letters home from Spain

England, Ireland, Scotland...

2007-05-07T03:05:00.000-07:00

Alright, here we go with the long awaited blog post on my trip to London/Dublin/St. Andrews. I went with my friend from JBU Micah Williams. First stop: London.
We went to a lot of free museums, the first of which was the British museum. We got a real kick out of this museum. Basically it's stuff that Britain has jacked from other countries over the past couple thousand years. They have different rooms full of stuff from each country. It's like, 'hey look what we stole from Egypt, now look what we stole from Greece, now look what we stol from Italy...'
Ya, I digressed to third grade...
Micah, the next great philosopher, with a book in his hand as always...it just happens to be that the book he's holding is our tourists guidebook to western europe. Not quite philosophy but close for Micah.
Me and Alexander the Great, just chillin. I think when he was my age he owned like half the known world, and I...well I don't even own a car anymore, or an ipod anymore, or a phone anymore since I lost my second phone in Cambridge...
I have a picture just like this from about 7 years ago, and yes I even took a picture with me leaning over as if I was gonna dunk my head in the fountain again:) But Micah has that picture and I haven't gotten it from him yet.
Micah and I outside Buckingham palace.
Highlight number 1 of the trip: WICKED! We saw Wicked that Saturday night, and it was incredible, absolutely incredible.
Micah and I in our seats, and yes that is the back wall of the whole theater. For the second act we moved down about 15 rows, thanks to a gay friend I met the night before who worked as an usher in the theater.
Westminster abbey at night. Pretty darn beautiful. We went to an evensong and heard the London chamber singers sing. They were great and it was so cool to be listening to great music in Westminster.
Micah, in sepia, staring up at Big Ben=hot pic
Micah in the attic of the guys' house we stayed at. micah and I both slept in this tiny attic. The 3 London guys we stayed with were hilariously awesome. They were some friends of friends of Micah's sister. So it worked out well. They were great though. They made us a typical English roast that was absolutely delicious and huge.
These two things were the key to my surviving London. Micah and I kept a pretty crazy pace to be able to make it around the city. So my coke and my map basically saved me.
Micah and I on Tower Bridge. By the way, I ran frantically underneat London Bridge only to realize I had been lied to all my life...
So, since they are silly English pig dogs and drive on the left side of the road, they have to tell you on the street which way to look so you don't get creamed by a car. The best part of this picture is just to the right of the picture is an old guy on a moto stopped at the light. So Micah was staring right at him, and he was laughing as we walked by him after taking the picture.
Highlight #2 Les Miserables. We sat in the 10th row, the 10th freaking row. It was beautiful. The show was incredible. Jean Valjean and Javert were absolutely amazing. Sadly we got an understudy Marius who was pretty clearly an understudy, but the show was still awesome.
Me inside the theater. Just kickin it.

Now onto DUBLIN IRELAND!
Ireland was the place I wanted to go to the most in the world that I still hadn't visited.
Micah, Tyler (another guy from our program who we met in Dublin) and Stephen, a random dude we met on the airplane who was cool.
Christ Church
A picture of myself in Christ church. We went in and heard an evensong performed by a small group of 8. It was pretty sweet.
Dublin on a drizzly, dreary day.
Ahhh, a beautiful day to take a beautiful hike, and see a beautiful castle!
Me holding up the castle gate...
Micah and I enjoying some Magnum bars at 4am after dancing in some Dublin clubs for a couple hours. Note to all: Irish people suck at dancing. No honestly, they're awful. If you go to Dublin go to a nightclub and get a good laugh. They play top 40 songs, everything from Nelly Furtado to YMCA to the Killers. And the drunk Dubliners just jumped around.
So we took a day and went to Wicklow outside of Dublin on the coast. It was beautiful. This sign is just silly, it might as well say, "hey come check this out," so we did
We hiked up to a lighthouse
Me in a field on the coast. And that's it for Ireland. Micah and I at this point were running out of room on our cameras and we still had 3 days left, so we stopped taking so many pics.

And now to St. ANDREWS SCOTLAND.
Naturally we stayed with my sister and her husband, which was an absolute blast. They showed us the town, took us on a hike in a nearby town, and introduced us to some really cool friends who gave me the Office season 3! Woohoo! I watched 13 episodes the day I got back:)

So we went to a beautiful castle and hiked around. It was so gorgeous and green it was great! (I'm going for as much alliteration as possible in this post by the way).
Craig, castle, Scottish countryside, cool.

DnA hiking the trail ahead of us.
Well we were in Scotland, almost in the highlands...so why not?
And that's the end of Scotland.
Worst part of the trip: losing my phone in Cambridge
best part of the trip: 2 broadway musicals
Biggest surprise...hahaha this is a good story. After travelling for 10 days, we got back into the Madrid airport, and finally made our way to the bus station. When we got there we were gonna buy our overnight bus tickets to get back to Sevilla. But upon asking for our tickets we found out that both the midnight and 1am buses were full and we couldn't get tickets. So it was either sleep on the street, or pay a little more to travel all night on a bus to some town an hour away from Sevilla, and then take another bus to get to Sevilla when we got there. So that was our solution. We slept horribly on the bus, but made it back safe and sound.

And there ends our trip. Incredibly beautiful, incredibly fun. Micah and I had a great time and had some good bonding. I saw some incredible places. Life is good. Now just 11 days til I'm home!!
oh and to top it off, this past weekend I went to Portugal again just for the weekend to sit on the beach:)

