Lunar Luminate

Hi!

I started using other Amherst bloggy things because my updates aren’t significant enough to plague AmhPub with things.

Still, one thing I do that might interest a few others are my screencap adventures! I just finished another one, so check it out:
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GASP! With the summer, I’ve returned to post again!

The semester was hectic but fun, and in the end a lot of my friends graduated and will be gone when the school year begins again.
Meanwhile, I’ll be starting work on my thesis in about two weeks time. THIS MIGHT BE PUT ON THE BACKBURNER AGAIN
AS A RESULT but hopefully I can actually make good progress with everything. Formatting is no longer half the pain it had been before

Anyways, as a quick summary of Phantasy Star IV thus far:

Our heroes are Hunters! They investigate basement monsters in a University. The principal is all sketchy and tells them that the research team that sent the stuff responsible for causing monsters to spawn there was turned to stone by a mysterious man in black named Zio! One of the professors of the Academy joins your party.
So your goal is to head to Birth Valley and find out what happened to the research team!

I’m really not very far into the game yet :B But it’s hard to gauge the pacing of it, as sometimes it feels so much faster than it is.

( So, what’s comes next in this game anyway?? )

Argh, I woke up with a cold today that knocked me flat on my feet. Or rather, I’m mentally competent, but I can’t spell or think coherently. I can at least physically interact with the world, and so, I want to do this in the gap that begins the New Year for the East coast, and be done with it before the West coast celebrates its own New Years.

This is a Meme that some of my friends have done annually for a while, so I think I’ll join the tradition.

AND I STILL HAVE OTHER THINGS TO POST A-DURR but that can wait. :B

LET’S GET STARTED

~
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?:
I NEVER SPENT A SUMMER AWAY FROM HOME
AND I NEVER HAD TRIED ALCOHOL BEFORE (10 sips in 8 weeks over the summer. I CAN NAME EACH ONE AND THEIR CONTEXT HOO-HA! And then full complete drinks in Spain)
AND I HAD NEVER BEEN TO EUROPE BEFORE
AND MOROCCO FOR THAT MATTER
IT’S BEEN A LOT OF NEW-NESS THIS YEAR :B

2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t even remember what my resolutions were last year. NORMALLY THESE THINGS JUST KIND OF GO UNMINDED

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
..no? I don’t think so anyway..

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Not that I can recall.

5. What countries did you visit?
Spain! And Morocco, France, Italy. Stopover in Germany if that counts? I did a lot but really not that much considering Portugal and England were RIGHT THERE

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Work ethic, I want mine back. It was better before, and I left it at home in Spain, a-durr :B Thankfully it wasn’t terribly necessary there, but still. Maybe now that I’m energized I’ll be able to work again at Amherst. OH, AND CONCLUSIVE LAB RESULTS, THAT WOULD BE NICE.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Hmm.. This day towards the end of the summer, and then my last Friday in Spain, and also the night Brawl came out.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I didn’t lose myself in Spain 8D AND SURVIVED THE EXPERIENCE WHOO
Aaand I guess making friends with a buncha people I never really completely expected to be friends with. It’s a good thing.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Let’s not discuss

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Your typical colds and such. Stomach flu in Spain soon after switching host families, that was fun.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
MY SPAIN JACKET
IT’S SO COOL
Otherwise I like the t-shirts I got

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
i dunno :B

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Hahaha I could name a few
But non-specifically, the contradictory-conservative side of Spain appauls and depresses me. MORE ON THIS LATER.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Food and Travel.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
OMG SPAIN
OMG BRAWL
OMG MOTHER 3?
OMG ______

16. What songs will always remind you of 2008?
Umm… See You Again by Miley Cyrus
Put Your Ass In The Air
Pocketful of Sunshine by Natasha Bedingfield
Scared of Yourself by Zornik
Scheherazade by Eiko Shimamiya

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
i) happier or sadder?
Probably happier, but more cynical. THANK YOU SPAIN
ii) thinner or fatter?
I lost nine pounds in Spain, so thinner, it seems :U
iii) richer or poorer?
Probably poorer D:

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Being confident? Seeing certain friends, seeing those two countries I missed out on, i dunno

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Less stubborn I MUST BE BEING OVERSENSITIVE AS USUAL I’LL TRY TO HOLD OUT AGAINST THIS CRAZY HOSTMOTHER OF MINE because no, I wasn’t being easily hurt, as usual, there really was a problem and I should have gotten away sooner.
So I guess being steadfast in  the wrong situations is a good way of putting it?

