Un Poema

I had a shower thought the other day, that dioses and mitosis almost rhyme in Spanish. So then I wrote a poem. It is in Spanish, mostly. I cheated with a few Galician/Portuguese contractions.

Acerca del mar

La casa que busco na costa sería,

Con fines de nada más que alegría.

Las olas olean y barcos pesqueros

Van yendo por mares escasos, ligeros,

Con bajos profundos dos que procedían 

Las bestias antiguas que barcos comían.

Hoy día tranquilas descansan en paz.

Los buceadores olviden, quizás.

Aquél horizonte lo miro pensando,

Los alrededores estoy observando.

Cielo nublado, hogar de dioses,

Los bichos abajo haciendo mitosis.

La suave arena que venga de lejos

De grandes montañas y ríos reflejos.

Todo adjunta al lado del mar

Por eso aquí yo quiero estar.

on being back

Well, I flaked on my plan to document my final lap around Europe. Maybe I'll come back to it some day when I need to do some serious procrastinating, but for now I'll call it a lost cause.

it's the space needle

One thing I do want to write about however is my experience with reverse-culture shock. I've been back for a little over a month now and as an added shocking bonus, spent most of that time in the Big City (Seattle). 

Number one on my list of shocks is customer service and the friendliness of strangers. Customer service in restaurants of course, where they give you free ice water with a big smile and seem genuinely happy to see you. Maybe it comes from the fact that a big part of their salary comes from tips, but the same goes even for non-tipping situations. Like when I went down to the UW Spanish department to ask about the DELE in November and chatted with the woman there for half an hour about the test and Spain and Spanish. Or when I went to the bank to sort out transferring money from my la Caixa account to my American one and the employee was all smiles and help. Or making small talk with the other folks waiting for the bus, smiling at fellow cyclists and getting blessed/excused when sneezing in public. 

Not that Spanish people or Europeans in general are not friendly, just that Americans, in public interactions, seem to go out of their way to be kind and accommodating. They also seem to be more culturally aware/understanding, which goes hand in hand with being more ethnically diverse. 

the master of fruits and veggies guards his stall in pike place

Next on my list is schedules. Here jet lag was a big help and gave me a head start in getting back into the rhythm of being up before 8am and going to bed before midnight. Back in Spain I'm pretty sure I moaned and groaned about having to madrugar (literally, to dawn/to sunrise) and it still strikes me as strange that an adult might go to bed before 10pm. 

Food of course is another one--tomato sauce is just not the same as tomate frito! There is so much more variety here in the states, especially if you want to eat out ("Where do you want to go?" "Oh, I dunno." "Well, let's narrow it down and pick a continent.") but it is way, way more expensive. Gone are the days of pulpo, wine and pimientas for under ten euros. 


And a few other little odds and ends: 

• electric stoves (no fire involved!)
• saying thank you to bus drivers
• cars everwhere (and they go so fast!)
• confusing medical system
• never paying with cash and coins being almost worthless
• being expected to know how things work because I'm "from here"

I suppose that's it. Thanks for reading! If I ever go abroad again, expect more of the same.

Aprovechando I: Warsaw

So, this blogging thing has become something of a habit, and even though I'm back in the states it may continue for a while yet,at least as long as I have some somewhat interesting things to talk about. And a camera, because mine doesn't really turn on anymore.

The title of this post is Spanish for "taking advantage of" and is something everyone in Spain has been telling me to do. Mainly in regards to speaking Spanish/Galician and going outside whenever it's not raining, but also about traveling. (travelling?) So, in an effort to take advantage of my last few weeks in Europe, I booked a flight east to Poland. This took an unprecedented amount of planning from me for two reasons: 

1. I would be traveling solo to a country where I don't speak the language (though I did pick up a few useful words)
2. Coordinating with the various people--my ex-roommate Anna in Łódż (pronounced wootch), her friend Asia (pronounced asha) in Krakow and my mother in Madrid (pronounced ma-DREETH)

More than a month ago now I hopped on a good ol' Ryanair plane with my little red travel notebook in hand. Arguably the most valuable object in my possession besides my passport, it is full of pages with titles like: Warsaw --> Łódż: how to get there and Hostel address, door key code etc. Seriously. I have traveled by smartphone before, but little red notebook is far more reliable. It doesn't need charging or internet and won't shatter to pieces if you drop it, and with a little forethought can contain all the information you might need.

reconstructed royal palace in Warsaw

After a brief stop in Barcelona where I said goodbye to my sunblock (curse you, airport security!) I found myself in the Warsaw Modlin airport and making friends with a confused elderly British gentleman. I was a little confused myself, because getting from the airport to the hostel was something of a challenge. I had to take three busses and two trains (Bus, train, train, bus, bus) to get to the neighborhood the hostel was in, but my little red notebook guided me there in the end. 

