Muy atrasado 11:23

So it's been a couple weeks since I got on here and talked about London and promised that Dublin was coming soon! Between then and now, I have gone on two more weekend excursions and have another planned for this weekend. For now, though, I have a free hour before class, so I will try to get caught up as best I can.

Dublin
We arrived in Dublin late on Friday night and as soon as we stepped off the bus from the airport, we were greeted by a couple of friendly Irish folks about our age that showed us to our hostel and invited us out for a pint. We never ended up finding them for that beer but the fact that they walked with us for a couple of blocks for no reason other than the fact that we looked like tourists and they wanted to give us a warm welcome was really cool, and was pretty typical of the entire weekend; the Irish were extremely nice and the three of us -- Alberto, Kelly, and I -- had a great time.

The next morning we took a free walking tour of Centre Dublin led by a jovial, knowledgable dude named GAR (which was short for something but he said to call him GARRRRRRRRRRRRRR). The tour was really cool, and we learned a ton about the city of Dublin and the history of Ireland. Really interesting was the story of the church/pub in one, which, although it just sounds like a typical Irish joke, actually served a purpose when the British outlawed Catholicism; the Irish would dress up on Sunday morning and tell the policemen they weren't going to Mass but to the bar. They would hold Mass in the basement, and, to make their story hold water on the way home, get drunk. (Some crazy dude also came up to us and starting mouthing off about how he was molested as a child because of the priests. Fun day!) I told Gar the story of Tipperary Hill and the stone throwers in Syracuse, which he thought was really cool. That is about the only thing about me that is Irish.

The Guinness Storehouse was an extremely fun museum, dedicated of course to everyone's favorite Stout. It was laid out more or less vertically, with about nine different levels culminating with a free pint at the top of the factory, which was a large circular glass room that overlooked the whole city. I loved eating the malted barley they had out -- the essence of Guinness -- because it tasted, well, just like Guinness. I was EATING Guinness! Even Kelly gave into her coeliac Kryptonite temptation and had to try a couple sips at the "Testing Lab." (She likes it.)

Going out to the Pub Crawl in Temple Bar was pretty fun. We got one of our big goals done in that we saw live music at one of the pubs... not exactly Flogging Molly but rather one guy with a guitar singing folk music. Nevertheless, great times and great beer. We were in this one bar when the Irish national team tied up a key match against Italy. The place went absolutely bonkers. One of the coolest sports bar moments I've ever had... and then as wild as it was, it was equally somber when the Italians scored a cheap goal in the 89th minute and it ended in a tie.


Rome
I got home from Dublin on Sunday night and on Thursday night, got to the airport and headed off to Rome to see Kelly, and her parents who were visiting from America. The Ciampino airport is a modern marvel. It's literally about three rooms! (I love it. Its size is what allowed me to make my plane Monday morning, too.) The Snavelys had a rented apartment for the weekend, so there was no cramming into a mixed hostel dorm -- we had tons of space to chill out and drink some wine. We had a packed itinerary the three days I was there, and we saw just about all the really big tourist sites in Rome: the Borghese Gallery, the Spanish Steps, TONS of cool churches that over there are probably nothing special, the famous fountains, the Vatican Museum (including the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica), the Coloseum, Palantine Hill, and the ruins of the Imperial Forum. I don't have the time to go into each and every thing that we did, but it was all absolutely gorgeous.

Italy is just a very different place than America, the British Isles, or even Spain. The quality and style of life is extremely different. I can't even describe it. It's a modern country, but at points it seems a bit backward or antiquated, too. I don't know what exactly it is or how to describe it, but in many ways Rome was very much what I expected. Long, winding streets, great food and coffee, and people who know what's important to them in life and what isn't.

We ate extremely well. Cheese plates with honey, mixed salamis, and of course, great pizza and pasta -- not to mention wine. The food was a lot closer to what we have in America, just in that the food was rich and made with lots of cheese. My stomach was hating me, though, for breaking my strictly Spanish Mediterranean diet, consisting mostly of fish, fruits, and vegetables. I got somewhat sick Saturday night and had to sit out while the Snavelys went out and got a drink or two. But the next morning I felt just fine. One of the more striking things was how good the olive oil was. WOW was it good -- as much as Spanish olive oil is better than American, Italian was that much better than Spanish. Really delicious.

