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!

My affair with Dublin. (Dublin, te quiero.)

Hola! Warning: this blog post has almost nothing to do with Spain because I was in Dublin for most of the week. But it was a wonderful weekend and I absolutely love Dublin. Referring to the title, the two friends I traveled with and I were talking about how the whole study abroad experience is a little like dating, where you kind of look around and figure out what works for you and what doesn't. We decided Barcelona was like a committed relationship and our weekend in Dublin was an affair, but we had to return to Barcelona because we signed a four month lease with it. Anyways, you probably had to be there, but I thought it was a funny analogy.  And Barcelona, I have a confession to make: there's a another city.. and I like it more than you. There. I said it. I liked Dublin more than Barcelona. (Don't judge me!) Of course this could have something to do with the fact that it was like a vacation and you're always destined to like a vacation destination more than where you live. It's not like I regret choosing to come to Barcelona and it's an awesome opportunity and experience, but after being in Dublin it was clear that it just fit my lifestyle a lot more closely than Spain does.  They don't stay up as late, they're on time for things, they eat at normal times, they speak English with really cool accents, customer service exists but you still don't have to tip, you can eat pancakes and cheeseburgers. These may seem like small things, but they make a big difference. There's nothing wrong with the Spanish lifestyle, obviously, it's just a little too leisurely and laid-back for me at times. Ah well, either way I'm back in Barcelona and getting back into my normal routine after the long weekend. (My favorite weekend, so far, for sure!)

Monday through Wednesday were full of midterms, and therefore stressful and not worth writing about. However, we left late Wednesday night after my midsemester studio review (which I got an A- on, woohoo!) and with the time difference, we got to Dublin around midnight, their time.  We took a taxi to our hostel from the airport and our driver almost got lost. But he was a nice guy and took some money off the fare for the time spent navigating. We got the hostel and checked in, we were in a 6 bed female room and didn't know if anyone else would be there yet or not.  There was one girl there sleeping, we felt bad for waking her up. Her name was Gwen and she was from Germany, she had an internship in Dublin and had been staying at the hostel for awhile.  She was really nice and didn't get mad that we woke her up. Later in the weekend, two more German girls moved into the room, who were very nice as well :). It had been a long day by that point, so we didn't bother her for long and we went to bed.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hostel for 1 euro. It was actually pretty good. The milk was cold, which is something I have learned cannot be taken for granted. We had grabbed a bunch of pamphlets from the front desk and went over those while we ate breakfast to see what we wanted to do. We decided to go on a three hour, free walking tour of the city, but it didn't start until 1, so we went and got ready and explored a little on our own first. Dublin is a beautiful city, with the river running right through the middle and all the charm that European cities just seem to have by virtue of being European. We stopped at a little cafe and were psyched to see they sold bagels, since they don't in Spain. (Dublin was good for finding American foods we had missed in Spain.) We met up with the tour group right next to city hall.. or so we thought. We found out after about 10 minutes that we had accidentally tried to join a privately booked group of Austrian engineers.. Whoops. They weren't angry, but it was a little embarrassing. Either way, we backtracked a block or so back to the meeting point and there was another group about to head out that was not privately booked, so we joined them. Our tour guide was a girl named Ingrid, she was really funny and had a wonderful accent :). We found out at the end that we had only been her second group and we were super impressed. We saw all the main sights of Dublin, including Dublin Castle, which isn't much of a castle, but still cool, Christ Church Cathedral, which is beautiful, Trinity College,  and St. Stephen's Green, among other places. It was a good way to see all the main sights of the city and it ended up being helpful for us to do it on our first day because then it was a lot easier for us to navigate and orient ourselves in the city. It's a very walkable city, which I like, unlike Berlin. We walked everywhere except to and from the airport. We rarely got lost and everything was really pretty close, so it was great. After the tour, it was only like 4:30, but we were really hungry from walking for 3  hours (plus it's not quite as strange to eat that early in Ireland as it would be in Spain) so we went to a restaurant we had scoped out during our exploring before the tour. It was called Gourmet Burger Kitchen and that's exactly what it was and it was wonderful. They don't have American-type hamburgers in Spain, so we had all missed them a little. It was a really great meal; food in Dublin was a little more expensive than it is here in Barcelona, but the portions are bigger and the food was just really good, everywhere we went. We then went and bought pretty cupcakes from a little bakery stand really close by that we had also scoped out. We walked around a little afterwards, went into some really cute little shops, and then headed back to the hostel to eat our cupcakes and go to bed early, because we had places to be at 6:50 the next morning. However, we all had a little trouble sleeping. The hostel had pretty thin walls to begin with, being it was an old school building (it was a really cool place, by the way), and then there were people doing goodness knows what in the hallway. All. Night. I literally heard them right up until I left the room to go shower at 5:45 am. It was so loud. All I remember thinking in my half-asleep, irritated state was "how is it humanly possible to be that loud?" The funny thing is, guess what language they were speaking? Yep. Spanish. Apparently they aren't used to the earlier closing times of bars and such since they hardly even open until midnight in Spain, so since they were used to staying up until 6, they just partied in the hallway of the hostel. Awesome. The next day we had to reactivate our room keys (a security measure) and the worker at the desk, after seeing our room number, asked if we had had problems with noise and said they would take care of it and to come tell them if it was a problem that night too. Luckily, it ceased to be an issue after just the one night, but we appreciated that the hostel worker was on our side.