I arrived late in the day (because of that whole bus, plane, plane, bus, train, train, bus, bus business) so after checking in I dropped my things off and went to the little convenience store around the corner to buy a frozen pizza and a beer for dinner. This turned out to be a mistake however because the hostel didn't have much of a kitchen and I ended up cooking my pizza piece by piece on a hotplate. 

reconstructed main square

Warsaw was nice. I went on a free walking tour (love those!), saw the sights and made two travel friends: a Warsaw native who was going on the tour because he wanted to become a tour guide, and a British guy who was heading home after his Erasmus year in Budapest. 

About eighty-five percent of the city was leveled in WWII and later rebuilt by the communists. The tour guide told us a nice story about how after the war the city government went out and collected all the old photographs and paintings done by the pre-war art students in an effort to accurately reconstruct the old town, which was nice, but had a ring of sadness to it. We learned about Marie Curie and Frederic Chopin, who were both Warsaw natives and who both died lingering deaths in France. There are "Chopin benches" littered throughout the city, which will play a cheery (or not so cheery) Chopin tune when you press a button. 

After the tour I went with my new travel friends to a bar mleczny or "milk bar"--a nostalgic remnant of the communist era. The place was all done up in linoleum and cement, with metal-and-plastic chairs not unlike the ones I owned in my off-campus university years. Our aspiring tour guide ordered us some dumplings and beet soup and told us about how in the real milk bars, back in the bad old days, had the silverware chained to the tables so no one would steal it.

presidential palace (you can't go inside)

We wished our Polish friend good luck on his job interview and me and my British friend caught a trolley down to the Warsaw Uprising museum. The museum was huge and had an incredible amount of detail, on everything from daily life in occupied Warsaw, to the kinds of weapons and aid the fighters got and the fates of city officials, soldiers, members of the media and little girls. It was yet another reminder that these things you read about in the history book were not so long ago, and these places really do exist and are permanently scarred from them.

I also learned that Obama was in Warsaw on the day I arrived (which happened to be the 25th anniversary of free elections in Poland) and gave a speech about how free elections are great and if Russia invades Ukraine and Poland would like some troops we can probably lend some. The Polish people I asked about this thought this was a good idea.

Things I like about Spain

I tend to complain a lot about some things in Spain (and I just tend to complain in general), so today I'm going to make a list of things I like about Spain.

1. Tapas

Una caña at Amoa bar

Tapas are number one on this list because whenever I get asked this question by Spaniards it is the thing that pops out of my mouth. It's the easy, lighthearted answer. Tapas are nice. Go to essentially any bar in Galicia and order any cheap little drink (between 1 and 2 euros for a beer or a fanta or a fanta-beer) and you get given some tasty morsel to go with it. A bit of bread with meat or cheese, a chunk of tortilla de patatas, maybe a little bitty bowl of something calentita. 

2. Things are Cheap

At least some things are. If I shop smart, I can get away with spending about 10 euros (13 bucks) a week on groceries. If I go to a coffeeshop, I'm not going to break the bank on a five-dollar fancy coffee drink. Partly because bathtub size soy-mocha-frappa-dappa-chino is not normally an option on the menu while tiny-cute café con leche is. 

Other things that are cheap: rent and utilities, train tickets, seats to the local philharmonic, new clothes at the mall. Healthcare too and university tuition, though I haven't taken advantage of those things personally.

3. Walkable, Lived-in Cities

enjoying the atmosphere at the Barrio de San Pedro festival

I walk a lot in Santiago, much more than I did in Bellingham and it shows on the wear and tear in my shoes and jeans. All the Spanish cities I've seen (perhaps with the exception of Vigo) have a huge, pedestrian-only old town, jam-packed with churches and shops and terraced cafés. Even newer neighborhoods (like Santiago's zona nueva) boast narrow streets and sprawling squares that the locals treat like backyards. I'm not the only one who walks either, and it's not unusual to run into someone I know on my way to the library or a private class. And then we simply say "goodbye" as an easy way to acknowledge each other's existence without having to stop and make awkward small talk.



