Sayonara!

Welp, I've just about wrapped up packing and about to head to bed for a few hours before my flight tomorrow. Packing is NOT FUN. Neither is hanging out in airports, planes, and buses for 24 hours. Anyway, no energy to chat more, gotta go sleeeeeeep. More updates when I land on the other side of the Atlantic!



See y'all in 9 months!
Jessica

Update.

Making this quick -- just wanted to let you all know that I am starting to post pictures from this summer and even as far back as the spring when the parents came to visit. Since I'm busy packing to leave again Monday I don't have time to post about all the adventures, but hopefully once I'm back in Spain I can write a brief overview. Enjoy!

Back to Reality!

Okay, so I've been a little MIA the last couple months, whoops.  But I had good excuses, I promise! They include (but aren't limited to): Barcelona, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Croatia, Prague, Vienna, Germany, Santiago de Compostela, Pamplona, music festivals, concerts, Running of the Bulls festival, meeting people, swimming in the ocean, going on adventures, having the time of my life, etc.  So, it's been a little difficult to keep this little blog here afloat.

Anywho though, I´m writing this very quickly (and tiredly) on my last night in Spain!  Tomorrow at around noon Spanish time (5:00am central time) my flight leaves for the states!  Though I've had an unbelievably amazing time here the past 10 months, I am more than excited to get back.  And when I do, I promise I'll do a somewhat thorough blog update.

Before I leave though, I want to give a big fat THANK YOU to everybody and anybody who has entered my life this year.  You know who you are.  All of you amazing Gallegos who have opened your hearts and your homes to us and filled us with ridiculously delicious food; the amazing friends and CouchSurfers who have offered up your bed, sofas, or floor space; my amazing students who, in the end, probably ended up teaching me more than I taught them; and ofcourse the fellow adventurers who I shared unforgetable tales with while traveling.  None of this would have been the same without any of you.  And ofcourse, a big shout out to all of you back home who have been diligently reading the blog and sending me a constant stream of love and support.  It's always nice to know you're missed :)

With that, I must say goodbye, but leave you with an outstanding cover of a beautiful song.  Cheers




Adios, amigos!

Long story short, Jessica's an idiot.

Hello my tiny minions!

So, as I'm sure you've noticed, I have yet to post anything from my trip with my parents over Semana Santa.  It's not for lack of trying, though, let me tell you.

Basically, this is what happened: Thursday was Cinco de Mayo, and though it's not celebrated here in Spain, a bunch of us Americans and a few Spanish friends got together at the house for some much needed Mexican food and drink.  A little too much Tequila was drank, and my computer took the fall for it.  Literally.  But anyway, the computer is currently (hopefully) in repairs, and I will soon be able to share with you all the adventures of Pammy and Danny in Europe. Please, hold your breath in anticipation :)

This past weekend was pretty jam-packed, as apart from the Mexican fiesta we also went to a student of mine's house to learn how to make authentic Spanish paella.  Now I can cook for you when I get back!

We have a long weekend coming up, 5 days to be exact, and we're planning on taking advantage of them by heading down south to Porto, Portugal, for a couple of days and then back up to Vigo (in southern Galicia) where we will take a ferry to Las Cies, some islands off the coast.  We're all very excited about it -- a couple of years ago The Guardian, a main newspaper from London, called the beaches there "the most beautiful in the world".  So, it should be a good time :)

Anyway, sorry about the long delay, I'll hopefully be getting my computer back any day now and should be able to post about all the shenanigans that the Mechtenbergs got into over here.

-Jessica

Hang on a second while I pick the brain out of my teeth.

Well guys, 10 years later the pictures are finally up.  First though, I suppose I should be obliged to put out a word of warning that a few of the pictures (specifically the ones in the ‘Tenerife’ album) have a PG-13 rating, and should be viewed with the utmost caution, lest the obscenity burn a hole in your retinas.

Obviously, I’m joking, but seriously – view with discretion.  Like I said a few weeks ago, Carnival in Spain is one of the most… enlightening? (yeah, that’s gotta be the right word) experiences I’ve ever had.  I won’t be able to give you all the details (first rule of Fight Club?) but I’ll try my darndest to arrange enough puzzle pieces together into a coherent depiction of what is Carnival in Spain.

Now, the whole trip wasn’t all craziness and transvestites; it actually started off as a pretty average vacation.  I left Ferrol on a train along the northern coast of Spain and had my first stop in Oviedo, Asturias.  Aside from an absolutely wonderful CouchSurfing host (hey Pavla!) who even went so far as to let me sleep in her bed while she slept on the couch, nothing all too noteworthy happened there.  Except for walking down the street and periodically hearing a group of people speaking in English; that doesn’t happen in Ferrol.  So the next morning, after missing the first sold out bus and waiting in the bus station for 2 hours while this still-drunk-from-the-night-before guy tried to have the world’s best conversation with me, I set off towards Bilbao.  I can’t even tell you how excited I was – Bilbao was the very last major city I had left to visit, and it’s the one I had been wanting to see the most for a couple of years.

