¡FÚTBOL!

I couldn't come to Spain and not go to a fútbol game (that's soccer to all you Americans...), and considering I live basically right next to the stadium, I had NO excuses!  But as my time was winding down, I realized there were only two more home games and I had to get my act together before I lost my chance!  So, at the end of November, I went to the Sevilla FC game versus Bilbao Athletic!  It was an awesome experience.  The game started with the crowd singing the Sevilla FC hymn which is a pretty terrible song with cheesy lyrics, but it was awesome to see everyone swaying with their Sevilla scarves up in the air singing "Sevilla, Sevilla, Sevilla!"  Then the game began and I got really into it!  I'm not very much into watching sports, but the first half was so exciting and back-and-forth and ended with a score of 1:1!  However, the second half went downhill.  Sevilla was pretty much falling apart and hardly ever spent any time on offense!  The only entertaining part of the second half was watching all the Sevilla fans screaming, freaking out, and making obscene hand gestures over every little thing!  I never understand how people can get that into a sports game that it matter enough to react like that!  But I suppose their passion is admirable...  Anyhow, Sevilla wound up losing to Bilbao 1:2, much to the delight of the 15 Bilbao fans who came all the way down from Basque country to be obnoxious.  Although there was not a favorable outcome for Sevilla, I still had a great time and a great cultural experience with some great friends!

Emily and me before the game outside Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán

Red smoke bomb before the game!

Singing the Sevilla FC hymn!

Me, Caitlin and Emily :]

And the game begins!

Sevilla vs. Bilbao!

Kick that ball!

Caitlin and me with a Sevilla scarf!

2nd half - Bilbao with the ball headed toward our goal...of course...

Obnoxious vascos!

Estadio Ramón Sánchez-Pizjuán after the game!

Gibraltar!

Love Spain?  Of course!  Love the UK?  Why, yes, yes I do!  Want to go to both at the same time and see monkeys?  HECK YES!  I wanted to visit Gibraltar ever since I knew I was coming to Spain and was intent on finding a way to make it a reality.  It's only 4 hours away from Sevilla; however, getting there with public transportation is a nightmare!  The bus schedule would have allowed me to visit the city (it's a city, but it's really technically it's own country!) for a whole 3 hours, so I was pretty much decided it wasn't worth the money and gave up on going.  Enter Erasmus Student Network!  It's a network for students in Erasmus (obviously), which is the major study abroad program for European students.  They planned a trip to Gibraltar on November 12 and all I had to do was sign up!  It was like a dream come true!  I am so luckily that this opportunity fell into my lap!

I took an 8am bus from Universidad de Sevilla and was initially pissed because the friends I had agreed to go with never showed up and I was left alone!  However, it was a blessing in disguise!  I met a new friend from Germany named Lukas and I was able to spend the whole day speaking German and meeting new people!  When we arrived at Gibraltar (which is basically just a huge rock with some sort of city built around it), I was initially taken aback.  In my head, I just imagined that we would cross the border and it would instantly look like London.  That was rather foolish since we were still in Andalucia and the city looked rather Spanish.  We took the cable car up to the top of the rock to see the great views of southern Europe and northern Africa and we had great views...of a grey cloud.  However, the presence of wild Barbary apes more than made up for the poor weather!  They were hilarious!  Within 5 minutes of being up there, one monkey had stolen a map out of a girl's bag (and then dropped it after she threw her bag up in the air and ran screaming) and another latched onto some guy's leg and was pulling on his key chain of a monkey!  We had 4 hours on the rock (which was kind of too long) and 1 hour in the city (which was too short - but nothing in Spain is ever planned very well or logically).  So Lukas and I just wandered around the rock, trying to catch a glimpse of something more interesting than a cloud, climbing around on the abandoned casemates, and watching some idiot guidos trying to feed the monkeys some bread (actually, the biggest idiot was our bus driver, who wanted people to pour water into the ear of a sleeping monkey to see what it would do...)!   It was a cool experience.  Then we walked around the city and got some fish and chips at the Lord Nelson Pub (so I was at least able to experience something British)!  The cold and cloudy weather definitely put a damper on the visit, but the monkeys were fascinating to watch and the whole experience was very unique!  I'm definitely glad everything worked out and I was able to visit!  Thanks Erasmus Student Network!

Approaching the Rock of Gibraltar!

Taking the cable cars up to the top!

Ready to see some wild apes...and not get bitten or fined!

The monkey that grabbed the monkey key chain!
Coincidence?  I don't think so!

Look!  There's Africa!
Where?  Where?
Oh, behind that cloud...

Ape family - Papá, Mamá y el bebé

 

The crumbling casemates of Gibraltar!

¡Qué mono!
(I'm REALLY proud of this pun, which you won't understand if you don't speak Spanish...)

I'm on the rock!

AHH!  Monkeys on cars!  It's like Jumanji!

This was probably the most frightening moment of the day -
this huge, angry-looking fellow bounding straight towards me and my camera!

This is the closest I came to seeing Africa that day!
Nowhere...