So the whole next day was taken up by our Cliffs of Moher day-trip on a tour bus. It was my favorite day/activity of the weekend.  The cool part was that we didn't just drive to the cliffs, hang out and then drive back. We stopped at all sorts of other places, which was why we chose the tour company we did. And we were particularly lucky because our tour guide took us to places that weren't even listed on the official itinerary on the website.  He was awesome (we had such good luck with tour guides!), his name was Bud and he was like someone's grandpa, a little old man with a great Irish accent, of course. He was really funny and he had obviously been giving the tour for many years, so he would ask us if we wanted to make extra stops and he just knew of other cool places he wanted to show us that were along the way, so it was great. He also played Irish music on the bus and sang along :). First we stopped in the town of Limerick [no oysters, though...(if you get that joke you win ten internet points)] and saw the remains of the Walls of Limerick and King John's Castle. We then stopped at another castle (a Bud addition to the tour), Bunratty Castle. We didn't get to go inside any castles during our stay in Ireland, but we saw the outside of quite a few! We then stopped in the seaside surfing town of Lahinch (Bud addition) to take pictures of the sea. There were actually surfers, too! And it was not a particularly warm day. After that we made it to our destination: the Cliffs of Moher! It was incredible, they were even more beautiful than I expected and we had really good weather as far as visibility, so we could see everything :). It was so unbelievably windy up there. We were worried about losing our scarves, if not falling over. It added some humor to some of the pictures, so it was good all around. We walked around there for about an hour and I of course purchased some souvenirs at the gift shop, including an Irish artisan chocolate bar. It was dark chocolate with crystallized ginger and almonds. Do you care? Probably not, but it was gone by the end of the day and I am remembering it fondly. Our big tourist group (about 40) then got back on the bus and headed to the little village of Doolin for lunch. First we stopped by the shore in Doolin where Bud orchestrated some very touristy photos of us all. After lunch we drove through the Burren region of Ireland, which if I remember correctly means something about a land with a lot of rocks. And that's what it was. Sounds lame, yes, but I had never seen a landscape like it before, so it was pretty neat. We stopped for a few more photo ops and everyone's hairstyles got better and better each time as the wind continued to be ferocious. It was entertaining watching them all come back on the bus (we sat in the front so we could see out the front window). I was very glad of my short hair. Next we visited the ruins of Corcomroe Abbey, which was really neat. It's literally the remains of a broken down abbey in the middle of nowhere in the Irish countryside. It was really cool and a little creepy. We drove on along Galway Bay, which was beautiful of course, stopped in another little town for coffee, saw the outside of Dunguaire Castle from a distance, and then got back on the "motorway" to head to Dublin. It was about a two hour drive back and since I had two seats to myself, I slept and listened to The Script :) one of my favorite bands who just happen to be Irish. Then we got dropped off back in Dublin around 7, Bud gave every one of us a hug, and we headed back to the hostel. On the way, we stopped at a McDonald's because one of us wanted french fries, and I noticed they were advertising Shamrock Shakes. How could I not get a Shamrock Shake in Ireland? So I did. I was a happy tourist. We went back to the hostel and then went just down the street where there were literally three Chinese restaurants in a row. We chose one and it was really good. We were almost the only ones there because we were eating at Spanish dinner time, since we hadn't had lunch on the tour until about Spanish lunch time. We were all pretty tired so we went back to the hostel then and went to bed.

