Capítulo Veinte: Pictures of you

Pictures (FINALLY)!

Bigger blog post coming soon!

Roman Aqueducts; Trinity below one of the arches of the RA

Muy largo; La Catedral de Santa Maria de Segovia

Inside the Cathedral; pretty ceilings

Stained glass with cool ceiling; La Alcazar de Segovia (we climbed the tower)

My knight in shining armor; more awesome stained glass

Looking out the window from the alcazar; me on the top (not the tower though)

After climbing the stairs from hell, I'm on top of the castle's tower (great view); la alcazar from a distance

Can't really see us, but we're in there; La Iglesia de Vera Cruz

Again, castle from far out; the cathedral in the distance

Pretty; Toledo

Cervantes y yo; random castle on a cliff

Puente (bridge); can't remember exactly what that was...some government building

La Alcazar de Toledo (awesome scultupre); nosotros

Swords; La Catedral de Santa Maria de Toledo (we couldn't take pictures on the inside T_T)

Orange tree; gardens del minestario

More inside the minesterio; lions and another cool ceiling

See the chains hanging from the minesterio; the entrance

The bridge at night; the alcazar at night

Capítulo Diecinueve: Just Hold on a Little bit Longer, Thoughts and Memories Will be Enough

“All this bickering, all the suspicion and the closed walls, it always seemed wrong to me but I could never find the words. I mean, we're not that different in the end, not things like decency and respect. But alone in that monster's lair – and you can't imagine what it's like to be alone, really alone, thinking this is all you'll ever know – when I was there it started to make sense to me. Those guards at the palace gates, those pointy fences, they don't protect us from anything, really. That's what the falling moon is really about. It's a message from the gods...From the guardian giants... but still, it's a message...It's – we could all be gone any minute, so there's no point hiding from the world. Enemies or friends, we all die together. Maybe not all at once, but... together."
- The Deku Princess, Insomnia (a retelling of Majora's Mask)

It's been so long since I've read good fan fiction, let alone a novelization, so I was truly amazed when I found Insomnia this summer. The author takes the original characters and ideas of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and makes it his own. Let's be clear, Majora's Mask is probably the most unique Zelda game to date, not only because of the three-day time limit, but also in its storyline and character interaction. The moon is falling on top of the city of Termina, and it's your duty to travel back into time and repeat the same three days in order to solve the mystery of the moon. The game's true strength lies in its ability to make you emotionally involved -- there's this deathly sense of impending doom that is always dwelling, and when you do all the sidequests and interract with the non-playable characters, you truly become anxious to save everyone. Now take all that and throw it into a story. This guy completely twists the concept of time travel, throws in some philosophy about existence and the end of all things, and gives a distinct voice to each of the characters, including the heroic mime that is Link. Seriously, he's done really, really well with his story, and has certainly demonstrated that he is a very talented writer.

Sorry, I just had to rant about that. He's just updated his story, and I am impressed with what he's done.

But you know what else it's been long time since? My last post. Yeah, the moment I said I need to get better at posting, I get worse. Go me! Even so, I feel like as of late, I haven't been extremely available to talk to, or I just haven't been keeping in touch with some people as well as I'd like, friends and family alike. So I'm going to try and make sure I definitely improve in that regard, because there are plenty of people whom I don't want to lose contact with.

Last week itself wasn't exciting, but the weekend was fun. We used the weekend as Robby's birthday weekend (his actually birthday was yesterday). In order to rest up for the next night, we stayed in Thursday and watched Amadeus (long but pretty interesting movie about Mozart). Friday night was the real party. We went out to a Discoteca again (God, I need to cut back on going to those...). Since we've been going to Joy so much, we went to Kapital this night, and yeah, definitely worth it. Like Joy the week before, Kapital's dance floor was emptier than usual by the time we'd gotten there, so we decided to scope out the rest of the discoteca. And of course, after failing to do it last time, we HAD to do Karaoke. I haven't done Karaoke in a while, but this was a blast. There were plenty of Spanish songs, the majority which we obviously didn't know, but they had a very nice assortment of American/English songs, so we picked our poisons. First up, myself and Trinity did NSync's (yeah, remember them?) "It's Gonna be me." To make the performance even better, I remember the beginning part of the dance to that song, so yeah, you can guess what I was doing...totally worth it though. After that, Robby and Kaitlyn did "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen, which is by far one of the best songs to Karaoke to. Ever. Not to mention headbanging. Yeah, there were definitey some great pictures from that one. The last song we did was performed by Trinity, Robby, and myself to Pink's "Just Like A Pill." Kind of an older, whinier song, but still great to sing to. After that, we pretty much danced the rest of the night until the morning. It was a long but successful night.

