Visiting Valencia, Spain

This past weekend I took my last major trip of the summer: to Valencia, Spain. This was more of a spontaneous trip, because when I got here and my Spanish coworker heard I had never been to Spain, she invited me to visit her at her house there. What an amazing opportunity to see a country from an insider's perspective!

My coworker, Carmen, lives outside Valencia, so I flew into Valencia airport, spent the first evening with Carmen and her friends.

They took me to this beautifully restored restaurant in the old part of Valencia for dinner. The restaurant is famous for its wine (hence the decor). This is me with Carmen.

After dinner, they took me to a bar in the new part of Valencia which was built when they hosted America's Cup and is now being refurbished for a car race they are hosting. The bar was right on the water and it was pretty! And I was absolutely amazed at the number of people out dancing on a Thursday night!

Then Carmen and I spent the night at her friend Ana's house in Valencia, and the next day Ana lent me a bike and showed me around Valencia (Carmen had to take her mom to the doctor).

Me at the Valencia market, which was beautifully restored and also had a ton of really good food. We bought cherries there! (yum!)

This is the Valencia art museum, which is in a cluster of great museums called the "Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias," or the City of Arts and Sciences. It is also next to this park, shown here, that runs along the dry riverbed through town. So pretty!

Here I am with my borrowed bike (you can just see the handlebars) and the museums again: this time, the planetarium (in the foreground) and the art museum from another angle (in the background).

This is another park, this time running along a ridge beside the museums. There aren't actually that many parks in Valencia, but the ones they do have are really nice.

That evening, I took the train to Carmen's hometown of Villareal (Vila-real in Valenciano) where I met up with Carmen and her other friends where we spent ANOTHER evening out. I swear, Spanish people never sleep!! I learned that Valenciano, the local language (related to Catalan), is used in everyday interactions unless one of the participants only speaks Spanish (Castellano). Apparently during the Franco dictatorship, Valenciano was prohibited, and now that they have returned to democracy, they take pride in their unique local language.

The next day I was supposed to go to Barcelona but I think I was dehydrated from all the biking and the hot sun (I'm not used to real summer weather here in London) so I felt sick and decided not to make the trip. Instead, Carmen took me around in the air-conditioned car! Her hometown is small but there was a small church, called a hermitage because people used to make pilgramages there, which was really cute.

We also visited a park called el Desierto de las Palmeras (Palm Desert).

There was a functioning monastery in the Desierto de las Palmeras park, and there were also ruins of an old monastery. Here are the ruins:

Then Carmen took me to see a small town on the coast called Peniscola, which has a beautiful old section with all white buildings, and it also has a castle!

On the last day, we visited another beachside town but I didn't take any pictures. :( It was even hotter that day so we only went out for a couple of hours and then we were so wiped out we went back and had some coffee and rested! And then I was back to London late Sunday night!

One very cool thing I saw on the way back, from the plane: FIREWORKS! It is so neat to see fireworks from above! They look so tiny!

Stavanger!

I got back last night from an amazing weekend in Stavanger, Norway, the town where my grandparents used to live and a place near and dear to their hearts! I have an ever-increasing admiration for my grandparents and their adventures overseas, and the more I travel, the more impressed I am at all that they have been able to do. And all in a day's work! I am lucky to have such great grandparents and such wonderful examples in my life!

Stavanger was really beautiful. There weren't any huge mountain peaks or glaciers (there's no snow in Stavanger in the summer!), but everything in the landscape just seemed to fit together in a really nice way. It felt like an outdoor landscape that you could really... interact with. I'm not sure quite how to explain that it was gorgeous without being grand, but still so beautiful that it really could take your breath away, and make you not want to leave! Actually, looking at the pictures now it does look pretty grand, so maybe I am misremembering it!! :)

I arrived on Friday night, and the first thing I did on Saturday was go on a boat tour of the fjord.

After the boat ride, I went to the fish market....

Where I enjoyed some FRESH shrimp,

... and a fish cake! It tasted like a fluffier and garlickier version of a Chinese fish ball. All the undiluted seafood was making my stomach feel funny though so I had to eat a bagel to even things out. :)

Then I explored the town of Stavanger itself.

Here is the market, which was next to the fish market and one of the marinas, and on the edge of the downtown area.

This is one of the downtown streets. I actually took this picture before the boat ride, so it was early enough that not many people were out! (Stavanger seems to sleep in late!)

