Today, there was a car bombing in Pamplona at the University of Navarra, which is in the north of Spain, in the province of Navarra. 17 people were injured. ETA, the Basque separatist terrorist group is believed to be behind it. I'm ok, and everyone I know is ok. The official people who have contacted me, like the Embassy in Madrid, are not too concerned about any other ETA attacks outside of the northeastern corner of Spain in the near future, and ETA has historically not targeted tourists or foreigners, and they tend to attack government or official targets. Even so, terrorist attacks are never a good thing, especially at a university.
Happy Halloween.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
More protests and snow!
My grammar class today was, once again, interrupted by protests, with protesters entering our building and setting off the fire alarm and throwing open classroom doors (which is completely normal. It really isn't a big deal here to set off a fire alarm just to create a disturbance; it actually happens about once every two weeks in the residence hall, and every one just ignores it. If there were a real fire, we could all just crawl out our windows, and, since the buildings are made of brick or stone, it's much less dangerous). My grammar teacher told us that the students were protesting the implementation of a standardized EU education system because they think they will have to work harder. It turns out, also, that the new system will apply to every one graduating next year and in the future, so students who are juniors now will have to scramble to meet all of the requirements in time to graduate, and some will have to stay an unanticipated extra year.
There are rumors that there is going to be a student strike starting November 3.
Grammar class was also eventful, because it started snowing after the protesters left. I don't think we really learned much about grammar in class today.
There are rumors that there is going to be a student strike starting November 3.
Grammar class was also eventful, because it started snowing after the protesters left. I don't think we really learned much about grammar in class today.
Cold, Blustery Day
Today, when I left for mineralogy, it was:
a. Still dark (the sun doesn't rise until 8:30)
b. 36 degrees (F)
c. rainy
d. really windy (gusts up to 40mph)
I'd check the weather, so I knew about a-c, but I hadn't been expecting the wind. Altogether, it made for an unpleasant 1.5km walk to class. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who found the weather conditions unpleasant, because I was the only student who came to class for the first 30 minutes. The professor commented to me that Spanish students are afraid of the rain, but she then proceeded to lecture like normal (usually, there are 4-5 students who come to the lecture portion of class). It was a little strange to be on the receiving end of a private lecture, and I was very relieved when another student showed-up. In class, however, our professor told us about how she found scheelite in Salamanca by walking around at night with a UV light and looking for the phosphorescence, and she then told us that she came back the next day and "sampled" it. I'm pretty sure that's about as legal in Spain as it is in the US, but it sounds like something a geologist would do...
Now, though, I have an hour before class, and I am nice and cozy in my room drinking cola-cao, the Spanish version of instant hot chocolate, which is made with milk (which makes it clearly superior to instant hot chocolate made with water).
a. Still dark (the sun doesn't rise until 8:30)
b. 36 degrees (F)
c. rainy
d. really windy (gusts up to 40mph)
I'd check the weather, so I knew about a-c, but I hadn't been expecting the wind. Altogether, it made for an unpleasant 1.5km walk to class. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who found the weather conditions unpleasant, because I was the only student who came to class for the first 30 minutes. The professor commented to me that Spanish students are afraid of the rain, but she then proceeded to lecture like normal (usually, there are 4-5 students who come to the lecture portion of class). It was a little strange to be on the receiving end of a private lecture, and I was very relieved when another student showed-up. In class, however, our professor told us about how she found scheelite in Salamanca by walking around at night with a UV light and looking for the phosphorescence, and she then told us that she came back the next day and "sampled" it. I'm pretty sure that's about as legal in Spain as it is in the US, but it sounds like something a geologist would do...
Now, though, I have an hour before class, and I am nice and cozy in my room drinking cola-cao, the Spanish version of instant hot chocolate, which is made with milk (which makes it clearly superior to instant hot chocolate made with water).
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Awesome Weekends (Scotland)
Last weekend, I met-up with a geology friend, who's also in Europe this year, in Edinburgh to take a pilgrimage to Siccar Point, which is the location where Scottish geologist James Hutton discovered the concept of deep time in 1787.
Here's a brief summary of our Scottish adventures:
We started out in Edinburgh, which was a pretty amazing city, although it was a little disorienting that people drove on the other side of the street.
We stayed in a really nice bed and breakfast, and we planned to head to Siccar Point early Saturday morning.
Here's the b&b.