Lagos and Granada

2007-04-19T07:45:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, so 7 of us rented a car and headed to Lagos for the weekend. I hadn't had enough of Portugal's beaches so I went back for more. This is us crammed in our little car. There really was no space for luggage, but we made due. And just to say it now before I get the comments, no I didn't wear a shirt on this trip...ever.
Best story of the trip: On our way to Portugal we needed to get gas. This is what our car said when we finally found a gas station, that's right, 2 km until we run out of gas. At this point in time we were way hidden back in the countryside, cause we got so lost trying to find a gas station. We were almost in deep, deep trouble. We rolled up to the gas station in this tiny town shouting in triumph that we hadn't run out of gas, which honestly was a miracle. Then when we got out, the cap had been screwed on wrong and wouldn't come off! We basically tried for 10 minutes to get it off with no success. Then while we were deciding whether or not to just break it off, one of our guys tried again and just pushed and pulled superhard, and pulled it off. So we finally got some gas and made it out of there.
This is the beach in Lagos. It was incredibly beautiful
The group of the 7 of us. We had a great little appartment with 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms, and a nice kitchen. So we made our own meals and just had a great time. Good work Blake on centering your beer in the middle of the picture...
Blake and I doing dishes after the meal. Pretty standard.
This is one of the huge rocks that jutted out into the ocean. Tyler and I climbed it, and it really hurt the feet.
Closeup of us on top of the beast.
We had to swim out into the ocean and climb up part of the back side of this rock, then try to edge our way around the outside of the rock, which was basically razor sharp, just so we could jump from this high and not land on huge rocks.
This is our little beach, and us playing volleyball, we did a lot of that.
Coolest part of the trip: In that big rock on the right there is a little cave. We swam to it and walked through it and it led us to another beach. Then we swam out and through another cave, and another and it led us right out into the ocean amidst these huge rocks and arches and stuff. It was incredible! And of course to end the trip we had a bonfire on the beach. I had even found and bought some marshmallows in Sevilla and took them with me so we could have smores. Good times. Beautiful beaches. Fun people.

GRANADA
So Carine, Hayley, Micah and myself (yes that's an all JBU trip) decided Monday morning that we should skip a day of school this week and go to Granada to see the Al Hambra cause we didn't want to have to spend one of our last two weekends after we get back from our Feria break travelling to Granada. So we planned on skipping Wednesday. Then during our 1st break in classes we found out that our school was taking a daytrip to the ruins of Italica on Wednesday. Well we weren't gonna miss a daytrip, so we decided, hey let's just leave today. So we booked a hostal for Monday night, hopped a train at 4 that afternoon, and went to Granada. We just chilled that night and saw a few sights, even enjoyed some pizza hut pizza. Then the next morning we woke up and went to the Al Hambra. We had heard that you had to wait awhile, so as we approached we saw this...
I started to think to myself, "Aw that's not that...
..aww dang." and the line wrapped around that back wall too... But after an hour and a half we got in.
Micah showing his excitement for his coffee and my pepsi while we were waiting in line. We played presidents while standing and moving in line to pass the time:)
The gardens in the Al Hambra are incredible. So we took a bunch of pictures of flowers:)
Well here we are. This is the ole, set the camera on a ledge with the timer and hope it gets us all in the picture. Worked pretty well.
Someone didn't know how to use the flash on my camera...anyway, me in one of the courtyards.
micah and I being studs
The four happy JBUers just chilling on a bench. Really we're just happy to not be in school.
Most annoying thing: The famous Patio de los leones (patio of the lions) didn't have any leones...Yay they took them out to restore them. That was sad. Overall it was awesome though. It was good to see stuff that we had studied for weeks in our Spanish art class.
This is the Al Hambra from a lookout point accross the city. Those are the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

Well those were my two trips this past week. Tomorrow I leave for London/Dublin/St. Andrews! I'm super excited. I'll be in London 4-5 days, possibly hit up Cambridge for a day, definitely planning on seeing Les Mis and maybe another show. Dublin should be awesome. And it'll be a blast to stay with DnA and see their place in Scotland and finally get to see their world. Well that's it. Time to go deal with a bunch of screaming children in a convent:)

Porch-you-gull

2007-04-09T02:56:00.000-07:00

Wow! what a trip! This past week was Semana Santa (holy week) here in SEvilla. Which basically means huge religious parades and processions of monks and brothers who are dressed up in robes with hats that seriously look just like the KKK. Kinda scary, but it's what they all wear. So we had the week off school. I went with four friends to a beach on the coast in Albufeira Portugal. It was incredible. Here's our beach
Adam Van Gelder...cool name, I'm jealous...and myself chilling on the beach. We got pretty darn tan.
Perhaps my favorite picture of all time. I was just goofing around and took this. It turned out really cool.
Mike and Adam trying to juggle a volleyball. We juggled a lot, and peppered a lot. It was pretty darn sweet. The sand was just incredibly fine. It was so nice.
Action shot! Sometime while we were peppering. So the ocean was freezing, so I never actually got in it more than up to my knees. Every day it was about 75 degrees, with a little wind. If the wind was blowing a bit it was nice. Without the wind it was a bit toasty. It was the perfect weather for a week on the beach. We were at the beach literally at least 4 hours a day for 5 straight days.
We stayed in this great little 3 star hotel. We put 5 people in a 4 person room, and it cost us a whole 8.66 euros per night. Incredibly cheap. Our room had a little kitchenette, so we bought all of our own food at the grocery store and cooked. It was super cheap and a lot of fun. You can see the worst ketchup of all time on the table. We bought it at some little store where all the food was labeled in greek...still can't figure that one out. That pot is a bot of potatoes that we fried in a pan with some oil. They were good.
This is me cooking French toast. The kitchen area was actually really dark. There wasn't a light in that part of the room. The only light was that little stove light. So I wore my little headlight so I could see when the french toast was done. It tasted incredible. We could've eaten that every day and been content, if we hadn't run out of syrup on our 3rd day. It was so good I would've just eaten the spatula.
Adam, Carine, and Hayley chilling in our kitchen area. Probably cooking rice or something. We had rice one meal. Hayley had this great idea to cook the whole bag. Holy cow that was a ton of rice. After Adam and I ate 3 helpings each, and the others each ate a good ammount, there was still half the pot left. Adam tried to snack on it throughout the night but couldn't make a dent. So we left it on the counter for the next few days and occasionally picked at it. Eventually we gave in and threw it away.
Ya we decided to go take modelling pictures on this huge rock. So this is Adam and I being hot.
The ole wink...

There were these really cool rocks that jutted out into the ocean. So Adam and I climbed up them and hung out for a little while. So this is me striking the Stuck pose. Good times...
And on the last night, to top the week off, we had a bonfire on the beach. Had a hilariously great conversation complete with the classic questions about if you were stranded on a desert island what would take, and if you could have one super power what would it be. We tried to roast some little hot dogs, but their hot dogs here suck and theyre tiny, so it didn't work well. We sat around and talked for 4 hours, til the fire died, then headed back to the hotel for some sleep before we headed out.

