Study Break!

As the title mentions, I am using blog-writing as an excuse to take a break from my mountain of homework. Why do I have a mountain of homework, you ask? Because next week is midterm week, the misery of which is eclipsed only by finals week.  Monday, I have my midterm studio review, for which I literally just finished making my site model having never made a site model before in my life.  I think it turned out pretty well, I kind of like making models so I really didn't mind, I guess we'll see.  Then on Tuesday, I have an essay test for my Gaudi class, I'm hoping it won't be too bad, and on Wednesday I have my Spanish midterm, which worries me a little. Also due on Wednesday is a paper for the online class I'm taking through the U. It's a busy week.  The thing is, I've been focusing on studio and have yet to begin working on anything else, so that's what I'll be doing as soon as my little blogging study break comes to an end. But I just have to make it to Wednesday, and then off to Dublin for the rest of the week/weekend! Anyways, I'm not here to write about next week quite yet, time to write about this week.

Monday, we started off by going after class to a "Cook and Taste" event arranged for us through the program.  We split into two groups and took turns volunteering to prepare various things for our three course Spanish meal, all the while being instructed by a chef, of course.  Afterwards, we got to eat it :). We made butternut squash soup with leeks and prawns (I didn't eat my prawn. I gave it to Cara), Spanish tortilla, tomato bread, chicken paella, and Catalan cream, which was similar to creme brulee. It was fun and it all turned out well and it was really good.  There were some mystery pieces of chicken I didn't eat (they aren't quite as selective here with which parts of the animal are eaten, in general) and like I said, gave my prawn to Cara, but it was good overall.  I just couldn't eat the prawn after seeing them all in a bowl with their little eyes staring at me and then watching Cara take off their heads and legs (she volunteered to do that, she's so much braver than I am) and get her hands all bloody. Blech, it grosses me out just remembering it, and I'm just not a seafood fan to begin with.  With my limited cooking abilities, I decided to just volunteer to peel and cut potatoes.  I was incredibly slow and my potatoes were not the nice little slices of even-thickness the chef had described, but what can you do? 

Then on Tuesday, I got even further outside my comfort zone when I decided to accompany my friends to the nearby town of Sitges for the Carnaval celebration.  That was an experience.  Are you ready for this? So to begin, Carnaval is essentially a mixture of Halloween and Mardi Gras, whereby everyone drinks a lot and dances in the streets in costumes. I had bought a feathery mask earlier that day, but that was as much of a costume as Lindsey, Abby and I had. Juan was not impressed. We met in Plaza Catalunya, one of the main plazas in the middle of the city and got on a bus to take us to Sitges.  There were over 400 Americans there in costumes trying to get on buses and it was a little hectic and the bus ride there was so full of obnoxious it was unbelievable. Thankfully, it's only like a 45 minute bus ride. When we got there, we walked over to the main street where there was a huge parade going on.  The parade was pretty cool and there were some street performers too, like a guy with fire batons, and all kinds of craziness. I doubt I've ever seen so many people in my life.  By the time we were leaving, you literally had to just push your way through the mass because there were more people than there was room on the street.  Overall, I guess it was fun and it was worth the experience because it's a really big deal to the people here, but I would definitely never feel the need to do anything like that again. I don't drink (which I definitely don't regret after seeing some of the people who did) but I danced, so that part was fun.  There were some really good costumes, too (unlike ours) and some really impressive drag queens.  It was fun at the beginning, there was a terrible few hours in the middle where some of the girls in our group were really intoxicated and it involved one of the most embarrassing experiences of my life to date, in a restaurant. I'll just say it included vomit, spilled wine, generally a huge mess, and ended with some of the girls getting kicked out all the while flipping off and cursing out the restaurant workers (2 tiny blondes against 2 large men..) By that point I had left the restaurant and was waiting outside because I couldn't handle it (but witnessed it through the glass walls).  I was so glad we were in a foreign country in a city I'll probably never return to. I knew there was a good reason I didn't drink/hang out with people who made a habit of drinking too much. So we then spent some time in Burger King so the vomiting girl could use the bathroom, and then the girl who'd practically thrown her wine glass across the table in her uncoordinated drunkenness realized she'd lost an expensive headband and literally ran out of Burger King into the night to search for it. Alone. We didn't find her the rest of the night, more on that later. I do feel a little guilty for not stopping her, like I lost a puppy I was supposed to be taking care of, seeing as I was the sober one and essentially the babysitter, but it was just so chaotic, I had no idea what was going on at that point and had been seriously considering finding the train back to Barcelona alone even though I had a round-trip bus ticket.  Eventually, Lindsey, Abby and I left the drunk girls and went and danced some more, so then it was fun again.  So it was fun at the beginning and end, with terrible in the middle. Like an Oreo, but filled with unhappy. We took the bus back to Barcelona and then I took a taxi back here. I got back at 4:30, slept until 7:30 and then got up for Spanish in the morning.  