I liked this colorful street downtown! Stavanger actually reminded me a lot of southern Chile (Puerto Natales and Chiloe, especially) and from this street you can kind of see the resemblance.

I did see some new additions to the downtown area that wouldn't have been there when Gma and Gpa lived there. For example, this is the new mall. But although it's modern, it fits right into the downtown architecture, is still part of the walking downtown culture, and doesn't even really look like a mall. Very tasteful!

Also here is the tourist office, which is huge and looks pretty new. They were incredibly helpful and all spoke at least four languages (denoted by these little flags on their nametags!). Actually, I only met three people in Stavanger that didn't speak English: the bus driver, a random man on the street, and a lady at church on Sunday. It is definitely a bilingual society these days! (It was much easier for me getting around than it must have been at first for Gma and Gpa, when not as many people spoke English!)

Here is one of the many marinas.

And the cathedral.

Here I am with the lake in the center of town. It had this great fountain in the middle of it, and a little park around the outside.

This is Gamle Stavanger, the historic "old" Stavanger from the 1800s. The houses were all painted white and in really great condition, and some of the streets, like this one, were lined with rose gardens.

After going to Gamle Stavanger, I decided to head over to where Gma and Gpa used to live, on Erika Nissens Vei:

I wasn't sure which apartment building was theirs, so I'll show them all the options and then post the right picture here if I took one of their actual building!

One of the things that Gma said I would pass on the way to their old apartment was this cemetery.

What we didn't predict was that in the cemetery, I would see this HEDGEHOG! He might even be cuter than Huckleberry! :)

You can't really tell from this photo but I had to get really close in order to get the photo to come out, so I was only about a foot away. But don't worry, I was ready to run away in case he should charge!

(Ok, that was a joke. For the uninitiated, hedgehogs don't charge. They don't have to... as Dustin well knows, if you actually touch them, they just spike you!)

The walk to Erika Nissens Vei was sooo far. I literally had sore muscles the next day from all the hills around town, and it took at least a half an hour of VERY brisk walking to get to Gma and Gpa's old street. I have no idea how Gma did it while carrying grocery bags!

But the more recent residents don't have to worry about that, because there is now a supermarket right on Erika Nissens Vei...

...complete with an entire aisle of American cereals!!

That was the end of the excitement for Saturday, because not only does Stavanger get up late, but it also goes to bed early! I tried to go to this restaurant in a neighboring town, Sandnes, for dinner but literally EVERYTHING was closed even though it was 7 pm on a Saturday night and all the restaurants said they were open until 10 pm on Saturdays. I still have no idea what happened!

On Sunday, I visited Gma and Gpa's old church. I never actually got to go inside, though, because the service was moved to Sandnes for a joint service with the congregation there. So I had an adventure trying to find the Metodistkirke of Sandnes at the last minute! :) But I did finally make it! This is a picture of the Methodist church in Stavanger.

I was able to record two videos of hymns at the church, too. The sound quality isn't great but it's still kind of neat!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7oMjnCVInw

http://www.youtube.com/v/WsB8fGerBQU

I didn't realize that Gma and Gpa had the option of going to an English speaking church in Stavanger and decided to attend the Norwegian one instead! The people were really nice, and the pastor at the Sandnes church says he might remember my Gma and Gpa from when he was young! (He might have just been humoring me though.... haha.)

They also have a new Oil Museum, which documents the way oil is formed and the role it has played in human development. It also discusses the history of oil drilling in Norway. It was really well put together and informative!

The Oil Museum sign.

And then, sadly, it was time to come back to London. Stavanger was so amazing and I was certainly not ready to leave after only two days! But what an amazing treat to have been able to go, even for a short time! (And it was so expensive, it was probably good I could only stay for a weekend!)

Other cool/funny/interesting things I noticed:

There was wood everywhere. Even the floor at the airport was hardwood!!

A lot of the streets were cobblestone, and instead of painting the crosswalk onto the street, they would just use white stones!

Another funny thing was, in situations where someone was helping me at a business, I would try to let them talk first to see where they thought I was from. The lady saying bye to the passengers after the boat tour said "au revoir," and the bus driver on the way to the airport said "danke" after I paid. So I guess I look French and/or German!!

I have no idea what this cartoon is about, but the lady says "tusen takk," just like my Gma!!