Funniest story of the trip: One night we were playing the card game presidents until about 3. Well then we had the idea, 'hey let's just stay up all night and watch the sunrise.' So I looked it up online and it said 'sunrise 7:15am.' We still thought it was a good idea. So we played presidents for another 4 hours, straight, not as good of an idea. So come 7am we strolled down to the beach to see the sun rise. Well if you noticed in the above pictures, the beach is kinda walled in by really tall rocks all the way down the coast. And our beach didn't face east, it faced south. So the sun rose, and it was probably beautiful, we just couldn't see a thing cause there were huge cliffs between us and the eastern horizon. We went to bed a bit cranky at 8am.

Frustration of the trip: My credit card company placed a hold on my card cause my parents had called on my behalf trying to set up a PIN number so I can take money out of an ATM here. Well the credit card company thought it sounded fishy. So they thought a third party had my card and put a hold on my account. Even after I got on my online banking and sent them messages they refused to pull the hold off my account, so I had ZERO euros for the trip. Thankfully Carine loaned me money, and a lot of it. It was frustrating.

Overall it was incredible. We relaxed on the beach the whole week, got some great tans, ate some good food, and played a lot of cards. 6 nights at a hotel, and meals for 7 days, + bus tickets and little souvenirs, all totalled 110 euros. Absolutely fantastic. Now I just have to survive 11 days, before I head to London, Dublin, and St Andrews for 10 days!

Good Friday

2007-04-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

In honor of Good Friday, I'm going to post a poem. Enjoy, and remember the pain, suffering and love that this day represents.
(i actually wrote this as a concrete poem in the form of a cross, but after spending over two hours today trying to put it on here in the form of a cross, I gave up. So use your imagination for now:)

The grain of the wood grinds against his bones
He winces in pain as another splinter embeds itself
in his already torn and ragged flesh.
He sways, tilting his head upward
bringing into his blurry, stinging vision the outline of a hill.
“This will be impossible” muttered the man on the other side of the beam.
But he was a man of impossibility.
He staggered forward, his footsteps quick and panicked
as he tried to steady himself.
He sucked in deeply and heaved forward,
placing one foot squarely in front of him.
Another two steps left him gasping for breath.
He swayed back and forth in place
as he tried to wipe the blood and sweat from his eyes,
succeeding only in wiping some sweat away
but replenishing the streaks of deep, red blood around his eyes and in his eyebrows.
He tried to rehoist the beam of wood on his back
with the help of the man on the other side.
It landed with a soft thud between his shoulder and neck
drawing forth gasps of breath.
With determination he started to lift his foot again
Unable to take another step up the hill,
He stammered, shifted off balance
then was dragged backward by the unbearable weight of the cross.
The man on the other side of the beam called to a few nearby for help.
“This is impossible” the man said to two men who helped them to their feet.
But he stood, and started again with determination
for he was a man of impossibility.
He had known it would come.
He had come for this reason.
The time had come.
He was bearing the cross.
He was bearing the sins of the world.

Matalascanas

2007-03-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

Right, so on Saturday we decided, hey, lets go to the beach on Sunday. So we bought tickets and went to the beach, which is rather evident by the color of my skin. We had a good time though.

So there was a cold wind at the beach and we were cold most of the time. So we dug huge holes in the sand so we could lay out without being in the wind:) Best idea ever. So here's Carine and Blake in one of our holes.
Us playing soccer on the beach. Life is good.
This was a cute little boy who was running after his family. So I took a couple pictures of him and the beautiful ocean behind him.
Here's Micah and I decorating our aforementioned hole. So we're guys. So there was naturally a competition of whose hole was coolest. Well we built the biggest and best, then went to buy lunch and when we got back, we had been surpassed. Well we didn't want to dig anymore, so we went for asthetic beauty. We tried to smooth all the walls and floor etc. Then we went to that grass in the top of the picture and picked a bunch of flowers and lined our hole with little yellow flowers. Then we found these really nice cool big purple flowers, so we picked two of those, one to go at each of our heads. We also had a little bottle shaped hole in the sand for our two-liter of coke to protect it from the sun and keep it cool. Yeah, we're pimps...
A view of the ocean from inside one of our holes.
So that was our day trip to the beach. It was great, we had a good time. Life is good. I leave in two days for Portugal. We are going to Albufeira to chill for an entire week! So you will be seeing plenty more beach and ocean pictures in the next week. I love being so near so many beautiful beaches. Hope you all are enjoying Kansas and Arkansas:) (yaya Thomas I know you get to see it every day, but I'm in Europe, so I win. :)

Tangier Morocco

2007-03-21T03:58:00.000-07:00

Alrighty, here we go. This is our trip to Morocco. 10 of us went, 5 guys, 5 girls. We went through a travel agency so we got our ferry ride and 2 nights in a 4 star hotel for only 65 euros, which is really incredible. This is part of the group in the ferry port waiting to get on the boat. We were supposed to leave at 5:30, but in true Spanish fashion we didn't even board til 6:15. Awesome...
Yeah, we saw a pretty sweet sunset on the ferry on the way over.
So the first night we decided to go for a little stroll on the beach, that was 100 yards from the front door of our hotel. So our hotel faced the ocean, and all we had to do was walk out the front door to get to the beach. It was awesome.
Carine and I in front of some big palace in Tangier. We had this awesomely hilarious 75 year old Moroccan tour guide. He spoke some 7 or 8 languages. His english was pretty entertaining. The whole time he'd be like, "no, we don't do shopping now, we shop later. We ride camels now. You want to ride camels? yeah we ride camels now..." He was great. Oh and he was really short, darm skinned of course, carried a cane and shuffled his feet when he walked. I kid you not, he totally reminded me of Yoda. I even took a video of him walking so I can show you when I get back to the states just how much this guy looked and moved like Yoda.
Ya I rode a camel. Good times. I never rode one in Israel cause it woulda cost a whole dollar and goodness knows that was too expensive for some ;) So I payed the euro here and rode the camel in a circle. Pretty weird/cool.
Yeah, i liked the ride so much I moved in on him. I went 90 but he didn't come the 10. Thankfully he didn't spit in my face either.
This is our whole group at some cool lookout point in Tangier.
So we stayed at a really nice hotel. We decided to spend an hour and half and relax from our tough lives of shopping in the Arab markets and hanging out. So we got some sun.
That night we had dinner in the hotel. This is our whole group -Cora who was taking the picture. During dinner they had some Moroccan traditional entertainment that was pretty cool. The meal was pretty average. But I liked it more than I thought I would.
Yeah that dude danced around and spun that try of lit candles on his head, it was incredible.
These dudes danced around, did some really athletic stuff while playing these instruments.
The next day we went to this small fishing village called Asilah. As you can tell it was right on the coast. I'm gonna be spoiled by all the beaches I visit:) I'm gonna get back to Kansas and I won't know what happened.
Yeah, a tribute to my brother Jon Stuck. After Asilah we went right back to the hotel to check out, catch the ferry and head back to Spain. Spain has never seemed so great. We had a great time though. I bought some cool Moroccan stuff for cheap in the Arab market. We all got back safe and noone got sick. We had a great time and never felt threatened. Although apparently Tangier is a marijuana haven, cause I got offered 'hash' about 40 times in 2 days, no exaggeration. It was ridiculous. But the first guy to ask was pretty funny. In broken English he says, "I got good stash, you want hash?" I was pretty taken aback by the creative rhyme and all, but I still said no:) Well I hope you enjoyed the pics. Some day I'll put some pics up of the school. But not yet...not yet. (yup subtle Gladiator reference...)

