Ok I studied abroad in Spain for 5 weeks. And this was in Year 2002.
I learned that:
--They eat late dinners (around 8 or 9pm i think??)
--And for breakfast we eat eggs and bacon..etc right? They eat bread, and croissants, and fruit, stuff like that. My favorite was the chocolate-filled croissant. I've also had a french tortilla too.
-Bull fights: Done in the summer only... considered a "sport," and sometimes the bullfighter will cut the ear or tail off (considered a prize if he does VERY well)
--They speak 5 official language, let me se if I can remember them all:
Castellano (or Español), Valenciano, Vasco, Catalan (they speak this in barcelona... lots of signs are written in this language), Gallego
-- One typical spanish dish is La Paella. its basically a plate of spanish rice, you can order a chicken paella, vegetable paella, seafood paella (i they put calamares in there).
--There were MANY castles there (on the beach, or off the highways.. they are really hard to get to, because they are on high hills and mountains and you could easily fall trying to get to them) those castles were the Christians' castles... and they would always wait for los moros to come. Los moros are the North Africans
--They do not drive on the left side of the road there
--The Spanish's old form of currency used to be the Peseta, but now they use Euros, and using euros made the cost of their goods go slightly up
--They do the running of the bulls in the summer too. I was there while it was going on, but I didnt get a chance to go.
--Another thing I learned was that soo many different cultures lived in spain: People from india, Africa, I met people there who were from Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Argentina.. I know for a fact while I was there many argentineans were moving to spain because Argentina had the bad economy back then and spain had the strongest out of all the Spanish-Speaking countries, so people would move there.
--I thought living in spain (i stayed in Alicate) was like living in the USA. You could live a normal life... theree werent as many poor people there as in Peru.. oh but there were lots of homeless people especially in madrid. Oh, one thing i noticed about the women in madrid they had big hips and butt. (I'm not gay, ok). But that's a common feature of the people in the mediterranean areas, is to have that body type.
--Oh another thing about Spain. Jobs: Instead of working a straight 8 hours like we do there.. for example they will open their businesses at 8, or 9am.. whatever time they start.. and then close for lunch for about 2 or 3 hours.. and then open back up. Banks did this, and certain shops and stores.
Peru: I went in... im just gonna take a gues and say i went in 2005.
--45?f the population still have Indians (wow, look at the united states we have like 2?ight?)
--Lima Peru, very historic place, many earthquakes (I was in one the the same night we flew in!!! I thought our hotel was going fall!!!) Even during the day while you're walking sometimes you will feel the ground make a slight tremble. You know why this place has lots of earthquakes right? There are tectonic plates right here. There is a big plate sliding under south america.. and evertime it slips you have an earthquake.
http://smallcomets.physics.uiowa.edu/lecture/FIGURE12.GIF --It has a rich side, a middle-class side, and a poor ghetto side of town.
--It never rains there (remember about the rain shadow thing you learn din school? thats why)
--The pacific ocean is cold all year around, so tourism as far as swimming at the beach is pretty low.
--The only way to cross the Andes mountains is by plane.
--In the mountains.. many peoople here are Indian, and many speak Quechua. I was amazed. They looked like pure American Indians. Like Incan.
-- I went to Maccu Pichu - this belonged to the Incans.... (look it up)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machu_Pichu There are only 2 ways to get there: By train, then you have to take a bus to the top, or walk the Inca Trail. These ruins are still here today because back then, the Spanish never found it. They didn't walk far enough on the Inca Trail. If they would have found it, it would have been destroyed. When you google the picture up, you might see 2 TALL hills... you can climp up there and view the whooole scenery. Tourists have slipped and fallen/died while trying to climp, and also people ahve been stuck by lightning up there.
--Google their typical clothing..
--I went to Amazon, too. We ate chicken and rice, took cold showers in an outdoor hostel, I went to a fruit farm god they had soo many tropical fruits I had Cocoa, and some type of lime that tastes SWEET.
We fished for piranhas, oh yes you have to have a yallow-fever shot before going. Animals?: Capibaras (the largest rodent in the world), Caymans (they look like alligators but they are white), and there are jaguars but we didn't see any. Oh!! Monkeys are in the jungle, they get soo loung in the early AM hours. The ants there are HUGE. Like 1 inch long. There are tarantulas. If you want to build a house in the amazon, since its very important to the people not to cut down alot of trees in the area... you're only assigned to use a certain number of hectaries (or acres) of living space. Oh!! We saw a shaman (witch doctor).. he basically uses plants from the amazon as medicine. They had medicine for everything you can think of. Mint leave were for nausea, they had something for fever, colds, stomach ache..etc etc. And when you boil the leaves those are used as your medicine.
--Artifacts: Incan Indians wore PURE gold, silver, and turquoise. I mean everything you can think of that they wore was GOLD: Armour, earrings/jewelry.... I think some of their weapons too. (We went to a museum called El Museo De Oro or aka Gold Museum).
-One thing I noticed about Peru were that people were VERY poor. it was sad. In Lima, Peru kids would be out selling candy on the streets, and in the Andes... kids would beg for money. Kids were on the street hungry. Their parents make them go out and get money to bring back home. They dont get paid much there either.
Mexico: (I was in Guanajuato, Mexico)
--They also have Indians... (I mean Native Americans) and they make up about 10?well it was 10?hen I went back in 2003/4.) And they speak their own languages at home (besides spanish), too.
--Chile is used on just about everything.. even on fruit.
--Music: cumbias, ranchera, mariachi, duranguense
--We suffered from altitude sickness.. i think it was only about 5,000ft though. in peru in the andes mountains it was 11,000!!!!!
--There;s not really much I can say about mexico... food/drink that I had: rice water i thought it was odd.
--oh, I did go to the pyramids, too. Called Teotihuacan. The largest one is The Pyramid of the Sun (we walked to the top) and the smaller one was the Pyramid of the Moon.
These pyramids are considered the 3rd largest in the world.
http://funnyfunda.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/teotihuacan.pnghttp://www.flickr.com/photos/ekzfotos/430908420/ --They had a famous mummy museum.. they're not your typical mummy though.. like the egyptian ones who were wrapped up in cloth. These mummies were people still preserved. Still had their clothes on, still had their hair,
some were young kids, many were old. If I'm not mistaken I think they dug these "mummies" from the graveyard and put them in them in the museum. I cant think of anymore but i gave you alot of info!
--Wait! Here's 1 more.. i took a history class and I thought this was the most interesting think i;ve learned. There were artifacts found called Colosales. These round artifacts were made of stone and were created back in the civilization days (i think). Anyway on these stones, faces were carved on them. These faces resembles African features. The faces had broad noses, and big faces, and huge lips.These features leave historians wondering if some of Mexico's earlier people were of African descent.
http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?ei=UTF-8&p=Colosales%20Mexico&fr2=tab-web&fr=yfp-t-501&w=312&h=400&imgurl=es.geocities.com/nota205/junio/olme.jpg&rurl=http://es.geocities.com/nota205/junio/olmeca.htm&size=19.1kB&name=olme.jpg&p=Colosales+Mexico&type=JPG&oid=b7b2709a6bd3b170&no=2&tt=32&sigr=11gajfacc&sigi=117l513dg&sigb=133h26dkshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/ponchosqueal/356584264/ --