Night Time In Valencia

When the show had finished everyone piled into the street and made their way to their own respective places, and me and Cassi and Missy and Paige decided to walk over to the falla that we wanted to see burn so that we would be sure to get front row seats! So we got there around 8:30 or 9 because we were thinking that we would need to be there early to get front row and what not, so we chilled at our falla of choice for a really, really long time. And during this time, we really began to worry about this. I mean, here we are about 20 feet or so away from this big statute thing, which is in the middle of a residential area and tall buildings, and they are going to set it on fire. Who thought that placing a large burnable object in the middle of the city and buildings, placing people close to it, and then lighting it on fire was a good idea?! But good idea or not, we were ready for whatever cam e our way! We thought that we had the prime spot, but then we were moved because they were going to burn another one that was a little ways down the street. So after practically pushing us out of our spot, we walked around and found another group of people from our group who had been waiting on the other side of the falla. So we sat there with them until around 11:30 when once again we were pushed from our spot and into the streets where they were setting up the barriers. The good thing about the spot that we chose, though, is that was where they chose to make the cut off, so we were right in the front row! It was rumored that the burning was going to start at 12, then we would stay till it was about done burning and try to find the bus to head home. So when 12 o’clock came and nothing was happening, everyone started to doubt the validity of our source that told us it started then. The fire fighters were just kinda chillin’ around the falla, talking, walking back and forth pretending that they were doing something, when really if you watched them, they were just walking. Meanwhile there were hundreds if not thousands of us all packed like sardines into the street behind the barrier waiting for something to happen. When 12:15 came around and they had turned the lights on and off once or twice making us think that something was actually going to happen, people started to get restless and start chanting things like “we want fire!” and sometimes other things that were not so encouraging to the people making the fire possible. The little old people next to me even got into it and started yelling things at the fire fighters so that they would know that we were ready to get the show on the road. It was pretty funny! I even joined in a couple of times with a “Madre Mia” or a “Vamos” or something here and there so that I could really experience everything, ya know? That and my feet were killing me from standing there in the same plaza for a good 4 hours and I really was ready for this fire to start. When 1 o’clock in the morning rolled around I was considering just crowd surfing it to the back or something because I could barely stand, but just at this point on of the firefighters walked up to the section where I was standing and said something to the effect that the zone that I (and everyone around me, obviously) was standing in was a really hot zone, and if we got the urge to turn around and run away, don’t! Just bend over so that you are behind the barrier or other people and stay there until you are not so hot anymore. Well that was just the thing that I wanted to hear after standing there for hours to see this. So here I am thinking that I am going to walk out of there without eye lashes now, or I might get trampled by the people who just can’t take the heat! So comforting! I wonder if they have ever had problems with stampeding people before. But on the other hand that at least meant that they were going to start sometime soon! It was a good half an hour later that everything was set up and the gas had been poured on the falla, and all of the firefighters had taken many pictures with it, that Ms. Falla (or something like that) came and set the fuse on fire. It was right then that my camera decided to die, so I missed the one event that the whole day had been leading up to! Sad! (no worries, I got copies of pictures and such from other people) This is one of the coolest things ever! As the fuse continued to burn it went and set the giant lantern on fire that was the top of the falla, and from there the falla was history! And the fireman was right! We were definitely in the hot zone, not to mention the wet zone too! There were firemen standing in front of the buildings, spraying them with water from fire hoses so that the buildings wouldn’t catch on fire, so every once in a while we would get a few drops of water falling on us. We stayed to watch the whole thing burn down, and when we finally left the falla that was once as tall as the surrounding buildings was nothing more than smoldering ashes! It was pretty intense!
After that we were all pretty beat, so we headed over to the train station to use the smelly bathrooms one last time before going back to the bus, and ended us sitting on the floor of the train station for a while, waiting for people to come, and use the bathroom and such. We finally made it back onto the bus around 3 o’clock in the morning and crashed into the seats. The ride home is kind of a big blur of trying to get comfortable on the bus, and waking up, and trying to fall back to sleep, and once again nothing good can come from trying to sleep on the bus! When got back to Alcalá at 7 in the morning, and Paige and I walked like Zombies back to our house, and crashed in bed! We slept till about 3 that afternoon. It was great!

