2. Tabernillas: Another very nice cafe/restaurant. If you go there for lunch (between 1-3 in the afternoon normally) you will find an elegant restaurant to eat, but the real treat is to go there to Tomar un Cafe (drink a coffee). It is located on Calle Ponzano (see above). Also the waiters are very accustomed to serving Americans so I suspect that speaking English would not be a problem.

3. Cine Renoir: This movie theater is one of the smaller ones in Zaragoza, but also one of the most fascinating. They usually play some of the smaller, non-blockbuster movies that are released. On top of that they are known for playing the movies in their original version so there may even be a movie playing in English (though I have not seen one during my year here). You can reach the theater by walking up Gran Via towards the Park and the Soccer Stadium. The movie theater is on the right, hidden around the corner a bit, right before the soccer stadium (and across the street from the park). I highly recommend it.

4. FNAC: Located on Calle Coso, it is a wonderful store dedicated to books music and many other things of that nature. I would compare it to Borders or Barnes and Noble. The best thing about it though is that, while they do have books in Spanish, they also have a selection of books in English for your reading pleasure. It is not really a small store, but yet it is one that is definitely worth a look if you are bored and are looking for something to do.

5. Calle San Miguel: Located near the center of Zaragoza (off Independencia), this street is the center of a neighborhood full of typical Spanish restaurants. If you are really interested in having some ham or some Spanish tortilla, just go looking for any restaurant in this neighborhood. I highly recommend it.

Hope you all enjoyed what I have written over the semester. It has been fun to be able to share some highlights of my year over here in Zaragoza, Spain, and I'll be doing one more entry when I get back to Providence reflecting on my year as a whole. Until then.

In Barcelona, Palm Sunday was celebrated by, well, waving palms. Throughout the streets there were people waving what appeared to be branches cut off palm trees and dyed various colors. Another "celebration" I was witness to was Los Castellers de Barcelona. I call it a "celebration" because in reality it had nothing to do with Palm Sunday, it was just a live art show put on in the street. However this live art was like no other that I had seen before. This involved humans climbing up and down other humans to form a gigantic tower of people.

After Barcelona I was off to Germany to visit an old friend. Easter there is very much the same as an American Easter, except that apparently the whole egg tradition doesn't end at a young age as it does in the United States. Because of that I was lucky enough to revisit my childhood by painting/dyeing eggs and then later searching for them and various other small gifts in the backyard.

After Germany it was back to Spain and to the city of Valencia. Valencia for me was a time to relax and get my mind off the impending AP Exams, SAT Subject Test and work waiting for me back in Zaragoza. Because of that a lot of the time was spent at the beach. However I managed to visit a couple of sights. One of the more interesting things in Valencia is its market. Up until 1928 Valencia's central market was held in the streets, however in 1928 a building was constructed to house the market and protect it from the weather.

One of the main tourist attractions in Valencia is its aquarium. And while that may seem weird at first, it is obvious why once you see it and the area surrounding it. The aquarium is located among a mini-city of incredible architecture. The building the surround the aquarium are made up of architecture with incredible curves and buildings of amazing grandeur that just can not be translated well into words.

Thus concluded my spring break and a wonderful one it was at that.

Part of the city where the aquarium was in Valencia

Another part

A few from the "city" afar.

Part of the actual aquarium

The beginning of a person tower. It finished with about 8 layers of people.

My new host family consisted of a brother who had just turned 16 a few weeks earlier and his mother and father. It was with my new host brother that I would go to school with during the week. I was one of three kids from my school that went to Sevilla the same week I did. However one of the goals of the trip was to make it as independent as possible. We had to buy our tickets on our own (thus sitting apart from each other on the train) and we were supposed to have as little contact as possible with the other two once we arrived in Sevilla. Now of course since I was in the same class as one of them it wasn't perfect, but we all did the best we could.

Being just one of three true English speakers in the school, we were bombarded with questions about the United States, questions like "Does everyone own a gun?" or "Do you always eat at McDonalds?" or other questions along those lines. After I calmed peoples fears that Americans weren't just fat people that sat on their porches shooting people all day, they started to make conversation and make us (meaning me and the other kid from my school) part of the group.