I actually expected Wednesday to be a lot more miserable, but I really wasn't even that tired.  I was better off than most because I was only sleep-deprived where many were sleep-deprived and hungover. It was kind of entertaining to see who made it to their classes, but then we realized we still didn't know what had happened to headband girl.  I still don't know the whole story but throughout the course of the night, she was mugged, possibly assaulted by a taxi driver, and somehow ended up at the police station, where our resident director had to go pick her up that morning (which meant our class with her was cancelled, leading to much curiosity for those who knew nothing about the situation). Moral of the story: alcohol is bad.  So I made it through the day, I did have to choke down a cup of coffee (blech) and that helped, but it wasn't a particularly terrible day, even though Wednesdays are my busiest. I went and volunteered at the school again. For awhile I was worried I'd be alone because Hailey had gone to Sitges too, but she showed up after just like 20 minutes.  I almost got my gloves stolen again, but by a different kid this time. I might have to stop wearing those.  Of course, I got lots of hugs again :), those kids are so friendly. I was happy because they remembered me when I got there (even if they didn't remember my name) and asked where the others were, it was cute. It was better than the first time because I kind of knew what to expect, so I wasn't as nervous. I enjoy it, even if it makes my Wednesdays super busy, and I'm still hopeful it'll help me with my Spanish. I felt I was able to understand the kids a little better this time, but there were still a few times I had no clue. Maybe I should've asked them to help me study for my midterm..

Thursday I got to catch up a little on my sleeping because I didn't have class until 4:30.  On Tuesday in that class, we had visited the Palau Reial Gardens, where Gaudi had designed two gates, one fountain, and a really impressive iron dragon gate, but on Thursday it was back to normal class after weeks of tours :(. Oh well, it's still an interesting class, even if we're not out visiting places every day.  Thursday was a pretty uneventful day overall, except for it being my half-birthday.  I bought a cupcake in celebration and it was delicious.  Otherwise I just worked in studio in preparation for my midterm review; I've been pretty busy with that, a lot to do. 

Friday I planned to work some more in studio after my Spanish tutoring session, but instead we planned our Spring Break trip to Morocco, Granada, Seville and Cordoba and then went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch and then down to the beach.  That was much more enjoyable, though, and I'm sure it was good for my mental health.  The weather was really nice, we took off our shoes and walked along the water (in February!).  The sand itself wasn't that warm yet and the water was freezing, but it was fun and very pretty and we had bought some wonderful bread and pastries from a bakery nearby that our studio professor had shown us, so we ate those on the beach :). After we were done at the beach, we headed back here and then I did have to do more work, unfortunately.  I also looked up some things to do in Dublin, though, so I'm really excited :). The other two girls who are coming and I are meeting after our midterm on Tuesday to make some semblance of an itinerary and basically just decide what we want to see while we're there. I also realized I have so few weekends left in Barcelona due to all this traveling and decided to make a list of all the things I still want to do in and around the city and I'm going to focus on that from now on.  Not that I haven't been until now, I feel like I have, but now I'm officially making a point of it. Since I'm studying in Barcelona, and in Spain in general, I decided I'm going to focus mostly on seeing Spain and then it just means I'll have to come back to Europe in the future and see everything else :).  But at the same time, I just had to take advantage of our three-day weekend and cheap tickets to Dublin ;).  I figure as long as it doesn't interfere with me having a chance to see something in Spain, it's allowed, and this won't because I have all the things I still want to see all nice and planned out :).

Yesterday I didn't get as much work done as I would have liked because our host parents are staying at the beach house and they invited us to come for lunch.  We left at noon and I brought my computer so I could do homework. Little did I know, it was a big family event with at least 10 people and it would've been rude of me to do homework instead of being social.  It was a typical meal with this family, Juan (Sr.) brought up politics, religion and sex all during one meal and there were three different conversations (arguments?) going on at once.  I sat quietly and ate my ravioli.  Also, I was unaware we'd be gone for 8 hours, but that also happened.  I underestimated the leisureliness of the Spanish lifestyle and their being absolutely okay with doing nothing. For hours. Needless to say, this all caused me extreme anxiety and I was then up until midnight doing homework to make up for lost time. I wanted to do something today to get out of the apartment but because of that, I don't feel like I have enough time and I have too much work to do, so it looks like Sunday is solid homework for me. Oh well. 

I apologize if this was a little scattered, but my brain is feeling a little scattered with everything going on: midterms, planning Spring Break, planning Dublin, all kinds of craziness. And although it's enjoyable (minus the midterms), it's still a lot to think about with one brain. If only I had another where I could store things. Or a Pensieve. That would do (yay for Harry Potter references in everyday life ;)!). So thanks for reading and next week's post should be exciting because I'll have Dublin stories to tell!

