London....mind the gap, and your wallet.

Two Americans, one Japanese, two Swiss, two 65 year old Germans, and one girl from Kazakhstan walk into a bar...sounds like a joke, right? Nope, just the story of my past weekend in London.  Only replace a bar with our hostel room and you have the foundation of the picture.  I think that if we hadn't gone out to see any of the sights in London on our whirlwind 2 1/2 day trip this weekend, we would have been exposed to more culture than a walk around all of Epcot.  Without going into detail and running out of blogging gas before talking about the actual city,  I think it's worth mentioning a few of the oddities from our "roommates"- whose common language was English (ranging in skill levels from conversational to "hallo").  Our friend from Kazakhstan loves America- seriously. Her first sentence after she asked where we were from was "I LOVE AMERICA".  She also loves Victoria's Secret.  The girl from Japan sleepwalks.  The two Swiss girls were very hardy travelers, and, according to Kazakhstan, one looked like the spitting image of Liza Minnelli (who she said stars in Sex and the City).  The last of this motley crew were the two older, white haired, German women, who kept mostly to themselves.  Their two characteristics of note were that they only knew how to say "Hallo" and "going out" in English, and also that they rarely were fully clothed.  Needless to say, although we treasured our time (2 hours) in the hostel, we decided to focus our energy on the city of London itself.

I had formed most of my images of London from a combination of scenes from The Parent Trap, Mary Kate and Ashley movies, and the episodes of Mr. Bean we watched in Australia in 2000.  Many of them held up- the city is exactly how it's portrayed in the movies- only the people are nicer (not as generally attractive as here in Spain, mind you...) and the accents sound better.  My friend Hilary and I took on the city like...two very excited American tourists.  In a two day span we managed to see all things obligatory: The Tower Bridge, London Bridge (which is really just a normal plain bridge), The Tower of London, Big Ben, The London Eye, The Tate Museum, The Globe Theatre, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace (including the Royal Mews-- which, inexplicably, means "stable/garage"), Picadelly Circle, Soho, and Camdentown.  We were all over the place.  People have asked me a bunch of times "what was your favorite part of London?" and I honestly can't say.  I think the experience of actually being in London was the best part.  Being among the people and in the environment with "Kate+William" regalia (they are beyond an obsession) was surreal.  My favorite part of the entire trip was our trip to "The George Inn," a cobblestone restaraunt/bar near our hostel where youngish professionals come for happy hour around 6 or 7 at night.  There was a huge outdoor patio and everyone was just standing around chatchitting, if you will.  The people (and the peoplewatching) were great.  I will be looking forward to being able to grab a beer in the States and converse with friends like that come July 19.  It has the effect of making one (me) feel very mature and wise for their years.  I felt mature just writing that sentence.  Oh, London...you are grand. 

Just a word of caution to excited tourists: the men in the red coats with big furry black hats? Yeah, they don't stand in heckling distance anymore.  They operate behind bars and real security guards with large rifles that look like something out of Ghostbusters.  I couldn't even shout a knock-knock joke to them to try to get them to laugh because they were so lejos (spanish for far) away.  Such a shame... I was positive that I would be the one person on the Earth to make them break a smile.  (I'm sure I'm the first person to ever have thought that).  Also, watch your wallets on the metro. My friend Hilary's was stolen right under my very watchful nose.

Un Beso from Alicante!

Casey

Granada

Hola a todos!

Granada was an incredible city- my favorite in Spain so far, outside of Alicante.  The main thing Granada is known for is the fact that it was a muslim stronghold in Spain and the last city to fall to the christians in 1492.  Ferdinand and Isabel - the Catholic kings who united Spain as a whole empire again, are buried there, and Granada is a history buff's fantasy.  The muslim influence is apparent in the architecture there- for example, because it's so hot in Granada, they built their streets narrower to allow for more shade and cooler walking in the summers.  This makes driving in tour buses both thrilling and frightening at the same time.  It seemed like only old people and babies were the ones closest to being hit by our driver, but fortunately (like the Knight Bus in Harry Potter), we made it without any pedestrian fatalities.  On Friday we saw the burial site of Ferdinand and Isabel as well as the Catholic cathedral in town- which was giant.  Although it was really cool to see the bodies of F&I (as I affectionately refer to them), it was sort of creepy to see the coffins and know how old the bones and whatnot really are.  That night we saw a Flamenco show in this all-white town (with adobe roofs) that was up a hill in a very scenic area.  You could tell it was a family run business, because the cousins and grandmother all danced while the brothers worked the bar part.  We sat in a low-ceilinged room shaped like a fashion show's runway, with chairs on either side.  The dancers danced literally right in front of you up and down the isle, which put our toes in a very precarious position (even the male dancers wore 2 inch clogs).  The Flamenco itself was incredible- lots of stomping and twirling and flowery outfits.  I loved it- and I am not the dance type.  I know our entire family will be thrilled to know that Michelle Obama sat and watched Flamenco in the very room that I did...I was considering taking a few twigs from my wicker chair home with me as a souvenir just in case we got the same seat.  Saturday was spent at La Alhambra- a muslim city built within the city of Granada during the 13th century that today sees 8000 visitors every day.  This ancient city is unreal- not really what we think of as a city- but it has all of the elements of a city from its heyday in the 1200s.  The 1200s!! It's mind blowing really to think of how many people walked around on the same ground that we were on.  Most of my pictures are from there- we spent 2 and a half hours walking around with our tour guide (using cool microphone earbuds to hear her) and barely saw all of the sites.  It was one of the most gorgeous places on Earth- their mosaics especially were incredible.  All in all, loved the trip, and although I'm happy to be back in Alicante as always it was definitely a city I could see again.

