Paris, November 22

Phew! For those of you who have been wondering why it's been such a long time since I've posted, it's because I didn't have much turnaround between the epic trip to Andalucia and a wonderful excursion to Paris last weekend. Those of you who knew I was in Paris and are wondering why I haven't posted about it yet should also know that I have been SWAMPED with work ever since I got back. . . but now I can relax a little and write to everyone, because, thank heavens, it's SABBATH. Even if I weren't such a die hard Adventist, I think I'd still have to pick a day like this to stubbornly defend rest. . . but I digress. You want the fun exotic stuff, not my anti-stress rhetoric.

Approaching Paris from the air at night was a breathtaking spectacle like no other, a good first impression of the City of Lights. When we landed, and found our way to the hotel, we were mildly surprised to find ourselves in the red light district, but the hotel itself was in a nice, quiet little alley away from all of that. Hotel Andre Gill was decorated in warm orange colors and cats were on the reception counter--and so I instantly fell in love with it. We had our first taste of Paris that night in the form of warm Nutella crepes from a street vendor.

Our first full day, we did a lot. Versailles is large and nearly indescribable in its vastness, not just the palace but its sweeping grounds, outlying summer palace, and Marie Antoinette's estate. The fall colors only served to increase its loveliness. We emerged from the metro after our visit to see a sparking blue Eiffel Tower (blue to celebrate the EU being in Paris currently). Wow, that thing is just as beautiful as I'd always pictured it, and more. . . and the full moon only added to the romantic atmosphere. Later, we toured the Seine on a ferry, sliding under twelve of Paris's most famous bridges and getting a great overview of the city and its history, from Notre Dame to World War II. Altogether, an excellent day.

The next day, we found a Free Tour (which they have in many cities in Europe, it turns out) that took us all over Paris. We started at the Saint Michael Fountain, and it seems like we went everywhere. . . on foot. This filled in an area of French history about which my memory had been sketchy--their civil war between the Catholics and Protestants. Seeing the church from across the Louvre where a Catholic king and a Protestant queen got married to the sound of riots in the streets just amazed me at how people survive such insane things. After our tour, which ended at the World Fair buildings, two of us went to see the interior of the Paris Opera House--wow, that was cool. I was amazed by their score library and set designs. The costumes were out, too, in long rows for a sale or something. The building itself is indescribably beautiful, far beyond anything the various set designers for The Phantom of the Opera can recreate.

After that, we headed out to the Louvre, breaking up to see whatever particularly appetized our own tastes. I saw, of course, the Louvre's three most famous works (the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo), but I think I was almost more impressed by Napoleon's apartments and Hammurabi's Code of Law, which I hadn't known was in there. Just walking through the section it was in, full of artifacts from Darius I's palace, was amazing from the perspective of a biblical scholar. . . and then to see Delacroix's famous painting of Liberty leading France to victory. . . I think that was my favorite. Afterwards, we saw the Arc du Triomphe up close. I never realized it was so big and beautiful. . . I love it. By the time we got back to the hotel, exhausted, we had, according to my step counter, done a four days' march. It was worth it.

Thankfully, the day that followed was not nearly so intense. We started it with a leisurely stroll up to Sacre Couer, where we arrived not just to a beautiful church and view of Paris inside and out, but to the pure, clear sound of womens' voices--we had come, quite accidentally, during mass. The experience was transcendental. From there we crossed by metro over to Notre Dame, to see it up close and personal. How lovely! It was every bit as gorgeous as Victor Hugo had described it. . . I was in awe of the incredible presence of this cathedral, and enjoyed the music of a choir that was singing there. There were protesters outside of it for some reason, which made it hard for me to meet back up with my group, but I found them, and we ate dinner on the banks of the Seine.

Later, we went on a tour of Montmarte, to see the various homes of the artists and composers who had lived and worked there. From the top of the hill, we could see all the lights before us. It was a breathtaking sight. In one square, we could see artists at work still, carrying on the legacy of the greats. We returned to the hotel, picked up our companions, and went to try and see Luxembourg gardens. Sadly, they were closed for the night, but what I saw through the bars was enough to allow me to see why Victor Hugo picked them as the backdrop for Marius and Cosette's courtship in Les Miserables. I really want to re-read that book now. . . but it's a real brick of a book, and I don't have that kind of time any more. We saw the facade of St. Sulpice, too, and made our way back to the hotel.