Valencia Evening

By this time, we had been wandering for a good long while, and by a good long while I mean ever since we had gotten off the bus that morning, so me and Cassi and Missy and Paige decided that we were tired and needed desperately to find a park to siesta, so telling Shumway that we were breaking off from the parade, we went our own way, first to find ice cream for Missy, and next to find the park. After even more walking we found a little store that had some ice cream to satisfy Missy’s sweet tooth, and we sat outside at the tables with our map spread over the top, trying to decide where the park was. Now, Spanish maps are a little bit different than the ones that you normally find in the US, there is nothing telling you which way is North, South, East and West, and the markings on the map, like where the churches are and such vary from map to map, and some maps are distorted to accentuate the better parts of the city, or things that people normally go to see so that they will be easier to find or something, which just makes everything confusing. So there we were, 4 directionally and apparently map challenged girls, trying to figure out where the park is in relation to where we were, and all we wanted to know what how to get us to the big green area on the map that said Parque. It took us a while to find the street that we were on, on the map, and once we did, it took us even longer to figure out which way we would have to walk to go in the right direction of the park, but after much discussion and debate about where we were gonna go, we set out in what we decided was the right direction. We walked in the right way, and after just crossing the street and coming to where the park was supposed to be, and really what the map had shown as a vast green area was in fact a vast brown, dirt area that were soccer fields. We were a little disappointed that we couldn’t go chill there and take a nap, but while we were walking across the bridge that looked down on the park we noticed a little ways farther there were trees and grass and other greenery that looked quite inviting. So we crossed the bridge and headed to the other side of the street to then walk and go to the nice part of the park. Now let me tell you about this park. It’s kinda weird, but because the park is below the rest of the city, kinda like a canal, except for it’s a park. So while we were along the road, trying to find a way into this park, but I think this is one of the LEAST accessible parks that I have ever seen! We walked along the road for a good 20 minutes without even seeing the slightest inkling as to where the entrance is. We passed other parks while trying to get into this one, just because all of a sudden entering this park became some sort of challenge or something that we just had to do! We even stopped and asked a guy that was already in the park, how in the world we were supposed to get in there! He laughed at us and told us that there were stairs a little ways farther. So we walked for a while longer until we finally found the ramp entrance to the park, located right in the middle of the park and nowhere else. How convenient! When we finally got in, made it past the small children throwing fire crackers and underneath another bridge we found a place to sit down and eat the sandwiches that we had made the night before.All of our efforts of getting into the park were kinda lame, because after we were done eating, we sat there for a bit and decided that it was too cold to really lay down and take a nap or something, so we got up and walked back out of the oh so enchanted park and back into the streets of Valencia. We just wandered some more for a while after that, and after finally finding some bathrooms (the porta-potties on the side of the road, these ones are high tech! they had a place for you to wash your hands! Sweet, I know!) we found a place where crowds were gathering so we thought that we would stop and see whats going on. Where there’s a crowd, there has to be something exciting going on, right? Upon further investigation we found that they were going to do a fireworks show in a little bit, so we made camp right next to the seating that was reserved. We figured if it was reserved it would be a good place to see things! This is where we stayed for the next hour or so until it was dark enough for things to happen. But before the fireworks started going off, there was a parade that came through on the street with dancing girls and dragons spitting fireworks, the works! It was pretty intense! So intense, as a matter of fact, that one of the dragon costumes got hit by some of the sparks of the fireworks that it was spitting and started on fire! It was just on the tail, but the parade had to momentarily stall so that the person who was walking behind could stomp on the fire and put it out! But once that was taken care of, things went smoothly! By this time the crowd had collapsed passed the previous barriers and we were now standing right by the street in great anticipation of the fireworks. When the parade ended, we all just stood there for a second, wondering what was going to happen, but once the fireworks started shooting out of the ground around the little building in the center of the plaza area, we knew the show had started!!! It only lasted about 10 minutes or so, but let me tell you what, the Spaniards know how to do fireworks! It was so loud and the sky was lit up for the whole time! One of the funniest things were the German guys that were standing behind us. They were laughing so hard at just about everything that you couldn’t help but laugh too!