Family and Malaga

2007-03-15T04:02:00.000-07:00

So DnA and Dad came to Sevilla this past week. It was freaking awesome. So here are some pics of our times together. This is in the Alcazar Gardens. It was beautiful.
Ya so there were these cute ducks, so I started feeding them and one finally ate out of my hands. They were pretty fun. I think I must be eating one of my cookies right here, they were good.
Awwwwwww....DnA (that's my sister and brother in law if you didn't know that) at the gardens.
Dad and Adriel at the top of the Giralda, the tower at the cathedral in Sevilla. I forgot to take my camera off of sepia:)
Me at the cathedral, wearing my pretty sweet VanNistelrooy jersey from when he played on Manchester United.
At my old senora's house. That's my old senora with her back to me. This is the flat that the fam stayed at.
So after DnA left Saturday morning, dad and I decided, what the heck? let's go to Malaga! it's on the costa del sol in Spain so let's go hang out on the beach. So we went to Malaga and stayed with Ruth and Boaz, two missionaries from our church in Topeka. And this is a pretty tight picture.
This is me with the bull fighting stadium in the background, and the beach of course.
Dad with Ruth and Boaz. They were so wonderful. They had no clue we were coming, and we had no way to warn them. So when we got to Malaga we just found a phonebook and called them up and said, hey...we're in Malaga, can we stay the night? And they said yes and took us to this incredible restaurant and let us sleep in their house and took us to their church the next day. I must insert a story here. After church we went to eat at the house of another family from their church. They also work in the mission with Ruth and Boaz, who by the way are Moroccan, so their main language is Arabic. Anyway the people with whom we ate were from bethlehem, so they spoke Arabic too. I was the only person at the table who was bilingual. Normally you'd say, hey that's impressive or cool. But in this case it was because I was the only person who only knew 2 languages! The parents and kids all spoke arabic, english, and spanish. The grandma also spoke German. Ruth and Boaz speak classic Arabic, moroccan arabic, english, spanish, and french. And dad of course knows hebrew and greek as well as english. Incredible. And the meal? We ate rabbit. A ridiculously huge rabbit from Germany. And the other parts of the meal were middle eastern random foods. It was the most culture I will ever experience at a meal...ever.
And this is the beach dad and I hung out on for a couple hours before we headed back to Sevilla. Good times, good times. It was of course hard to say goodbye (to yesterday...) to the family, but it was so fun to see them. I'm excited to be heading up to Scotland to see DnA in a month so that will be superfun.
Many of you have asked what I am going to do about march madness. Yes of course I've already filled out brackets online. I will be using espn.com's instant updater whenever I can. I've already been reading tons of articles etc, getting ready for the festivities. I hear this is a restaurant here run by an American called Tex-Mex, where many people watched the superbowl. It is possible that they are going to show some games there, so hopefully I'll get to catch a couple, even if they are ridiculously late.
I was also thinking, far be it from me to stop anyone from sending me a package just because I didn't give them my address...so in case you feel the urge to send me gummy bears or something, here's my address.

Craig Congdon
Paseo de Cristina 1-3
Entreplanta A-B
Sevilla Spain 41001

And to finish off I'll give you the quick version of a tale of immeasurable sadness, that you will all undoubtedly laugh at. Saturday morning when I was going to say gbye to DnA at their place I wore a hoodie and put my phone in the pocket. Upon arriving I had to pee, really bad. So I went to the bathroom and peed, and having finished peeing before I had the chance to flush the toilet, I just slightly moved my upper body causing my phone to fall straight into the very yellow liquid in the toilet. After a second of hesitation I plunged my hand into my own pee to recover my phone. I washed it off in the sink, then gave it a couple days to dry out, but all to no avail. It is broken, and it's gonna cost me about 35 euros, (around $50) to replace it. Oh and my ipod broke 2 weeks ago. So my electronics aren't doing so well over here. So if you have an ipod you want to sell for cheap, or if a friend wants to dump one to get a new one, let me know. That's all for now. Tune in soon for pictures of my school...I swear I'll put them up sometime. Oh and I'm going to Morocco tomorrow, so you'll get some pictures of camels this next week. Alright I'm done.

Holy Toledo!

