Finally Home

I have forgotten to update since I have gotten home. Anyway, I had all good flights back with minimal sleep. We left for Malaga and spent the night in the airport there (Whats the point of going to Europe without sleeping in a airport or trian/bus station for atleast one night, right?) , then a flight to London - change airports + 8 hour layover - flight to Chicago - and my last flight to Cedar Rapids. All flights went well except for my last one. I missed my check in for my flight to Cedar Rapids by two minutes....2 MINUTES! So British Airways put me in a hotel for the night and I got a flight home the next morning.



It has been good to be home, seeing friends and family and of course Christmas. The only downfall is the subzero temperatures but with the snow it makes it not as bad...I guess. I will hopefully post one more time about my trip to Rome, so I guess check if you would like or I will see you soon if I haven't seen you already.


Merry Christmas & Happy New Year,
Chase

Its All Coming To An End...

I am finally done with all my classes. We change levels each month so I had eight days of class and then had to take exams, so it was a weird month of classes. We were allowed to miss 80% of classes so that means one class a week so I would miss Friday and sometimes Monday every other week to have a longer trip. My teacher called me “El viajero incansable” because I go on trips and miss class. Don’t worry mom… I attended at least the required amount of class. I have been ready to be done with classes here but I know I will miss Spain. Once Thanksgiving hit a lot of people started to say they were ready to go home.

Our Group Despedida Dinner Last Week - 37 people

Today I had my only two finals and now I’ve got two days of free time in Granada before I start my voyage home. It’s going to be a long day but I am excited to get back home and see friends and family. I get back Friday night around 11, so hopefully I will sleep on the plane rides and I will be able to see those of you who will be in Cedar Rapids.

Pete and I Slaving in the Kitchen

Pete and I were forced to cook dinner for our family last night because our señora refused for us to take her and the family out for a dinner, so she talked us into cooking. I just want to say neither of us had ever actually cooked over a stove before, because mac & cheese, ramen noodles and pre-made oven pizzas don’t really count. So we thought and really couldn’t come up with anything and we wanted to learn how to make Spanish tortilla, and its similar to omelets but they only put in potato and onion. So I went to the supermarket and found a bag of chopped onions, cucumbers, red and green peppers. I also got cheese and some ham – no meal in Spain is complete with out some kind of ham. Pete decided on an apple crisp for desert and it was interesting because his mom sent him a recipe in cups and ounces and we had to convert to grams and milliliters. The recipe required a stick of butter and we had more like a brick of butter and just made an educated guess.

My "Tortilla Americana"

Reminding you that we had never cooked these meals before, or ever really cooked much at all. Our meals turned out quite well. The flipping of the omelet was not as bad as expected and they turned out great. My señora borrowed by camera and took several pictures of us because she said your parents won’t believe you when you tell them that you cooked a meal and we liked it. There was a lot of pressure especially from Galdric, our host brother because he is a really good cook, and we were the first students to ever cook for them. They loved it and they called it “Tortilla Americana”. Pete’s apple crisp turned out well even though it wasn’t like normal apple crisp, but it was still delicious.

A Typical meal with the host family - Galdric to be funny by sticking a spoon in his mouth for the picture, Yaya looks like she's mad at Galdric, and Pete and I both have very stupid looks on our faces.

I’m happy that Pete and I made dinner for our host family. It was fun to cook, it turned out well, and most of all, they liked it. Also we have left over desert for when more family comes over tomorrow. Pete leaves Wednesday at 6 AM so tonight is our despedida or goodbye dinner with the rest of our family.

Trip to Foggy London Town

London was the second city on my list of places to see while in Europe. I asked around to see if people wanted to come with me, but people already had other trips planned or they had already been. I had a free place to stay with my friends from Central at the Vandon House and a free flight home courtesy of Ryan Air….well kind of since they still charge tax and other hidden fees – it was still the cheapest way of travel so far. My tickets were less than 70€ roundtrip along with not having to pay for a hostel for three nights, it worked out pretty well.


