FLAMENCO! OLE!

My second flamenco was SOO much better than the first (not that the first was bad)...but they were doing some really cool things, like this one senora twisted her body completely around BACKWARDS (kinda like the Exorcist girl), it was INSANE! Here is my recipe for getting a good flamenco dance. I think flamenco is a mixture of: stomp, the robot and riverdancing (Irish jig) when you´re really angry. It´s actually a good stress reliever, I´ve tried it! 1) Get really mad. You have to put on your mad face the WHOLE TIME! No smiling! 2) Throw your arms any which way you want and make them STIFF, except for your hands which move like snakes. 3)Now start making up your own rhythm and stomping slowly 4)Think of something that really REALLY pisses you off! (Bad grades, bad boyfriend, bad luck) 5) Stomp harder and as fast as you can moving your arms dramatically like the robot dance (except your hands) 6) Now pretend that there are flies all over you and hit your body in various places! While doing this scream: ´vale´ and ´ole´ 6) Okay stop hitting yourself before you have bruises, and start slowing down the rhythm 7) After you´re done releasing your anger, slow down the rhythm 8) Just take a deep breath, and just move your hands and realize that you´re at peace with the world 9) the END! GREAT flamenco dance! Remember the keys are INTENSE PASSION and ANGER!

Pancake Day!!

PANCAKE DAY! YES!! So at the beginning of our trip, Erin gave Nico this batch of blueberry pancake mix and maple syrup kit. This entire time, we have been craving pancakes and have been wondering what the heck she did with our gifts. So randomly one day the pancake mix (and my Mint, Chocolate Coffee, and Colorado tea) shows up in the kitchen and Nico says we can make it! QUE GUAY! We actually get to use the kitchen and cook! So we made a big plan to get up early and make them today at 9am. I felt like it was Christmas ... I was talking about pancakes all week and we both got up an hour earlier because we were too excited to make them. So first of all, Nico thinks the Chocolate Mint Coffee is chocolate, she didnt know it was coffee until she opened it. She didnt know what the heck the pancakes or syrup were because obviously she couldnt read English, OR BLUEBERRIES!!! There are no such thing as blueberries here, I couldnt even find the word in my Spanish dictionary, just berries (bayas). Anyway so we are all in the kitchen using olive oil for oil, brown eggs (their eggs have barcodes ON THE EGGS) and a wooden spoon for a spatula (Nico doesn't own a spatula). I never realized making pancakes is such an ART, until I saw Nico try! So Erin pours the batter and Nico jumps right in there trying to cook these pancakes. She starts whipping the fork around the batter so that it spills all over the pan. Then when the pancake starts to rise on the other side, she takes the wooden spoon and starts beating the pancake so it's flatter than a potato chip! I felt like she was hitting ME, by ruining our pancakes. I was like, no no necesitas dar golpes (No, you dont need to hit it). But I didnt want to be rude, until I saw our soggy pancakes! Then I was like LET ME DO IT! So then after that she tried to direct me to spill the batter everywhere with the fork, and I was like NO! YO PUEDO HACERLO, por favor! So yeah, it was hilarious, us fighting over the best way to make pancakes! Then Erin and I pour the syrup and start scarfing down these pancakes and Nico is like EWWW! Honey! I dont like honey! We were like: No, its different than honey, just try it! So she did, and hated it, but said she was glad for the experience! Oh well, more for Erin and I who ate them all! YUM! Now I have a stomachache...

Paris 4 - Stopped by the police

So then we drove from Paris France all the way to Salamanca Spain, through beautiful Southern France/Northern Spain through Pamplona Navarra (where Sanfermines take place in July which is the running of the bulls thru the streets). It is so gorgeous, more than Galicia, but not more than Santander. It was soo tranquilo, with a lazy river, grassy meadows and the famous Pyranees mountains and sheep bleating in the background. It cost a good 50 euro to go through all of the tollroads (we didnt know the freeroads) and at like 2 in the madrugada on our way from Madrid to Salamanca we got stopped by the Guardia Civil. They asked us for our residency cards and we showed them our pasaportes which they said were insufficient. Obviously we didnt have residency cards because we arent residents. So anyhow we were there for like 15 minutes talking to them as they wrote down all our info and checked the trunk. We found out today that there was another bomb in Madrid that blew up and killed a few policia, so they were being really strict. FInally we made it back to Salamanca at like 3 in the morning. Sorry to interrupt but these like 14 year old boys in this cybercafe are playing a LOUD videogame and are SOOO ANNOYING! They keep singing gypsy songs. I have to leave I cant even think they are so freaking loud!

