A Mustard Seed in Madrid

This blog comes to you from 30,000 feet in the air at cruising altitude above the Atlantic Ocean, seat 36 L to be exact. I started out flying from DC to JFK in New York, then after a mildly excruciating 6 hour layover, I can now say the next stop is Madrid. (Okay, I sat at the bar for about 2 hours so the layover wasn't that bad) but I am so excited to get there!

So here are some of my thoughts on my upcoming adventure:  First of all, I hope I am a decent English teacher for Malco. I haven't actually taught before but I did take a class on teaching English as a second language so that kinda counts, right? I'm not too worried about getting along with the family as a whole or them liking me, because what's not to love? ;) I'd like to think I'm a pretty easy going person and not too much of a high maintenance girl. Second, I hope I can personally improve my own Spanish skills by living with my host family. Also I would like to possibly figure out if teaching is a good career track for me. In the least I'd like to have a better idea of the career track I want to pursue after this time in Spain.

Finally, on my way to the airport my mommy gave me a lovely going away present which included some stationary to send letters, a daily devotional book, and a beautiful necklace of hers that was given to her by her mom when she was my age. The necklace is a gold chain with a small circular pendant that is clear with a mustard seed inside of it. Why a mustard seed? Well if you turn it over there is inscribed a verse from Matthew 17 which says, "If ye has faith as a mustard seed... Nothing shall be impossible unto you." Meaning that all I need is the smallest amount of faith in God (mustard seeds are super tiny), and trust that He has a beautiful plan for my life, and I will be able to do anything. It's a beautiful promise and it is a huge encouragement as I begin this next chapter of my life. So, thank you Mom! And thank you everyone for reading this far into my blog. Hopefully I will be able to share some amazing things with you over the next 12 months! 

Hasta luego!

Besos,

Catalina xx

Surprise!!

I'm backkkk!! And I have big news!!! So, GUESS WHAT?!

....I'm going back to Spain!!!!

AHHH asdgjkljklgda!! It's surreal, but it's about to be very real in about one month. In the beginning of January I will be going back to Spain to be an au pair for the Higueras-Pérez family of Madrid. The family consists of Carlos, the father, Ana, the mother, and Malco, their 8 year old son who I will be caring for and teaching English to.

My host family

Malco!!

What is an au pair? I like to tell people it's a glorified nanny. But the truth is that it is someone who goes to a foreign country to live with a host family and care for their children while simultaneously sharing the culture/language of their home country AND absorbing the culture/language of the host country. It's a beautiful mutualistic relationship that is created and I'm excited to become a part of it.

Right now I don't have a ton of information that I'm able to share but I did want to revive this blog so that I can keep you all updated in the future. So please follow me and check back regularly so you can keep tabs on your favorite world traveler :)

Besos,

Catalina

Ps. I've really missed updating this thing. I'm getting antsy to actually start this adventure!

La Feria de Abril, I mean Mayo...

Hola tod@s! I have 2 final exams tomorrow, but no te preocupes, I'm going to study soon. Just wanted to update everyone on one of the coolest weeklong holidays I've ever encountered... FERIA!

Okay so in American terms, Feria (or Feria de Abril) is a HUGE fair that comes to Sevilla every year usually in the month of April but always atleast 2 weeks after Semana Santa. However, since Easter was so late this year, "Feria de Abril" was actually in May. (The running joke said it started the 32nd of April lol)

So, what do you do at the Feria? Great question. Feria is basically a huge celebration of the Andalucian culture, including but not limited to: Flamenco dancing (particularly Sevillana), Flamenco dresses, Flamenco music, Singing, Drinking Rebujitos, and lots of fried fish and tapas... Next question, What are "Rebujitos"? Another excellent question. These are possibly one of the greatest drinks I've ever had... It's a slightly unproportional mix of lots of Manzanilla (White wine from Andalucia) and a bit of 7up. Delicioso!

Of course, after much influence from the Rebujitos, everyone becomes a Flamenco dancer at the end of the night (by end of the night I mean around 6:30am when the Feria closes)

Throughout the fair ground there are hundreds of tents, called "casetas" where rich families and organizations set up for private parties where you must be on a list to get in. There are a couple casetas publicos but everyone knows the private parties are better. Luckily, through a connection of a friend of my intercambio, I was able to get into private casetas both nights that I went.

Aside from private tent parties, there's also a half of the fair grounds dedicated to attractions and games, for the kids of course. Ferris Wheels, roller coasters, flipping boats, you name it. It was all there. Hope you enjoy the pictures:

La Portada de Feria, it changes every year

Daniel & I on the Ferris Wheel

Some fun and games :)

Those are all of the casetas

Surprisingly enough, I played twice & got 2 out of 3 both times :)

Quite Sevillana, don't ya think?

