Bruselas + TACOS!

On Sunday afternoon I returned to Valladolid from Brussels, Belgium with about 15 pounds of chocolate. YUM! It was quite the adventure, let me tell you.
First, I forgot our airline tickets. Cool. Good thing we had a little bit of time before our flight! We took the taxi ride of our lives back to Valladolid to print our tickets off Sarah's USB and then back to the airport to run to our gate. Whew. Once we got to the Brussels airport, we realized the language barrier we were about to have because in Brussels they speak French and Dutch. Thankfully, many people also spoke English and we got directions to the bus that takes us from the airport to the city. We must have taken the wrong bus because it only took us to the Charleroi train station.
However, we met a really nice Italian man on our way who plays American football in his hometown and speaks English. His name is Fabio pahahahaha! So, we bought train tickets and got on the train with Fabio. Then our train broke down. We transferred to another train that was full, so we stood between the cars and prayed that we would know what stop we should get off at.

When we finally arrived at our stop, we were clueless as to where to go from there. Thankfully, we found a woman who spoke English and asked her for directions. She knew exactly how to get to our hotel, down to every last turn! We checked into our hotel around 9pm, making the trip about 9 hours total from Valla to Brussels. Whew.

We were pleasantly surprised to find a personal kitchen in our cheap hotel room, so we decided to make some macaroni and cheese that some lovely friends of mine from home sent me a few weeks ago :) Buenisimo! We decided to stay in that night because it was raining pretty hard and it was dark so we couldn't see anything anyway.

In the morning we got up early to make the most of our day. As we were walking down to Grand Place we decided to take a picture next to these statues. Then these guys in suits jumped in the picture. Oooookay. Hahahaha they were super nice and invited us to go out with them that night, but we were exhausted by the time we got back to our hotel so we didn't actually hang out with them at all.

We got to Grand Place and stopped some kids with some waffles to find out where they got them. Turned out they were doing some sort of school project where they had to trade hard boiled eggs for anything people were willing to give them. We gave them some American change and headed out to find some Belgian waffles.

We stopped at The Waffle Factory and met our new friend Oosed. Don't really know if that's how you spell it. Probably not. BUT he was super funny and gave us lots of recommendations of what to do and see in Brussels. We walked down to Mannekin Pis and then took the metro to the Atomium and toured that bad boy, buying lots of chocolate along the way, as well as some yummy Belgian "frites". We returned to our hotel exhausted and hungry, dropped off some shopping bags, and headed to "Volle-Gas" for some mussels and other Belgian delicacies. Oh, I almost forgot! We tried some escargots too! There was a street vendor right by Mannekin Pis that was selling them and we had to try them while we had the chance! They were authentic! Sarah and Alyssa both ended up spitting them out, but I ate a few. They were alright.

The next morning we traveled back to Valladolid and rested for a bit before we caught an autobus to Laguna (a pueblo) to make tacos at Rut's house (a girl from my Bible study). A bit exhausting after a weekend trip to another country, but muy fabuloso! There were about fifteen of us there sharing quesadillas, tacos, and nachos for dinner. I don't know if you guys understand how much I have CRAVED Mexican food since I have been here. Thank goodness I could find almost everything I needed to make them. What a fix.

Well, there we are, friends. 

Adventures,

adventures,

adventures!!!!

March Adventures

Ok so I'm really sucking at this whole updating my blog regularly thing. This month has just been crazy for me. Let's see here... I went to Barcelona last month. That was fun. I did all the things I said I was going to do in that blog I posted before I went, surprise, surprise! Then, let's see here, what did I do? The first weekend of this month we had a four day weekend because it was Carnaval. Carnaval is celebrated throughout Spain and most of Europe right before Lent. They go crazy before they have to give up meat or something. Idk. I guess that's how Mardi Gras started too? Anyway, I got two days off school so it was cool. My friend Lindsay and I weren't crazy about being part of the Carnaval festivities, so we hiked part of the Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James). It is one of the biggest Christian pilgrimages and it ends in the north of Spain in Galicia (which I heard was the most beautiful part of Spain). Plus, I heard that I get to go to heaven if I do part of the camino and we all know it's not about Jesus forgiving your sins to go to heaven, but what you do to earn it. (Sarcasm, friends).

