Andalucia Part Dos

After reading journal articles for the past 2 hours while Katie napped on the "Big Green"(our couch), I decided to abruptly switch the music from Debussy to Bruce Springsteen and take a break to finish up the blog about our trip to Spain.

Following our tour through the mountain town of Granada we took a bus to Sevilla and stayed in a little Hotel near the downtown.

(Not our hotel haha, but pretty)

Knowing that our fellow American friends Jared and Leah would be joining us in Sevilla in two days we didn't want to tour too much of Sevilla without them, so we took a day trip to Cadiz to check out the Spanish view of the Atlantic.

(No disappointments found)

After returning to Sevilla from our trip to Cadiz we were surprised to find hundreds of thousands of people swarming the streets. While still in shock of the surreal experience of unknowingly walking into a massive celebration of something you have no idea about, we stumbled upon a huge parade going through the center of town....  Later we became aware of the Spanish holiday Epiphany, to celebrate the arrival of the three kings to deliver gifts to Jesus. This is the more commercial portion of Christmas holiday for the Spanish and they go ALL OUT!! The parade lasted 45 minutes complete with marching bands playing the world cup song "This is Africa", massive themed "Mardi Gras"-like floats tossing tons of candy, and kings riding horses with their faces painted black (a little strange)...

The Beethoven Float. 

We liked all the little kids' wigs. 

After the parade was over there was so much candy on the streets that you inevitably ended up with a sole of smashed candy stuck to the bottom of your shoes.

Our friends from Oxford finally arrived after a long taxi ride through all the parade traffic

We toured all over Sevilla, ate the tapas, drank the wine, tried to watch some flamenco dancing but decided not to after it was going to cost muchos euros and last 3 hours. However, we did find the Plaza de Espana which was one of the most beautiful buildings either of us had ever seen (that is besides Samford Hall).

The plaza was filled with intricate mosaics all over everything

Katie was more interested in sliding down the railing than the mosaic

The trip was awesome and tons of fun, a nice break from the cold of England. But we're off to some friends to cook some Mexican and Bread pudding (whoever heard thought of that combo?? I don't know but I am really excited about it)

Love Ya'll

Jordan and Katie

Andalucia part 1

So we took a New Years trip to Spain a few weeks back and then came home, tired and lazy, and never blogged about it. Thus, the long anticipation for the blog post has abated, for those who have already looked at the pictures on Facebook, you will see nothing new. Sorry.... But, you will get the insightful commentary to correspond with some of the pictures.

Welcome to Granada, the first stop on our trip

We stayed here for about 3 days and in between trips to the churro stand we got to tour the palace of La Alhambra and fight off gypsies and street scammers (Nothing too serious but a little bit unnerving at times)

I'm not going to try and give any kind of history of the palace because I'll screw it up and Wikipedia is just too easy. I will however say that it was an enormous castle with beautiful gardens and was by far the highlight of the trip altogether. Also, the great American writer Washington Irving (who also wrote stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and The Legend of Rip Van Winkle) while serving as a diplomat in Spain lived at Alhambra for a time and wrote a book called Tales of Alhambra. I bought the book and it provided some pretty interesting reading about the palace and its history.

One of many Palace Gardens

Some Arabic architecture poking out around my head. Also, reppin' AU, starting to get pumped for the big game. Furthermore, I should add that Granada offered our only War Eagle moment in Spain. While eating ice cream one night a man standing adjacent at the counter greeted us with a War Eagle. He was from Ohio and had come to Spain to work for one year as an engineering project manager, "that was 16 years ago", he sighed. We stood delighted, conversing in English for an hour with John who had no affiliation whatsoever with Auburn but knew about the War Eagle.  After countless miscommunications at restaurants and shops having desires and expectations lost in translation it was a nice change to speak in a native tongue for a while.

I have to go to class now, but I will finish the rest of this blog later with part of 2 of our journeys.

War Eagle and Love ya'll 

Mouth Full of Metal

I will never forget the glorious day I got my braces off.  April 19th 2003.  I crimped my hair the night before and made sure to wear my 'coolest' American Eagle shirt to go along with my new gums.  I can kinda remember my orthodontist that day talking to me about how I was going to have to wear my retainer at night in turn for having my braces taken off blah, blah blah... I wasn't listening (partly because I couldn't stop running my tongue over my new teeth) and mostly because I just wanted to get to school and show everyone how mature I was not to have braces.

Am I the only person in the world who still has to wear their retainers?!  Seriously, I would have never thought 8 years ago I would have to still wear them to keep my teeth from looking like snaggle teeth.  For the first few months we were married I wasn't wearing them to bed. Who wants to talk with a huge lisp and have purple glitter (because that was the obvious choice in 8th grade) spilling out of their mouth when they are newlyweds? Not me.... until I looked in the mirror and realized I was starting to fit in a little too well with the Brits :(

Sunday Morning Cravings

I just wanted to take a minute and let you in on some of  my random cravings that I have been experiencing since we moved here.  Jordan and I have had a lot of fun cooking in our flat.  Especially on Thanksgiving when we tried to replicate some of our families best Thanksgiving recipes.  Our pumpkin pie called for corn syrup, normal- right?  we had to resort to this weird bottle called liquid glucose.  Or when we were making the cranberry salad and the recipe called for cool whip and all we could find was 'squirty cream' (that is no lie).  But these next few things have found themselves to be irreplaceable, sadly no substitute can be found for them here. 

wouldn't you think chicken broth would be universal?! well, sadly the Brits don't know its wonders in casseroles and soups yet

how good does chocolate milk sound? yeah.. thats what I've been thinking for the last few months

This goes without saying.. but dang do we miss Mexican food!