Me and an ape!

Oh, hey!

FINALLY!  The clouds have cleared!

Yay!  It finally feels like London!

The Convent Guard House with Gibraltarian coat of arms!

Cádiz - ¡mi ciudad española favorita!

About a month ago (yes, I am WAY behind...again) I day-tripped to Cádiz, the oldest city in Spain!  It was founded by the Phoenicians in 1000 BC and has been an influential port city for Spain and the entire Mediterranean region ever since (I could go on and on about the history since I did a project on the city for my Mediterranean history course, but I'll spare you all the nerdiness)!  It instantly became my FAVORITE city in Spain!  Yes, more than Sevilla or Madrid or Granada.  It is on the beach (and actually touts the best urban beaches in all of Europe), but has a real city vibe to it (unlike the sleepy town of Ibiza)!  The city just had such a great atmosphere to it and I'm only SLIGHTLY bitter that my host family never offered the use of their beachfront apartment there to me and my housemate! 

I started my visit on Playa de la Victoria, which was awesome!  Despite being November, it was in the 70s and sunny, so I walked around with my feet in the water, watched the Atlantic waves crash into the rocky shore and sat and relaxed in the sun!  PERFECTION!  Then I ventured into the city to see the sites and learn some history (for my history project and my own personal edification).  The cathedral was beautiful and the Torre de Potinente, the cathedral's bell tower, afforded great views of the whole whitewashed city, the colorful fishing boats floating near the shore and the expansive, blue ocean!  I also visited the Museo de Cádiz to do some research for my project and check out all the cool Phoenician and Roman archeological artifacts!  I ended my day sitting on the rocks watching the most beautiful sunset at the Castillo de San Sebastian, an 18th Century Spanish fort built on the site of a 3000 year old Phoenician temple!  It was simply amazing (minus accidentally stepping in a puddle on the rocks and having one wet foot for the rest of the day).

Waves crashing into rocks!  NEVER gets old!

Cádiz from Playa de la Victoria

Chilling on the rocky Atlantic coast in Cádiz!

Typical Spanish streets

Beauty of nature and humanity at the Cádiz Cathedral!

The city in white!

A the top of the bell tower!

Colorful fishing boats!

Castillo de Santa Catalina

Famous Phoenician sarcophagi from 480 BC

Roman mosaic at the Museo de Cádiz

Self-portrait of Alonso Cano
The street I live on in Sevilla is named after him! 
It was nice to finally put a face with the name!

Walking to watch the sunset at Castillo de San Sebastian

Sitting on the rocks waiting for the sunset!

I N C R E D I B L E !
This is probably one of the most beautiful things I've seen this semester!

Walking back into the city at dusk!

Purple skies on the jetty at Playa de la Victoria

MOROCCO المغرب

During the first weekend in November, I went to Morocco.  Yes, that means AFRICA!  I still can't believe that I've been to Africa!  It's so surreal!  I went with a tour group because there was NO way I was just going to go alone with friends, considering none of us speak Arabic or French or are familiar with Arab culture.  Our group left Sevilla on Friday afternoon and drove all the way to the port city of Algeciras to take the ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city that is actually located on the Moroccan coast.  The ferry was SO awesome!  I had never really been on a nice, passenger ferry so it was a cool experience.  Upon arrival in Ceuta (in the pouring rain and the dark of night) we picked up our Moroccan guide for the weekend, Mohammad, and headed toward the Spanish-Moroccan border.  This was a nightmare!  It was so busy with vehicle traffic and people running through the rainy streets with overstuffed grocery bags like homeless people carry around.  It was definitely a very abrupt shift from one culture to the next!  After about an hour of waiting at the border, we drove to the nearby fishing village of M'diq where we had dinner at the hotel and went to bed!

Relaxing on our ferry to Africa!

On our first real day in Morocco, we got up at a decent hour for breakfast at the hotel and then headed out to the explore the city of Tétouan.  Mohammad gave us a tour through the medina (an old, walled section of many North African cities), which was full of street markets!  The street markets were full of vendors selling spices, goat cheese, flat bread, fruits, vegetables, live chickens and sheep, incense, handcrafts, and pretty much anything else you could think of!  It was fascinating to see all the colors and smell all the smells (ranging from amazing-smelling freshly-baked bread to dozens of live chickens in a cage).  We viewed the exterior of the Royal Palace and visited some local shops - a carpet store with beautiful handmade and naturally dyed carpets (not of the magic variety) and a traditional Berber pharmacy, where we were introduced to a variety of herbal remedies.  After these visits, we had time for shopping in the medina.  Haggling is a a HUGE part of Arab culture so shopping is much more of an interchange between the vendors and customers.  To start haggling, you're supposed to offer to pay half the price and work from there.  I wasn't buying any big, expensive items, so I unfortunately didn't get to experience the haggling culture as much or make any great deals!  The best I did was get a little handmade camel figure for €2.50 instead of €3.  After shopping, we went to lunch and had a Moroccan salad, couscous with vegetables and beef, and cookies with traditional Moroccan mint tea - everything was good except for the tea.  After lunch, we had a rather unique cultural experience.  The weekend that we visited happened to be the weekend of the Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice) in the Islamic calendar.  The sheep and goat markets were hubs of activity as each family purchased their own animal to slaughter for the upcoming feast.  We were stuck in traffic for probably an hour watching family after family dragging their new sheep or goat down the street (or in some cases the sheep dragging the person).  It screwed up our itinerary, but I did not mind at all since it was such an interesting cultural experience that I was fortunate enough to witness.  Once we got out of that mess, we headed to Grotte d'Hercule (Hercules Grotto), a cave with a beautiful crevice looking out into the Mediterranean Sea - quite awesome!  Then we were off to a beautiful seaside cliff to ride camels at sunset - the most anticipated part of the trip for everyone!  It was awesome!  Not much else I can say about that!  We then stopped at Cap Spartel, where the Mediterranean and Atlantic meet and then drove to our hotel in Tangier for dinner.  I explored Tangier with some friends and it was just like any other modern, Western city - much different from the medina of Tétouan or the sheep markets!  It was a rather jam-packed day, but it was just incredible!

