Mira jovenes, we went to Córdoba a few weeks ago. The divine gods of the internet have determined that I have committed a great wrong and must be punished. Therefore it takes weeks for me to be able to upload as many photos as I want to post. So this is long overdue but there's nothing I can do about it. In Córdoba we visited an Arab mosque and the ruins of the Califa's city, Medinat Azahara. The mosque was gorgeous, but as of late it's been turned into a Christian cathedral. So among all the ancient Islamic architecture, there are random references to Jesus and other Christian artifacts. I'm taking the Islamic Art and Architecture class so the whole trip was like an educational field trip. Luckily for y'all, I've already taken this test and thus forgotten most of what we learned about. So I hopefully wont be boring you with a lot of useless information.
Before we went to the mosque we got to wander around a little bit. (and eat the most delicious mint chocolate chip ice cream I've ever had.) We saw this sort of shrine. The sign says "If you want your pain converted into happiness, you will not pass here with speaking (confessing?) to Maria." This was before we had split up into smaller, more manageable groups. We were still traipsing around as a group of eighty Americans. We tend to draw a lot of attention to ourselves. Especially since the roads are hardly big enough for a volkswagen to pass through.
This is the juderia. The Jewish neighborhood. They have...lots of plants. If you look close you can see some of the eighty students' heads at the bottom of the picture. It's very difficult to get picture with no one in it when we're this many. I've spent this whole trip trying very hard to keep people out of my pictures just to find out that there is a category in the photo contest for a picture of your fellow students...oh well.
This is the patio of the mosque. I was too busy trying extricate myself from our collective hugeness to notice this at first. The little box up top has a bell in it and the water coming through makes the bell jingle. I was just wandering around thinking "What is that obnoxious dinging?" When I finally figured it out, it sort of grew on me.
When I took this picture I though this pool was the ablutions fountain. Where everyone would cleanse themselves before entering the mosque. Turns out that's a different pool, but I still thought this was pretty.
Ooh. Aah. Isn't it pretty? All the arches are red and white to imitate a Greek aqueduct. The place is enormous. Even though they have erected a huge chapel in the middle, it's easy to ignore that and pretend like this is an undefiled historical monument.
See how big it is? We were trying to estimate how many football fields big it is, but we gave up when we realized that none of us really has a grasp of how big a football field is and none of us are good at that sort of thing anyway. This section of the mosque was made in less than a year and from recycled materials. So none of the columns match up in appearance or height. Cleverly, the Muslims made bases for the columns that evened out their height.
Ok, I tried not to take too many pictures of the Christian sacrilege. But, damnit, I love doves. This ceiling was very pretty with quite a few cherubs and such. But still, wrong and destroying the Islamic integrity of the building.
These people were annoyingly in my shot but in retrospect I think I like it. This might be a celosia. A window for women to look through without being seen. But I don't think it is.
The stained glass that made this is probably a Christian addition.
But it's so pretty and shiny! And there were several variations.
This one was the prettiest of all and I took my time getting a decent shot.
I wasn't the only one that noticed. This little girl came tearing up, making a beeline for the colorful spot on the floor. She was so cute. She was dancing in the light and squawking delightedly. I wanted to steal her but I figured that was grounds for my program to send me home, so I just creepily took her picture instead. 
Yay for dusty conditions! They make divine shooting conditions. I wish I could post these bigger. I'm sure there's a way and I just don't know. But then I guess it would just take even longer to upload them. See those arches? They are called "loblados and entercruzados" I think. They distribute the weight better.
And then the heavens parted and God shined his divine light upon me. And everyone got out of my way so that I could get this photo. There were so many people at the mosque that it really was a miracle that I got this shot.
Chandelier thing. When we're supposed to be listening to our guide, I find it difficult to concentrate. Instead, I take pictures like this. 
More star-shaped things. Yes, I know. I'm very predictable. We were very hungry at this point and our guide kept saying we were almost done. But she seemed reluctant to exit the mosque because we were the first ones finished. 
So we wandered into the chapel in the middle of the mosque. This appears to be an eagle perched on top of an agonized cow. Catholics are so weird. 
Pretty sure this is not an original Islamic artwork. But I like pretty things. This was the very last thing right before we left the mosque.After the mosque we were given free time to eat lunch and wander about. We wanted to go to the zoo but we didn't really have time. So we ate amongst many, many flies and I took pictures of birds. I've mercifully left them off from here. After lunch we wanted ice cream (again) and so we set off in a random direction. On the way we found some sort of open air bazaar and I found my Real Madrid jersey. Frank didn't come with us because he was too busy talking to Jenny (shiver) and so he was very jealous when I showed up with it later. After we found some (more) ice cream, we all piled back onto the bus to drive outside of town a bit to see Medina Azahara.
You can see it's mostly ruins now. Lupe, our profe, kept telling us we had to use our imaginations to picture what it must have looked like in the 10th century. It was hard.
Bits of it that are still standing. I could tell you about how these arches are herradura califal and why, but you don't care do you? No, I didn't think so.
The sky was lovely though. A more able photographer could have really had a field day here. But they would probably have had a tripod and a polarizing filter. Besides, by the end of this all, I was very hot and very tired. We had plans to go to Camborio, I think, so I slept on the way home. Camborio is the discoteca in the caves. It's cool at first, the novelty of it, but it's too expensive and gets waaaaaaaay too crowded. I'm not really a fan. We went for Halloween too. I'll try to get some pictures up of that soon. The only reason I finally got these up is because the internet was working exceptionally well last night and so I stayed up later than I wanted to post these and I got a head start on my next post too. No promises, but it shouldn't be more than a week before they'll be up. I hope y'all like butterflies... 