Saturday we were exhausted, and like one time before, we took a Burger King run, which is just as good as I remember it! They don't put nearly enough ketchup on their sandwiches though...but that's a common problem in Spain. Ha. After that, Trinity and I (later joined by Robby) had a miniature movie marathon. We'd been aching to watch Mulan all week, since both of us could quote the entire thing and sing all the songs. So we go back and turn on Mulan via YouTube, and it was probably a good thing we were the only ones home for a while, because we were being pretty loud and obnoxious. Still, Mulan's a great Disney movie, and it has one of the, if not the best Disney song ever made in "I'll Make a Man Out of You." We continued our Disney movie marathon with The Fox and the Hound (we concluded that every character should have died) and Tarzan. In between Fox and the Hound and Tarzan, we made us some good egg sandwiches, as well as some fantastic mashed potatoes! Trinity makes them really well, with garlic, ranch, salt...so good! I'll have to remember that when I go home. After Tarzan, we threw in Life Is Beautiful, which is an Italian film about a family during in the Holocaust of World War II. Obviously, anything related to the Holocaust is going to be heavy and hard to take. For me, the beginning of the movie didn't really seem like it could be related to anything so tragic, but once it hit a certain part (when the "No Jews" sign is on the door of one of the shops), I was anticipating the worst to come. But actually, I didn't find this movie to be as emotionally draining as I was expecting, which is a good thing -- the fact that it's WWII is enough to make you sad and understand the suffering that all too many endured, and then throwing in this family's story and makinf it that much more violent may have made it worse and hard to handle. But they balanced it well, and the movie turned out to be quite excellent. And the ending puts a smile on.

Sunday, after a mini-fiasco about Daylights Savings Time (we went back an hour in Spain), we went into Toledo for the day. Like Segovia, it's about a half hour outside of Madrid, and it had its own beauty to behold. It's a pretty hilly city, and it was a bit bigger than Segovia, as well as more complex -- there were plenty of times where we didn't know which way we were heading, and then there was one time where we literally went in a giant circle (thanks, Mr. GPS =P), and we passed by many, many familiar shops. Some of these accidental wanderings turned out to be nice photo shots, though. And overall, it was a good trip. We went to the Alcazar (which was closed, but still gorgeous from the outside) and to the edge of the city and got some good shots of el rio Taja (with el puente going over it) as well as another nice castle in the background.

Then we hit up couple of chapels (which were a bit on the disappointing side, but still had some neat artwork), the Monasterio (also sadly a bit smaller than expected, but had some cool stuff as well, like orange trees!), and of course, La Catedral de Toledo, which I am infuriated that we could not take pictures inside. Not that I don't understand, but seriously, it was SO pretty, definitely the highlight of Toledo, and we can't take pictures of that?! Not fair. But like the other cathedrals, this one was fantastic with its architecture, stained-glass windows (it had more than the others), beautiful carvings, powerful organs, and so on. What this one had over the others, though, was the famous obra "El Expolio de Cristo" por El Greco, a famous Spanish artist who was born and raised in Toledo. There were lots of other works by El Greco (and other artists) there, too, but this one was the most well known, and the room they'd made to display was simply breath-taking. The heavens painted on the ceiling, the golden frame, surrounded by other fantastic paintings, it was truly amazing. Once again, I WISH I could have taken pictures, but they're awfully picky about those photo snaps. I did get a couple nice shots from the outside, though (which was still beautiful). Heading back into Toledo, we took a walk around the city until resting in a park and playing cards until it was time to catch the train. The city was also well known for its craftsmanship and making swords and armor. Many a time, I wanted to buy a sword...but yeah, first of all, I don't have the money for that, and second, getting it back to the United States could be problematic...so it's a good thing I resisted.

Overall, Toledo in my opinion was not as impressive as Segovia, but it was still great to see! After walking up and down hills for a while, though, my legs were kind of sore...I need to get back into shape. Once again, pictures will be coming a bit later (maybe tomorrow).

Other things:

We want to go to Barcelona this weekend, but we'll see how that goes. We've been putting off booking tickets, so who knows what's available?

Wednesday, they have this thing called anti-karaoke, which is basically classic 80s, hard rock karaoke (sin las televisiones). Since we had a successful Karaoke night on Friday, we're pretty thrilled to try this out. Plus, you get to dress up in ridiculous outfits, which it makes sense since Halloween is coming up.

Oh yeah, I miss those American holidays. I hope you all are getting into the spirit! I can't believe it's the end of October already. Like seriously, where the hell does time go? Pretty soon, it'll be Thanksgiving, and then Christmas. *gasp*

Like I said, sorry about my lack of communication as of late. Hopefully I'll be around to be able to catch some of you and have a chat on Skype or something. Hope all is well!