20. How will you be spending the holidays?
At home, seeing people, catching up on games and life before hunkerin’ down for biochem and electromagnetism. Whee~

22. Did you fall in love in 2008?
hahahaha

23. How many one night stands?
OH MAN YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW

24. What were your favorite TV programs?
I would have gotten into pushing daisies if I kept watching it. I really didn’t watch much TV this year oO
I feel like I should watch more TV but those are dangerous words.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
…Mmmm, not hate, persay. There are people I dislike now that I did not before. And then others who I don’t know how to feel about.

26. What was the best book you read?
Duuuuuuh
I can’t think of OH
Einstein’s Dreams.
That was the one book I managed to finish that I started this year. There were others but they got lost in the busy-ness that was school.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Hmm there was a lot this year.
Technically the voice-synthesizer technology is 2007 so I’ll have to go with..
Genki Rockets. It’s probably the thing that’s most consistently tickled my fancy for the longest period of time this year, and also the most interesting in terms of how they do things. I GOT THEIR ALBUM I’LL WRITE ABOUT IT LATER.

28. What did you want and get?
Replacement iPod, which I got. I generally don’t have very many desires, frankly.

29. What did you want and not get?
I don’t think there was anything, really oO

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
WALL-E
JUST, OH SO TOTALLY

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went to an organic Italian restaurant in the center of Seville with a small group of friends for Lunch. Cordoba the previous day. Cleaned my room and pumped the music with the apartment to myself. It was pleasant
I turned 20 on November 9th. I’M A YOUNG ONE

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
NOT HAVING AN EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN BROUGHT BY HOSTMOM#1 WHILE IN FRONT OF THE REST OF THE FAMILY
THAT MIGHT HAVE MADE ME FEEL BETTER ABOUT MYSELF AND ABOUT LIFE IN GENERAL

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
I became more t-shirt-y over the summer and then snapped back into being nicely dressed in Spain.

34. What kept you sane?
The effort and support of a whole ton of friends, and in particular a few who were there when I really did need it.. Thanks.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Durrrrr ask Robyn because I never have answers for this sort o thing

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
In all truth, I would have been fairly ok if it had been between McCain and Obama and the former one
BUT WHEN PALIN APPEARED, ALL I KNEW IS SHE COULD NOT BE ALLOWED NEAR SUCH POWER. D:

37. Who did you miss?
everyone

38. Who was the best new person you met?
I met a lot of neat people :B Before Spain and during Spain. DON’T MAKE ME CHOOSE

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
There’s a distinct line between being understanding and open to the ideals of others, and bending over backwards just to satisfy the arbitrary whims of an individual. Regardless of how important it is to be adaptable, what is important to you should never be sacrificed, and you should always hold onto your ideals if you believe they are right.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Pokito a Poko - Chambao

Volveré a encontrarme con vosotros
Volveré a sonreír en la mañana
Volveré con lagrimas en los ojos
Mirar al cielo, y dar las gracias…

Pokito a Poko entendiendo
Que no vale la pena andar por andar
Que es mejor caminar para ir creciendo…

—-

Will this become a tradition? I DUNNO MAYBE we’ll see.

Otherwise..
It’s been a good year.
I am thankful for those friends I made
For those who I have met
For those who have allowed me to share with them certain experiences.

Thanks.

Happy New Year.

HI PEOPLE

I just wanna put these thoughts down so that they’re somewhere in the world before I forget them.