2007-03-05T09:22:00.000-08:00

Alrighty, well this is Toledo. And these are the windmills from Don Quixote, really they are which is pretty darn cool. And that castle is cool too. There was a shephard with a huge flock of sheep at the bottom of the hill. Cool stuff
And this is me and Adam. We decided we're gonna take pictures like this whenever we find posts, so get used to them. This is also on top of the mountain at quixote's windmill.
This is the cathedral at Toledo. And this is a really cool picture off of a reflection off a door accross the street. Definitely Micah's idea but I copied it cause i thought it was really cool.
Inside the cathedral, it was pretty tight
This dude is making gold medallions for necklaces, by hand. It's really cool. He is pushing the 24 k gold strand on this steel that is set in wax so that it won't move. It was pretty darn amazing.
Ya, boys playing with swords, I totally could take him.
Now we introduce one of the greatest games of all time. The name: Oreo Madness. How to play: everyone in the group gets an oreo, you twist it in half, the half without cream you eat right away. Then on the count of 3 everyone licks the side with cream and sticks it to their forehead. From there you try to be the first to eat the oreo...without using your hands. You have to wiggle and wrinkle your face to get the oreo to slide down your face, when it gets to your mouth you have to grab it with your tongue before it falls. If it falls you relick and restick. First one to get it to his mouth wins. Adam on the right there is the one who introduced us to this brilliant game, he then dominated us all. Good times had by all.
Carine and I-post oreo madness
The five of us at a pizza restaurant. It was good.
Blake, Dan, Andrea, and Noah, just chilling at this really cool scenic overlook of the city of Toledo. We did this on our way out of town, it was beautiful. Well that's all for now. More to come soon. Including...pictures of my first haircut in spain! and pictures of the new house. And probably a lot of pics of Daniel, Adriel, Dad and I because they are all coming in over the next 2 days! WooHoo!

Sentimental birthday reflections

2007-02-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

So I turned 20 two days ago, and if I were at school Aaron Schaffer would've congratulated me "for escaping teen pregnancy!" Praise the Lord! Let's be honest the birthday day wasn't the best of days: I woke up feeling sick, had to go to classes, couldn't talk to my mom and bro who tried to call because the phones were messing up, and my internet went out right when i tried to Skype my girlfriend. Consider it all pure joy though right! Well there were a couple highlights to my bday: one of my friends here gave me a shoebox wrapped in newspaper with gummy candy and a postcard inside, and another friend wrote me a rather humorous birthday poem. My bday night we went out dancing and had a jolley old time as always, even after we got last for 45 minutes trying to get there. And my birthday present to myself was skipping classes on friday and sleeping all day cause i felt like crap when i woke up:) One of my friends wrote me a note encouraging me to take the day to really examine my life and give thanks for all the blessings etc, that God has given me over my 20 years of life. Well I thought that was a pretty good idea, so here are some birthday reflections.
One of the great parts of my bday was the massive amount of facebook wall posts and emails that I got. Granted some of them were a day or two late (ya you know who you are:) and I didn't really know 1/3 of the people on facebook who wished me a happy bday, but it was still very heartwarming to be 1000 miles away, but still feel like people cared about me on my bday. It was great to get messages from people who I knew in elementary school, or from people who i just met 4 weeks ago and have spent the last month with here in Spain. Of course the most meaningful notes were from those with whom i have shared my life. To those friends who I have known since diapers, those who i have grown up with, played soccer with, gone on trips with, sung with, acted with, and just hung out with, thank you for filling my life with joy. Thank you for molding and "sharpening" me into the man who I am today. Thank you for laughing with and at me. Thank you for calling me out when I needed it. To you I say thanks.
Then there are those who I often forget but have had a great impact on my life. I.E. my past teachers, or parents of my best friends. I got some great emails from a past chem teacher, some young man named ralphie, and a couple others. Thanks for all the direct, but also indirect impact you have had on my life. Who knows where I'd be without you all!
Well that's enough sentimentality for now. Back to Spain. This week I bought my plane tickets to go to London, Dublin and St Andrews at the end of April. Plans for this trip include seeing Les Mis and possibly Wicked or Phantom on broadway in London, going to some pubs and hopefully a soccer game in Ireland, and checking out the world famous old course in St Andrews and chilling with the sister and brother-in-law. I'm super excited about Dad, and DnA coming to Sevilla in 2 weeks. That will definitely be a party! I'm already trying to figure out what all we should do. It's a really tough job, trying to decide what to do and where to go when they will only be here for 4-7days. But it is going to be a blast.
My friend Adam and I have officially kicked off what we call "hobo Jueves" (Jueves means Thursday in Spanish but what kind of a name is hobo thursday? no ring to it...oh by the way you pronounce J like an H in Spanish.) Last Thursday we took sandwich stuff and some cookies and stuff around to people who live on the streets just to give them some food and try to talk to them a little while to show them God's love. This Thursday we went and found a lady who was sitting on the street, so we went and bought food and sat and ate with her. She was from Romania and had only lived here for 4 months so she didn't understand much spanish, but we still tried just to hang out with her. This week afterwards Adam and I went to a little cafe and had a little 3 hour theological debate. It was great. I totally miss having those great talks, and i'm sure you'll hear more about our topics of discussion in later posts as I try to think in writing about what we discuss. We have some very very different theological views but he is a great guy and we have a great time talking.
Life is good. Last night about 15 of us from the program ended up in the same salsa bar. Well we were all dancing and having a great time. We were there from about 12:30-3:30, and micah and I topped off the night with a couple cigars in the upstairs room. And as we stood there relaxing, we could only look at each other and say, "life is good." The weather here is either incredibly beautiful, or incredibly wet. It pretty much alternates every day. Today it was about 75 and sunny. Yesterday it rained half the day and was dark and cold (cold here being 50 degrees). It has pretty much been one of those two every day for the past two weeks. But today was beautiful, we definitely got a little view of what the next couple months will be like here, and it was beautiful.
Next week we are back to having a four day week. Next Friday we have a school trip to Toledo. We are going up there on Friday, spending the night in a 3 star hotel, and coming back Saturday night. Our school trips here rock. it's gonna be a good way to end February cause during March we have a bunch of 5 day weeks (which is really rare for study abroad programs) and we have a lot of tests and projects in March. And I will be going crazy cause I won't be able to see ANY March madness. Which means I will be on ESPN.com all day long hitting 'refresh, refresh' which will actually say 'recarga, recarga.'
Well this is a pretty darn long post, so I'll end it here. So from Spain, I say adieu....ya i went there...