Adios!

~ LSquared

Capítulo Diecinueve: Somewhere a Clock is Ticking

"One man scorned and covered with scars still strove with his last ounce of courage to reach the unreachable stars; and the world was better for this.”

- Don Quijote de la Mancha

Just as I had predicted, my updates are steadily decreasing. I honestly hadn't noticed that I haven't updated in four or five days. As usual, time sneaks up on me.

The weekend was quite lovely. After being away from Madrid for a weekend, I was in the mood to go out into the city and enjoy a social outing. Trinity and I ended up going to a Discoteca on Friday night, and as usual, that was fun. We usually go out to places like that on Thursday nights; surprisingly, the night life gets kicking at a later hour on Fridays -- the Discoteca didn't really start getting more crowded until after 1:30. I'm not sure if Thursday nights are particularly popular nights, or if this Friday was just off, or what, but I noticed the difference. Nevertheless, it was a good time, and we enjoyed dancing to some pretty good music. At one point, a violinist came out on stage, and he played along to the beat of some techno music. I must say, he gave a great performance -- he rocked out as well as any rockstar to that violin, and I was impressed. Didn't help that he was cute, but I'm pretty convinced that he was gay.

Saturday, Trinity, Robby, and I were supposed to go into Segovia, a city that's just a half-hour train ride outside of Madrid, in the morning. Unfortunately, the train we wanted to take was full, and the other train was significantly more expensive. As a result, our day trip was delayed a day (oh, boo-hoo...) and we ended up going back to Trinity's place and hung out for a while. It was probably a good thing that we ended up not going that day given that Trinity and I had been out fairly late at the discoteca the night before, and we were both still pretty tired from it. The day was not wasted, though. Trinity had gone back to the US a week before to attend her brother's wedding, and she came back with a batch of small goodies, a.k.a. American food. We made a wonderful Velvetta cheese dip, and then stuffed our faces as we watched Disney-Pixar's "The Incredibles" on YouTube (as much as some people tend to insult the Disney-Pixar duo, you have to admit that they make really good movies, Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles, A Bugs Life just to name a few). Still too lazy and too tired to do anything, we watched another movie, M. Night Shymalan's "The Village," which I had never seen. Personally wasn't overly impressed with it. M. Night Shymalan's obviously known for his spooky thrillers, and his big final plot twists, but this ending really seemed so lacking, like I was expecting it to be more dynamic, but it wasn't. Overall movie wasn't scary either. Still, it had some neat symbolism and motifs to it. Anyway, I'd say this was a fairly "American" day.

Early Sunday morning, before heading out to Segovia, we made strawberry pancakes (another gift from Trinity who brought back Bisquik). We bought some strawberries and milk and had us a good American Breakfast. Seriously, Spain's breakfasts are sorely disappointing; you don't get that much food, and it's not considered as important as the other meals. I myself don't eat breakfast that much (I like my sleep), but when I do, I expect to eat a full American breakfast; we're talking eggs, sausage or bacon, hashbrowns, juice...the works.

The pancakes, which were delicious, weren't even the highlight of the day, because the day trip to Segovia was great. Segovia is (obviously) much smaller than Madrid (not necesarily 'rural', but definitely not as much of a city feel), but out of all the places I've been to in Spain, it's probably my favorite. Immediately upon getting there, we stood before the Roman Aqueducts (a bunch of arches stacked on top of each other). Robby and I had seen a picture of this in our clase de Historia de Espana while learning about the influence of the Roman Empire on Spain. Actually it was just incredible. In some ways, it reminded me of the Great Wall of China, because it stretched a long way, though obviously not anywhere as long as the Great Wall, and it was made with beautiful stone. The city as a whole was right up my alley of interest -- it was just like everything you'd heard about medieval castles, a fortress-like structure on top of a cliff with a big wall surrounding the city for protection. The walls even had the places where guards would patrol!

Continuing, we headed into the city and immediately saw a Cathedral peeking through the alleys, above all the buildings. Of course, we had to go check it out. It was the gothic style La Catedral de Nuestra Senora de la Asuncion y de San Frutos, and like La Catedral de Burgos en La Rioja, it was jaw-dropping. Amazing. It wasn't as big or complex as Burgos, but it was just as gorgeous. The architecture and other artwork inside and out were quite stunning. Something that I didn't mention last time that I definitely should have are the ceilings inside a Cathedral -- they have some really neat, difficult-to-make designs which make you wonder how the hell people were able to make that. As usual, I could go on and on about this Cathedral. Pictures later.

