Barcelona

Hey all! So as is obvious from the title this blog is about my trip to Barcelona the week before last. Um where to start? My weekend in Barcelona was in one word AMAZING! First of all the weather was absolutely to die for. It was sunny and in the 70s all weekend! Second of all we really got to see almost everything there is to see in Barcelona, from Las Ramblas, the Mediterranean Sea, the Olympic Park, the soccer stadium of FC Barcelona, Park Guell, architecture by Gaudi, Plaza Espanya, and El Mercado (the market).

Las Ramblas is a walkway from the center of Barcelona at Plaza Catalunya leading to the port of Barcelona at the Mediterranean Sea. Along Las Ramblas are people selling a sorts of things, pretty flowers, and those people that dress up and perform like in San Fransisco. Along the way, walking down Las Ramblas, you run into El Mercado. This is possibly the coolest thing in the world. It's a huge market of people selling fishes, meats, fruits, bread, etc. I bought a carton a fresh strawberries for 1 euro that were the most delicious strawberries ever!

After that we went to the FC Barcelona soccer stadium which Sean and Elliott were all about. However, we didn't take a tour of the stadium because it cost about 15 euros which is nonsense because it costs 4 to tour the Real Madrid stadium.

We also went to Plaza Espanya. At the plaza, up the hill, is the most impressive building which turned out to be an art museum. You can walk to the top of the hill and have a very cool view of the city. Also, on Saturday nights they but on a water show with all the fountains and light them up in all these cool colors. It was almost magical!Also, behind the museum is the Olympic Park. So, after the water show we went over to look at it. While we were there Disney On Ice was there so we sat outside of the building under the Olympic torch talking and listening to all the Disney songs.

The other cool thing they have in Barcelona is this air taxi for lack of a better word. It's sort of an enclosed ski lift that takes you up and you get an aerial view of the entire city!

Also, Barcelona offers amazing buildings designed by Gaudi for all you architecture lovers. They are pretty much the coolest designs because they are so original. He used so many things as inspiration including sea shells, the body of a snake, coral, etc. I loved his work because it is like nothing I'd ever seen. He also designed this park called Guell. The park is surrounded by benches made out of mosaic stone. It was so peaceful just to sit there and watch all the people.

Overall, it was the best trip so far. The people (Sean, Elliott, Maribel, Vanessa, and myself) I traveled with were perfect; the perfect number of people! It was just a really great trip!

Besos

P.S. more pictures to come!

Just another day in the life of...

Well, it's been a little while since my last post, but that is because I've been so busy. Where to even begin? Let's see...last weekend I was taken on another trip with my class. We went to Toledo (again) and let's just say it was a less than pleasant time. Towards the end of the trip I turned to my friend, hands shaking in the air, and said, "Man he's [my teacher] has done it to us again (referring back to Segovia)". He literally gave us a 2.5 hour lunch break after which we meet back at a Cathedral. At the Cathedral he gave us a 10ish minute talk about it's significance blah blah and then preceded to tell us that we could not enter unless we each paid 7 euros. Well, obviously nobody wanted to do that. So he asked us if we wanted a break until the bus came at 6. I was like a break from what, your 10 minute talk? Jeeze Louise! So needless to say we waited another hour. So, basically I was dragged to Toledo under threat of a grade deduction to sit for 3 and a half hours. Cool.

But, anyway that Sunday (Feb. 24th) Anne and I went to Madrid to see Real Madrid play. Now, this is what I'm talking about. Enough of this cultural museum nonsense (although I admit that was not torture), I want to see a soccer game. Of course we sat in the noise bleed section, but whatever, it was still awesome. Now, the funny thing is Real Madrid was playing Getafe which basically is a team that should of rolled over. However, because we were there they obviously had to lose. But, the really funny thing was how they lost. Real Madrid had dribbled the ball down and ended up connecting off a cross to score a goal. Everyone started cheering and the players did the obligatory run over to the corner flag, dance thing. Well, apparently while they were dancing the referee had blown his whistle calling the goal back because it was offsides. However, by the time anyone (fans and players alike) realized what had happened Getafe was literally at the box of Real Madrid and yes you guessed it, they scored the only counted goal of the game and ended up winning. Crazy!
Anywho, this past weekend I went to Barcelona, however, I will save that discussion for the next blog to give it justice. I'll just say that Barcelona is amazing and the trip was beyond great!