update

2007-02-17T10:52:00.000-08:00

Hello western hemispherers...
so, i just feel like it's about time to post. Well I have switched houses. Our old senora threw out her back making our beds, so we had to move to a new place. Maybe I'll put pics up of the new place soon. Our new senora also has a son who is living with us. I'm sure many of you are thinking, oh cool a guy craig's age maybe who he can befriend and hang out with. "Erroneous, erroneous on both accounts!" 1) this guy is not my age, he's close to twice my age. He's definitely in his 30s and still living at home, which actually isn't abnormal in this culture. But it definitely seems ridiculous to me. So he is pretty weird too. He chills at home whenever he's not at work. He lives in his bathrobe and is super in to the gossip shows. When they come on the senora hollars at her son and he comes rushing in to watch the gossip shows. She then fills him in on the 42 seconds he missed. Our bathroom and shower doors are both that clear but that kind of hazy glass. So if creapy 30+ yr old still living at home in his bathrobe chooses to stand outside the bathroom door he'll have a pretty good view of whats goin on...awkward? ay!
So that's the new place. School is in full swing. For some reason, the profs here have this wonderful setup, where out of my 4 classes i have 2 tests on two back to back days. So on Monday and Tuesday I have a test in all 4 of my classes. They also decide to assign us compositions and presentations on the days right before our tests. So suddenly I feel like I'm here to learn and go to school or something. Weird.
I'm still deciding what to do with my first week long break, ya we have a week-long break at the beginning of April, then a 10 day break two weeks later. Right now Micah and I are looking at London/Dublin/St Andrews over feria. in fact we are working on buying our tickets now, and if we had enough money in our bank accounts we would buy them now.
Little bit of spanish culture 101 for ya. Meal times here are wack. Breakfast for us is at 8 before we go to classes at 9. Lunch isn't til 2:30! then you siesta, and all stores etc shut down from 3-5 ish. Then you chill til dinner....somewhere between 9 and 10:30. we eat dinner around 9:30 at my new house. So what this means is by the time lunch and dinner finally come around you are so starving you will eat whatever is set before you. Typical meals, soup or "lentajes" which is just soup which has more solid crap than liquid. then you have some sort of fish or chicken, and for desert....an orange or a banana and if you're lucky some pudding!
So if they don't finish eating til 10 or 11 that means that don't meet up to hang out til around 11:30. They then proceed to stay out til 3 or 4. naturally I love it cause I'm a night owl. This also means that everyone sleeps in. People don't like to wake up here. So i fit right in:) oh and that's also why they build a nap into their schedules. They know they're gonna be gettin some extra sleep. Well that's all for now. More to come later.

Barca!!!

2007-02-13T02:48:00.000-08:00

Alright here we go! Here are pictures from my Barcelona trip. It was freaking incredible. Possibly one of the best weekends of my life. I took a little over 300 pictures, ya definitely didn't think that was possible for me, but I took about 60 in the aquarium and about 30 at the soccer game so i guess it wasn't too hard. This is our hostel. 9 of us were in this room, 8 guys 1 girl...On a sidenote I hate that my camera put the wrong date on these pics so ignore them
This is Gaudi's "wave." He had to have been crazy, but his stuff is awesome. He also designed la sagrada familia, which you will see pics of soon.
So we climbed up this hill to a castle that overlooks Barcelona to watch the sun set on the city. From here you can see everything. There's the beach that we spent a couple hours at too:)
A picture of all the guys from the trip. We had a good time
Me and the Baker brothers being BAs at the castle. There were a bunch of cannons and stuff.
This is the fountain at Montjuic (sp?) It is the coolest thing, the fountain has a lights and music show. It plays classical music, the fountain changes all the time, and the lights change too. Sooo cool.
This is the huge building behind the big fountain. Pretty tight
These are three french dudes and a german who i played soccer with on the beach. They were pretty darn cool. Pregame one of the frenchies says "hold on, we gotta smoke and drink so we'll play better..." riiiiiiiight. I'm sporting my new rhonaldinho jersey which i bought for the game.
THE GAME!!! Incredible. I took this picture from my seat, which as you can see, was dang close to the field. There was only plexiglass and 11 rows of chairs between me and the field.
Ya, that's Rhonaldinho in the first half. Naturally he had to score both of his goals on the OTHER half right in front of the rest of our group. Not too happy about that. But it was still incredible.
A view of the most beautiful field I've ever seen in my life from higher up
Me at the field, pregame
Here is la Sagrada Familia, the huge, huge, huge cathedral that Gaudi designed. They started building it in 1882, and they have no clue when they're gonna finish it. No they aren't restoring it, they're still building it. It is going to be even huger. They're guessing it'll take another 100 years. They have another 10 towers to put up, to go along with the 8 that are up now, and the others are gonna be taller...
Some of the decoration of a little section of sagrada familia
our reaction...jason needs to drop that O....
for my halo buddies..... EL PINGUINO!!!!! So we went to an aquarium, a freaking huge one. And there were penguins! which are my fav animal if you didn't know that. Oh yeah, there were sharks too
Told ya so. Big, scary, lots of teeth, looked pissed all the time. I would not want to run into this thing in the water. "He punches the shark in the face, and the shark says, 'ALRIGHT' "
Ok, well that was obviously just a tiny taste of Barca. We also found a sweet jazz club one night, walked down las ramblas, a crazy street with street vendors/performers everything. So I'm sure I left out a ton, but you're probly tired of reading this, and the guys probably stopped reading after the soccer game pictures:) The soccer game was incredible, and right now the only event that could possibly have a hope of topping that game, is if I get to see Les Mis in the queen's theater while I'm in London, which will happen:) Life is good here. I do have to switch houses because my senora threw out her back while making our beds. More to come on the move later this week. Peace!

Cordoba!

2007-02-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

oh i hate how it puts these in backwards, aight sorry about this, but you get it all backwards:) Me feeding birds outside the mosque
So when the Christians conquered Cordoba they decided to build a cathedral...Indside the mosque. Ya inside...it's a big mosque
the mosque, called "un bosque de columnas" a "forest of columns"
Part of the cathedral inside the mosque
Outside of the mosque. This is my grammar and art history prof.
The Samson pose. I've taken a lot of pictures like this. So cool story behind these ruins. It's the ruins of a city that a Califa (Muslim ruler) built. It's basically his palace city, but he named it after his favorite mistress. Then since she liked snow, but it doesn't snow near Cordoba, he planted orange trees, whose blossoms are white. So when the orange trees blossomed they covered the ground in white blossoms that made it look like snow. He was a pimp.
Adam and I...ya I've taken a lot of these pictures too. Maybe I'll get paid for this one too.
ruins
ruins
Sweet view on the way out to Cordoba. Most beautiful scenery yet.
So that was my trip. I did get to see the super bowl, thank goodness, I just had to stay up til 5am last night to see it, and got up for class at 8...awesome. Well that's it for now. Tune in later for more.

