Snazzy Sevilla

The day we left for Sevilla was Friday the 13th and I learned (from yahoo homepage) that there are three Friday the 13th’s in 2009 and that this only happens every 11 years. Then when we got to out hotel Lyndsey and I were in room 113! I wasn’t at all bothered by any of this because I actually like the number 13, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. On our way to Sevilla thought we stopped at El Torcal for a hike. There were these huge rock structures everywhere and at the end of the hike we climbed up the highest rock. The view was AMAZING! We could see little towns and we were even higher than the clouds.
So there are all these discrepancies about who has the biggest church in the world. I had been told in Toledo and the Vatican that they had the biggest church in the world. Then we get to Sevilla and our guide tells me their cathedral is the biggest in the world. I was getting tired of people pulling my chain when the guide told me that they all measure it differently. Sevilla has the biggest cathedral in the world based on volume (she even showed us the Guinness world Record certificate posted inside the cathedral) and the Vatican has the largest area. Toledo claims to be the largest because they say that St. Peter’s is not technically a “cathedral.” I was glad to finally get the whole story. There were two huge organs inside the cathedral in Sevilla. They had a combined total of 7000 pipes! 2000 kg of gold was used to decorate the altar and to pay the people who worked on it. The style of the church was definitely gothic, but the Capilla Real was very different from the cathedral and was built in Plateresco style. This doesn’t translate to English because it is an exclusively Spanish style of architecture from the end of the 15th century. The cathedral only took 105 years to build which is record time compared to how long it usually took. This was due to continual financial support and lack of wars during the time of construction. Four bronze sculptures (representing the 4 kingdoms of Spain, historically) carry the remains of Christopher Columbus. Here we go with another dispute! His remains have been moved 5 times, but about a year and a half ago it was confirmed that his remains were actually inside the cathedral in Sevilla. They achieved this confirmation with DNA testing using the remains of his brother and an illegitimate child who is also buried inside the cathedral. Previously the Dominican Republic had argued that they had his remains, but after a 100% match I guess Sevilla wins! After our tour we decided to take a carriage ride through the city since there were so many pretty horses and carriages. It was so lovely! The weather was perfect and we saw a lot of beautiful architecture, the river, and we rode through Parque Maria Luisa which was breathtaking! We had been dreaming of Starbucks for weeks before we got to Sevilla because we don’t have one here in Granada. We also were on a mission to buy thermoses so that we could carry our coffee with us to school instead of having to inhale it all at once at 7:45 in the morning. During the course of the weekend we went in all five Starbucks that were in Sevilla looking for a certain Espana mug. Of course we enjoyed a few frappaccinos along the way as well ;), but we couldn’t find it until Lyndsey had resigned to buying some other random one when Kelley spotted two at checkout. SCORE! One of the coolest parts of the weekend was when we went on a bike ride through the city. We rode for like 3 hours, but it was SO fun! We had bells on our bike which we found every excuse to ring while enjoying the weather and the city. The last day that we were in Sevilla we went to the Alcazar which is a Moorish palace that reminded us a lot of a less impressive version of the Alhambra. While there our tour guide told us a super interesting fact. Apparently mythical legend says that Hercules pushed two pillars in order to separate Africa from Eurasia. The pillars with a blue ribbon (representing water) swirled around them is one of the Spanish coat of arms. She said that this is where our symbol for the dollar originated.

<3 Ashton

Santa Maria de la Encarnacion

One of the things I love about Europe is the cathedrals. Granted I’m not catholic and I sometimes wonder while I’m in one what God thinks of all the extravagance and icons of Mary, but I still always find solitude inside. My friend Ashley and I signed up together to take a tour of the Cathedral in Granada. She’s my friend here who appreciates art and architecture more than just looking at it and saying “that’s cool.” We learned that it took 212 years to build and so it has both Baroque and Renaissance influences. On the façade there are engravings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John with their respective animals. The archangels Michelangelo and Rafael are on far sides and there are two girl angels (one holding the Ten Commandments to depict the Old Testament and the other depicting the New Testament). I pass by this cathedral everyday, but I had never seen the inside of it. It was bigger and more beautiful than I had expected. It was also a lot different than a lot of the cathedrals I’ve seen here. There were a lot of windows to let in natural light (representative of the Spiritual Awakening during the Renaissance) and the marble was painted white to refract it.