In the morning, we did some last-minute shopping before going to the Musee d'Orsy, where the Impressionist works are kept. After the Louvre, this sunlit burst of color was wonderfully overwhelming. The Impressionist masters speak to me in a way the somewhat stilted works in the Louvre do not. To see, at last, up close, the works of Seurat, Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, and so many others I've admired all my life was a truly uplifting experience. The pastel works particularly captivated me with their soft, mysterious qualities. . . there was one of a family that I particularly loved, because it made me think of my parents. The many Degas paintings reminded me of a friend of mine who used to study ballet.

Finding the bus to the airport was a bit of an adventure, but eventually we got there, thinking the adventure over. . . but then we got to Valencia, and there was no one to pick us up from the airport. Eventually, one of the deans came and picked us up, but for a while, we grimly thought we would have to spend the night in the airport.

Since then, homework, homework, and more homework! Hopefully, as we careen towards the end of the quarter, things will start to ease up. Keep in your prayers the community of PUC, as there has been a car accident there which has killed four students, one of which I remember from my work at the library. It is sad to see such things happen, and they remind us all that nothing lasts forever. Thank you for reading to the end of this post, which I know is ridiculously long. My love to everyone. . . I miss you all more than ever, as Thanksgiving approaches, and hope that yours is happy.

Andalucia

I am exhausted, and no wonder--I have just spent the last eight days tromping through Andalucia, the southern part of Spain. This journey took myself and 28 other ACA students through the cities of Granada, Marbella, Gibraltar, Tetuan (Morocco), Algeciras, Seville, and Cordoba. To sum up such an epic trip is a daunting task, as it is to choose which of the visually stunning views to share with you in photos, but I will attempt to do so without making you read two hours worth of text.

Our first stop was Granada, a city full of college students as poor as ourselves. The benefit: lots of cheap food available to cater to the student crowd. Outside a gelato store, we saw two students entertaining themselves by dangling a spider in front of tourists as they passed by on the sidewalk below. Creative way of busting boredom, I say. Later that night (it was a really long night) we had a tour through the Arab section of town, including a glorious view of the former sultan's palace, the Alhambra on our way to a flamenco tablao. I was awed by the intensity of the performance, how these women are so confident even though in the states they would be considered past their prime. I tried to film a particularly captivating performance of a middle-aged woman with lungs of iron and swift feet, but gave up because it's the sort of thing you have to see live to understand.

The second day in Granada was exhausting, as we saw so much in so little time. . . on so little food. We saw the graves of the great Catholic kings, Fernando and Isabella, whose achievements include the reconquest of Granada, uniting Spain with their marriage, and the discovery of America. With that laundry list of achievements, no wonder they seem like some of Spain's favorite historical figures--particularly Isabella. The cathedral in Granada. . . now that was amazing. It's mostly in the baroque style, painted dazzling white with gold accents and high, vaulted ceilings. Almost more fascinating to me were the large old missals lining the perimeter of the room--all Gregorian chant written before the modern system of lines and clefs was invented.

In the afternoon, we saw the Alhambra, and yeesh, after being there, I can't believe it's not as famous as Versailles (which hopefully I'll get to see in a few weeks). The gardens alone are breathtaking, and the many fountains are real marvels of engineering--they use no pumps, just gravity and the physics of narrow and wide pipes. The palace itself defies description, and unfortunately, my camera had run out of battery by the time I got to the interior. There is so much poetry in the geometric designs of the Muslim builders, in the intricate patterns of the tiles and lovely Arab script, saying over and over again, "God is great." I can see why the building inspired the American writer Washington Irving to live there for a time to write the book, "Tales From the Alhambra." I want to read it when I get a chance.

The next day was a welcome respite, mostly bus time with stops to various places on the Costa del Sol. I had my most solid meal in the trip so far in Marbella, where they had, of all things, peanut sauce. . . I had been dying for something rich and tasty like that. Later, we stopped at Gibraltar, which is a part of England, oddly enough. What I love about Gibraltar is that the English, in order to keep Spain from taking this little city away, put an airport between the city and the rest of Spain. The upshot? When you get out of customs and find a bus, you often have to wait for an airplane to cross the runway before you can enter the city. Only in Gibraltar. . .