I knew that a few people would be gone on trips but the person I was going to stay with told me that he forgot that he was going to Wales that weekend – AKA Chris Weaver. So I met a bunch of people from Central that I never really met. I left Granada the day after thanksgiving at 12:30 so I left my house at 9:30AM to catch the 10AM bus, so just the combination of bus rides and waiting in airports made it a long day. It felt like an extremely long day since when I arrived in London, Victoria Station…not the Stansted Airport the sun already had set but 5PM. So it felt like 8 or 9 at night and I was trying to figure out why there were so many people around – Rush hour…Duh. Also I cut off so many people off by going to the right, I completely forgot that in England everyone walks on the left. I had got a Subway since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and then called Lindsey and she came and found me because Vandon would have been impossible for me to find.


The first night we hung out in Vandon and I got actually eat some real thanksgiving food since they had a bunch of leftovers, and my thanksgiving in Spain consisted of tropical fruits, seafood, and unlimited beer and wine. Theo and Derrick were also visiting for the night so we decided to go bowling in Queens and it was the worst I have ever bowled, the lanes had not been waxed in a long time. Only one person in our group of seven got over 100. After the lanes closed at 11 we walked around for a bit and decided to go to Walkabout, a pretty popular bar in London. It was a pretty cool bar and they played good music, but I have not idea why there would be several people dressed up like it was Halloween. The weirdest costume was probably the guy in the tele-tubby costume. Compared to Spain it was an early night, but it had been a long day of traveling. It was a cool walk home because we just turned a corner and there was Big Ben, it was completely unexpected, and then not to far from that was Westminister Abbey.


I had people take me around to the sights in London and we left Vandon around 11. Buckingham Palace was only a 5 minute walk so we went there first. We got to see part of the changing of the guards, which I have now seen in two countries – the other was in Prague. It was packed so we didn’t stay long and we walked though Hyde and Green Parks and then to Kensington Palace, which is where Princess Diana lived, so we also saw her memorial fountain. A day pass for the Underground cost 5.30 pounds but I got my moneys worth, we used it a ton each day. After lunch, at Pizza Hut we went over to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I got yelled at for taking pictures in there. The people in front of me were taking pictures with flash, and I never use my flash and I was the one to get called out of a crowd for taking pictures – The only downfall of having a big camera, I guess. We also went across the Millennium Bridge to Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, which was cool because it’s an exact replica of the original theatre. We couldn’t see in the theatre because it was the off season but the girls told me about they plays that they went to there and it sounded pretty cool and they had floor seats where it was standing room only and they are really close to the stage as well.


We went back to Vandon for dinner. Thankfully they had leftovers, which also made the trip cheaper. It was interesting to see how other people’s abroad experiences are since we all live all over the city and with host families who cook my meals and in London they all live in a hotel and have to cook for them selves. Many of them said they don’t think they could live with host families abroad, and I wasn’t crazy about it at first when I got to Spain but I never really appreciated it until talking to the people in the London program.


That night we went to a pub, O’Neill’s in Piccadilly Circus, which is kind of like Londons version of Time Square. The pub had three floors and a live band playing and they played cover songs from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Foo Fighters, Greenday, Coldplay and other bands like that. It was really cool. When we got back to Vandon we were making some food and other people were coming back from other pubs. Two girls from Central, Brynn and Kim walked through the kitchen and they both looked at me and had to a double take. They recognized me from Central and they both asked, “What are you doing here?” I told them that I was planning on visiting Chris, Zach and Jordan but they were all gone, but I already had my tickets so I decided to come on my own.


The next morning I planned on going to St. Paul’s for church with Rob and I couldn’t find him but there were some girls going to Westminster Abbey, so I tagged along with them. This was the first church service I had been to since I have been in Europe, but I have been in a bunch of cathedrals on tours in Spain so I hope that somewhat makes up for not going to church for three months. There are grave sites under the floor and just walking to where the mass was held I looked down and saw “Charles Darwin” and thought that was odd that he would be buried in a church especially Westminster Abbey, since he believed in evolution. I’m not used to the Catholic service, so it was cool to be there but kind of boring.