Valencia Afternoon

But after somehow surviving the challenge of the horrific bathroom, we found out that there was some kind of fireworks show that was going on at 2 somewhere around the main part of town, so we started to head in the direction that we thought it was in, and soon found out that we were going the right way because every other person that was in the city was headed there too! So we were almost pushed in the right direction, going with the flow of people towards the genie and the center of town. I think I now know just how a sardine feels packed into those little packages because that’s about how close we were with the people around us, waiting for the fireworks to start. We waited, and waited, tried to turn to talk to my friends that were behind me, but there was no movement that could be made without causing a domino effect of people all the way down the street, so I had to be content standing there in the sun packed into the street with thousands of people that I don’t know surrounding me, waiting to see the fireworks in the middle of the day, which seemed a little strange to me, but hey, it was still cool! We had been standing there for a while, waiting for them to start, when we finally decided that the heat of the sun bearing down on us and the body heat from the people we were sandwiched against was too much. So we decided to follow the small parade of people in our group that had formed and were making their way through the masses of people, so I grabbed the arm of the last girl in the line and began to make my way through the rest of the people that had gathered there. As we were making our way out, the fireworks started, and I got distracted and lost the arm of the girl in front of me, and there I stayed. I have found I am not talented in the ways of making my way through a large crowd of people who are standing right next to each other, so once I lost the arm, all hope for leaving the crowd early was lost! So I turned around to face where the fireworks were supposed to be, and I got to see the smoke that was coming from what used to be fireworks, and that was it, accompanied by very loud noises, which normally come with fireworks, claro. Once the festivities of that time were done, we tromped along with the other people until we reached the plaza area where there was more room to roam, and were able to take a breath of fresh air and with for the other people in our group to come. We waited for a bit, and finally a couple more people came, and we decided that a smaller group was better, and made our way out into the middle of the plaza to decide where the market was. The map was not very helpful, seeing as a lot of the streets didn’t really have names on them, and we couldn’t find the plaza del marcado. So we were going to ask someone like we normally do, you know, the people who look like they are natives, but when you are at something that millions of people go to, how are you supposed to know who is a local and who is not? So rather than take time trying to distinguish who knew where to go and who was just wandering and looking like they had a purpose, someone got the idea to ask a police officer! We then were able to kinda find out where to go! We walked down the main street for a while, marveling at the different fallas, passing other tourists. I felt right at home! Haha! I even got offered some cerveza for only 1 Euro, and almost convinced the guys to give it to me for free! What I would have done with it had I gotten it for free, I don’t know. Maybe left it on the curb for a surprise to a passerby or something, but it would have been funny to get it! We kept wandering for a while in the direction that we thought that the market was, and finally found it tucked back off the main street a ways. There were shops on the side of the street selling random things like t-shirts or knitted tops for girls (which would not have covered very much, they were not very well knitted so they had somewhat large holes in them. Maybe that’s the point… but I am just not sure). Apparently the indoor market that they have here is one of the biggest ones in the world, but as we wandered to find the entrance to it, we found that it was closed. Sad day! But I believe that it’s a huge market, the building was pretty monstrous itself!!! But with that loss, we just kept wandering around the market and the city, seeing what there is to see!