The camino was BEAUTIFUL. Galicia reminded me so much of Wisconsin :) It was amazing how God provided for us on our trip too, from the very beginning to the very end. For example, the first night we arrived in Sarria around midnight not knowing that all the albergues (places to sleep while you hike the camino) closed at ten pm. Cool. So, we found this lady on the street who was walking around with a drunk man and she offered for us to stay at her house out in the country. We didn't really have any other options, so we got in her car. She was an angel. And what a great memory!

We started hiking early in the morning and by midday ran into a Spanish man from Barcelona who was super nice. We hiked with him the rest of the day and met up with his friend in the next town. They were such a blessing! I don't know if we would have made it to Santiago in time for our flight if it weren't for them. We didn't know how ignorant we were about everything camino until we met them... They taught us the best, cheapest places to stay and eat, and they were doing the five day trip in four days too so they knew how far we had to go each day to make it on time.

NOTE TO FUTURE PEREGRINOS: 

Give yourself enough time to do the camino. Don't try to cut it short. Trust me.

About the third day of our four day hike my knee started to feel like it was being sliced open. AWESOME. Long story short, it didn't go away, but the other knee even gave out the next day too. So, the last day we ended up walking around 50km (about 30 miles)... with both of my knees basically not functioning. I had to hook arms with Lindsay in order to keep going or my legs would give out. Eventually I became numb to the pain, so it was ok.

We walked for about nine hours that day and once we finally got to the cathedral at the end of the camino, we couldn't stay for long because we had to get to the airport and catch our plane back. It's a shame because, even though I'm not big on architecture or Catholic cathedrals, it was one of the most beautiful churches I have ever seen. Now, I don't know how much of that beauty was self imposed because I had been waiting in pain for so long to get to our destination, but I suppose we will never know.

So, we got our credentials and our certificate and then headed off to catch the bus to the airport. Little did we know, there was a Carnaval parade going on and the bus we went to catch was out of service because of the parade. Cool. So we walked even further to the next one and had to run to catch it. I don't even know how I did it. What was amazing is that the bus driver waited for us (bus drivers don't wait for anyone in Spain) and I'm not even sure how he saw us because you can't see out the back of the bus... Man, the Lord was looking out for us. While on the bus, we met this guy from Italy who happened to be getting on the same plane as us and while we were waiting for the gate to open he just turned around and threw two packets of Oreos at us. What? Haha it was so great! Then, we had to catch our bus from the airport in Madrid to Valladolid and that was a definite adventure, but we eventually made it. Actually Lindsay made it and then yelled at me to climb in because she had saved a seat for me. Whew! It was a super confusing situation. We did buy tickets, though, so don't go a-thinkin that we stole a bus ride back to Valla!

SO we FINALLY made it back to Valladolid at three am on Sunday night (Monday morning, rather) and walked home to collapse in our beds before class at 9:30am. Let me tell you, friends, it was an adventure from the beginning to the very end. All four days and 120km of it. And God was so good to us!

I can tell you that hiking the Camino de Santiago was probably the most fun trip I have ever been on, but also the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I don't recommend it. I mean, maybe I would if you were giving yourself the alloted amount of time. But idk.

This past weekend I went to a conference in Madrid with GBU, which is the university Bible study that I am a part of. There was one Spanish girl from our group who went and four American girls, including myself. We had a lot of fun and met many new people. It was a great experience to have, but it was also a little tainted because it had a very evangelistic direction to it. At first I was starting to get worried because we didn't open our Bibles or pray once, nor did we do any worship. BUT, as I talked to one of the girls from Madrid, she explained to me the evangelistic nature of the conference. She assured me that at most conferences they would normally have worship and prayer and more digging into the Bible. That was a relief for me. And what an encouragement. God is working here in Spain, friends :)

Lastly, (I know this is super long, SORRYY!!) this weekend I am headed off to Brussels, Belgium to indulge myself in chocolate and waffles with two friends, Sarah and Alyssa. WE'RE REALLY EXCITED!! It should be a ton of fun, if I know us.

