jerez is the home of Flamenco, and the famous Andalucian stallions. However, the "de la Frontera" part is important too. For 250 years, Jerez was on the border between the Castillian state and the rump state of Granada, the last Muslim emirate in Europe. Thus, if you travel in that region of Andalucia, almost every town bears the suffix "de la Frontera"= of the border.
I'll give a more detailed account of my travels tomorrow. Also, dear readers, this Thursday, I will once more be paying homage to Catalonia and I will fly to Barcelona Thanksgiving night.
Friday, November 9, 2007
The Generalife in her labyrinth
A relatively uneventful week, since Mark and Marina left. Last weekend was a 4 day holiday, because all Catholic countries celebrate All Saint's Day on Nov. 1. Marina and Mark arrived late on Thursday, and by Sunday, when they left again, Scott and I had taken them to see Cordoba (just Marina, Mark had to work on a paper), the gardens of the Alhambra (Known as the Generalife, from a distortion of the Arabic "Jannat al-Rif"), and we just generally bummed around.
A note on the Alhambra. I want to clarify some things now. Although it is the most famous structure still remaining from the Muslim period here in Spain, it is more of a compound than a single unified structure. The foundation is the fortress, which is little more than a battery facing towards the city and a series of walls. Within, is a series of other buildings, including an inn, a world-class restaurant, the Palace of Charles V (Habsburg), the Generalife, and the absolutely incredible world-class treasure of the Nazari Palace, the palace of the last Muslim king.
The Alhambra is so popular that on Saturday morning, Scott got in line at 7:10, 50 minutes before the ticket office opened, and not only did all of the 2,000 tickets for the morning sell out, but all 3,000 did too by the time we arrived at the front. Thus, we were only able to show Marina and Mark the Generalife, which is sold separately. I must admit that I liked the gardens of the Alcazar of the Catholic Kings in Cordoba better, but this is not to impugn the Generalife. The coolest part was the water staircase
Essentially, the chutes are the handrails. Amazing.
Although this is far more prevalent inside the Nazari Palace, the Gardens are the only Muslim site in the world where the inscriptions on the walls are not verses from the Kor'an: They are instead poetry. This is important. Traditionally, secular Arabic poetry addresses itself to a female love, and the poetry within the Alhambra is no different. Seeing as how its hard to dedicate a fortress to your favorite concubine, the king's poet instead turned the gardens into the female love, and thus the subject of all of the odes to the "beautiful lover" is in praise of the natural beauty surrounding the emir. However, in a sense, it is the architect of the Generalife praising himself, having the workers inscribe these odes to the gardens on the walls of the the porticos of the complex. This vanity was not lost on the kings, and thus the garden's were given their proper name: Jannat al-Rif, the Architect's Garden, and thus distorted by the Spanish into the name "Generalife".
They left on Sunday, and I have spent the last week just taking care of business as normal. Or as normal as Spain can be. Wednesday, I had to watch 2 atrocious Spanish films in the surrealist style, which is often difficult to appreciate in English, let alone in the sheer absurdity that the Catalans have taken it to.
In another shot at my title, I have been watching with interest the events in Pakistan. Truly, history may not repeat itself but it knows how to keep a good beat. I am very curious to see how it all plays out. No matter what way you slice this one, Musharraf is going to lose and the U.S. can only hope we don't get dragged down with him. Our name has already been dragged through the mud enough these past few years.
Additionally, I am trying to set some groundwork for my return to Brandeis. Spring housing, employment, classes, even a summer job. Unfortunately, my vacation won't last forever.
On that last note, tomorrow, we're off to Cadiz and Jerez! I'll update again next week.
Vaya con Dios.
A note on the Alhambra. I want to clarify some things now. Although it is the most famous structure still remaining from the Muslim period here in Spain, it is more of a compound than a single unified structure. The foundation is the fortress, which is little more than a battery facing towards the city and a series of walls. Within, is a series of other buildings, including an inn, a world-class restaurant, the Palace of Charles V (Habsburg), the Generalife, and the absolutely incredible world-class treasure of the Nazari Palace, the palace of the last Muslim king.
The Alhambra is so popular that on Saturday morning, Scott got in line at 7:10, 50 minutes before the ticket office opened, and not only did all of the 2,000 tickets for the morning sell out, but all 3,000 did too by the time we arrived at the front. Thus, we were only able to show Marina and Mark the Generalife, which is sold separately. I must admit that I liked the gardens of the Alcazar of the Catholic Kings in Cordoba better, but this is not to impugn the Generalife. The coolest part was the water staircase
Essentially, the chutes are the handrails. Amazing.
Although this is far more prevalent inside the Nazari Palace, the Gardens are the only Muslim site in the world where the inscriptions on the walls are not verses from the Kor'an: They are instead poetry. This is important. Traditionally, secular Arabic poetry addresses itself to a female love, and the poetry within the Alhambra is no different. Seeing as how its hard to dedicate a fortress to your favorite concubine, the king's poet instead turned the gardens into the female love, and thus the subject of all of the odes to the "beautiful lover" is in praise of the natural beauty surrounding the emir. However, in a sense, it is the architect of the Generalife praising himself, having the workers inscribe these odes to the gardens on the walls of the the porticos of the complex. This vanity was not lost on the kings, and thus the garden's were given their proper name: Jannat al-Rif, the Architect's Garden, and thus distorted by the Spanish into the name "Generalife".
They left on Sunday, and I have spent the last week just taking care of business as normal. Or as normal as Spain can be. Wednesday, I had to watch 2 atrocious Spanish films in the surrealist style, which is often difficult to appreciate in English, let alone in the sheer absurdity that the Catalans have taken it to.
In another shot at my title, I have been watching with interest the events in Pakistan. Truly, history may not repeat itself but it knows how to keep a good beat. I am very curious to see how it all plays out. No matter what way you slice this one, Musharraf is going to lose and the U.S. can only hope we don't get dragged down with him. Our name has already been dragged through the mud enough these past few years.
Additionally, I am trying to set some groundwork for my return to Brandeis. Spring housing, employment, classes, even a summer job. Unfortunately, my vacation won't last forever.
On that last note, tomorrow, we're off to Cadiz and Jerez! I'll update again next week.
Vaya con Dios.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Crackin' down
It's time to crack down.
My free time will now equal math. I need to get back into math-shape. Otherwise, I'll be 'jodido' this coming semester.
All right, more later. I'm off to class.
My free time will now equal math. I need to get back into math-shape. Otherwise, I'll be 'jodido' this coming semester.
All right, more later. I'm off to class.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
And so it goes
Well, the half-way point of my sojourn in Espana has come and gone.
Et aujourd'hui, c'est Halloween!
Those two sentiments pretty much sum up the experience. My Spanish is much better than I ever could have hoped for, but I just recently realized something: my French is deteriorating at a asymptotic pace. I recently tried to do the months of the year, and I couldn't without some help. Forming simple sentences is difficult, and to hell with longer ones. I can still read it (Thank you, random stranger who translated a "South Park" episode into French), but all the same, it seems like one language is indeed coming along at the expense of another. Alas.
Additionally, no matter what anyone may tell you about how much the rest of the world hates America (and they do), the southern Europeans, at least, cannot seem to get enough of our culture. They know our movies. They listen to our music. They steal our words. And even now, I see kids walking up and down the streets of Granada in Halloween costumes. Just tonight, there was a crowd of thronging college kids pushing to get into a costume shop. It was a bit unbelievable.
Not much doing today; midterms went well and classes are chugging along at their lethargic pace. Viva Espana.
Et aujourd'hui, c'est Halloween!
Those two sentiments pretty much sum up the experience. My Spanish is much better than I ever could have hoped for, but I just recently realized something: my French is deteriorating at a asymptotic pace. I recently tried to do the months of the year, and I couldn't without some help. Forming simple sentences is difficult, and to hell with longer ones. I can still read it (Thank you, random stranger who translated a "South Park" episode into French), but all the same, it seems like one language is indeed coming along at the expense of another. Alas.
Additionally, no matter what anyone may tell you about how much the rest of the world hates America (and they do), the southern Europeans, at least, cannot seem to get enough of our culture. They know our movies. They listen to our music. They steal our words. And even now, I see kids walking up and down the streets of Granada in Halloween costumes. Just tonight, there was a crowd of thronging college kids pushing to get into a costume shop. It was a bit unbelievable.
Not much doing today; midterms went well and classes are chugging along at their lethargic pace. Viva Espana.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Serenissima
Italy, Italy, we're done for a while. Its been two quick flings, but let's face it sweetcheeks: you and I just ain't cut for each other.
Don't get me wrong; that last time especially was fun. But after the strike at Malpensa (foreshadowing: Malpensa roughly means "evil thought" in both Italian and Spanish) that delayed my flight to Madrid (la Realissima) for almost 5 hours, your capricious ways and fading looks just won't be enough to lure me back.
*Begin flashback*
The weekend previous was very slow, and a bit lonely. It was alleviated somewhat by spending some time with my friend Lauren, from El Paso by way of Amherst College. We get along well enough, and like to share jokes about Massachusetts. I do miss Brandeis, I will admit. But the longer I am here, the more I am convinced that this has been a great experience for me in more than just my resume, both academic and personal. I have learned a lot about how I interact with other people now that I've been stuck in a foreign culture for a month and a half and I hope to learn even more in my remaining time here.
I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling unusually exhausted. I was naturally more than a little confused, considering I had just gotten a full night's sleep. Within about 5 minutes, my excessively runny nose told the tale: I had a head cold.
I spent the next 48 hours in a bit of a fog, but by Thursday I was feeling better after I aggressively made sure to get at least 10 hours of sleep, and I bought a box of tea. However, I was apprehensive because I knew that I'd have to spend Thursday night in the Malaga airport, b/c my flight to Milan left at 10 in the morning, and no bus left Granada early enough to make it feasible to spend the night at home. Sleeping in the airport is never really sleeping. Its more like a disjointed series of nodding offs. And that's precisely what happened. I managed to snag about 5.5 hours in the airport, even though I officially went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 7:45. Fortunately, the flight from Malaga to Milan was 2 hrs, so I was able to bring my total up to 7.5, but I still wasn't feeling 100%. To make matters worse, I woke up just as my flight was descending with my right ear in a world of blistering pain.
I got out of the airport, and took the bus to downtown Milan. I had about 5 hrs until my train to Venice, and my only real goal was to see La Scala. Unfortunately, I didn't find it. Apparently, the Milanese don't consider it important enough to have signs pointing to it, but I did get some pretty fantastic pictures of the main cathedral of Milan. Definitely by far the coolest cathedral I've seen yet.
But in terms of Milan in general, I was somewhat disappointed. Milan is supposed to be the most vibrant city in Italy, and as far as I could tell (having not really gotten acquainted with Rome), it was. But everything was just a little....shabby. I'm perhaps being too harsh. On the outskirts, there were some bright, clean buildings. But the overall impression was a world-class city that could have been. Italy is famous as being the recurrent underperformer in the EU economically, and my general impression has been consistent with that assessment. Milan has a nice subway system, cool trams, a modern airport, knowledgeable and friendly people, and was the only city in Italy that I've visited so far that felt like it subsisted more than on food or tourism. But for all of that, both Barcelona and Madrid are shinier and more friendly-looking places to travel.
A note to all of the European aficionados. In Milan, I will proudly say that I ate a Burger King. I would have eaten at McDonalds, but I didn't see one until afterwards. Why, you may ask, do I bring this up? Because there was no way in hell that I was going to waste the time and money trying to hunt down some "authentic" Italian eatery and try to communicate with waiters who spoke no English. It was enough of a pain in the ass at Burger King, where the waiter thought that "il numero quatro" meant that I wanted 4 chicken sandwiches, instead of the #4 on the menu. But regardless, I am tired of lectures about eating authentic food while abroad. That's great when you speak the language, or you have a travel guide. However, like hell am I going to do it just to show how "un-American" I really am.
So around 5, I trucked my stuff together and headed back to the train station, and headed off to Venice. Train ride was uneventful, and I rendezvoused with Marina at 9:00 P.M. and we got onto the bus and headed to our hostel, which was near the airport. I was still feeling under the weather, so I conked out immediately. Unfortunately, the room was extremely poorly heated, so I did not get a peaceful night's sleep. I woke up the next morning resolved to push through the fatigue and enjoy what Venice had to offer.
And boy was that a good decision. By far my favorite city in Italy is Venice. I was expecting the worse, to be honest. Venice is the only major city in the world where there is no motor traffic downtown. It's economy is powered almost exclusively by tourism. Its in a country notorious for economic mismanagement. The thousands of visitors every year are legendary for defacing the city little by little. And it doesn't help that Venice is in fear of being swamped by its own lagoon. Nevertheless, I've wanted to go to the Queen of the Adriatic my entire life; infinitely more than I wanted to ever go to Rome. Venice is such an important part of world history, far more than almost any city you'd care to name in Spain, that it was a necessity. And I must say, my fears were unfounded.
Venice was vibrant. Venice was clean. Venice was alive, and I had the time of my life there. The lack of motor traffic made navigating the city much more of a free-spirited adventure then having to dodge traffic in Madrid or Florence. Our first stop was to check out the old Jewish Ghetto, which was near the train station. Venice has the world's oldest ghetto, and in fact, its where the word comes from. At the time, the Jews were consigned to living in the far north quadrant of the city, which was near some getti, or foundries. Although the surviving Jewish population is small, we did find the old synagogue with a full-page article about the community from the Wall Street Journal and a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, so obviously, there were still a few folks kicking around. Just to seal the deal, there was a small street of Jewish bakeries and and Israeli restaurant. We deemed this legit, as there seemed to be very few tourists in this section of the city. Satisfied, it was on to find pizza!