I'm sure I will remember some more amazing and fun things about Norway soon, but that's it for now! It was such a fun, memorable and touching trip. I am sorry it's over but so lucky and blessed to have gotten the chance to go!

Mom's Visit

I was so excited that my mom decided to attend an Education conference in Amsterdam, and after the conference she came to visit me in London last weekend! We had a great time exploring the city!

One of the days mom was here, we explored the area around the Tower of London and the south bank of the Thames. Here we are with the Tower Bridge!

The next day we visited the government buildings and Trafalgar Square. Here we are at the official "centre" of London


(You can barely see us in the picture though...!)

This is mom at a fountain at Trafalgar Square. It got really windy right before the picture so everyone else ran away from the water, but mom took one for the team and got sprinkled on so we could get this great picture!

Here we are at Big Ben, the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. Apparently the clock face is over 25 feet wide!

And on the last morning mom was here, we went to a service at Westminster Abbey!

Also, work has been going really well and one neat thing we did was go see two hearings at the House of Lords Judicial Committee, the current equivalent of the US Supreme Court (actually, the House of Lords Judicial Committee is about to be renamed to the UK Supreme Court in a few weeks). One of the cases is particularly interesting and it surrounds the fate of the people of the Chagos Islands, who were exiled when the UK gave the islands to the US for a military base.

Here I am with my coworker, Vesna (also a Stanford grad, 2003) inside the Houses of Parliament, the building where the Judicial Committee hears cases.

The Parliament building is really pretty on the inside, too. Here we are (you can barely see us) with a pretty stained glass window.

And here we are outside the building. That's the view of the Houses of Parliament we all know and love! :)

And today, for the 4th of July, we celebrated by eating at a great American BBQ restaurant. It's kind of weird celebrating Independence Day in England - the country we are celebrating our independence FROM! There weren't a lot of festivities, but it was nice to spend part of the day with Americans: my classmate Jordan and the other law students on his fellowship.

Here I am with Jordan. We were all missing the US and sending the good thoughts homeward on Independence Day!

Next stop: Luxembourg (Monday-Wednesday)!

Northern Ireland & A Ball!

The last few weeks have definitely been a whirlwind. After Dustin left, I moved into my new dorm, which has been really nice. The people here are a lot more normal :) and although I haven't made any new best friends, it's fun to keep running into the same people. I am in an amazingly central location and have been trying to soak up London while working and still keeping my sanity!!


Just over a week ago, I went to visit my friend Naomi in Northern Ireland. Naomi is originally from outside Belfast, and we met while we were both in Santiago!


Northern Ireland is absolutely beautiful. Naomi took me to the coast. Here we are on a rope bridge, going from the main island to a tiny little island in the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland.





















Here we are again in the rope bridge.... It was actually kinda scary....









Here we are on the little island (on the other side of the rope bridge), enjoying the beautiful day!












One of the most amazing features of the Northern Irish coast: the Giant's Causeway, an unusual rock formation along the coast facing Scotland. Legend has it that the ancient giants built the rock formation as a road to cross the channel between Ireland and Scotland!









Around the same time (just before I went to Ireland, actually), my friend Jung-Min was visiting London and we got to see the Sound of Music on stage! It was my first West End musical and it was really amazing!








And then, in case things were in danger of getting boring, one of Dustin's best friends from Stanford, Lewis, invited me to go to a ball with him! Lewis is finishing up an MBA program at Oxford and he and his MBA friends decided to go to the fancy Trinity College Ball, an annual event put on by one of the Oxford "colleges," and Lewis invited me to go along!

...Recognize the dress from Lisa's wedding? :)












....We were expecting a formal dance, but although the attire was "white tie recommended," it turned out to be more of a fancy, all-night carnival! This is us in a hot air balloon (we only got to go up about ten feet, but it was still really cool) with one of Lewis's classmates, Verona.

They also had bumper cars, laser tag, a live concert of the Sugar Babes (apparently a really famous group here in England, although we weren't that impressed), as well as made-to-order milkshakes, donuts, and other delicacies. It was definitely an event to remember!


I knew that my law school classmate Jordan was going to be arriving on Saturday to intern in London for six weeks, but when I got back from the ball, I was so surprised to get an email from him saying that he was going to be staying in... none other than my very own Goodenough College! He didn't realize that it was the same place I was living, so it was quite a happy reunion when he arrived to find me here! We explored London a little bit on Sunday with his Blackstone Fellowship buddies, but they haven't given me the pictures yet! Dustin will be sad to know we visited his beloved Trafalgar Square and even took a picture with a lion!


