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*
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