Category: Featured

With the folks in Andalucía (w/ lots of photos)

I got an early birthday present this week:


My mom and stepdad came to visit me in Granada! We spent the week running around Granada, both touristy attractions and more typical parts of the city. We got to walk through the Albaicin, toured the Alhambra, had tapas with my Spanish host parents, and took a day trip to a wonderful bed & breakfast in a tiny pueblo in the Alpujarras (Alps).

Jean Claude, the cook/owner of L’atilier (our B&B), made us some amazing vegetarian food – our dinner was the best meal I’ve eaten in many years, possibly ever. Our friends Beth, Lee, Dave and Cory had highly recommended L’atilier to us and practically insisted that we go – and for very good reasons. Thanks, guys, for making sure we got to experience such wonderful cuisine and hospitality! 🙂

Having my folks out for the week was so much fun… It was great being able to show them my new stomping grounds and share the city with them. They’re spending the next few days in Amsterdam before returning home. (My Amsterdam trip will be in early May.)

I got a lot of great pictures during their visit, I will post them after the “read more…” link since there are so many (Facebook and RSS readers, this means you’ll have to follow the link to the original post to see all the pictures.)

Continue reading With the folks in Andalucía (w/ lots of photos)

Taking Stock

If all goes according to plan, I should be graduating in May 2010. When I went into my Business Administration program with an Information Systems major back in 2006, I didn’t think I’d be leaving it in the midst of an economic crisis. On top of that, I have been learning more and more about what kinds of work I find truly engaging and interesting, and I’m still figuring a lot out on that subject.

They say that during an economic downturn, the best investment you can make is in yourself: increase your own skill set and marketability to become more competitive. I know that my academic program is definitely helping in that regard, but I know that I will have a lot of learning left to do if I want to end up following my real passions. This means much more in-depth skills than are learned in IS programs – basically, trying to catch up with the Computer Science majors.

At this point, if I go for some kind of tech job, I could see myself freelancing, consulting, or torturing myselftrying my hand at a startup or other entrepreneurial venture. At the moment, I don’t see myself as a software engineer, systems analyst, or project manager for a large or even medium-sized firm.

And then there’s the question of the Peace Corps: I am seriously considering two years of volunteering in the Peace Corps after graduation. I’d be doing some kind of IT-related work in a third-world country, though the work probably won’t directly match up with my own career aspirations. Would two years away from the bad economy be a good thing? Or would I be losing my experience/knowledge/fresh job history? Would it be a resume booster? All of these questions are rather self-centered ones for something that really is about serving others, but they still are things I will have to consider for such a large commitment.

So basically, the question of how to best grow my skill set and enter the tech industry under unfavorable economic conditions has been very big on my mind as of late. I don’t have any definitive answers, but have stumbled upon a few helpful clues that might turn into more complete strategies later on.

Sevilla & Córdoba (with pics)

Just got back from a weekend in Sevilla with a quick stop in Córdoba. Sevilla was absolutely amazing – a few times larger than Granada. Like Madrid, it’s full of monuments at every turn. We went around all the usual touristy stops – my mind was blown by the Cathedral’s tower. It was constructed by Muslims and then converted into the cathedral’s bell tower. Since the call to prayer used to be given from the top of the tower five times a day, they elected to use ramps instead of stairs and ride up by horse or donkey. The ramps are still there, and you have to go up around 35 of them to reach the top, where an amazing view of Sevilla awaits.

We made an afternoon stop in Córdoba yesterday, as well. I was sick – second time in a week. After spending an hour and a half looking for a pharmacy that’s open on Sundays during siesta. Ran into about 15 closed ones (Spain has pharmacies everywhere) before finally finding a 24/7 one. Then had a tour of the Mosque/Cathedral, which was an amazingly cavernous building.

I’m now glad to be back in Granada- getting sick on the last day while still traveling is a real pain.

Now for pictures!

Sevilla

Córdoba

Paseos & More (with pics)

The real semester has started up here, and with it comes the sad reality that I’m not here on a five-month vacation. 😛

Classes in my program (Hispanic Studies) are mostly taught by University of Granada faculty who normally teach Spaniards. The classes happen at full-speed Spanish, and don’t normally stop to cover aspects of Spanish language except for a few obscure vocabulary words. My most interesting class by far is Hispanoamerican Culture & History. I haven’t been able to take history classes since my junior year of high school, so I am happy to be back in one. My class schedule is pretty similar to that of an American university, except that Study Abroad students here never have class on Fridays.