After that, we went to the highlight of the city: the castle which inspired Disney, Alcazar. Okay. You know I love medieval history. You know I love medieval fantasy. So yeah. Putting me in a castle makes me an EXTREMELY happy panda. The Ireland castles were really cool, but we didn't really get to go inside one. We got the chance to explore Alcazar, and I had a field day. First step in, there's a 'knight in armor' on display, and I just jump like a typical fan girl. Kind of sad really, but I really enjoyed going through this castle and looking at all the displays it had to offer: stained glass, displays of weapons and armor, portraits and other paintings, the views of the outside lands, all of it was just great. Apparently, the place had been used as a prison for a couple of years, but it was so difficult for me to imagine how that was possible -- the entire place was way too elegant and royal for it to be suited solely for prisoners. We also got to climb the tower, which was actually quite treacherous. First of all, there were LOTS of stairs. I mean, if you're a coach and want to have your athletes get into shape by doing stair exercises, this is the place to do it. I was very much so out of breath upon reaching the top. And secondly, the stairway was narrow, and the stairs were steep. Imagine dozens of people making their way up and down those stairs, squeezing passed other people doing the same thing. Seriously, this was the one set of stairs you did NOT want to fall on. The adventure up was definitely worth it, though, as we got a great view of the city of Segovia, with the gorgeous Cathedral in the background, as well as the land around. Really, really pretty stuff.

We got some lunch after exploring the castle, which was nice but nothing worth describing in great detail. After, we ventured a little ways out of the city (around the castle) and visited a couple of churches. While those were beautiful in their own right, we were really camera happy because of the view of the castle that we were able to get from heading that way. The castle literally stood ABOVE everything, like a city of the sky. You could see it just standing on the cliff, towering above the rest of the land. Reminded me a bit of Middle Earth and Lord Of The Rings. Anyway, lots of pictures for sure! They'll come later. After walking all that way and back (keep in mind that the walk back was very uphill), we were pretty beat, and luckily, it was about time to catch the bus and train back to Madrid.

Overall, very successful day trip. We want to try and do a day trip to Toledo this weekend.

In other news...

Weird to think that I'm about halfway done with my entire adventure in Spain/Europe. This semester has gone by really quickly, and I feel there's still so much that I would like to do and see, even if I don't know what those things or sights are. Time is always going, even when I'm not doing anything productive, and I seem to miss it as it passes me by sometimes.

Speaking of being halfway through things, I'm probably over partially the academics, and classes are still going pretty well. I'm fairly confident that I'm doing well in all of them (although it's a bit unfair to judge some classes since the grade is based on a final or a paper). Actually, the classes really don't seem overly difficult at all. Makes me kind of worried to go back to IWU and get slammed with work.

Two things about IWU: they've sent out the email about class registration. They had a list of classes that would most likely be available during the Spring, but the official course catalog comes out tomorrow. I'm not too worried, since I guess I have a slight advantage in registration this semester, as well as the fact that I have a pretty good idea as to what I'd like to take. I guess I'm still just a little concerned about getting into what I need to, as well as covering all my credits. Class registration is always stressful for me (as it is for everyone), even though I'm generally prepared and have had pretty good luck with registering. Personal Reminder: I need to get those emails about classes as soon as possible.

Other news about IWU that I've received: H1N1 has hit the campus. I've never taken it too seriously; as a matter of fact, I've joked about it on numerous occassions, but I guess now that it's literally struck home, I'm more attentive and a bit more worried. I'm not by any means freaking out or becoming paranoid, and I'm sure the student body is healthy enough to fight it off, but it's kind of scary to think about it being that close to friends, and in my case, family as well. So to all those at IWU, please stay healthy and keep me updated!!

It's chilly here, at least in this house...but a big warm blanket makes me sleep oh so well!

Hasta luego.

~ LSquared

Capítulo Dieciocho: I Wanna Get Wit Ya, and Take yo' Picta!

Ireland Pictures. Need I say more?



Lovely ladies; Gulickans Reunited



Church on campus; the back of it

Castle Ruins at NUI; Castle-Turned-Government-Building

Dalkey Castle Ruins; island

Looks a wee-bit dangerous, yeah?; us livin' on the edge

I wanted this picture "on the rocks"; Dalkey city lights

O'Connell Statue in Dublin; St. Patrick's Church

Another shot of St. Patrick's; the deceiving plaza-looking area before the castle

THIS is what we wanted to see: The Dublin Castle; castle tower in black and white

Dedicated to the 2006 Special Olympics; Dublin Castle Courtyard

Myself, Abbie, and Robby in the castle courtyard; Molly Malone Statue ("Thank You Boob Lady")

Entrance; Trinity College

One of the parks; Oscar Wilde Statue

This was in the distillery -- if you touch this 240 year-old stone, you'll have 10 years good luck; Jameson Distillery

Me at the Jameson Distillery; Bar hopping/Pub crawling