The next morning, Saturday, we got up and went to the Temple Bar food market Ingrid had told us about. It was really neat and everything looked delicious. Having never had them and being in Europe as I am, I went with the crepes, Nutella and banana. It was a good decision. We then headed to our scheduled noon tour of the old Jameson Distillery. It was really neat old building, but the tour itself was nothing special. We got a free drink at the end and I didn't think I'd be able to swallow whiskey, but I got it mixed with cranberry juice, so it wasn't too bad (better than the Guinness, but more on that later).  Then we went to this neat store that was like an artists' collective and I got a hat I had seen on the first day and had thought about ever since. It's hand crocheted Irish wool and I love it :). It's a good souvenir. Then we headed to the train station, as we had decided the night before to take a little day trip to the town of Malahide to see Malahide Castle. On the way we took a detour to Christ Church Cathedral so we could go inside and see the crypt. It was beautiful on the inside, too, and we happened to visit while there was a Norwegian Gospel choir singing, so that was fun :). We explored the church a little and went down to the crypt to see the most photographed attraction in Dublin: Tom and Jerry. A cat and a mouse that had gotten stuck in a organ (the cat obviously chasing the mouse) and preserved. For whatever reason, when this was discovered someone decided instead of getting rid of them, they should be kept and are now displayed in the crypt. So there's that.. Also, we found it hilarious that there was a cafe in the crypt. Who wants to eat in a crypt? Apparently, some people do because there were quite a few people there eating, actually. After we were finished exploring, we headed out and happened to pass by the coffin of Strongbow in the main part of the crypt. It was funny because he was a very important Irish rebel leader, I believe, (either way, very important to Irish history) and Ingrid had even mentioned how more people go to see Tom and Jerry than Strongbow, and sure enough, we had forgotten he was there too and just sort of stumbled across his coffin as we were leaving. I took his picture too, though, to try to even it out. We found the train station and got on a train to Malahide, just about a half hour away. When we got out of the train, we saw... a rainbow! In Ireland! Even cooler than the Shamrock Shake. As we excitedly took pictures like the tourists we were, it developed into a perfect whole rainbow with a hint of a double rainbow above it. Awesome. After we got that out of our systems, we moved onward towards the castle. Approaching it from the grounds takes quite a while, as they're very extensive. They're absolutely beautiful though, all wooded with some huge green fields where kids were playing soccer and rugby. You walk on a little path through the tree and there were little parks and playgrounds too and we could tell it was a really popular place to take your kids to play. We finally got to the castle, only to find out it was in fact closed for renovations until summer and it was destined to be yet another outside-only castle. Luckily, we're all pretty optimistic, easygoing people and the weather was beautiful (not sure what rain made the rainbow, because we never got rained on) so we just sat down in a field and looked at the castle for awhile. Then we decided to do some spontaneous gymnastics, just for fun. (Erica and I both used to be gymnasts and Sandra does an awesome cartwheel ;).) I can still do a front-walkover, yay! After chilling there for awhile, we headed into the town to explore. That didn't take long, because it's a pretty small little village. Very cute and quaint, though, and right on the sea, so we walked along the boardwalk for awhile. Then we headed back to Dublin on the train (where it was raining when we got back, unfortunately, but not much) and found a pub with live music to have dinner. It was really fun and felt very Irish. Erica and I got burgers again because we just really missed them and they're just really good in Ireland because they're big on natural, locally produced things (maybe why the food was a little more expensive). We realized it was our two month study abroad anniversary that day and thought there was no better way to celebrate than by not being in Barcelona, haha. Not really, it was just kind of ironic, especially since by that time we really didn't want to ever leave Dublin. We headed back to the hostel and Erica and I just hung out in the lobby. She had homework to do, unfortunately. Sandra went on a pub crawl and I feel like I probably should've gone because it seems very Irish, but I had been in Spanish mindset thinking that if I did that I probably wouldn't get back until 5 or 6 am, not realizing that duh, it's not Spain and people don't stay out that late here. Sandra was only gone until like 1 or 2. Also, it didn't cross my mind until afterwards that since I don't drink, I wouldn't have even needed to buy the wristband deal that got you free drinks and I could have in fact just tagged along. Oh well. That's what I get for being a lame-o.