Tetuan, Morocco, was our destination for the next day. With our native guide, Abdul, we got to ride a camel and take a tour of the Medina, the old section of Tetuan. In the Medina, there are 1800 streets, all narrow and hard to navigate, so it is imperative to have a guide. He joked, "You will see white people like you in there. They are not from Morocco. They came as tourists years ago and never found their way out." I certainly believe it--even with a trail of breadcrumbs or something, I don't think I could ever find the herbalist, the restaurant, or the artist commune we visited ever again through the dense marketplace with live chickens, all varieties of seafood, and robe artisans. I tried to buy a robe at the commune, but in the bartering process, the vendor was being really uncooperative, to the point where he resorted to flattery--"I would pay 250 camels for you if I saw you in that robe." Despite the cultural implications of this particular piece of flattery, I did really enjoy my time in Morocco, especially at the restaurant, where they treated us to good couscous and Moroccan mint tea.

By the time we arrived in Seville, it was rainy and almost sundown, so the main highlight of the day was the interior of the cathedral there. This cathedral is very, very impressive--supposedly the third largest in the world, and it houses the body of Christopher Columbus, among others. It has a pipe organ so large there's a choir room in the middle of it. Its bell tower, once the minaret of a mosque, is a beautiful, seamless blending of the Arab and renaissance architectural styles. For Sabbath, we went to the Seville SDA Church, where the people were very amiable, and spent the afternoon walking through the Plaza de Espana, which hosted the World Fair in 1929. Incidentally, George Lucas also filmed a part of Star Wars: Episode II there. Beyond that, we saw a memorial to the great Spanish poet Becquer, which was beautiful in its form and the significance of its different statues. Later in the evening, I enjoyed more sculpture as I accidentally happened upon a plaza full of Salvador Dali statues.

Our last day in Seville, we visited the royal palace there--it is actually the oldest one in Europe still in continuous use. How continuous? The king and queen were there just ten days ago. Much of the interior celebrates the discovery of the Americas, though there is one painting that interests me in particular because it finally explained to me who in the world San Fernando is. I spent so much time in the San Fernando valley without knowing who he was, it's embarrassing. So many layers of history in each room. . . and then the gardens were lovely as well, with peacocks and cats wandering through them.

Our teacher surprised us with a carriage tour of Seville, and it was neat to see the city from that angle. I sat up next to the driver, asking him questions, and that way learned a number of things I had missed over the last two days. Shortly thereafter, we headed out to Cordoba for our last night. Cordoba is a small town, but charming, with baskets of flowers hanging from the walls of the houses. The old section revolves around the old mosque we'd come to see, the new around a beautiful plaza of many illuminated fountains. The last morning of the trip, we toured the mosque--it was amazing, I just wish I'd been more awake and healthy to enjoy it. The mosque, now a Christian cathedral, is the largest in Europe, and well-preserved except for the parts the Christians ruined by building their own things in it. King Carlos the Fifth, several hundred years ago said that ruining the perspective of the place by building in it was a bad idea, and it stays that way to this day.

It was a long trip back, and I'm tired. Going back to routine school is tough after that, especially with such a difficult English class this afternoon and difficulties in hostel reservations for Paris. . . and being sick doesn't help things at all. Adventure comes at a cost, but I'd say that it's well worth it. I hope you all are doing well, and that you have a wonderful week.

Sagunto, October 22

It has been a while since I have written, yes, but I figured it would only bore you to hear of how little has been going on here. However, I've had a few randomly interesting experiences over the last two weeks. One of them was the surreal experience of going all the way back to San Francisco just to pick up my visa because of a consulate difficulty--at three days in the air and three there, it earned the dubious distinction of the shortest trip to the US in the history of the school.

Another has been teaching this conversational English class to high schoolers three afternoons a week. Each of these classes is entirely different, and they're all very curious about the US, California in particular. Lucky them, that's where I'm from. What's amusing is that two of the groups just want basic vocabulary on how to not get lost in a city, etc--the other very specifically wanted to know everything there is to know about having fun in Los Angeles and Hollywood. That group also had really random questions about where "Springfield" is. With my roughly hand-drawn map on the chalkboard, I felt the need of a good US map terribly. I may buy one in Carrefour this Friday.

We had our first choir performance this last Sabbath, to kick off Week of Prayer. The speaker took so long first service that by the time it was our turn to sing, we didn't do nearly as well as we could have. The teacher, frustrated, managed it so that second service, we sang before the sermon. It sounded much, much better.