Mom is visiting from Thursday to Sunday of this week after her conference in the Netherlands, so the fun continues!...

Dustin goes to London

Dustin came to visit during my second week here, and we had some great adventures together! He was a good travel buddy and it is sad not to have him here anymore!!

The first weekend Dustin was here, we went on a little trip to see Stonehenge. It was my second time there, but I still thought it was very impressive! Actually, Stonehenge has been in the news recently because they have just done some more excavation and it looks like they are coming closer to uncovering the original purpose behind the stones....

Another view of Stonehenge.

Dustin and the cathedral in Salisbury, the town near Stonehenge where we stayed. The Salisbury cathedral has the tallest midevil spire in England and the fourth tallest in Europe. It also houses one of the original copies of the Magna Carta (unfortunately, we got there too late to see that).

We were supposed to also see Bath (an old Roman city -- yes, the Roman empire made it all the way up to England!) and Bristol, but they had record rains of 60 cm on the second day of our outing, so we had to head back to the shelter of London!

Fish & chips was the only authentically British food that Dustin and I thought tasted good. This picture doesn't quite do it justice... the piece of fish was enormous!

Last Tuesday after I finished with work, Dustin and I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe Theater, a recreation of Shakespeare's original theater. I had been to the theater before (on the high school choir trip) and thought it was kind of hokey then, but this time we didn't hype it up as much and it turned out to be really fun. We got the cheap seats in the standing section right in front of the stage, so we got to be part of all the rowdy cheering of the crowd!!

They have this really pretty walkway along the Thames that we liked. This is us with Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye in the background.

Us with one of the lions in Trafalgar Square, Dustin's favorite place in London!

Trafalgar Square again, this time with the National Gallery in the background.

Dustin being touristy in the Tube station.

Another night on the Thames river walk, this time with the Tower Bridge in the background.

The Tower of London. It really looked like Disney World!

Yesterday (Saturday), we went to Oxford to meet up with one of Dustin's college friends, Lewis. Lewis is finishing up his MBA at Oxford and it was great to catch up with him! He will be there most of the summer so I am looking forward to seeing more of him while I am here!

Climbing a tower in Oxford....

We made it to the top!

Sporting our new Oxford tshirts, outside our hostel this morning.

It was sad to see Dustin go, but life definitely won't be boring for the next few weeks. After Dustin left this morning, I moved into my new student dorm. Although the space is pretty small, it is right near my office and I finally have a room all to myself! The other residents here seem really nice and since moving in a few hours ago I've already met my neighbors, a family from Chile! And then in two weeks, an old friend from high school is going to be staying with me in London for a couple of days, so the adventure continues!

London!

I got to London on May 14 and it has been a whirlwind settling in and exploring! Here are some of the first week's adventures:

One of the first things I visited in London was Big Ben, the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. In the background you can also see the London Eye (the ferris wheel).

This is Trafalgar Square in central London, where lots of festivals and demonstrations take place. It turned out to be Dustin's favorite spot when he arrived!

After less than a week in London, I went on my first business trip with the AIRE Centre! We went to Strasbourg, France, to watch a hearing at the European Court of Human Rights, but we also got to do some sightseeing. Strasbourg is in the Alsace region of France, on the border with Germany. We flew in to Baden-Baden, Germany, and then took a bus over to Strasbourg. It was my first time on the European continent!



Here I am, with the European Parliament Building in the background.

















This is the AIRE Centre staff in the European Court of Human Rights, the building where our hearing took place. The whole building looks like a kids' science museum. It is bizarre!


From left to right: Milly, Lorna, and Emily (all interns like me), Carmen (lawyer), Adam (lawyer), Jennifer (administrator), Matthew (intern), and me. There are also a couple of people who didn't go on the trip. It is a fun group!





In case you were wondering what Strasbourg itself looks like! It's France, but it looks like Germany!




















We went to the zoo in Strasbourg, and the gardens there were pretty.























Strasbourg and the surrounding area is famous for its storks, and we saw a bunch. Here is one in its nest on top of a building.

















The first week was really fun, but I was definitely wiped out by the time it was over!