4. The Presence of History

This hit me harder more towards the start of my European adventure than it does now, but I still have to stop every so often and think wow, this thing, this thing that I'm looking at right now has been here for a hundred, five hundred, a thousand years or more. In school the kids learn from a young age how to distinguish between romanesque, gothic, baroque, rococo and other architectural epochs that I don't even know the names for because these are everyday features in their lives.


5. A Feeling of Place

There are two parts to this bullet point: the idea that every little town or village has its thing (usually a food thing) that makes it different and special, and that even if people move away from their ancestral village, or if their parents/grandparents/great-grandparents moved away, they still remember and consider themselves to be from there. They go back and visit the distant relatives who stayed behind and sample the local tarta or cheese or whatever that is special from that place. 

This isn't to say that we don't have a sense of place back home--I for one am still pretty attached to my hometown, even if I don't want to live there and haven't kept in touch with anyone there except my parents. I'd rather not leave the region if I don't have to, and I've met a lot of Galicians who feel the same way about their comunidad autonomo.

*****************

There are a bunch of other little small things I like about Spain (such as rolled Rs and shutter curtain things that actually keep the light out) but I think I'll end my list here. I actually wrote this post out weeks ago, but took forever in taking and uploading photos. So here's one more photo I've taken since the last post.

It's the noria or ferris wheel that the city put in the park for Ascension Festival! It cost three euros to ride and went really fast (which you can't see from the photo because the photo is a static image so you're just going to have to take my word)

In final news, I'm going to Poland tomorrow! Do widzenia!

Going Home

I apologize ahead of time for the ambiguity of this post's title. I'm not talking about going home-home, just about how I get back to my apartment after school here in Santiago. I took a bunch of pictures and added captions to all of them, but there are way too many for Blogger to be a viable format so I put them all on Imgur. 

Here is the link for the album.

A lot of people gave me funny looks for taking pictures of boring things, but I had a lot of fun doing this. If you notice a drop in quality from my usual pictures, it's probably for two reasons: One, I didn't edit any of these before putting them up, and Two, the screen on my camera broke so I have to use the viewfinder and can't really use any of the camera's built-in features beyond point and shoot.

I won't post an obligatory photo today, because I posted a whole bunch on the Imgur site already. Enjoy!

Pazo de Oca

Continuing my spring break car adventures, Noé, Chelsea and I went on a little morning adventure to Pazo de Oca and Pico Sacro just outside Santiago. The Pazo (Galician for palace) is about a half hour drive outside Santiago, or maybe less since we had some difficulty finding and staying on the right highway. 

In the past, pazos were something of a noble's house and local government center combined. It was where the local lord lived and from where he ruled over his villages. There are some pazos that are still private residences to this day, but many have opened their doors to the public. Or at least the gardens, as is the case at Pazo de Oca.

These Camelias were all over the gardens

On the way back to Santiago we stopped for a mini-hike at Pico Sacro--the highest point for miles around, as far as I can tell. You can drive almost to the top, where there is a parking lot and a little church. (Sacro means "sacred")

path up the hill

All the little towns carved out of the woods

Galicia Profunda: part III

Monday was our third and last day in the Ribeira Sacra, and we left the casa with one final map from Manolo showing us the way out of the Mencía-growing Ribeira Sacra region to the Albariño-growing Ribeiro region. Our first stop (after a couple more miradoiros overlooking the Río Sil) was the Monastery of San Estevo--a huge old monastery that has since been converted into a high-end hotel. They also had a pretty cool art exposition going on, commemorating the time when the monastery had been a sanitarium.

Cheap beer and caldo gallego for lunch in Luintra

The next stop on our journey was a very unique church/monastery---the aptly named San Pedro de la Roca. The original building was carved from a single huge rock set into the hillside, and was at its height home to thirteen monks. The tour brochure played it up as an ancient lost wonder, but according to the lovely museum next door it was really only lost and "rediscovered" within about twenty years in the early part of the 1900s. 