We planned on taking a bus to Cockburnspath, which is a small town near Siccar Point. On Saturday morning, though, we ended up taking a city bus to the opposite side of town than the bus station, and decided to walk and enjoy downtown Edinburgh.
However, downtown Edinburgh is a very distracting place for a geologist, since there are a lot of interesting rocks, like this deformed basalt that the Edinburgh castle is built on.
We also found this really fascinating rock that is basalt clasts in an organic limestone.
This is a picture of some snails crawling on the fossilized remain of their ancestors.
Anyway, we decided to look for more of the really cool conglomerate-limestone, so we went up the hill by the castle.
We didn't find any more of that really fascinating rock, but there was a great view of the city.
Our little side trip made us miss the early buses to Cockburnspath, though, so we ended up leaving Edinburgh at 3 and getting to Cockburnspath at 4.
When we got to Cockburnspath, we oriented ourselves, and set out to find Siccar Point and Hutton's Unconformity.
Scottish countryside:
We can tell we're getting close because there's gently-dipping Old Red Sandstone:
And... Siccar Point!
Siccar Point is the second piece of land jutting out into the North Sea.
Yep, we made it to Siccar Point.
More Siccar Point.
We went down a hill-side covered with ferns. Walking through ferns was a very strange sensation and felt a little surreal.
Then we walked around the beach on the Old Red Sandstone and the conglomerate layer, which directly overlays the Silurian greywacke at the unconformity.
However, it eventually became clear that we were on the wrong side of the point to see Hutton's Unconformity, and the sun was setting and the tide was coming in.
So we decided to climb back up to the top of the point. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was dark, and we couldn't go looking for Hutton's Unconformity any more that day. We walked back to Cockburnspath and took a taxi to Dunbar, with plans to return to Siccar Point the next day.
After a night in a very expensive b&b in Dunbar, we tried to call a taxi to get back to Siccar Point with no luck: taxis don't run on Sunday morning. So we spent the morning in Dunbar and took a bus back to Edinburgh so my friend could catch her flight.
Trying to call the taxi.
The oldest Methodist church in Scotland.
The birthplace of John Muir.
Cool braided stream patterns on the beach.
After my friend left, I had some time to kill in Edinburgh, and I went to a really cool museum (the Dynamic Earth Museum). I found it really well put together, and they had really good exhibits, including real glacial ice and the rocks of Scotland. In the whole museum, which took a good hour and a half to walk through, there was only 1 thing I disagreed with (they said that the subducting slab melts, which causes arc volcanism).
They also had the most original geologic cross-section I've ever seen. It's called "A Slice through Scotland" and shows the major faults as different sections of rock and has real rock for the different Scottish rocks.
Here's a brief summary of our Scottish adventures:
We started out in Edinburgh, which was a pretty amazing city, although it was a little disorienting that people drove on the other side of the street.
We stayed in a really nice bed and breakfast, and we planned to head to Siccar Point early Saturday morning.
Here's the b&b.We planned on taking a bus to Cockburnspath, which is a small town near Siccar Point. On Saturday morning, though, we ended up taking a city bus to the opposite side of town than the bus station, and decided to walk and enjoy downtown Edinburgh.
However, downtown Edinburgh is a very distracting place for a geologist, since there are a lot of interesting rocks, like this deformed basalt that the Edinburgh castle is built on.
We also found this really fascinating rock that is basalt clasts in an organic limestone.
This is a picture of some snails crawling on the fossilized remain of their ancestors.Anyway, we decided to look for more of the really cool conglomerate-limestone, so we went up the hill by the castle.
We didn't find any more of that really fascinating rock, but there was a great view of the city.Our little side trip made us miss the early buses to Cockburnspath, though, so we ended up leaving Edinburgh at 3 and getting to Cockburnspath at 4.
When we got to Cockburnspath, we oriented ourselves, and set out to find Siccar Point and Hutton's Unconformity.
Scottish countryside:
We can tell we're getting close because there's gently-dipping Old Red Sandstone:
And... Siccar Point!
Siccar Point is the second piece of land jutting out into the North Sea.
Yep, we made it to Siccar Point.
More Siccar Point.
However, it was a little more challenging to get to Hutton's Unconformity.
Then we walked around the beach on the Old Red Sandstone and the conglomerate layer, which directly overlays the Silurian greywacke at the unconformity.However, it eventually became clear that we were on the wrong side of the point to see Hutton's Unconformity, and the sun was setting and the tide was coming in.