I WENT TO MADRID WITH ALINA FROM THE CLASS OF 2010 she’s studying abroad in Scotland and we went back to our respective home-institutions today.

Pictures are forthcoming, I finished rotating them before realizing FRIG, HOMEWORK
And small amounts of sleep also mean FRIG, GOTTA WORK
And Morocco on Thursday Morning.

ANYWAYS, some minor thoughts:

1) Madrid is pretty, but it’s hella modernized and commercialized. The majority of it is not true old timey Spain, and Seville isn’t quite oldtimey either (I count the white houses with red ceramic curvy-tile roofs as old timey), but it’s far more of an authentic classic Spain than Madrid is.
As a result, I am glad I am in Seville which is less tainted by commercial tourism, and that Williamson convinced me early on not to apply to Madrid.
HOWEVER, It’s interesting. Granada or Salamanca would offer a purer Spain-experience while maintaining some commercialism, yet being difficult to get to other cities through because of location. Seville’s kind of in between, and it’s more expensive than those two commercially, but it offers a lot more variety and such.

2) Madrillians are SUPER NICE. And they understand me better than Sevillians. That might be because the Salvadoran dialect tends to throw in a bit more Castillian emphasis, and so despite my fast-talk people understood me? Because Sevillians are the fastest speakers in Spain, but they make me repeat my words whenever I open my mouth. >|
Sevillians are also super nice but I felt much more at home talking in Spanish in Madrid.

3) I tried the very typical Fried Calamari Bocadillos
(Subway/french-bread sandwiches, whereas white bread sandwiches are Sanwich(es) :P)
in two places, a bar in the Royal Plaza and a shop next to the Queen Sofia art museum. Art Museum’s little hole in the wall place had fresher bread, larger portion (but thus larger price, but fair), more flavor, and yet it still is missing a sauce. IF YOU GET IT, ASK FOR A LEMON WEDGE, IT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE TO HAVE SOME CITRUSY JUICE. But they are SO. FRICKEN. DELICIOUS.    NOM

4) Parks. BEAUTIFUL. Running around catching leaves (what few still fell) was fun. And if we had more time we’d totally have done leisurely strolls as opposed to our powerwalking WE HAVE AGENDAS LET’S SEE EVERYTHING AS MUCH AS WE CAN But hell it was fun

5) I find myself lamenting that I am this bus/plane/train I am taking is not taking me to California. Even if the end will be awesome, I’m still getting anxious-excited to have SALVADORAN FOOD. AND NOT-VEAL BEEF. AND YARDS AND GARDENS AND PARKS AND SANTANA ROW AND SAN FRANCISCO’S FERRY MARKET AND SOURDOUGH BREAD AND yea. I think the biggest motivator is food. And people but you can’t eat people

6) Picasso’s Guernica is kind of amazing.
Alright, I need to finish a work, then look up some addresses, Dinner in about an hour, and hopefully I can start uploading pictures to photobucket to start another screencap adventure before too long.
And then after that, I’ll go through my 252 pictures of Madrid (lots of repeats) and distill it into about 180 pictures, hopefully, across three facebook albums.

Now, to progress into the work!
Take care~
Eban

Hi there! It’s been a while.
Long story short: Due to everything that happened to me in Seville, I left this fairly forgotten for about two months.
Oh, and Mother 3 appeared. THAT DID NOT HELP THINGS but the game is damn right awesome and YOU SHOULD DOWNLOAD THE PATCH AND PLAY IT IF YOU HAVE NOT ALREADY
MOTHER 3

With this post, I resized the images to 75% their original size and turned them to png’s, so that way it’s not so painful to scroll through and read, and hopefully they’re not excessively small to make them a pain to view, plus bandwith shouldn’t be such a pain now. IF PEOPLE HAVE ISSUES, PLEASE DO INFORM ME.

Anyways, quick refresher!