Since the two other students and I did not have anything to do during class we would visit other English classes to talk and help out in each class. Our basic role in each class was to answer the kids' questions that the teacher told us would be simple. Oh were we in for a shock. First of all, these classes were some of the loudest I had ever been in. The kids talked the entire class, nonstop. Second, their simple questions are not simple at all. How many 17-year-olds do you know who know exactly what they want to be when they grow up? I certainly don't know many. For me the simple questions like "What's your favorite movie?" or "What's your favorite band?" are hard because I don't have one specific one. And to top it off they learn British English so there was a little confusion. One memorable mix-up was the definition of mascot. The question was "What is your mascot?” Pretty simple question, no? Not at all. Apparently in British English mascot means pet. You can only imagine how such answers such as a Quaker (Moses Brown's "mascot") and a door (one girl went to Deerfield where their mascot is a door) would have confused them.

The weekend was another memorable experience. Friday night I got to witness some drama between my new host brother and one of his friends. My host brother felt that his friend was spending too much time with his girlfriend and not with their group of friends. I stayed out of that whole battle, leaving it to them to sort out. Saturday we did the typical teenage thing. We went to see a movie (Date Movie, a really dumb movie but incredibly funny) and hung around in the center of Sevilla. We walked by the beautiful bull ring and by the famous cathedral with its amazing tower that has a great view of the city. The day was finished off by watching F.C. Barcelona battle it out against Real Madrid in the biggest soccer rivalry in Spain (it is like Red Sox vs. Yankees). The game finished in a 1-1 tie.

Overall the 5 days experience was one that immersed my almost fully into the true Spanish life. A life that included Spanish school, hanging out with friends until late at night, watching soccer and just enjoying life. To top it off it helped my Spanish immensely as I noticed a huge difference in my Spanish when I arrived back in Zaragoza to resume my normal life. Of course shortly after this I went on Spring break where I would barely hear a word of Spanish, but that is a story to be told tomorrow.

The tournament is set up such that each team plays each other twice (once at each home stadium) and the team that scores the most goals combined advances to the next round. If they tie there are a series of complicated tiebreakers using the amount of yellow and red cards each team received. The first obstacle for Zaragoza was a Barcelona team that was on a New England Patriot like win streak having won 18 in a row. All that Zaragoza did, after not scoring once 5 days earlier against Atlético, was put up 4 against the best team in Spain on the way to winning 4-2. They finished off Barcelona six days later by only losing 2-1 and thus winning by an overall goal total of 5-3. However, they were not done yet. Up next was the big bad Real Madrid team, whose two star players Ronaldo and Beckham made more money than the entire Zaragoza team. In front of the home crowd little known Diego Milito and Ewerthon scored 4 and 2 goals respectively as Real Zaragoza trounced Real Madrid 6-1. All that Zaragoza had to do was not lose by more than 5 goals in Madrid and they would be off to the finals. Zaragoza took care of business by losing 4-0 a week later to advance to the final which will be played April 12th in Madrid.

Madrid returned this past Wednesday to Zaragoza, the site of their 6-1 embarrassment with revenge on their mind. It was a terrific game. Both teams could not get any offense going in the first half with each team only getting 2 good chances to score and converting neither of them. However about 5 minutes into the second half Zaragoza struck. Argentinean and Real Madrid nightmare Diego Milito scored on a header making the score one-nil as it is said. The score stayed that way for the rest of regulation time as Zaragoza fell back and played a strong defense. However in the stoppage time Ronaldo broke the hearts on Zaragoza fans, taking advantage of a muffed save by the Zaragoza goalkeeper and kicking in the loose ball to tie and the game. The game ended shortly after in a tie (with each team getting point in the standings), but it was not the result Zaragoza had hoped for as they played well enough to win the game.

Real Zargoza's stadium: La Romareda. It was here that Zaragoza ended Barcelona's winning streak, beat Real Madrid 6-1 and where I went to the game against Madrid

A corner kick during the game.

A picutre of my ticket to the game.