So there you are. Update on my life: complete :)

Tortilla Española

Last Friday we got together with some people from our Bible study. They taught us how to make Spanish tortilla and we taught them how to make cream cheese brownies (thought of Melanie the whole time). Plus, one of the guys made crepes because he's half French and crepes are yummy. It made for a VERY nutritious dinner.

 First we made tortilla. Yum. Now some of you may be thinking I am speaking of the tortillas you buy at the grocery store. Mexican tortillas. NOPE! But don't worry, that's what I thought it was at first too.

Host Mom: "Oh, we are going to have tortilla for dinner tonight."

Kim: "We are ONLY eating tortillas!? Que pena!"

Rest assured. The tortilla they speak of is a simple dish containing egg, potatoes, onions, and a little bit of salt. Might sound gross to you, but you're wrong. It's kind of like an omelet. It's one of the most popular dishes in these parts. There are other types of tortillas, obviously you could put in it whatever you like, but potato is the most popular. Technically it's called tortilla de patata, but if you just say tortilla española people know what you are talking about. If you want tortilla with anything else in it, though, you have to specify.

Anyway, it's quite a simple dish to make. You just peel the potatoes and onions, cut them into pieces, and fry them in a bit of olive oil. Take them out, mix them with the whipped eggs in a frying pan, and cook her up! Oh, and add some salt too. The most difficult part is flipping it. Most people use a plate and then slide the tortilla back onto the pan. 

 Our Spanish friends really like brownies, so they wanted to learn how to make them with us. As we made them, we explained to them what we were doing and they wrote it down so they had the recipe for future reference.
Now, I always seem to have troubles with these Spanish ovens... I'm sure we did the conversion of Fahrenheit to Celsius right (I used the converter on my phone), but for some reason the top was completely burnt and underneath wasn't even fully cooked. Aye! This time we even had it on "whole oven" setting.
The kitchen got a little smokey, but it was alright. We just opened up a window. At first they were pretty disappointed because the brownies didn't work out, but we decided to change the setting to "only bottom" and see what happened. It worked! AND you could barely even tell they were burnt. Go us! So, they turned out pretty well.

Daniel (he's the guy in the background there) is half French and lived in France for three years, so we asked him to make crepes for us. The recipe was his mother's own, and even in French... talk about authentic! Even though I haven't spoken or seen French since senior year of high school, I could even read the recipe :) I was pretty proud of myself. It helps that I know what goes in crepes, generally.
I did a pretty good job making my batch, as you can see. That little doo-hickey appliance was pretty handy! Otherwise I don't think our crepes would have been nearly as circular. It may have been fun to make fun shapes with them though...

So, here you can see our extremely healthy dinner for a fabulous Friday night in Spain. We ended up trying all kinds of combinations of food... brownie wrapped in crepe, tortilla wrapped in crepe, tortilla con brownie...? It got a little crazy.
We had a bunch of fun, though. It almost even turned into a slumber party! The girl's house we cooked at was in a pueblo right outside of Valladolid and the last bus came to take us back at 10:30pm. We ALMOST missed it, but made it just in time.

Next on the list, you ask? MEXICAN!!!!

Update... Finally!

Alright, so I'm doing a terrible job of updating this... Whoops! Things are just happening all over the place!
... And I'm lazy. You all knew that though ;) So, let's see here...



I had my first Spanish cine experience! A few weekends ago we went to see Tangled in a theater. I saw it in December in the states (in English, of course), so it was easier for me to understand. So much fun!

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I also had the awesome experience of watching LOS PACKERS win the SUPERBOWL! What a great experience. Some friends of mine know the owners of a bar called El Aire, so they told the owners that there would be quite a few American students coming to watch the Superbowl if they played it, So they opened up on a Sunday night, just for us, and played the Superbowl. It started at 12:30pm here. I didn't actually hit my bed until 5am Monday morning. Let's just say class was tough on Monday. Totally worth it, though!
What made the Superbowl even more interesting, is that not only were there NO COMMERCIALS, but there were Spanish announcers! I really had to pay attention to understand what was going on because I don't know American football terms in Spanish. Plus, they talk so fast! Without commercials it was harder to pay attention, though, because there were so many breaks and pauses where there would normally be commercials. Oh well. No big. We won :)
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This past weekend we had another excursion. We went to three places: Museo de las Villas Romanas, Portillo, and Tordesillas. The museo is an exhibition of Roman ruins about an hour away from Valladolid. While we were there we saw a short play in a reconstructed building that was made to look like what the ruins were back in the day. Does that make sense?