That afternoon, I did something really stupid. Bored and curious about the castle that had been staring down at us the entire time here, my friends Jenny and Lillian went with me to explore the castle which crowns the town of Sagunto. Why was this stupid? Because only an idiot would not recognize that the looming dark gray clouds meant rain. This registered on a very theoretical level, but we were too eager to have fun to pay it much mind.

We had a great time exploring the castle. It is a beautiful old thing, a mixture of Roman and Gothic architecture, and surrounded by cactus, oddly enough. We took all kinds of pictures, enjoyed the view, and then. . . came the rain. It came lightly at first, merely refreshing. Then it fell in great drops, slickening the path so that Jenny fell and twisted her knee. I had prepared for rain, but she had not--I lent her my umbrella, as I had a good rain coat, but I had left the raincoat's hood way back at the dorm.

Pretty soon, all three of us were waterlogged, stopping in a supermarket to dry off. Lillian got a plastic bag to cover her head, but it did not do much good. Shivering, cold, and wet, we could hardly see the way back over the bridge to the road that led to the school. Much to our profound joy, someone from the school was driving along and that road, saw us, and took us back up to the dorm, making us vow to put on dry clothes and never try to go to the castle in the rain again. No argument there--that is burned in my brain as something I will never, ever do again.

Since then, it's been a fairly routine round of classes, though today we had the fun of performing Spanish folk songs in Folklore class. Much to my consternation, both my group and another picked the same song, Mar y Cielo, but it turned out all right in the end, when the teacher had us combine to teach it to everyone. The video of that is online--we certainly had a good time with that.

Please pray for me to learn patience. I have become frustrated with two things: the rain, and the habit my deans have of locking the doors of the dorm during the Week of Prayer meetings. I would go to worship even if the door weren't locked, but it just makes me irritable to feel like they don't trust me enough to do this on my own. It tempts me to spend the worship hour somewhere else on the grounds writing just to make a point, even though I know in my head that would be counterproductive. It's a part of Adventist culture I've had the good fortune to avoid so far, but is just a part of the way things work here.

At the very least, I'll have a week to cool off from this as myself and the other ACA students travel to Andalucia starting this Monday. We will see all kinds of things I'd always dreamed about seeing in Spanish class back in the states, like Seville, Granada, Cordoba, and even a small bit of Morocco. I hear there's lots of sun in Andalucia; I certainly hope so, as the unseasonable rain here is really starting to get me down. When I saw the sun yesterday, I nearly cried, it was so beautiful.

Hope life is treating all of you well, with lots of sunshine and good music.

Valencia, October 4

That's right--I've decided, since I'm going to be here so long, to dispose of this whole "Part 1, 2, 3" business. On Thursday I had the pleasure of my first trip into Valencia, and wow, it was amazing. . . my pedometer read 26,000 steps at the end of the day, but the tiring effort was well worth it.

Valencia is a feast for the lover of architecture. I'm not just talking about the Gothic, Baroque, and Neoclassical buildings dotting the place (which are incredibly awesome, but scattered all over Europe, after all), but some of the amazingly streamlined modern buildings of the city as well. They have a concert hall, for example, that looks like a spaceship suspended over a crystal sea. It's in the middle of a complex of beautiful, futuristic buildings which oddly mix well with the well-tended gardens next to them. It reminded me, for some reason, of the Ghetti Museum in Los Angeles.

The Valencia Cathedral was really cool, too, though. The first part of it was built in the 300's--it blows me away to think that there's really churches that old that have been worshiping continuously for such a long time, and still do. I soaked in the mix of Gothic, Baroque, and Neoclassical styles, and climbed the tower of Micalet. Wow, that's a lot of stairs, and I feel really sorry for whoever had the job of ringing bells there before they were all mechanized (talk about mixing athleticism with musicianship), but the view from the top was well worth it. To take the trip with me, check out the video on the website.

At the cathedral door, we got to witness the Council of the Waters, where anyone with a water dispute can come to the judges there, and they will deal with it on the spot. They do this every Thursday, and anyone can come. No one had a water complaint this time out, and no wonder--if they do this every week, they must be very efficient at dealing with it.

After that, we saw a very old Gothic-style bank, the best-preserved in Spain, and then got turned loose on the city to enjoy all kinds of free time. I had the joy of trying Spanish horchata for the first time, which is nothing like the US version--it's much thicker, much richer, and made from almond, not rice. And it's GOOD. We also had some gelato, and went shopping--as in looked in all the shops without buying much.