Paris 3 - Notre Dame

That night I hung out with Daya at her hood in Saint Michele (which is cheaper Paris with tons of cool restaurants, a student's dream) and tried french crepes (like huge pancakes)with my FAV Nutella and bananas, made by Daya´s hot frenchman John Pierre (that really is his name)! We saw a movie in the making (Paris is just like LA) on our way to Daya´s hangout bar, and I got to have lemonade, which I really really missed, and a gyro! We kept missing our metro stop because we were so distracted talking, and once we had to leave the metro and catch another one cuz this french guy kept bugging us. We also saw this guy peeing off the very top of the balcony of this like 7 story building, who waved at us after he was done! I saw this like 5 story Louis Vuitton bag, and tons of crazy French styles, maybe weirder than the Spanish styles (both are stuck in the 80´s, maybe in 10 years they´ll get to the 90´s). The next day we all went down the River Seine (Poison River) on a boat for like 9 euro, and saw lots of famous Paris bridges which were beautiful and ANCIENT! We also saw Notre Dame Cathedral, which is not at all like it is in the Disney movie! I know I shouldn't base my facts off of a Disney movie, but I expected a lot more. The gargoyles were so tiny you could barely see them, and the Cathedral was big, but not THAT big, and the inside was okay, very grandiose. It had huge baroque chandeliers and organs, very interesting, but not that great. I honestly couldn't tell you why it was so famous, because the ones in Spain are much bigger, more interesting, more grandiose, more baroque and more detailed. I'm not playing favorites, Spain has them beat by a long-shot. The most interesting things about this cathedral are 1) the fact that it's so famous and 2) a statue had its head chopped off and was holding it in its own hands. And that's what I think about Notre Dame.

Paris 2 - Eiffel Tower

Paris is so different from Spain, the food (lots of sauces), the times (they go to bed early), money (it is so expensive), and the SMELL! OMG! I thought I was going to PUKE in the metro it was worse than the train to Portugal, I dont know HOW people ate there! BLECCH! Que ASCO! The metro was like another world, with entertainment, markets and people. To make spare change, people would go from compartment to compartment making french remixes of American rap songs complete with the saxophone and dancing- it had to be the funniest thing I've ever seen! There were little markets with coffee, verduras and fruits, and mini-souvenir shops. UNDERGROUND! So we saw the beautiful golden opera house, the gardens of Concorde and Tuileries, Napolean´s grave, the Arc de Triumph, the glass pyramid Louvre Museum, the Musee d Orsay, the rio Siene (which is supposedly so polluted that you would die of poison before drowning), the Egyptian obelisk, Champs Elysees (famous area that is like the Rodeo Drive of Paris), and por fin the Eiffel Tower. When I saw it from far away I was like, oh it's just like the one in Las Vegas, but no! This one was like 10 times bigger and ten times uglier! Why would you ever want to go up that thing? It was painted this ugly brown color, and it cost 10.40 euro to go to the very top. But supposedly it was beautiful at night, so we went during sunset up the first elevator to the second floor, and switched to the top elevator which took about a half hour to get there cuz of the long line and it was freezing and windy! So we finally made it to the top, which was great because you could see all of Paris. It had flags from tons of countries/cities and details of how far away in km the country was (LA was like 9105 km). Anyhow, there was grafitti from visitors all over the world on top, and we all wrote our own graffitti message and waited for the sun to go down. I'm thinking, this had better be good, because it's freezing and windy and I'm over it. Then, the sun goes down, tower lights up, and so does Paris, and it SPARKLES. It sparkles for like 10 minutes every hour! It is tan beautiful and everyone is quiet, watching in awe at the magic of it. How can this daylight eyesore turn into such a moonlight jewel? After that, it's not so cold and I can't really feel the wind. It reminds me of a Christmas tree, a giant Christmas tree that sparkles every night and reminds me that something ugly can always be made into something beautiful.