Alys and Chaz went to the town of Piata after being summoned by the Principal to take care of a monster outbreak in the basement. They went to fix this and found the source of the monsters, some bio-tubes that apparently were transported there after a research team excavated them from a place called Birth Valley.
Suddenly a man in black named Zio appeared and threatened the principal with a stone-person. Or I guess he was threatened with being turned into stone? Anyways, as a result, the Principal did not allow a rescue/investigation team to be sent to find out what happened to the research team, since they were never heard from again.
Hahn, a professor (I think?) at the Academy, is like WE MUST GO SAVE PROFESSOR HOLT AND THE RESEARCH TEAM and Alys, our master Hunter (Huntress?), demands pay for escorting him through the dangerous desert.

Old adventures are located here.

( Just what is it that awaits our adventurers in the Motavian sands? )

The next one may be a while away, however, as here’s how my weekends look for the rest of Spain-time:
Seville, Weekend of the 19th
Madrid, Weekend of the 28th
December:
Morocco, Weekend of the 4th-8th
Rome, Part-Week 14th-18th
It’ll be busy but it’ll be fun YAAAY
And I’ll be back in California on the 20th. Ex-ce-llent.

And when I do get home, I have Animal Crossing and the new Tales of Symphonia waiting for me.
That, and I still need to beat Okami.
And get the rest of the stars in Super Mario Galaxy.
But Brawl’s almost done I JUST NEED STICKERS AND 100 MAN BRAWL TO BE BEATEN WITH EVERYONE.
Yay!

Take care~

And I remind you to check out screencappery for all your Screencapping needs! 8D

Hm, after orientation, with sudden old host-fam trauma and the start of classes (I shopped a total of 16 classes within 1.5 weeks 8D) I fell out of blogging.

Also haven’t done any Phantasy Star IV Posts since the beginning, whee @w@.

BUT

I feel obliged to write now just to I can catalogue the end.

SO, I need to write:

8 1.5 page papers about my “feelings” from a list of 13 Spain-Issues.
1 Presentation on the energy and hydrological plans of Spain, and school violence (these are part of the 13 Spain issues) (For Monday)
Weekly papers for Conversational-Grammar (of which only three remain)

And then!
My only finals:

1.5 weeks from now:

History and Technique of Photography (30 minute fill-in-the-blank/short answer section, 45 minute 1 page essay section)
Publicity and Propoganda (1 Page front and back essay)

2.5 weeks from now:

Morphology and Syntax final (Grammar class, fill in the blank type of exam probably)
Cinema Final (Choose a question write an essay)

Trips from this weekend onwards:

Seville, Weekend of the 19th
Madrid, Weekend of the 28th
December:
Morocco, Weekend of the 5th
Rome, Part-Week 14th-18th

Fly home: December 20th. 18 hours of flight and yet I’ll be in California at 10 PM still.

It’ll be a rush :O

Oh, and for the record:

Red eye January 15th
Arrive at Hartford on January 16th at 9:37 AM

Anyone wanna give me a ride, save me the shuttle-trip-price? :D?

Hallowe’en as a celebration seems to have been something fairly exclusive to the Americas (And Ireland, I guess. And Australia Japan New Zealand WHO’S COUNTING?), at least until more recent years where our natural globalizing trend has spread this festivity to other countries.

In Spain, at least, the local news talks about this generation of tweens and youth being the Halloween generation, the first to grow up celebrating this day consistently enough so as to ensure it for future generations.

It’s interesting to see the slow transition to celebrating new Holidays.
In the entire city, as I walked, I only ever passed by one costume shop. I couldn’t imagine trick or treating happening properly here, since most of the world is apartment-based, at least within the city.

Local news channels seem to give the best view of Halloween here: it’s a holiday meant to be scary.

I think that’s a little unfortunate though, because part of the fun of halloween was dressing up simply as something you’re not: a doctor, a princess, an animal.

Yet overwhelmingly, costumes here are meant to incite some form of fear.

Except with the way Spaniards are, things tend to not be that scary.

Friday night, I went with a friend to La Isla Magica, a theme part built on part of the property of the old World Expo from 1992. The park itself is amazing, because it has waterfalls and fountains and greenery like woah so you don’t feel like you’re in a theme park at all.