We had Friday to recuperate from this and go to class, and Sabbath morning to enjoy church, then we had another fabulous adventure. At the bidding of our Folklore class, we walked all the way to Sagunto to see the Fiesta de Moros y Cristianos.

Okay, we have parades in the States, but nothing like this. When our teacher said it was a relatively short parade, I didn't expect a 2-hour spectacle with hundreds of participants, all kinds of amazing, glittery costumes (which unfortunately didn't photograph well in the poor light), and all kinds of marching bands. And this parade was only the first half of it, where the Moors come in to conquer the city--this morning (which I missed) was when the Moors and the Christians are supposed to fight, and the Christians win with the help of St. James. Just seeing the half I did, though, was absolutely amazing. The marching was far more precise than almost anything I've ever seen in the States, and there was dancing as well--they used a lot more people just walking and showing off their costumes than they did parade floats, though there were a few of those, too.

There were all kinds of instruments, some of which even after a life time of hanging out with a music teacher, I can't identify. All in all, I have to reflect--they do spectacle way better as amateurs than Disney does as a professional company. Go figure.

Anyways, as you can imagine, I slept a solid nine hours after I got back. Between the festival and the trip to Valencia, we've all certainly had an interesting, and a physically exhausting time of it. Hope life is treating you well, and that you've had as good a time this weekend as I have.

Justin Day 2008

To those of you who are new to Jillian's Journeys this year, every now and then I take a break from the travelogue posts to mark a special occasion or to honor something or someone who has made a difference in my life.

This post is dedicated to my brother Justin, who would be 22 today if he had not died a little over four years ago in a hiking accident in Peru. I started celebrating Justin Day, as I now call it, last year on his birthday; there are many ways to celebrate, some of which I listed in the following post:

http://jilliansjourneys.blogspot.com/2007/09/justin-day.html

Today I celebrated by wearing all black save for a pair of boots, a caribiner, and a portrait of him given to me by a family friend around my neck. I went down to the Bocasteria, a place here on the Sagunto Campus where they sell food items, etc., to us students, and drank a cup of coffee in his honor before writing the following poem. It's not the smoothest or most beautiful poem I've ever written, but I thought I'd share it with you today:

A cup of coffee I raise today
For the man with the hair of fiery red--
To honor all those who've crossed his way,
To honor the words he has said.

"No fear!" he said--
Let courage be your guide.
Go wherever you think God has led
Your way across the ocean wide.

"No regrets!" he added, with a grin--
Don't let the past be your chain.
For we were all long freed from sin,
And will come home again.

"No holding back," he finished, smiling--
Be bold, live all the life you can.
For what use is it to waste life whiling
Your time away where you began?

So, a cup raised high from foreign land,
I drink to the man with hair of fiery red--
Forever to celebrate his words, which stand
As wise and great as the day they were said.

No fear, no regrets, no holding back.

Thank you for bearing with me for this out-of-the-ordinary post; the next one will be more fun stuff about Spain. After all, not much of interest has happened around here over the last few days--I single-handedly flooded my floor of the dorm on Sunday (that was exciting; for an explanation of how this is possible, go to the website and check out the video), helped register immigrants for Spanish classes, and started Choir--other than that, nothing particularly interesting has occurred. Tomorrow I get to go to Valencia, which will provide all kinds of interesting pictures and whatnot, and this weekend I'll get to see my first Spanish fiesta in Sagunto. I hope life is treating all of you well, as always, and wish you a very happy Justin Day!

In my prayers,

Sagunto, Part 2

The weekend was restful and relaxing almost to the point of boredom, broken up by a sudden, unexpected seasonal rainstorm. Struck by a sudden inspiration, I grabbed an umbrella and ran out there with a camera to get the footage you'll see on my blog if you're nice enough to look at the web page. Please. . . view it. I got sopping wet to give you that oh-so-authentic location footage. The link is at the bottom of this email, as it is for all Jillian's Journeys posts.

Class really began on Monday, and for the first time, I went to breakfast. To miss breakfast here isn't a horrible thing to do, as we have this place called the Bocasteria where we can buy ourselves some fairly tasty food on our mid-morning break, but it's much cheaper (as in, already paid for) to go to the caf. My hardest class, it looks like, will easily be Translation and Interpretation. After the Greek course this summer, though, it's almost a breath of fresh air to be applying the same skills with living languages. In a fit of overachieving ambition, I decided to translate "Sabbath Prayer" from Fiddler on the Roof into Spanish because of the disturbing lack of Spanish translations of the song anywhere online.