Besos

La vida es una locura

Man, I always sit here for like 5 minutes (that's exaggerated, but you get the point) thinking about how to start these posts. So, today I decided to start it by telling you how difficult it is to start it (I know pretty ingenious of me). But, anyway so this weekend I went to Madrid...twice! On Friday, I went to Madrid to meet up with Casey. I meet her and her friend for lunch at this place called Vips (which I originally read as very important people, but apparently that was wrong). After that we went to the Reina Sofia because Casey's friend had not been there. It was actually somewhat interesting to go again and to hear the perspectives of other people. Anyway, on Sunday I went back to Madrid. This time I meet my friend Sean at the train station and we rode in together. Then we meet his friend from Mexico and three other people in our program at the Reina Sofia (I know 3 times in a week, I'm pretty much an art rock star). Now, to my surprise I actually really ended up liking it. I saw the same paintings by Picasso and Dali that I had seen before and have come to the conclusion that Dali pretty much rocks over Picasso. I literally saw something new each time I looked at Dali's work whereas Picasso ends up all looking the same.

After the Reina Sofia Sean, his friend and I went to go eat lunch. I decided to order fish and was not prepared to receive a full fish with the tail and head still attached. Whenever we eat fish at home here they just serve it normally (just the body). So, needless to say having this fish face staring at me was not going to float my boat. So, I decided to cut the head off. Of course as I'm doing it Sean is playing the role of the fish and is saying, "No, you're hurting me. Don't decapitate me!" (He thinks he so cute). Anyway, the fish was quite good once it was decapitated and tailless.

After that we meet up with our friends Kendra and Kelsey. I have only one thing to say about that. I have never meet a girl i.e. Kendra that walks into so many souvenir shops. And, the kicker is that everything is exactly the same in all the stores, but every time we passed one she would say, "oh cool let's go in" and I'm thinking to myself, "sorry did we not just see that exactly thing in the store two feet away?" So ridiculous! It's amazing to me the extent to which people complain about not having any money and then the just buy the lamest, most useless things. It's like are you seriously telling me you would pay 20 euros for a bag with a bull on it. But, anyway...

Travel plans:

Feb. 28th-March 2nd: Barcelona
March 13th-17th: Dublin
March 19th-20th: Valencia
March 20th-23th: Ibiza (an island off of Spain)
March 28th-30th: Granada (with UA)
April 4th-7th: Paris


Things I miss:

1. Driving on the highway
2. Bagels
3. The radio
4. A glass of cold milk (I swear they don't refrigerate things here)
5. Dryers (it takes forever to get my clothes back)
6. The dollar
7. Chain restaurants

Things I like:

1. Having meals prepared when I walk in the door (it's pretty sweet)
2. Spending the evenings in the internet cafe with everyone
3. Being mistaken for a Spaniard (I guess it's the brown hair)
4. Laughing to myself in the middle of class b/c I'm thinking about something that happened the day before
5. Having basically no work and just plain hanging out &/or traveling all the time
6. Going to Madrid

Besos

Cultural Day

Hello again. So, yesterday I had my first full on cultural day. Anne and I decided that we needed to go to Madrid and actually do some of the cultural activities the city has to offer. So, we got up in the morning and rode the train into Madrid. Our first stop of the day was to the Palacio Real. The Palacio Real is in the middle of Madrid and is used to ceremonies and dinners. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia do not actually live there. The live in a palace about 12 km outside of Madrid. The last king to live in the palace was King Alfonso XIII. Anyway, we arrived at the palace and decided it would be best to take a tour, so we paid our 10 euros and were walked around what I would call 1/3 of the actual palace. The rest is off limits to the public. The palace was huge and impressive. Each room had a different theme with a different color scheme. Anne and I both decided that that simply added to the clashing affect. Every room was so busy that it actually began to hurt your eyes. Below are a few pictures of the outside.