We were recommended a place due south from the Jewish quarter, in the Dursoduro district. It wasn't hard to find, but alas, the place was closed by the order of the law for.....tax evasion. Or at least, that's what we think it was. My italiano isn't so good, although I must say I could generally follow a conversation. Unlike my friend Catalan. Anywho, we started walking towards the Grand Canal and we managed to find a pizza place on the way. We located the Rialto bridge, the largest of only 3 bridges that crosses the Grand Canal:
(Add picture here: Blogger not letting me upload pics again)
We crossed on the Rialto, and headed into the San Marco neighborhood, home not only some of the oldest parts of Venice, but also the world-famous St. Mark's Square, Basilica, and Bell Tower. In spite of what you may think, geographically speaking, St. Mark's isn't in the center of the city proper, but instead at the bottom, on the lagoon (the honor of being in the center belongs to the Rialto, more or less.) It took us a good hour of just wandering purposelessly through the streets to stumble upon St. Mark's. And what timing we had:
(Add another pic here. For simplicity's sake, you can link to the facebook album for now that Marina's put up documenting the trip until I can get this damn thing to work:
http://brandeis.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040025&l=ba1eb&id=9804049
http://brandeis.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040026&l=95150&id=9804049)
All right, anyway, the plaza was amazing. Most of the tourists were gone, so we got to watch the sun set and the lights come out over the plaza. A live band was playing what I'm 99% sure was the Radetzky March by Strauss Sr. and it really added a sense of magic to the whole place.
The next day, we walked around the city some more, and we headed back to St. Marks in order to find the Arsenal (Dad, I was thinking of you.) and to get into the Doge's Palace. Unfortunately, the Arsenal's museum was closed (it was Sunday), but we did manage to get into the Doge's Palace. What a treat! We couldn't take any pictures, but it was truly amazing. Although the Doge of Venice never had much political power, he was still given a position of respect unequaled in the Republic (think the Japanese Emperor), so almost every inch of his palace was a work of art. I was really taken aback by the frescos on the ceilings, usually depicting religious scenes, but the coolest was the Doge's waiting room. In it were two giant globes of the world, made in the 1700's, and the walls itself were maps of the known world. It was neat to see both how relatively accurate the maps were and to see what was considered "Terra Incognita" at the time.
We left the Doge's palace and decided to get some gelatto, per the recommendation of a friend. We got a little more than we bargained for (each serving was monstrous), but like good children we ate every bite. The sun was beginning to set and the chilly wind of the lagoon began to blow, so we packed it in and headed towards the docks, and after finding out that a gondola cost 80 euro, decided to take a water bus for 6. The pictures are in Marina's album, but I must say, the ride up the Grand Canal to the bus station was a once in a lifetime experience. It was just stunning to see the heart of Venice from the center of its brackish artery, and gaze at the barnacled water-marks on the side of stately 16th century homes, stores, and mansions.
The next day, I took a train back to Milan, and after a 4 hour plane delay, headed home to Madrid, and then to Granada. I was really pleased with this trip because not only did I see almost everything I wanted to see, but Venice's charm was irresistible and it colored all of my memories of my trip in a warm, happy hue.
Don't get me wrong; that last time especially was fun. But after the strike at Malpensa (foreshadowing: Malpensa roughly means "evil thought" in both Italian and Spanish) that delayed my flight to Madrid (la Realissima) for almost 5 hours, your capricious ways and fading looks just won't be enough to lure me back.
*Begin flashback*
The weekend previous was very slow, and a bit lonely. It was alleviated somewhat by spending some time with my friend Lauren, from El Paso by way of Amherst College. We get along well enough, and like to share jokes about Massachusetts. I do miss Brandeis, I will admit. But the longer I am here, the more I am convinced that this has been a great experience for me in more than just my resume, both academic and personal. I have learned a lot about how I interact with other people now that I've been stuck in a foreign culture for a month and a half and I hope to learn even more in my remaining time here.
I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling unusually exhausted. I was naturally more than a little confused, considering I had just gotten a full night's sleep. Within about 5 minutes, my excessively runny nose told the tale: I had a head cold.
I spent the next 48 hours in a bit of a fog, but by Thursday I was feeling better after I aggressively made sure to get at least 10 hours of sleep, and I bought a box of tea. However, I was apprehensive because I knew that I'd have to spend Thursday night in the Malaga airport, b/c my flight to Milan left at 10 in the morning, and no bus left Granada early enough to make it feasible to spend the night at home. Sleeping in the airport is never really sleeping. Its more like a disjointed series of nodding offs. And that's precisely what happened. I managed to snag about 5.5 hours in the airport, even though I officially went to sleep at midnight and woke up at 7:45. Fortunately, the flight from Malaga to Milan was 2 hrs, so I was able to bring my total up to 7.5, but I still wasn't feeling 100%. To make matters worse, I woke up just as my flight was descending with my right ear in a world of blistering pain.
I got out of the airport, and took the bus to downtown Milan. I had about 5 hrs until my train to Venice, and my only real goal was to see La Scala. Unfortunately, I didn't find it. Apparently, the Milanese don't consider it important enough to have signs pointing to it, but I did get some pretty fantastic pictures of the main cathedral of Milan. Definitely by far the coolest cathedral I've seen yet.
But in terms of Milan in general, I was somewhat disappointed. Milan is supposed to be the most vibrant city in Italy, and as far as I could tell (having not really gotten acquainted with Rome), it was. But everything was just a little....shabby. I'm perhaps being too harsh. On the outskirts, there were some bright, clean buildings. But the overall impression was a world-class city that could have been. Italy is famous as being the recurrent underperformer in the EU economically, and my general impression has been consistent with that assessment. Milan has a nice subway system, cool trams, a modern airport, knowledgeable and friendly people, and was the only city in Italy that I've visited so far that felt like it subsisted more than on food or tourism. But for all of that, both Barcelona and Madrid are shinier and more friendly-looking places to travel.
A note to all of the European aficionados. In Milan, I will proudly say that I ate a Burger King. I would have eaten at McDonalds, but I didn't see one until afterwards. Why, you may ask, do I bring this up? Because there was no way in hell that I was going to waste the time and money trying to hunt down some "authentic" Italian eatery and try to communicate with waiters who spoke no English. It was enough of a pain in the ass at Burger King, where the waiter thought that "il numero quatro" meant that I wanted 4 chicken sandwiches, instead of the #4 on the menu. But regardless, I am tired of lectures about eating authentic food while abroad. That's great when you speak the language, or you have a travel guide. However, like hell am I going to do it just to show how "un-American" I really am.
So around 5, I trucked my stuff together and headed back to the train station, and headed off to Venice. Train ride was uneventful, and I rendezvoused with Marina at 9:00 P.M. and we got onto the bus and headed to our hostel, which was near the airport. I was still feeling under the weather, so I conked out immediately. Unfortunately, the room was extremely poorly heated, so I did not get a peaceful night's sleep. I woke up the next morning resolved to push through the fatigue and enjoy what Venice had to offer.
And boy was that a good decision. By far my favorite city in Italy is Venice. I was expecting the worse, to be honest. Venice is the only major city in the world where there is no motor traffic downtown. It's economy is powered almost exclusively by tourism. Its in a country notorious for economic mismanagement. The thousands of visitors every year are legendary for defacing the city little by little. And it doesn't help that Venice is in fear of being swamped by its own lagoon. Nevertheless, I've wanted to go to the Queen of the Adriatic my entire life; infinitely more than I wanted to ever go to Rome. Venice is such an important part of world history, far more than almost any city you'd care to name in Spain, that it was a necessity. And I must say, my fears were unfounded.
Venice was vibrant. Venice was clean. Venice was alive, and I had the time of my life there. The lack of motor traffic made navigating the city much more of a free-spirited adventure then having to dodge traffic in Madrid or Florence. Our first stop was to check out the old Jewish Ghetto, which was near the train station. Venice has the world's oldest ghetto, and in fact, its where the word comes from. At the time, the Jews were consigned to living in the far north quadrant of the city, which was near some getti, or foundries. Although the surviving Jewish population is small, we did find the old synagogue with a full-page article about the community from the Wall Street Journal and a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, so obviously, there were still a few folks kicking around. Just to seal the deal, there was a small street of Jewish bakeries and and Israeli restaurant. We deemed this legit, as there seemed to be very few tourists in this section of the city. Satisfied, it was on to find pizza!
We were recommended a place due south from the Jewish quarter, in the Dursoduro district. It wasn't hard to find, but alas, the place was closed by the order of the law for.....tax evasion. Or at least, that's what we think it was. My italiano isn't so good, although I must say I could generally follow a conversation. Unlike my friend Catalan. Anywho, we started walking towards the Grand Canal and we managed to find a pizza place on the way. We located the Rialto bridge, the largest of only 3 bridges that crosses the Grand Canal:
(Add picture here: Blogger not letting me upload pics again)
We crossed on the Rialto, and headed into the San Marco neighborhood, home not only some of the oldest parts of Venice, but also the world-famous St. Mark's Square, Basilica, and Bell Tower. In spite of what you may think, geographically speaking, St. Mark's isn't in the center of the city proper, but instead at the bottom, on the lagoon (the honor of being in the center belongs to the Rialto, more or less.) It took us a good hour of just wandering purposelessly through the streets to stumble upon St. Mark's. And what timing we had:
(Add another pic here. For simplicity's sake, you can link to the facebook album for now that Marina's put up documenting the trip until I can get this damn thing to work:
http://brandeis.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040025&l=ba1eb&id=9804049
http://brandeis.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2040026&l=95150&id=9804049)
All right, anyway, the plaza was amazing. Most of the tourists were gone, so we got to watch the sun set and the lights come out over the plaza. A live band was playing what I'm 99% sure was the Radetzky March by Strauss Sr. and it really added a sense of magic to the whole place.
The next day, we walked around the city some more, and we headed back to St. Marks in order to find the Arsenal (Dad, I was thinking of you.) and to get into the Doge's Palace. Unfortunately, the Arsenal's museum was closed (it was Sunday), but we did manage to get into the Doge's Palace. What a treat! We couldn't take any pictures, but it was truly amazing. Although the Doge of Venice never had much political power, he was still given a position of respect unequaled in the Republic (think the Japanese Emperor), so almost every inch of his palace was a work of art. I was really taken aback by the frescos on the ceilings, usually depicting religious scenes, but the coolest was the Doge's waiting room. In it were two giant globes of the world, made in the 1700's, and the walls itself were maps of the known world. It was neat to see both how relatively accurate the maps were and to see what was considered "Terra Incognita" at the time.
We left the Doge's palace and decided to get some gelatto, per the recommendation of a friend. We got a little more than we bargained for (each serving was monstrous), but like good children we ate every bite. The sun was beginning to set and the chilly wind of the lagoon began to blow, so we packed it in and headed towards the docks, and after finding out that a gondola cost 80 euro, decided to take a water bus for 6. The pictures are in Marina's album, but I must say, the ride up the Grand Canal to the bus station was a once in a lifetime experience. It was just stunning to see the heart of Venice from the center of its brackish artery, and gaze at the barnacled water-marks on the side of stately 16th century homes, stores, and mansions.
The next day, I took a train back to Milan, and after a 4 hour plane delay, headed home to Madrid, and then to Granada. I was really pleased with this trip because not only did I see almost everything I wanted to see, but Venice's charm was irresistible and it colored all of my memories of my trip in a warm, happy hue.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Cordoba and the easy life
Can I hear three cheers for Socialist Democracy?
My new room at La Residencia is, well, decked out. Mini-fridge, desks, lamp, toilet paper, towels, sheets, phone, trash bin were all-included; didn't have to pay a single dime. Additionally, I get my very own bathroom. Plus, every Wednesday, a maid comes in to clean all of our rooms. When I said this was like a working vacation, I wasn't just whistling Dixie. Or Yankee. Or what have you.
My classes are easy enough, so far. My economics classes are more or less a joke. One is taught by a political science professor. Smart guy, but I am more accustomed to having to crunch equations than having to sit through recitations of all of the treaties that were formed to create the current EU. Being a rather avid reader of the news, this gets a might bit tedious. The other econ class is somewhat better, although the expectations are still pretty low. No graphs, unfortunately. Just papers.
I do have a midterm in Islamic Art and Architecture on Tuesday, so I'll be studying for that today. That class is conducted in Spanish, so its a bit more difficult in that sense. But Arabic is really the only class that's remotely difficult. Having gotten a basic grounding in Hebrew, it gives me a bit of an edge over most students (I got a 45.25/50 on my last quiz, compared to an average of 39). But its still a really difficult language, just in learning the alphabet. They have sounds that just plain don't exist in English. Soon, we're going to start learning vocabulary, so I hope that the endless repetition of the letters will make it easier to distinguish certain sounds. However, although I was initially hesitant to start taking Arabic, I think even this one semester of it will be a good investment. Even a basic knowledge of the language puts me head and shoulders over many other people.
Now, to Cordoba. With pictures!
So last Saturday, we took a class field trip to Cordoba, which was one of the last capitals of Moorish Spain. At the height of the Umayyad Caliphate, Cordoba was the largest city in Europe (at 500,000 people), and some people reckon it was the largest in the world. Additionally, Cordoba is home to one of only 3 synagogues still surviving from the Al-Andalus time period. As a modern city, its only medium-sized, but I was reasonably impressed. The city was immensely cleaner than any I'd been to (except for Madrid), and one could tell after walking around that it was a city that prided itself on a high-quality of life.
The first stop of the trip was at the ruins of a summer palace of the Caliphs of Spain, not far from the city proper. One thousand years ago, the city surrounding the palace was meant to be magnificent, but during a civil war between competing factions, the city was razed, and then buried, until 1911. Most of the pictures I took were of buildings that were reconstructed by later teams of archaeologists, but sd far, only an estimated 10% of the original size of the city has been excavated:
We then hopped back on the bus and moved on to Cordoba itself, specifically la Juderia.
Me at the Gate to the Juderia.
Back when Cordoba was essentially the capital of Spain, it had the largest Jewish community in the world(Maimonides was born here), and the old Jewish quarter (where the synagogue sits), still has the feel of something out of the 13th century. The streets are narrow, the houses white washed, and trying to make your way around begins to seem like sorting your way out of a labyrinth:
The ark of the synagogue. Although you can't really see it in this picture, the walls are covered with inscriptions in Hebrew.
The real jewel of la Juderia isn't the synagogue, per se, although it was pretty cool. La Juderia ensconces the Grand Mezquita (Great Mosque) of the Caliphs, now one of the largest churches in Spain. The effect of visiting this building is just downright unsettling. Allow me to explain.
The Mezquita was supposed to be the architectural tour de force of Moorish Spain. And it is. At the time, it was the second largest mosque in the world. However, when it was conquered by the Catholics, they converted it into a cathedral. The effect is more creepy than inspiring. Its just plain weird to see stained glass windows of Jesus and Mary looking down on red and white horseshoe arches. Stranger still to see the underside of the old minaret, with bright white plastered cherubs, superimposed on the faded brown stones:
Yeah, weird. Anyway, the scenes inside were still pretty spectacular:
That's the minaret/belltower. When it was turned into a cathedral, it had to be completely redone, since the original minaret was obviously not designed to carry two several tonne bells.
