Quick info: My dad sent me an envelope dated 1/29/03 and it got here on 2/11/03, so mail takes a while. Now to the story:

Bentsen organized a side trip to Lisbon, Portugal from 2/7 to 2/10. I decided to go. It was 5 of us altogether (the others were Sara-Kathryn, Kristin, and Paulencia). We left on Thursday night (yay for no Friday classes) at 10:45. Now, Bentsen is a great guy and we trusted him to buy the tickets. Turns out that for this 11 hour train ride, he got us seats...not beds, seats in 2nd class. It was horrible; I can´t sleep in chairs on moving things. The only thing that made it at all ok was that the two girls behind me were great fun to talk to. Kristi and Leah from UNC-Chapel Hill, living in Madrid with families and teaching their kids English. We talked almost the whole trip. Kristin and Sara-Kathryn decided to try to sleep in the quiet and spacious seats in the next car because although they didn´t have tickets for them, there was a grand total of two people in it. Well, turns out one of the uniformed train guys was stalking them. They tried to go to two different bathrooms and he followed them. And he definitely kicked them out of that car and followed them around. They offered to pay extra to upgrade to that car and he wouldn´t let them. AND he apparently tried to invite them back to his cabin...hmm. We finally got there. Since Kristi and Leah did not have reservations anywhere either, we all decided to find a hostel together. This old guy at the station took us to his hostel. 10€ a night. Kinda weird guy, we didn´t really know Portuguese (Bentsen was carrying around a guidebook and liked to try to talk to them in Portuguese, but that wasn´t working so well), beds were a little hard. Plus it was the kind of place with one bathroom in the hallway. And the fun part was there wasn´t a showerhead but just the handheld kind and nowhere to mount it on the wall, so I had to keep setting it down to use the soap. Meanwhile, Kristin and Sara-Kathryn got the only free 15€ a night room, with a TV and a private bathroom. After a nap we all left for Sintra, another town a half hour away on the Metro. Ate at Pizza Hut (yay for cheesy garlic bread) and took a bus forever up winding (=nausea) paths through the hills. Finally, we got where we were going: Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point of Europe. We ran up to the wall and looked out on the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, as far as you could see in front of you, during a cloudy sunset, with a medium breeze. It was amazing. We took pictures next to the little marker. And nearby there was one marking the 75th anniversary of, you guessed it, Rotary International. Kristin´s and my dad are both in it, so we took a picture of it too. (I´m thinking of sending a copy to Inés when I get back, along with a drawing of a dead chicken. Just as a joke.) We got back to Lisbon and walked around the streets, ran away from a beggar that tried to hug S-K and ate. Lisbon seems more old world than Madrid, which is funny since it was mostly destroyed by an earthquake and then rebuilt. There were palm trees. Funny story: when we finished with Pizza Hut at lunch, there was one slice left. We were just going to leave it, but Paulencia suggested we take it with us and give it to a homeless person. Well, that´s a great idea. So we packed it up and carried it out and planned to give it to the next homeless person we saw...ok, we walked around all freakin´ day and there were no homeless people anywhere in Sintra. Even when we got back to Lisbon, none. We ended up throwing it away (found that hugging guy later). But throughout the day whenever we stopped somewhere, as we were leaving, we were like, "WAIT, do we have the pizza with us?" "I have it." "OK, good, let´s go."

The next day (Saturday) we got up late and didn´t understand what our hosts tried to tell us about the buses, so we ended up running at breakneck speed through the unfamiliar streets of Lisbon with Bentsen leading the way to the bus station and got on about 5 minutes before the bus left for Fátima. An hour and a half later, there we were. Fátima is famous because in 1917 three children were in a clearing shepherding and saw the Virgin Mary. The same day for the next 5 months, in fact. So there is a big cathedral and chapel there and people come from all over to visit it. There was a long tiled path that people were crawling or walking on their knees on towards the chapel. I lit a candle for my family and friends. In the cathedral Mass was going on, so we watched for a few minutes. After that, we looked at some tourist info we had picked up and decided to visit some nearby caves. Hey, we didn´t have a car so we thought we´d walk. Turns out the caves were 2 kilometers away through the woods and the street we were following had very fast cars and no sidewalks. We finally got there about 20 minutes before it closed. The tour guy was in charge of us and a couple. He started talking...in Portuguese. Luckily, that was for the couple and he switched to English in a sec. The caves were pretty, but there wasn´t much to them and we couldn´t take pictures. Still it was fun, aside from the suspicious-looking guy who drove away as we passed him. 55 25 HD...if we see that license plate again, we run. We got back after the 5:00 bus to Lisbon and the next wasn´t till 8:00 so we walked around the city center for a while. Not much to do. Ate and got late again so we ran to the bus station at breakneck speed again but it was late anyway. Once again we had leftover pizza from dinner and Paulencia brought it back to Lisbon, but this time for personal consumption.