Parte dos! Medieval-ness makes for a happy Megan

Well hello there, yet again I end up writing this at night.  However, now I'm really glad that I split the week into two posts because hopefully I won't have as much to write and won't have to stay up late to write it.  So if you haven't noticed, I did post another blog on Friday of this week that talks about my week Monday through Thursday. It was a busy week so I decided to split it up. If you haven't read that yet, you're doing it wrong! Go back! This is only about Friday through today, Sunday, although I don't have much to say about today so it's mostly about Friday and Saturday.

So on Friday, I only have one class, which is Spanish.  I still struggle in that class although I feel like it's very slowly getting better.  However, I decided to get a tutor for Spanish and after class on Friday I met with her for the first time.  Her name is Anna and she's a language professor, I think she's more associated with the Business and Culture program at CIEE so I hadn't met her before, but I think our first session went really well. I was happy because I felt like it really helped me a lot and I look forward to continuing to meet with her because I really do want to improve my Spanish but I just feel like I don't learn much of anything in class (the professor is a really sweet lady, but not the best teacher I've ever had and the Spanish method of teaching is in general much less organized, hence my struggle).  So it's just a little extra help once a week, it means an increase in my Spanish homework because now I have homework for Spanish class and for my Spanish tutoring sessions, but that's okay. It'll be worth it when I become fluent, right ;)?  I had talked to some friends earlier in the day, Hailey who volunteers with me and her host family roommate, Marena, and they'd mentioned taking a trip up to Montjuic after Spanish class and invited me to come, so once I was done meeting with Anna I contacted them and headed up the mountain to meet them.

Side story: I was able to contact them after buying a second Spanish phone on Thursday :(. Mine broke in Berlin, I still don't know why.  It was working one morning and then I went to check the time in the afternoon and it wouldn't turn on.  I tried charging it, taking out the battery, the SIM card, all that jazz, but no luck.  So I had to go to Vodafone by myself (Helen had gone with us to purchase phones the first time and spoken all the Spanish) and communicate well enough to get a new phone.  As far as communication goes, it was a success, but I had to pay the full price for the new phone even though I had a working SIM card because it's like a cheap package deal and they don't let you buy just the phone. Oh well, I have a functioning cell phone once again.  I had gone since Berlin without one because I didn't wanna go through the hassle of buying another and it really wasn't all that inconvenient since I don't use it much here, but I figured I should probably have one for emergencies. Or contacting friends to meet up and go sight seeing :).

Anyways, bringing me back to my main story, I took a funicular and then a cable car up to Montjuic Castle where Hailey and Marena were waiting.  The view from the cable car was so pretty! Mom, you would've hated it. It was made of mostly glass. But you could see the city and all the way out to the sea.  When I got up there we walked around the castle, which was really cool. I'm totally a sucker for anything remotely Medieval, so I was especially pumped when I was standing by the castle and there were people below on the grounds doing archery! It was impressive. The only bummer is that I wished they had been wearing like Medieval clothes, haha. It would've made it so much more authentic!  But if I were ever going to take up archery, I think Medieval castle grounds would be the place to do it.  We ate lunch at the top of the castle with an awesome view of the city, no big deal ;).  Then we went back down, I had a round trip cable car ticket so I took that and Hailey and Marena walked and we met up again at the Olympic Stadium.

The Olympics are really important to the people of Barcelona and from what I can tell they take a lot of pride in their Olympic buildings and whatnot.  It was the 1992 Olympics that really put Barcelona on the map as a place to be, before it had been relatively unknown and had kind of an industrial reputation, but it's obviously changed drastically since then.  Overall, the Olympics had a really positive effect on the city.  I hope no locals read this, but we all agreed that the stadium itself was a little underwhelming.  It was pretty impressive from the outside, but inside was just an average stadium, and kind of small. Aside from that, it had a sad little gift shop but said sad gift shop had a Gaudi calendar (which I purchased) and some really nice postcards (which I purchased 3 of).  I plan to hopefully make a scrapbook of my trip when I get home, so I'm saving all kinds of things and collecting post cards because their photographers are far superior to my own skills.  So that'll be my summer project.  After that, we began our walk back down the mountain.  Hailey and Marena went home, but I took a quick detour to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion.  It doesn't matter if you know what that is or not, basically I just had to study it a lot and it's been on a fair number of tests that I've taken so I felt the need to see it in person.  I was too lazy and cheap to pay the 3 euros to go inside but you can pretty much see the whole thing from the outside.  Maybe I'll go back and go inside another day, but being all modern as it is, there really isn't much of an inside, so we'll see.  I don't have any particular fondness for his architecture, it's just one of those things where I've learned so much about it and seen pictures in textbooks so it was cool to actually see it. I touched it.  That night I went to bed pretty early, luckily we were finished with dinner at 8:30 (crazy, right?!) because our host family was headed to their beach house for the weekend. Even Juan went for a night! He's becoming pretty mobile on his crutches even though he hasn't had his knee surgery yet and his whole leg is in a brace.  Anyways, we had to get up early the next day for our day trip, so I made sure to get lots of sleep because that's what I do :).