For the last few weeks, I’ve gone out to different districts of the city on my own to explore everything a bit more. The whole city center feels pretty familiar now, and I’ve started to venture a bit into a couple of areas off the tourist map of Granada. This morning I went with my friends Megan and Korie to one part of town that seemed more suburban and modern – it had a big view of the Sierra Nevada, which made me feel almost as  if I were in Colorado!

Other times I’ve explored more of the Albayzin and Sacromonte districts. It’s great how so many neighborhoods here have such distinct personalities in a small area.

I’ll post a few odds-and-ends photos from the last few weeks here – a little bit of everything from different paseos I’ve done, plus a couple of other things that don’t fit anywhere else.

Paseos & More

Obama continues and defends Bush’s illegal rendition programs

Very soon after taking office, Obama signed an executive order mandating the close of the Guantánamo Bay facility within the next year. His administration has been working hard to ensure our security by administering justice and by not provoking our enemies by torturing our prisoners. As far as Guantánamo is concerned, I am more than happy with the progress being made.

That said, the Obama administration has chosen to continue the United States’ illegal extraordinary rendition program. This CIA program transports detainees, most of whom have not been charged with any crime and are not afforded simple protections of due process or habeas corpus, to "black sites" in foreign countries where they are subjected to extra-constitutional interrogations and torture.

After the Guantánamo executive orders, it became clear that rendition was going to stay in one form or another. Obama’s CIA Director nominee, Leon Panetta, testified that he would end the rendition program, only to later retract his statements – I’m guessing after the administration set him straight. On the lack of reform regarding rendition, The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

But the biggest outrage came on Monday, when new Obama administration lawyers chose to keep the Bush administration’s stance in a federal lawsuit brought against a Boeing subsidiary by five detainees who were transported by the CIA to foreign countries, where they were tortured during interrogations. Bush’s lawyers insisted that the case be dismissed as a matter of national security, and now Obama’s lawyers have chosen to do the same.

Extraordinary rendition is never an acceptable practice. It is performed for the explicit reason that interrogations can be conducted without the protections of U.S. law, which forbids torture. Justice must be carried out to ensure our nation’s safety. But this includes the need to humanely treat our prisoners and detainees, instead of spitting in our enemies’ faces and inviting even more violence to our doorstep. The ACLU’s statement best summarizes the situation:

"Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again."

Shopping and Super Bowling in Granada

About a week ago, I finished my 3-week intensive language course at UGr. I have no obligations until classes start up again sometime around February 12- so I’ve got some nice free time on my hands. Tomorrow I finally will tour the Alhambra, so look forward to a massive photo dump sometime tomorrow afternoon (US time).

Sunday night I went out with some of the full-year study abroad students. There was a bar throwing a Super Bowl party, but we were the only people who bothered to show. It sure was interesting watching America’s biggest day in sports from a country where close to no one is interested whatsoever. Kickoff was at 12:30 or 1:00 AM, and we were there until about 4:00 AM. They had prepared for more visitors than just us, so we got double helpings of free tapas with our drinks. Eating palella and bocadillos in a near-empty bar sure was a strange way too watch the super bowl… I would have killed for some nachos or potato chips with onion dip.

One other thing worth mentioning is what shopping is like here in comparison to good ol’ American suburbia:

  • The ratio of shoe stores to clothing stores is probably about 1.5:1
  • I’m sorry, but Spanish designers’ idea of jeans is just ugly. In every 10 pairs that I look at, there is maybe one that doesn’t disgust me. I made the mistake of only bringing 3 pairs of pants and I’ve been dropping into various stores for a couple of weeks now trying to find one pair that looks decent.
  • If any article of clothing has writing on it, you can bet on it being some kind of broken English. I saw a shirt that says, “Nobody knows I’m metrosexual,” and a clothing tag that said something like, “The most bombastic and iridescent style, threatening the essence of violence. Straight from the jungles of Africa.”
  • The one equivalent of a major department store here is El Corte Inglés. They have horribly high prices but a selection that can’t be beat. They usually have their own sit-down restaurant inside the store. We visited an 8-story Corte Inglés in Madrid with a rather fancy restaurant on the top floor.
  • What I heard was true, a pair of Levi’s here will easily go for 100€, if not more.