This is the central courtyard. Its magnificent. Especially impressive are the gullies that are cut into the stone flooring to self-irrigate the trees when it rains. If you look very closely at the trees, you'll see the lines on the ground that connect each tree. The lines end in little fountain pools, out of sight of this picture.
Perhaps not the best picture, but it starts to give a feel for how big it is. You can see the trademark arches on the left, which are definitely NOT a style commonly associated with Christianity in the West. Red and white are the main themes, as in Islamic art, they are considered the colors of beauty. Additionally, in formal religious imagery that'll show up in these pictures is from the Christian era, because it is forbidden in Islamic art to show pictures of any living creature: human, animal, or divine.
The rows upon rows of arches.
The altar.
Etc. I'll put the rest on a facebook album. It was at about this point that my camera ran out of batteries anyway, so I didn't get to take many pictures of what I personally considered the coolest part of the whole excursion: The Gardens of the Alcazar.
The Alcazar of Cordoba was both a fortress and a palace for the Caliphs, and the Gardens that were built in its interior were nothing short of enchanting. I thought they were great. At the end of my trip, I'm going to compile an album of greatest hits, and surely I'll be able to scrape together a few of them. There were fountains. Statuary. Irrigation networks. Shrubs, hedge rows, orange trees, everything. Like something out of Arabian Nights.
Awesome.
Anyway, we left back for Granada shortly thereafter, but I would definitely like to return at some point in my life. And hopefully, I'll be able to take more pictures!
My new room at La Residencia is, well, decked out. Mini-fridge, desks, lamp, toilet paper, towels, sheets, phone, trash bin were all-included; didn't have to pay a single dime. Additionally, I get my very own bathroom. Plus, every Wednesday, a maid comes in to clean all of our rooms. When I said this was like a working vacation, I wasn't just whistling Dixie. Or Yankee. Or what have you.
My classes are easy enough, so far. My economics classes are more or less a joke. One is taught by a political science professor. Smart guy, but I am more accustomed to having to crunch equations than having to sit through recitations of all of the treaties that were formed to create the current EU. Being a rather avid reader of the news, this gets a might bit tedious. The other econ class is somewhat better, although the expectations are still pretty low. No graphs, unfortunately. Just papers.
I do have a midterm in Islamic Art and Architecture on Tuesday, so I'll be studying for that today. That class is conducted in Spanish, so its a bit more difficult in that sense. But Arabic is really the only class that's remotely difficult. Having gotten a basic grounding in Hebrew, it gives me a bit of an edge over most students (I got a 45.25/50 on my last quiz, compared to an average of 39). But its still a really difficult language, just in learning the alphabet. They have sounds that just plain don't exist in English. Soon, we're going to start learning vocabulary, so I hope that the endless repetition of the letters will make it easier to distinguish certain sounds. However, although I was initially hesitant to start taking Arabic, I think even this one semester of it will be a good investment. Even a basic knowledge of the language puts me head and shoulders over many other people.
Now, to Cordoba. With pictures!
So last Saturday, we took a class field trip to Cordoba, which was one of the last capitals of Moorish Spain. At the height of the Umayyad Caliphate, Cordoba was the largest city in Europe (at 500,000 people), and some people reckon it was the largest in the world. Additionally, Cordoba is home to one of only 3 synagogues still surviving from the Al-Andalus time period. As a modern city, its only medium-sized, but I was reasonably impressed. The city was immensely cleaner than any I'd been to (except for Madrid), and one could tell after walking around that it was a city that prided itself on a high-quality of life.
The first stop of the trip was at the ruins of a summer palace of the Caliphs of Spain, not far from the city proper. One thousand years ago, the city surrounding the palace was meant to be magnificent, but during a civil war between competing factions, the city was razed, and then buried, until 1911. Most of the pictures I took were of buildings that were reconstructed by later teams of archaeologists, but sd far, only an estimated 10% of the original size of the city has been excavated:
We then hopped back on the bus and moved on to Cordoba itself, specifically la Juderia.
Me at the Gate to the Juderia.
Back when Cordoba was essentially the capital of Spain, it had the largest Jewish community in the world(Maimonides was born here), and the old Jewish quarter (where the synagogue sits), still has the feel of something out of the 13th century. The streets are narrow, the houses white washed, and trying to make your way around begins to seem like sorting your way out of a labyrinth:
The ark of the synagogue. Although you can't really see it in this picture, the walls are covered with inscriptions in Hebrew.
The real jewel of la Juderia isn't the synagogue, per se, although it was pretty cool. La Juderia ensconces the Grand Mezquita (Great Mosque) of the Caliphs, now one of the largest churches in Spain. The effect of visiting this building is just downright unsettling. Allow me to explain.
The Mezquita was supposed to be the architectural tour de force of Moorish Spain. And it is. At the time, it was the second largest mosque in the world. However, when it was conquered by the Catholics, they converted it into a cathedral. The effect is more creepy than inspiring. Its just plain weird to see stained glass windows of Jesus and Mary looking down on red and white horseshoe arches. Stranger still to see the underside of the old minaret, with bright white plastered cherubs, superimposed on the faded brown stones:
Yeah, weird. Anyway, the scenes inside were still pretty spectacular:
That's the minaret/belltower. When it was turned into a cathedral, it had to be completely redone, since the original minaret was obviously not designed to carry two several tonne bells.
This is the central courtyard. Its magnificent. Especially impressive are the gullies that are cut into the stone flooring to self-irrigate the trees when it rains. If you look very closely at the trees, you'll see the lines on the ground that connect each tree. The lines end in little fountain pools, out of sight of this picture.
Perhaps not the best picture, but it starts to give a feel for how big it is. You can see the trademark arches on the left, which are definitely NOT a style commonly associated with Christianity in the West. Red and white are the main themes, as in Islamic art, they are considered the colors of beauty. Additionally, in formal religious imagery that'll show up in these pictures is from the Christian era, because it is forbidden in Islamic art to show pictures of any living creature: human, animal, or divine.
The rows upon rows of arches.
The altar.
Etc. I'll put the rest on a facebook album. It was at about this point that my camera ran out of batteries anyway, so I didn't get to take many pictures of what I personally considered the coolest part of the whole excursion: The Gardens of the Alcazar.
The Alcazar of Cordoba was both a fortress and a palace for the Caliphs, and the Gardens that were built in its interior were nothing short of enchanting. I thought they were great. At the end of my trip, I'm going to compile an album of greatest hits, and surely I'll be able to scrape together a few of them. There were fountains. Statuary. Irrigation networks. Shrubs, hedge rows, orange trees, everything. Like something out of Arabian Nights.
Awesome.
Anyway, we left back for Granada shortly thereafter, but I would definitely like to return at some point in my life. And hopefully, I'll be able to take more pictures!
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Italia
Well, it was an adventure.
I spent Thursday night in Barcelona, in a youth hostel. I didn't get a chance to see much, but I did meet up with Mark Kagan. He took me to see to the Montjuic (The cultural epicenter of Barcelona, with a long history.), where I was fortunate enough to see a performance of the Magic Fountains. I know that Las Vegas has them, but this was truly spectacular. I would recommend anyone to go to Barcelona just to see the Montjuic.
I arrived on Friday afternoon in Florence, from Barcelona. I was excited, if a little tired. Starting about 2 years ago, I have reached the point where I travel at least once every 2 months, on average. One would think that I would have gotten used to it. They would be wrong. I still hate it.
Anyway, I took a bus from the airport to the city and rendezvous-ed with Marina and a friend of hers. We dropped off our stuff at our lodgings, and then proceeded to tour the town. Florence is a very old and very proud city. That became evident very quickly. What became less evident is where all the people lived. On our nighttime stroll, we saw Il Duomo (unbelievable), the Uffizzi Gallery, and we even found the pavillion of the Lucky Pig (put a penny in its mouth, make a wish, and then if when the penny drops, it lands in the grate, your wish will come true). But by 10:30, after we had dinner at really delicious and inexpensive Italian restaurant, we hardly saw anybody walking the streets. Coming from Spain, this was a little unnerving. Even in Boston, there would be people out and about on a Friday night, and this was Europe!
At 10 the next morning, we struck out again. This time, we made a small list of everything we wanted to see, instead of wandering around aimlessly. Granted, our list was a little bit optimistic, but we did manage to get to about half of everything on it. Our biggest time investment was in the Duomo. Ladies and Gentlemen, what a feat of human engineering. Although by no means the biggest cathedral in Europe, it is still a stunning and masterful monument to human ingenuity. The facade of the building was entirely unique, and gave an impression of artistic intricacy, and its straight lines with subdued hues lent the church a feeling of a far greater height than it actually possessed. The interior was equally magnificent. The ceiling was vaulted, so that there was a feeling of airiness to the back of the church that one would not have expected from a structure that was started 400 years ago. However, the greatest part was yet to come. We moved towards the front of the church, where we could see the underside of the Great Dome that lends the church its name. I took some pictures, but they can't do it justice. The artist Zuccari did a rendition of Dante's Last Judgement, so that the base of the dome depicts hell, the middle section Purgatory, and the upmost section as Heaven. It was incredible.
We climbed up to the top and took some pictures of Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Classic Italy; I'll put up the pictures at some point this week. After the Duomo, we went down and had some lunch, and then went over to the Uffizzi Gallery. Unfortunately, the line into the interior of the Gallery was prohibitive, but fortunately, the good people of Florence had an outdoor exhibit of some of the cooler Renaissance statuary. Again, pictures promised.
Next, we went to the Museum d'Opera. Time was running short (we wanted to leave by 7:30, since it would take 2 hrs. by train to get to Perugia), so we breezed through the museum in under an hour. And a shame at that. The Museum d'Opera (which is about 10 meters from the Duomo itself), has some of the most amazing art I've ever seen. Their Donatello collection is superb, and they even had one of Michaelangelo's Pietas. Extremely cool.
We headed to the train station and left towards Perugia. Marina went to sleep and I took out my copy of 100 Years of Solitude, in Spanish. Although I don't understand every word, and there are entire sentences lost on me, I think its been an excellent investment. Little by little, it is expanding my vocabulary and my sense of syntax and grammar. His Spanish is very fluid, and is structured in a way that I haven't yet encountered in class, probably because it is considered too complex for students. At some point, I'd like to go back and try my own hand at translating it. But translation is easier said than done, for example, the first sentence:
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano BuendÃa habÃa de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
I could translate that several different ways.
Literally: Many years later, in front of the wall of the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that remote afternoon that his father took him to meet ice.
Kind of clunky, yes?
I think more faithfully, it would be this:
Many years later, standing against the wall facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father first took him to see ice.
Better, but I still want to find a more succinct way of translating the bit about the wall of the firing squad. Oh well.
Back to my journey.
We arrived in Perugia late, and I went to my hotel and Marina went home. Woke up the next morning, met up with my girlfriend again, and she showed me around the town.
I was really glad I went to Perugia after I went to Florence. Perugia is really cool because it is a university town and it is home to a lot of Etruscan architecture and ruins. Entirely cool, because unlike most things preserved from Antiquity in Europe, the Etruscan ruins were incorporated right into the fabric of the town. Aquaducts, walls, and even a genuine well. It is worth keeping in mind that the history nerd in me was pumped because the Etruscan predate even the Romans, meaning I was touching walls that had been built over 2,500 years ago.
But perhaps what really made my stay enjoyable was that I felt Perugia was alive, especially compared to Florence. At night, there were people outside, especially in the center of town. And let it be noted the center of Perugia is not easily accessible, unlike that of Florence. In fact, the city center is located on top of a mountain, with sides so steep that there are actually escalators to get there. But nonetheless, there people were. The pizza was good, so was the gelato. Plus, Perugia is cheap. Cheaper even than Granada, which is saying something considering that my host parents insist it is the cheapest city in Spain.
On Monday, my flight left back for Barcelona at 9 from Rome, so I was really hoping to get a chance to see at least a little of the city, or barring that, going to Assisi, which I was excited to discover was only 20 minutes by train from Perugia. Alas, there was no good way to get from Perugia to Assisi to Rome to the airport in a comfortable amount of time to get on my plane. I thus contented myself when my train passed through Assisi to take pictures from the train window. And I must say, I got two good ones. The first is of a fat, robed monk waddling up and down the platform at the Assisi train station. The second is of the town itself, which is actually about 5 km from its train station. Its perched on a plateau on the side of a mountain, and it shines a pretty brilliant white in the day.
I arrived at the Rome airport and had a rather uneventful trip back to Granada. Sorry if this post is a tad brief and dull, but it will help immensely when I get my pictures loaded up here. I need to go battery hunting, as my batteries died when I was in Cordoba. Also a misfortune, because I wasn't able to take all of the pictures I wanted of the Grand Mosque. But that's for later this week.
Goodnight, folks.
I spent Thursday night in Barcelona, in a youth hostel. I didn't get a chance to see much, but I did meet up with Mark Kagan. He took me to see to the Montjuic (The cultural epicenter of Barcelona, with a long history.), where I was fortunate enough to see a performance of the Magic Fountains. I know that Las Vegas has them, but this was truly spectacular. I would recommend anyone to go to Barcelona just to see the Montjuic.
I arrived on Friday afternoon in Florence, from Barcelona. I was excited, if a little tired. Starting about 2 years ago, I have reached the point where I travel at least once every 2 months, on average. One would think that I would have gotten used to it. They would be wrong. I still hate it.
Anyway, I took a bus from the airport to the city and rendezvous-ed with Marina and a friend of hers. We dropped off our stuff at our lodgings, and then proceeded to tour the town. Florence is a very old and very proud city. That became evident very quickly. What became less evident is where all the people lived. On our nighttime stroll, we saw Il Duomo (unbelievable), the Uffizzi Gallery, and we even found the pavillion of the Lucky Pig (put a penny in its mouth, make a wish, and then if when the penny drops, it lands in the grate, your wish will come true). But by 10:30, after we had dinner at really delicious and inexpensive Italian restaurant, we hardly saw anybody walking the streets. Coming from Spain, this was a little unnerving. Even in Boston, there would be people out and about on a Friday night, and this was Europe!