On Saturday morning we made our way to the group meeting point for the day trip our program organized for us.  We hopped on a bus and everyone pretty much slept for an hour and a half on the way to the Medieval (yes!) town of Besalu.  When I wasn't sleeping, the scenery was so pretty.  It was just like picturesque Spanish countryside, vineyards and all. Besalu was really neat, it's known to be one of the best preserved towns from that time period and it really did seem odd to see these authentic Medieval buildings with modern cars driving through the streets (which was crazy anyways because the streets were obviously not built to accommodate a vehicle).  We were only there for an hour or so, but it was a very small town and I feel like I saw everything there was to see and even got some shopping in :). We ladies found a really cute store and most of us ended up buying something from there.  It had a lot of great stuff and it wasn't tourist-y, so it was actually good quality stuff.  I got a cute little leather coin purse for myself because I always forget that coins aren't worthless here (there are 1 and 2 euro coins) and I end up with so many of them.  I can't say what else I got because I finally got started on my gift-buying for friends and family back home :).  What I will say is Emma, if you read this, know you've officially been checked off my list ;).

We got back on the bus and it was just about another half hour to the town of Figueres, where the artist Salvador Dali was born and where he constructed his museum to himself.  Yes, that's right, not only was he alive when his museum was constructed, but he constructed it.  A museum of his own work.  Obviously, he was a very confident man.  What I will say about the Dali museum is that overall, it was one of the strangest experiences I have ever had and that judging by that place and the fact that he designed and made it, Dali was a very strange man.  And understandably so; our guide only explained probably a hundreth of the symbolism in some of his work and that hurt my brain, so I cannot begin to imagine what was going on in his.  So it was strange, but impressive and an interesting experience overall. After the museum, we had free time for lunch in Figueres.  It's a cute town, lots of cafes as is typical here, so we chose one.  The food was good, but it was literally the worst service I have ever had. Here's the thing: customer service? It does not exist in Spain. And I'm not being mean, I'm stating a fact; the locals know it, the foreigners quickly figure it out.  They don't give tips here in restaurants (Jake, you'd love it ;)), so why would they actually work for their money? They don't.  That's not fair, I've had a few servers here who were good by American standards, I had been pretty lucky until now, but they're not all good.  They live a very leisurely lifestyle here in Spain, and for that fact, you cannot count on how long a meal will take.  We didn't have much time and knew that this was questionable, but we had to eat. We asked for the check 3 times and actually considered just pretending to leave without paying so that they'd make us.  Anyways, we were able to meet our group on time, so it was all okay, but it was certainly one of those culture shock experiences.  We got on the bus and headed back to Barcelona, with most everyone agreeing it was the perfect opportunity for a siesta.

We got back to Barcelona and I did some homework, super exciting, then Juan got back and his parents headed back to the beach house for another night.  We ordered pizza and watched a very odd Spanish movie called Volver, with Penelope Cruz.  They had different accents and I struggled to understand a lot of it, but it was clear it was a very unusual plot.  I didn't find it worth finishing the movie and instead I went to bed at midnight when I was done with my homework for the night.  I don't believe I missed out. Today was uneventful, like I predicted in my last post, I spent most of it doing homework, working on my Spanish and my studio project.  When I woke up this morning my first thought was that I had wanted to go shopping (I could seriously shop for weeks straight here) but then I remembered that despite its size, Barcelona shuts down on Sundays.  It's a bummer and I really didn't expect it, but have grown to accept it over the past few weeks.  I feel like in the States people wait until Sunday to run errands and things, but here almost nothing is open. Oh well, it was probably a good thing because I made a lot of progress on my homework instead of on depleting my bank account.

Tomorrow we have a program activity where some poor soul is going to try to teach me how to cook a 3 course meal.  Then we get to eat it, which is good if yours turns out well, but I'm thinking I might have to sneakily switch mine with someone else's.  Either way, I am excited and I think it'll be fun and probably entertaining, at  least for those around me.  Then for the rest of the week, I still haven't decided whether to go to Carnaval or not, I have a tour for Gaudi on Tuesday, and that's all that I'm aware of, but you never know what could happen! I guess you'll just have to tune in next time *suspenseful music*!

Bonus Blog! Gaudi-riffic!

Hola! Well, if last week's blog was uneventful, this week's will make up for it. So much so that I decided to split it into two posts because I didn't want one ridiculously long post (I'd like two semi-ridiculously long posts instead). Monday was average and boring, but technically this will be split Mon.-Thurs. and then Fri.-Sun. So here's Monday through yesterday :).