We also got to see the Capilla Real which is kind of attached externally to chapel. Quite honestly I didn’t know that this even existed. It was built to house King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella’s bodies, but it also contains their daughter Juana’s body and her husbands’. One of the coolest facts I’ve learned since being in Spain was that King Ferdinand actually denied Christopher Columbus’ request to finance his voyage. Queen Isabella, however, approved it and financed it by giving him her jewelry to sell in order to buy the ships. Isn’t that crazy? She didn’t have access to actual money or gold so she financed the whole thing with her jewelry!

<3 Ashton

Victoria Goes to the Hospital

One Monday as I was walking out the door to go to class I was met by Victoria’s daughter (Estelle) and son-in-law (Pedro). They proceeded to tell me Victoria was in the hospital. I wasn’t terribly surprised because she had been to the doctor a few days before and was told she had bronchitis. Not to mention that her grandchildren had been over the night before and every time the grandkids come over she complains of chest pains and anxiety. They told me that they thought it was something to do with her heart but that they didn’t really know yet. She also asked if Lyndsey and I would want to move houses. I promptly told her that we would love to stay with Victoria as long as she wanted us to because we loved it here but we didn’t want to be an inconvenience either. I ran off to school to inform Lyndsey of the news. After informing our program directors of the situation we headed back home where Estelle was going to meet us for lunch. We assured her that we would be fine staying by ourselves for a few nights and we came up with a telephone ringing system so that we would know when it was her calling and not one of the million other people who call incessantly. She also wrote her name and number down and it was then that we realized that her name is actually Esther not Estelle as we had thought for 2 months time. The next day we were told that Victoria was fine but they were running a lot of tests so she would be in the hospital for a week. The plan was for Esther to come cook lunch and something else for us to heat up at night. We were cool with it and ended up enjoying the freedom to eat and shower whenever we wanted as well as have friends over (gasp!). People really don’t hang out at other people’s houses here so we took the liberty of having a few movie nights. We also got to use the TV and watched several movies (Casablanca, Thirteen Days, Supersize Me, Notting Hill). Basically whatever we can find at the library or in Victoria’s collection. We also got to know Esther and her family very well which was fun. She would run (literally) through the house cooking and cleaning while Lyndsey and I talked to her sons and husband. One day she even brought their dog! Our friends’ Kelley and Ashley live with Victoria’s friend Maria Luisa and on Saturday we were invited over for lunch. This was a big deal and we were very excited. She made paella which was delicious, and we got to see their house. Afterwards we met Kelley’s parents who were visiting. They took us out for ice cream and we had a good time chatting. We then decided to go visit Victoria at the hospital. After getting lost (we don’t go anywhere new without getting lost) we finally found it. Victoria did NOT look good though. She was in a small room that did not have air conditioning with two other patients. At one point I had to step out of the room because I felt nauseas and thought I might faint. Luckily I didn’t because I did not want to end up in one of those rooms as a patient for ANY amount of time. We gathered as much that she was going to be there for several more days. A few days later Lyndsey and I stepped off the elevator for lunch when we smelled something horrendous. Usually we are greeted by a wonderful smell that is always coming from our apartment, but unfortunately this day it was the bad one that originated in our casa. We now refer to what we had for lunch that day as puke soup and it is the most accurate description. During the two weeks that Victoria ended up staying in the hospital we had a few questionable soups. Different neighbors and family members would cook things for us and needless to say their cooking paled in comparison to Victoria’s. On these days after Esther would leave I would proceed to flush them down the toilet since we don’t have a sink disposal system. We still don’t really know why Victoria was in the hospital and I’m convinced that the doctors weren’t so sure either because they first told us it was a near blockage in her heart, then they said it was a heart attack and lastly they said it was just bronchitis and no heart problem. They knew she had bronchitis from the beginning though so I’m not really sure what went on that two weeks while Victoria was in the hospital. We were glad though the day she finally walked through the front door.

<3 Ashton

Praise be to the God of ALL Nations!

We are still rocking out at the Baptist church in Granada! The first Sunday of the month is a praise service, which was a wonderful surprise. There was Bible readings, scripture memorization (a whole chapter from a 9 yr old!), prayers as well as music from the choir, ensembles and soloists. I sat beside a Japanese girl who told me it was the first time in her life that she had been to church! Every week during the service they ask first-time visitors to stand up and introduce themselves and tell where they are from. EVERY single week there are several people from South America and the US, and sometimes Asia or Europe, not to mention the people from Spain. It is such a vivid example of a multinational congregation coming together for the sake of the gospel. The church had a special English worship service this week so obviously we went and it was awesome! We always enjoy the music and we kind of enjoy the messages every week in Spanish, but it was so wonderful to worship and study the Word in ENGLISH!

<3 Ashton

Skiing in the Sierra Nevadas!