Morning of Valencia

That morning was one of the earliest mornings of the whole trip! Someone decided that it would be a good idea to leave at 7 o’clock in the morning, so that’s what we did! But for me that meant a 6 o’clock wake up, or more like a 6 o’clock drag myself out of bed and try to get ready as quietly as possible so that I won’t wake the family up, all while trying, against all of my better judgment, not to crawl back into bed. But we were ready to go at 6:45 leaving once again a little early to get those prime spots on the bus. We snagged them just in time, and I used a technique called “have someone come over and talk to you that is already sitting in another seat technique” so that by the time everyone else is one the bus and has found their seats, and we are getting ready to leave, the person I was talking to will go and sit back in their seat, and I have the whole row to myself to sleep! Alright, so that’s not really what I planned, but that’s how it happened, and it was AMAZING!!! It’s too bad that I am not really able to sleep on busses really well, because conditions were perfect for sleeping! I even brought my little neck pillow thing and my BYU blanket for comforts sake. But alas, I did not sleep the whole way, but I was able to relax somewhat comfortably sprawled out on 2 bus seats listening to my iPod curled up in my blanket, and resting on my neck pillow. Ya, it sounds nice, but it wasn’t really as nice as it sounds. I lost feeling in my leg a couple of times and had to readjust positions and then when we went over bumps my head would smack on the window. Haha! Oh man I love busses!We finally got there around 11:30 in the morning and the bus pulled over to the side of the Plaza de España and we waited for one of the padres of a couple of the girls in our group to show up. So while waiting the logical thing to do was try and make a dent in our rations for the day, so we ate the sandwiches and bananas that originally wouldn’t fit in the backpack, and patiently waited for Juan to show up. Juan is native to Valencia, but lives in Alcalá right now. He was there visiting for Semana Santa because its so famous there, and he agreed to come and show us around for a bit! So when he got there, we all piled out of the bus and into the warm air of Valencia. I always feel weird when the whole group of us is walking around a place because I just feel like we are a bunch of ducklings following their mother. So that’s how it was again as we walked through the city for the first time. We started out just walking from Falla to falla. Fallas are the almost statute like things that each neighborhood makes every year for the festival. They have a competition between all of them. There are lots of different categories, at least as far as I could tell, and each big falla that we went to had several little banners hanging in front of them saying what place that had gotten in the different areas. There were big ones that we just as tall if not taller than the buildings around us, and little ones that were about the size of a small car, and medium sized ones that were about in between the other 2 sizes (hence they are the middle sized ones, haha) , and just about every corner that you turned, you saw another one! We started being able to tell where we were based on what falla we had just seen. At the center of the city was one that looked like the Genie from Aladin, so if we wanted to get there, we would just ask people where the genie was, and then they would tell us how to get there. So we wandered through the city for a while, following Juan from falla to falla, through the streets and between people, and finally ended at the train station. I still wonder why he took us there, I mean, its cool but it was not like we had never been to a train station before. Maybe it was for the girls who needed to use the restrooms, which was all of us. So the 29 girls who were on the trip all paraded over to the bathroom, making the like about 3 times longer than it was before. And I don’t know what was worse, waiting in line, or actually making it into the bathroom itself! This was the worst smelling bathroom that I have ever entered in my life!!! I think I would almost rather hold it then ever enter that bathroom ever again!!! It was so bad that I had a headache when I left, and I was not the only one with these symptoms! There were like 4 other girls who left there with headaches too! It was that bad!

Bike Riding!!!

A few weeks ago we found a place that rented bikes for free, that you can take and ride around the city. So the next day we decided that’s what we wanted to do. So at 11 o’clock the next morning, me Paige and Clara were there along with 3 other girls in the program were at the little square in the middle of the city, ready to rent bikes! We had to fill out forms that said that we were going to be good to the bikes and such and give our information so that if we took off with the bikes they could track us down or something. I mean, I was planning on riding all the way to Italy with it, but after that there is no way I would ever make it! They would catch me way to quickly! Dang it! But once we signed our lives away, we jumped on these little green bikes with baskets on the front and little bells on the bikes that you could ring as you were going down the street to warn people that you would otherwise plow over that you are coming. At first it was a bit shaky, seeing as I have not ridden a bike in a few years I felt like a little kid having to learn all over again! The handle bars were shaking when I was riding, which kept me from going in any sort of a straight line for a good 5 minutes, but hey, its like… well ya know… riding a bike! So I finally remember what to do and was able to do alright after that. It’s a good thing that Clara came with us, too! She took us to this part of the city that is up by where we are living that none of us have ever been to before! There were not as many people and the sidewalks were nice and big, not like the ones that are in the middle of the city that can fit about 1 ½ people on them, which makes walking when someone is coming from the opposite direction kinda awkward. But you manage. So we rode around for a bit, went off roading (rebels, I know) till the path ended like 2 minutes later then came back to the pavement. On the way home there was this one incident where I was about 4th in line, and we were turning out of this park, there was sand on the ground, and as I was turning I was heading straight for a pole! So, with my life flashing before my eyes, there was nothing I could do but scream and drop the bike and myself right in front of the pole, which then caused a chain reaction with Tina, the girl who was right behind me, and she fell too. Luckily Laura was a bit behind and didn’t get involved in the fiasco, but I was pretty embarrassed about it, and we had a good laugh when we found out that Tina was alright. A few hours later we took the bikes back to the place, had a hard time walking home because we were already so sore, then spent the rest of the day relaxing and watching a movie with Clara.