At 10 the next morning, we struck out again. This time, we made a small list of everything we wanted to see, instead of wandering around aimlessly. Granted, our list was a little bit optimistic, but we did manage to get to about half of everything on it. Our biggest time investment was in the Duomo. Ladies and Gentlemen, what a feat of human engineering. Although by no means the biggest cathedral in Europe, it is still a stunning and masterful monument to human ingenuity. The facade of the building was entirely unique, and gave an impression of artistic intricacy, and its straight lines with subdued hues lent the church a feeling of a far greater height than it actually possessed. The interior was equally magnificent. The ceiling was vaulted, so that there was a feeling of airiness to the back of the church that one would not have expected from a structure that was started 400 years ago. However, the greatest part was yet to come. We moved towards the front of the church, where we could see the underside of the Great Dome that lends the church its name. I took some pictures, but they can't do it justice. The artist Zuccari did a rendition of Dante's Last Judgement, so that the base of the dome depicts hell, the middle section Purgatory, and the upmost section as Heaven. It was incredible.
We climbed up to the top and took some pictures of Florence and the surrounding Tuscan countryside. Classic Italy; I'll put up the pictures at some point this week. After the Duomo, we went down and had some lunch, and then went over to the Uffizzi Gallery. Unfortunately, the line into the interior of the Gallery was prohibitive, but fortunately, the good people of Florence had an outdoor exhibit of some of the cooler Renaissance statuary. Again, pictures promised.
Next, we went to the Museum d'Opera. Time was running short (we wanted to leave by 7:30, since it would take 2 hrs. by train to get to Perugia), so we breezed through the museum in under an hour. And a shame at that. The Museum d'Opera (which is about 10 meters from the Duomo itself), has some of the most amazing art I've ever seen. Their Donatello collection is superb, and they even had one of Michaelangelo's Pietas. Extremely cool.
We headed to the train station and left towards Perugia. Marina went to sleep and I took out my copy of 100 Years of Solitude, in Spanish. Although I don't understand every word, and there are entire sentences lost on me, I think its been an excellent investment. Little by little, it is expanding my vocabulary and my sense of syntax and grammar. His Spanish is very fluid, and is structured in a way that I haven't yet encountered in class, probably because it is considered too complex for students. At some point, I'd like to go back and try my own hand at translating it. But translation is easier said than done, for example, the first sentence:
Muchos años después, frente al pelotón de fusilamiento, el coronel Aureliano BuendÃa habÃa de recordar aquella tarde remota en que su padre lo llevó a conocer el hielo.
I could translate that several different ways.
Literally: Many years later, in front of the wall of the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that remote afternoon that his father took him to meet ice.
Kind of clunky, yes?
I think more faithfully, it would be this:
Many years later, standing against the wall facing the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father first took him to see ice.
Better, but I still want to find a more succinct way of translating the bit about the wall of the firing squad. Oh well.
Back to my journey.
We arrived in Perugia late, and I went to my hotel and Marina went home. Woke up the next morning, met up with my girlfriend again, and she showed me around the town.
I was really glad I went to Perugia after I went to Florence. Perugia is really cool because it is a university town and it is home to a lot of Etruscan architecture and ruins. Entirely cool, because unlike most things preserved from Antiquity in Europe, the Etruscan ruins were incorporated right into the fabric of the town. Aquaducts, walls, and even a genuine well. It is worth keeping in mind that the history nerd in me was pumped because the Etruscan predate even the Romans, meaning I was touching walls that had been built over 2,500 years ago.
But perhaps what really made my stay enjoyable was that I felt Perugia was alive, especially compared to Florence. At night, there were people outside, especially in the center of town. And let it be noted the center of Perugia is not easily accessible, unlike that of Florence. In fact, the city center is located on top of a mountain, with sides so steep that there are actually escalators to get there. But nonetheless, there people were. The pizza was good, so was the gelato. Plus, Perugia is cheap. Cheaper even than Granada, which is saying something considering that my host parents insist it is the cheapest city in Spain.
On Monday, my flight left back for Barcelona at 9 from Rome, so I was really hoping to get a chance to see at least a little of the city, or barring that, going to Assisi, which I was excited to discover was only 20 minutes by train from Perugia. Alas, there was no good way to get from Perugia to Assisi to Rome to the airport in a comfortable amount of time to get on my plane. I thus contented myself when my train passed through Assisi to take pictures from the train window. And I must say, I got two good ones. The first is of a fat, robed monk waddling up and down the platform at the Assisi train station. The second is of the town itself, which is actually about 5 km from its train station. Its perched on a plateau on the side of a mountain, and it shines a pretty brilliant white in the day.
I arrived at the Rome airport and had a rather uneventful trip back to Granada. Sorry if this post is a tad brief and dull, but it will help immensely when I get my pictures loaded up here. I need to go battery hunting, as my batteries died when I was in Cordoba. Also a misfortune, because I wasn't able to take all of the pictures I wanted of the Grand Mosque. But that's for later this week.
Goodnight, folks.
Friday, October 5, 2007
Apologies for the delay (Madrid Continued)
All right, where was I?
Right-o. Siesta time was over.
Scott and I regrouped, and we headed out for dinner. The details aren't important, but we didn't actually sit down and have dinner until 10:00. Dinner was expensive, too. A bit of a sour note in the whole proceedings.
But fortunately, after we escaped from the restaurant, we headed straight back downtown. Once again hopping on the Metro, we hurtled towards El Paseo del Prado. The Paseo del Prado was the place to be. It seemed that by 11:00 (relatively early by Spanish standards), the entire city had jammed up the Plaza del Cibeles, one of the biggest interchanges in downtown. We got off the Metro at Banco de Espana, and upon emerging from the underground, I was greeted by one of the cooler images I saw that night: The Palacio de las Communicaciones. Its a huge (and surprisingly graceful) stone and concrete edifice on the Paseo del Prado, which turns into the main North-South artery of Madrid, and not far from the museum itself. The facade had been turned into a gigantic movie projector. Check out the video:
Scott and I started down the Paseo towards the Prado itself. The neat thing about the Prado is that it is located in the same plaza as all of the other art museums of Madrid. You can't beat that kind of convenience with a two-by-four. Unfortunantly, half of Madrid had the same idea. Scott and I never did find the end of the line for the Thyssen Museum.
So, deciding to give the crowd some time to bottom out (and it only being 11:30, early by Spanish standards), we wandered back towards the Royal Palace, hoping to get into the Teatro Real (Royal Theater). The end of that line we DID manage to find, after about 10 minutes of walking.
This effectively ended all of our attempts to try to get into the most famous of the sites. So instead, we checked out the street displays. This was just as much fun, I would imagine. We stumbled across a gigantic outdoor karaoke contest (you can see it in the photo album from the previous post), and coolest of all, the Army had opened its private garden to the public and had allowed a local artist to redecorate the place as a garden of the future. I also took video of that too. Unfortunately, Blogger isn't letting me upload it right now, but hopefully I'll be able to do it later.
At this point, Scott was getting really tired, and granted, it was about 3 am. The first people were just beginning to leave. So I got him to agree to stop by the Prado once last time, but alas, it was completely closed. I resigned myself to heading home.
And then we ran into trouble.
Somehow in the process of coming to Madrid, Scott and I had fallen under the false impression that the Metro would be open that entire night. Considering that there were over a million people in the street (according to the newspaper the next morning), it didn't seem that unreasonable of an assumption. The truth was more that the there was 24-hour bus transportation, but Scott and I had almost no knowledge of how the bus system worked.
So, after getting pissed for about 15 minutes at the idiocy of labor unions, lazy municipal governments, and the general Spanish way of doing things, I dragged a very sleepy Scott to the Palacio de las Comunicaciones. (At this point, allow me to commend Spanish coffee. That stuff kicks a powerful punch. I wasn't feeling the fatigue at all. I had thought to grab some while we were watching the crowd in front of the Royal Theater earlier, while Scott had gotten a beer. Hence our different states of alertness.) After studying maps of the city for about 20 minutes, and keeping a beady eye on the destinations of the infrequent bus, I realized we had to go to a Plaza further north, and then transfer to a different bus route that would take us within walking distance of our hotel. (By walking distance, I mean a 20 minute walk).
Fortunately, I had cobbled together the bus routes more or less correctly, because we were able to get home, around 5 am. Needless to say, Scott was only awake through sheer force of his own will and I was beginning to droop myself. We crashed.
By mutual agreement the next morning, we ate a brief lunch near the hotel, and decided to get the hell out of town. We went back to the bus station, got on the next bus to Granada, and split.
As a final note, I did stay awake for the last leg of the trip, so I got to see the mountains that separate Castille from Andalusia. Those make up the last few pics in my album and are among the most beautiful mountain vistas I've ever seen. Scott and I pulled into Granada around 7:45 and I managed to get home by 8 to a warm pizza dinner.
Thus concludes my adventure to Madrid. I will talk about Italy on Sunday; tomorrow, I'm going on a class field trip to Cordoba.
Right-o. Siesta time was over.
Scott and I regrouped, and we headed out for dinner. The details aren't important, but we didn't actually sit down and have dinner until 10:00. Dinner was expensive, too. A bit of a sour note in the whole proceedings.
But fortunately, after we escaped from the restaurant, we headed straight back downtown. Once again hopping on the Metro, we hurtled towards El Paseo del Prado. The Paseo del Prado was the place to be. It seemed that by 11:00 (relatively early by Spanish standards), the entire city had jammed up the Plaza del Cibeles, one of the biggest interchanges in downtown. We got off the Metro at Banco de Espana, and upon emerging from the underground, I was greeted by one of the cooler images I saw that night: The Palacio de las Communicaciones. Its a huge (and surprisingly graceful) stone and concrete edifice on the Paseo del Prado, which turns into the main North-South artery of Madrid, and not far from the museum itself. The facade had been turned into a gigantic movie projector. Check out the video:
Scott and I started down the Paseo towards the Prado itself. The neat thing about the Prado is that it is located in the same plaza as all of the other art museums of Madrid. You can't beat that kind of convenience with a two-by-four. Unfortunantly, half of Madrid had the same idea. Scott and I never did find the end of the line for the Thyssen Museum.
So, deciding to give the crowd some time to bottom out (and it only being 11:30, early by Spanish standards), we wandered back towards the Royal Palace, hoping to get into the Teatro Real (Royal Theater). The end of that line we DID manage to find, after about 10 minutes of walking.
This effectively ended all of our attempts to try to get into the most famous of the sites. So instead, we checked out the street displays. This was just as much fun, I would imagine. We stumbled across a gigantic outdoor karaoke contest (you can see it in the photo album from the previous post), and coolest of all, the Army had opened its private garden to the public and had allowed a local artist to redecorate the place as a garden of the future. I also took video of that too. Unfortunately, Blogger isn't letting me upload it right now, but hopefully I'll be able to do it later.
At this point, Scott was getting really tired, and granted, it was about 3 am. The first people were just beginning to leave. So I got him to agree to stop by the Prado once last time, but alas, it was completely closed. I resigned myself to heading home.
And then we ran into trouble.
Somehow in the process of coming to Madrid, Scott and I had fallen under the false impression that the Metro would be open that entire night. Considering that there were over a million people in the street (according to the newspaper the next morning), it didn't seem that unreasonable of an assumption. The truth was more that the there was 24-hour bus transportation, but Scott and I had almost no knowledge of how the bus system worked.
So, after getting pissed for about 15 minutes at the idiocy of labor unions, lazy municipal governments, and the general Spanish way of doing things, I dragged a very sleepy Scott to the Palacio de las Comunicaciones. (At this point, allow me to commend Spanish coffee. That stuff kicks a powerful punch. I wasn't feeling the fatigue at all. I had thought to grab some while we were watching the crowd in front of the Royal Theater earlier, while Scott had gotten a beer. Hence our different states of alertness.) After studying maps of the city for about 20 minutes, and keeping a beady eye on the destinations of the infrequent bus, I realized we had to go to a Plaza further north, and then transfer to a different bus route that would take us within walking distance of our hotel. (By walking distance, I mean a 20 minute walk).
Fortunately, I had cobbled together the bus routes more or less correctly, because we were able to get home, around 5 am. Needless to say, Scott was only awake through sheer force of his own will and I was beginning to droop myself. We crashed.
By mutual agreement the next morning, we ate a brief lunch near the hotel, and decided to get the hell out of town. We went back to the bus station, got on the next bus to Granada, and split.
As a final note, I did stay awake for the last leg of the trip, so I got to see the mountains that separate Castille from Andalusia. Those make up the last few pics in my album and are among the most beautiful mountain vistas I've ever seen. Scott and I pulled into Granada around 7:45 and I managed to get home by 8 to a warm pizza dinner.
Thus concludes my adventure to Madrid. I will talk about Italy on Sunday; tomorrow, I'm going on a class field trip to Cordoba.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Hello
Hey, a quick note.
My computer lost the entire post I'd written as a follow up on Madrid, so I'm going to rewrite it when I return from Italy.
Have a good weekend.
My computer lost the entire post I'd written as a follow up on Madrid, so I'm going to rewrite it when I return from Italy.
Have a good weekend.
Monday, September 24, 2007
MADRID!
Viva Madrid!!
So, about my weekend. Let's begin.
Originally, I was going to go to Malaga with a bunch of my fellow food-abstainers, because there are no synagogues in Granada. Alas, this plan fell through. So with a lack of anything better to do this past weekend, I hit on the idea of going to Madrid with my friend Scott.
Good call.
So we organized our trip in a jiffy, and bright and early on Saturday we trucked off to Madrid via autobus. Now, its a 5 hour ride, but considering that it was Yom Kippur, and I was fasting, I simply took advantage of the opportunity to sleep. Although this meant that I missed seeing most of Castilla de la Mancha (made famous by none other than the most famous of La Mancha's denizens, Don Quixote), I was well rested upon our arrival at precisely 1 o'clock at South Station in Madrid.
First, let me say that Madrid has the 3rd largest subway system in the world, only behind New York's and the Underground. I have never in my entire life come across a system so fantastically complicated as the Madrid Metro. A glance at a system map revealed a network spun not out of reasoned foresight, but out of a maddened desire to cover every inch of the earth with a rail network so no Madrileno would have to suffer the indignity of, God forbid, having to take the bus or *gasp* walk.
It was awesome.
Although everywhere was accessible by subway, it also meant that there were a fair number of redundancies. So, Scott and I each chose our favored path to get to Chamartin station (the location of our hotel, helpfully built into the station itself), and raced. I lost, but only by a few minutes!
