My siblings are hilarious.
We went to Disneyland on Saturday:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2634050&id=10709142&l=8c93fcc65f
And Universal Studios on Monday (yesterday):
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2634076&id=10709142&l=662f863f10
At Vivianna’s birthday party there was a fellow named Jack and his wife Pam who had just retired and moved to Spain, they were from England!
He invited me and others to visit for a BBQ, but Jacqueline and I were the only two that wanted to go.
What a great experience that was too. Pam told us about her experiences as a nurse and then a nurse consultant. She talked about the problems facing England’s health care system right now. One of those, since they have Universal health care, is that they get people visiting on student visas from parts of Africa. They have AIDS and cannot be deported because their home country doesn’t have the proper support to stay healthy. So they stay and the UK has to foot the bill.. and apparently it happens all the time!
There were so many things that we talked about… Ryan Air and how terrible they were about luggage. Jacqueline has been to Italy several times so she knew what Pam was going through.
Pam also told us of her neighbor and the type of life she had led.. going through a camp in WWII and becoming a writer and such. About Pam’s terrible cooking and her friend who sounded like quite the character.
Jack and Pam showed us their animals- two cats, two dogs, and four parrots. They loved them all. The parrots even did the talking thing.. so cool.
It was really nice to talk with them and get to know them. I love how God works things.. you meet the most interesting people.
Valencia. The Oceanogràfic, Science Museum, Hemisfèric, “Among Dinosaurs” Exhibition and Centro Commercial.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2627971&id=10709142&l=592fffcce6
What a wild adventure. We rode a bus for like an hour to Valencia. Jacqueline, Nick and I were the only ones who wanted to go.
Once there we did a whirlwind experience of the Oceanogràfic, which by far, was the best part of the experience. I wish we could have stayed there longer. The museum has this RIDICULOUS rule that once you leave you can’t get back in. Well, we could have if we had our hand stamped or something, but at the time it didn’t seem important. We were more excited about the science museum part.
The shark exhibit was SPECTACULAR! It was just like in the movies where you walk through a giant glass tunnel and can see all the sealife swimming above you.
There was the biggest, ugliest, and goofiest looking fish I ever saw. It is called a Sunfish ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_sunfish ) and it looked so completely alien.
It had a fin on top and on bottom and a little itty bitty fin on its side. It was SO big, and frightful looking.. maybe not frightening, dopey.
Then they had sharks, and being underneath one you can see how angry they look all the time! It was so neat to be there. You really did feel like you were under the sea.
Afterward we visited the Walruses, Beluga whales, and Penguin exhibits. The penguin place had dirty glass walls, so it was difficult to see what was happening inside.
There were some other exhibits, but we wanted to make sure we got the chance to see everything so we skipped them.. *sniff* oh well, we had high hopes for the rest of the places.
We walked over to the Science Museum part and were dissapointed. Mostly this was due to the lack of upkeep. It seemed like half of the exhibits were broken, and few of them had signs on them telling you so, so you had to figure it out for yourself that a piece was missing, the buttons were jammed.
I was all excited about seeing the Star Trek exhibit opening that day. Unfortunately, the guy giving the opening speech took FOREVER so we had to skip it in order to get something to eat.
We went to a restaurant in the mall across the street. It was called the American Bar or something like that, but I ended up ordering the Greek hamburger. It had a very interesting sauce.
We went to the HEMISFÈRIC, which is this seashell shaped building that had an IMAX in it. Then we wore these futuristic contraptions and watched ARABIA. I fell asleep midway through so I don’t remember it all.. It was a very tiring day.
Then we saw the final thing, the “Among Dinosaurs” Exhibition that was advertised everywhere!
It had the cheesiest looking dinos I’d ever seen. I’m pretty sure I have had action figures with more detail than these guys. Nick and I had a lot of fun with that stuff though.
After the experience we still had some time. We visited the mall across the street and went into Carrefour, which is.. by FAR.. the WORST store. It was basically like Wal-mart in that they had everything from desks to yogurt. They had the most ridiculous signage and I tried buying a few things, and none of them rang up at the advertised price.. it was very frustrating. I walked away angry at the store.
Then we took the bus back to the bus depot and still had some more time, so we walked around. There was some sort of an art gallery opening, so I walked in and had a free glass of wine. Good times.
Oh, and on the bus there were these LOUD American girls.. think of the worst stereotype of Americans visiting another country, then add valley girl attitude.. that was these girls.
The entire trip as a whole was amazing though, and I loved even the terrible things because they make for a good story. = )
Beach bohemian night.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2627955&id=10709142&l=c8bd3409c7
The big event this day was to go down to the beach and have our Bohemian night. Mostly this was because the last one we had abruptly ended when a neighbor complained that we were singing loudly at 2am on a Wednesday night.
We brought our blankets out and hung out on the beach. Talking mostly.
Some friends Havilah’s friends were there. Oh, one thing I should mention is that there are a lot of Norwegians in Altea. So here were a few Norwegian girls right in front of me, and we began to talk about random things.
At one point, the most adorable girl started telling me a story in Norwegian.. it was SO INCREDIBLE! She did all the expressions and everything. It was the story of Red Riding Hood, and she made the scary face when the ‘wolf’ was going to eat the girl.. oh, it was so incredible. I wish I had thought to record it. She was so beautiful while telling the story, she was being so sincere and animated — I LOVE stuff like that. Oh! How I miss her!
Of course, that was the only time I saw her. I had to leave early to meet up with Elí. I thought we were meeting in another area. I said my goodbyes and went off. I didn’t see him right away, but I spotted some other friends who had sang to us last week.
Anna and Amber, Maria and all of the girl band members of ELLA were there. They were saying goodbye to Amber that night. She was going away for a year for some type of volunteer work like the Peace Corp.
There are so many amazing people out there.
I eventually found Elí and Charlie and we walked back to the sea. Most everyone else ran out into the pitch black sea, but I stayed behind and met a few of Xara’s english students. One of them was studying to be a computer engineer, but I realized I couldn’t really contribute too much to the conversation because I know very few technical terms in Spanish.
What a fun night.