Graffiti

Despite the small town feel of Huelva, there is a lot of interesting graffiti around. A Huelva-famous artist who goes by the name of Man-O-Matic, does incredible graffiti. He has a lot of beautiful, realistic portraits about and business's commission him to paint their garages and doors. I also visited El Parque Alfonso Sanchez the other day. It is an incredibly strange park. It is an enormous and consists of ramping cement tiers that raise up and culminate into a kind of lookout walkway that one can get a pretty good view of Huelva from. Not only is it's structure strange, but it looks like a place completely abandoned. All the cement walls are covered in years of graffiti, plants and small trees grow up out of cracks, and beer bottles and other debris little the area. I was told that big concerts happen there in the summer but it was hard to picture the place being used by anyone. However, I did like the place a lot; the graffiti was fun and the grungy aesthetic is cool to look at.

Other nice little things..

There is a neighborhood in the city center of Huelva called Barrio Reina Victoria. It's quite odd actually. It's located on a hill top and sectioned off by a low wall and gates. All the residences here are small old British style houses, with little verandas with overgrown flowers and climbers and little streets. Everything seems miniature. As the story goes, way back in 'the day' during Queen Victoria's reign, this neighborhood was built to house poor British mining families that worked in Huelva. Now, the Barrio Reina Victoria is a site to see and an expensive little neighborhood to live in.
Also, one evening I took myself on a little walk down to Muelle de Riotinto, which is a kind of long pier that curves out into the Rio Tinto. Beyond the Rio there are a lot of marsh lands and eventually the Atlantic coast. At sunset this place is gorgeous. I took a breather here and read my book for an hour or so.

Cristóbal Colón

I was shocked when I experienced Christopher Columbus day here. Back in the US, it is just another great little holiday to have off of work. Here, in Huelva, October 12th is a big celebration. Little did I know before I moved here, but Christopher Columbus/Cristóbal Colón spent time in Huelva and actually embarked from here in the three ships to America! There is a museum about the discovery of the Americas and 3 ships docked nearby that are recreations of Columbus's three ships. These recreations actually sailed the route to the US on the 500-year anniversary of Columbus Day. I also had the opportunity to visit an old monastery nearby that Columbus stayed before he left on his voyage. The monks of the monastery helped and gave advice to Columbus. The monastery still has some original frescos and 4 monks still live there and maintain the place. It's very beautiful.

Huelva

I haven't talked about Huelva yet. I love the town so far. I guess it is technically a small city. Coming from living in New York the past 4 years, I was afraid I would dislike living in a city as small as Huelva, but so far, I like it a lot! It is big enough that if you want to go to other parts of the city you need to take a bus, or go for a pretty lengthy walk. On the other hand, the city center is small enough that you can walk across it in 20 minutes. Huelva is my first taste of a European city, and I think it's beautiful! I think the European aesthetic is more beautiful in general. There are lots of older buildings everywhere, no skyscrapers here, and all the buildings have lots of balconies with plants dangling down and beautifully designed tile walls or detail. There are numerous plazas and small parks, palm trees, and several old churches. In the city center, the streets are for walking and socializing, not for cars. In some of the older buildings you can see the Arabic aesthetic influence, which I love. The streets are all stone brick and cafe tables sprawl out into the streets everywhere. On a more general note, never having been to Europe and coming from the US, it seems to me that this city has a old European romantic feel. It is pretty family oriented and cute old folks stroll down the street or smoke cigars on one of the many street-side benches chatting about whatever it is that cute old people chat about.
There is one cafe which quickly became a regular haunt for us-Bar Aqua-it has wifi for one, every Tuesday there is a language exchange where people from all over come together and practice speaking different languages with each other, every Wednesday there is trivia, and every Thursday its is board game night. We are now on first name basis with the wait staff, so we feel extra cool when we go in there haha. Also, the food and drink in Huelva are cheap and it is totally acceptable to get a wine or beer (or two) casually at any time during the day.
This type of street layout (that is, for walking and gathering at cafes) really reflects the 'slowness' and socially-focused nature of the Spanish culture. As an American coming from the North East, this really stuck out to me. In general, things move slower in Spain, everything takes longer to get done, but there is a really refreshing social intimacy that comes out of this. It is the norm to get desayuno/breakfast (consisting of a cafe/coffee and tostada media/half a toasted bun with oil and a tomato based sauce--the Spanish think eggs for breakfast is ludicrous haha) at a nearby cafe anytime between 9-11, head to work until siesta at 2-5/5:30 during which everything besides cafes shut down, and return to work until close around 9pm. Dinner is at 9. This style work day has the effect of some inefficiency (as we unhappily experienced trying to get things fixed in our apartment) but one has to wander if Americans were more like this, would we be a little less neurotic?