We checked in, organized ourselves, and took off. First stop, Plaza de Espana. (At this point, I would like to point your attention to my facebook album of my trip. The whole shebang is narrated more or less chronologically). Madrid is throttled by parks, plazas, trees, and the most stunning 19th century architecture. We wandered our way from the Plaza de Espana, near the overlook of the Temple of Debod, where we could look down on most of the city. We descended, stopping so that Scott could have a quick ice cream break and for me to get some water, because although it was Yom Kippur, I did not want to dehydrate. Sadly, on our way down the hill, we passed by two guys surrounded by garbage taking heroin. Or what I assume to be heroin; generally two dirty people in the middle of a park with syringes sticking out of their arms are not giving each other insulin injections. The addicted seem to be a global underclass, no matter what people may say.
We proceeded over to the Royal Gardens, where I took about an album's worth of pictures. The Gardens are beautiful, but some "right-minded" moron thought it would be a great idea to stuff the most avant garde pieces of statuary he could scour from the post-modern underworld of the city's art galleries. In effect, it was entirely incongrous to see such carefully tended shrubs and classical statues peppered with steel pipes, gigantic red masks, and most hilariously (I have trouble believing this was intentional), a statue of Vladimir Ilich Lenin himself. This was too much for me. I couldn't help but stare at the damn thing. Lenin, the regicide plus ultra, had by either the irreverent joke of some sculptor, or the most blithely unhistorically-minded artista to ever grace our Good Earth found a likeness of himself placed in the garden of a distant relation of the Romanovs. And in case anybody missed the point that this was indeed good ole Vladimir, the bronze casting actually opened to reveal nothing other than a hammer and a sickle. I understand that this is the land of surrealism, but this was a little much. Scott and I then proceeded to go around the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) to the Plaza de Isabel II.
What struck me very quickly was the huge number of monuments dedicated to the various uprisings against authority that had taken place in Madrid, most notably the rising of the 2nd of May, 1808, when the Spanish people rose up spontaneously against the French occupation lead by one of Napoleon's brothers. This was the theme most prevalent throughout the city's many monuments, and I'll need to learn more to fully understand why. I have theories, but they are not within the scope of this post.
Scott and I left the royal environs, and proceeded down the Calle Mayor, which I'll cheerfully translate as Ye Olde Street. Henry, shut up. The Calle Mayor processes along an East-West axis through Madrid, connecting El Paseo del Prado (of the museum's fame) to la Puerta del Sol (Port of the Sun, the city's center), to the Royal Palace and the Royal Theater, among other reliquaries of Imperial Madrid. The Calle Mayor opened upon the Plaza Mayor, which was a really stunning sort of courtyard which was obviously intended to be a central gathering place for people from all over the city. Most fantastically, the facade of the main hall of the Plaza was painted with what I believe to be Renaissance style frescoes, although my brother would know better than I.
Scott and I left the Plaza Mayor, and went across the Puerta del Sol, where we decided to jump on the subway to escape the heat and go to the Parque del Buen Retiro. This is sort of Madrid's central park: it's enormous. It was nice to walk in the shade for a while, but the best part was while we were resting for a few minutes, we saw perhaps one of the coolest sights of the trip: An old man was doing a Snow White impression, birds hovered around him, and would occasionally leap into his hand, peck at the crumbs, and then depart, but always a flock faithfully and patiently followed him. I took some video, but I haven't yet figured out how to put it online.
Scott and I left the park, and wandered through the Salamanca district, which is home to some of the most elegant homes in Madrid. Madrid, in comparison to Granada, is a city home to wide boulevards, and the Salamanca district personified this striving modernity par excellence. This part of the city was founded by the fashionable class at the end of the 19th century, and it retains both a sense of haute bourgeois (of the decidedly Victorian kind; if the Victorians had been diligently Catholic, that is) dignity and at the same time, is definitely reminiscent on a much more subdued scale of the Gold Coast or Fifth Avenue. Alas, the sun was high and we were tired, so we retired to the nearest subway stop, which was fortunately in the center of the district, and took the Metro back to the hotel for a brief half hour siesta.
Alas for our sleep-deprived (and for me, food deprived) selves, our adventure was barely half over. Much more excitement awaited.
Stay tuned, readers, for Madrid Parte Dos a la manana!
So, about my weekend. Let's begin.
Originally, I was going to go to Malaga with a bunch of my fellow food-abstainers, because there are no synagogues in Granada. Alas, this plan fell through. So with a lack of anything better to do this past weekend, I hit on the idea of going to Madrid with my friend Scott.
Good call.
So we organized our trip in a jiffy, and bright and early on Saturday we trucked off to Madrid via autobus. Now, its a 5 hour ride, but considering that it was Yom Kippur, and I was fasting, I simply took advantage of the opportunity to sleep. Although this meant that I missed seeing most of Castilla de la Mancha (made famous by none other than the most famous of La Mancha's denizens, Don Quixote), I was well rested upon our arrival at precisely 1 o'clock at South Station in Madrid.
First, let me say that Madrid has the 3rd largest subway system in the world, only behind New York's and the Underground. I have never in my entire life come across a system so fantastically complicated as the Madrid Metro. A glance at a system map revealed a network spun not out of reasoned foresight, but out of a maddened desire to cover every inch of the earth with a rail network so no Madrileno would have to suffer the indignity of, God forbid, having to take the bus or *gasp* walk.
It was awesome.
Although everywhere was accessible by subway, it also meant that there were a fair number of redundancies. So, Scott and I each chose our favored path to get to Chamartin station (the location of our hotel, helpfully built into the station itself), and raced. I lost, but only by a few minutes!
We checked in, organized ourselves, and took off. First stop, Plaza de Espana. (At this point, I would like to point your attention to my facebook album of my trip. The whole shebang is narrated more or less chronologically). Madrid is throttled by parks, plazas, trees, and the most stunning 19th century architecture. We wandered our way from the Plaza de Espana, near the overlook of the Temple of Debod, where we could look down on most of the city. We descended, stopping so that Scott could have a quick ice cream break and for me to get some water, because although it was Yom Kippur, I did not want to dehydrate. Sadly, on our way down the hill, we passed by two guys surrounded by garbage taking heroin. Or what I assume to be heroin; generally two dirty people in the middle of a park with syringes sticking out of their arms are not giving each other insulin injections. The addicted seem to be a global underclass, no matter what people may say.
We proceeded over to the Royal Gardens, where I took about an album's worth of pictures. The Gardens are beautiful, but some "right-minded" moron thought it would be a great idea to stuff the most avant garde pieces of statuary he could scour from the post-modern underworld of the city's art galleries. In effect, it was entirely incongrous to see such carefully tended shrubs and classical statues peppered with steel pipes, gigantic red masks, and most hilariously (I have trouble believing this was intentional), a statue of Vladimir Ilich Lenin himself. This was too much for me. I couldn't help but stare at the damn thing. Lenin, the regicide plus ultra, had by either the irreverent joke of some sculptor, or the most blithely unhistorically-minded artista to ever grace our Good Earth found a likeness of himself placed in the garden of a distant relation of the Romanovs. And in case anybody missed the point that this was indeed good ole Vladimir, the bronze casting actually opened to reveal nothing other than a hammer and a sickle. I understand that this is the land of surrealism, but this was a little much. Scott and I then proceeded to go around the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) to the Plaza de Isabel II.
What struck me very quickly was the huge number of monuments dedicated to the various uprisings against authority that had taken place in Madrid, most notably the rising of the 2nd of May, 1808, when the Spanish people rose up spontaneously against the French occupation lead by one of Napoleon's brothers. This was the theme most prevalent throughout the city's many monuments, and I'll need to learn more to fully understand why. I have theories, but they are not within the scope of this post.
Scott and I left the royal environs, and proceeded down the Calle Mayor, which I'll cheerfully translate as Ye Olde Street. Henry, shut up. The Calle Mayor processes along an East-West axis through Madrid, connecting El Paseo del Prado (of the museum's fame) to la Puerta del Sol (Port of the Sun, the city's center), to the Royal Palace and the Royal Theater, among other reliquaries of Imperial Madrid. The Calle Mayor opened upon the Plaza Mayor, which was a really stunning sort of courtyard which was obviously intended to be a central gathering place for people from all over the city. Most fantastically, the facade of the main hall of the Plaza was painted with what I believe to be Renaissance style frescoes, although my brother would know better than I.
Scott and I left the Plaza Mayor, and went across the Puerta del Sol, where we decided to jump on the subway to escape the heat and go to the Parque del Buen Retiro. This is sort of Madrid's central park: it's enormous. It was nice to walk in the shade for a while, but the best part was while we were resting for a few minutes, we saw perhaps one of the coolest sights of the trip: An old man was doing a Snow White impression, birds hovered around him, and would occasionally leap into his hand, peck at the crumbs, and then depart, but always a flock faithfully and patiently followed him. I took some video, but I haven't yet figured out how to put it online.
Scott and I left the park, and wandered through the Salamanca district, which is home to some of the most elegant homes in Madrid. Madrid, in comparison to Granada, is a city home to wide boulevards, and the Salamanca district personified this striving modernity par excellence. This part of the city was founded by the fashionable class at the end of the 19th century, and it retains both a sense of haute bourgeois (of the decidedly Victorian kind; if the Victorians had been diligently Catholic, that is) dignity and at the same time, is definitely reminiscent on a much more subdued scale of the Gold Coast or Fifth Avenue. Alas, the sun was high and we were tired, so we retired to the nearest subway stop, which was fortunately in the center of the district, and took the Metro back to the hotel for a brief half hour siesta.
Alas for our sleep-deprived (and for me, food deprived) selves, our adventure was barely half over. Much more excitement awaited.
Stay tuned, readers, for Madrid Parte Dos a la manana!
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Pictures
Finally, the pictures you've all been waiting for !
Here's my beautiful, ecstatically jet-lagged face after I finally landed in Madrid. What better way to make friends and influence people than to look like a hungover American?
This is the view from the air. I am not entirely sure why I was awake to take this. At that point, I was on my flight from Madrid to Malaga, and I was bone tired. Thus, this must be from when we are landing. There's a lot of agriculture that is still practiced in Andalucia, but conversely, there is also a terrible draught, especially in Eastern Andalucia where Granada is. When we arrived at the hotel in Malaga, we were advised not to take long showers, use water only when necessary, and keep all appliances turned off when not in use. Certainly, in just paying the basic bills, there's a very different way of looking at consumption here in Spain than at home.
Yet in spite of the drought, Granada's many fountains still beckon. This city was really redone at the end of the 15th century to reflect the ultimate triumph of Spanish monarchy (and Catholicism) over the Moors. So although Granada does not have Paris' wide boulevards, its has many parks, plazas, fountains, and streets dedicated one way or another to the Reconquista. Although if one looks hard enough, one can still see many buildings have retained a vaguely Middle Eastern design. This is most noticeable near the center of the city, but fortunately, the old Muslim quarter has been preserved more or less intact, so the architecture is very reminiscent of Morocco. Or so I am told.
Anyway, to business. I'm going to put up two more pics and then leave the link here on the internet to the main album I assembled on facebook. But don't worry. You don't need facebook to see the album. They designed it that way. Or so I am told.
So voila, two more for the eyes:
The Alhambra, as seen from the top of the hill of the Albaicin, the old Muslim quarter.
And last, but not least, I can't resist showing this photo:
The umbrella fighting scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was shot here! Sweeeeeet. This is the beach in Cabo de Gata, the National Park I mentioned in my previous post. There are more pictures in the album.
The Link to the album.
In short, here's life.
I got sick this past weekend, a 24 hour stomach bug. Once I recovered, it did not stop me from taking a bus to Seville and meeting up with the rest of my program there, who had left on Friday morning. I didn't get to see everything (the cathedral, the palaces, etc.), but I did get to see a European soccer game. I had the best seats with my friends Scott Forman and Lauren Cordova, front row at centerfield. Seville was playing Huelva, a local city not far, and they kicked ass, 4-1. It was pretty cool. I didn't take any pictures of this, but Scott did and he's going to send them to me.
Upon returning, Monday was the first day of classes. So far, not so bad. Compared to my usual schedule, this is rather peaceful. Only Arabic and Spanish require weekly homework of any kind. Finding a math class at the university is proving quite a challenge. The main sticking point is scheduling. Almost all but 3 of the math classes are year round, and of the 3 that aren't, one would be great, but it interferes with my Spanish class, and that's mandatory attendance. One I don't have the prerequisites for. The last is a class on regression models, which would bore me to tears. I'm halfway tempted to try it anyway, because there might be more emphasis put on the technical details than what I saw in Econometrics, but I don't know if I could stomach a 3rd semester in a row of ordinary least squares. The upside is that if I take it, I can drop two of my classes for one. A class at the center is only worth 3 credits, while a university class is worth 6. Thus, it would probably be more work in exchange for fewer classes to worry about, and more free time in my schedule. I don't know if it'll be possible at this point, but I'm going to keep exploring my options.
The last piece of news is that I got a job working at the study abroad center. Its just running errands and such, but its a great opportunity in several ways. One is that its good to have a job during school hours (i.e., I do it between classes), as a way of supplementing my income. Even if it just winds up being 30 euros a week, that'll significantly help my living expenses, especially since I wasn't planning to make any money. Two, is that the pay is good. Its 7 euro/hr, which equals to about $9.80/hr, which is more than I would be currently earning state-side. Three, is that the job is mostly running errands around Granada, which is helping my Spanish immensely. Although I placed into the second most advanced Spanish class, my speaking is still far worse than my writing, understanding, or reading. I can speak grammatically, but very slowly. Hopefully, this will only help improve the situation.
Anyway, that's about all the news that's fit to print. Or at least, as far as I have told.
Here's my beautiful, ecstatically jet-lagged face after I finally landed in Madrid. What better way to make friends and influence people than to look like a hungover American?
This is the view from the air. I am not entirely sure why I was awake to take this. At that point, I was on my flight from Madrid to Malaga, and I was bone tired. Thus, this must be from when we are landing. There's a lot of agriculture that is still practiced in Andalucia, but conversely, there is also a terrible draught, especially in Eastern Andalucia where Granada is. When we arrived at the hotel in Malaga, we were advised not to take long showers, use water only when necessary, and keep all appliances turned off when not in use. Certainly, in just paying the basic bills, there's a very different way of looking at consumption here in Spain than at home.