That is HARD. I have a lot more respect for people who write voiceovers for musical films than I ever had before. To translate the words, make it fit into the music, and then hope that somehow, it will retain the same feel as the original is a mad balancing act that I find ridiculously, suicidally enjoyable.

After class, in the evening, some friends and I went to worship just because we were bored and found out that worship is required, sadly enough for those who'd skipped. Glad that we'd done this, however accidentally, we went for a walk afterwards. The night was fragrant from the freshly fallen rain on the orange groves, and the castle was beautifully lit for the night time. I needed the exercise, and the air; both were wonderfully medicinal, despite the cars trying to hit us every few minutes.

Today they canceled class to take us into Sagunto itself to see some of the local sights. We were supposed to see the castle up close and personal, but it was raining so much (something which hasn't happened at this time of year here in thirty years) that we didn't. We did, however, get to see the Roman Theater leftover from the Roman occupation and explore it thoroughly. I'd gotten to see ancient theaters in Greece, but I never got to explore any of them like this. I was amazed at how similar the passages behind the rows of renovated seats were to a modern theater. Someday, I really, want to see one of the outdoor performances they have there. It sounds like fun, like a Spanish version of the Hollywood Bowl.

Afterwards, my friend Jenny and I went down to their open-air market that they have every Wednesday in Sagunto. Although I had only intended to buy a bag and some yarn, she convinced me to buy a shirt and a pastry as well, both of which were quite good. I'm not sure how I feel about the shirt, but it only cost me 4 euros, after all. I've never been good at shopping for things I don't need. She's teaching me, and I'm a slow learner. Incidentally, if anyone wants to send me yarn, the local stuff isn't very good and only comes in white, grr. . . but I love to crochet, no matter what color I'm using.

Anyways, enough of my ranting about yarn and whatnot. Not a very exotic thing for me to talk about all the way from Spain. Perhaps my brain is too short-circuited today to think of anything more creative to write about; I just wanted an excuse to put up pictures and video. Please check it out; it takes a certain amount of loving care that takes up time and it makes my little heart happy to know when people are actually looking at it.

I hope life is treating you well, as always, with much luck and prosperity.

Sagunto, Part 1

Hello! Yes, I have arrived safely in Spain, and am incredibly sorry for the delay in writing this issue, for any of you who may have been worried if I got here. I almost didn't, though, as my flight from San Francisco to Chicago was canceled due to mechanical failures in the plane, getting me off to a great start on this saga. Fortunately, American Airlines was able to rebook me for a flight to Los Angeles instead, from which I was able to fly to Chicago, literally walking straight off of my first flight and onto the second. In Chicago, I didn't have much time, either--just enough to make a few last phone calls before kissing cell service good-bye for the year.

The flight to Madrid was long, dull, and tedious like most transatlantic flights, amplified by the fact that I couldn't sleep. By the time I got to the Valencia flight, I was so tired, the only thing keeping me awake was a certain skepticism as to how airworthy the plane really was. And, of course, some magazines talking about great things to see in Spain I hadn't realized were even over here. Even in a year, I don't think I'll see everything I want to see in Spain, let alone Europe. Coming off of that flight, I thought I'd lost my baggage, but fortunately, they had merely come in on a different terminal, so I was set for success already.

Riding on the highway at break-neck speed, I enjoyed the scenery passing by--with all those orange groves, the place looks like Southern California used to before all the orange groves were covered by houses, with the added perk of the occasional ruin of a castle. Upon my arrival, I was settled in with a very nice room mate, Yamuna, who speaks no English and is very sociable. That's a very good combination for someone who's actually trying to learn Spanish. She told me how her somewhat odd name is actually the river that flows in front of the Taj Mahal. Cool.

The next morning, which was my birthday, I took the placement test to see what group I'd be placed in for the year. I scored in the top group, to my wonder, joy, and delight. This made me eligible for the Translation class I so badly wanted to take, which I registered for along with the rest of my 19 credits. That may sound like a lot, but the pace and culture here is much more laid back than PUC, and I feel like I can handle it. If I can't, I'll probably drop my Bible class--we have worship every night, several hours of church and sabbath school a week, and the credits probably don't transfer to my religion department back home anyway. If I took a class at their seminary, on the other hand, that would count. . . but I don't want to try that until I get a general feel for the coursework in the regular ACA classes.