Brussels and Paris
Last week was an extremely quick turnaround. I got back from Rome, as I mentioned, Monday morning, almost missing my plane. I was home all day Tuesday, and first thing Wednesday morning -- like, 05:00 first thing -- I was up and showering and heading to the Madrid airport that I know oh so well to head off to Brussels with Alberto and my friend Zach! We didn't have a ton of time in Brussels and there really isn't a ton to see, but sometime soon I will copy pictures from ALL of these trips and you can see the Great Square in Brussels, which was something else. Just to put the city in perspective: their biggest tourist attraction is Mannekin Pis, a three-foot statue of a young boy peeing into a fountain. (He apparently sometimes dresses up à la the bear on Woodchuck Hill Road but it's a bit cooler than that. Though I wouldn't know because he wasn't dressed.)

We took great care to sample the local flavors -- we consumed a, let's say, healthy amout of the local wheat beers. Hoegaarden and Blue Moon are the Belgian whites of choice in the States, but there are of course tons of great craft beers over there, too. One is called Delirium Tremens, and we went to the bar the company owns. That beer costs about $60 per case back home, but in Brussels a normal-sized glass was only €3.20 or so. We also, of course, needed to hit the absynthe bar across the street (yuck) and we also had great waffles and fries (the two local specialties). We also had great, spicy Vietnamese and Thai food, which was fantastic.

We took a train to Paris the next day and took a walking tour from the same (free) company that we used in Ireland and while the tour wasn't as good (as evidenced by the fact that I didn't quickly remember her name but I just rememebered it's Anne Marie, she was Irish too). It was still a good tour, though. It was interesting being back in Paris, as I'd been there once before with American Music Abroad. I remembered a lot but I think then we were moving too quickly and frantically to really take very much of it in. I loved walking along the Seine and crossing the footbridges. After the tour, Kelly and Sapir and Kelsey and Robin met us at the Louvre for FREE ADMISSION on Friday night. Kelly and I lost the rest of the group but we were into other stuff anyway; we got to see many of the sculptures that were pilfered by Napoleon from the Borghese Gallery in Rome. There was so much stuff in there I couldn't possibly hope to get to it all, but Kelly took lots of pictures and those will be up soon, hopefully next week.

The next day we saw the Notre Dame cathedral (and climbed to the top of the belltower! Woo!). It was pretty awe-inspiring but there were just so many tourists it was sort of difficult to enjoy. We then headed up to the Sacre Coeur church on top of Montmarte, which is one thing I specifically remembered from Paris the first time. That night, we climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower at dusk and saw the most incredible view of the city in a light rain. Kelly and I enjoyed a romantic bottle of water at the top! She and I then went and bought some stuff for a picnic dinner. We went out and sat on what many call "the most romantic bridge in the world" and had our picnic dinner -- it's where the finale of Sex in the City was filmed, apparently, but the Seine was all lit up and it was fantastic. One of the best nights of my life.



Tonight, Kelly's here and Salamanca this weekend! ¡Hasta luego!

Un fin de semana en el Reino Unido e Irlanda 14:20

This past weekend kicked off a very busy month of travel for me. I'm sitting here on Monday evening just before dinner a bit tired—but not too tired to write—after a whirlwind weekend in the UK and Ireland! I left for London Thursday afternoon with my friend, Alberto (who despite the name is not Spanish but American, although of Ecuadorian descent)... but that ended up being Thursday night because our flight to London was delayed three hours! No explanation from easyJet's crew on the delay, but in the end it turned out just fine: we indulged in a couple mini-bottles of tequila from the Duty Free store and met another American studying in Madrid who happened to be on the same flight. (We also ran into our friends from Syracuse on their way to Portugal. Small world! Except not really because we all had good reason to be in Madrid.)

We finally arrived in center Centre London around 11:00 that night, and we took a taxi out to Picadilly Circus to meet Kelly at our hostel (after a bit of aimless wandering because I may have forgotten to note the address before leaving). We took a walk around the neighborhood and just explored the nearby city before hitting the hay in preparation for a long day Friday.