So we decided to climb back up to the top of the point. Unfortunately, when we got there, it was dark, and we couldn't go looking for Hutton's Unconformity any more that day. We walked back to Cockburnspath and took a taxi to Dunbar, with plans to return to Siccar Point the next day.After a night in a very expensive b&b in Dunbar, we tried to call a taxi to get back to Siccar Point with no luck: taxis don't run on Sunday morning. So we spent the morning in Dunbar and took a bus back to Edinburgh so my friend could catch her flight.
Trying to call the taxi.
The oldest Methodist church in Scotland.
The birthplace of John Muir.
Cool braided stream patterns on the beach.
After my friend left, I had some time to kill in Edinburgh, and I went to a really cool museum (the Dynamic Earth Museum). I found it really well put together, and they had really good exhibits, including real glacial ice and the rocks of Scotland. In the whole museum, which took a good hour and a half to walk through, there was only 1 thing I disagreed with (they said that the subducting slab melts, which causes arc volcanism).
They also had the most original geologic cross-section I've ever seen. It's called "A Slice through Scotland" and shows the major faults as different sections of rock and has real rock for the different Scottish rocks.
I also found this on my way to the museum:
On Sunday night, I found a small Methodist church, and the people were really friendly and had coffee fellowship, so it felt a lot like home.
I left Monday morning (Monday was a national holiday in Spain, so I had the day off), and took some nice pictures of the Salisbury Craigs in the sunrise.
So, even though we failed to find Hutton's Unconformity, we still found some great rocks and had a wonderful time in Scotland, and the trip was definitely worthwhile. There may be plans for a return trip sometime this winter too.
On Sunday night, I found a small Methodist church, and the people were really friendly and had coffee fellowship, so it felt a lot like home.I left Monday morning (Monday was a national holiday in Spain, so I had the day off), and took some nice pictures of the Salisbury Craigs in the sunrise.
So, even though we failed to find Hutton's Unconformity, we still found some great rocks and had a wonderful time in Scotland, and the trip was definitely worthwhile. There may be plans for a return trip sometime this winter too.Thursday, October 16, 2008
Awesome Weekends (Oviedo)
On Sunday, when we got back from Picos, we took a bus (yes, with civilized people who had probably not been anticipating sharing a confined space with dirty, muddy, smelly Americans) to Oviedo, which is the capital of Asturias, so we could take a bus to Salamanca.
We only spent 4 hours there, but Oviedo definitely has some of the most interesting rocks I've ever seen in a city, so I decided to share them.
Oviedo in the far north and is marked by a red star.
Pretty, Mediterranean architecture and nice shade trees.
Marble breccia
Black marble with shell fossils.
More fossils, but in red marble.
And our very good friends: ammonites!
We only spent 4 hours there, but Oviedo definitely has some of the most interesting rocks I've ever seen in a city, so I decided to share them.
Oviedo in the far north and is marked by a red star.
Pretty, Mediterranean architecture and nice shade trees.
Marble breccia
Black marble with shell fossils.
More fossils, but in red marble.
And our very good friends: ammonites!Coming soon...Scotland and Siccar Point!
Awesome Weekends (Picos de Europa)
This is kind-of a continuation of my last post, but I decided that the weekend really needed to be broken up into smaller pieces.
So, Picos de Europa is a national park in Spain on the boarder between Asturias and Cantabria in the Cantabrian Mountains. It is the oldest and largest national park in Spain and one of the oldest and largest "wild places" in Europa (according to the Picos website).
It was amazing.
We basically took a 1-day backpacking trip. We left from Covadonga by bus to the Lagos of Covadonga.
It's 20 km from Covadonga to the Lagos, so here we are securing a ride back on Sunday morning.
There were a lot of these taxis, and we had to bargain a bit to not pay ridiculous prices.
The Lagos were amazingly beautiful.
When we got up to the Lagos, we discovered that it had snowed in the mountains that night, and it was pretty chilly.
We left the Lagos and headed up into the mountains.
All of the yellow-green bushes are very prickly, and we broke the law by taking plant matter out of the park with us, although it was in the form of thorns in our hands! For the first part of the path, we followed a stream up into the mountains and it was very muddy and a little treacherous, but very pretty.
After we got out of the mud, the path mostly went through pasture land.
Some of these pictures are from the way back, which is why the lighting is so different, but we did literally walk through herds of goats and cows. It felt like we were in the "Sound of Music".
We ate lunch at a cirque.
Peanut butter and cheese sandwich with a carrot knife.