I celebrated my birthday by walking into the town of Sagunto with some other ACA students. We had to cross several orange orchards, walk under a tunnel, and ask for directions when we got lost to get there, but it was rewarding enough when we actually located a place to eat. Sadly, we didn't have time to do much else, so we got back in time for evening worship, which was followed by an orientation to dorm life here. It is very different than dorm life at PUC, and I actually appreciate the enforced silence rules they have from 10:30 PM--7:00 AM. If they had that rule at PUC, I know any number of people would get a better night's sleep.

Yesterday was my first day of class, but I only had two classes which aren't even into the subject matter yet, so no comment. I did, however, meet, their Biblical Languages teacher--nice woman, and a lovely wake-up call for me to remember to practice my Greek. With Spanish swimming around my head, though, I really don't feel like it. That afternoon, the school had us all bussed into Sagunto to go to Carrefour, a store a lot like Walmart, but better, for some of our daily necessities. It was hard for me not to fall into the temptation to buy a nice, large jar of Nutella. I justified my purchase of a bottle of tonics by my need for a one-liter bottle for my water. We were supposed to go to the beach afterwards, but there wasn't enough time--we just got to see it from the bus, looking beautiful and tantalizing. I can't wait to go next week.

There were two worships last night, and three this morning, so I'm actually sort of worshiped-out. I've enjoyed the music in all of them, and the preaching, even, up to a point--the more tired I am, the less any language, particularly Spanish, makes sense, and I'm still jetlagged. I think I'll appreciate it all a lot more next week, and I am truly glad to see such an active church community over here.

Hollywood to Home

Joyfully I sat on a stump at the entrance of Camp Wawona, waiting for my grandpa Les to pick me up. In an hour or two, he did, but that was only the beginning of the epic birthday weekend for my father and I, ranging from Hollywood to Disneyland, and eventually bringing me home at last, where I am now writing as I prepare to leave for Spain in two weeks. This weekend was a great delight for a variety of reasons, but first and foremost because of family and food. You may laugh at the last one, but food has recently become very, very important to me as a rare and valuable commodity. Even rarer and more valuable, though, was the family I got to share the weekend's events with.

I almost cried when we got to the hotel. It was so beautiful, and I had nothing to do with its ongoing upkeep. The beds were soft and comfortable, and the furniture matched. It may seem odd that something that simple would strike me so powerfully, but to look at the city of Los Angeles through the window was truly a spiritual experience for me.

The next day we saw a few sights before going to the long-anticipated Hollywood Bowl. A cemetery may seem like a bizarre tourist attraction to start, but Forest Lawn is no normal cemetery. It houses a brilliant stained glass replica of Da Vinci's Last Supper as well as the world's largest painting. I'm not kidding; at 90 ft high by 160 ft wide, the size of this painting is truly staggering. My father and I, suddenly struck by an inspiration, decided to track down the grave of the famous Walt Disney. Despite rumors that he is frozen beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, we found his family plot, a rather humble private garden where he, his wife, and his son-in-law are buried. More difficult to track down than Walt Disney, however, was our own relative aunt Lydia. Whereas Walt was easily accessible outdoors, we actually had to be buzzed in to a locked mausoleum and given directions through the winding corridors to find her. She had lived to be over a hundred before she passed away recently, and I can only hope that some of that luck carries over to the rest of us.

From there we visited an excellent vegetarian Chinese Restaurant, The Happy Family, before going over to Griffith Park Observatory. The observatory is a beautiful building, recently restored and outfitted with an entirely new underground floor of exhibits. The new exhibit I appreciate the most down there is a vast wall panel of the stars on ceramic tile, rendered accurately from a satellite image of a patch of the sky no larger than what is covered by a person's thumb looking up at it. I can now say officially that I have been stargazing underground. Coming back outside, the sun was setting beautifully over the famous Hollywood sign, and we made our way over to the Hollywood Bowl for the long-anticipated concert.

John Williams is not just an amazing composer, but a very charismatic, personable musician in live performance as well. It is one thing to half-listen to his internationally famous Olympic Fanfare while the sports are being shown on television; it is another thing entirely to be there in a live concert hall, feeling the kind of energy that many trumpets produce. Amazing, too, is the way that 18,000 people can become so silent so quickly in awe of such genius. I've been to Bay Area knock-offs of the Hollywood Bowl experience, but none of them quite equal the sheer spectacle of outdoor performance done right. The LA Philharmonic may not come close to matching the San Francisco Symphony in musical perfection, but when they play, their audiences listen with much more rapt attention than I've ever heard the San Francisco Symphony receive in even a closed concert hall.