That night, moved perhaps by the spirituality gained by visiting all these places, or perhaps because we found a really good deal online, we spent the night at another monastery-cum-hotel. We killed what was left of the afternoon poking around Carballiño, a biggish small town nearby, close to the smallish small town (that was actually really gross) where the monastery was located. It turns out the Carballiño is one of a very few unbanalities in northern Spain to have a Jewish quarter, so we had a good time wandering around and getting as lost as you can get in the old part of a small town.

By the next day we apparently still hadn't gotten enough of old churches and went a little out of the way to check out the Mosteiro de Santa María de Oseira. The 13th century monastery was abandoned in the 1800s, only to be restored and rebuilt in the early part of the 20th century. Today it is a functioning monastery, complete with monks, a tour guide, albergue for Camino de Santiago pilgrims, and a shop where you can buy cookies and alcohol made by the monks. Inside you aren't allowed to take photos, but if you do go in (or google image search) you can see some pretty impressive works of architectural technology for the time. 

From there, we headed west to the Rías Baixas for an afternoon on the beach before heading home to Santiago.

Galicia Profunda: part II

Do you guys remember when last year, during Carnaval I went to Amsterdam and did the most touristy thing ever and it was fantastic? Well, I managed to repeat the experience in the small town of Doade. This is a town so small that nothing shows up when you search for it on Google Maps. I managed to find it anyway. 






So, Chelsea, Noé and I took the tourist train that trundled us among grapevines and along canyon walls, between thousand-year chestnuts and crumbling villages to one of the many vineyards in the area. 

Terraces on the slopes

After the little train (can you really call it a train if it doesn't roll on rails?) dropped us off in Doade again we got back in the car and set off for the points of interest indicated on Manolo's map:

This tiny hermitage, the name of which I have forgotten

This lookout where Noé did not drop his camera

A waterfall

another walk by a stream with muiños and some neat aquatecture

This path that did not lead to a castro. This was the second time we were unsuccessful in finding a castro--they probably don't even exist anyway.

The 9th century Santa Cristina Monastery, now abandoned

On the way back home to the casa again Chelsea learned how to drive stick, taking advantage of the empty country roads. Minimal stalling occurred. I tried my hand at it the next day, with less encouraging results. It seems that knowing when to switch gears on a bicycle does not help very much, while being experienced at driving an automatic does. No one got hurt however, except for the car's clutch, but it was a rental anyway.

More pictures coming soon!

Galicia Profunda: part I

For those of us living in Catholic countries, this week is Semana Santa--the famous Spanish holiday where the faithful fill the streets, carrying wooden floats of saints and wearing Ku-Klux-Klan-like robes and pointed hats. We also get the whole week off from school, so I took advantage of the time to do a different sort of traveling.

Bright and early Saturday morning I walked down to the car rental place to meet with fellow auxiliar Noé from California and pick up our freedom-mobile, a little gray four-door Fiat. Once the car was loaded up with backpacks, groceries and board games we hit the road to Ourense to pick up our third partner in crime, Chelsea from Oregon. 

A few weeks previously, the three of us decided that we were sick of the usual European hostel travel. It had gotten sort of formulaic. Arrive in a city, navigate your way to the hostel you found the night before on Hostel World or Booking-dot-com, acquire a map and a list of destinations to see: a church, a museum, a castle or palace, a park and a restaurant... Rinse and repeat. So instead, we hit upon the idea of renting a car and a casa rural (see number 2) in the Ribeira Sacra. 

The Ribeira Sacra is a Denominación de Origen (DO), a sort of geographic certification of quality created by the Spanish government that primarily covers wines. This means that only wines that are produced in this region and that possess certain characteristics (the kinds of grapes and style of production, among other thins) can be labelled as DO Ribeira Sacra. Sort of like how real Champagne can only come from a certain region in France for it to be called Champagne. 

While the wines were a big draw, the reason behind the wines for me played a bigger part: the climate and geography. The region we visited has a much more continental climate than Santiago does, and about half the annual rainfall. That plus the wandering courses of the Ríos Miño and Sil make for a beautiful part of the world.

Entrance to the house with Chelsea and Noé in the doorway

We arrived at the house in the early afternoon and after a snacky lunch, we met with Manolo the house's owner, who hand-drew us a map of places we could see within the afternoon. 

I think most of the rest of this post will be photos, so sit back and relax.

