Walkin to the big Jesus on the mountain

So yesterday some friends and I decided to hike to that big Jesus statue located on that distant mountain top I can see from my window. We got directions on where to go from whence the map we have ends, because the route is on the part outside of the range of the map of the city. I later learned it was about 5 km outside the city, which would explain why going up took about 2 and a half hours and also why it wasn't even on the map. Here it is in this picture I marked, it's barely visible from here but they keep it lit up at night so you can see it there.

So the hike started around 3:30 PM, which is when we were finally outside the urban part of the city and into the beginning of the countryside, which took about 30 min just to get to aside from the 2 hr 30 min it took from there on to get to Jesus. If you turned to the left from the angle here you would be heading up the road on the beginning of our route. To the right would be the city and behind, obviously where we came from.

In this video, I was in the middle of just trying to film a panoramic view of our current location when an elderly man walking a dog passed by and stopped a bit away from us and asked us, in spanish of course, if we were walking up the mountain, so when I replied we were he told us the better shortcut to take because it had "less curves" as he said more or less.

So this is a view of the city about 30 min into the hike into the countryside, it's quite a bit farther away now as you can see.

Around the corner a few minutes later we came accross this building, named the Santa Maria del Naranco Hall.





This building dates from the 9th century, that's right, it's about 1,100 years old.








This is about an hour into the hike now and you can see the city off to the right. The speed limit, or rather speed suggestion as I'd put it based on the way they drive by, is 40 kmh. Note the lack of guardrails. Nice.






About an hour and a half later we're still walkin along this windy road, there's a guardrail here because for some reason it's safe to do up to 60 kmh in this part. That of course didn't matter for us pedestrians aside from making dodging the passing cars a little more interesting.






Here is how far away the city looks now at about an hour and 45 min into the walk.






Shortly after we found a path that at least took us off the road fortunately. Note the steep grade at which the path ascends as it curves to the left in this picture because that will help put in perspective the angle of the slope in the next picture of the path we walked.






Yes, that's going up and away at that steep looking angle, it's not my camera angle, i took it looking straight ahead, not upwards. It wasn't that bad but I don't think I'd want to run laps on it or anything.








At the top of this incline here is the view of the city down below that we walked from.







Finally after walking another 15 minutes or so we came to the final path to the giant Jesus.







And here he is. Not sure how old the sculpture is or the exact size but I'd estimate it's over 50 feet tall.

These are the mountains in the distance that lay behind the city and beyond.

This is a 360 pan shot I took of the view from up top here next to the monument. It was pretty hard to take it all in and accept it as real and not just a pretty photo background or special effect. The view was definately worth the journey to get to it.

And this is a zoomed in shot of the city from the top.

And lastly, for all the pictures I haven't posted that I did take is at least this one that I think is very worth posting, it is the sun as it's setting and I caught it at a good moment. I took about 90 photos of our hike so this is merely a portion of the narrative but at the least sufficient to express the highlights of what we saw. It was worth the sore muscles in the morning the next day.

The areas I've frequented the most so far...

So I finally managed to get a chance to take one outdoor photo of the university, here is the front of the campus as you first enter it. The building where my classes actually take place is not shown here but I'll get a picture of it later. It's an older building that was originally used as a garrison for the troops of the Spanish army during World War II.







I did manage to take a picture of the lobby of the building where I have classes even though I don't have an outside shot yet. This is what you see once you enter.







This is the street that is essentially one of the bar districts, about every door you see on either side leads into a different bar.





This one bar named La Caja Negra, or The Black Box, is one that I've been frequenting because of their music choice and it's proximity to where I live. Also now if I go in on certain days of the week I get free drinks here and there because I became acquainted with the bartender by trading mp3s. One of the times I was first visiting this bar I noticed they were playing the music through a computer hooked up to the bar's huge stereo, so I told the bartender how I brought my external hard drive with me to Spain with my 130 GB of music files and that I could let him browse it.





So the next week after that, which was a few days ago, I returned with my hard drive and hooked it up to the bar's computer. While doing this I asked if I could install a DJing program on the computer and the bartender said that was fine, so I commenced to mix music and play around with the program on their computer while having it play through the bar's stereo while there were other patrons there. It was a lot of fun because I got to pick the music I wanted to hear at the bar because I was the one in control of the system for once, and while I DJed for the bar for a bit the bartender would just give me and my friend beers and didn't let us pay for any of them which of course was great as well.




So, so far it's only been a week and I'm starting to get to know the locals finally. I'm also not getting lost on my way to my usual places now, as long as I take the same route. I don't have classes tomorrow because of my schedule so maybe I'll get a chance during the day to take some pictures of the area around where I live in the city.

So I've Heard it Rains A Lot in Oviedo

Was supposed to have a tour of Oviedo today with the rest of the UMASS group but when I woke up to get ready I noticed it was raining hard and quite windy. I called one of the program directors and asked if we were still meeting and she said she already sent an e-mail out saying that it was canceled. This is funny to me because not only did I not receive an e-mail, but I also thought it funny because many of the other students don't have access to the internet so even if one was sent it would be useless. So, I texted the rest of the group that has a spanish cell phone number here and let them know it was canceled. Oh well, whatever. Least I got to sleep more. Now I'm about to go to class and was originally planning on taking pictures of the university but now that it's raining I think not today, so here instead is a video I just took of the view out my window right now at 3:40 PM Oviedo time.