For now, that is all. Tomorrow… ¡La Alhambra!

Granada Update

It’s been a little while, so I figured I’d pop my head in and give y’all a quick update on life over here.

I’m through 9 of 15 days of my intensive language course. Things are going well – I still feel like I’m reviewing the exact stuff that I’ve been learning and repeatedly screwing up for years now. This time it is clicking with a bit more ease, but it’s no walk in the park. The nice thing is that this time I actually feel motivated to study it and get it down.

I switched my course for the semester that starts in early February. I was in the Language, Literature & Culture program, but I changed to the Hispanic Studies program. Hispanic Studies has more faculty members from the University of Granada, and are more focused on the actual subject matter than they are on linguistic aspects. I signed up for some cool ones (Flamenco and Traditional Music, anyone?) so I’m looking forward to the start of that semester. Unfortunately, Hispanic Studies also comes with more homework. But I’ll only have 4 days of class a week, so I can’t complain too much.

More random observations and personal experiences from recent days:

  • As expected, Andalucia is awesome for its free tapas. Each drink you order comes with awesome free snacks.
  • While lacking spice and strong flavor, I am really starting to enjoy how the mediterranean diet is quite healthy without sacrificing much in the taste department. Obesity here is way less frequent, and I see a lot less unhealthily skinny people here too. It seems like a lot of people here manage to hover around “just right,” and that they don’t have to work too hard to stay there.
  • My family and teachers have started trying to correct some Latin American influences on my Spanish – and are trying to get me to pick up the Castillian lisp as well. I’m subconsciously starting to use it at times, and also picking up the sloppy Andalucian habit of dropping the ends of many words (“Muchas gracias” sounds like “mucha gracia” and “más o menos” becomes “Má o meno”)
    As a native of another former imperial colony whose language has mutated much from the mother tongue, I don’t know what to think. I react negatively to the idea of British English being superior to an American dialect, since we can all understand each other regardless. I’m not closing my mind to Castillian Spanish – after all, I chose this country for study abroad over a plethora of Latin American options – but it certainly is making things more confusing. Once I was an American trying to pick up Mexican Spanish. In a few months I’ll sound a third American, a third Mexican, and a third Spanish. If I do Peace Corps in Latin America after I graduate, the people there are going to be crazy confused. 
  • Last week I got a cold, mostly hanging around the throat and nose. Now it’s turned into a really annoying cough. I’m hoping it passes soon, but at least my head feels clear now.
  • I watched inauguration online since I didn’t know if the televised coverage would dub over the speeches or not (they didn’t). People seem pretty interested but I didn’t get the best vantage point to really comment on Spaniards’ opinions. It’s obvious that people over here are very interested, but beyond that I don’t really know.

OK, I’m out for now… Time to beat myself over the head with some Spanish grammar.

Dear iPhone:

We need to talk.

We’ve been together for almost a year and a half now, and it’s been great – I have few complaints. You’ve freed up space in my pockets by letting me leave my PDA and iPod at home. You’ve made me feel more liberated with Google Maps at my fingertips. I even hacked your SIM-lock so I could bring you with me to Spain, instead of having a fling with some Spanish phone. But I have a confession to make.

There’s somebody else:

Her name’s Pre. I feel guilty saying it, but she’s giving me unfaithful thoughts. And it’s not just her features (though I do like her tactile keyboard and revealing slider): she’s got a great brain, too.

She does picture messaging and syncs with cloud services. She knows how to copy and paste, something I’ve patiently overlooked with you since we first met. And – I know you don’t do this because it’s against your values, too “kinky” – but she multitasks her apps.

I haven’t done anything yet but I wanted to get it all out in the open now. I want our relationship to work, I really do, but if you don’t start to pull it together and do some of the things that the Pre does so well – you’ve been promising me push notifications since September – I might have to reconsider. Nobody else is getting in my pants pockets but you, but if you don’t start working on improving our relationship soon, I’m not going to stick around forever.

I hope you understand.

-Zeke

Photos from the first week in Granada

We’re getting pretty well settled here in Granada… Much easier to blend in a bit and feel more like a local. I’m learning the streets more and have a better sense of direction…

Today we went for a tour of the Albayzin – the historic Muslim quarter of town on a huge hill next to the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, quieter part of town that has less roads and more footpaths. Very hilly, too. We saw a lot of great stuff and I got my first good look at the Alhambra, too.