This hostel we stayed at was supposed to be the best hostel in London—maybe even the UK—and if it was the best, I don't want to see the worst. It wasn't horrible, but certainly not as nice as either Valencia hostel. But I guess that's what you get when you travel on a budget. As a Brit muttered to me as easyJet botched the boarding process after making us wait three hours, "you get what you pay for." It's true. But to be able to see lots of great European cities on the cheap, in my eyes, makes up for crap like waiting for three extra hours in an airport terminal, or being crammed into a hot, dirty room with a dozen others and being woken up at 4:00 AM to see if I stole a pillow. (Answer: Uh, I didn't touch your pillow.)

The next day we got up early and tried to cram as much London as we could into just a few hours, as we had a flight to Dublin at 9:30 that night—needing, of course, to head to the airport at 7:00. We started off getting into the "Tube" and heading toward Westminster and all of the big sights. Quick note on the London Underground / the "Tube": people talk about it a lot. And, no doubt, it's a really nice subway system. The trains arrived promptly and it was on the whole very clean. I really enjoyed the layout and design of some of the stations and the modern technology of the tickets, Oyster cards, and kiosks. There were some things about it that are better than Madrid's Metro, but on the whole, I still think Madrid holds true as the best Metro in Europe. The trains and stations in the Underground are very small and made me a bit claustrophobic, whereas the Madrid Metro has wide, spacious trains and platforms, despite being a smaller city. There are also NO redundant, overlapping lines in the Madrid Metro, nor lines with multiple terminations. I mean, it's splitting hairs, but for what it's worth, I love my Madrid Metro and will defend it to the death.

We saw and snapped pictures of the Parliament building, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey. We then headed over to St. James's Park and over to Buckingham Palace to try to catch a changing of the guard. Not much happened; we waited probably 40 minutes and just saw a group of soldiers riding by on horseback led by a (struggling) bugler, but hey, it was still pretty cool to see at least that. Kelly and Alberto took lots of pictures and I will try to steal some of those and post them to Picasa and Facebook. I would take more but the memory card on my camera died while I was on Mare Nostrum—along with about 200 pictures—so I am limited to 20 pictures or so at a time on my ancient camera before the internal memory fills. I have taken some and I will get them up when I can.

We ate a great lunch in a little restaurant right on the River Thames—and right next to Sir Francis Drake's galleon!—and I also enjoyed a British craft brew along with it. We had bangers and mash—i.e., sausage and mashed potatoes—and enjoyed the very typical, classic London cityscape: overcast, gray, blustery day, with a scattered drizzle (or, as we were catching the airport bus, downpour) mixed in. After (before?) lunch, we wandered toward a cool outdoor market with a lot of interesting food for sale. There was a great pot of SPICY West Indian Chicken Curry, and Kelly and I stocked up on candied almonds and walnuts, as well as chocolate/cinnamon-covered hazelnuts and white chocolate fudge raspberries. All pretty cheap, too—this, of course, being a relative term, given that in England everything costs twice as much as in the States because of the exchange rate.

My favorite thing we did in London was attend an Evensong service at Westminster Abbey, which is the Anglican evening choral church service. Attending the church service gets you into the Abbey for free, and while you can't really wander about and look at all of the tombs, you get to see the incredible inside of the cathedral and hear the traditional "men's" choir, with child sopranos and altos—really haunting and pure sound.

It was just weird to be in an Anglophone country again. Walking into a shop and NOT saying "¡Hola!" to the shopkeeper. Bumping into someone and telling them "sorry," and not "perdón." Ordering fried food and having eggs for breakfast instead of dinner. That, and the weather, made me feel at home.

Dublin was awesome, too! More on that in a bit. For now, cheers!

Valencia y la diferencia entre 'escuela' y 'colegio' 10:45

Things have been, as usual, pretty awesome lately. I went to Valencia with Alberto last weekend, and we saw lots of great sights. Above all, though, it’s just a really beautiful city. Marble sidewalks abound in the city center, which included a cool indoor market, a gorgeous cathedral just a short walk from our hostel, and portions of the old city wall you can climb on. I’ll try to get some pictures up from my friend’s camera as soon as possible. Saturday in Valencia, we visited Europe’s largest aquarium, which is a massive underground complex right near the Mediterranean—unfortunately, not really beach weather when we were there. That night, we smoked a couple Cuban cigars, because hey, we can! While we calmly enjoyed a bottle of wine and our cigars in la Plaza de la Virgen, a festival started up in the square: a traditional Spanish swordfight. It was a pretty cool sight, and Valencia was wonderful, as advertised: sunny, warm, bright, and clean. The bus service we used was fantastic, too, and I wish I could take it everywhere rather than flying.

