Ripoff in Requena?

Satuday in Spain aint such a bad thing. Today we woke up and met in the lobby around 9:30 for a surprising adventure. With our program, basically everything is a mystery which is either fun or completely frustrating. Today was a bit of both. We took a city bus a half hour out to the Valencian bus station. We hopped on a bus and headed out to Requena. For those of you who demand geographic relations it's an hour west of Valencia, past the mountains. The bus ride out was beautiful, it was a sunny and clear day. Once we arrived we walked 20 minutes or so in what we found was almost a deserted city. We went to a Bodega called Covinas. We were told we were going to tour it, so I was expecting a vineyard and maybe some working machines but it basically turned out to be a few fancy sets of garage doors and a few barrels of wine and a few hundred wine bottles on a rack. It honestly wasn't too impressive. Their wine tasting area was pretty interesting on the other hand, although it did not have any sort of outside view. They quickly gave us a glass of blush, which wasn't my cup of tea. It was my first official wine tasting, and I'm not whining but they didn't have any freaking cheese. They had a choice of potato chips or pork rinds (not even flavored ones!). Our second glass was a vino tinto (spanish for red wine). It wasn't horrible, but wasn't my favorite. After our quick half hour tour of the Bodega we walked around the city and quickly found out that the caves were actually closed (hence the surprise on our trips seems to always happen). I was really looking forward to the caves because I was told that there were ancient writings and markings on there which sounded really interesting. Rather than visiting the caves we basically walked aimlessly around the city. Ryan and I made well of our time advancing our gargoyling careers. Ryan may have reached the pinnacle of his career with a daring high altitude church gargoyle. I'm in the prime of my gargoyling career now. We walked through an open air market into a left over Carnival festival. There was a group of Spaniards dressed like tourists and came up and gave us a hard time. What can I say, I look American. But if looking like a badass is wrong...I don't want to be right. As Dubya would say...Americuh. The trip back was pretty nice, we took a train through the mountains which was pretty nice. This coming up weekend, on the other hand, is Barcelona! I'm really excited to see this city, the architecture around it I've seen in books and on the internet looks really beautiful. I'll definitely have some good updates and pictures after the weekend. Pictures from Saturday (A barrel signed by the president of Spain, me wine tasting, the view in Requena and the weird carnival festival we ran into) - Sean

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Sunday Mornin'. There's a theme with this whole early to rise thing while you're on...vacation during a vacation. I woke up and was told that the hotel we were staying at had a cheap breakfast and I went out to the place where it was supposed to be served and either they missed their night of shopping at Kroger or they slept in. Since I packed food (I spent 13 euro on food for my trip) I ate 4 PB&J sammaches again (lay off, we walk the entire day). We ended up leaving the hotel and made our way to a local plaza so everyone could get some breakfast before we headed up to La Alhambra. There are pasteleria's everywhere (no, art supplies don't have a disease it's a pastry shop) and we decided to stop at one and have a little bit to eat. They've got pretty solid baguettes (not a purse for small girls) and I had one and a cafe con leche (milk and coffee...they're notorious here for these. It's like Henry Ford saying you can have any color Ford you want as long as its black). Afterwards half of our group got split up from us and because they didn't have any working phones, we decided to head up to La Alhambra without them. It was about a half hour walk straight up hill. Along the way we passed by graffiti tagged along the streets. By graffiti I mean I would let them paint my garage, it was serious art work. As a kid who used to draw cars on the back of my doors because I ran out of paper I have a bit of respect for their rebellion. When we made it to the top a doorman at the local hotel said the tickets were probably sold out so we walked around a garden for an hour or two lackadazically (spell check is saying it's not a word but my dad used to say it, so it's gotta be one). The garden was above Granada and looked down to the city. It was a really clear day out so it was more than beautiful looking at the city of Granada with the Sierra Nevada in the background. After we went to the garden we walked up to La Alhambra and stood in line in hopes there were still tickets left for the day. An attendant on the side of the line said there were only 40 tickets left. He turned to the group behind us, asked if they spoke Spanish and they responded in French and he immediately switched over and told them what he told us in French. Pretty sweet. Side note: What's the most common phrase in France? I give up. Continuing on we got to the front of the line and managed to get 6 tickets! It was a small miracle because they only sell 350 an hour and were down to the last 20 for the entire day. La Alhambra was amazing! The details on the walls alone were beautiful, I had respect for the work and details they put in it. La Alhambra is an old 14 century Moorish palace thats survived the test of time for the city to sell admission to curious tourists. All for now, this weekend is our first baseball game, I'll be sure to have a quality update for my first college sporting event. - Sean.

