I turned 16! So on my 16th birthday I woke up early and gathered all the papers I thought I would need to collect my visa in Pamplona and headed to the Cercanias station by my house went to Atocha and caught the morning train up to the north of Spain back to where my journey started.
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Picture 1: Atocha
Picture 2: Pamplona random pic
Picture 3: News on my birthday
Picture 4: Train station in Pamplona. Funny story about this one. So my train home the day after my birthday was Pamplona to Zaragoza, and then about 30 minutes later Zaragoza to Madrid on the AVE (which is Spain's super fast train system that went well over 300 km/h... for the Americas about 190 m/h.) Well my train from Pamplona was supposed to leave at 9:13 a.m. but it didn't get there til about 9:30 and left around 9:35. I had no idea what to do once I got to Zaragoza so I was kinda worried I'd totally miss my train or get on the one I was told that will be right next to it that would take me to Barcelona. Thankfully I arrived with a good amount of time to transfer (actually the train from Zaragoza to Madrid was delayed like 15 minutes too so there was no rush at all)
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Zaragoza train station pictures.
To avoid having to dwell on things I'd prefer not to, I'll just cut to the chase and move on. I had to switch families and now I live in Elche, a city in the Valencian Community really close to both the beach and the city of Alicante. Valencian is an official language but Spanish is still used a lot here. My family speaks both in home and my school is all in Spanish (except for the one hour a week of class I take that's in Valencian.) Valencian is from what I've been told the exact same as Catalan (what's spoken in Catalonia, another region in Spain, where Barcelona is) but just has a few different words. My new school has a program for Spanish for foreigners so I get 15 hours of this class a week at school. There's another girl from AFS in it as well as kids from Sweden, Belgium, and China.
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Random pictures from Alicante and Elche which are super cool.
Well I know this was pretty short, but I'll try and update it more soon. Happy holidays to everyone if I don't get around it to it until after it!
As always your pictures are beautiful. Have a wonderful holiday and a happy and healthy new year.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Grandma and Poppy
Thank you! To y'all too of course.
DeleteActually I'm not anonymous.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy all of your posts. I belong to a book group consisting of nine men who read one book a month for nine months each year, and then meet in each others' homes for dinner and to discuss the book. Why do I mention this? Because the book we are currently reading for our January meeting is "Homage To Catalonia" by George Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm, which are more popular and that you may have read). Our book this month is his account of the Spanish Civil War, in the late 1930s. It was the militias of the Republican army (socialists, anarchists and communists) against the fascist forces of Franco, aided by Hitler's Nazis. Orwell came to serve as a journalist but joined the Republican (loosing) army as an enlisted man.
In chapter two at 15, he wrote: "They sent my company by lorry [from Barcelona] to Sietamo, then westward to Alcubierre, which was just behind the line fronting Zaragoza." Too bad the book does not have a map! I don't know if you are aware that you are walking through rather recent (less than 80 years ago) history. My reading is connecting me to you! Love, Uncle Roger
How interesting, Spanish people talk about their tough civil war a lot I've noticed. Very cool to hear you're reading a book about it. Hope all is well, Happy Holidays!
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