On Sunday, we got up early and the hostel guy took all of us to the train station to drop our bags off at a locker. We managed to put all 7 people´s (us and Kristi and Leah) bags in one locker. Now, all this time us SMU people had been doing our thing and Kristi and Leah had been doing theirs. The 7 of us started walking towards the Metro station to go to Sintra again because we didn´t get to finish there before. We walked and walked and walked. Finally a bus came by and 4 of the group just got on it. Kristi, Leah, and I were still standing there. "Wait, where is this bus even going?" Of course, my friends here had gotten on a bus that was not headed to the Metro station. But they had already paid for the bus fare. Kristi and Leah (I´ll call them UNC for short) and I didn´t want to get on and the bus started to pull away. But at the same time, I didn´t want to be separated from SMU and they didn´t want to lose us because all of our bags were together. So we ended up getting on too. When the bus was as close as it would get to the Metro station, UNC got off and we all planned to meet an hour before the train back to Madrid to collect our stuff. SMU kept going to the city (district?) called Belén. Saw a huge monastery there, including the tomb of Vasco de Gama (sailed around Africa to the Indies for Portugal). Definitely came in the middle of another Mass. Then we walked around the seaside (Bay of Belén) and came to the Torre de Belén, a small castle-like structure in the Bay that was used to defend it from enemy ships. It was a neat structure, very picturesque. We had a good view from the top (winding narrow stairs yet again, like the cathedral in Segovia). After that, we took the bus and walked to the Metro station. Went to Sintra. Decided to climb to the Moorish castle...at the top of a mountain. We walked for seriously 45 minutes up inclines the whole time, trusting Bentsen´s map. Everyone was complaining and sweating and we didn´t even know where we were. Nice views though. We trudged up to the gate just as the last tram was leaving for the castle itself. Yep, after all that work (which I can´t really describe to you) we didn´t even get to see the thing. But at least we found out THEN that a bus went back and forth between Sintra and the gate, so we took that back down (in about 1/10 the time it took us to get up). And it dropped us off not only in Sintra but directly at the Metro station. Funny coincidence: as we were climbing up through a small village we saw UNC getting on a bus coming down. We got back to Lisbon and walked around the city center some more, had dinner, and took the train back to Madrid. S-K, Bentsen, and Kristin had bought beds by now. Paulencia and I eventually did too, once the odyssey got underway. Talked with UNC till the early morning and went to my sleeping room. Still couldn´t fall asleep really. The fun part was that we arrived in Madrid on Monday morning about an hour before my first class. So I hurried home, threw my stuff down, got my backpack, and took the bus to school just in time. And that was my trip to Portugal. Even though they are both descended from Latin, I could not understand any Portuguese, even when it was written. UNC and I exchanged emails (they said I reminded them of one of their friends) so hopefully we´ll see them again some time. Everyone we met in Portugal was very friendly. And Bentsen had no money so he had to get S-K to pay for everything for him. Now he owes her like 80€.

The Tuesday right after this trip, we all went to Andalucia, in the southern part of Spain, for a class trip (mmm...taking my massive backpack on a bus to school, crowded with commuters...that was fun). The bus ride to Andalucia was forever long and boring. But it was neat looking out at the landscape. Outside of Madrid, the terrain is flat with rows of hills. We went through a tunnel in the rocky hills of the Desempeñaperros. There was fog everywhere in the morning. Once we got to the province of Jaén in Andalucia, there were olive trees everywhere. Jaén produces more than 50% of the country´s olive oil, which is used in cooking every single thing here. Going with us were María and Andres, the two art teachers. My señora is so cool cause she packed me a lunch.

First stop: Córdoba. Aishah, Chuck, Lupita, Kristin, Lauren, and I walked around and ate. For the required culture class we all take, we had packets of questions to ask the locals (e.g. local dishes and drinks, politics, customs, festivals, etc.), so we bothered a shopkeeper for a while. Lunch: ugh. We found a place that looked nice with an outdoor patio. We asked what some typical dishes were. The guy said ox tail and gazpacho were some. Aishah insisted that we try them. Chuck had his video camera, so we taped him trying the ox tail. It was actually very tender, just tasted like roast beef. The gazpacho was a cold tomato-y broth with pieces of raw onion, green pepper, and tomato. I liked it, but no one else did. The gross part was Chuck´s other dish. He ordered chorizo (sausage) and fried egg. Pretty normal dish here. That chorizo was the nastiest thing I have ever seen or smelled. It looked like small round pieces of bloody meat in this neon orange sauce and it smelled like vomit. We taped him eating that too. And the bill was like 58€. Uncool. Afterwards we met up again and visited the Mosque of Córdoba. It was constructed in the 8th century and then expanded in the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 16th centuries (16th was by Christians). Córdoba declared political independence from Damascus early on but later declared religious independence too (had its own religious leader, still Islamic, of course). In fact, for a long time, a pilgrimage to Córdoba could be substituted for the pilgrimage to Mecca that every Muslim must make once in his life. The mosque was very big with an outside patio with gurgling water and palm trees (and later orange trees planted by Christians...this country is filled with orange trees) and inside there were rows and rows of red and white arcs. It was dark and cold and totally cool. As they like to keep pointing out, the Muslim buildings and monuments were much better than the Christian ones and when the Christians would reconquer the cities, they didn´t destroy the buildings but converted them to Christian ones. So we saw the area of the mosque that had been turned into a cathedral as well. In fact, Alfonso X is buried in the mosque. Afterwards I had some pistachio ice cream (my parents would be happy) and we left for Sevilla. Wish we had spent more than 4 hours in Córdoba; there was probably more to see.