After the cirque, the trail rose very steeply and got rockier.
And we ran into this horse that we couldn't really walk around, so we followed it until we could pass it.
Right after we met this horse, we found...
Snow! It was actually really snowy for a while on the trail, but it was still really warm, because we were walking at a fairly brisk pace.
We spent the night in a refuge in the mountains with a whole bunch of really friendly Spanish people. It was a great experience because we got to both be in these beautiful mountains and practice our Spanish. It was 7.6km from the lakes and 600m higher than the lakes. There's more information (in Spanish) at: http://reddeparquesnacionales.mma.es/parques/picos/recomen/recomendaciones128.htm
Here's the refuge.
And we had a really excellent dinner, and since we were in Spain, there was wine, although it was served in paper cups.
The fire was the only heat source, and the only place to dry our damp shoes, but it was a bit smokey.
There was a really prominent snow-line on the mountains on the other side of the gorge.
We also found coral in the limestone that we were sitting on when we went to visit the gorge. I love the juxtaposition of the coral and the snow.
It actually turned out to be really good that we left early because the sunrise in the mountains was beautiful.
The mountains were really incredible, and Picos is definitely one of the most amazing beautiful places I've ever been. Climbing through the mountains made me want to be a structural geologist when I grow up.
This video is of the wonderful music of the animals in Picos (I didn't take this video, so the credit should go to my travelling companion.
So, Picos de Europa is a national park in Spain on the boarder between Asturias and Cantabria in the Cantabrian Mountains. It is the oldest and largest national park in Spain and one of the oldest and largest "wild places" in Europa (according to the Picos website).
It was amazing.
We basically took a 1-day backpacking trip. We left from Covadonga by bus to the Lagos of Covadonga.
It's 20 km from Covadonga to the Lagos, so here we are securing a ride back on Sunday morning.
There were a lot of these taxis, and we had to bargain a bit to not pay ridiculous prices.The Lagos were amazingly beautiful.
When we got up to the Lagos, we discovered that it had snowed in the mountains that night, and it was pretty chilly.We left the Lagos and headed up into the mountains.
All of the yellow-green bushes are very prickly, and we broke the law by taking plant matter out of the park with us, although it was in the form of thorns in our hands! For the first part of the path, we followed a stream up into the mountains and it was very muddy and a little treacherous, but very pretty.
After we got out of the mud, the path mostly went through pasture land.
Some of these pictures are from the way back, which is why the lighting is so different, but we did literally walk through herds of goats and cows. It felt like we were in the "Sound of Music".We ate lunch at a cirque.
Peanut butter and cheese sandwich with a carrot knife.
After the cirque, the trail rose very steeply and got rockier.
And we ran into this horse that we couldn't really walk around, so we followed it until we could pass it.Right after we met this horse, we found...
Snow! It was actually really snowy for a while on the trail, but it was still really warm, because we were walking at a fairly brisk pace.
We spent the night in a refuge in the mountains with a whole bunch of really friendly Spanish people. It was a great experience because we got to both be in these beautiful mountains and practice our Spanish. It was 7.6km from the lakes and 600m higher than the lakes. There's more information (in Spanish) at: http://reddeparquesnacionales.mma.es/parques/picos/recomen/recomendaciones128.htm
Here's the refuge.
And we had a really excellent dinner, and since we were in Spain, there was wine, although it was served in paper cups.
The fire was the only heat source, and the only place to dry our damp shoes, but it was a bit smokey.
Our refuge was near a very famous gorge in the Picos, so we took a short trip to go check it out.
We found this scary cave, as well as a lovely hanging valley, accompanied by a mysterious cave in addition to the gorge.
We found this scary cave, as well as a lovely hanging valley, accompanied by a mysterious cave in addition to the gorge.
There was a really prominent snow-line on the mountains on the other side of the gorge.
We also found coral in the limestone that we were sitting on when we went to visit the gorge. I love the juxtaposition of the coral and the snow.
We had to leave the refuge really early in the morning so we could make it back to Covadonga to catch our bus. Notice that it's still dark outside while we're preparing to leave.
It actually turned out to be really good that we left early because the sunrise in the mountains was beautiful.
The mountains were really incredible, and Picos is definitely one of the most amazing beautiful places I've ever been. Climbing through the mountains made me want to be a structural geologist when I grow up.
This video is of the wonderful music of the animals in Picos (I didn't take this video, so the credit should go to my travelling companion.
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