Scott, Kendra, and me at the Reina Sofia


After we were done at the palace we hopped unto the metro to go the the Reina Sofia Art Museum. Also at this point Kendra and Scott and meet us in Madrid. So, we all went through the museum together. The Reina Sofia is a massive art museum that houses paintings by Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Joan Miro to name a few. Now, normally I am not one to go to the art museums and I will say that by the end I was burned out. However, it was quite interesting because Kendra is a big art person and so as we walked around she would explain the different paintings. One of the coolest paintings we saw was Picasso's Guernica.

I thought this was very cool because Kendra was explaining that it was a painting was of a bombing by Germans during the Spanish Civil War. Once she explained the scene you could really see it. Also, the museum had photos and the painting as Picasso was working on it so you could see his progression and how he changed his mind several times.

All in all it was a very successful day of cultural activities. I was glad that we decided to take the opportunity to see some of these things in Madrid.

Besos

Traveling

Hello again! So, as is obviously from the title of this post I'm going to talk about traveling. In the last week I have been doing a lot of traveling and now I am exhausted! Last week a group of us went to Italy. We first flew into Milan and spent the night/next day there. Milan was actually quite surprising to me. For some reason I had this impression that Milan was a dirty city with not much to see. However, this was certainly not the case. The center of Milan is quite impressive. There is a huge square outside the cathedral of Milan. The cathedral of Milan is a massive building that took over 500 years to complete. Work started on the cathedral in the 14th century and it is the second largest church in the world (Saint Peter's Basilica is 1st). The other very cool thing about this cathedral is that the actually let you climb the outside of it to the top. Once you get to the top you have a view overlooking the entire city of Milan.

After Milan we all hopped onto a train heading for Florence. In Florence we spent 2 nights/1.5 days. Florence was also a very nice city. In Florence we also went to go see a cathedral. It was very nice, however, I felt that it could not compare to the one in Milan. The problem with this cathedral for me was that about 20 feet in front of the cathedral the decided to build another building thus blocking the entire view of the cathedral from a distance. Not a very smart design plan if you ask me. However, once again, in Florence you could climb to the top of the dome and also to the top of the bell tower. At this point Anne and myself had gotten separated from the rest of the group so we decided to go to the top of the bell tower thinking that they probably went to the top to see the view. However, once we got to the top we didn't see them, they had gone to the top of the dome! I could see the kid named David on the top of the dome because he was wearing a bright red shirt. So Anne and I started screaming their names and the funny thing was they could actually hear us from the other building. We all stayed at the top of our respective buildings for a while enjoying the view and then meet up again at the bottom.

From Florence we all went to Venice. Venice was amazing. Coincidently, the day we arrived in Venice was the day of the big city carnival so everyone was dressed in these elaborate costumes walking around in the streets. When we got to Venice everyone was starving so we found a little restaurant and sat outside watching all the people walk by in costumes while we ate. The other amazing this about Venice was the water taxi. We didn't actually stay on the island because it was a lot more expensive so we had to take a water taxi to get off the island. The amazing thing about it was we took it a night and you were able to stand out the back as the wind was blowing past you.

So, that was my traveling to Italy for our long weekend. However, this weekend I also did a lot of traveling. On Friday, I went to Segovia with my class for one of our two day trips. The trip was to be able to look a some castle around Spain. However, the trip to Segovia was not that good for several reasons. The first reason was that it was freezing. When we arrived to the first castle it was actually snowing a little! The second reason was because we didn't actually go to Segovia like they told us. First we went to a castle that I don't know where was, but was about an hour from Alcala. Then, we drove another hour to a little tiny town. This town was the saddest place every. It was literally a ghost town that as I referred to it as seems like a place where drunks go to die. In this town we first saw an old jail which was not that cool nor impressive. Then we ate lunch. Now, before we started the entire group along with the teacher agreed that we would have one our for lunch. However, after one our all the kids were ready and the two teachers were not. After, an hour and half of waiting the teachers finally came out to say they were ready. We were all so irritated that we just wanted to go home. Then they teachers started joking that it was just Spanish culture to take that long. I have to feelings regarding that topic. First, if you want 2.5 hours to eat lunch then just tell us from the beginning instead of making us rush through lunch to then sit there and wait for you. Second, on a school function it is important to stick to the schedule because a. it's incredibly rude to make people wait like that and b. as a result we were quite late arriving back in Alcala. So, anyway after lunch we walked to the back of the town to see their unimpressive castle. Then the teacher preceded to stand outside of it talking for 30 minutes about the castle while we were all freezing. And, in the end he told we couldn't actually go into the castle because it was privately owned and too expensive. So, he basically dragged us to this ghost town to wait 1.5 hours while he ate lunch and then to freeze outside a building we could not enter. I was quite annoyed to say the least and they got an ear full on my trip evaluation.

