1-11-11

Well, another lovely restful long-weekend comes to a close. This was an especially odd one because most everyone else took off; there were about 6 guys in the whole dorm; and not too many more girls. Some went backpacking in the Pyrenees, some went to Madrid, and others went to many other locations. The party was small this weekend, but it was, nevertheless, a party, and we surely didn't suffer because of the numbers.

On Sabbath, I went to my first Pathfinder meeting here, and for me, it was complete chaos. I was supposed to arrive at 4:30, but since I had such a fun week before that I felt the need for a little nap, and accidentally woke up at 4:35. I was not too worried because after all, we are on Spanish time. Spanish time makes people late 5 or 10 minutes to EVERYTHING; class, dinner, meetings, deadlines, everything. It drove me crazy for about the first two weeks, but now I have gotten used to it. I walked down to the room, and entered right in the middle of introductions. I knew about a third of the people in the room, but just as I was about to sit down, the main director pointed to me, and said something equivalent to, "go ahead and present". Of course my first question was, "present what?" Not only was I still half asleep from just waking up from my nap at this point, but the lady talked really fast, so it took a few tries for me to understand what it was I was supposed to present. I said my name, where I was from, and my favorite sport, and they moved on to the next person. The night was great, crazy, but great; the kids were lots of fun, I got a chance to talk with all of the other "monitors" or counselors, and even though I didn't actually have a responsibility that night, it was still lots of fun.

I thought Pathfinders would go until about 6 or so, then I would go to dinner, and socialize for the rest of the evening. As it turned out, Pathfinders, or "Exploradores" as it is called here, went until 7, then there was the staff debrief afterward. I didn't get out of there until about 7:30; I completely missed dinner. Luckily, I was invited to one of the other counselor's houses who is the girlfriend of one of my good friends here. Just as we were about to reach the front door of their apartment, I asked who she lives with, and she told me she lives with her parents. I then asked if her parents knew if I was coming, she said no. Wonderful. I have a certain disdain for going to other peoples' houses un-invited because I feel like I am a burden on whoever has to feed me and entertain me. Luckily, her parents were completely fine with it, and we had a great evening. For dinner, we had fried eggs, fries, and little pancakes. It was like breakfast...for dinner.

I don't think I have ever talked about the food with you so far, so here it goes. For breakfast almost every day, I take bread, slice up tomatoes, put them on the bread, and put olive oil and salt over the whole thing. I learned this breakfast from a local here who is from Cuba, and even though it sounds weird, which it did even to me when I arrived, it has become one of my favorite breakfasts ever. Along with the "pan con tomate" (bread with tomatoes), I usually eat cereal; the same cereals every day- we never have variety when it comes to cereal, fruit, and sometimes a yogurt. Lunch is my favorite meal of the day. I always get a mountain of salad with corn, beets, tomatoes, spinach, and these beans I don't know the name of. I always like to top my salad with olive oil. Every once in a while, they put out vinegar, but I have become so used to just olive oil, that I don't even bother with vinegar. The entree is usually good, but there are a few things I hate for lunch, and one of them is hot dogs. Now, if you are saying to yourself right now, "maybe Steven has embraced Spanish culture so much that he doesn't like anything American anymore", let me finish. These veggie dogs taste like rubber- I am not even kidding you. If you don't believe me, book a flight to Valencia, get on the train, come to the school, and try one yourself. Not only do they taste like rubber, but they feel like rubber too, but I guess most veggie hot dogs do. My favorite entree is pizza. This isn't just any pizza, this is literally the best pizza I have ever had in my life. This pizza is baked with olive oil, has green and black olives on it, and the crust is the type of bread used for Spinach triangles. If you don't believe that this is the best pizza in the world, again, book your flight, buy your train ticket, and try it yourself. Sometime, I will ask the cook if she can show me how to make it, then maybe I can save you $1000 at least in airfare, and $4.35 on train fare. For dinner, usually, all I eat is a light salad, some fruit, and sometimes the entree they put out. Every night, the cereal is out again. One thing I have learned is that cereal, along with olive oil, is a staple food supply, topped by nothing else except possibly olives themselves.