Once I got there, my CSing host Gonzalo took me on a bit of a walk around the Casco Viejo (old part) and up to the Guggenheim.  The Guggenheim = pure genius.

the amazing light installation inside

the Guggenheim and Puppy

I think the Guggenheim pictures really speak for themselves (check out more in the Bilbao album to the right), all I can really say is that it completely blew me away. 

The second night there we took off with Gonzalo’s friends to the little beach town of Laredo, where there was a big Carnival celebration.  People were dressed up as pretty much anything you can imagine, but I think one of my favorites was the big group of high school boys dressed up like the Denver Broncos (or at least i think that's who they're supposed to be....)

dude dressed up like a lego man. saweeeeet!

The next day we went back to Bilbao and hung around for awhile, but unfortunately, that was pretty much it for my trip to Bilbao.  There are a few other inconsequential details, but since I was only there for a couple days I really didn’t get to explore the city too much.  I guess I’ll just have to go back.  I did get to eat some pretty tasty pintxos (Basque tapas), which the Basque region is famous for, even in Spain.

Sunday I took off for San Sebastian, where I would meet Leslie and her friend Julie from back home.  Apparently though, somewhere along the way from Bilbao to San Sebastian half my brain decided to go haywire.  Halfway through a phone conversation at the San Sebastian bus station with my next CouchSurfing host, Juanma, I realized I left my backpack on the bus.  My backpack which had all my worldly possessions in it, and the bus that had just driven away for its next stop in some other town.  Crap.  I’m not going to go through the details of me trying to get my backpack back, mostly because it’s still making me cringe just thinking about it, but after a ton of unnecessary drama and a Spanish woman working at the bus station being the opposite of helpful and telling me that since it wasn’t stolen I was out of luck, I did eventually get it back the next day and all was well.  I can’t really say much else about the city of San Sebastian.  It was a very lovely city with a beautiful beach, but 99% of my time there was spent panicking and trying to recover my bag.  Bleh.  

I guess I could say though that compared to a lot of cities here, it was impeccably clean and neat – somewhat to a fault.  Also, there was a huge nationalist supporting (people who want Basque Country to be its own country) in the region around San Sebastian and there were even some posters up about the ETA (the local terrorist group) prisoners.  It was quite the difference from Bilbao, which is also in Basque Country, where people hardly even speak Basque.  I realize most of you have no idea about anything about the history of Basque Country, but it’s very unique and interesting.  The Basque people are said to be the oldest civilization in Europe, and the Basque language is so distinct that they don’t even know where it originated from (unlike the Galician language, which has obvious ties to Spanish and Portuguese).  Because of such a history, there’s obviously a lot of drama about wanting to become a country of its own.  Anyway though, it’s an interesting history to read about if you’re ever bored with some time on your hands.

ETA terrorists

But enough about that.  After a couple stressful days in San Sebastian, Leslie and Julie headed east to Barcelona, and I set off the opposite direction for Santander – my last stop up north.  I was greeted by my last CSing host, David, who had obviously been through a bit of his own Carnival disaster extravaganza, as had his apartment.  We made some sandwiches and set off on bikes around the city, where David played the perfect tour guide.  He showed me this less-than-interesting church which was donned with plasma TVs every 6 feet, and then we took a ride up to a beautiful park where we had a picnic.  Later that night we went to the Santander library to meet a friend and see this 80’s exhibit that was going on, with lots of funny Spanish 80’s toys and whatnot.  We also found an Osama Bin Laden comic book in the library, which was very strange.

The next afternoon, I grabbed a flight to Madrid to meet up with Callie and Sheena (American friends who live in Ferrol) and stay the night before our flight out to the Canary Islands the next morning.  My friend Fernando took us to this amazing little underground Chinese restaurant, and then out to an Italian language exchange bar.  The Italian bar was really cool; it was basically an intercambio place where you could go and practice another language, and as long as you bought a pint of beer you could eat as much of the authentic Italian food as you’d like.  So all in all, a pretty sweet deal.  We also met the Italian guy who organized the whole night, and of course he pounced on us Americans, begging one of us to marry him so he could get American residency.  Our wedding’s this summer, for those interested, and my new Italian husband will come live with me in Nebraska next year ;)

My new Italian fiancee... though I can't remember his name for the life of me.
I obviously cared much more about the tasty food and pint of beer...

Oh yeah! The Nebraska restaurant in Madrid!!!  I've heard the food is terrible though... haha

The rest of the night we spent out with some German and Venezuelan friends we met at the Italian place, and then around 4:00 we headed toward the airport for our flight to Tenerife.