Fruit vendor in the medina of Tétouan

Chickens - worst smell of the entire weekend!

Narrow, covered streets in the medina

The Royal Palace

The first of MANY sheep!

Morocco is so colorful!

Traditional carpets!

Moroccan salad - carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, olives, and rice!
(The beauty of it is that you can just take what you want and mix it yourself!)

Veggies, couscous and beef
(I don't recommend eating cooked cucumbers...)

Shopping in the market

Spices in the Berber pharmacy

One of the many mosques in Tétouan that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

A family walking home from the sheep market in preparation for Eid al-Adha

Morocco proudly flies it's flag...pretty much anywhere and everywhere!

Waves crashing into the Grotte d'Hercule!

Sarah and me on our camels!

I'M ON A CAMEL...IN AFRICA...AHHHHH!

They're so cute and friendly :)

We became friends...after he gnawed on my shoulder a little bit haha

AMAZING sunset on one of the most gorgeous beaches!

Our entire tour group after riding the camels!

Lighthouse at Cap Spartel

Downtown Tangier

On Sunday, we woke up early to leave Tangier and head to the village of Chefchaouen in the Rif Mountains.  It was a really beautiful drive through the mountains with the plumes of morning fog and the sun poking from behind the mountains.  However, traversing the narrow, winding roads in a coach bus was not so friendly on the stomachs.  I'm glad I didn't throw up...others were not so lucky.  The village of Chefchaouen was rather interesting.  EVERYTHING is painted blue!  I felt like I was in some dreamy, Dr. Seuss land.  It was seriously not real life!  We walked through the medina taking too many pictures, cringing at the sounds of bleating goats that may have been being slaughtered, gawking over the abundance of cats and occasionally breaking out into ever-popular and ever-so-appropriate "Blue" by Eiffel 65.  We stopped at a traditional fabric shop and were showed an array of beautiful and colorful scarves and tablecloths, as well as their 100 year old loom!  It was pretty neat!  Then it was once again shopping time, lunch time (same exact Moroccan lunch as the day before - Arab cuisine is apparently a one-hit wonder), and time to head back to the bus!  We had a lengthy drive back through the mountains and then back to Ceuta to catch our ferry back to Europe!

Enjoying their last day of life :(

The poverty of Morocco was evident, from the rotten, missing teeth of the locals to the desperate begging for any change to the half-built buildings sitting in disrepair.  This was one of the few cases of poverty I actually caught on camera: a hungry dog searching for food in pile of garbage in front of a tent village.  This was my first time in an undeveloped country so it was quite a sad thing to witness firsthand for the first time...

My chance encounter with a goat in the Rif Mountains

The Rif - SO BEAUTIFUL!

Entering the medina in Chefchaouen

"I have a blue house with a blue window"

THIS IS THE MOST PERFECT KITTY PICTURE OF MY LIFE!
I LOVE THIS AND I'M SO GLAD IT HAPPENED AND THAT I HAVE THIS PICTURE :)

The mountains that give Chefchaouen it's name! 
Chefchaouen means "watch the horns" in the Berber dialect and the
mountains in the background are apparently the horns.

Yarn at the fabric shop!

The houses of Chefchaouen - such poverty, yet some people have satellite TV!

Daily life in Chefchaouen

Me and my friends with an adorable (and frightened) Moroccan boy who wanted to be in our picture!

Is this real life???

Charming street markets!
None of us had ever been to Peru, however we all felt like we were in Peru...weird.

Ceuta!  Is it Spain?  Is it Africa?  IT'S BOTH!

Boarding our ferry back to Europe!
(This was also my final sunset over the Mediterranean for the semester...)

Overall, my adventure in Morocco was an INCREDIBLE experience.  It was so interesting to have my eyes opened up to a completely new and unfamiliar culture and so refreshing to take in all the sights, smells and natural beauty of northern Morocco!  I would recommend it to anyone!