   From there we went to Portillo and saw a sweet castle. It was a lot of fun. We climbed the tower to the top and there was a fabulous view. It reminded me so much of Guatemala at times. They have similar fences around their houses and their roofing is similar. There is graffiti all over the place in Spain, which you actually come to appreciate after a while. The graffiti in the smaller, poorer villages really trigger memories of Guatemala for me. Some of them even have things all over the place like in Guate. It was just so beautiful to me. What an experience.

Later, we went down to the dungeon, where they would apparently just toss people down to break their legs, then leave them there to die. Kind of dark and twisted. I imagine it would have smelled quite terrible.




Next we headed to Tordesillas, which is where the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed. That's the one that gave Spain dominion of most of the Americas and Portugal got some of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Brazil, etc. EXCITINGGGGG hahaha We learned about the treaty this week in history class, though, so it was nice to have a museum visual to remember it by.

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Sunday we had a lunch at my church. That was super fun. Apparently they have a lunch the second Sunday of every month. Cute. Great way to get to know people and use our Spanish!

Wednesday I got lunch with Andrea, the Navigators missionary, again. I really like their family, they are so nice! She took me to the grocery store and helped me find a few American things I was craving. Example: chocolate chips for making chocolate chip cookies!! Yum! Can't wait for those.

This weekend (today, actually... in two hours? crap! I have to pack!) I am heading to the good old Barcelona with my roomie Jessica, and two friends named Lindsay and Courtney. We are staying at a hostel really close to the beach and it should be great weather there :) We plan to see Sagrada Familia, the old Olympic Stadium, Parc Guell, walk Las Ramblas (something on my bucket list!! wooo!! check that baby off!!!), among other things. Don't worry, I'll take plenty of pictures of my first adventure! We will return on Tuesday night, so I will try and update as soon after that as I can. May be difficult, but we will see.

Not sure when my RA interview is going to be yet, I am waiting for an email back. It should be next weekend though. If you have any tips for me, let me know!

Miss you all!

Segovia and Other Adventures

Wow! It has been a busy week for me! Last Friday night I went to get burgers with a few friends from an hamburgueseria. They were HUGE. We knew they were called "Gigantes", but we weren't entirely sure how big they were. In the states a huge burger isn't that big. A lot of people decided to share between two or three people. My roommate decided she wanted her own, so we each got one.

Needless to say, I didn't finish it all in one sitting. It was probably the size of four burgers. Whew!

NOTE TO FUTURE TRAVELERS: Gigante really means giant in Spain!

Saturday was super fun, we had our first excursion to Segovia. We saw the aqueduct and toured around the town a little bit. The town was beautiful. We had an awesome opportunity to tour the Alcázar of Segovia too. It was the first time I had ever been in a castle! Although it wasn't entirely in the original condition because of a fire in 1862, it had been restored. King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella were married in this castle, they lived here for a little while, and it served as a state prison for some amount of time. Seems like a pretty versatile place. It had been taken over by both Muslims and Christians at different points, but the decorations and the artwork have a very strong Muslim influence. Super beautiful.

On Sunday there was a Party for the Nations at our church. It was kind of like a pot-luck style dinner where everyone brought a dish that was from their country for others to sample. My roommate and I decided we wanted to make seven layer bars. FAIL. Spanish ovens are very different. We knew it was in Celsius instead of Fahrenheit and we were prepared for that, but we didn't know that Spanish ovens work in sections. There are three settings: top, bottom, both. Apparently we had it on top because it was burnt to a crisp on the top, but barely even cooked on the bottom. Now don't ask me why you would only want to cook the top of something, but ok whatever. I just do not understand that setting. Anyway, we had a lot of fun at the church and met a lot of new people. One lady shared her testimony with me. She was married at one point, but somehow became HIV positive and her husband no longer wanted anything to do with her. Through the process she was saved and God finally blessed her with a new husband who she is so in love with. What a great reminder of God's sovereignty. LOVE TESTIMONIES!