Traditionally, the park puts on decorations for a fright night of sorts.

Curious, we arrived and were giddy at all the people in costumes, even though we didn’t dress up. As we made our way inside, we headed to the closest haunted house (there were two; we didn’t see the second ultimately D:) and got in line.

At this point though, watching teenagers and youngins pass by us, we were able to draw some interesting conclusions.

Keep in mind, Spain is largely Catholic. However, the overwhelming majority of people were dressed as witches or devils. A response to a religious opinion? Perhaps.
Scares are rarely suspenseful or dramatic. They try to be right in your face and they kind of announce themselves as they appear. This makes them lose all effect for me, but it was endearing to see people try.

And that became far more noticeable in the Haunted House. We had a guide for the first half who was like AAND NOW YOU ARE ENTERING THE HALL OF EXPERIMENTATION, said in her raspy dramatic female voice, and except for the actors who would noiselessly join our group and tap us on the shoulder (which didn’t scare me at all, but the other Spanish women in the group (mothers, mind you, and not the -ilf kind :P) would cling to me or my arm desperately as I was the only male in the group and I just wandered through with a kind of “duhurr :B” look to my face.
I did try to warn Sarah when the actors approached. “Behind us. To the right. Up ahead.” Except she didn’t realize that I wasn’t just spouting directions for no reason so she got rather spooked.
Oh, rule difference: They CAN touch you in Spain. The sign before the haunted house says “Some of our guests may approach you and touch you. Allow yourself [to be touched].

All that said, there’s not much of an ambiance-suspense thrill felt here. All of it really is extremely dramaticized.
The other haunted house was located in their Aztec-y jungle-y part, but the wait was two hours so we didn’t go in. It looked potentially really good, however.

Outside of the park, however, Halloween was barely noticed. No kids, no costumes, no rampant partiers in costumes (Except for a few, and they were American :P)

SO ultimately, while the night was pleasant, it was missing a bit of that true halloween spirit. And after seeing some of the pictures of people back at Amherst, I do regret missing out on such a wondrous evening

Next time, I’ll post my waaaay after the fact impressions of more Foreign cities, classes, and people.
Take care~

Hellodere.

It’s been a while.

Last I recall, I started an old genesis game to share the experience with those online. SEEMS LIKE THAT STOPPED

For the moment, anyway.

Spain suddenly took a life on its own, one filled with glee and excitement, and sudden anguish and ennui and frustration with my host family. I stopped networking, save for AIM and the frustrated e-mails I sent to people due to my situation and circumstance.

But I moved recently. And now I’m regaining me time.

So my goal now is to feel better about everything and enjoy Spain properly.

I went to Paris, I’ve been to Granada. I had a beach weekend, I’ve had amazing times.

I need to update my facebook albums first. Then, maybe, I can write some new posts.

I’ll bring the stories soon.

Until then~

Eban

HAY THERE :B

Welcome to my first Screencap Adventure post!
INSPIRED BY THE GREAT AND ILLUSTRIOUS Zarla, a very old friend from an epoch long ago, I’ve been debating on and off for a long while as to whether or not I should do one of these.
However, it sounds like great and awesome fun, so why not just go for it?

—
Major edit:

So I understand I crashed some computers with the size of this post 8D
Thus I’m going to limit myself to the live journal blog and just link to it, if you’re curious.

The posts there are smaller and use less energy because LJ has limitations, thus forcing me to conform to some standards

As a result, this first post got cut into two separate parts.

Anyways,

Check out screencappery for all your Screencapping needs! 8D

Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium - In Progress
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

That’s all for now!
Take care 8D

HI GUYZ

So in my adventures in Spain, I find that right now it gets way too hot to make any adventures between 10 AM and 8 PM at all worth it, especially because with the program’s insistance for us to blend in, I brought ONLY PANTS plus one pair of shorts.

Thus, when I’m not doing Homework, I end up with a fair amount of free time in the afternoons that I’ve spent watching spanish TV with the family. Or surfing around the net inanely.