Getting home from the tour was a bit difficult… There was a huge Gaza protest going on in the street. We wanted to  check it out, but at the same time I knew that abroad, Americans can be seen as “OMG Israel can totally do whatever the hell they want.” So we tried to lie low walking through the enormous crowd, not wanting to look very American. Hopefully with the new presidency our foreign policy might come out of the sewers so we aren’t seen as supporters of genocide.

OK, I digress. The photos:

Granada, semana primera

Well I’ve been in Granada for a couple of days now, and I’ve been able to adjust to the city some more. I’ll commence the unfocused mental dump of my observations from the last few days:

  • Granada feels way more urban than I had expected. I thought it would be a small to medium-sized town like Fort Collins, but it’s about twice the size of that – around 250,000 people. I’ve been saying for a while that I’d like to try living in a big city, and while Granada is pretty small relative to Denver, Phoenix or Madrid, it’s still way more urban than anywhere I’ve lived before. Maybe it’ll make for a good trial of a somewhat larger city before taking the plunge into a city of millions.
  • Living in an old city with old streets is a very – well, foreign – concept. It’s obvious that there was no master planner in Granada, and it’s really easy to make a wrong turn that takes you way farther away from your destination than you had intended. I’ve gotten lost several times but the major streets and landmarks in the city center are starting to become familiar. I know enough to get home and get to class 😀
  • The weather here is abnormally cold. It snowed yesterday, which is very rare. Many, many scarves. I’ll probably pick up the trend this weekend.
  • Because of the crappy weather, I haven’t bothered to go anywhere near La Alhambra yet. I want to tour it when the weather is just a bit better.
  • Going out tonight for the first time, not counting the pool hall I went to in Madrid. I’ve heard good things about the nightlife here, so I’ll have to report back on that.
  • I have one class for the next three weeks. It’s four hours long every day, with two profesoras that teach for two hours each. Neither of them know a word of English (or at least they claim) and it’s not allowed to define or translate an English word for another student – we have to try to define the word we have in mind in Spanish. It’s more difficult, and after several hours of this  my brain definitely starts to hurt. We won’t be learning any new grammar in our class, but instead will be reviewing everything we’ve learned and perfecting it in order to correct all of the little mistakes. It’s exactly what I need, so it’ll be hard, but I’ll be glad I did it by the end of the month. After that I’ll advance a level and take my semester classes one level up.
  • I’m resisting the temptation to eat at Burger King. My roommate went there today and he says it’s better than it is in the States. I’m going to guess that I’ll cave in in another day or two.
  • Everything they say about learning a language by studying abroad is definitely true. Being around it all  for just a week has helped me to pick up so much, and I’ve met a few students who were here for the last semester that are excellent with the language.
  • My English writing has gotten sigificantly worse because my mind keeps trying to form sentences in Spanish structures.
  • In the last day or so I’ve started correcting myself constantly, even mid-sentence. I think it’s good that I’m thinking about the “little rules” that I so often break, but at the same time it’s probably annoying to try and carry on a  conversation with someone who can barely complete their sentences.
  • Spanish food is hearty and healthy. I’m still adjusting to the meal schedule but the food is great (and it’s nice to not have to find a million restaurants of varying quality and prices, like we had to for the first week). It is a bit more bland than some of my favorite foods, like Mexican or Thai, which definitely are a bit more strong in their tastes. I’ll have to go in search of some cayenne or something.
  • Starting to look at plans for my ~10 day break after the intensive month class is over. Ryanair is amazingly cheap, I can fly from Granada to Italy for like… 4 euro. I don’t have a huge list of “must-sees” for while I’m here, but I would like to see Belgium, Prague, Rome, maybe Amsterdam. Overall I’d like to stick to Spain, though. I don’t like the idea of spending lots of time in a place where I don’ know any of the language.
  • Before getting to Granada, I definitely felt like more of an observer than a participant in Spanish life. I’m starting to blend in a bit more and I’m sure that within a couple of weeks it will just come naturally to me.
  • Navigating streets and crowded areas is pretty strange – there really isn’t much of a concept of personal space here. I’m noticing little things I do to get out of others’ way that nobody else does, and realizing how funny it must look. I normally have great “crowd navigation skills” but here people have different fixed habits of which side to move to when you’re in someone’s way, and other things too.