In the meantime

Hello friends and family,

To be rather honest with all of you, nothing really exciting has happened the last two weeks since my last post. That is partly because I have been swamped with homework, exams, papers, and scholarship applications. However for the other part, I am settling into life in spain, and new things don't really seem so new anymore. I am sure they would be strange and wierd for you, but after spending more than a month and a half here, most of it just seems to come with the territory. For example, the elections are coming up March 9 here in Spain. Denia has become littered with political ads, posters, and what not. In fact, I was woken up to a car with a huge loud speaker talking trash about Zapatero (the current president, and candidate for the upcoming elections, he's rather liberal). I have never seen that in the States, but I wasn't surprised after seeing how rabid Spaniards can get about elections.

Another example, I ate entire fish the other day, including their heads, tails, skin, and bones. It was delicious, and my padre always tells me that the flavor is in the skin, so I am forced to eat it. I tend to agree with him. I can't picture myself liking that in the States, but if you put enough olive oil on anything, it tastes great.

We are heading to Andalucia this Thursday to see what Granada and Cordoba have to offer. I need to remember to put batteries in my camera before we leave, for your sake if not my own. It should be very different than the trip to Barcelona, I think we have better living arrangements this time or at least we better, or else I am staging a protest with pickets and the like. If you know anything about the history of this region of Spain, the art and culture show very strong connections with its Muslim past.

I am glad to hear you all enjoyed my article the previous week. I think I want to write another, but I can't think of an enfoque (focus). Any ideas?

Tommy

Sorry for the Wait

Dear Family and Friends,

Its been a long time since I last graced this hallowed blog. So for that I'm sorry. However, you do have one thing to be thankful for, this post won't be near as long as the previous one. YAY. Also I did snap a picture of me and the family, which you can see right about here...

I look like a giant in that photo, and its not just tricky camera work. I really am alot bigger then my spanish family. My moms name is Mari, great cook, and my dad's is, Jose. On that couch right there is usually where Jose sit and talk after lunch or dinner. He is insanely pro Spain, so we usually talk about how good Spanish art, science, food, and wine is. I am quietly becoming more patriotic to Spain then I am to America. Shhhhh, don't tell my political science professors

Speaking on that note, I am currently writing an article for chimes that will be appearing in the upcoming issue, 2/15/08. It will be called Vale la Pena (worth the pain) and have a similar theme as I mentioned above. But i am not going to say anymore, you will need to read it, you can find the current issue online here http://clubs.calvin.edu/chimes/ and just search for my article by either my name or the name of the article

I am going to talk about the last two weekends here, but as I promised you a short post, I won't go into much depth.Please comment if you want to hear more

Last weekend there was quite the party in Spain. Its called carnaval, and that really translates to "farewell to meat." As Spain is traditionally a Catholic country, they practice lent just as many people do in the states. Carnaval is the day before lent, where everyone indulges in sweets, alcohol, and whatever else before the 40 days of lent. So in a sense, it is exactly the same as Mardis Gras and fat tuesday. Our group, rented a bus and went to a neighboring town to celebrate with 30,000 other spaniards. It was a night of shoulder to shoulder dancing, loud loud music, and excesses (as I am sure you can imagine). To give you a better picture of how crazy it was, I am going to provide you with two things. First, we left at 630 in the morning and the party was still raging. Second, here is a friend of mine and "your humble narrator" in our costumes.

This most recent weekend, a group of decided to climb a mountain that towers over denia. We met at 11, which was pretty hard for some of us, including me as we went to bed only 5 hours before that. We estimated that we walked nearly 13-14 miles to the very top of the mountain (2300ft). It was very rocky and steep, unlike any other mountain I have climbed before. I cut my hand trying to take a shortcut as you can see here.

Its a beautiful view from up there, take a peek, it was cloudy up there, as you will be able to see

Thats really about it for now, I hope everything is going well for everyone on the other side of the pond

So long,
Tommy Heyboer