Yet in spite of the drought, Granada's many fountains still beckon. This city was really redone at the end of the 15th century to reflect the ultimate triumph of Spanish monarchy (and Catholicism) over the Moors. So although Granada does not have Paris' wide boulevards, its has many parks, plazas, fountains, and streets dedicated one way or another to the Reconquista. Although if one looks hard enough, one can still see many buildings have retained a vaguely Middle Eastern design. This is most noticeable near the center of the city, but fortunately, the old Muslim quarter has been preserved more or less intact, so the architecture is very reminiscent of Morocco. Or so I am told.Anyway, to business. I'm going to put up two more pics and then leave the link here on the internet to the main album I assembled on facebook. But don't worry. You don't need facebook to see the album. They designed it that way. Or so I am told.
So voila, two more for the eyes:
The Alhambra, as seen from the top of the hill of the Albaicin, the old Muslim quarter.
And last, but not least, I can't resist showing this photo:
The umbrella fighting scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was shot here! Sweeeeeet. This is the beach in Cabo de Gata, the National Park I mentioned in my previous post. There are more pictures in the album.
The Link to the album.
In short, here's life.
I got sick this past weekend, a 24 hour stomach bug. Once I recovered, it did not stop me from taking a bus to Seville and meeting up with the rest of my program there, who had left on Friday morning. I didn't get to see everything (the cathedral, the palaces, etc.), but I did get to see a European soccer game. I had the best seats with my friends Scott Forman and Lauren Cordova, front row at centerfield. Seville was playing Huelva, a local city not far, and they kicked ass, 4-1. It was pretty cool. I didn't take any pictures of this, but Scott did and he's going to send them to me.
Upon returning, Monday was the first day of classes. So far, not so bad. Compared to my usual schedule, this is rather peaceful. Only Arabic and Spanish require weekly homework of any kind. Finding a math class at the university is proving quite a challenge. The main sticking point is scheduling. Almost all but 3 of the math classes are year round, and of the 3 that aren't, one would be great, but it interferes with my Spanish class, and that's mandatory attendance. One I don't have the prerequisites for. The last is a class on regression models, which would bore me to tears. I'm halfway tempted to try it anyway, because there might be more emphasis put on the technical details than what I saw in Econometrics, but I don't know if I could stomach a 3rd semester in a row of ordinary least squares. The upside is that if I take it, I can drop two of my classes for one. A class at the center is only worth 3 credits, while a university class is worth 6. Thus, it would probably be more work in exchange for fewer classes to worry about, and more free time in my schedule. I don't know if it'll be possible at this point, but I'm going to keep exploring my options.
The last piece of news is that I got a job working at the study abroad center. Its just running errands and such, but its a great opportunity in several ways. One is that its good to have a job during school hours (i.e., I do it between classes), as a way of supplementing my income. Even if it just winds up being 30 euros a week, that'll significantly help my living expenses, especially since I wasn't planning to make any money. Two, is that the pay is good. Its 7 euro/hr, which equals to about $9.80/hr, which is more than I would be currently earning state-side. Three, is that the job is mostly running errands around Granada, which is helping my Spanish immensely. Although I placed into the second most advanced Spanish class, my speaking is still far worse than my writing, understanding, or reading. I can speak grammatically, but very slowly. Hopefully, this will only help improve the situation.
Anyway, that's about all the news that's fit to print. Or at least, as far as I have told.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Alhambra
What an amazing past 3 days.
Currently, I'm waiting for my roommate to get home b/c I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my camera and my computer to cooperate, and he's a bit of a comp whiz. So in the meantime, I write. Although not for long, because my host dad is waiting for me to play FIFA soccer.
On Saturday, we woke up really, really, really early to go to a nature park on the interior Mediterranean coast (a bit south of Murcia and Valencia), called Cabo de Gata. Essentially, its miles and miles of coast and arid mountains, but its very beautiful. In fact, several scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (among other movies) were filmed there. The beaches were stunning, and we did some serious hiking over the hills. The pictures summarize the experience better than any words that I can come up with, but it was a deeply memorable experience.
We were treated to a big dinner at a local pizza restaurant, but we didn't actually return to Granada until 11:30 at night. I was feeling a bit restless, so I wandered my neighborhood for an ice cream cone. Fortunately, I managed to snag one around 1:30 before the place closed.
What I appreciate about Granada so far is that its a small city, which means its very easy to get around, and its safe. In spite of the fact that its not as big as Madrid, for example, there are still plenty of places to go, and plenty of things to do, even into the wee hours of the night.
Sunday, I crashed. Pure and simple. Didn't wake up until 2:30, but then around 8, I went to a little cafe/bar on the Gran Via and had a beer with some friends, we then met up with my host parents and went to their favorite bar not far from where we live. It was called "The Perra Gorda" (The Fat Dog), and it was very punk, but very cool. We played foosball, (won 1, lost 1), and then we finally all traipsed home around 12:30.
So I will wait until my roommate arrives to put up the pictures and tell about the Alhambra.
The Alhambra cannot be explained in words.
Currently, I'm waiting for my roommate to get home b/c I'm having a little bit of trouble getting my camera and my computer to cooperate, and he's a bit of a comp whiz. So in the meantime, I write. Although not for long, because my host dad is waiting for me to play FIFA soccer.
On Saturday, we woke up really, really, really early to go to a nature park on the interior Mediterranean coast (a bit south of Murcia and Valencia), called Cabo de Gata. Essentially, its miles and miles of coast and arid mountains, but its very beautiful. In fact, several scenes from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (among other movies) were filmed there. The beaches were stunning, and we did some serious hiking over the hills. The pictures summarize the experience better than any words that I can come up with, but it was a deeply memorable experience.
We were treated to a big dinner at a local pizza restaurant, but we didn't actually return to Granada until 11:30 at night. I was feeling a bit restless, so I wandered my neighborhood for an ice cream cone. Fortunately, I managed to snag one around 1:30 before the place closed.
What I appreciate about Granada so far is that its a small city, which means its very easy to get around, and its safe. In spite of the fact that its not as big as Madrid, for example, there are still plenty of places to go, and plenty of things to do, even into the wee hours of the night.
Sunday, I crashed. Pure and simple. Didn't wake up until 2:30, but then around 8, I went to a little cafe/bar on the Gran Via and had a beer with some friends, we then met up with my host parents and went to their favorite bar not far from where we live. It was called "The Perra Gorda" (The Fat Dog), and it was very punk, but very cool. We played foosball, (won 1, lost 1), and then we finally all traipsed home around 12:30.
So I will wait until my roommate arrives to put up the pictures and tell about the Alhambra.
The Alhambra cannot be explained in words.
Friday, September 7, 2007
Tengo calor
Its hot here in Granada.
So a follow up. Let me describe to you my "family".
Maria Eugenia and Juan (known as Juanjo), are a young, unmarried couple. They live near the center of town, and only a 10 minute walk from the university. They are very cool. Maria is an architect and Juan is a cook at a hospital. They have a golden retriever named Nana, and Juanjo plays X-Box 360. Last night, after I came home from the bar (more on that in a minute), Juanjo and his friends were playing FIFA soccer on the X-Box 360. They insisted I play with them and it was a lot of fun. I feel very lucky to be living with such people. They are very kind and patient.
Now about the nightlife. Granada has a tradition that if you go to a bar and order a drink (unlike the US, bars in Granada serve drinks of all varieties. Coffee, tea, beer, wine, spirits, fruit juices, and soda.), you get free tapas. Tapas are sort of like mini-appetizers. So if you go cruising bars, you can essentially get a free dinner. Its endemic to Granada only, but its really a good way to eat.
I am really enjoying myself here so far, but I am being careful not to get too carried away. We were warned repeatedly that there is often a period of depression after the first week or so, so I don't want to fall too hard or too fast if and when that happens.
Pictures coming this weekend. Stay tuned!
So a follow up. Let me describe to you my "family".
Maria Eugenia and Juan (known as Juanjo), are a young, unmarried couple. They live near the center of town, and only a 10 minute walk from the university. They are very cool. Maria is an architect and Juan is a cook at a hospital. They have a golden retriever named Nana, and Juanjo plays X-Box 360. Last night, after I came home from the bar (more on that in a minute), Juanjo and his friends were playing FIFA soccer on the X-Box 360. They insisted I play with them and it was a lot of fun. I feel very lucky to be living with such people. They are very kind and patient.
Now about the nightlife. Granada has a tradition that if you go to a bar and order a drink (unlike the US, bars in Granada serve drinks of all varieties. Coffee, tea, beer, wine, spirits, fruit juices, and soda.), you get free tapas. Tapas are sort of like mini-appetizers. So if you go cruising bars, you can essentially get a free dinner. Its endemic to Granada only, but its really a good way to eat.
I am really enjoying myself here so far, but I am being careful not to get too carried away. We were warned repeatedly that there is often a period of depression after the first week or so, so I don't want to fall too hard or too fast if and when that happens.
Pictures coming this weekend. Stay tuned!
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Jet-lagggggggggg
I am jet lagged. And it sucks.
But before we get to why I am here, in Granada eating a ham and cheese sandwich and watching an old episode of lost in Spanish. (in case you were wondering, the Australian-Spanish accent does not exist. Or rather, it does not exist well.)
My flights here were more or less uneventful, if a bit convoluted. I flew from Cincinnati to Chicago on Monday at 1:35. I then flew from O'Hare to Heathrow at 4:40 Central Standard Time. It was a really nice flight, and I had a nice, long conversation with a friendly woman from Colorado. She is planning to move to Croatia, so we chit-chatted about the U.S. versus Europe.
Unfortunately, I arrived at Heathrow at 6:00 GMT, which meant that it was 1:00 am EST. So when I would normally be going to bed, I was instead having to travel across Heathrow to get to my gate to go to Madrid. Fortunately, security was efficient, and I found time to first buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's finest for my host family in the duty free. I bought it in euros, but they gave me change in pounds, so I went to a little faux french cafe and settled what I suppose was a case of late night munchies masquerading as breakfast. The croissant was excellent.
I boarded the flight to Madrid at GMT 8:40 and arrived at Madrid-Barajas at noon, about 20 minutes later than scheduled, but I didn't mind because it gave me time to sleep, if only 2 hours. Madrid, for the record, is GMT +1, meaning it is officially 6 hours ahead of you guys back in Cincinnati and Boston.
Madrid-Barajas is perhaps the coolest airport I have ever been in. Very modern, very clean, very well organized. Following my intuition, I was able to get to the check-in counter for my flight to Malaga in good order, and with 4 hours to go.
Unfortunately for my potential enjoyment of Madrid, I was still deeply rooted in EST and my layover in Madrid was prime sleeping hours for yours truly. I couldn't very well take a nap for fear of being robbed blind, so I had to find ways of keeping awake. I paid 2 euros to e-mail Mom, Dad, Katherine, Henry, and Marina. I bought a small lunch. I read the European edition of the WSJ. But I still struggled to stay awake. I got a merciful hour of sleep between Malaga and Madrid, but all the same, when I arrived at the hotel around 7:30, I could barely think straight.
I took a very long, very welcome shower, got changed, and sent an e-mail before bed. Just before I was about to get ready to go to sleep (hungry), I got a call on my room phone from a fellow Brandeisian asking if I wanted to get some food. I agreed, because I didn't really want to miss a chance to see Malaga, and thought that getting some food would make up for the passing up on the sleep.
Well, the food was good, but it was expensive. And I was too tired to really make conversation. So I finally found a way to leave and I finally, finally got some sleep, around 11 local time.
Unfortunately, 9 hrs of sleep has not cured my jet lag. And today hasn't helped. We sat through 6 hours of orientation and lunch was uninspired. We arrived in Granada around 7, and I got picked up by my temporary home stay family at 8.
I will describe them more in detail in a follow up post tomorrow.
This one has been pretty factual, so I'll give a better sense of the details when I've shaken off some of this jet lag.
But before we get to why I am here, in Granada eating a ham and cheese sandwich and watching an old episode of lost in Spanish. (in case you were wondering, the Australian-Spanish accent does not exist. Or rather, it does not exist well.)
My flights here were more or less uneventful, if a bit convoluted. I flew from Cincinnati to Chicago on Monday at 1:35. I then flew from O'Hare to Heathrow at 4:40 Central Standard Time. It was a really nice flight, and I had a nice, long conversation with a friendly woman from Colorado. She is planning to move to Croatia, so we chit-chatted about the U.S. versus Europe.
Unfortunately, I arrived at Heathrow at 6:00 GMT, which meant that it was 1:00 am EST. So when I would normally be going to bed, I was instead having to travel across Heathrow to get to my gate to go to Madrid. Fortunately, security was efficient, and I found time to first buy a bottle of Jack Daniel's finest for my host family in the duty free. I bought it in euros, but they gave me change in pounds, so I went to a little faux french cafe and settled what I suppose was a case of late night munchies masquerading as breakfast. The croissant was excellent.
I boarded the flight to Madrid at GMT 8:40 and arrived at Madrid-Barajas at noon, about 20 minutes later than scheduled, but I didn't mind because it gave me time to sleep, if only 2 hours. Madrid, for the record, is GMT +1, meaning it is officially 6 hours ahead of you guys back in Cincinnati and Boston.
Madrid-Barajas is perhaps the coolest airport I have ever been in. Very modern, very clean, very well organized. Following my intuition, I was able to get to the check-in counter for my flight to Malaga in good order, and with 4 hours to go.
Unfortunately for my potential enjoyment of Madrid, I was still deeply rooted in EST and my layover in Madrid was prime sleeping hours for yours truly. I couldn't very well take a nap for fear of being robbed blind, so I had to find ways of keeping awake. I paid 2 euros to e-mail Mom, Dad, Katherine, Henry, and Marina. I bought a small lunch. I read the European edition of the WSJ. But I still struggled to stay awake. I got a merciful hour of sleep between Malaga and Madrid, but all the same, when I arrived at the hotel around 7:30, I could barely think straight.
I took a very long, very welcome shower, got changed, and sent an e-mail before bed. Just before I was about to get ready to go to sleep (hungry), I got a call on my room phone from a fellow Brandeisian asking if I wanted to get some food. I agreed, because I didn't really want to miss a chance to see Malaga, and thought that getting some food would make up for the passing up on the sleep.
Well, the food was good, but it was expensive. And I was too tired to really make conversation. So I finally found a way to leave and I finally, finally got some sleep, around 11 local time.
