Fun Facts from across the world

     Nothing really new or exciting happened this week, but I did forget a few things about my recent trip to Gibraltar/Malaga.  Did you know that Gibraltar is the home of Miss World 2009??  Me either!!  When we crossed the border the first thing we saw was a big poster of Miss World 2009.  Also, in Malaga we also went to a Picasso Museum.  Malaga is where Picasso was born, so of course we had to stop and see some art.  It was pretty neat.  We got to see some original Picasso artwork and make our own (pretty funny) interpretations. Plus side to this visit, I can use some of the things I saw for a paper for my history of art class.  

     This week's Granada Seminar was over olive oil.  We learned how they make olive oil and how to tell how "good" the oil is by reading the labels.  While in class this was fairly interesting.  Then over the weekend we went to an olive oil museum.  The way it seemed to me, was that at the museum we would actually see them making olive oil and have them go through parts of the process for us.  I even thought we were going to be able to have a olive oil tasting. (When you taste olive oil you put it in your mouth, swish it around, and then spit is out. Yuck.) However, once we got to the museum, I quickly realized that it was no longer a working olive oil factory.  It was really a museum.  So we got to walk around and here how they make it, but nothing really very exciting at all.  It was kind of disappointing, but there is always room for fun.  My friend and I ended up taking some good pictures there, and it was really pretty, because it was in a town up in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

  Now for my favorite story of the week.  I bought some playing cards last week because they would come in handy on trips, and I wanted to see what a Spanish deck of cards would look like.  I got them out this week to play solitaire and I realize that there are not enough cards.  I thought that maybe I just dealt out the cards wrong, so I tried again (3 more times).  Each time with the same result, not enough cards.  So I end up counting them and there are only 48 cards!!  I didn't know if I bought a bad deck or a special deck or if all Spanish decks are like this so I decided to do some research.  Turns out my deck was perfectly fine.  Here's the history of a Spanish Deck of Cards (Baraja):

  ~Usually made up of 40 cards (1-7,10-12) 10-12 are picture cards kind of like our Jack, Queen, and King

  ~ Sometimes the 8 and 9's are added to make 48 cards 

  ~Jokers (Comodines) are rarely used which makes a 50 card deck. ( I have this kind)

  ~There are four suites: Clubs (bastos- they look like chicken legs), Gold coins (oros), Cups (copas), and Swords (espadas)

  ~The suites represent the social classes of the Middle Ages

  ~Coins: Merchants

    Clubs: Peasants

    Cups: Church

    Swords: Military

  ~10 is called a sota and represents a prince. 11 is called caballo and represents a knight. 12 is called rey which is the king.

I then tried to see if there was a special Solitaire game, but I didn't really see anything that looked too promising or that I wanted to try to learn right then.  So now I have this very nice deck of Spanish Cards that I don't really know how to use.  I learned a lot though! :)