The USA??, Brazil, and finally back to Chile

The last few months have been kind of a whirlwind for me with getting back to my project after summer vacation only to turn around and make my first trip home since September in the middle of April, come back to Chile and the same day fly to Brazil for a Fulbright seminar, and then come back to Santiago to try to finish everything up before my parents get here on June 15!! (A big congrats to the first Doctor Ladewski, who is able to come visit because she finished her dissertation! Yay!)

One of the first things I got to do when I got back to the States was go visit New York where I met my future co-workers at the Fed and got to hang out with my cousin Megan... who I hopefully
will get to see a lot next year when we're both living in the big city!






And then a few days later I was off to visit my grandparents in Florida. Of course the highlight of the trip was spending time with them, but we also did some cool things - including the Tiffany glass museum in Winter Park and some gourmet food!









Grandpa waiting patiently for the ladies (we were dawdling as usual, taking in the sights of beautiful Winter Park!).











And then it was time for the highlight of the trip (and the great excuse that made the whole visit possible!)... my cousin Sarah's wedding! Congratulations to the newlyweds whose beauty is complemented here by the blossoming Ladewski orchards!








...plus it gave us an excuse to get all dressed up, too! :)













And then the day after Sarah's wedding, I was off to Santiago and then Sao Paulo, Brazil! It wasn't all fun and games (we had to sit through 35 presentations - half an hour each...) but we did get in a little bit of time to relax. This is the group of Chile Fulbrighters at our hotel near the beach outside of Sao Paulo. Everyone thought we were so cool we even had a few "honorary Chileans."






The Chileans again, this time at the beach. The guys joke around that they are the "Fulbright Chile basketball team" and comparing their height to mine, you can see why!










The girls on the beach...










We also went on a hike in the nearby Atlantic Coastal Rainforest, which (according to our resident Fulbright expert Jason, as well as according to our Brazilian guide) is a biodiversity hotspot, with the highest number of species per square meter of anywhere in the world.




In addition to big trees, the rainforest has some pretty huge rocks!












Here are those big trees - you were probably thinking they were never going to show up! We actually went swimming in this pool which is above a waterfall....










...and this is the waterfall on the other side!


















And now it's back to Santiago and finishing up the project and saying my first good-byes, including to my pastor and his wife who just took off for a couple of months in the US. These are the "kids" from my church, who have been like a second family to me here. It's going to be sad to go!

Buenos Aires

Dustin decided to come down for another visit over his spring break (someone should really tell them that it's not spring in Michigan yet) and we met up in Buenos Aires for a few days before coming back to Santiago together.



One of the greatest things about Buenos Aires is the architecture. We tried to hit all the big "sights," and this is the Casa Rosada which is the site of the president's office. You can't really tell from the pictures, but so many of the buildings were in disrepair, which was really sad.

On another note, they say one of the theories behind the pink color of this building is that it was painted with cow's blood....











This is the Argentine congress building. On our last day in Buenos Aires, there was a huge protest in front, one of quite a few protests that we saw while we were there.















This flower sculpture opens during the day and closes at night, and it was Dustin's favorite thing in the city (go figure). We spent forever trying to find it only to arrive after the gates were closed for the night, but a bribe solicited by the gatekeeper allowed us this photo.













We went back the next day and, no bribe necessary, were able to walk around the little park. You can see the flower is open during the daytime!

We went to an outdoor crafts market and were there when a street tango show started. The dancers were really good and drew a huge pedestrian crowd!

One of the days we went to the docks at Puerto Madero, a really upscale and pretty new area of Buenos Aires, which kind of reminded me of Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco. This bridge is called Puente de la Mujer - Bridge of the Woman.

On our last day in Buenos Aires, we went to the famous Recoleta Cemetery, where Evita Peron is buried. It was interesting because the cemetery was more like a little village, with houses where the people are buried and paved "roads" instead of grassy plots.

And on our last night, we went to see a tango show at a cafe. I thought the tango was pretty cool, but Dustin's favorite part was the music, which included a bass, an accordion, a piano, and a singer. The audience was very international, but we were the only Americans there.

Once back in Santiago, Dustin and I took advantage of the opportunity to go to some of the "touristy" sights that we missed last time. One of the things that we did was go to Cerro Santa Lucia, a hillside park in downtown Santiago.

Us at a little park in Los Dominicos, relaxing for a little bit. After that, it was time to say good-bye, for a couple of months at least!