La Sidreria

So last night I went out to the sidreria, it wasn't so simple however. I figured I could remember the name of the place and that it didn't matter if I got lost because I had my map and knew the general location of it on the map at least. Wrong. Apparently going out knowing just the name of the restaraunt and not having a map would have gotten me farther. I wandered in loops for about an hour and thought I was going to lose it before I gave up trying to find it myself and called my apartment and asked Helen to get the name for me from the sheet I left behind. After that I found it and fortunately everyone was still there and in true Spanish style hadn't actually started on time at all and were in the middle of dinner instead of finished when I arrived an hour late.


This is where we ate in the back private room of the sidreria with the rest of the other UMASS kids and some members of their host families.





This is how you are supposed to pour the sidra, or cider. The waiter, el camerero, always has to pour it out like this according to their custom. He then serves you the glass which only has a little sidra in it, they don't fill the glass. Then you take the glass and have to drink it all in one movement and not leave any behind. Then he takes the glass from you and you resume eating and drink the water or wine that you have in front of you.

This is some of the food, they serve multiple courses of small portions that they put out on the table and you all share it with the people around you. You don't ask for anything they just bring it out and you try it. There was a wide variety of food types that basically cover all kinds of meat, seafood, and vegetables.

After we ate, which was a long, social process, all of us students along with the program directors left as a group and went to a nearby bar. The music was a mix of bad american pop and other songs from around here that people dance to that we don't even know. It was funny watching Spanish guys dancing enthusiastically to "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" and not knowing that if this was the U.S. they wouldn't be thinking they looked so cool after someone said something. It was still a fun time and we ended up leaving around 4ish because us Americans were tired. All the other locals were still going at it without a sign of stopping anytime soon. While walking home late at night you get to see the street cleaners hosing the streets down and sweeping. I can see why Oviedo won a prize for cleanest city.

Classes started yesterday but I haven't had all of them so far yet. I'll try to post some pictures of the campus, etc tomorrow. For now, here is a video clip I took of the street right in front of my apartment ground level entrance.

Settling in

So here's my first blog entry from Spain. It's been 3 days now since I've been here in the city of Oviedo. So first a little info about this place. Oviedo is a small city located in the province of Asturias, almost at the northwesternmost point of Spain, with one province in between here and Portugal. It's about 45 minutes south of Spain's northern coast. The weather here is like paradise after coming from snowy Amherst. When it's "cold" here it's about mid 50's F at night. Ha, in Amherst it was around 19 F when I left, and that's during the day.

Here are some mountains I saw while on the plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo.

As the one hour plane ride from Madrid to Oviedo drew near the end and we lowered altitude, I could see thesurrounding countryside outside the city.

The mountains are very close to us here, when I look out my 8th floor window of the apartment I'm staying in, I see green peaks not too far in the distance with a large, lit up statue of Jesus, arms outstretched, and as a matter of fact I walked pretty close the other day to the edge of the city, and the mountains appeared to be quite close.

The part of the city I live in is in the commercial center of the town where the most activity is. When I open the door to the elevator on my floor, that's right, I said open the door, because the elevators here have doors like a house that you pull open to enter, I push the 0 button to go to floor 0 because that's the first floor of a building for them here. -1 is the basement haha. I learned the hard way today that negative numbers around here next to floor numbers always mean an underground floor when I walked into a portugese for spanish natives class on the wrong floor but the right room number at the university today and had to ask the teacher where to go as the students laughed at my confusion, I thought it was pretty funny because the class got a kick out of watching me talk back and forth with their teacher.

Anyhow, so here are some pictures of the room I'm staying in.

Here is the view at night looking downward from my window.

Here is the rest of the apartment, it winds around a corner in an L shape. This is the entrance, note the large, centered doorknob haha.

And this is what you see once you open the door and enter.

Upon walking down the hallway the first room after the bathroom is the kitchen, on the right. We eat dinner at this table together around 9 PM every night. "We" includes myself, my host Helen, and sometimes Victor who is another student who stays here who is from this city and rents another room in the apartment from Helen. I have not eaten yet with Helen's son, a 42 year old lawyer, but he too has his own room here that he occasionally stays in.

This is the living room where Helen watches her shows at night and also converts the couch into a bed and sleeps here.

I was surprised to learn they have "high speed" internet here hooked up to a wireless router. This is because a student from Japan who stayed here last semester installed the router, figures... haha. I was surprised about the internet because other students from my program are in houses or apartments that don't even have phones let alone internet.

Well this is all I feel like posting for now as I do have much more to write but must go attend a dinner/meeting at a Sidreria, a hard cider oriented bar/restaraunt that caters to the customs of this region which have celtic roots. The cider here is a big deal for the locals and is more popular than beer and wine. Apparently there are a whole set of special rules and actions to follow when partaking in this cultural event of going to to a Sidreria so I guess I'm going to go see them. I'll take some pictures tonight and post them later. Tomorrow I want to try to get some photos of the university, as I've been so busy I've not had the time to take any.