Like I said, nothing very exciting happened on Monday. It was kind of a bummer having to go back and have such a long day (9 to 7) after the minimal classes I had attended last week because of being sick. I payed for this on Tuesday (not that it was my fault that I had to go to class) in that I felt like I had run a marathon the day before. Not that I'd know, considering my limited running capacity, but either way, I was tired. Anyways, I think I'm fully recovered now and back into my regular routine. Although the great thing about my life right now is that my "regular routine" included visits to multiple famous buildings this week for class :). We started off the week with a visit to Palau Güell for my Gaudi class. It's one of his earlier works, before his epiphany or whatever occurred in his brain to make him design buildings like the Sagrada Familia. For this reason, it's very different and not immediately recognizable as Gaudi, but it was still really interesting. You can definitely still see Gaudi in the ornamentation, though, and the crazy attention to detail. I'd live there. You know, if it weren't for all those obnoxious tour groups stomping through my house all the time.  The interesting thing about visiting these buildings I've studied is that when you study the building, you usually don't consider the context or the surroundings of it at all and this one was particularly surprising for all of us.  It's just like off on some random side street off of La Rambla, one of the main roads, stuck between two totally average looking buildings on both sides and all around. It's quite odd.

Then on Wednesday, I had a pretty busy day, and will every Wednesday from now on, because another girl in the program, Hailey, and I began a volunteering position at a local special needs school here (on top of having 3 classes from 9 am to 7 pm that day, yikes). It has kids of all ages, from probably like 5 to 18 and we're essentially playground monitors during recess.  What this consisted of was standing around awkwardly and kids everywhere running up to us and asking all kinds of questions and almost getting my gloves stolen by a little boy who was apparently fascinated by them.  A few kids liked my gloves actually, and one enjoyed my multiple earrings. It's way outside my comfort zone and I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, especially my Spanish skills, and I was glad there was another girl there, Mackenzie, who had been volunteering there for a few weeks already and kind of knew how things worked.  The kids were really sweet, even if I couldn't understand them particularly well (I sometimes had to remind them to speak Spanish because I don't know Catalan), I got a lot of hugs and even did some face painting because it's Carnival right now in Spain.  I might go over to Sitges, a nearby town, next Tuesday to see the celebration.  I hear it's pretty crazy, it's essentially the equivalent of Mardi Gras, and I need a mask/costume if I'm gonna go. But anyways, that's beside the point.  Hopefully it'll get less awkward as it goes on, I figured it would be good for me to do something outside my comfort zone and I hope it'll help my Spanish improve too. It makes my Wednesdays super packed, but what can you do? Gotta get the most out of the experience, right? Sometimes that means being super busy and that's okay. I wouldn't change a thing :).

Yesterday, Thursday, I had my Gaudi class again and another tour :) (such a great class).  This one was of Casa Mila, or as it's known here, La Pedrera, which means "the quarry" in Catalan.  It got this nickname because it's a gigantic building all made of local stone and when the workers were there every day working with the stone for however many years the consrtuction took, people walking by began to say it was more like a quarry than a building, or so the story goes. This building was more like what you'd typically expect from Gaudi.  The outside is all curvy with intricate iron balconies that are all different.  We started the tour by walking up like 10 flights of stairs (without being warned ahead of time; they just kept coming!) to see the roof/terrace area.  It was, again, a really interesting building and I'm really enjoying seeing all these buildings I've learned about.  Also, because I go with the class, it's all payed for and I save lots of money :). The view from the roof was really neat, you could see a lot of the city because the building is located pretty centrally.  They had an apartment restored with period furniture and everything, it was neat.  I believe next Tuesday we have one more tour and then unfortunately it's back to regular class for awhile, but even that is pretty interesting.

Then last night, we had our second intercambio (translation is roughly like interchange, exchange, something along those lines), which is where we go and meet with Spanish students at a bar and they practice their English and we practice our Spanish.  Like last time, the poor Spanish students were sadly outnumbered, and to be honest I didn't speak much Spanish because there weren't enough of them to go around and I ended up talking mostly to other Americans... Whoops. It was still pretty fun though, I got two free "Coca-Cola Lights", not Diet Cokes, out of the deal, which is good because they're actually kind of expensive here. They're served in a glass bottle with a glass of ice and lemon, every time I've gotten one (sorry if I've mentioned this all before). No aluminum cans for the Spaniards, they're classy. I got home around 12:30 and was a little sleepy in Spanish class this morning. They do things so late here! It didn't even start until 9:30! (Which meant I missed dinner, which is also around 9:30, haha. Still not used to that.) I shouldn't complain though, because everyone else went out after the intercambio was done and got back really late, so I'm sure they were much more exhausted (although that's their fault).  Believe it or not, I'm not much of a "going out" type of person and I wanted to get some sleep before class today, not to mention I'd had a headache all day.  This made it irritating when I was waiting for my friends to decide if they were walking to the metro stop with me or not, ending with me walking, alone, as fast as I could to catch the metro before it closed at midnight after they decided after all that time that they were in fact not catching the metro and that I could have left earlier when I wanted to and not had to hurry as no one was coming with me anyways.  Not that I really wanted to go alone, either, I had been hoping someone would come because I'm such a nervous person and I was scared to walk alone at midnight in Barcelona.  Anyways, it ended up fine and I caught the train and got back okay, I just wasn't particularly sympathetic when they complained about their hangovers this morning.