The weather definitely affects people in London, the cold and rain just makes you just want to sleep. I was like a tourist and raring to go and see more sights, and not many people were out of bed until 1 or later. I went with Rob to a Chinese buffet that was pretty close to Vandon and really cheap so when I got back some people were awake so we made plans to leave by 2 and go to Abbey Road. Zach had just got back from Barcelona and came with us to Abbey Road, since he knew how to get there. We had to take our picture just the like Beatles did crossing the cross walk and it was fairly cold so people wanted to go back. Kim said that she would take me a around, since she hadn’t had a chance to walk around London and there were a few things she had not seen yet. So in about five hours I saw: Tower Bridge, Tower of London, HMS Bellfast, London Bridge, Millennium Bridge, the Tate Modern Art Museum, Piccadilly Circus and ate at a Moroccan restaurant there, then Trafalgar Square, walked around the London Eye, Westminster Bridge, Big Ben/parliament and then St. James park near Buckingham Palace.

Abbey Road

The Tate Modern Art Museum was free and I really liked it because the only kind of art I have seen is pictures of Jesus and then portraits of royalty in Spain. I was happy to actually see an actual Picasso and Jackson Pollock in front of my face. Even though Pollock was a splatter painter it’s really cool to see how big the piece actually is and how his rhythm of the brush made it flow all together. Then I really liked just looking at the sketches/drawings, photos and sculptures they had. I really like most of the abstract art because it makes you think and you see different things every time you look at it. But they did have some really odd pieces and video artworks, which some pieces didn’t seem like art to me at all. We stayed until close so we were probably there for an hour to an hour and half.


More people were back from their trips when I got back and we could hear Chris coming from about four blocks away because he was singing. He and a few people had gone to Wales for Hassman’s birthday so I got to hear about how crazy that trip was. I got to talk to Jordan briefly because they made enough noise when they got back from Sevilla it woke me up so I had to go pound on his door and he completely forgot that I was going to be in London. So even though my friends I was planning on seeing weren’t there for the weekend it was a great trip and I got to meet a lot of people from Central.

These signs were life savers...literally

I slept only for about 3 hours and had had to get up at 4:30 to catch the 5:10AM bus at Victoria Station. I almost missed the bus, it left within a minute of me sitting down. I sat next to a guy that I recognized from Fridays bus ride into London. He was from Hungary and studying in Granada for the year. So we stuck together through the airports and plane ride. That is one thing I have enjoyed while being in Europe is meeting new people almost every day from all over the world.


I slept on the plane and wanted to siesta when I got back to Granada but I didn’t have much time since lunch would be in an hour or less so I unpacked and then skyped with the parents, and got to hear about the Thanksgiving weekend. That night we had a group movie session that night. I probably saw about five minutes of the Motorcycle Diaries, and I was out, and Ben kept laughing at me because I kept bobbing my head because I was trying not to fall asleep. So this might be like how my trip home will be in a week when I get back to Iowa.


Thankfully, I went the weekend I did because I was thinking about going this past weekend, the first weekend in December. I know of at least two people that got stranded at the Stansted Airport because of protestors at the airport. So my friends missed at least two days of class and sucks since it was the last classes right before finals started. I have less than a week left here in Granada and today has been cold, cloudy and rainy so it gave me a chance to finally write about my trip to London. Hopefully I can write about my trip I had last weekend to Rome and have that up before I leave Spain. See you all in less than a week.

Prague, Praha, Praga

It was a fairly late night the night before our trip and Pete had the bright idea to get home from the discotec when I was going to wake up at 6 A.M. So I had three hours of sleep and he had none, so he planned on sleeping on all forms of public transport. To catch our mid-afternoon flight out of Madrid we had to take the first bus of the day out of Granada. So we started our trip with a five hour bus ride. It’s amazing how dark it is here at 7 A.M. – Still dark as it is at midnight. I’ve seen 7 A.M. only a couple of other times but that’s because we have stayed up all night and just getting home about that time. The sun did not rise until 8:30 so I got some decent sleep of the first hour or so on the bus. The bus ride went smoothly and then got a taxi to the airport and then waited for about two hours. The weather in Granada as of late was sunny and in the 70’s, when we landed in Prague at sunset and it is a balmy 8 degrees Celsius so roughly 45 degrees. While waiting for the bus at the airport we saw Air Force One so that was something pretty cool and completely unexpected. Pete was only awake for maybe an hour both the bus ride and the flight, so he accomplished his goal of catching up on his sleep.