The group on Feria night #2

I thought I'd leave you with some friends performing drunk flamenco dancing, enjoy :)

Besos xx
Catalina

I'm Back! (but still in Spain)

So, the charger cable for my laptop broke... literally severed in two pieces... so I haven't been able to post since my computer has been dead for about 3 weeks now. It kinda stinks. However, I did get ahold of a friend's laptop (thanks Brian!) and while I should be working on my presentation on La Casa de Bernarda Alba for tomorrow, I'm going to take a short break to update all my stalkers xD

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since I've updated... Let's see what I've done...

There have been two major holiday celebrations in Sevilla. First was Semana Santa (Holy Week) which is right before Easter and second was Feria (for my next post). There were processions of huge floats representing the journey of Jesus leading up to Easter Sunday. While I thought the concept was very interesting and meaningful, the obnoxiously large crowds disinterested me. Take a look-

I couldn't move from where I was standing so I took a pic

These fellas (called Nazarenes) ran around the city all week... They're religious, I swear.

So after approximately 2.5 days of Semana Santa, I was ready to get out of Sevilla. And that's exactly what I did. Brian, Bryan, Jim, and I met up with Brian's parents in Malaga in a town called Estepona and spend a weekend on the beach at a super nice resort. It was amazing. (Big thanks to Mr. & Mrs. Driscoll, I don't think I could thank you enough for your generosity)

A picture from our resort :)

After the beach for a couple days I took off again with Laura and Mariana for Mérida, España, where my other roommate Maca lives. We spent two nights at her house and exploring her quaint town full of Roman ruins. It was amazing, we literally would be walking through town and stumble upon sights like the one below hidden around every corner.

Let's take a walk through the ancient Roman aqueducts today, nbd.

Immediately from Maca's house we went to Lisbon, Portugal to stay the rest of our weekend with some friends of Laura. Not only did I fall in love with this city but also may have met the man of my dreams- a man who can cook! (I hope he's not reading this haha) Aside from that we got to explore not only Lisbon but also, Cascais and Sintra, both very beautiful portuguese towns. Sintra is an amazing little town on a mountainside with an incredible mountaintop castle and monastery. The views from up there were possibly the best I've ever seen...

Beautiful Lisbon

My family should recognize this delicious portuguese sausage... Linguica!

Me and Micael in Sintra :)

Mariana and I, on the castle in Sintra

So that's all I have for now... Hope you've enjoyed. I'm going to try and get more cultural stuff up. It is currently the week for Feria here in Sevilla so prepare to learn lots about Flamenco and the Sevillana :) Can't wait to update you again! Miss everyone... less than 2 months til I'm home.

xo Catalina

PS. HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MOMMY! I LOVE YOU!!

The Fiesta Post

Wow it's been awhile since I've posted, I apologize. Sad part is that I feel like I haven't done anything too exciting since my last post. I guess I mean nothing too exciting compared to my new standard of living, I'm not sure what you all will think. But if you're reading this I'm sure you'd like to know... Okay so what have I done since Granada...

The night I got back from that trip I went to a party at my intercambio's house. Let me rewind though. I have an intercambio and his name is Daniel :) He's the best. I love hanging out with him. An intercambio is a speaking partner. He's trying to learn English while I'm trying to learn Spanish so we meet every week and talk to practice each other's languages. It's awesome. So far we've met every week since I've been here and we've become great friends. So this weekend I went to his flat in Sevilla and we had a party:

Daniel & I

The party crowd

Such a fun night

Us, again.

In a bar we visited after leaving his flat

Let's see what else have I done recently... A friend of mine who was living the residencia with us had to leave to go back home to Mexico so we all went out in a big group to say our adios to him. We went to a botellón with him in Plaza San Salvadore which is a pretty popular place to do this. Botellón is very popular over here in Spain among young people. You might be asking, What is botellón? What usually happens is that lots of people, I mean hundreds to thousands, will meet in a location where everyone brings their own alcohol to drink in a public place and just hang out until it's all finished and then from there they'll go to bars or discotecas to keep the party going. I know, it's insane. When I first encountered this activity I was shocked. Isn't this completely illegal? Am I going to get arrested for drinking in public? News flash: Yes it is illegal (from what I've heard) BUT this is España, no te preocupes. No pasa nada! This is the mindset of this country. It's completely laid back... The next worry I had was, isn't something bad going to happen, like a fight will break out, etc... Nope. Everyone is just here to socialize and relax, there has been absolutely no tension in any of the botellóns that I've seen; it's kinda awesome. It's difficult to describe this activity if you've never experienced anything like it. The closest thing I can compare it to is maybe Quadfest at Radford or any typical college party weekend; except minus the drunken fights and strict cops waiting around to hand out tickets. The biggest one I went to had atleast 5,000 people there, this one probably had about 500. It's hard to see but take notice of the amount of people in the background:

Laura, Mariana, & ME

El grupo

After drinking some of that bottle...

Hope you enjoyed my adventures from the past week :)

Hasta la vista!

Catalina xx