As Madonna once said, "Holiday!! Celebrate!!!"

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Trip Start May 27, 2009 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 01, 2010

  Málaga, Andalusia, Spain
Monday, December 21, 2009

Well hello again!  It has been a while huh?  Time flies over here!

Well, let's start with Thanksgiving shall we?  Turkey day in Southern Spain was quite the success.  Even though I had class all day and through the late afternoon I managed to put a pretty awesome meal together with the help of Roisin and Lindsay.  Roisin really did a lot of the work and it was her first Thanksgiving!!  When that chicken came out of the oven (Turkeys aren't that easy to come by in late November), I was so proud!  We had stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, and roasted vegetables too!  The French girls downstairs made some delicious desserts as well.  It was a huge success.  It was the first Thanksgiving for a lot of the people who came - German, Spanish, French, Belgian, Canadian, Chinese, and Irish!  We gave thanks for the food and the company and proceeded to chow down in good ol' American fashion.  So much wine was consumed in fact that I appeared at school the next day looking like the walking dead.  This was probably one of the worst hangovers of my life - but it was worth it!  Although I was pretty jealous of the fam, who were in Mexico at the time, I was pretty pleased with how my own celebration went down.
School has chilled out a lot since the last time I wrote.  I still really dislike the fact that I have to go five days a week to do next to nothing three of the five days, but I am doing it and enjoying some really good podcasts on the way to school every day and the company of Juan on the way back from school.  Seriously though, have you discovered podcasts yet?  They are so great!  Let me suggest a few in case some of you readers out there are interested...

 For those of you who don't know, I am obsessed with NPR.  Here are a bunch from them:
-Current song of the day
-This American Life ***  THE BEST!
-This I Believe
-Talk of the Nation

Then there are these:
-The Moth
-Nialler9 music blog
-BBC Mundo

I am trying to find more good Spanish podcasts but I am not having too much luck. Radio Nacional Espana has a lot but I am not sure which are good and which are not so good.  If you have any suggestions, let me know!!

Also, I read "East of Eden" By John Steinbeck recently and it is EXCELLENT.

Alright, back to things that I've done...  At the beginning of December we had a puente or long weekend.  Roisin convinced me to go to Belfast with her and it was a great last minute decision!  We arrived to rainy Belfast late Friday and we waited for a bus that never came.  We and many other Spaniards were kind of stranded for about an hour and a half.  We were told that no taxis were able to come at that time of night so we would have to wait for the next bus which may or may not come.  This seemed to be much more like Spain than Ireland...  A van cab thing happened to pass by and Rois and I hopped in along with a few others and wished the others luck!  I felt a little bad leaving them behind, but we had to take the opportunity when we had it!
We stayed with Roisin's friend Paul, who is an amazing person.  He is from the Cork area like Roisin but studying in Belfast for his masters in Environmental Engineering.  The weekend was so much fun. I had been to Belfast about five years ago with my family and it was a completely different experience.  Last time I found it really depressing and there was still plenty of evidence of the Protestant Catholic division.  This time I found it to be quite lively, full of students, and really charming.  Queens University has some botanical gardens right along side it and the downtown is very small (kind of like Madison).  I have to say, we spent a lot more time in pubs then sightseeing though.  The weekend we went to Belfast happened to be the same weekend of a reunion of The Worker's Beer Company there.  They work at festivals all over Ireland and the UK in the summer.  Roisin's sister and a bunch of her coworkers from the festivals were in town so it ended up being a huge party all weekend.  We ate and drank really well for really cheap (the pound is almost equivalent to the Euro right now).  Funny, our favorite bar in Belfast was called "The Spaniard."  They played great music there and on our last night we just had a huge dance party there for hours.  If I had to sum up the weekend in a few words I would say, good craic (pronounced "crack" and is slang for fun), many taytos (really good Irish potato chips), and Guinness!
Our flight on the way home was crazy!!  All of these drunk old football men were on our plane and drinking and standing and shouting the whole flight.  They were really obnoxious and I was not used to people just walking all over and shouting the entire flight so I was a little thrown off.  Other people were annoyed too and this giant man complained because his wife was trying to sleep.  Well the flight attendant tried to talk to the drunk shouting men like they were children, "Now be quiet! shhhh!" but that just didn't work.  The shouting continued.  Giant man who complained turned around and yelled to one VERY inebriated man, "Will ye just shut up already!?"  And then shit went down.
A shouting match followed and then the very drunk man started yelling that he was a Catholic bastard or something along those lines and then he was saying some things that I didn't understand but they were apparently really offensive words for Catholics related to the Protestant Catholic conflict.  Anywho, it was really intense and they were about ready to get into a fist fight and all of these people were running up drunkenly and holding the really drunk guy back.  AND WE WERE ON A PLANE!  IN THE AIR!!  It was sooo weird.  The giant man and his wife finally moved to the front of the plane.  Yelling continued from all the drunk people but they finally settled down and started shouting about things unrelated to the giant man after a while.  So weird right?  And really upsetting that that hatred still exists!
Liam, Roisin's friend was in town last weekend, and he is great!  It was also my downstairs neighbor's birthday so last weekend was pretty exhausting but very fun.
It has been raining all weekend and is supposed to rain all week which is not at all what we people of Malaga are used to!  I find it very hard to get out of bed in the morning because it is so chilly!  Clearly, it is nothing compared to Wisconsin or Minnesota winters, but still, it is cold, for here.
My friend Corey and I went on a quick Belen tour or Nativity scene tour on Saturday.  We went to city hall and to some random store that had a barbie nativity scene. It was so detailed and awesome!  I will put of photos of it for sure - Barbie and Ken never looked so good!

I only have one more day of school and then I am free for two weeks!! wooo hooo!!  Jen is arriving on Wednesday and we will have a Christmas Eve brunch in Malaga then fly to Barcelona with Lindsay.  We found tickets for 10 Euro each!
Our friends Andrea and Brendan (that we met in South America) are cooking a Christmas dinner!  Then we are heading to Pamplona where our friend Katie and her boyfriend will be for New Years. We will probably stop up to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim and my coworker Janire for a day too.  Then we will come back down through Madrid where Jen flies out the 2nd and I will make my way back down to Malaga.  So, next time I write I am sure there will be a lot to tell since Jen and I are always going on crazy adventures together!!

Well, I miss you all!  Happy Holidays!

xoxo,
Julie


 
 
 

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Lights on the Corte Ingles	Calle Larios	Christmas Tree in Plaza de la Constitucion	Thanksgiving Chicken!
The spread for Thanksgiving

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