Valencia and More!

Hola! Well I just got back from our weekend trip to Valencia, and just finished posting the pictures on Facebook. Unfortunately my camera battery died this morning :( so I'll have to steal some pictures from my friends. That's the beauty of Facebook :). I should likely be doing homework right now, but psh, my blog is more important. Plus I'll have enough homework in the next week or so, I deserve at least the rest of tonight to not worry about it. I don't know why, I guess it's just because we're getting towards the end of the program (what?!), but I have a lot of things due in the next few weeks. Specifically the 21st. I swear, my professors collaborated to have me turn in everything on that day. Anyways, now about my weekend in Valencia and other little things throughout the week :).

Starting with Monday, of course. It was hard to go back to class after the long weekend in Dublin. Nothing very exciting happened, really. Just class. So on to Tuesday, I guess. Again, I mostly did homework and worked on applying for internships and stuff back in Minneapolis for the summer (and wrote my Dublin blog :)). That's kept me pretty busy; after I finish my homework, I usually work on that. There's one internship I really want, but there's only one spot available and I'm really nervous to send my stuff in. I just keep editing and reviewing and all that, it'll be hard for me to just tell myself it's good enough and to send it in. But I'm going to have to because if I don't meet the deadline, I definitely won't get it. Anyways, I had one class on Tuesday and it was a giant walking tour. We walked all over the city to look at examples of architecture. It was a pretty nice evening, so it was nice :). After that, I went to a Mexican restaurant with some friends. It's one we've gone to a few times and it's pretty good. We all realize the slight irony of going to a Mexican restaurant in Spain, but we all kind of like Mexican food a little more than Spanish... Whoops, haha. Spanish food is just a little bland. Some of it is really good, but overall it's just bland. They don't like spice or anything like that, from my experience. Also, a strange thing is the temperatures of the food in Spain. Nothing is really either hot or cold. It's very often room temperature. I feel that people exaggerated the quality of the food here, in general. I'd have people tell me "oh the food is great in Spain, you'll love it!" and I really wonder what they were eating. It's just very in-the-middle in all ways. It's not bad, it's not particularly good, it's not hot, it's not cold. Extremes seem to not exist. It's a strange thing to get used to. But like I said, that's just in general. Some Spanish food I've come across is very good (and some is not).

On Wednesday I had class most of the day. I had to skip volunteering to work on studio :(. But I got it all done in time for the review. It was a pretty informal review, but after presenting my work, my professor said the words "I really like it", so I must be doing something right. Then we had a program-organized activity that night where we got to go see a movie with our guardian angels. Well, actually there was only one. And like 11 of us. I always feel bad that they're so outnumbered. Anyways, we went to a really neat theater (with really comfy seats) and saw The Artist. It's a silent movie, so language didn't matter. There were some written words that would flash up to show dialogue, in typical silent  movie fashion, but they were in English with Spanish subtitles, so I didn't have to think too much, which is nice. Watching a movie in Spanish is not a leisure activity like it is in English, it takes so much more effort haha. But I really loved the movie. I can see why it won so many awards. I laughed a lot, I may have cried a little (spoiler alert: I did.) and it was just a really cute story. I'd recommend it.

Thursday wasn't particularly eventful. I went shopping before class and got some black flats for 10 euros at H&M and I've worn them everyday since, haha. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I feel like when I packed I erred too much on the side of cold weather. All I had for shoes were two pairs of tennis shoes, two pairs of boots, and a pair of magenta flats. Magenta flats do not match much, so now I have black ones too. I feel like I'm going to be wearing like the same four shirts for the rest of the program too unless I go shopping, because I can wear warmer and cooler clothes in colder weather as long as I layer, but now the warmer clothes are too warm and I can only wear like my t-shirts. I just packed too much warm clothing; my love of sweaters let me down. Anyways, after my shopping excursion we ate lunch outside and then it was just about time for class. Pretty uneventful the rest of the day.