The town of Castro Caldelas with its castle overlooking the Río Edo

A walk by a stream with some abandoned muiños (water mills)

Our first view of the Río Sil

An abandoned church

A field I shot while Chelsea asked the locals for directions

Up to this point I haven't mentioned just how disorganized we were leaving Santiago. Somehow I managed to leave the house with a wide selection of board games, but no towel, and Noé was stuck with two different shoes for the entirety of the trip. Originally, part of the reason we wanted a casa rural was because it gave us the option of cooking rather than eating out the whole time. Unfortunately we forgot some of the key ingredients for some of our dishes and ended up eating a lot of junk. But we were on holidays, so it was okay.

More pictures tomorrow of some of the beautiful awesome places we visited the next day.

How I Spent the Day with Fifty-five Twelve-year-olds

This past week I got suddenly invited to go on a field trip with my school to the big city of Vigo for the day, to see a theatrical production of The Portrait of Dorian Gray in English. And so, at the crack of dawn (quarter past nine in the morning) I found myself on the bus out of town with the bus driver, two other teachers and fifty-five middle-schoolers. Oh, God.

waiting in line

The bus driver dropped us off on some main drag near in Vigo and a vague idea of where the theatre was. The timetable seemed to have allowed for some getting lost, because even after a couple askings for directions and doubling-backs we found the theatre entrance about a half hour before the doors opened. For lack of anything better to do, we herded the kids to a plaza across the street where they wouldn't be blocking the foot traffic, while the teachers snuck off one by one to get a coffee pick-me-up at the cafe next door.

The play was about what I was expecting it to be. Nice, but nothing to write home about (so why am I writing this post??). A couple Argentinian dudes with decent accents, a British girl, and a local guy to do the lights. There was a rather painful Q&A session at the end where the actors invited the kids to ask them about the play, English, acting... 

Silence. 

In the end the actors ended up talking about themselves anyway, and asked the kids some comprehension questions about the play. Which they were calling the Picture of Dorian Gray. I don't know if this was a problem with the English-->Spanish-->English translation, or simply the name of the theatre version of the story, but that asshole part of my brain really wanted to ask.

Now, it just so happened that the day of our excursion was a strike day, and there was a demonstration going on in the town center in Vigo. Right near where the theatre was. Because of the demonstration, police had closed down the main drag, and the bus driver couldn't get through. One of the teachers used this delay as an opportunity to buy ice cream for everyone, which turned out to be not the best idea, because we then had to go running around trying to get back to the bus, avoiding protesters, television crews and police blockades. In the process we lost four students, including one little boy on crutches with a broken ankle. Let's just say thank god for cell phones. 

For lunch we stopped at the little town of Baiona, unleashing our terrors upon the unsuspecting restaurant owners. I went with the other adult to a more secluded, pricey place away from the children, and played along with everyone else when we said that we would be on the road again in an hour and a half. 

Just short of three hours later we were counting heads on the bus, headed up the hill to look at some petroglyphs. The bus wound its precarious way through the one-lane track that lead into the mountains. At one point we ran into a truck wanting to go down into the town. The driver quickly changed his mind and backed up at full speed until a driveway presented itself where he could back into.

At the top of the hill we were met by a very Galician, very energetic man who, after getting various degrees in history, anthropology and goodness knows what all else, discovered he still wasn't really all that qualified for any jobs, and wrote a book about petroglyphs instead. 

Xosé, the author, told us a little of what he knew about the people who had lived here around five thousand years ago, picked up from the scant traces they had left behind--some carvings on stones, some burial chambers called dolmens, and perhaps a few linguistic remains left in the names of places and plants. 

The petroglyphs and the people who made them pre-date the Romans and the castro-building celts. They were most likely a stone-age society that had some concept of astronomy (many of the carvings look like solar calendars) and placed some importance on stags and the hunting of deer. They had horses and dogs and bows and arrows, and must have had some way to accurately cut into stone.

Xosé brought with him some butcher paper, and got the kids to make some rubbings of the petroglyphs, which I hope are in the school now, and not still in the back of the science teacher's car. 

It was getting to be dark out soon, so after making the rubbings we ran back down to the bus so as to get back to Baiona again before all the coffeeshops were closed. 

By this point I was getting to be overwhelmed by the seething mass of children and took the opportunity to go for a walk by myself and take some photos.

Now, it may have sounded like I don't like my students, or children in general, but that's not true. My students this year are (by and large) good kids. They are enthusiastic and happy to be in school, and I'm happy to be there with them. But fifty-five of them, for twelve hours... I think you get the picture.