FC BARCELONA!

2007-02-01T03:09:00.000-08:00

hahahaha, that's right boys, get ready to be jealous. Yesterday I bought tickets for 11 of us to fly to Barcelona, and I bought tickets to an FC Barcelona game. So in 9 or 10 days, I will be watching the best player in the world. I hope. So ya, we're going to Barcelona for 3 days, we're gonna stay in a crappy hostal, and we're gonna watch FC Barcelona play Real Racing...ya whoever they are. The stadium is almost full too, so it's gonna be CRAZY! So I'm hoping to get to watch Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Sevilla the 3 top teams in the Spanish liga. I should be able to see Sevilla since I'm here, and I'll just have to work on getting to a real madrid game.
Now that I've made you all jealous, let me tell you how much it sucked to set this up. Somehow I ended up in charge of the trip. Don't ask how, cause I have no idea. So when I first looked we could get game tickets for 18 euros, but screw that we got the 33 euro seats cause they are great seats. So when I first looked for flights they cost 46 euros, by the time we finally bought them, because of people stupid indecision and not being able to use the credit card cause my maximum was too low, they jumped up to 67 euros. But another person who is going with us found them for 53 like 25 minutes later. The reason I couldn't get those? Cause I had to buy the ones I found cause I was sitting outside a building in the cold using their internet. We had already bought the game tickets cause if we couldnt get those we werent gonna go. So I had to buy them then before my battery ran out. So I didn't have time to keep checking other sights. I spent about 6 to 7 hours on the tickets as it was.
Other than that, there's not too much more to report. Classes are goin. I'm understanding everything in my classes so that's good. The grammar class is crazy though. She keeps talking about all these rules and stuff that I've never heard so that's kinda intimidating. We're going to Cordoba tomorrow as a school to see the huge mosque there. So I guess that's kinda cool. A group of us are gonna try to go to the Rock of Gibralter on Saturday after we get back. So that could be interesting too.
Let us close our eyes, and talk about the weather, yes, yes, let's talk about the weather. But seriously it's making me mad. Apparently it never rains in Sevilla. In fact, they had been in a drought for a while, until we got here. The day we showed up it was raining for the first time in a long time. Since then it has rained 4 of the days we have been here. So it's wet, cause nothing dries here. Complaint number two. When my senora invited her family over, they all said "this weather is so weird for Andalucia. It never rains and it's never this cold." Ya it's cold here too. What a great combination. Wet and cold, my favorite.
I have yet to make plans for Semana Santa, and Feria, my two week long breaks in April:) I've been invited to go to Greece and Italy with some people for one break, but I still haven't decided. I'll put pics up of Cordoba and the rock of Gibralter hopefully on Sunday.
Sidenote it's really annoying that I don't get wireless in my house. last night I had to sit outside a random building in the cold in order to steal wireless from a big apartment building so i could buy the plan tickets before they got even more expensive.

2007-01-29T03:07:00.000-08:00

Alright, it's time for a walk through Craig's little house. If you open up the front door, this is the first thing you will see. This is where we sit all the time. This is where we eat our meals, and this is where we warm our feet. :) It's incredible, because they don't have heating in the place they put a space heater under the table to keep your feet warm. Im getting really used to it. You'll notice all chairs are on one side of the table. That's because everyone has to be abble to see the tv while we eat, and after we eat, and before we eat, and all day long.
If while standing there you turn left, this is what you see. The beloved tv, which is always on, always. The table that we never use except when the rest of her family, who live in another flat, come over i.e.yesterday for lunch and the Sevilla soccer game. The kitchen is behind that door. I have only ever been in there once, when she first showed us the flat. She told us she doesnt want boys in the kitchen....insert comment here:) Her little bathroom is behind the kitchen, and her bedroom is a tiny sliding door that you can't see on your left right before the kitchen. Through the hallway on the right is where we will go next!! (cheeeesey)
This is our room. It's small. That's Jason watching the Office on my laptop :) That's his bed he's on, and the other's mine. Brilliant eh? And that's one of my sambas on the floor.
This is the view from my bed. Those are our closets, and our space heater, without which we would freeze. However we have to turn it off when we go to bed, and whenever we leave the room, because the senora is very paranoid that there's gonna be a huge fire. The rule is, if you can't see it, it can't be on. So really it's only on when we are reading or watching the office.
This is our bathroom. It's tiny. You'll notice the tile floor, well it goes throughout the house. Let me tell you, tile floor in an unheated house when its 20 degrees outside at night...is freezing. I bought slippers because it is so cold you don't ever want to talk on it barefoot. That is my orange towel which my senora gave me. I had used it twice before i looked at the design on it...which is a naked woman. Weird? Yes!
By the way, here is the New York Times article that I am mentioned in:) I'm on pages 3-6, with pictures on page 1. Check it out! it's all about JBU's first dance. Ciao! Actually I'm having trouble putting the link on this page. so i'll post it under comments if i can copy and paste there! peace

2007-01-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

This is the Torre de Oro, or tower of Gold, on the river. I have to walk across this bridge every day to get to school. It's about a 20 minute walk to school, so no more getting up 10 minutes before class:( There is construction all over Sevilla because they are putting in a subway system, which they've been working on for a year and a half, which goes to show that construction is the same all around the world. It sucks and takes forever.
The "bar" we went to our first night of hanging out. By the way, they call any restaurant or bar 'bar' so that's why there are bars everywhere. These are kids from my group, and one guy from costa rica who we met here in sevilla. The guy in the front left is my roommate Jason.
These next pictures are from our walking tour. This is the Portugal consulate I think. Lets be honest I was talking the whole tour and didn't really hear much.
this is la Universidad de Sevilla (University of Sevilla for those of you who don't habla espanol...and are retarded and couldnt figure that out anyway...) It is the fourth largest building in Europe=frickin huge.
ya so funny story about this statue, our guides were like, anyone know anything about this man, and one kid was like "ya he fought a lot and the king didn't like him much."...wow, ya think that up all by yourself? I have no clue who he was but I coulda just randomly guessed that one.
Our guides, David and Leslie. They work with the school, and are cool
Adam and I with our random chinese friend. He ran up and got a picture with our huge group throwing up a peace sign while we were doing our big group pictures, so we ran after him and got a picture too.