We stayed in a 3-star hotel in Sevilla, me in my 3-person room with Jeromiah and Eric. Went down to dinner a little early and thank goodness for that because those old people attacked the buffet line a minute after I left. I didn´t want to go out for the night, so I stayed in my room and Jeromiah taught us an Italian card game much like Cassino (thanks, Pam) before leaving to go out. Later, Chuck came by with Kristin, Melissa, and Bentsen and we played Tonk (some game Chuck taught us all) and laughed and they drank the wine that Jeromiah had illegally brought into the room. In the morning we left (María is way strict about being punctual) and saw the Palacio Real. ("They are opening a special door for our group and if we weren´t are there, 5 minutes later he will close it and we won´t get to go in.") We walked through the garden. Here it was all bushes and trees and no flowers or lawns because Andalucia is a very dry part of Spain. We saw some more examples of Muslim architecture, a room that had the first painting containing a picture of Christopher Columbus, the public and private plazas, and the throne room and things. Carlos I (the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabel) and Isabel of Portugal were married in this palace. Once again, the conquering Christians did not destroy the place. Afterwards, we went to the Barrio de Santa Cruz. A bar there, the Hostelería de Laurel is where the first scene of Don Juan Tenorio (the play we watched in Spanish) takes place. Next, the Cathedral. Tall Gothic ceilings, stained-glass windows, the choir area, the major altar of golden wood...and the (a?) tomb of Christopher Columbus. (Apparently two other places in the world say they have him, or maybe parts of him, as well) Again, the cathedral was originally a mosque. We walked up the tower again (gently sloping ramps instead of stairs this time, how about that) to see the city from the bell tower that the Christians added on top of the old mosque´s minaret. Lunch time: 10 of us went for tapas (small pieces of food that originally came with alcoholic drinks...now you can just order them from the menu). It was lots of fun and we got to try a lot of different foods for cheap. Afterwards we walked to the Plaza de España and half the group went on a horse carriage ride through the city and 4 of us rented this 4-person bike thing and rode around the park for a half hour. After dinner at the hotel, which we walked all the way back to, all of us were taken to a flamenco show. It was really fun. I have to say I liked the dancing better than the singing. I´ll show y´all pictures when I get back. Apparently María can flamenco, but she didn´t show us.

In the morning, we left for Granada. We got there and had free time for 3 hours so I went up to the room and used the bathroom. Wish I had known that our 4-star hotel was doing construction on the second floor and we didn´t have water for me to wash my hands. We found a Chinese restaurant and had a cheap satisfying lunch. (It´s funny hearing them speak great Spanish, especially since I´ve never been to one in the States where they speak good English. There are lots of Oriental people in Spain.) Next we all went to the Capilla Real. Fernando de Aragon, Isabel de Castilla, their daughter Juana La Loca, and her husband Felipe El Hermoso are all buried there. Kinda boring, just saw their coffins (I was expecting to see remains, but I guess that was a little unrealistic) and some really bad Flemish paintings. I guess I don´t appreciate Western art. Isabel´s sceptre and Fernando´s sword were also on display. Bet you didn´t know that the symbol for Granada is the pomegranate. The cathedral in Toledo, San Juan de los Reyes, was built for the burial of Fernando and Isabel, but once they conquered Granada (the last Muslim-held city to fall, signifying the total reconquest of Spain for the Christians, in 1492) they decided to be buried there and had the church built solely for that purpose (the first time that had been done by a king of Spain). Consequently, the church is devoted more to them than to God. After that, we walked up to a smaller neighborhood of the city to get a view of the Alhambra. Then I went with Jeromiah, Joanna, Paulencia, Lauren, and Lauren Viktor through the Muslim neighborhood. We found a hookah place and I tried that for the first time in my life. It was totally cool. We got peach flavor and passed it around. Although Jeromiah actually smokes, I got the best clouds of smoke (the others decided that if I started smoking, I´d be good at it ;P). We took pictures and everything. I like hanging out with that group. After dinner, Chuck wasn´t feeling well enough to go out, so we decided to play cards again. But this time we went downstairs and played near the lobby. We ended up playing for like 4 and a half hours, with Andres, our teacher. Taught him Tonk. (And I won handily our one game of ERS.) It was a lot of fun and other people in the group came by to say hi and take a break from the mad partying that was going on downstairs (María was in the middle of it, I heard).