The Hunt Commences

The hunt for a apartment (piso) began. Miriam and I decided to join forces for this battle. We copied numbers down from "Se Aquila" signs throughout Huelva, snatched slips from advertisement posters on doors and lampposts and messaged people advertising pisos on apartment-renting sites online. We went on piso visits and once again, THANK THE LAWD I had Miriam there to communicate with the Spaniard landlords. Miriam is completely fluent; she majored in Spanish, studied abroad in Argentina, and did a similar teaching program to ours in Chile this past year. At one of these visits we met Illaria. Illaria is a super friendly Italian who is also in the program. She was visiting the same apartment as us one day. We got along immediately and exchanged contact information and considered moving into an apartment together if we found one available for three. And that we did.
Alas, as fate would have it, after a week of tiring ourselves traversing this unfamiliar city looking at apartments we were not too excited about, we settled on an apartment directly below Jess and Jane's in the same building, with almost the same layout exactly: C/ Marina 29, 9A - Huelva, Spain 21001 (if anyone wants to send me cookies feel free). The piso is in the center of town and has a nice balcony that looks out onto the sunset and Rio Tinto. There was a slight catch to finally locking down this apartment, however: it did not have electricity, internet nor hot water when we first moved in. Jacabo, our initially charismatic landlord but whom we will learn to scorn, predicted we would have these things up and running in three days. Little did we know at first, but this was a Spanish three days, which in actuality turns out to be more than two weeks! We spent the first two weeks in our cool new apartment using candles for light after sundown and still relying on Jess and Jane for hot showers and a place to charge our phones. Not an ideal start. Although we still have candlelight dinners sometimes when feeling nostalgic for old-times sake.

Cheers to Being Clueless and Receiving the Saving Graces of Others!

Okay! After three flights (Pittsburgh to Washing D.C. to Frankfurt to Faro), 24 hours in the air and airports, two bags of trail mix, a bowl of miso soup in Frankfurt, only a few hours of off and on dozing, I arrived perfectly sweaty and delirious in Faro, Portugal on the pleasantly sunny morning of September 24th. (Hats off to the German Airlines Lufthansa; I got to watch Star Trek 2, eat two meals, and enjoy three glasses of wine and one glass of Baileys on the house!).
My checked suitcase came through (Thank god!) and I wandered through the airport out to where I believed and hoped the bus would arrive that would take me to the bus station where I could catch a ride into Spain. To my slight relief, there were others waiting cluelessly as well; we were all doing our rounds back and forth from the bench to the bus map and exchanging "welp, I hope this works!" looks. The bus eventually came and a nice woman I was sitting next to directed me about which stop to get off on to get to the station. The open-air bus station in Faro was buzzing with humidity. I bought my ticket, sat down on a bench next to a smelly garbage can, rested my head in my arms on top of my suitcase and proceeded to fall in and out of sleep for the next three hours until my bus arrived.
The ride into Spain was pleasant--the part that I remember that is, for I fell asleep almost immediately. When I woke, I asked the woman next to me "Cuál es el nombre de esto ciudad?" to which she replied "Ayamonte." Ayamonte is a pretty little white-washed city very near the Spain-Portugal boarder on the Spain side--I was on my way. Huelva came about an hour later. A friend of mine, Miriam, whom I only met via facebook the week before met me at the station and brought me to another friend's apartment. By another friend I mean another person I met on facebook the week beforehand. Jess and Jane! Our Saviors! Jess and Jane are two second-year auxiliares with the program. They graciously allowed Miriam and I, mere first-years, to crash with them for the first week while we scrambled for an apartment. So my first experiences in Europe and Spain are all defined by my own cluelessness and other's willingness to help me--from the women on the buses, to  Miriam (Miriam is from Philadelphia), to Jess and Jane allowing two strangers to sleep and eat in their apartment. I feel very lucky; things came together, I met nice people and I survived the trip and my first days in Spain.