Spain has started to cool down, possibly more next week, as I still spent all of yesterday at the beach. It was a good way to spend Halloween, after the beach we walked around Alicante, which is probably my favorite past time here. I have spent so many hours walking up and down the Explanada, which is a long plaza by the port that is home to lots of little shops and restaurants, and right before the beach. I have tried a few of the restaurants, but these tend to be more expensive, so not very often. Even Mcdonalds there is expensive, at about $9 for a happy meal Where I have eaten is called Miami, Katie and I have split different pizzas the few times we have been there. The only place where I have actually found spicy food. Every other time I have been warned the food is spicy it is never spicy, even a weak hot sauce is stronger, or it is vinegary, I was told something was spicy but it was pickled. So that has been an interesting difference. I have finally given in and eat toña for breakfast most mornings, it is a sweet bread that tastes amazing with coffee, which is cheap and amazing, they are espresso shots, and I always have mine with milk, but they are very small.
I keep wanting to start a paragraph that addresses some of the things I am struggling with, but I am not quite sure how to address them. They are not things that are really specific to Spain, more generational than anything, it is kind of hard to watch relations where men want to keep things the way they used to be while the women want things to progress forward. I have observed this is relationships at home, but it never has really impacted me until here. Understanding this has been really hard, and at time tried my patience. There are always different things that will be challenging in a new culture though. Everything else is really just small unimportant things, like the wifi not working when you want it to, or the language barrier that still has to be maneuvered occasionally due to lack of vocabulary.
My birthday was this past week, and I have to say I was surprised more than once. My host family ended up having to small cakes for me, one Tuesday, and another today, Saturday as her son and his girlfriend were able to be here today. She made Salmon and muscles for lunch today, and Mexican food for dinner on Tuesday. I was also surprised by my fiance who contacted one of the other students here to help have flowers delivered, as well as some of the souvenirs that I had said I wanted, actually all of them, I was thoroughly surprised.
Lastly there is Germany, and castles and Turkish food kind of sums up my trip. I love history, and castles so it was like Christmas for Ralphie Parker when he got the Red Ryder B.B.gun. I hope that gives you an accurate description of how excited I was. We saw the Heidelberg castle, which was so beautiful, the architecture and size just blew me away, especially since it was made around the same time as some of them castles we saw in Spain, but the structure and style is so different. We also got lots in Trier, which was fun,just included a lot of walking.
Below are some pictures of my trip to Germany.
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| The description of the statue was in German, but what I do know is that it was a victim of the Fig leaving by the Church in attempt to cover up the genitalia on any statutes. |
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| Just a small part of the castle, was not able to get a picture of the whole thing |
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| The birthday cake my host family had for me today |
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| Me sitting in the last castle we saw, it made for some fun photo ops. |