Tomorrow, I start my “service learning” teaching at the elementary school right down the street from my apartment. It should be interesting… I’m a little scared, as I’ve never taught anything before, and I hope at least that the teacher is in there leading the discussion and that I am not in there by myself like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Still, no experience in the classroom will likely be as embarrassing and awkward as my first encounter with this school last week. I went into this school armed only with the knowledge that I had an appointment with Carmen Rodríguez, the school’s director, at 10:30 on Wednesday morning. So, I walked into the school at the only obvious entrance, and told the guy behind the security desk that I had an appointment with “Carmen Rodríguez” at the “Nicolás Salmerón school”, and he looked at me sort of funny—I did stumble pronouncing Rodríguez—but he answered, “con Carmen, sí, un momento.” He led me into the nearby office and introduced me to Carmen, who was having a loud and animated phone conversation. He asked my business and introduced me as a new “English teacher” to Carmen, who invited me to sit down.

Carmen didn’t appear to be expecting me, so I reminded her that I was sent from Syracuse University, and that I had an appointment with her. She nodded and asked me something along the lines of if I was with the business collective or the educational group. I asked her to repeat, not because I didn’t understand, but rather because I had no idea what I was talking about; all I knew was that I was sent by Syracuse to teach English. That she understood, but I had no idea what she was talking about so I finally said that I guessed I was with the educational group. She said OK and looked for my name on the schedule, asking if I knew what times I was supposed to teach. I said that yes, I did have a schedule—this is all paraphrased because we were talking in Spanish, of course—and I told her it was Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. She, in turn, looked confused and responded that my name—“Ben John”—wasn’t on the list and that furthermore, they don’t teach English classes on Tuesdays.

I probably looked a bit disheartened. I told her that this was what I was told at Syracuse, and I was wondering how such a mixup happened. She asked me again if I was from an educational group or business group, and I replied that I didn’t know, that I was simply sent from Syracuse to teach English. She then told me that she’s merely an administrative person and doesn’t know anything about this, and that I should be talking to the school’s director, which elicited a sigh of relief from me. She called the director, who wasn’t there, but then told me that her secretary knew nothing about this and had no record of an appointment. I was starting to get really upset, flustered, and frustrated. I was really looking forward to doing this service learning and did NOT know what went wrong. Carmen was confused as well and told me that she’d take my number down and have the director call me as soon as she got in, and that I’d talk to my people at Syracuse to see what the problem was. As I was leaving, however, she said something interesting. Carmen told me that I shouldn’t be waiting on pins and needles because they’ve already hired their teachers for the year and that they already have a full roster.

At this point, I was really confused. I replied that I was not looking for employment—that I was simply a volunteer sent to assist the English teachers at Nicolás Salmerón on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She looked at me for a second and asked if I was supposed to be at the Colegio Nicolás Salmerón—as opposed to the “escuela” that I asked for—and I said, yes, probably, and asked if I was not indeed there? Carmen laughed and said no, I was at the Cultural Center Nicolás Salmerón—not the elementary school—and that they teach English classes for adults Mondays and Wednesdays at night. The reason for the confusion was obvious: I was introduced to her—named Carmen, as well as the director of the school—as a new English teacher (which technically I was, but not a paid employee), and I asked for the Nicolás Salmerón School, where I technically was, but I was more specifically looking for the colegio, an elementary school attached to the cultural center. I breathed a huge sigh of relief, apologized for wasting her time, and followed the security guard across the building to el Colegio Nicolás Salmerón, where the ACTUAL Carmen Rodríguez was waiting for me.

She couldn’t have been nicer; she was eager to meet me and took me into her office where we had a short chat alternating between Spanish and English—my Spanish was probably better than her English, which made me feel good—and then she took me around the school to meet all of the teachers I’d be working with in this small elementary school. She also showed me the double doors I walked by that led to the school’s courtyard, that did NOT look like the building’s main entrance, that are the entrance to school proper. Before I left, I went into one of the English classes I’d be working with and introduced myself before hearing all of the students give a short introduction to me in English. As the teacher presented me to the class—fourth graders, speaking Spanish—one girl’s hand shot up and she asked me, in pretty good English, “Do you speak e-Spanish?!”

I smiled and was happy to be able to respond, “¡Sí, por supesto!”