Great Britain Part II: Looking at Things

I got back to London on Sunday and started the great adventure of walking around and looking at things. But not before learning:

new word #2: left luggage: a place to drop off your bags for a bit while you wait for your train or coach. ex: I left my suitcase with the left luggage so I could go for a walk before the train came.

The first thing I looked at was this cemetery close to Tamsin's cousin's house, and it absolutely fulfilled all my expectations for what a European cemetery should be. It was big and sprawling, walled-in and somewhat overgrown, and there were haphazard gravestones filling all the available space. In Spain, things are (surprisingly) done in a more organized manner, with a cupboard-with-drawers kind of arrangement for the coffins. A little more space-efficient perhaps, but not nearly so spooky and charming. I even saw a real live raven perched on a rubbish bin. 

After formulating a plan of attack, Tamsin and I set out to see Parliament Square--that one big, chaotic square where it's possible to tick half the landmarks of London off your list. We saw: Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Methodist Central Hall, and a bunch of Great Men statues, but did not go inside any of them (least of all the statues). The square was huge and crowded and overwhelming, so much so that it was hard to appreciate the grandeur of it all. I'm sorry, but you're just going to have to imagine (or google image search) the scene at the square--I didn't manage any worthwhile photos.

Because it was there and free, we did check out the new supreme court building, which, even though it was only established within the last decade or so, managed to stay inkeeping with the square's aesthetic of monumentally impressive buildings. In the basement, they had an exhibition of the history of the court, some various gifts and artifacts pertaining to justice, and a live video feed from whatever court proceedings were going on at the time. No photos here either.

View of St. Paul's from St. Paul's

Neither did I manage to take any good photos of the whole of our next sightseeing site: St Paul's Cathedral. Like anything else that's worth seeing in London (except the museums), it costs an arm and a leg to get into the cathedral, so Tamsin and I made an effort to make the most of our visit, listening to the whole audioguide and investigating the length, breadth, height and depth of the entire building (500-something steps from top to bottom). I got really tired and hungry by the end of it, so I don't remember many of the facts.

Like so many other cathedrals, St Paul's has gone through many incarnations, the current one being architect Sir Christopher Wren's 17th century masterpiece. The building supports the world's tallest dome, made of two parts--a lower, more geometrically perfect dome inside, painted and mosaic-ed, and an outer shell made of wood and lead designed to look impressive from the outside. A pretty clever idea in my opinion, since no one would be able to get a good look at the art inside if it was way the hell up on the outer dome. 

Down in the crypt you can see the tombs of the heroes of the Napoleonic Wars--Nelson and Wellington--and throughout the whole place you can find many lesser known military figures from the same period. The cathedral was fairly new at this point in time, and I kind of wonder if someone made a conscious effort to fill up the space with statues to make the whole thing feel more authentic. 

The next thing we looked at was the Tate Modern Museum, the modern art museum across the river from the cathedral. To get from one to the other we had to cross a pedestrian only bridge where we saw: tourists; a rainbow; and a man painting tiny pictures onto the dropped pieces of gum embedded into the walkway. Once across, the museum itself was big, cold and kind of complicated, with escalators that skipped floors and no clear timetable of hours. The art inside was definitely... modern. There was at least one whole room of pieces with titles like blue square and orange and yellow triangles on white field.  And thus museum number one was crossed off the list. 

Museums two and three we put off until the last full day, opting to first look at the Tower of London and a line painted on the ground. 

The Tower of London is really more of a collection of towers that make up the castle-fort that has over the years served the British royals as home, fortress, prison and extra closet space. Because, God, it can be tough to find room for all those jewels. I mean where does the rest of the world keep their meter-wide solid gold punch bowls? Also on display were the mythical ravens whose presence forestalls the end of the monarchy. Just to be safe, their feathers are clipped, and they live in a hutch on the lawn. 

The line on the ground, as you may have figured out from the picture, is the Greenwich Meridian, the line which divides east and west because that happened to be where some guys built a telescope. Those guys (and some of their friends) also made some very important observations and calculations that gave Britain the navigational edge the empire was built upon. So, for a line on the ground, it's pretty important.

The whole building was decked out in green for the show

The evening of our second day in London, we looked at what I think was the funnest thing that we looked at in London: the musical theatre show Wicked. 