Tenerife was just beautiful.  And crazy.  The first day we were there, we rented a couple of cars (by that point there were 7 of us) to make a trek up the volcano that sits in the middle of the island.  We probably should have heeded the warning that the gas station attendant gave us about the bad weather, but of course we didn’t, so we ended up halfway up a volcano surrounded by fog and about 5 feet of visibility.  I’m not gonna lie, I was freaking out a bit.  Dang claustrophobia.

After a certain point though, we were above the fog and it was mostly clear.  Before going back into town, we stopped at a black sand beach, formed from the ash of the volcano mixing with the sand, and then at this delicious barbeque restaurant in the mountains.  On our way back down the mountain, we made a pit stop at a gas station, where as luck would have it, I got stuck in the bathroom for about 15 minutes.  

"I just don't think I can fit"

The rest of them trying to get me out, and of course taking pictures.

The next couple days were spent with the Carnival festivities.  During the day we went out to watch the parades and competitions in the streets, and at nights we joined the young and old in the street for Europe’s largest Carnival celebration.  It’s a really amazing event, and the costume of choice for just about every man was to dress up as a woman.  We met people dressed up as just about anything and anyone, from Vanilla Ice, to Monica Lewinsky, to an Avon Lady.

Lady Gaga and I

So that’s about it with Carnival.  I know I said it was a spectacular event and that I would tell you all about it and everything, but it’s really one of those things where I think the pictures say far more about it than anything I could type.  The album to the right should give you a pretty good idea of what it was all about.

But apart from that, the past few weeks I’ve mostly just been trying to catch up on all the stuff I’ve missed while traveling, most of which is sleep.  Last weekend we did a small trip to Vigo, a city in southern Galicia, to see José González (who is actually Swedish, not Spanish) and visit our rugby playing friends from New Zealand, who were having a huge going away dinner with Argentinian barbeque.  I was the only one brave enough to try the brains.

In other news, this past week was BEAUTIFUL, with temperatures in the 80’s, so of course, we went to the beach on Friday! It was wonderful, and I got to swim in the ocean and everything :)  Afterwards a friend of ours drove us around the area and showed us some cool views of the beaches and little villages. (more photos on the right)

life in Galicia is so rough :)

Katharina kept making me pose :(

 Welp, that's all folks.  The rest of the week will be spent packing and getting reading for Mom and Dad to come on Thursday, which I'm super excited about!  The next blog you'll read will have lots of pictures of the two of them, so get excited!  I leave you with two very appropriate soundtracks for the week's blog:

Un saludo desde Galicia!  [PS -- "hace calor" means "it's hot"]

what's the craic?

Hello world-

I’m back, relaxing, and moving verrrry slowly.  Traveling for almost three weeks with barely a break apparently takes a toll on the immune system, and I subsequently spent the whole week sniffling, sneezing, and coughing up that gross looking stuff that nobody wants to talk about (whoops).  But no need to fret (I know you were about to), my superior genetics have been kicking this thing out of my system in record time, and this morning I woke up feeling nearly invincible.  The score is now as follows:

Jessica’s immune system: 1

Stupid cold: 0

I really didn’t want to write this blog, but after so many people (the voice in my head being the loudest and most persistent) subtly reminding me how I haven’t posted in awhile, I really had no choice, lest everybody I know and love disowns me.  So this is how it’s going to go.  Today I’ll write about Ireland and whatever other random anecdotes that pop into my head.  Then, I’ll work on putting up some stuff about Carnival and try to get it posted little by little within the next week.  Unfortunately I’m going to try and power through this as quickly and effortlessly as I can, so it will probably be lacking the pretty little word pictures I usually like to paint.

So here we go!

Let’s see… I was in Ireland, and um, it was pretty great.  Biggest disappointement?  There were not NEARLY as many gingers (redheads) as I was expecting!  Talk about false advertising.  The accent was pretty stellar though, so I guess that makes up for it.

But anyway, after a ridiculous plane ride where the middle-aged couple behind us threw a big temper tantrum and were literally intentionally pushing up on our seats (Pam and Dan, if you even think about acting out while you’re over here I swear I will disown you), we finally arrived in Dublin around midnight and ventured out into the city for a bite to eat and a nice pint of Guinness.  Mmmmmmm, Guinness…

Not much exciting to tell about that night (that I can remember), so once we got back to the hotel room and tied the two twin sized beds together with belts and TV cords (three girls paying for a two person room is really most economical, we’re in a recession!) we crashed and then got up for the St. Patty’s Day parade the next morning, which happened to pass by right outside our hotel.

The streets were packed for the parade, though I suspect most of the crowd was made up of tourists; I think the majority of the Irish folk venture into the outskirts of the city during the holiday.  The parade started off pretty average, with assumedly important people waving out the windows of their smart cars and middle aged, kilt-wearing men playing the bagpipes.  After that things picked up a bit, and the parade turned into some crazy circus show interspersed with random high school bands, including a few from the US.