Leon Part 3

From there we thought that a park that we found on the map would be cool, so we set out In the direction that we thought it was, and after wandering around for a while we ran into some missionaries! It was kind of a shock for them I think, because when we saw them we all started yelling “ELDERS!!!” and walking towards them. I’m pretty sure that’s not something that happens to them every day. So we walked up to them ,and one of the was a native to Spain and so he only spoke Spanish which was fine, we are on a Spanish study abroad. But the other one was from Cali or something like that, so he thought he would talk to us in English, but that just made things even more awkward than the situation already was! So he was trying to speak to us in English, while the other one was speaking Spanish, and we were all just trying to find out how to get to the park, and really it was just one big mess! In the end we got about half Spanish, half English directions on how to get to this park and set out just about confused as we were before, but eventually we found it! It wasn’t amazing, not like some that I have seen in Alcazars and such, but we did see a couple getting a little too friendly and we had bets going on whether it was 2 girls, or a guy with long hair and a girl. The guy with the long hair and a girl won, and then we walked away and found one of the coolest jungle gyms that I have ever seen in my life! It was quite large and had 3 basic round sections to it, 2 on the bottom and 1 on the top, and then inside the whole thing were just a bunch of ropes that you could climb on and through and such. It was like a Spiderman thing! That took up a good half an hour of our time, just playing around on the jungle gym, and when we finally decided to share with the little kids, we got off and made plans to go to the river.
We had to ask someone how to get there, which turned out a lot better than the missionary experience did, and we found our way to the river! We couldn’t actually go down to it, we were a little too far up, and there was a concrete barrier. So we walked to the bridge, took some pictures with the concrete lions that were posing on the bridge, the only downside to that was that the one that Erika chose to take pictures with was missing the mouth part, which to me is the part that kinda makes the lion, ya know, but that’s alright.
Just up the street we found a hotel that our Spanish teacher told us was one of the most amazing hotels in Spain in her opinion. When we got there the outside was really gorgeous, so it was believable! It looked a lot like a palace, with a big, concrete courtyard in the front, with random little fountain that came right out of the ground and ran over one of the concrete squares like a spring out of the ground. And I am sure that the inside would have been just as cool, if we could have gone in! We walked in and there was a little foyer area, then big glass doors with a sign posted saying “this area is for paying customers only”. Apparently most of us missed the sign, because we just walked right through those big glass doors and in to the part where the check in desk was. I think just about everything stopped when we walked in, and we got some pretty weird stares which stopped us in our tracks and finally someone noticed yet another sign that they had posted after the doors saying the same thing, and we turned around and walked right back out. Talk about awkward! So we decided to walk down to the little church that was connected to the hotel that was supposed to have a museum in it too. And it did, the catch was, you had to walk down this long awkward hall way right next to the place where people are praying, and the only thing that separates you from them are columns, spaced too far apart for comfort. So as you are walking your footsteps are echoing, and you can see people stopping their prayers to look up and see what that sound is and then throwing out mean looks as they go back to praying. We even had to leave our hall way area and enter the actual praying area to get to the door that would then lead to the museum. I think we stayed a whole 5 minutes in the museum, 2 of the 5 being the time we spent talking to the lady who gave us our tickets and told us that the better part of the museum was on the other end of town. Good trick! So then we had to walk back through the same hallway with the same loud echoing footsteps and odd looks from people and we practically ran out the door at the end so that we could escape everything! It was intense!
After that we had to go and meet someone at the market again, and at 12 in the after noon is when that place really comes to life! We almost had to do the whole primary, lets all hold hand and walk in a line so that nobody gets lost thing, so that seriously no one would get lost! It was a stroke of luck that we saw John-Charles buying some fruit, otherwise there would have been no way that we would have found him! After everyone had bought what they wanted, and we followed a nice old man to a bread shop, it was time to head back to the bus. So we would our way through the streets and found the place where the bus was supposed to be to pick us up, but there was no bus to be seen! Well… that’s a lie. There were busses to be seen , but they were not our bus! There was a group of girls sitting on the grass next to the parking lot that were from our group, se we walked up to them to see what was going on, and apparently Prof. Shumway had taken the bus to go and pick up his family at the hotel and would be right back. That “right back” turned into about 45 minutes, so we had the entire group there including the ones that are normally late, sleeping on the grass and waiting for our professor and our bus to come back and get us. When it finally did we all climbed in and got settled down for another long drive home!
We did stop at a place called Coco castle on the way home, which was pretty cool. Its one of the oldest castles that we have seen, dating back to the 1300’s or 1400’s. We only had half an hour there, 10 minutes of it trying to find a place to use the bathroom, so we ran around on the inside for a while, seeing what there is to see, then got back on the bus for the last leg of the trip! We made it home around 10 or so that night, just in time for dinner! Haha! It was a good trip!