Unfortunately, 9 hrs of sleep has not cured my jet lag. And today hasn't helped. We sat through 6 hours of orientation and lunch was uninspired. We arrived in Granada around 7, and I got picked up by my temporary home stay family at 8.
I will describe them more in detail in a follow up post tomorrow.
This one has been pretty factual, so I'll give a better sense of the details when I've shaken off some of this jet lag.
Friday, August 24, 2007
Rewind
What a crazy week.
On Saturday, while trying to get home, the people who ran AirTran airways had so many backed-up flights, that all the people waiting to get out of Boston had congregated around the flight counter so that by 7:30, the entire place was Bedlam. The state troopers were there at the scene trying to keep things (more or less orderly). Due to the chaos, and the fact that I was weighted down with all of my "I'm done with school" stuff, I didn't manage to fight my way to the front of the counter in time to check in for my flight. The result? I had to dither around Logan airport for 13 hours hoping to make a standby flight so that I could get home for Nelsen's wedding.
Unfortunately, the management was not cooperative at all, and even after a shouting match, they said they could promise to send me at the soonest only by Monday. So Monday it was, and I had to miss the wedding. I was not happy.
So I stayed an extra 48 hours in Boston. I had a nice lunch and dinner with Marina's family (mmmmmmmmmmm, crepes), but I was still agitated that I couldn't go home.
Once home, I proceeded to chill. I told Mom all about what's been going on in my life and all of that. It was good to relax and sleep in. Also, very good to see my mom.
On Wednesday, I went back to Cincinnati. Dad and I have been bombing around a lot together, and today at Target, we ran into Nick Mahan. It was kind of cool to see him, if only because I really haven't heard from him since we graduated from high school. He wants to get the hell out of Cincinnati, which I sympathize with. Apparently, Florida beckons.
Last night, I was invited to dinner at Chez Schram. It was a great dinner and we played "Settlers of Catan". I highly recommend that game to anyone, its a blast. Its not as well-known as the more traditional board games, but its one of those cool strategy games where you don't have to know a background story and you don't have to learn a lot of intricate details.
Anyway, I'm having a lazy afternoon right now, and don't feel much like talking any more. I'm having dinner tonight with Julia and Nelsen, and hopefully, go crash with Henry down at UC tonight.
Its good to see my friends and family again.
On Saturday, while trying to get home, the people who ran AirTran airways had so many backed-up flights, that all the people waiting to get out of Boston had congregated around the flight counter so that by 7:30, the entire place was Bedlam. The state troopers were there at the scene trying to keep things (more or less orderly). Due to the chaos, and the fact that I was weighted down with all of my "I'm done with school" stuff, I didn't manage to fight my way to the front of the counter in time to check in for my flight. The result? I had to dither around Logan airport for 13 hours hoping to make a standby flight so that I could get home for Nelsen's wedding.
Unfortunately, the management was not cooperative at all, and even after a shouting match, they said they could promise to send me at the soonest only by Monday. So Monday it was, and I had to miss the wedding. I was not happy.
So I stayed an extra 48 hours in Boston. I had a nice lunch and dinner with Marina's family (mmmmmmmmmmm, crepes), but I was still agitated that I couldn't go home.
Once home, I proceeded to chill. I told Mom all about what's been going on in my life and all of that. It was good to relax and sleep in. Also, very good to see my mom.
On Wednesday, I went back to Cincinnati. Dad and I have been bombing around a lot together, and today at Target, we ran into Nick Mahan. It was kind of cool to see him, if only because I really haven't heard from him since we graduated from high school. He wants to get the hell out of Cincinnati, which I sympathize with. Apparently, Florida beckons.
Last night, I was invited to dinner at Chez Schram. It was a great dinner and we played "Settlers of Catan". I highly recommend that game to anyone, its a blast. Its not as well-known as the more traditional board games, but its one of those cool strategy games where you don't have to know a background story and you don't have to learn a lot of intricate details.
Anyway, I'm having a lazy afternoon right now, and don't feel much like talking any more. I'm having dinner tonight with Julia and Nelsen, and hopefully, go crash with Henry down at UC tonight.
Its good to see my friends and family again.
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Home
I'm back.
Long story, will relate tomorrow. Apparently, the days where one could show up at the airport and breeze right through to the gate are dead. Very sad.
Now, to sleep.
Long story, will relate tomorrow. Apparently, the days where one could show up at the airport and breeze right through to the gate are dead. Very sad.
Now, to sleep.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Scatalogically eschatalogical (Or, How to Philosophize with A Battle Axe)
Notice: Now that it has been repeatedly brought to my attention, I have enabled anonymous commenting on my blog, so those of you sans blog can leave your own comments.
Before addressing the long-winded title of my post, a quick recap of my last week in Boston.
So far, I have attacked packing in leaps and bounds, but half-heartedly. I've really enjoyed my summer here, and I am not looking forward to leaving.
I had dinner with Amy, Samantha, Frankie, and Elizabeth in Nahant (which, as you'd probably be interested to know, Nathanael, is a rare example of a populated island connected by a tambolo.) 'Twas great. Ate too much. Made "Your Mom" jokes. Said some good byes, plus got an awesome early birthday present of a water balloon slingshot from Amy.
Work is about as slow as molasses, and lazier, to boot. I wore my Jack Daniels shirt to work today, and nobody blinked twice. Where else in my life am I going to get a job that pays this well and requires so little? Unless, of course, I join a union...Tomorrow is my last day.
Nathanael asked me to critique a series of essays (The 30 Theses by Jason Godesky) by a primitivist who claims that the civilization as we know it is facing imminent collapse. Although the sort of doomsday scenario the essayist foresees is slew of very modern problems, the thinking that inspired him is very old. Rousseau is certainly smiling in his grave that his adherents have adopted so well to the Information Age. Never minding the obvious silliness of a software engineer heralding a return to nature, he is not as smart as the old philosopher, but certainly better informed. A bit like arming a baby with a Kalashnikov. The technology exists, but the capacities are lacking. I don't think good old Jean-Jacques would have been floored with Godesky's Disneyesque invocation of the "scientific" moral virtue of diversity, per biology and physics in his first thesis. Reading it felt like I was reading the "Circle of Life" scene in "The Lion King" rewritten for grownups. Heavy on the factual theatrics, light on substance. Also, claiming the virtue of "diversity" as your cornerstone while gearing yourself up to rewrite the entire human order is about as vapid as it gets, as it is worth point out that diversity is about as relative and an artificial structure as it gets. "Diversity" is entirely dependent on how advanced our notions are of the multitudinous options that exist, in the natural world or otherwise. If we aren't educated enough to realize that there are 1,000 of different types of ivies, trees, fauna, or what have you, then we can't appreciate the "moral of diversity." If diversity is the only moral, and humans in Jason Godesky's world are living in societies without the resources to teach an appreciation of diversity, then by his own logic, they are ignorant of morality. So what then is the point? Diversity is too unstable a foundation on which to properly attack modern society, precisely because the concept of diversity is so thoroughly a modern concept and a creature of our age, and no matter how many times you invoke the Big Bang, it just doesn't cut it.
The second thing that deeply annoys me about primitivists (and their more intelligent cousins, the anarchists) is a total lack of appreciation of the consequences of their dreams. I read a really good example of this phenomenon, of ideologues versus reality, in Newsweek Magazine, usually a source of the most shallow news coverage available. A man making a documentary found a group of pro-lifers protesting outside of an abortion clinic, and asked them a very simple question:
"Ok, if abortion were made illegal, what should be the punishment for a woman who gets one anyway? These women would then be legally committing murder."
The responses are hilarious. Most of them looked stunned.
"I don't know"
"Not my place to say"
"Pray for them"
One person tried to suggest punishing the physician who performed it. When the man asked about cases of women performing them at home, without assistance, the person just looked helpless and shrugged.
The lesson is that its one thing to protest something you believe is immoral. Its something entirely different to actually enshrine your beliefs into law. Do these pro-lifers have the guts to actually throw real women into prison? Can they seriously believe abortion will just disappear if you make it illegal? The documentary suggests otherwise.
(For the sake of curiosity, I performed this experiment on Nelsen. I asked him the same question, and he responded with "Its not my place to judge." Bullseye.)
Anarchists and primitivists are in a similar boat. Its a beautiful thing to say that civilization corrupts. Its even more beautiful to make pretty speeches and post manifestos on the internet. But actually condemning the entire human population to living on subsistence scavenging? You believe that children, the sick, and the mentally handicapped would be better off in the wild? Are you actually willing to close down the day care centers, the institutions, and the hospitals and personally wheel those people out into the fields and say, "Best of luck to you buddy. Just remember, if you don't make it, its because evolution is a beautiful thing and you just happened to wind up on the wrong side of the genetic lottery." If you can do these things personally, then you'll have my ear, and also my hand on my cell phone, ready to call 911 for when you get violent.
Of course, for the weaker of stomach like Mr. Godesky, who secretly hope that some deus ex machina (or in his formulation, hominis ex machina), will do it for you. No need for revolutionaries to storm Shriners. If civilization collapses, it'll be done for them without the need to sully their hands (and souls) with actually taking real action to make their dreams come true. It's escapist at best, but still cowardly in spirit. So I find myself staring at 30 theses, over half of which go to great pains to show how we're going to wake up any day now and find that its all gone. Poof. Vanished. And people like him are ready to make it in the wild. Beneath it all, you grasp that he hopes in his heart of hearts that it could happen today. Now. Right now. He's ready, just you wait. He saw it coming all along. Never mind that if he believed this deeply in his dream, he'd quit his job and go about trying to do everything he could to tear it all down. Best not to muddle one's conscience and convince yourself that society will do it for you.
Lastly, lets say he's right and I'm wrong. Do they seriously believe that a civilization can never rise again? Somewhere along the way, we did it once. One tribe went from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. So if we return to being hunter-gatherers, what's to stop one tribe from deciding all over again to start farming.? Short of nuclear winter, we'll never be able to completely eradicate all arable land to the point where nothing can grow. It may no longer be optimal in a lot of places, but absolutely barren? Dream on. Go back to ag school. Surely that evolution you revere so much is efficient enough to create a plant that can thrive even in denuded soils. Or is evolution only useful to invoke when you want to try and enchant your audience (and yourself)? For if there's one thing that Jason wants to make sure we understand, its that life marches on, thanks to good old natural selection. And life abhors a vacuum. Someone will eventually discover all over again that the fastest way to gain power in a world where all previous forms of temporal power have been conveniently erased is through a civilization. Uh oh. Sorry Jason, it looks like we're just going to start all over again.
(In case you want to argue that it'll be impossible for some reason blah blah, etc. etc., lack of resources, blah blah, don't forget the Infinite Monkey Theorem. With absolute certainty (i.e., probability equal to 1), we know that if you give a monkey who can live forever a keyboard that'll work forever, it will type the complete works of Shakespeare in chronological order not only once, but infinitely many times. That's how infinity works. A probability, no matter how small, as long as it is not zero, can happen with absolute certainty if the lifespan approaches infinity for all intents and purposes. This is mathematical fact, and I'll be glad to give anyone who asks the proof.)
Man, I haven't really talked philosophy in a long, long time. I realize I've lost most of my readers already, but its sometimes good to exercise other parts of my brain.
Of course, arguing with fools is making a fool of yourself. So I guess the last laugh is on me.
Before addressing the long-winded title of my post, a quick recap of my last week in Boston.
So far, I have attacked packing in leaps and bounds, but half-heartedly. I've really enjoyed my summer here, and I am not looking forward to leaving.
I had dinner with Amy, Samantha, Frankie, and Elizabeth in Nahant (which, as you'd probably be interested to know, Nathanael, is a rare example of a populated island connected by a tambolo.) 'Twas great. Ate too much. Made "Your Mom" jokes. Said some good byes, plus got an awesome early birthday present of a water balloon slingshot from Amy.
Work is about as slow as molasses, and lazier, to boot. I wore my Jack Daniels shirt to work today, and nobody blinked twice. Where else in my life am I going to get a job that pays this well and requires so little? Unless, of course, I join a union...Tomorrow is my last day.
Nathanael asked me to critique a series of essays (The 30 Theses by Jason Godesky) by a primitivist who claims that the civilization as we know it is facing imminent collapse. Although the sort of doomsday scenario the essayist foresees is slew of very modern problems, the thinking that inspired him is very old. Rousseau is certainly smiling in his grave that his adherents have adopted so well to the Information Age. Never minding the obvious silliness of a software engineer heralding a return to nature, he is not as smart as the old philosopher, but certainly better informed. A bit like arming a baby with a Kalashnikov. The technology exists, but the capacities are lacking. I don't think good old Jean-Jacques would have been floored with Godesky's Disneyesque invocation of the "scientific" moral virtue of diversity, per biology and physics in his first thesis. Reading it felt like I was reading the "Circle of Life" scene in "The Lion King" rewritten for grownups. Heavy on the factual theatrics, light on substance. Also, claiming the virtue of "diversity" as your cornerstone while gearing yourself up to rewrite the entire human order is about as vapid as it gets, as it is worth point out that diversity is about as relative and an artificial structure as it gets. "Diversity" is entirely dependent on how advanced our notions are of the multitudinous options that exist, in the natural world or otherwise. If we aren't educated enough to realize that there are 1,000 of different types of ivies, trees, fauna, or what have you, then we can't appreciate the "moral of diversity." If diversity is the only moral, and humans in Jason Godesky's world are living in societies without the resources to teach an appreciation of diversity, then by his own logic, they are ignorant of morality. So what then is the point? Diversity is too unstable a foundation on which to properly attack modern society, precisely because the concept of diversity is so thoroughly a modern concept and a creature of our age, and no matter how many times you invoke the Big Bang, it just doesn't cut it.
The second thing that deeply annoys me about primitivists (and their more intelligent cousins, the anarchists) is a total lack of appreciation of the consequences of their dreams. I read a really good example of this phenomenon, of ideologues versus reality, in Newsweek Magazine, usually a source of the most shallow news coverage available. A man making a documentary found a group of pro-lifers protesting outside of an abortion clinic, and asked them a very simple question:
"Ok, if abortion were made illegal, what should be the punishment for a woman who gets one anyway? These women would then be legally committing murder."
The responses are hilarious. Most of them looked stunned.
"I don't know"
"Not my place to say"
"Pray for them"
One person tried to suggest punishing the physician who performed it. When the man asked about cases of women performing them at home, without assistance, the person just looked helpless and shrugged.