Back to my Sabbath evening:
My friend drove me back to the school, and I arrived around 11:00. When I got up to my hall, all of the lights were out, all of the doors closed, and the only sound heard was my foot steps echoing throughout the hall. It was truly an eerie feeling. I got to my room, talked to my parents a little bit, and decided that I was lonely, so I decided that I was going to go seek out and free my friends from the monster that kidnapped them all and made the dorm so eerie. I figured that since the play room called the Frontera is where the monster usually hides children with nothing to do, I would start my quest there. I walked in, and not only did I find all of my kidnapped hall mates, I found all of the girls there too; literally everyone still on campus was in the Frontera; about 12 in all. I walked in, and everyone was watching Lord of the Rings on the projector. Esther was the first person to see me, and she said, "well there you are, Josh and Eric were worried about you." I kind of laughed, but I realized that I had been gone since 4:30, and it was now 11:00, and I had skipped dinner, and was no where to be found afterward. At first I thought it was kind of rediculous to be worried about a 20 year old who had only been gone a few hours, but then I realized that here in Sagunto, there isn't really anywhere to go without a bike or a car that you would go alone. They invited me to stay for the rest of the movie, so I grabbed a chair and sat down, and the movie ended literally two minutes later.The next night, we all gathered in the Frontera again and watched Lord of the Rings II.

My dad and Vanessa's dad have been urging us to study our sciences while we are here, so yesterday, Vanessa and I, along with Esther and Kalifa went to Valencia to look at the Bodies Revealed exhibit. This exhibit is almost just like the Body Worlds exhibit I saw back in the seventh grade at the California Science Center, except now that I am much older, I was able to appreciate it much more. I learned a few helpful words in Spanish before we went, just in case everything was in Spanish. I now Know that the word, "hueso" means bone, and "piel" means skin. It turns out that everything was bilingual, so that wasn't a problem, but what was even better was that Esther was the T.A. for an A and P lab, so she was letting me drink in her knowledge, and that made it much more enjoyable for me. We saw a brain that had had a stroke, the lungs of a smoker, and the heart of someone who had a heart attack amongst all of the healthy organs. They had full bodies assembled, with only half of the organs present, and plastic eyeballs inserted. The eyes only looked foreward,  and seemed really lifelike, so I told Esther that this exhibit would be a great setting for a horror film- she didn't like that comment too much. All in all, it was a very interesting, but I like the one I saw in seventh grade slightly better- maybe because I remember it being all together bigger. After we saw the exhibit, we walked around a little, and caught a train back to Sagunto. While we were walking, we stopped at a place called yogurtlandia. despite the really weird name- in Spain no less- they had very good smoothies and crepes. What a combination, right?

On the train, I was looking something up on my tablet, and I started looking at the pictures on there from Hawaii, my backpack trip with Pastor Ken, family pictures, last year's new years party, and others, and I started to feel a little bit homesick. Esther saw that I was looking at pictures, and she said, "stop looking at your pictures, you will get homesick", but I just kept on going- it was good to see faces and places I haven't seen in a while, but as I kept looking the feeling became stronger and stronger. It was like I shocked myself with a really bad wire, and the only way to stop it is to stop touching it, but I couldn't because I was stuck to the wire; my face was glued to the screen. Esther saw that, and she reached over and closed the lid on my tablet. Esther was right; I am not sure what the immediate cure for homesickness is, but I sure know what the immediate cause is; looking at pictures. Luckily, within five minutes, I didn't feel it at all because we were talking and joking, and I forgot all about it.

Today was a restful day, and this evening, we finally nailed down our Christmas plans for travel, which I am supremely excited about, and I will tell you what they are the next time I blog.

Of course I am just kidding:) We are starting our break with a cruise that leaves out of Genoa, Italy, and on that cruise, we stop in Rome, Olympia, Jerusalem, Izmir, and a few others. There are probably 10-12 other students going on this cruise, and we were able to book a cabin for 3 for about $1,600 total, including lodging, food, and entertainment for Josh, Eric and I. Our cruise will end the 19 of December, and we will, as of right now, travel around northern Italy because we will already be there, including  Pisa, Florence, and Venice, and then we will go down to Rome for a few days.
After a few days in Rome, we are planning to either take a night train or a Ryan air flight up to Paris for New Years. We will spend a few days in Paris, take a day out to go to Caen (Normandy) and possibly, if we still have time, we may go up to England and finish the trip there before we head back. We should know the final details of our trip fairly soon, but I am extremely excited that not only do we have a plan, but that we all actually agreed on something. We have been in disagreement for quite a while, but as of tonight, our cruise is booked, our airlines to get to the cruise are booked, and most of the rest of the traveling to be done is on the trains. Esther is thinking of possibly coming with us as well for the last part of our trip, and I say the more the merrier.

Well, the night is growing old, and I need to study for a test tomorrow. The details of our plans are still up in the air, but we have the jest, and it has been booked. For that I am pleased.

Hasta la proxima vez...

(The photo is of the cruise ship we will be taking, The Costa Serena.)