Paris 1 - Raw Food

AAAHHH!! Guess where I am???????????? Bonjour, cuz I am in Paris right now baby! Can you believe this!!? Me either! I am too excited to go to sleep, and this hotel guy said we could use the internet for free so yeay! I cannot understant ANYTHING that people are saying AT ALL! Isnt it great?
NEVER eat French food unless you know what it is (ie french fries)!! On Wednesday, we flew to Paris and went to the train to go to the metro from the airport. I didnt understand A THING! Good thing my friend spoke French because I wouldnt have known anything. First of all, you have to find your correct bus from the airport to the metro train, get on the right train going to Paris, then the right metro. It's sooo confusing because it has a million different metro lines, and not all of them can be used if you get a day pass. Paris is carisimo!!! OMIGOSH let me tell you it is 8 euro just to go one way on the metro from the airport. So we found a hotel (2 stars but whatever) in the expensive Mouton Duvernet neighborhood which is Southern Paris for 20 euro per night per person, which is sooooo cheap, it's not even funny. I still cant believe we found that one AND it had free internet! Que suerte! This hotel was a lawsuit waiting to happen, you had to really be careful not to fall down the stairs when you stepped out of the bathroom, but the main thing was we werent in northern Paris or the redlight district (Moulin Rouge) which is muy dangerous. So that night we went out to eat down the famous Charles de Gaulle street because nothing was open except there. We were hungry around Spanish meal time like 10pm, and these Parisians were already getting ready for bed! So we found this restaurant called le Petite Vienne, which sounded like more our price range and not like 25 euro per plate!! So it sounded like pasta-ish food to me...WRONG! First of all the majority of things were fish, and second of all we ordered the steak tartare with frites and ensalada. Doesnt it sound like steak with tartar sauce fries and salad? Pues no! Let me tell you about steak tartare. It is the most disgusting thing I have ever SEEN! So we were really hungry right waiting for our delicious steak when out comes this red blob and potatoes in a sauce and salad. The red blob was our STEAK! EW, it was raw raw ground beef and had a quivering RAW egg on top! We were like oh HELL no what happened to our steak!? We're SO hungry....but there is no way I'm eating raw steak and raw egg unless I was on the verge of death. So we asked them to take it back and cook it (I dont know what took so long to prepare if the cook didnt even have to cook the meat, just blend it in a blender), and they got sooooo pissed! They probably spit in our food. So here we were, stuck in this little cafe surrounded by a group of karate world champions from Tunisia (we talked to someof them- DAYA met us there and told us what was going on) who were staring at us and laughing when we saw our food! After that I was like umm, no french food for me thanks, Ill stick to what I know, maybe even McDonalds if I have to. And that was our first night in Paris!

Valencia 5 - Pesada

So finally we made it back and we were starving so we chose a restaurant really far from the hotel by the beach. GUESS WHO FOUND US!? FREAKING PESADA and she wanted to eat with us NOOOOO! She happened to choose our restaurant out of all the restaurants she could have went to that were so much closer! AH que mala suerte! So then we went back to the feo hotel where I found a disgusting hair on my pillow, and had to get up at 9am where we went to another no-nametown I HAVE NO IDEA WHY! We were like vale ok today will be great because yeay, she doesnt have a microphone because she broke it remember?! WRONG! She was soooo perky and was like, oh I have a sorpresa! New Microphono! ARGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!Pesada went out and bought a new microphone! So we endured her talking for another 3 hours about the Naranjos AGAIN! and then after that we went to a town called Cuenca where we saw hanging casas...nothing much. She talked for another few hours and blasted yet another movie that NOBODY but the first three rows wanted to hear! They were the brown-nosers, saying ohhhmija please can we watch this...oh youre so bonita...blah blah blah! By the time we got to Salamanca, I had a migraine, and she started talking about Salamanca, and everyone was FROM SALAMANCA, we ALREADY KNOW! She tried to be our LIFE GUIDE I swear...we only hired her for Valencia, and she never really talked about Valencia except for los naranjos! I will NEVER EVER get a guided trip again thanks to Pesada! We left the bus and everyone asked for a complaint form, that was not in the first three rows of the bus. So a bus full of Spaniards were also pissed besides us few Americans, so I was NOT exagerrating.