Pictures from Sunday: (One of me enjoying the details, one overlooking Granada with the mountains in the background and one saluting Hotel America.)

Pictures from Sunday:

It's Saturday in (Athens) Granada!

Saturday we woke up in Sierra Nevada...not really a bad thing. We woke up around 7:30, so we were able to get breakfast, check-out, and get on the bus home. Breakfast was free (jackpot) and since they decided in Valencia that they were only going to feed us small portions, I may have looked like a bush baby (not the offspring of the former president yall, it's a reference to how big my eyes got, cripes!) when I found out that it was all you can eat. Needless to say I had my fair share of cereal, fruit, yogurt (they love that stuff here) and juices. They also had makings for sandwiches so I figured what any Frendt would do is make one for the road. After we got all checked-out we headed down to where the busses were parked. They had re-opened the road and we went up to the driver with our slips from the night before and he coldly denied them. He exchanged words rapidly we didn't understand and we exchanged politely back to ourselves in English.

We paid for new tickets and got on the bus and left the Sierra Nevada after a bitter-sweet adventure. We got back in Granada pretty timely and all basically went straight to sleep. We woke up and heard there was one of the biggest open markets in Europe near-by us. We adventured over to the market and come to find out, the 7 Eleven on the corner in the states probably had more food than this market did. Naturally we left (I have a few good pictures from there though).

Our group split up into two smaller groups, one went to Wing Ding's Ressaurant of Duck and Osser Assortments of Asian Sings (a Chinese Restaurant nearby) and we went to a Morocco an neighborhood. The streets were narrow and there were different shops selling hand-bags, hookah pipes, rugs and other items you might find in your basement. We had heard that tea-houses in this neighborhood were among the best so we decided to find one and enjoy a spot of tea. Three of us had a fresh cut mint tea and two others had an earl grey jasmine and rose tea. I have to say that the mint tea was probably the best hot tea I have ever enjoyed. The company was great we sat on the miniature footstools for two hours or so just having some hot tea. It was quite cold and rainy so we only looked around Granada for an hour or so afterwards.

We all went back to the hotel and met up with the other group, had some dinner (PB&J...actually I had 4 PB&J's...how's a hoss gotta survive on just one?). We took another short nap and got up to see what kind of night life Granada had to offer. We went out to a place called Little Havana that specialized in one thing...being little. Half of us decided we wanted to just go hang out at a small bar and have a beer or so, so we took off. The half of us that left found out that most everything but the discoteca's around close pretty early in the night, so we just headed back and watched the NBA all-star game (don't know how that was on but Atlanta really sucked it up) and went to sleep. All in all it was a good day tater. - Sean.

Pics from today: A bit of Gargoyling, a dog I'm sure is happy it's not in an Asian meat market, and random scenic pictures of Granada.

Granada...It's not pronounced Canada with a G.

Hey Yall,

This weekend was easily the best weekend of 2010. I'm going to do this update in three different parts because there is so much to say about each day. So here goes part 1: Friday

Thursday night/ Friday morning at 12:50 our train was scheduled to leave the Valencia train depot. We arrived 45 minutes to an hour early, which we knew wasn't customary but we didn't want to miss our opportunity. We had reserved our seats earlier in the day but we hadn't stamped our Eurail pass to activate it. Fortunately there was a man working late that was able to stamp our pass and get us ready to go. I've been on a couple trains before around Europe but the one we took was pretty slow in my opinion. I figured it would have gone faster than it did. Tim Allen, these trains need MORE POWER!!! After an 8 hour train ride (it wasn't really that bad) and a few sketchy people on the train (gotta watch your stuff, old smelly men try to steal it) we made it to Granada. We got off the train took a taxi to Hotel Nariz, a small hotel that had prices around what a hostel would be like. We dumped off our stuff and got changed for the Sierra Nevada!