Well, the temperature isn’t supposed to drop until November-ish, and even when real classes begin I’ll have random gaps of time between classes where at best I can read, so, I was thinking…

How would you guys feel about my doing a screencap adventure here?

The idea was inspired first by Zarla who does these for old less-well-known games so that people can get a chance to experience some of the early trendsetters of the gaming generation. She started a livejournal community called screencappery which currently has several games and series being played through and catalogued, along with others finished. Such titles include Earthbound, Mother 3, Sanitarium, Golden Sun, Quest for Glory, and others, many of them classics and at the same time fairly obscure for people who missed the whole start of Sierra and Lucas Arts and whatnot back in the early nineties, before windows appeared and when people still had to use DOS commands.

Anyways I’m rambling.

My point is, I’ve had a game in mind that I started playing back in Junior year of high school, but then classes began and I never managed to finish it. I got more than halfway through, though. The title?

Phantasy Star.

Or rather, Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millenium. I’ve played 1, and I haven’t finished 2, and 3 confused me like woah. THE FORTUNATE THING, you can safely ignore the third one because it doesn’t have a significant impact on PS4, as it takes place elsewhere.

ANYWAYS, The Phantasy Star series is one of the first major RPGs to be produced, and was exclusive to Sega consoles, setting multiple precedents within the genre. The first in the series set a few graphical benchmarks due to the dungeon and cave exploration employed. The second was only hindered by tedious tedious level grinding if you wanted to be capable of going anywhere. The third was the first to employ multiple endings based on the decisions you made as you played the game. However, the general fan favorite tends to be Phantasy Star IV, which also introduces a few tropes that precede things that generally get accredited to Final Fantasy (I’m thinking 7, in particular :P)

The Phantasy Star series was one that hit me a bit late, because I first fell into it with Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube (originally for the Dreamcast), and it is also the first game series to impact me so significantly with its music. As a result, I went back and played it’s old iterations to learn about the history of the series, and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. It’s still something not well appreciated, and that is why I want to share it here.

Phantasy Star 4 is an average-length game for an RPG, but it has a lot of depth to it and is fairly entertaining. Screencaps will include some battle sequences, lots of NPC talking, some adventuring, and cutscenes! I’ll also be providing commentary and background for scenes that refer to old characters or things in the past games, as reading through lots of screencaps can get boring, I know.

The question however is whether or not any readers would be interested, because I can always make another blog for the purpose of this screencap adventure. Updates will begin regularly until schedules begin keeping me busy, but for now I’ve got no gripes with this.

I just need to find an emulator and an appropriate screencapping device. I’ve already got a photobucket account to load these things to, though, so that should be fine.
Anyone interested? Does anyone even care?

Well, back to the future tense I go. I owe a post here about the bull fight I saw Sunday, but otherwise, life is fairly uneventful; orientation classes are just not that interesting. Hence the lull in Spain-posts

Take care~!

Day 9:

Stupid things I say when I’m talking to myself:

As I come out of the shower-
“Now that I have dried myself with this umbrella-…”

—

HA!
Fully functional wi-fi box is GO! I have internet while in my room now! YESSS..

Although I wonder why I’m only getting the Orion signal from here and not the Daedalus signal. Hrm..

So today we went to the cathedral. I shall post facebook pictures 8D The album also contains the bulk of description. But here’s probably what strikes me:

The Giralda

Part of the Cathedral, from the outside.

Embalmed Crocodile. KEEP READING FOR DETAILS!

Public album: Click Here!

Also great moment after classes when Sarah was trying to call the Discover Seville office
And suddenly she goes, on the phone,
“LO SIENTO, WRONG NUMBER.”

Allie Garrison and I were with her. There’s a pause, before Allie asks, “..Lo siento… wrong number?”
And then we just cracked up because Spain-iards really fail at understanding American English, somehow. Like, they have huge difficulty even when the words are similar, which is irritating because the language gap then becomes more apparent.
But imagine it like SORRY GARBLEGARBLE *hang up*
A fantastic moment.