My friends Jackie, Samantha, and I wanted to go skiing in the Sierra Nevadas since it is only like 45 minutes away and the best skiing in Spain. So I woke up EARLY and then still almost missed the bus because my bus to the bus station was late. This is where transportation gets very tricky here: you never know what time the bus is going to come and if you need to take a bus to the bus station to catch another bus somewhere else…well, it’s a toss up on whether you’ll make it or not! On the way up the mountains I had a few waves of nausea but thankfully I was okay. We met other APIs on the bus (the program we are here with is called API (Academic Programs International) so when we see other kids from our program we call them APIs) so luckily we got to spend the day with them too and I got to know some girls I didn’t know before. We rented our skiis, got all decked out (I had forgotten how much work GETTING READY to go skiing is), and headed for the gondola. If you don’t know what a gondola is ( I didn’t) it is a closed lift that you stand in and it takes you up to the other lifts. The markings on the slopes were a little different here. In order from easy to difficult there are green, blue, red, and black slopes. I would have been happy to take a few greens, but the crazies I was with were a little more advanced than I was so we started on blue. The first slope we chose happened to be very icy and so I got concerned that they would all be the same but they weren’t. I quickly realized that blue slopes here are significantly more intense than blue slopes at home. Haha, imagine that! Nevertheless, I was fine and quickly got my groove back on the slopes. Some of you probably just read that and laughed because I have only been skiing like 3 times in my whole life, but whatever I can hang. I only had one major wipeout, a minor one, and an intentional one in order to stop. I was really worried about going in the first place because I really don’t want to end up in a Spanish hospital. So I had done some serious praying and was really trusting God to keep me safe. He demonstrated His faithfulness because not only did I not get hurt, but I had a wonderful time enjoying His creation and spending time with new friends. We stopped for a lunch break and then went back out, but soon my knees started to feel weak and I decided to play it safe and not push my body farther than it wanted to go. This leads to another story: I was already exhausted and had some aching muscles because when I was at the gym the night before I forgot to convert the weight machines from kilograms to pounds. Therefore, I lifted with my legs approximately TWICE as much as I should have. At the time, I did think it was heavy, but I thought that I had just gotten weak. And just so everybody knows, your legs are actually CAPABLE of lifting a LOT of weight, but you WILL pay for it the next day. Just another everyday misunderstanding in Spain! Jackie and I enjoyed chatting at a café while the other ladies kept skiing and we apparently spent so much time there that we forgot to pay before leaving. We were trudging off when we realized we hadn’t paid and scurried back to do so. We apologized profusely to our waitress who HAD noticed, but she was nice and thanked us for coming back. We were so appalled at what we had almost done! There was a concert in the middle of all the shops with some random band performing covers. They were pretty good (especially with the Shakira song) and we wanted to stay and listen but we had to catch the bus back to Graná (the abbreviated way to write and say Granada; basically they don’t pronounce d and t very often if it is at the end of the word). That's your random fact of the day brought to you by yours truly,

Ashton

ROME Part 2

Images of the Pantheon

The last morning that we were in Rome, we woke up early to go to the Vatican Museum and see the Sistine Chapel. I don’t think I was aware of the magnitude of the Vatican Museum before I went. As we were standing in line, my friend Kelley was trying to figure out which wall Tom Cruise had scaled and which street he had escaped down in Mission Impossible 3. At that moment Lyndsey thought she saw Tom Cruise standing in line. Of course, it wasn’t him, but she got several pictures of his lookalike by having one of us pose in the general direction where he was standing and then she would take a picture of this man instead of us. Once we were inside the museum we saw early Christian art to begin with and then icons. We also saw many tapestries, paintings, and sculptures. As if this wasn’t enough to look at, there are also decorated ceilings all throughout the Vatican Museum. At the end we saw the Sistine Chapel, which I felt there was too much hype over. Everyone, unfortunately including the group I was with just wanted to get to the Sistine chapel as soon as possible, so I felt like I missed out on a lot of the other art. What I have encountered at the Prado, Vatican Museum, and the cathedrals is that you could spend days taking in all of the art! The ceilings are so elaborate and have so many different paintings and parts to them that I just want to lay on the floor. I think that would be a better and more enjoyable view instead of craning my neck to see! I don’t think that’s possible though  After lunch we got on the bus to go to the airport. Once at the airport, I found a caprese sandwich so I was thrilled. Tomato, basil, and FRESH mozzarella are three of my favorite foods, so when you put them all together it is even better! I also found some delicious truffles. Apparently it was my lucky day!

Ashton