We weren't supposed to take pictures in the cave, so this one is snuck without flash. It was incredible -- I've never seen anything like it before. Huge, enormous, high ceilings, different rooms, lakes, formations.... very cool.
The inspiration for the title of this blog entry. When we were climbing up to the castle ruins, Liliana decided she felt like a mountain goat. And here is proof!
On the top of the central hill/mountain are ruins of an old castle. We walked around up there for awhile.
My friend Liz and me on the top of the big hill/little mountain thingie. Not a bad view.
Austin, I made her do it, I thought this was a rocking picture.
I later joined them, but before I did I had to take a picture. That's Liz, Amy, Austin, and Alexa, enjoying their bocadillo lunches out on the edge of part of the castle ruins.Not much more to report on the Aracena front. But, in other news, there was an enormous manifestation on the main street outside of our apartment building today. Tons and tons of people flooding the streets, blow horns, chants, banging on drums. Mayte told me it was held by the 'campesinos' (farmers) to protest the low wages they get and how they are losing money on their crops (production costs outweigh profit type of thing). I'm not sure exactly who they were protesting and what they were asking for--help, vaguely, in some form, I'm sure--but it was interesting to see. That would never happen in the US. Wake up, see a HUGE manifestation outside your window. I kind of like it.
I am officially taking the architecture and beautiful little streets here as normal. I realized that today when I was watching a video of Sevilla during Semana Santa in Anthro of Communication. My professor had made it for some other presentation, and it had the Semana Santa parade music set to other scenes and streets in Sevilla. A year ago, I would have been ooh-ing and ahh-ing at how beautiful everything was. And now, I think 'meh -- oh, wait, not meh, I used to think this was something extra-special once, but now, wait, what happened?' It's interesting. An example of how much I've changed, how much things have shifted, how "normal" my experience here has become to me.
I went to office hours today with my professor who insists on always calling students by the formal 'you' (usted) instead of the informal 'you' (tu) and I kept conjugating verbs in the 'tu' form by accident. It was really bad. My spanish, for whatever reason, was just refusing to cooperate. How fantastic.
I know in the past I've talked about how there are plenty of old people in the university, too, not just young people, but I don't know if I've ever shared the demographics of my Andes ancient civilizations class. About 70% of the class is in the 65+ age range. Ok, fine, great, it doesn't really matter, we're listening to the teacher lecture with his slides about the Nazca and Mochica anyway. But what's interesting is today I noticed how much the lectures are geared towards them. The teacher, who is great, uses a lot of simple comparisons like "oh, this would be like this in Spain, like remember, with this under Franco" to help them understand. I feel like he does that particularly because there are older people in the class; typically younger students are more open to new ideas and understandings of things and aren't as stuck in their ways because, frankly, we just haven't been around as long. But I definitely think my professor caters to this older group of students in our class and sometimes the comparisons he makes to try to explain things to them are... well, interesting, again.
Interesting is the word of the day, I suppose.
I'm going to Ireland on Saturday for a week because we have the week off for Semana Santa. It is my first real break this year (besides the 2 weeks I had off for Christmas when my family was here and I had finals to study for) and I am very excited. There were no breaks last semester, no Thanksgiving break, no break between semesters... so I could definitely use a week off! I'm sad that passover this year is pretty nonexistent... apparently there is a Jewish restaurant in Dublin. We will be stopping there and investigating the situation. I'm going to miss having a seder this year.
I am officially taking the architecture and beautiful little streets here as normal. I realized that today when I was watching a video of Sevilla during Semana Santa in Anthro of Communication. My professor had made it for some other presentation, and it had the Semana Santa parade music set to other scenes and streets in Sevilla. A year ago, I would have been ooh-ing and ahh-ing at how beautiful everything was. And now, I think 'meh -- oh, wait, not meh, I used to think this was something extra-special once, but now, wait, what happened?' It's interesting. An example of how much I've changed, how much things have shifted, how "normal" my experience here has become to me.
I went to office hours today with my professor who insists on always calling students by the formal 'you' (usted) instead of the informal 'you' (tu) and I kept conjugating verbs in the 'tu' form by accident. It was really bad. My spanish, for whatever reason, was just refusing to cooperate. How fantastic.
I know in the past I've talked about how there are plenty of old people in the university, too, not just young people, but I don't know if I've ever shared the demographics of my Andes ancient civilizations class. About 70% of the class is in the 65+ age range. Ok, fine, great, it doesn't really matter, we're listening to the teacher lecture with his slides about the Nazca and Mochica anyway. But what's interesting is today I noticed how much the lectures are geared towards them. The teacher, who is great, uses a lot of simple comparisons like "oh, this would be like this in Spain, like remember, with this under Franco" to help them understand. I feel like he does that particularly because there are older people in the class; typically younger students are more open to new ideas and understandings of things and aren't as stuck in their ways because, frankly, we just haven't been around as long. But I definitely think my professor caters to this older group of students in our class and sometimes the comparisons he makes to try to explain things to them are... well, interesting, again.
Interesting is the word of the day, I suppose.
I'm going to Ireland on Saturday for a week because we have the week off for Semana Santa. It is my first real break this year (besides the 2 weeks I had off for Christmas when my family was here and I had finals to study for) and I am very excited. There were no breaks last semester, no Thanksgiving break, no break between semesters... so I could definitely use a week off! I'm sad that passover this year is pretty nonexistent... apparently there is a Jewish restaurant in Dublin. We will be stopping there and investigating the situation. I'm going to miss having a seder this year.
1 comment:
It's been 11 days since your last post. I'm on the edge of my seat Emma!
Post a Comment