SO the Cathedral. It’s the largest Cathedral in the world (superceded in religious-buildings by the Vatican and the something something Saint Peter. But by definition, those are not cathedrals :P)

It actually used to be a mosque, and when Spanish peoples took back the lands from the Arabs they just adopted the buildings left behind, so the Mosque was made into a church.

However, an earthquake made it structurally unsound, so it got knocked down and replaced by a Cathedral with similar floor plans to the Mosque. Two structures remained, the courtyard ground and the Giralda, a giant tall tower that has clear Arab influence in its architecture and design.

Home to many treasures of our ages, including a 700 year old embalmed crocodile corpse (a beloved pet of the city sent by the king of Egypt some 700 years ago asking the current ruler of Spain for his daughter to wed because she was a hottie. Croc was put into the courtyard because it was suspected to be dangerous, but it was also an attraction, as many came to see it and legend goes that it became tame enough to let people pet it. Upon its death, townsfolk were like NO DON’T BURY HIM D: so they embalmed him and HUNG HIM FROM THE CEILING.), a ridiculously priceless crown, and an amazing piece or architecture spanning Moorish, Gothic, Renaissance, Romantic, and other artistic epochs, it is a building that transcends history itself.

The Facebook album does it better justice, but their artificial lighting inside came out neon yellow with my camera. WEIRD.

———

Day 10:

Today, I got up at 7 to go to Gibraltar with 3 other folks from my program, and the agency that took us is Discover Seville.

Bus ride there, we watched Good Will Hunting, which I’d never seen before. Glad I did now.

WE DROVE BY WINDMILLS modern windmills but still WINDMILLS <3

Upon arriving, we got a bus tour of the peninsula, and headed to Europa Point, the southern most tip of Spain and 15 miles from Africa. Unfortunately, cloudy weather prevented us from seeing Africa in the distance. Still a nice view.

We drove up the Rock of Gibraltar then, and on our way to the cave, some of the Macaques monkeys were on the side of the road and they JUMPED ONTO OUR BUS. One even climbed in through the driver’s window and leaned on the driver’s horn.

Then, we headed to St. Michael’s cave, which was AWESOME. Inside they built an amphitheater concert hall thing for events, because they actually DO have concerts in there because the acoustics are awesome. I WANNA GO BAAAACK they only let us wander the cave for 20 minutes, which was plenty of time if you were speedy and ADD like I was but hardly enough if you wanted to just stare at rocks, which I also wanted to do.

Upon exiting, next to the gift shop, More monkeys appeared. This time, we spent a while with them and let them climb on our backs. Cool little critters, really. FAR MORE ENJOYABLE THAN I HAD ANTICIPATED.
We were going to head to the legitimate Ape’s Den, but we lost two old ladies, so that venture was cut as we saw some monkeys at least and we still had the downtown free time to visit.

Nice downtown, but nothing that interested me terribly much. I LIKE SANTANA ROW BETTER.
Nestled in a store that looked like a Macy’s though was a shop with English goods, chocolate and marmalade and chips and pastries. I of course made a few purchases.

But pretty soon it was time to go. It would have been better if we spent more time in the caves and with the monkeys and less time in the downtown, but as it stood, it was fun. Gibraltar is tiny, and definitely doable in the five or six hours we had there. It’ll be a while before I decide it to be worthwhile to go again, as the only advantage really is the fact that it’s an English Colony with English goods that don’t have a tax on them. BUT, bring your own pounds, because most shops were making off with 30 extra cents per euro in the exchange rate. >( boo.

And now, I have a ticket to a Bull Fight for tomorrow, Sunday. Don’t know how I feel about this yet. I THINK IT’LL BE COOL but then the end will make me very sad D:

Another public Facebook album: Click Me!

Well, I’m tired. BED FOR ME I’ll be posting this in the morning. I’m SO glad I have wi-fi now, though.
This means skype chats should be even easier then
Anyone up for them? Let’s set a time.

Take care~