A quick taxi ride to the bus station and we purchased our round trip tickets to the mountain. The bus took around 45 minutes or so to get to the top, but the driver was gettin' after it to get there. Renting equipment was painless. Because we were students we got 10% off rentals. Lift tickets were somewhat expensive but you only live once right? The mountain itself was beautiful. The city of Granada was below and was almost too serene. Skiing was pretty good on the mountain. I'd have to say Banff was still the best skiing I've ever done, but southern Spain skiing? Check. Around 3 or 4 the clouds rolled in and started dumping serious amounts of snow on us. By 5 it was a complete white out, and pretty hard to see. It was some of the best powder I have skied in on the other hand.

The resort closed at 5 and our bus was scheduled to leave around 6:30 so we waited in the ski shop for it to arrive. We had a few snowball fights and built some snow men while we waited. At 6:30 we went down to the bus loading area to find that it had not arrived. We were told that the road was blocked because a car careened off the cliff and they closed down the one road to get into the resort.

We waited for a couple hours to see if the road would open back up, but decided to get a hotel instead (Mom, aren't you proud?). We stayed in the Mont Blanc (not sure if it has anything to do with the pen) and it was first class. They had a buffet which three of us shamelessly devoured after a full day of skiing.

We went to our rooms and talked for a couple hours and called it a night. - Sean

Here are a few pictures (including a reenactment of Dumb and Dumber "We'll take it!") Saturday and Sunday will come later (it's siesta here!)

This One's For You, Dad.

Well, I finally made it. I'm officially in the Bigs. A select few of the Americans have been drafted to play baseball for the University of Valencia. You may say, well Sean, did you happen to bring any gear to play a sport besides soccer which requires only shoes? And I will answer, the University of Valencia Astro's are outfitting us with gear to play with.

We practiced last night for the first time at 8. It felt great to step back on a real baseball field and take some BP and do various fielding exercises. During some of our fielding exercises the Spanish coaches would give us tips on how to improve. America's favorite past time (also all Fathers dreams) . Although we aren't eligible to play at Omaha against all the other college teams, I believe strongly we will improve the Astro's (who may or may have not lost their last game 1-11) record to a winning season.

I'm actually pretty excited I get to bring the ole Axe out and swing away. Your Scott Thorman look alike,The Lumberjack Sean Frendt is going to dominate first base and will have a batting record better than Andruw Jones (if you don't recall he went sub .190 so I should be ok).

I will continue to update throughout the season and can hopefully get some pictures up. For now Imagine a baseball field and me on it. - Sean

I feel like an idiot?

Although we had a long weekend, school came back for a visit pretty quickly. Although I had a great weekend with the Futbol game...well both Football games (Saints win!) we were in class today and in my second class we had a discussion over Ser and Estar. Both literally mean "to be" (Shakespeare you're mind is gonna be blown) and have very specific variations. We started asking questions and our professor corrected us on three different accounts. The first was asking a person how much something is, the second was letting someone know the food was good and the third I don't recall (Mom, I picked up on the first two, I did good). The phrases we had been taught since we started Spanish don't even make sense here. My question is, besides feeling like an idiot because I have asked countless people what the price of something was and telling our waiters the food wasn't that great, why do our professors teach us this material? Since I've been here, it's pretty amazing to see what we would never ever pick up on sitting in a classroom in the states. I have always felt that the romance department needs some re-structuring but why don't our professors tell us these things? We had a pretty long discussion on the 30 minute walk home and were all pretty encouraged. Our Spanish is still pretty rough but we have been here for less than a month and we are able to pick up on quite a bit. Just some quick after lunch thoughts. - Sean (Sorry there aren't pictures, use your imagination :-).

Mestalla Parte Dos!