Friday we all just had class in the morning and it was another beautiful day so none of us were willing to sit in studio and work. I wanted to go to the zoo; unfortunately my classmates were more interested in the Barcelona Beer Festival. Yes, the title was in English, hint much that it's geared towards tourists? Oh well. So instead of going to the zoo alone, I went with them. (But I will go to that zoo before I leave!) I got one glass of beer with my entrance fee, so Cara tried to find me the lightest, most un-Guinnessy one she could, but it was still just gross. I don't understand why anyone drinks beer when there are other options. I'm convinced everyone is just lying to themselves and each other and that no one actually likes beer and they all just pretend, and it's like this big conspiracy. Or at least that seems more logical in my brain than people actually genuinely enjoying the taste of beer. Anyways, I got to keep the glass, so I got a souvenir out of the whole deal (what a tourist..). I guess it was worth going because I got to be outside and hang out with friends, but I would have rather gone to the zoo. Afterwards we went to the beach, but by that time the sun was starting to go down and it was windy, so although it was far from cold, it wasn't really beach-sitting weather. So we all just decided to call it a day instead. The rest of the night was homework and then to bed early because we had to be to the train station at 8:30 the next morning.

So yesterday morning, we did just that. We met our group at the train station bright and early and then took a three hour train ride to Valencia. We slept while our assistant resident director, Nando, crept around and took embarrassing pictures of us. Thanks, Nando. I wonder when/where those will show up. We got to Valencia and I will remember this of the city: there were near-constant firecrackers and it smelled like gunpowder. The huge festival of Las Fallas takes place next weekend and they celebrate in like the two weeks leading up to it.  It's like a fireworks festival, hence the constant firecrackers (I'm still feeling jumpy), and little kids just walked around and lit off fireworks all day, everywhere we went. The main event is the burning of giant papier mache and styrofoam figures that they construct in the weeks leading up to it. We saw some of them and they were really cool, it seems a little strange that they spend so much time building these beautiful sculptures just to burn them.  Oh well. There are also fireworks every day around 2 o'clock. We saw them, but there wasn't much to see; the impressive part was definitely how loud it was. There were huge crowds watching/listening to them too. The whole city was like a huge carnival; it's all decorated and at night there are beautiful lights, and there are churro stands everywhere and other food stands, and souvenir shops.  It was a fun time to be in the city :). Anyways, back to arriving in the city: we checked into the hotel and then went and visited the Central Market of Valencia for lunch. It was pretty and really big. I got kiwi orange juice and then horchata, a typical Valencian drink (although you can get it other places, obviously). I had never had it before, but I thought it was pretty good. If I'm correct, I believe it's rice milk with cinnamon. And it's cold, so it was pretty refreshing. Afterwards we met to go on a guided tour of the historic center of Valencia. We visited the cathedral, saw the "Holy Grail" (whatever you say, Valencia...), and a few other old buildings. It was a nice tour, with nice weather, and the old town is quite pretty. Then we made a quick visit to the Ceramic Museum, located in an old palace. It was pretty neat, but we were all pretty toured out by that point. Gladly, after that we had free time. We went back to the hotel and just rested our feet for awhile from all that walking and then we went and walked around some more to see the festivities and get dinner. We walked around and saw all the pretty lights once it got dark and we bought pumpkin bunyuelos (typical Valencian pastries), which are similar to mini-donuts but not quite, and giant things of cotton candy. It was a fun time :), but I was exhausted so I went to bed relatively early. Needless to say, I didn't sleep particularly well with the fireworks.

This morning we got up, checked out, had breakfast, and then went to the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (city of arts and sciences), a giant complex by the architect Santiago Calatrava. I had thought it was one building, so I was not prepared for how absolutely huge it was. His architecture is pretty controversial because it's expensive and not particularly functional. We all agreed it looked like a theme park. It was just crazy. I really can't explain it, either look at my Facebook pictures or Google it, it's just a surreal place. We had a tour of the opera hall and then had free time at the museum, but in typical Calatrava style it wasn't a particularly functional museum and we weren't really feeling it. Some things were cool, however; there was an area where you could watch baby chicks hatch :) so we stood and watched one. It was really neat, we were all cheering it on. We really wanted to go to the aquarium part of the complex but it wasn't included in our ticket and it was expensive :(. Oh well. We ended up spending most of the time just hanging out outside in the beautiful weather; the outside of the buildings were cooler anyways, they were built to be photographed, essentially.  That was pretty much the end of our trip, though. We got on the bus and headed back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and then went to the train station to head back to Barcelona. It was a short trip but it was fun :). I like fairs and that's essentially what it was, but to the scale of a whole city. But I'm tired from all that activity so I think I'll end this blog now and get ready for bed. Thanks for taking the time to read this, and hopefully it was at least a little enjoyable, even though I'm sure it's a little scattered coming from my sleepy brain. Hasta luego!