Both of us had really wanted to see The Book of Mormon, but tickets for that were exorbitant, so instead we snagged some day-of, half-price cheap seats to a Wizard of Oz fanfic. Definitely worth it. The story was cute, the songs were clever, and the special effects were gorgeous. 

My theatre-going experience up until this point had been pretty slim--one childhood trip to see a matinee in Seattle, and far too many high school productions directed by Mrs. Neilson. I was expecting essentially a Neilson production with fewer mistakes. So of course my expectations were blown out of the water. Now I understand why the tickets are so pricey--you're going to get a heck of a lot more out of a live play than you are watching a Hollywood blockbuster at the local multiplex. 

On our third and final full day in the UK, Tamsin and I hit the museums and really dedicated ourselves to looking at things. SO MANY THINGS. Fossils, skeletons, minerals and crystals, bugs and birds and dinosaurs. Statues, pots, paintings, sculptures, icons, artifacts, mummies. 

All the things that Brits have dug up, discovered, identified and stolen over the course of the last three or four hundred years are on display, and for free. All of it is fascinating, steeped in history and aesthetic beauty, but what struck me most was the sheer volume of objects on display. By and large there wasn't a whole lot of information available about the things we were looking at, but it would take an army of grad students forty years to make a dent in the task. And once it was out there, it would probably only serve to make the experience that much more overwhelming. In all honesty I preferred the Aberystwyth museum with the spoons and taxidermied dogs to the grand treasure chest that is the British Museum. 

We rounded out our trip with the cultural experience of Evensong at Westminster Abbey, which was pleasant after the day of museums. The priest gave a nice speech about Nelson Mandela and perseverance, and the choir sang to us in Latin and perfect fourths. They even handed out pamphlets to tell us when to stand up and sit down, and the lyrics and notes to the songs. 

After that it was back to the land of siestas and Catholicism and work. It was a nice break and worth it, but I think my next trip will be centered less around looking at things and more around... I dunno. Food or something. 

Great Britain: Part I: Welsh Weekend

Three-for-one tourist shot right there.

Just so you know, it took me about three tries to spell 'britain' correctly in that title.

Over the most recent long weekend, I took advantage of my being in Europe to see a little more of the continent. Or at least the general europe-y sort of area. Great Britain is (in case you didn't know) an island to the north of Spain, and about as far away as Seattle is from Redding CA. (600 miles) I went with fellow auxiliar Tamsin from New Zealand, although we both flew in and out of different airports on different planes at different times.

We arrived Thursday and met up at the house of Tamsin's cousin, a kiwi expat who lived in London with her husband with a broken leg. London, like it has been described to me in so many fantasy novels, was cold and gray, teeming with quaint place names and spaghetti-like streets. Somehow it managed to be cute and massive at the same time.

Tamsin and I poked around a bit on Friday, then went our own separate ways as I took the bus out to Aberystwyth, Wales, but not before learning:

new word #1: Coach: long-distance bus. ex: Greyhound is a coach company.

Aberystwyth is a small college town on the coast of Wales, home to a 19th century university, a ruined castle, hills, sheep, daffodils, and ex- fellow auxiliar Laura from Ireland. It is situated about 230 miles away from London, roughly the same distance as between Seattle and a certain town in Oregon that I as a child mistakenly believed to be the home of the famous seventeenth century witch trials.

Because the coach ride was so long, I really only had one full day in "Aber" as the locals call it. (because honestly, who can spell that?) We took advantage of it however, and saw pretty much everything the town had to offer. 

View from Constitution Hill

Castle ruins

A parade?

The day I went just happened to be St. David's day, and as such everyone was decked out in daffodils and their best Welsh duds to celebrate the patron saint of Wales. St. David, according to the town museum, is the only patron saint on the British Isles who was actually from the place he was patron of. The rest of them, (St George, St Patrick etc...) were adopted from other locations. 

The town museum also had some neat examples of woodcarving, taxidermy, and paintings of shipwrecks. 

Wales was neat, and put me in mind of a British Galicia--not only for the green rolling hills and unpredictable weather, but the presence of a bilingual community in that small, tucked-away corner of the world. It was kind of homey feeling, and made me wish I knew how to pronounce words like gŵyl. The best part though was getting to see one of my friends from the Lugo days.