But most of all, we miss Auburn.  Especially this week with the the football team bringing home the national championship and both the men's and women's swim teams upsetting Texas in their respective dual meets. 

Trailing by 2 points going into the last relay the men won the last relay to beat the Longhorns for the first time in 3 years

What a week to be an Auburn Tiger.

War Eagle!!!

Happy New Years from Spain

For the last four years I had pretty crummy New Year's Eves stuck in a hotel room asleep after long swim practices anticipating the torture that the New Year's day workout would bring. This year was somewhat different. The wild-and-crazy Andersons spent their first New Year's Eve together in a Holiday Inn at the Luton Airport asleep at 10 PM awaiting a 4 AM wake-up call to catch a flight to Malaga, Spain. Aside from our wild party antics to bring in 2011, the year of 2010 was a very good one to both Katie and I. Last night while drinking some wine together and discussing whether 2010 was the beginning or end of a decade, we went month by month through 2010 talking about some of the highlights.

January: Jordan pops the question

February: Auburn Men win an SEC championship

March: Wedding plans galore and soaking up the best roomates in the world

April: This is our favorite month of the year to be in Auburn, the weather can't be beat, swimming is over, and there is lots of time for brother's weekend

May: Graduation and a sad goodbye to Auburn, at least for a little while

June: Our first wedding shower hosted by sweet friends- our first cast iron skillet!

July: 4th of July singing Toby Keith on the dock, and Britty and Mark's beautiful wedding. USA all the way

August: Our last wedding shower in Roanoke,  and an epic trip to Busch Gardens 

September:  Got hitched, tasted a little bit of Mexico and packed up our lives (please note the AU themed luggage, War Eagle!)

October: Moved across the pond

November: Both became much wiser at the age of 23, went to Wales and watched Auburn bring back the Iron Bowl from our laptop

December:  Home for the holiday season, and Christmas in Devon

What an incredible time we have been blessed with these past 12 months. It has been a wonderful year and we are excited about whats in store for 2011. We are so thankful for all our blessings but none more so than our loving supportive families.

2011, here come za Andersons

DIY d-a-y

Recently, Jordan and I have decided that we are most likely going to stay in Oxford 2 years instead of 1. As a result of God giving me a great job, Jordan loving Medical Anthropology, me getting a deferral for PA school, and us being afforded this incredible opportunity, it was a perfect storm for staying here in Oxford for another year of cream tea instead of sweet tea. 

With that being said, some of you may or may not remember some of the pictures I posted on facebook of our flat on the first day we moved in...  The luscious two-toned green carpet, luxurious green couch, mysterious stains sprinkled throughout, just your average student couples flat in Oxford.  When we moved in I kept suppressing this new found-wanna-be-homemaker in me, and kept thinking, its no big deal- we are only going to live here for one year, I'll save my decorating yearnings for when we move back home.  But with the thought of being here 2 years, I have now realized it is time to unshackle the yearning to try and spruce this place up.  I have had this one DIY project in the back of my mind and with the blessing of a little down time between Christmas and our trip to Spain, we decided it was time.

Me: "Jordan, what would you think if tomorrow was DIY day?"
Jordan: "You mean DIY d-a-y? Sounds good"

And we were off.  The project was really simple, I found an old broken frame at one of the shops here in town and fabric at Cath Kidston was on sale, so I wanted to upholster the backing on it so we could use it like a bulletin-boardish type of thing.  At one point Jordan was helping me upholster the fabric to the wood with one of those really girly little hammers with flowers all over it (it was the only tool we could pack with us) and I couldn't help but ask him, "Have you ever felt more married than right now?  Using a floral hammer to pin floral fabric to a piece of wood for a DIY project?" he just laughed and said " Well when you put it that way..."

Here is the fruit of our labor

our tag team upholstery skillz:

Anyone out there who has any suggestions, great resources or encouragement for decorating their first, rented home together- I would LOVE to hear from you!

Oh and last but not least, Happy New Years!

My Favorite Oxford Street Musicians

My favorite street musicians in Oxford

Please don't judge by the very blurry video that I found on youtube, this group is absolutely awesome. They have an old Italian Godfather-esque sound from the accordion mixed with jazzy New Orleans upbeat trumpet. I haven't talked to them at all but it seems as though its a dad and two brothers along with a few other family members. Katie typically has to drag me down Cornmarket Street to get me away from standing directly in front of them and tossing pounds into their open saxophone case. This is one of my favorite parts of Oxford, walking down Cornmarket with open ears. Today while enjoying my new favorite activity, sitting in the bookstore reading an unpurchased book, the theme of  "The Godfather" drifted into the coffee shop. One of those surreal feelings of living life accompanied by a soundtrack.