This week was really busy with coffee dates and planning for my spring break trip. Right now I am looking at touring through Switzerland, Italy, and Greece with a friend or two. We are super excited. We pretty much have Switzerland and Italy planned out, but Greece is actually a new addition to the trip. We want to walk Paul's footsteps and visit some of the places he visited on his secondary missionary journey. We will probably be in Greece for about a week, but aren't sure yet if we want to do join a planned tour through some sort of program so we can learn as much as possible, or if we want to just do our own thing while we are there and study it ourselves. If any of you have any suggestions or know of any resources or people who could help us out let me know!

I am still praying about what God will have me doing this summer, too, if you would like to be in prayer with me for that :)

Praise God for traveling companions!

Thinking of you all!

Tutoring and Intercambios

On Monday I started my tutoring job. It was a lot of fun. The parents actually speak English, but it is kind of broken and they both have thick accents. They said they want their children to learn pure English. Works for me!  Every Monday I will be going to their house to tutor their two little girls who are 4 and 6 years old. They are energetic and have short attention spans, but I think we will have a lot of fun. I am excited to hang out with some Spanish kids. I kind of wish I was tutoring more often, but they also have an English class in school. Plus, my time seems to be filling up quickly.
Wednesday night I went to a bookstore with some friends to pick up a textbook I need for my grammar class. While we were there, we encountered a young Spanish man who spoke English quite well. He told me that I was the second native speaker he has ever talked to, so I asked him if he ever did "Intercambios" (a conversation table program through the university). He did one time, but was much more interested in setting up a time to meet with me and do our own "Intercambios" thing. Well, I wasn't planning on doing "Intercambios" really, so I kind of avoided the question and asked him where we could find Spanish Bibles. He told us he had no idea. The young people here don't go to church, as he informed us. I remember something about "you won't be able to find anyone under 60 at a church in Spain." Well, there are a few young people at Comunidad Cristiana, but I imagine he is generally correct. He asked us if we were into church and when we told him he were I thought it would be a deal breaker for him, but he still insisted on doing "Intercambios". I ended up giving him my name and phone number so we could plan a time to meet. Of course, I won't go without my roommate and I will meet him at a public place, but it should be very interesting. He seemed very genuine.
Yesterday I met with a Navigators missionary for lunch at her house. *I was SO excited we had Mexican!!!* What a great family. I learned SOO much just talking with her about Spain.  As you can imagine, we ended up talking a lot about religion in Spain, which is seen through a VERY different lens. You see, religion here equals Catholicism and Catholicism is equated with Franco (the old dictator of Spain who died in '75). Religion is not to be trusted. Church and state are not separate here, and religion has always been institutionalized. It has been a means of social order; not exactly about God Himself. This gives me a whole different perspective of the separation of church and state issue in the states. It is so different here and I am really enjoying learning all about it. It's amazing what you can learn in just a few weeks!

Friends, I hope you are all doing well. I love hearing updates on your lives too! Please, please, please feel free to send me a message or Skype me or anything :)

God Is Good!

This morning I got up to go to the market with some friends. It was pretty fun :) They could tell we were Americans though, so we didn't buy anything because they were definitely overcharging us. It was kind of far away so there weren't a ton of people. We saw some cool sights on the way, like this slide. It looks crazy super adventurous and fun! There's caution tape on it though... so we were trying to decide if it there was tape on it because it was new or because it was dangerous. Who knows?

This morning I attended a church called Comunidad Cristiana and it was really good. We even sang a song in English! I think it was because they met us before the service, though. It was still sweet. It's a pretty small church and it was very open and family like. We had some good laughs. There were nine or ten of us from different schools there, so we had a good sized group. After church I met a couple from Kansas City who are actually planning a church plant in Valladolid. It was really exciting to hear about what they were doing. Tomorrow I am meeting with a missionary from the Navigators that is here. I am under the impression that they are attempting to start up a Navigators program at the university, but are still looking for an in there. How awesome would that be if we can make connections between this great church and the missionaries and really get things moving?! All on God's timing. But I'm so excited for what He is doing here and I am eager to see how He will use each of us :)
I'm sorry I haven't written about food yet. I'll get there, I promise.

P.S. Go Packers!!!!!