Today I had one of the best experiences on the trip so far, my first real European futbol game. I've been to a small minor league team game in Austria but Valencia actually has a pretty quality team which was really fun to see. They went up by two goals early in the first half and didn't score again but the atmosphere was still entertaining. I've always imagined the stadium to be electrically insane (Georgia Tech kids, calm down I'm talking intensity) but because the team we were playing wasn't that great, it wasn't considered a huge rivalry. The chants that everyone sang was still really fun to hear though. The stadium is a 30-40 minute walk, almost identical to Sanford stadium back in Athens. There aren't any hills in the city which makes walking convenient. The game started at 6 tonight and was over before 8. It's amazing how they can play an entire game before American's can get to half time in their own football game. Fortunately for us, we did find one place that has the Superbowl televised, on a different note. How bout them Saints? I got to meet Drew Brees when I was really young and he was fresh into Purdue so I've been a fan since. Pictures from Today: - Sean

Mestalla Part 1

Today I woke up to cold an rainy climate, a recipe for a uphill both ways in the snow sort of walk to school. Luckily it wasn't raining that hard but the internal battle of waking up on a rainy day is always the toughest. Cold and rainy is the absolute hardest battle. The distance walking from the dorm here to school is actually about the same length from my house in Athens to the Student Learning Center (I refuse to call it the MLC youngins'). On days like today I wake up and am presented with the question, walk freezing cold while getting soaked or stay warm, dry and completely comfortable until I have gotten suitable sleep. You can't tell me you haven't been through the same. Luckily for me, I happen to be in Spain and it is always the breaking point for my argument against myself. (You're correct mom, I do go to class.)

Today's excursion was the Mestalla (it's ok, I didn't know what it was either before I came here). Valencia has a futbol (Soccer for you westerners) team and their stadium is called the Mestalla. For 5 euro we were able to take a tour of the entire place. The most notable parts were the locker room and the club level seats. There is a place where you and nine other fans are able to be served by a Marriott chef while in an air conditioned (rare in Spain) room, with a built in radio, TV and minibar. The room costs 5000 Euro a game. Since the dollar is so strong these days it's around 7000 American Dollars for a soccer game (futbol, excuse me). The second part I thought was most interesting was the Valencian locker room. Unlike what you might think for most home locker rooms at a stadium that seats 50,000+ fans it's barren. Wooden benches, plastic name tags, metal shelves and white concrete walls adorn the locker room. The idea behind it is the coaches want the players mind absolutely focused on the game before them rather than staying comfortable before and after the game. (Mark Richt, I hope you're taking notes after your sloppy recruitment this year). Valencia is a good team, so I can only assume its a worthwhile thought.

I've called it part one because luckily for us, there is a game this weekend! For the low price of 20 Euro (America, it's the money that looks like they stole from a Monopoly box but ironically the dollar is about as useful here as monopoly money!) We are able to see the game Saturday (Altitude 'schmaltitude). Our tour ticket got us 10% off in the store so I was able to score some swag (If you aint legit before a game, don't bother coming.) (some of you might need a translation for swag, it means apparel or clothing). Pictures from the day (Field, Press room, Prayer room (We go ahead and call some of our football plays hail mary's to kill two birds with one stone) :

The Roof, Agassi and Classes.

We're in full stride of our classes now, each one definitely has its own feel. All four of my professors are female and each bring something different to the plate. Our culture teacher is extremely enthusiastic with teaching. I've had numerous professors in the past and will in the future (I've got the whole 5 year victory lap persona goin' on) and have learned even if the class may be the hardest one, if the professor shows enthusiasm for what they are teaching, I mirror what they have to offer. If a professor goes Ben Stein on us, the bare minimum always seems to follow. How does this tie into what you're doing in Spain and in Europe, Sean? In our dorm, the Rector Peset we're able to get on top of the roof. No, mom it's not illegal or dangerous like you think I might do, it's where we hang up our clothes and take in the sun that is blocked by the buildings below. I've been reading Andre Agassi's book Open and was struck by a passage he wrote to his newly born son (at the time it was around 2002). "Now I just work as hard as I can and let the rest fall where it may. It still doesn't feel great most of the time, but I push through it, for the sake of so much good...Always value others, ______ (Jaden his son). There is so much peace in taking care of people. Even though I have a bit of time left in college and even joke that when I graduate I will be sure to sign them out of their Retirement Home and take them to the sizzler for the early bird special I realize the value of hard word. Though currently, my grandmothers favorite phrase is "do you have a direction in school?" and it's funny to tell her I'm a rodeo clown or just graduated welding school, I know that hard work, and working hard for people always pays off.

Pics While Reading. Not too Shabby.