In the morning (Friday) we went to the Alhambra. María was upset because some people in the group caused us to get complaints from the other guests during the night. The Alhambra is really really big. There is a fortress section and a palace section. Saw the bell tower (the first part to be built), the ramparts, the foundations of some quarters, and the garden. In the palace we saw the plazas including the first round plaza I´ve seen in one of these palaces. Also, the throne room and the important and highly decorated walls. It was interesting at first but the tour was so long that I started to get a little bored. Took a bunch of pictures though (that´ll make Will happy). After that, the trip was over and we could decide whether to return to Madrid on the school´s bus or make our plans for the weekend from Granada. I was one of 8 people to come back. The others went to Cádiz or to Gibraltar and Morocco.

I decided to do homework in a café on Saturday (good choice because just as I was leaving, the grandkids came again). Turns out Inés was going to be gone for the night again. I worked for a few hours on homework in another part of town and came back. Didn´t know that there was a massive protest against the war planned for that night. The Metro platforms were packed to the gills with people trying to go towards Puerta del Sol and the trains were completely full. I had the misfortune of being on one for a short while and it was uncool. I am not claustrophobic, but I need my space in a Metro car. I heard later that there were a million people protesting around Spain. I think every single young person in Madrid was headed down there, but it wasn´t just them. People of all ages were going. After eating dinner by myself I got a message from Chuck that we were going out tonight. So I headed down to Sol (by midnight things were back to normal) to meet him, Kristin, and his high school friend Akua (neither knew the other was in Madrid and they randomly ran into one another in an Internet café one or two weeks ago). We went to a place that had no tables so we were seated (I´m not kidding) on stools in the stairwell. Lame, so we left. (I´d come back for the jazz.) We walked around and found this place that Chuck had been to where he got a "bucket of beer" for cheap, so we went in. Disco on the ground floor, and tables below. They suggested I get a rum and Coke. That was pretty gross. So Chuck says that since it´s obvious I don´t like the taste of alcohol, I should try shots: they taste horrible for a few seconds and then it´s over. I tried to resist, but they convinced me to do it, so Kristin whispers to our waiter while Chuck and Akua leave to get her a cab to meet friends elsewhere. The waiter (who is amazed that at 20 I have never had a shot) brings a little plate with two glasses, a salt shaker, and two lemon wedges. Kristin wouldn´t tell me what the shots were at first, but as you have guessed, they were tequila. We waited for Chuck to come back but he was gone for over 20 minutes, so I went ahead and took them both while he was gone (we filmed them on his camera of course). I have to say...they weren´t bad. We all went upstairs and danced in the crowded discotheque. I ended up having two more shots of tequila. (None of these were one after another or anything.) So after 4 shots, I still felt completely normal, maybe not steady enough to be walking a tightrope, but normal. Kristin and Chuck were impressed (Kristin is making it her mission to get me drunk once.) We danced all night long. It was one of the most fun times I´ve had here. We took the Metro home after it opened again for the morning...I got back to my place at 7:00 AM! And I reeked!

Later that day (Sunday) I got up in the afternoon, showered, and ate at McDonald´s (one of the only places here that is open on Sundays). Then I went to the Fourth Annual Feria Madrid por la Ciencia, basically a big science expo in the same place as that travel fair was. (hey, entry was free and I needed a science fix) I was thinking, well, science isn´t very popular back home, there won´t be many people there. Well, Pavilion 5 was rocking. There were people all over the place and stands everywhere. Physics, math, biology, chemistry, ecology, geology. And all the presenters were students, from elementary to high school. The stands were all pretty amazing and the kids looked like they were doing a good job handling the crowds. The stands were from universities, government agencies, museums, tourist places, and private companies. There was someone giving massages and another place you could get your teeth cleaned (by students...kinda weird). Some exhibits involved lighters and there were elementary school kids running those; don´t think that would happen back home. Also there was one stand where you could read personality descriptions and find out which planet you were like...not really science. I didn´t stop for long at any of the stands cause if you did the kids came up and asked you if you wanted an explanation. (I figure, if I can´t do normal Spanish, then I sure won´t understand a middle schooler trying to explain science to me in Spanish) But I definitely got to write my name on a Perkins Brailler.

Sorry for the length, but this has been a very busy week and a half. I miss you all!

Anand