Gibraltar

So yesterday was my first day in La Linea, which I spent walking around with Tatiana and Esteban, a couple from southern california who are also in the program. The city itself is...interesting, for lack of a better word. When people describe La Linea they often say "it is not your typical Spanish town" and I can see why. The city is very working class, and a lot of people are unemployed. The very center of the city is cute, lots of cafes with people eating tapas and drinking coffee. As you get outside of it it becomes more run down. It looks like it was on the upswing as a resort town and then the economic crisis hit and everything was left where it was. So there is a beautiful beach lined with palm trees and a nice sidewalk that a lot of people run and bike on. But then one block in it looks a lot like Peru, which is not something you generally expect of a European city. A huge percentage of the people here work in Gibraltar, and there are lines of cars up the street along the water every morning of workers waiting in line to get through the border, which is literally a 5 minute walk from the center of La Linea. I only have 9 minutes of internet so I will write more on La Linea as I learn more. In the afternoon yesterday I took a bus out to the community of Santa Margarita, which has newer houses and is pretty purely residential. I am couch surfing there with a Finnish and Hungarian couple in their earlir 30s who have traveled all around the world and currently work in Gibraltar. We chatted and had dinner and a few friends of theirs came over, and Italian and Hungarian couple. They told me about a gym near my school that has tennis and padel, which apparently is a combination of squash and tennis. So obviously I am going to join this gym and learn padel. Today I walked to Gibraltar with Tatiana and Esteban. Very British, with banners celebrating the Queens Jubilee and everything in pounds and pence. It is very beautiful there, and cigarettes and alcohol and chocolate are all very cheap. Apparently a big business is smuggling cigarettes over the border to sell in Spain. We hiked up to the top of the rock, which had gorgeous views of the Atlas mountains in Morocco and the strait of Gibraltar, which was full of barges heading toward the Atlantic. There were the monkeys, which were a little freaky but very cute, and a plethora of lizards and olive trees.



Time to sign off, love to all of you wonderful readers! Jordan

Arrival in La Linea

I have just arrived in La Linea de la Concepcion, my home for the next 9 months; it is dark but it looks beautiful. The road in is lined with palm trees, the beach and a big sidewalk with a number of people, both guys and girls, walking on it at night, which says a lot about safety. Apparently, according to my taxi driver, people walk over to Gibraltar to go out drinking-which reminds me of 19 year olds in Bellingham going up to Canada to drink. The rock of Gibraltar is lit up at night, and with the full moon as a backdrop it is quite the sight.

I want to take a moment and recognize the amazing timing, 'magic' as we have deemed it at home, that went into the fact that I am here right now. Up until noon the day before my flight I was convinced that my passport with my visa inside would NOT return from the consulate in San Francisco in time, despite the amount of frantic emails and phone calls they received from me. I was prepared (more or less) to lose the money and miss the first day of my job and the orientation that is this coming wednesday. Peter's theory on the whole matter is that I didn't smile in the passport photos I took for my visa, and I look like a thug and potential terrorist. Maybe that is why it took 3 weeks when I was hearing from others that it took 12 days, 2 weeks, 2.5 weeks....who knows. The important part is, it did arrive! Magic! All of my transportation went smoothly, although there was a slight hiccup in my plans. First I thought I was going to be able to get an interregional bus from the airport, but I have learned that there is not such thing. I searched it thoroughly. So, I took the metro to the bus station but the bus to La Linea didn't leave until 9pm, and it was 830am...so I got back on the metro and went to the train station and asked the ticket man where the closest station was to La Linea and he told me San Fernando, which is actually about 2.5 hours away. How did he get that job? He literally has a computer with google maps on it. So I went to the ticket self serve machine and figured out that Algeciras was the closest. Problem was that the next train didn't leave until 3pm, so I waited around for 6 hours. I bought a phone, a spanish SIM card and some credit all for 20 euro! I also got 20 free national or international texts too. Score! The next problem was that in the last 24 hours in Spain there has been intense rain which has caused flooding that wiped out the ground under the tracks on part of my rail route. Thus, the train was 45 minutes late, and then 2 hours into it we all had to get off the train, get on a bus for an hour and bypass the broken rail line, then get back on another train. The exact same thing happened to me and Kara in Italy on our way to Munich.

Anyways, I got off in San Roque, which is about 10 minutes north of La Linea and had a very friendly taxi driver who I could barely understand because his accent was so thick. (southern spain is notorious for its heavy accent). The hotel is nice! I have a deck and view of the rock of gibraltar and the port. Very nice, but the nicest part is the bed! Horizontal! Sheets! Clean! No arm rests and seat belts! I am going to sleep like a baby. Good night!