Group picture: Adam and Tyler and I are in the front left, being silly.
And this is the Cathedral. Incredible sight. I look forward to going there on a Sunday to a mass just for the incredible experience. Sadly the other side is being worked on. More ugly construction. Well that's all I have time for now. I'll put up pictures of the casa next time. But there won't be many of those, cause it's a little casa:) Oh if you want to get a hold of me you can call me. We have cell phones from here in Spain.
Call 011 to get out of the US, then hit 34 for Spain's country code, then my number is 677-768-470. weird to have a 9 digit number. anyway, use a calling card or something, but it actually doesn't cost me anything to receive calls. So call me! I am 7 hours ahead of you guys, so only call between the hours of 7 am and 5 pm Topeka/Arkansas time, so between 2 and midnight my time. hasta pronto

quick lessons from spain

2007-01-24T00:49:00.000-08:00

I have learned several quick lessons here, here are some:

showering after your roommate, even if you allow a half hour for the water to heat back up-bad idea. three seconds of hot water, and an instant ice bath. Shaving with cold water sucks too.

learn to like chicken and bread cause they are at every meal in some form or another.

It should not be called pizza unless it has normal toppings, ie crust with sauce topped in tuna, salsa, and some weird spice that smells funny- NOT pizza. (we call that nasty crap)

The casa is cold enough at night, remember to shut the window before going to bed or you are guaranteed to wake up shivering...repeatedly.

Finding an adaptor for your computer is no fun. Especially if you don´t know how to say; adaptor, plug, electricity, or laptop. Sign language never looked so silly...

Bars are everywhere and the place to be. It´s true, just accept it.

Construction workers will stop in the middle of whatever they are doing to simply stand and look at American girls.

Siesta is the single most brilliant idea ever, anywhere. The airplane? the wheel? sliced bread? all nothing compared to the concept of siesta. After you eat a huge lunch, you sleep. It´s so obvious. Why hasn´t America figured this one out?

It´s better to eat the food you don´t like the first time you receive it. Senoras hate to throw food away. So if you don´t like some food one night and you don´t eat it all, beware, it´s coming the next day and in an even worse form.

lessons from the streets:
Cars park anywhere, including touching the bumpers of the cars in front of or behind them.

Scooters are the Jerome Bettis´of the streets. Just move out of the way, cause they sure as heck aren´t going to.

Crossing the street is at times like frogger.

Take the right bus. The wrong bus is...well the wrong one you idiot, so get off of it and get on the right one.

Find the ATMs that you can choose "English" cause it´s nearly impossible to figure out how to get money out of an atm when it´s in spanish, and you look like an idiot standing at an ATM putting your credit card in several times and just trying buttons.

Well that´s all for now. If you want to call me you can, just let me know and i´ll tell you how. Oh and I changed this blog so anyone can comment, even if youre not a blogger. Pictures of Sevilla and the casa to come soon. hasta luego.

A new beginning

2007-01-22T10:21:00.000-08:00

the journey has begun!
Yesterday I left 4 or 5 inches of snow in freezing KC and Chicago, and today arrived in mid50s rainy weather in Seville Spain. After three flights, hours upon hours of weather delays in the states, and very little sleep I made it in at about 9am seville time. We are 7 hours ahead of you, so as I post it´ll be 8 pm here, but 1 pm your time. Jetlag has me pretty bad. I left Chicago at 645 last night, and after an 8 hour flight arrived here at 9 this morning. Where did the night go? no clue. i only slept for about 2 hours on the flight. We hit some pretty bad turbulence when i finally fell asleep and it jolted me awake. I was travelling with the big group, about 40 or so, that will soon become my fellow students here at Acento Trinity College. We all made it safely, and only 4 bags were lost, but not mine. After arriving we were all separated onto two busses and we were taken around the city and dropped off to our senoras, our host families.

Me and my roommate were dropped off to a sweet lady in her mid 50s. Her name is Loli (Low´ly). She took us back to our tiny little flat in one of the big appartment buildings. She speaks pretty quickly, but for the most part I understand what she says, which is a relief cause my roommate probably understands only a third of what she says. She showed us around her little house with pride. She was sure to emphasize that the kitchen and immediately surrounding area were "hers" and that she didn´t want boys in there. She just talked away the whole time, and eventually let out that she is an evangelical Christian. This will be a huge blessing throughout these four months. I´m really thankful that God orchestrated this setup.

My roommate is a great guy. He plays nerts so you know he is cool:) He also plays some soccer, so hopefully we´ll soon find some games to get into. Tomorrow morning we start orientation, hopefully get our cell phones, change money etc. I´m writing now from a computer in the computer lab at our little school, which is located in a tiny section in a huge building on the river here in seville. I don´t pick up wireless in my room, which is truly depressing, but I´ll get over it, and hopefully find some little internet cafes near my house.

First impressions of the city of Seville: these people must drink a ton. There are literally bars everywhere! It´s incredible how many bars there are here. Streets are ridiculously packed with cars. People just park everywhere, and they park like 5 inches from the cars in front of and behind them. I understand why european cars have those ugly straight backs to them, it´s cause of the way they all park on the roads. The shops are mostly small little privately owned shops. It´s confusing cause during daytime hours they don´t have their lights on. So the door will be open but there won´t be lights on. I see the lights are off so i think it´s closed, but not true. I already found two mcdonalds, which i am extremely thrilled about. Otherwise i haven´t seen any stores or restaurants that we have in the states. Im guessing it´ll be about a 15 minute walk from my house to the school, but I havent really timed it yet. The shorter the better of course, cause that would mean more sleep.

Well I think that´s enough for an introduction to my life here in seville. More to come of course. When I can I´ll post pictures on here. Please feel free to email me or facebook me. I´d love to hear updates from all of my friends and family.

from Spain
Craig T Congdon