Leon Part 2

The next morning was a lot like all the other mornings on the trip, wake up early, get ready, go to breakfast, eat a croissant and some hot chocolate then pack up. We were all out of the hotel by about 9:15 or so, with bags and everything, ready to go to the Cathedral in León. The bus took us there, I am not really sure why, and dropped us off in a parking lot a little ways away so it was just a short walk to get there. Supposedly this is one of the prettiest Cathedrals in Spain for some people. We got there and went to what we thought was the front, but the gates were locked so we figured we got opening time wrong and just stood around taking pictures for a while, starting at each other and what not. Then I finally decided to venture out of our newly found comfort zone and walk around to the other side of the church, that turned out to be the REAL entrance, and luckily people decided to follow me, so I just walked in, and slowly but surely, so did everyone else! It was a really pretty cathedral! Its not one of the biggest ones that I have ever seen, but the thing that set it apart from the others is the other cathedrals that we visit is the stained glass windows! All of the windows in this place were GORGEOUS! You couldn’t see it from the outside, but the colors on the inside really made the whole interior of the cathedral come to life! But other than the windows and colors, there was not really much to see. The one room that was available for people to go into had a sign posted next to it saying that you could only enter if you were going to pray. I considered going in and just saying my own prayer, obviously not to the Virgin Mary, but so that I could see the room. But then I figured that’s not really what they meant, and they were probably trying to keep people like me OUT by posting the sign, so I just looked longingly through the glass door for a minute then moved on. There were no good acoustics in this cathedral, seeing as it was one big open space we would have had to hum really loud to get any kind of cool echo, and yes we tested it.
After that we had free time to walk around the city and get a feel of this area of Spain till we were leaving, once again, at 2. So we headed out to go and see a museum that ended up being closed for renovations, so that left us will little choice but to turn around (it was at the end of the street, haha) and head towards the market. This is what you would really picture a market in Spain being. There were a bunch of tents all over the place with people selling fruit and veggies and flowers and meat and anything that your heart desired! There was even a little stand, outside in the plaza area, where they were selling cheese! We were there for a little bit, standing in the middle of the market, and apparently we were standing there by a tent that had a boy that was about our age selling strawberries, and he thought that we kept looking at him, when we were really looking at the amazing strawberries, or the people that were behind him. Well… at least I was. So there I was trying to take cool pictures of the lamp post in front of the building with a big clock on it and make it look all cool, when this boy comes around, out of his tent, to have us take a picture of him with Kate! It was hilarious to see him come strutting out of his tent and put his arm right around her and smile for the picture, you just know that he’s thinking “ya… I totally have these American girls checking me out! That’s right!” haha. We laughed about that for a while!!!