The lesson is that its one thing to protest something you believe is immoral. Its something entirely different to actually enshrine your beliefs into law. Do these pro-lifers have the guts to actually throw real women into prison? Can they seriously believe abortion will just disappear if you make it illegal? The documentary suggests otherwise.
(For the sake of curiosity, I performed this experiment on Nelsen. I asked him the same question, and he responded with "Its not my place to judge." Bullseye.)
Anarchists and primitivists are in a similar boat. Its a beautiful thing to say that civilization corrupts. Its even more beautiful to make pretty speeches and post manifestos on the internet. But actually condemning the entire human population to living on subsistence scavenging? You believe that children, the sick, and the mentally handicapped would be better off in the wild? Are you actually willing to close down the day care centers, the institutions, and the hospitals and personally wheel those people out into the fields and say, "Best of luck to you buddy. Just remember, if you don't make it, its because evolution is a beautiful thing and you just happened to wind up on the wrong side of the genetic lottery." If you can do these things personally, then you'll have my ear, and also my hand on my cell phone, ready to call 911 for when you get violent.
Of course, for the weaker of stomach like Mr. Godesky, who secretly hope that some deus ex machina (or in his formulation, hominis ex machina), will do it for you. No need for revolutionaries to storm Shriners. If civilization collapses, it'll be done for them without the need to sully their hands (and souls) with actually taking real action to make their dreams come true. It's escapist at best, but still cowardly in spirit. So I find myself staring at 30 theses, over half of which go to great pains to show how we're going to wake up any day now and find that its all gone. Poof. Vanished. And people like him are ready to make it in the wild. Beneath it all, you grasp that he hopes in his heart of hearts that it could happen today. Now. Right now. He's ready, just you wait. He saw it coming all along. Never mind that if he believed this deeply in his dream, he'd quit his job and go about trying to do everything he could to tear it all down. Best not to muddle one's conscience and convince yourself that society will do it for you.
Lastly, lets say he's right and I'm wrong. Do they seriously believe that a civilization can never rise again? Somewhere along the way, we did it once. One tribe went from being hunter-gatherers to farmers. So if we return to being hunter-gatherers, what's to stop one tribe from deciding all over again to start farming.? Short of nuclear winter, we'll never be able to completely eradicate all arable land to the point where nothing can grow. It may no longer be optimal in a lot of places, but absolutely barren? Dream on. Go back to ag school. Surely that evolution you revere so much is efficient enough to create a plant that can thrive even in denuded soils. Or is evolution only useful to invoke when you want to try and enchant your audience (and yourself)? For if there's one thing that Jason wants to make sure we understand, its that life marches on, thanks to good old natural selection. And life abhors a vacuum. Someone will eventually discover all over again that the fastest way to gain power in a world where all previous forms of temporal power have been conveniently erased is through a civilization. Uh oh. Sorry Jason, it looks like we're just going to start all over again.
(In case you want to argue that it'll be impossible for some reason blah blah, etc. etc., lack of resources, blah blah, don't forget the Infinite Monkey Theorem. With absolute certainty (i.e., probability equal to 1), we know that if you give a monkey who can live forever a keyboard that'll work forever, it will type the complete works of Shakespeare in chronological order not only once, but infinitely many times. That's how infinity works. A probability, no matter how small, as long as it is not zero, can happen with absolute certainty if the lifespan approaches infinity for all intents and purposes. This is mathematical fact, and I'll be glad to give anyone who asks the proof.)
Man, I haven't really talked philosophy in a long, long time. I realize I've lost most of my readers already, but its sometimes good to exercise other parts of my brain.
Of course, arguing with fools is making a fool of yourself. So I guess the last laugh is on me.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
One Hundred Hours of Solitude
So John is gone
Class is over
I have one week of work left
I decided not to go to New York after Henry said he couldn't meet up with me in Chinatown.
The result? Peace and quiet for the first time in weeks.
Bliss.
My class is over, and the final was tough as nails. Ugly. Probably one of the hardest tests I've ever taken. Its less that the questions were insanely difficult, and more that even for 8 questions, there wasn't enough time. The entire class was working on it until the last minute, and I think everyone felt the same way I did:
"Good questions, prof, but I just needed a bit more time to thread my way through it."
He posted the answers to the bloodbath online, and as I suspected, I answered it about 60% correctly. I even flubbed the Bayes' Theorem question (a soft ball in theory, although the prof messed us all up by asking us to invert the damn thing), if only because I managed to trick myself into thinking that a particular shortcut was the answer.
Bayes' Theorem is cool, because it is often used to check how reliable medical tests are, among other applications. For example, even for the most accurate test, if the percentage of people who actually have a disease is really small (for example, Ebola or Type I Diabetes), then there's usually a 90% chance or greater that if you test positive for it, you don't actually have the disease. Scary, huh? Even tests that are 99% accurate can report a false positive with probabilities of 75% or greater. Confused on how this works? Check out the Wikipedia article.
So I'm predicting a B or a B+ in the class, given that although I only answered about 2/3 of the questions correctly, I am 99% sure I still did significantly better than everyone else. It was that kind of test.
On a slightly related note, I'm seriously considering auditing multivariate calculus again:
1.) My professor the first time around was terrible. Getting a second helping would allow me to take a second stab at getting something better than a B-.
2.) There were some things I never learned at all. My lack of a thorough grounding in infinite series is killing me. It keeps hurting me again and again.
For those of you not as geeky about math as I am, an infinite series is where you add a number or a function an infinite number of times.
Consider Zeno's Paradox (the Dichotomy one):
The ancient Greek Philosopher Zeno posed this question which mathematics could not properly answer for 3000 years, until the advent of calculus. Lets pretend you're standing in your living room, some distance from the wall. Walk halfway to the wall. Now, walk half way from where you are now to the wall again. And again. And again. The distance you can walk keeps getting smaller and smaller, but if you repeat this process precisely, then in theory, you can do this forever, never actually arriving at the other wall.
But obviously, we all know you can walk all the way to that wall. We do it all the time. So it is with infinite series. If we add 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32+........, then we need to be able to show that it actually equals the distance between our starting position and the wall.
Unfortunately, I've been having to teach myself how to do these kinds of methods. And its not exactly intuitively obvious. Infinite series goes from teaching you how to calculate Zeno's Paradox to this monstrosity. Believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, this can be used to calculate the average of any old set of numbers. I've made a fool of myself for the past year or so, because every time my teachers talked about this method, I looked at them with polite disinterest. If I had learned this in high school (where Brandeis assumes you learn this, because apparently every high school but Finneytown teaches BC Calculus), I would have recognized immediately why it was such a beautiful piece of mathematics.
*Sigh* Oh well.
John's visit was fun. I showed him why Brookline is such a run down dump (just kidding Mom). Actually, I wanted John to go back and confirm to my parents that I was living in a very safe place. We chilled on Newbury Street, got into the MFA for free, and John bedazzled all with his knowledge of European Art. I was a bit humbled. I showed him the "Not for Tourists" version of Boston: Penguin Pizza, Felipe's, Coolidge Corner, and the Kosher Dunkin' Donuts near my place. On Sunday, we went to Marblehead to visit Marina at the beach and she showed us the Old Town of Marblehead.
After I saw John to Government Center on Monday and directed him towards the Airport, I ran over to the Spanish Consulate and grabbed my visa! Cha-ching. So I am now equipped and ready to bugalloo to Espana.
So that's the news for the week, hope everyone else is set. I'm going to go back to my bliss.
Class is over
I have one week of work left
I decided not to go to New York after Henry said he couldn't meet up with me in Chinatown.
The result? Peace and quiet for the first time in weeks.
Bliss.
My class is over, and the final was tough as nails. Ugly. Probably one of the hardest tests I've ever taken. Its less that the questions were insanely difficult, and more that even for 8 questions, there wasn't enough time. The entire class was working on it until the last minute, and I think everyone felt the same way I did:
"Good questions, prof, but I just needed a bit more time to thread my way through it."
He posted the answers to the bloodbath online, and as I suspected, I answered it about 60% correctly. I even flubbed the Bayes' Theorem question (a soft ball in theory, although the prof messed us all up by asking us to invert the damn thing), if only because I managed to trick myself into thinking that a particular shortcut was the answer.
Bayes' Theorem is cool, because it is often used to check how reliable medical tests are, among other applications. For example, even for the most accurate test, if the percentage of people who actually have a disease is really small (for example, Ebola or Type I Diabetes), then there's usually a 90% chance or greater that if you test positive for it, you don't actually have the disease. Scary, huh? Even tests that are 99% accurate can report a false positive with probabilities of 75% or greater. Confused on how this works? Check out the Wikipedia article.
So I'm predicting a B or a B+ in the class, given that although I only answered about 2/3 of the questions correctly, I am 99% sure I still did significantly better than everyone else. It was that kind of test.
On a slightly related note, I'm seriously considering auditing multivariate calculus again:
1.) My professor the first time around was terrible. Getting a second helping would allow me to take a second stab at getting something better than a B-.
2.) There were some things I never learned at all. My lack of a thorough grounding in infinite series is killing me. It keeps hurting me again and again.
For those of you not as geeky about math as I am, an infinite series is where you add a number or a function an infinite number of times.
Consider Zeno's Paradox (the Dichotomy one):
The ancient Greek Philosopher Zeno posed this question which mathematics could not properly answer for 3000 years, until the advent of calculus. Lets pretend you're standing in your living room, some distance from the wall. Walk halfway to the wall. Now, walk half way from where you are now to the wall again. And again. And again. The distance you can walk keeps getting smaller and smaller, but if you repeat this process precisely, then in theory, you can do this forever, never actually arriving at the other wall.
But obviously, we all know you can walk all the way to that wall. We do it all the time. So it is with infinite series. If we add 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32+........, then we need to be able to show that it actually equals the distance between our starting position and the wall.
Unfortunately, I've been having to teach myself how to do these kinds of methods. And its not exactly intuitively obvious. Infinite series goes from teaching you how to calculate Zeno's Paradox to this monstrosity. Believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, this can be used to calculate the average of any old set of numbers. I've made a fool of myself for the past year or so, because every time my teachers talked about this method, I looked at them with polite disinterest. If I had learned this in high school (where Brandeis assumes you learn this, because apparently every high school but Finneytown teaches BC Calculus), I would have recognized immediately why it was such a beautiful piece of mathematics.
*Sigh* Oh well.
John's visit was fun. I showed him why Brookline is such a run down dump (just kidding Mom). Actually, I wanted John to go back and confirm to my parents that I was living in a very safe place. We chilled on Newbury Street, got into the MFA for free, and John bedazzled all with his knowledge of European Art. I was a bit humbled. I showed him the "Not for Tourists" version of Boston: Penguin Pizza, Felipe's, Coolidge Corner, and the Kosher Dunkin' Donuts near my place. On Sunday, we went to Marblehead to visit Marina at the beach and she showed us the Old Town of Marblehead.
After I saw John to Government Center on Monday and directed him towards the Airport, I ran over to the Spanish Consulate and grabbed my visa! Cha-ching. So I am now equipped and ready to bugalloo to Espana.
So that's the news for the week, hope everyone else is set. I'm going to go back to my bliss.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Thursday, August 2, 2007
Brother's Keeper
In spite of what the Bible would lead you to believe, tomorrow, I get to play brother's keeper.
John's flight doesn't get into Boston until 12:12 a.m. tomorrow. If the T had a responsible sense of civic service, it would (like every other major city in the U.S.), leave the subway open until 2. As it is, the last trains run around 12:30. And Logan Airport is in a bad part of town. Goody. So I'm going to cross my fingers and hope we can at least get to Government Center on the last Blue Line Train out of the Airport. GC is safe and it would be relatively easy to get a taxi from there, and there's not a $6 Logan surcharge from there.
I gotta go catch my train, but I'll finish this later.
John's flight doesn't get into Boston until 12:12 a.m. tomorrow. If the T had a responsible sense of civic service, it would (like every other major city in the U.S.), leave the subway open until 2. As it is, the last trains run around 12:30. And Logan Airport is in a bad part of town. Goody. So I'm going to cross my fingers and hope we can at least get to Government Center on the last Blue Line Train out of the Airport. GC is safe and it would be relatively easy to get a taxi from there, and there's not a $6 Logan surcharge from there.
I gotta go catch my train, but I'll finish this later.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Anti-Diluvian
Well, its been a miserable kind of day. The rain did not help. I had to walk through the rain to get from the library to the train station and by the time I got on the commuter rail, I was soaked to the skin, and worse, my commuter rail pass was ruined. Completely buggered. I've managed to swindle my way through the system for now, but thank God this happened today, when its only good for one more day. I would be so completely screwed if it had happened earlier. My feet in my shoes felt like puddles for all 2 hrs of class.
New Hampshire was mostly fun. I had a good time in general, could have wished for less rain, though. I must say, the view on the top of Mt. Osceola was picture-card perfect. The most thrilling effect was when a rolling gap in the fog created the effect of a moving camera, so if you kept your eye in the center of the cloud bank, you could watch as the surrounding mountains were slowly revealed. A beautifully limited green and white panorama. Also fun was the invention of Waterwars B.S. Essentially, its just like the cardgame (a.k.a. Bullshit), but with the added bonus that if you are caught in the lie, not only do you have to take extra cards, but you also get hosed with the water gun by the person who called it against you. Needless to say, it was a blast. I highly recommend this game for crowds of at least 5.
I still haven't heard back from the Spanish Consulate, so I'll have to do that tomorrow. Lots to do, sadly, before I go back to Cincinnati. I can only pray for less rain.
New Hampshire was mostly fun. I had a good time in general, could have wished for less rain, though. I must say, the view on the top of Mt. Osceola was picture-card perfect. The most thrilling effect was when a rolling gap in the fog created the effect of a moving camera, so if you kept your eye in the center of the cloud bank, you could watch as the surrounding mountains were slowly revealed. A beautifully limited green and white panorama. Also fun was the invention of Waterwars B.S. Essentially, its just like the cardgame (a.k.a. Bullshit), but with the added bonus that if you are caught in the lie, not only do you have to take extra cards, but you also get hosed with the water gun by the person who called it against you. Needless to say, it was a blast. I highly recommend this game for crowds of at least 5.
I still haven't heard back from the Spanish Consulate, so I'll have to do that tomorrow. Lots to do, sadly, before I go back to Cincinnati. I can only pray for less rain.
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