A special guest to the program that evening was the director and choreographer of the immortal classic film Singin' In the Rain. Listening to this man talk about working with dancers like Gene Kelley and Fred Astaire was fascinating, and the clips shown with the music from these various films filled me with admiration for the old school Hollywood actors who had to be able to sing, dance, and act as triple threats. Between listening to his experiences and hearing so many of John Williams' greatest works performed live, it was a real night to remember.

That alone would have been worth the trip. However, there was still Disneyland the next day.

Disneyland is one of those places which continue to enchant me no matter how many times I visit it. Everything there has a story. Also, they are always building new attractions while refurbishing the old with innovative concepts. I had the privilege of seeing ASIMO, the only robot in the world capable of walking upright on its own. More impressively, it can also run and go up and down stairs; these are movements which were not possible in robotics even five years ago.

Another new attraction worth seeing is in the California Adventure theme park, the Toy Story Midway Madness. It does a beautiful job of combining ride, game, and show technology for a very fun, very interactive experience. It's great to be able to celebrate the introduction of a new attraction like that, but not without some sadness for the old. Let us now spend a moment of silence to mourn the passing of the Golden Dreams film which will be ripped out next week in favor of something slightly more interesting, despite its value as one of the most efficient and moving retellings of California state history I've ever seen. . .

All right. Moment of silence over. It gave me great joy to cross back over to Disneyland and view the fireworks and Fantasmic again. Every time I see Fantasmic, it fills me with great delight and makes me feel like the little girl on Dad's shoulders I used to be. In a good way. Some things are just too cool to be changed much with time, and are still worth coming back to time and time again.

Like home. At the end of a long, 6-hour drive yesterday (which was Dad's birthday--can't believe he's 50 now!), I finally got home to my cats, my room, and the tasks I need to accomplish before leaving for Spain. I am overjoyed to be back, and hope that life is treating all of you well. The next time I write a post, it very well may be from a dorm room in Spain; wish me luck!

Camp Wawona, Season II

Thanks to the general lack of particularly adventurous things going on in my life lately, I haven't been writing in this blog. However, since a few strange rumors as to my whereabouts have been circulating (mostly misconceptions that I've already left for Spain), and some of you have taken to bothering my mother about it, I felt it necessary to clear this up:

I am still in the United States, at Camp Wawona. That's Yosemite, in California. I've been here since I got back from Greece, and I have been cooking, cleaning, and otherwise making merry here. Mostly cooking and cleaning, though. It feels, for some reason, like it's been harder, longer work than last summer, and I didn't feel the need to document that for all of you. If you want to get a really good impression of Camp Wawona, read my posts from last year and look at the pretty pictures on the site from that time, too. I really love the camp, but I feel that taking many more pictures of it would be redundant.

My work here has been punctuated, of course, by the occasional visit from friends or a family member or two. That always really brightened up my week. Also, the odd visit into town (Oakhurst) is very nice, and the staff here have taken a liking to a local Mexican restaurant which I wish I could remember the name of now, because I'd really recommend it to anyone on their way into Yosemite. Great atmosphere, delicious food.

Otherwise, my off time is filled with finding cell service here to call home or crocheting. I've discovered a certain fondness for crocheting in myself I didn't know I possessed. It's kind of soothing, just sitting there making scarves while watching a movie. . . and the lengths of these scarves reveal the amount of time on my hands. Too exhausted from a day's work to do much else with it.

Particularly days like this last weekend, when the camp was packed out with a gigantic Naga View reunion. The banquet on Saturday night was the most elaborate we'd ever done, and quite exhausting. Still recovering from that, though there was something wonderfully familiar about punch tables and table skirts--I actually used to enjoy doing that sort of thing for my parents.

Anyways, I'm out of here on Friday morning, to another adventure in Southern California where I will see a good deal of my family and we will celebrate my father and I's birthdays. I can hardly wait, as it's been so long since I've spent some decent time with my family, and I've gotten a little homesick here. Okay, a lot homesick. It'll only be worse when I'm in Spain, so I'll just deal with it--in the meantime, I hope that life is treating all of you well, and that you are enjoying life to the fullest.