Pringles?

The rest of the day we used to enjoy the general atmosphere and see a couple sites in Dublin.  We ventured to Trinity College where the Book of Kells is housed.  I can’t really remember the exact details of the book, but it was written in Latin and had some sort of religious significance – something about the four Gospels – but I was less than impressed with the exhibit.  It’s not like we could pick up the book and flip through it to see all the marvelous writings and pictures or anything; the book was open to one page underneath a bullet-proof slab of glass, watched over by a bored looking security guard.  I was more impressed with The Long Room, this beautiful library that we exited through that had hundreds of volumes of old books stacked up to the ceiling and those sliding wooden ladders in every aisle.

Trinity College

Afterwards we joined in the celebration with the green crowd and dropped into a few pubs, where, surprise surprise, they actually ask to see your ID before entering!  I guess I’ve been living in Spain too long, where the concern for the drinking age is so low that our 16 year old students are sometimes seen out in bars, so we were taken a bit off guard.  Anyway though, since most of our group had to go back to the hotel to get IDs, Callie and I ventured off on our own and had pretty much decided to fly solo for awhile.  That is, until Callie sat down to get her face painted and I was ambushed by “JESSICAAAA!!!”  More surprises in tow, as my two Kiwi (New Zealander) friends that I met by random coincidence in Spain a couple months back charged me.  Small world, isn’t it?  So before we finally set off to meet our American and Scottish friends, we spent a good portion of the rest of the night with the Kiwis having fake mustaches drawn on our fingers, getting hit on by 65 year old Irish men, and eating shish kebabs from a guy who swears the other kind he was selling contained horse meat.  Yelch, still cringing from that one.

The next day we hopped in our rental cars and set off towards Galway on the west coast of Ireland.  Thankfully we had our Scottish folk with us; I’m not sure how we would have fared trying to drive on the left side of the road…. The drive from coast to coast was only about three hours, but we stopped once for lunch in a tiny little town and then again at the beautiful Cliffs of Moher where we explored and watched the sunset over the ocean.  Not a bad day, overall.

The Cliffs of Moher!

Me with my gigantic Scottish friends.  6'5", 5'2", and 6'4"

they make me look so short

this was supposed to be a shot of the "super moon" but i don't think you can see it unless you enlarge it

We finally got to Galway around 9ish and settled in for some nice fish and chips.  I absolutely loved the city of Galway -- much, much more than Dublin.  It’s a lot smaller, with a permanent population of only about 70,000 (smaller than Ferrol!) but you’d never know as it’s got a pretty diverse and lively university-age crowd.  That night a couple of us went to a great little reggae club with our CouchSurfing hosts, but unfortunately we had to leave at 8am the next morning to make our trek up to the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland – a 6 hour drive (or so we thought).

 

So Saturday was a bit of a struggle.  The “6 hour drive” predictably took longer, and though we left Galway at about 9am, I don’t think we actually got to the Causeway until about 6pm.  Giant’s Causeway was pretty cool, like nothing I’ve seen before, but quite honestly it wasn’t really worth being in the car all day.  It was all the way up in Northern Ireland, and it probably should have been left for a different trip.  So by 10:00 when we finally got back to Dublin, we were all pretty exhausted, and Callie and I headed to the airport to sleep a bit before our 6:40 flight back to Spain the next morning.

pretty pretty clouds :)

on our way to the Causeway

friends Jek and Sheena

they look like little stacked pennies :)

All in all, it was a pretty fun trip.  I’d still like to go back sometime for a more relaxed vacation when the country isn’t so flooded with tourists for the holiday and see a bit more of the country.  Oh yeah, so there’s all that hoopla about Ireland being all beautiful and green, right?  Well, I just want to set the record straight – Galicia is greener!  And prettier! I’m not trying to take anything away from Ireland, it’s a great place, but I’m just saying, when the world finally finds out about the hidden gem that is Galicia, it is going to explode with tourism.  It’s kind of interesting because apart from the landscapes being similar between the two countries, the culture is pretty similar as well.  Galicia has a long Celtic history from all the immigrants who have slowly moved over here from Ireland and Scotland, so we’re just flooded with all those bagpipes and Celtic folklore.  Also while we’re on the subject, let’s all take a second to ponder the stupidity of the dual existence of the words “immigrant” and “emigrant”—so pointless.

The rest of this week has been pretty calm, mostly because I’ve been sick and stuff in bed.  To the right you’ll see a new album posted on Ireland, which includes some pictures from the Giant’s Causeway and the Cliffs of Moher.  I’ll get working on some stuff about my vacations over Carnival and get them posted as soon as I can.  In the meantime, enjoy a tune from one of my favorite Irish singer/songwriters, Fionn Regan:

Cheers!