The whole ski trip was sponsored by my school. We (a group of about 20-25 kids) left on a Friday afternoon and headed up to a little town at the base of the mountain. The trip up was an adventure in itself. Our trip included a stop at a cafe, a foosball game and a pass over a bridge about the width of our bus with no railings. But when we finally got to our Albergue (hostel) we were welcomed with a nice dinner and snow!!! For the first time since last winter I saw and got to feel real snow! The trip was already worth it! Unfortunately by the time we got there it was dark and there was no possibility of going skiing, so we all called it a night.

The next morning we headed up to the ski slopes, rented all our gear and all that good stuff and got ready to get on the lift. Well since I had never been skiing this was quite an adventure for me. I got my skis on fine, but what I hadn't accounted for was the fact that I had no idea how to stop. On the way to the lift there was a little hill, well it was not really even a hill, a lump I'll say. Well what ended up happening was I slid down this lump and smacked into my friend who was standing in front of me (and an expert skier I should add). To make things worse I managed to fall over, in the middle of about 40 people, none of whom were having any trouble at all. Well here is where I got to practice for the first time something that I got really good at by the end of the weekend. Standing up without taking off my skis (I got good at standing up with my skis off too). After about 3 min of struggling to raise my self up I finally managed to stand and get on the lift.

OK, so I was ready to go, up all the way on the lift (which was quite fast), to the top part of the mountain in between the end of the lift and the lodge. This is where my day of falling began. OK so the lift is only about a 10 second ski ride from the lodge, it is a cinch for everyone who has ever skied in their lives before. But of course, since I had never skied, never taken a lesson, nothing, it was quite embarrassing. I fell at least 3 times, got stuck in powder and ran into a fence all between the end of the lift and the lodge. Good times.

On this mountain, which was called Cerler, there were four types of slopes. Green, blue, orange/red (we never decided what color it actually was) and black. Green was the easiest and they rose in difficulty all the way up to black which I think I might have killed myself if I had tried it. I stuck to the green slope. Now for most skiers, the green slope is just a warm up slope. They go down the green once only for the purpose of getting to a harder slope like blue or red or something like that. It is a good thing that I am a Celtics fan; because green was definitely my color. I stayed the entire weekend on the green slope in the attempt to learn how to ski.

All in all skiing was tons of fun. By Sunday I could get down the entire green slope without falling or hitting anyone and thus I was quite proud of my improvement, especially because I did not take a single lesson. The snow was fantastic and definitely one amazing experience.

The Green Slope from one of the lifts:

A view of the mountains:

The main lift from the lodge. It doesn't look all that far does it?

Eventually the rest of the team showed up and we started the real practice. We started with a fast break drill, followed by a 3 point shooting drill where we were split up into 2 teams and asked to make 9 three pointers (as a team), then sprint to the other court and make 8, than back and 7, etc. until we reached 1. Finally, once we finished those drills, the fun part of practice started. The coach split the teams up into two teams of 5 and we played a real game of 5 versus 5. This team is quite good. They run at will, sometimes dunking the ball, scoring points at will.

For me however the sport of basketball is not quite as effortless as they make it seem, and after about 15 minutes I was fatigued. I was slowly jogging up the court as the rest of the team flew past me on the way to scoring a hoop. Sadly this was not my best day at practice, but I'm hoping to soon arrive on the scene.

Jersey of the team I play with. The school is named Compañia de Maria (Company of Maria). Photo courtesy of http://www.ad-ciamaria.com/

So when I got here on the first day, one of 63 freaked out Americans, I was welcomed by my host family. I live here with a single mother named Pilar and her son, Juan, who just turned 19 a few weeks ago. I go to school in what in reality is a large apartment in the center of town. The school is located in La Plaza de Aragon. Like I said before I am one of 63 Americans in my school, with a extremely skewed proportion of about 3 girls to every guy.

Zaragoza is a very old city, dating back to Roman times when it was known as Cesaragusta. It was also Muslim dominated in the day where the Muslims were prominant in Spain. Anyway Zaragoza is very art dominated, with art ranging from a Roman theater to an amazing basilica.

The Basilica and the River Ebro (which flows through Zaragoza):

Roman Theater:

Main street outside my school:

Anyway that's pretty much the main parts of Zaragoza. I'll talk to everyone later.