Prague Castle

Muzeum

It was a fairly late night the night before our trip and Pete had the bright idea to get home from the discotec when I was going to wake up at 6 A.M. So I had three hours of sleep and he had none, so he planned on sleeping on all forms of public transport. To catch our mid-afternoon flight out of Madrid we had to take the first bus of the day out of Granada. So we started our trip with a five hour bus ride. It’s amazing how dark it is here at 7 A.M. – Still dark as it is at midnight. I’ve seen 7 A.M. only a couple of other times but that’s because we have stayed up all night and just getting home about that time. The sun did not rise until 8:30 so I got some decent sleep of the first hour or so on the bus. The bus ride went smoothly and then got a taxi to the airport and then waited for about two hours. The weather in Granada as of late was sunny and in the 70’s, when we landed in Prague at sunset and it is a balmy 8 degrees Celsius so roughly 45 degrees. While waiting for the bus at the airport we saw Air Force One so that was something pretty cool and completely unexpected. Pete was only awake for maybe an hour both the bus ride and the flight, so he accomplished his goal of catching up on his sleep.

Charles Bridge

When we got to Prague we got a three day public bus and metro pass because if you get caught without a pass the fines can be really expensive. We also exchanged currency… You’ve got to love the exchange rate when its 1€ = roughly 23ck. The prices aren’t equivalent of one to another, so seeing 30ck for a beer sounded ridiculous but was actually quite reasonable, around a 1,15€ for a pint of Pilsner Urquell – probably the best beer that I have had, and its labeled “The Best Beer In Prague”. We did not make any hostel plans but Pete’s friend Justin who has been to Prague on several occasions suggested the Czech Inn, and it ended up being full so they sent us to the next best place Miss Sophie’s and it ended up being cheaper than the Czech Inn. So the four of us, Pete, Melissa, Chris and myself split a room that had two bunk beds. The hostel had free internet and was really close to a metro station.


Once we got settled into our room we went out for the night and first walked to Charles Bridge where we planned to meet Pete and Melissa’s friend Hallie from Bradley who is studying in Rome this semester. We walked around and looked for a bar to eat at and a place to warm up. We found this small corner bar and it said capacity of 350 people and for what we could see it didn’t seem that full but it was busy. We couldn’t find a table and they pointed us to go down stairs and went down the stairs and took the hallway to the right. It opened up into a huge room, similar to a scene in the movie Beerfest, where it’s just a huge room full of people and the waitresses are carrying around 8 pint glasses of beer or more at once and crazy bar food like “Pork Knee”. The thing that sucks about Prague is that they put food on your table like giant pretzels and chips and mixed nuts. Good thing we were previously warmed about this, because it turns out to be very expensive to eat the bar munchies that are put on your table.

Statues on Charles Bridge - Kind of looks like the Heisman pose

It wasn’t an incredibly late night, we got back shortly after midnight and our hostel’s bathroom had two feet of glass at the top so it illuminated the entire room when being used and also was triggered by a motion light, which was somewhat inconvenient. Apparently I was snoring…or Melissa described it as, “I was making the bed rumble” so she yelled at me to stop snoring and I replied “Ok” to her and just rolled over.

Day 2: October 25

We got up around 9ish and we all showered and left for the day around 11. Our first stop of the day was Prague Castle but saw many of the sights on the way – Old Town Square, Tyn Church, St. James, National Theatre and then walked across the entire Charles Bridge to cross the river. We spent about three hours at the Castle, but two of the exhibits were closed – The Powder Tower and the Main Cathedral. It wasn’t that big of a deal the entrance to the Castle and other touristy things in Prague are fairly cheap, so we didn’t feel completely ripped off, but they could have put up a sign saying that some things were closed. We got lunch near the Castle and I got the least expensive thing on the menu, spaghetti. On the way back we got some great views of Prague and stopped in a park as the sun was setting. We went back to the hostel and took a siesta since I apparently kept Melissa up with my snoring from the night before and then walking around all day made us all pretty tired. That night we went to the Museum stop which is the center of the city and had cheap food there. We found a Chinese restaurant that was pretty cheap and very filling. Once again we walked around town and found a couple of bars and watched a few football (soccer) games.