I created a shutterfly website for my pictures- because to upload all of the pictures I took from Granada would take about 8 weeks on this google blog site.  The address is http://atlantameetsalicante.shutterfly.com/ and hopefully yall should be able to see my albums from my hike last week as well as the pictures from this weekend. 

Love you all and go Braves!

Quite delayed...

Hey Yall-

I am SO sorry that it has been so long since I put anything up here.  The weather and March in general has been too busy and wonderful- every time I think about blogging, I'm inconveniently located somewhere where access to the internet is either impossible or would require getting sand in my keys.  To recap the past month...

-The family came to visit during Carnival (which was wonderful- I'm sure you can ask them all about it if yall haven't talked)
-I had midterms (which went fine- although the grading scale here is odd- from 1-10 instead of 1-100, with decimal points)
-I discovered the next american idol in a local cafe.  Spanish singers here sing in English (accents questionable) so he chose "Unchained Melody' from Ghost to serenade my friend Sara on her 21st birthday.  Who knew that the next Clay Aiken would be working down my street wearing a tight black shirt with Mama Mia! in sequins...
-Got the plague (food poisoning from Mexican food)
-I taught a class to Spanish students at a local high school.  Going into the experience, I think I complained every hour on the hour about the fact that I don't want to be a teacher, but had to go talk to a group of 20 17 year old spanish students about "music" in English.  We really had no idea going into the class how much English these kids know, so it was challenging to create a lesson plan based off of practically no information.  I (surprisingly) had an awesome time- Spanish students are really receptive to any American influence, particularly if they get to listen to our music (which plays in the clubs here). They love to act and loved to talk, and we had a great time.  One guy even knew that the Hawks were Atlanta's basketball team.  Go figure.  I'm not signing up for Teach For America any time soon, but I will admit to being mistaken about the experience as a whole. 

What I really want to show yall more than anything is my experience last weekend.  Three of my friends and I hopped on the tram to Calpe- a town just outside of Benidorm (maybe an hour and a half away from Alicante) to explore the beach town and go on a hike.  My friend Sara who led us on this excursion is one of those "I have a vague idea of the route of where we should go in my head based on an assumption and also some fact" type of planners, so we went ahead and cleared out the whole day.  We got off at Calpe to find a touristy but beautiful beach town and a very cute couple from southern England who helped us find our way to Ifach, the rock we were hiking.  Mind you, this is the rock we saw from the tram and said "OK that thing is unclimbable, where's the mountain?"...we found ourselves at the base of what looked like a cliff sticking out of the water, with a path along the way warning of "dangerous hiking" past the tunnel that is there (sorry, Mom and Dad).  Anyway, long story short it is the most beautiful hike and place that I have ever been.  The most dangerous and exhilirating climb I've ever done, and the high of being up on that rock looking out at the ocean has kept us all in great spirits this whole week.  Pictures don't even do it justice, but they certainly do a better job than my words can.  The only downside to the whole day was the clan of feral cats that inexplicably decided to post up on the summit and try to eat our bocadillos (sandwiches).

Since midterms and the improvement of the weather, my schedule has simplified...I generally alternate between the beach, class, eating meals, running, thinking about homework, the beach, and the actual doing of the homework (reserved for hours after dark because it is simply too gorgeous out to ignore).  We are looking ahead to a trip to Granada this weekend of 75 degrees with sun!  I also booked a trip with my friend Hilary next weekend to London- so I'm very excited.  We are both very much high strung, let's see everything type people so we will be good travel companions.

In other news, the time changed here on the 27th of March so we are enjoying sunshine until past 8:15 at night.  Also, April Fools Day doesn't exist here- it's in December.  So much for our plan to dress up like statues in front of our class building and see if our classmates notice...
 

"We're climbing THAT?"

Well- that's it for now. I promise I'll try to keep this updated more often!  Welcome to la primavera (spring)!

Love,
Casey

PS- HAPPY OPENING DAY EVERYONE!