So that's all for this bonus blog post, coming up at my normal time on Sunday will be my sightseeing trip today to Montjuic, the day trip our program's taking us on tomorrow to the medieval town of Besalu and then the Dali museum in Cadaques, and anything exciting that may or may not (probably not) happen on Sunday, should be fun :)!

Recovering.

Well hi there, I'm trying this new thing called blogging in the afternoon and not at 10 pm. It's nice because then I can go to bed :) and I highly doubt anything super blog-worthy will happen for the rest of the day and need to be included.  As I spent most of this week recovering from the Berlinfluenza, it was not a particularly exciting week, but some fun things did happen :). Really it's probably a good thing because maybe this post won't be super ridiculously long. I probably just jinxed it, but really. I can't have that much to write about when I was sick all week, right?

So Monday was mostly spent in a fever-daze and therefore was not only unexciting, but literally unmemorable. As I believe I mentioned in my last post, I went home from class early and inadvertently sent my host mom into super-mom/nurse mode. I must have looked like death. I certainly felt like it. However, before leaving class, I did accomplish one thing, namely buying tickets to and booking a hostel in Dublin, Ireland for our next long weekend :). I believe it's the first weekend in March and I'm excited :). We had wanted to go to London, but for some reason the plane tickets were just crazy expensive, so we decided on Dublin instead, which was like half the cost. Now we just have to figure out what we actually want to do and see while we're there.

Tuesday was when I finally got around to writing my last blog post.  As you know, I had felt better in the morning and was determined to make it to the class visit to the Sagrada Familia at 5. I started to feel chilled again around 4, but was not about to let that stop me and I may-or-may-not-have-accidentally-on-purpose left when my host mom was on the phone so she couldn't take my temperature... So I went and it was so worth it.  For one, I got in free when it usually costs like 16 euros, and it really was just breathtaking.  I mean, the outside is awesome and all, but from seeing the outside you just can't even imagine what the inside is like.  Gaudi was a big fan of geometry, and it's really apparent here, and he makes some of the coolest geometric designs. I really can't describe it, the pictures are on my Facebook, but they really don't do it justice.  If for whatever reason you find yourself in Barcelona someday and have a spare 16 euros, go. Just go. Even if you're not the least bit interested in architecture, it's an amazing sight.  That said, I probably overdid it a bit and felt like I had been hit by a bus on Wednesday.  I stayed home from classes on Wednesday, missing a studio pin-up.  I still don't know how I'm supposed to make that up because I haven't talked to my professor yet, but I have studio tomorrow so I should be able to figure it out then.  We're not allowed to miss studio, ever, without an excused absence. Luckily, it counts as an excused absence since I was legitimately sick and have a doctor's note to prove it.

Yes, I went to the doctor for the flu.  This seemed so silly to me and I didn't understand it at all, but Helen woke me up on Thursday and told me I had a doctor's appointment at 11:30 and Cara (who was also sick by now) had one at noon.  Since they have free health care here, I feel like they just go to the doctor all the time, for everything. Just a cultural difference, I guess, but I would have never gone to the doctor for influenza at home. Helen couldn't come with us because she had to stay home with Juan, so Cara and I went off into Barcelona alone in search of the doctor's office.  We found it without too much trouble, luckily.  The doctor spoke a mixture of English and Spanish and I spoke to him in English, since I don't know how to explain flu symptoms in Spanish (well, now I do).  He took my temperature, looked in my throat and ears, listened to my lungs and told me what I already suspected: I had a respiratory flu. Thankfully, my lungs were fine, whereas Cara's doctor told her she had something in her lungs, so she's not recovering quite as quickly as I am.  After that incredibly thorough exam, I was prescribed 4 medications and charged 70 euros for the visit.  I was worried how much 4 prescriptions would cost, but they were under 20 euros total, so not bad.  So I'm now taking 9 pills a day. Yay. They're apparently very liberal with prescriptions here (Drug seekers, take note! Just kidding...But really, I wonder if they have a problem with that).  Anyways, it was an experience. I didn't go on the class tour of Park Guell later that day because I had already visited Park Guell once and although I do plan to visit again, didn't wanna overdo it like I had on Tuesday, and I felt it was more important I made it to my Friday classes.

So I did go to class on Friday, which involved me being totally lost in Spanish class (shocking!), but I emailed a tutor and am meeting with her for the first time this coming Friday, so hopefully that'll help, and then a tour (it was a very tour-y week) of Hospital Sant Pau.  I felt it was important to go on the hospital tour because it kind of relates to my studio project where we're designing a cancer center, and it was pretty neat.  It's not a functioning hospital anymore, but it's like a giant hospital complex/village and it was designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, another famous Modernist architect (No, really, Gaudi wasn't the only one! Although he is the coolest :)). The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, although I was excited because I broke down and bought a McFlurry :) (for my sore throat, obviously...).  They're better here because you choose a flavor of syrup, like chocolate or caramel, in addition to choosing a candy! But I promise, I don't go to McDonald's that often, although they're super fancy here and totally don't have the cheap, sketchy, somewhat trashy reputation they have in the States.  And locals actually go to them, they're not even 100% for tourists like I would've thought. So yeah, the rest of the day was mostly trying to catch up on homework from the classes I'd missed, along with Saturday.  I literally don't think I even left the apartment yesterday, it was a very lazy kind of day. But that's alright every once in awhile.