So, my final trip was yesterday to Toledo. Unlike the trip to Segovia, in which we didn't even go to Segovia, we actually went to Toledo (already an improvement). Toledo was a very cool city with much more old European feel to it than Alcala/Madrid. I enjoyed this trip a lot more and we actually saw a lot more things.

However, now after all this traveling I am very tired and have slept a great deal today. Now I am awake and must end this post now and start my homework for class on Monday.

Besos

The Beginning

Ok, so I have officially given in and decided to create one of these blogs (but, yes I do have my journal in which I will write more personal things). However, I am not to be held responsible for boring entries. If the entries are boring then it is safe to assume that my life is boring.

I am starting my 3rd week here in Spain and to say life is crazy is an understatement. I feel as if I am going at a million miles an hour and I can't catch my breath. Casey assures me however that it will slow down.

The first week in Spain was orientation at the University. Everything was new and it's funny now to think that I could not even figure out the layout of the building. During orientation week I had a crisis because three of my classes that I needed to take where all scheduled at the same time. This was a problem considering that all three of them are required classes for my major and that I am not left with much time before I graduate. I will not bore you with all the details just that after some maneuvering I am able to have three classes count for something. However, my fourth classes does not really help me in any way towards graduation. Therefore, I will be forced to take 6 classes in the Fall. Not ideal, but doable.

So, anyway, I am now starting my second week of classes and to my surprise the one I enjoy the most is called literatura española contemporánea. I have never had a teacher that can read out loud as well as he can. He makes the poetry sound like music. I have just finished reading a short story that actually kept my attention. I actually wanted to keep reading to find out how it ended. Anyway, I could go on but I feel as if you get my point.

Also, my host family here is so nice. I completely lucked out with them. There is a mother, father, and two daughters named Laura (22) and Cristina (17). On Sunday, they invited me to a family get together and I was very touched. It was a birthday lunch for my host father's father. I meet many cousins, aunts, and uncles and everyone was super sweet and the food was very good. After the lunch Cristina and I both had to do homework. However, Cristina, being 17, can get dramatic at times and yesterday I just had to laugh at her. She was complaining about the fact that she could not possible start her homework now because the lunch made her so tired. It was quite funny and I had to rag on her a bit.

Also, last night Anne (the girl that lives with the family down the street) and I found this bakery where we sat and did our homework. We ordered café con leche and later tea. It was the absolute best tea I have ever had. It was called té de bosque (tea from the forest). We stroke up a conversation with the woman working there and she seemed to be quite amused by us. I have a feeling we will be going back there many times throughout our time here.

With regards to the Spanish I have just three words to say, "Thank you Middlebury!" I feel so comfortable using my Spanish. My host family comments about how I am such a good speaker and how much I understand. Even Anne's host family said the same thing. Yes, I do realize that I am boasting here a bit, but I feel I have worked hard enough to deserve a little self-boasting.

This weekend we do not have school on Monday so a group of us have planned a trip to Italy. We are leaving on Thursday and fly into Milan. We have 4 1/2 days in which time we are going to see Milan, Venice, and Florence. I am quite excited and can't believe my life right now. How crazy is it to go to Italy for a long weekend. I mean, even going to California for a long weekend is not something you do everyday, let alone Italy.

Anyway, I feel that this blog has gotten excessively long and therefore I will end it here.

Besos