Day 3: October 26

We had a daylight savings time change so we got some extra sleep and we had to be up earlier to catch a train to Karljstein which is about 45 minutes outside of the city and had a huge castle there. The train was really cheap, about 200 ck for the four of us roundtrip since we traveled in a group of four. We weren’t really sure where to go when we got off the train but we kind of just followed the crowd until we actually saw signs for the castle. The countryside was beautiful and so green along with the trees changing colors. We don’t have that many trees in Granada in the city and wasn’t quite cold enough for fall weather yet. It was also kind of foggy as well especially near the river which made the sunlight all day feel like an early morning fall sun. I found this weird but interesting because it always felt like morning by just looking at the type of light that was emitted by the sun. I got a brat for 30ck, a painting for 300ck and some other souvenirs and looked around in Bohemia Crystal stores.

Karljstein Castle was very cool, while we were walking up the hill through town and it ‘just popped up out of nowhere’. The tour was cool and interesting but it’s not as impacting since we did not have any previous knowledge about the king and his family that lived there. On the way back to the train station the fog has cleared off and I got some good pictures of the river and some reflections of the countryside in the water.

Karljstein Castle

Pete, Melissa, Chris and I

We got back before sunset and walked around near the river down to the Fred and Ginger Dancing Building. Once sun set we took another siesta, Pete and Chris were both snoring and at one point Melissa yelled, “Who ever is snoring…shut up now!” and it was complete dead silence. The chineese was so good and cheap we had that again for dinner and after that we met up with Hallie and her friends at a restaurant that had live music. While walking to meet Hallie at Old town square, Pete got whistled at by a guy sitting on a back pack on the street, and it was Petes friend Justin who was supposed to meet us the day before but got delayed out of Barcelona. At the restaurant, Margaritas were 2 for 1 for 140ck, so that’s what Chris and I picked and Pete got a couple pints of beer while we were there and he paid over 180ck for two beers, so he was not happy about that. Justin snuck into our hostel and slept on our floor – he brought camping gear for when he was coming to Spain the following week to visit Pete.

Fred and Ginger Dancing Building

Day 3: October 27

For some odd reason I had set my alarm to wake up from our siesta and accidentally set it on A.M. and I woke up and could hear some faint kind of music. This went on for about 15 minutes until I realized it was my alarm going off in the dresser underneath my bed. Thankfully no one else heard it. I had a few emails and messages and thought the email from Teahen was pretty funny which included the website www.chasehennessey.com, and him asking who the kid was, I got a pretty big kick out of that. We had an afternoon flight so we had time to walk around and get souvenirs before we left. We wanted to see the Jewish Cemetery but it turned out costing 160ck more than expected so that was off our list of places to see. The flight went smoothly and I got caught up on my journal from the trip while everyone slept. When we got to Madrid it was a pain getting metro passes because all of the payment forms were electronic. We took the metro to the bus station and caught the 7:30 bus so we got back to Granada at 12:30. I had one day of review for class then a final, since I missed a Friday and a Monday for this trip.

Despite the cold temperatures, I really liked Prague and would love to return again someday. I would have to say it is a MUST SEE city in Europe. I am thankful for Pete asking me if I was interested in going even though it was not on my list of places to visit or even see in Europe, I am so happy that I went. The sites were amazing, the weather during the day and in the sun was not bad – perfect fall days – but the nights were pretty cold. The weather in Spain also took a turn for the worse, we always seem to bring some aspect of it back and this time it was cold temperatures. So that has been the end of our 20 degree Celsius days (Roughly 70 degrees Fahrenheit) since we have been back in Spain for the past 6 weeks.

Sorry that this post took so long but I have traveled a lot lately and have had two finals at the end of each month. I will try to post soon about my three weekend trips to the Sierra Nevada’s, Sevilla & Cordoba and then this past weekends trip to London. And if I don’t get any of those done before Thursday…Ojala… I will be going to Rome this weekend for four days and will be my last trip for my abroad experience. I have loved it all so far and hope this last trip is everything and more than what I have heard about Rome, its my number one place that I wanted to visit on my list before coming abroad. So my days here are slim but I will see you in a matter of weeks, so good luck to everyone on the weeks from hell coming up – AKA Finals, and see you for Christmas break.