Today, it's only 2:35 right now, but like I said I don't foresee anything super exciting happening for the rest of the day.  I did leave the apartment today though, which was nice because it's a beautiful day.  Today is the main day of the festival of Santa Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona (I believe), and another girl from the program and I went to see some of the festivities and even ran into the CIEE Berlin students, who were in Barcelona this weekend.  What we really wanted to see was the castellers, which are essentially human towers.  We're here in the off-season, apparently you can see it like every weekend in the summer, but they were doing it today for the festival, so we were glad we'd get a chance to see it... However, it didn't work out that way.  We did see a parade full of lots of giant statue things of people (pictures on Facebook, haha), which was interesting, but we were in the plaza literally right next to the one the castellers were in and didn't realize it :(. So, a failure on our part, but I was still glad I went. It was something to do and it was fun to see, anyways.  We plan to search for more opportunities to see them before we leave.

So that's all for this week, sorry it wasn't more eventful, but I mostly slept a lot.  I'm feeling better now, I really don't even feel sick anymore, maybe just like a mild cold, so that's good and hopefully I'll have more exciting adventures to tell about next week :).  At least it worked out in making a more reasonably-sized blog post :).  I hope everyone's having a wonderful February so far, it's really pretty nice here, and I'll talk to you next Sunday! Adios!

Berlin makes me sick.

So yes, the title is true.  This past weekend the whole program took a trip to Berlin and yesterday I had a fever of approximately 102.  On the other hand, I absolutely loved Berlin and wouldn't take back that trip for anything.  I was feeling better this morning and determined not to miss our class trip to Antoni Gaudi's church, La Sagrada Familia.  I went, and again I'm glad that I did because it was incredible, but I certainly feel worse now than I did this morning, leading me to believe I may have overdone it a tad by going to class.  Moral of the story: I'm apparently a fan of sacrificing my good health in the name of sight-seeing.  The beginning of the week was pretty average, aside from going to to the National Museum of Catalan Art, although I liked the view and the building significantly more than the art, and on to Berlin:

We all made our way to the airport around noon on Thursday, which included Cara and I getting lost-ish in the metro and almost missing the train to the airport, which comes only every half hour and would have led to us either missing the flight or spending money on cab fare or the Aerobus. Luckily, we made it and were able to just use our metro cards. Although it was stressful, it ended up okay and it was definitely the most cost-effective way to get to the airport.  These budget airlines we fly on are really different.  None of them board in sections, everyone just lines up at the gate, and this one we didn't even have assigned seats! We just chose them as we got on the plane, which seemed really odd to me. And then when we landed, everyone clapped! I didn't know that was a thing, but apparently so.  Just really excited to get to Berlin, I guess? I got off the plane bracing myself for the extreme cold we'd been warned about, but I walked out into typical Minnesota winter weather, no big deal.  I think that's one of the reasons I fell in love with Berlin; it feels like home but with so much interesting history and historical buildings.  However, even mild cold feels pretty extreme when you stand in it for hours, which we did daily thanks to our planned itinerary and which most likely led to my (and at least half the program's) illness.

When we got to the hotel, we were all a little taken aback.  It was nice, but because we had been told we were staying at a hotel, that means you don't have to pack things like towels, hair dryer, shampoo, etc., right? Wrong. It was really more like a hostel.  We all had to "rent" towels for 1 euro, which we were told we'd be reimbursed because apparently this was a surprise to our program director as well.  So essentially, it was incredibly nice for a hostel, but pretty ghetto for a hotel; it was some weird cross-breed.  We met the three students who are with the same study abroad organization, but staying in Berlin.  They seemed pretty nice, but I didn't talk to them much as they were pretty outnumbered.  This weekend they're switching and coming here.  I didn't do anything exciting that night, but was glad I didn't when the people who did slept through next morning's bus tour.

Admittedly at 3 hours, it was a long bus tour, but I thought it was awesome.  We saw so much, the only downside is I don't remember what everything was that I took pictures of (also pictures out of a bus window are not of the best quality).  After the bus tour, we visited Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, which a lot of the U of M students were really excited about because we had studied it more than once in various classes back home.  Apparently it didn't live up to some people's expectations, but I thought it was great.  The thing is, it's a Jewish Museum, not a Holocaust Museum, which I think some people might have been expecting.  Obviously the Holocaust is a big part of Jewish history, but it's not necessarily the focus of the museum, there are obviously Holocaust-related exhibits, but also an extensive general Jewish history exhibit, which I actually kind of appreciated.  I think it makes a lot of sense to focus on the people instead of just the terrible things that happened to them.  The Holocaust-related exhibits were certainly interesting, especially because they're the ones that are less typical, as far as museums go.  One is an incredibly tall, unheated, dark tower with one light at the top and the other is a big cement room where the floor is filled with metal circles cut to look like faces, and you're supposed to walk over them, which makes a bunch of creepy, echo-y clanging sounds.  Both made me incredibly uncomfortable, which I would imagine was the point, but I won't go into architectural-museum exhibit-symbolism right now.

We got done with the museum at 3:30 and had free time the rest of the day.  A few other girls and I decided to go shopping along our walk back to the hotel, which was really fun. I got a few souvenirs and we got German soft pretzels and also went to an amazing chocolate shop where they had giant chocolate sculptures, some of which were models of German monuments.  It was expensive though, so I just bought one truffle, but it was delicious.  The thing we began to realize, however, is that Berlin is so spread out that the map we had was really deceiving and we ended up walking for a very long time in the cold (okay, so that one was our fault).  Later a group of 10 of us went to dinner at an authentic German restaurant and I have to say... I prefer the German food I've had to the Spanish food I've had.  Again, this is probably because it's more familiar and more similar to what I have at home.  The most notable German food I had was spaetzle (spelling?) with cheese, which was at that restaurant and delicious, and Currywurst, which is bratwurst with ketchup and curry powder.  It sounds gross, but it was actually good. Anyways, the free time we had that day was more than made up for the next.

On Saturday, we went to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, a little way out of Berlin.  I had never heard of that particular camp, but that certainly didn't lessen the experience.  However, this was a very cold day and with getting there and back and the 2 and a half hour (outdoor) tour of the camp, we were all frozen.  Not many buildings remained, but we saw an old barrack and other depressing things like an execution trench (where people knew they were going to be murdered) and Station Z (where they were tricked and had no idea), which was a building where the most people died at Sachsenhausen.  I found the whole experience really surreal; no matter how hard I try and how much concrete evidence I see, it's just hard to even imagine the hardships that those people faced.  They were tricked, and ridiculed and just treated like animals. We were all exhausted (emotionally and physically) after the tour, but our itinerary for the day was not yet complete.  We went to this abandoned building called Tacheles, which was apparently once a department store.  After the department store closed down, artists took over.  It's now 100% covered in graffiti, not well lit, unheated, and creepy.  People, mostly artists, live there with various levels of legality, but we were visiting one artist who was a friend of the CIEE Berlin Program Director.  His studio was heated, thankfully, but very small and we all sat on the floor.  He does a lot of work pertaining to the Holocaust, which is why we met with him, and it was very interesting and his work is very good.  However, I was thoroughly sketched-out by the creepy graffiti building and although it was interesting and I certainly had never seen anything like it, I was not sad to leave.  It's certainly not anywhere I'd visit alone. Or again, for that matter. Ever.

The next morning we checked out and left our bags at the hotel to go on a 2 and a half hour, outdoor walking tour.  If I wasn't destined to get sick already at this point, this did me in.  Now it wasn't unbearable, but it was probably about 2 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill, which is less than pleasant, and I didn't have my Minnesota winter gear with me.  Some people left the tour early because they just couldn't handle the cold and weren't able to pay attention to the guide anyways because of it, but I decided to stick it out, determined not to miss anything.  We saw the Brandenburg Gate, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (pictures on my Facebook, it was really neat), and stood over the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.  Those were the most notable stops.  The bunker is underground and inaccessible, there's just a parking lot and an informational sign where it's located, but it was still interesting.  They don't want to have access to it because they're worried it will turn into a neo-Nazi shrine.  I didn't realize neo-Nazis were so active, but at Sachsenhausen too they had tried to burn down an exhibit in one of the bunkers in the 90s. Scary.

So we got back to the hotel and thawed out a little before heading to the airport to catch the flight home.  It was the train from the airport where I started to notice my throat was scratchy and I had a headache, but I get headaches a lot and thought nothing of it.  I didn't feel awesome the next morning, but went to class anyways.  However, it got worse throughout the day and I ended up having to leave class early.  Like I said, I had a fever that night, but it was gone this morning.  I was feeling a lot better this morning but now I feel like I've deteriorated again and I'm worried my fever might be back.  My head feels gigantic and my throat is sore. Needless to say, I wasn't going to accomplish anything productive, so what better time to write a blog? I really don't want to miss class because I have a lot of work, but I guess we'll see.  I just wish we ate dinner before 10 pm so I could go to bed early... Oh well.  I'll try to stick to my Sunday to Sunday schedule for content, even though I'm a few days late on this entry (due to returning to Berlin late and sleeping away my fever), so I'll talk about my Sagrada Familia visit and everything yet to come this week in next Sunday's blog. This one is certainly long enough. Sorry, I always do that. Apparently I don't have much of a filter when it comes to blog writing, but I just wanna share every little experience :). Hope you don't mind.  I'm gonna take a nap now before dinner and hopefully I'll be feeling better soon :). Hasta luego.