Sunday we got up and wandered the city a little more. It was kind of early, so not many things were open, although more than are open in Barcelona on a Sunday. Dublin doesn't completely shut down, it just opens a little later, like most cities. Anyways, we found another cute little cafe that advertised pancakes for 4 euros, so we got a pot of chai (I'm becoming a tea drinker since being in Europe!) and pancakes and it was wonderful. Afterwards we hit up some souvenir shops and then headed to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour. The museum was so awesome. It was so well-done and really neat. Also, it was a self-guided tour and the route was really clear, so that's always better. We started at the ground floor (duh) and the exhibit made its way up to the 7th floor, where the Gravity Bar is located. It's a round room made all of glass, so you can see the Wicklow mountains, the sea, and the whole city of Dublin. It was really pretty. Of course, the tour came with a free pint of Guinness. After a tasting session on the second floor of the exhibit, I was pretty sure I wasn't a fan, so instead I opted for the half pint + soft drink option and after essentially chasing every sip of Guinness with Diet Coke, I cannot understand why anyone would drink it when Diet Coke exists. Bleh. I had a really hard time finishing even that little glass, and Erica actually couldn't. She said it was giving her a stomach ache and only drank about half. Sandra didn't have as many problems with it since she had gone on the pub crawl, apparently it's an acquired taste (one which I have to desire to acquire, at that). So I'm sorry, people of Ireland. Please don't hate me. I love your country, just not your beer (although it could have something to do with the fact that I just don't drink beer in general, who knows). After that we went back down to the first floor where they were asking everyone to sign a pledge to make St. Patrick's day the friendliest day of the year and set a world record of some sort. They were trying to get 50,000 and had almost 30,000 when we were there. You just had to pledge to be nice on St. Patrick's day and I figured I could handle that. Then we got to take photo booth pictures and print them :). While we were waiting in line, we were trying to figure out how to email the pictures to yourself, so we were watching the ladies in front of us as they typed in an email address with the exact same format as my school address, ending in umn.edu. What are the chances? Sure enough, we talked to them and they were professors at the University of Minnesota. Crazy. After that, there were still a few more things we wanted to squeeze in before our flight. We visited Butler's Chocolate Cafe, which is as awesome as it sounds, and then really quickly (we were literally there for 10 minutes) went to the National Irish Archaeology Museum to see an exhibit Ingrid had told us about. It was free, so we figured, why not? It looked like a really neat museum and it would've been cool to spend more time in there, but the exhibit Ingrid recommended was one about Irish bog men from like 200-400 BC. I believe they were just people who lived in bog areas, hence the name, and one day they were digging in the bogs and found these people and a bunch of artifacts like really well preserved. It was definitely a little disturbing, but worth seeing. We considered going to see the Book of Kells at Trinity College, but it costed 8 euro per person, so we didn't. We then went back to the hostel and collected our bags and then went and waited for the bus. It was a double-decker, so that was fun. We got to the airport, checked in, all that jazz. We were all pretty sad to leave. We got back to Barcelona around 9, Barcelona time and then I took the train, metro, and then walked to get back here to the apartment. It's quite the journey. I always took for granted traveling with my parents who simply parked their car at the airport. Needless to say, I was quite tired and not looking forward to going back to school the next day after such a wonderful long weekend. So I skyped with the family for a little while and then went to bed. 

Now it's Tuesday and I'm back in Barcelona. Still a little sad, but it'll be okay. Sorry I was a tad late with the blog this week, but as I said I got back late on Sunday and just didn't have time yesterday, so here you go :). Moral of the story: I love Dublin. It was such a successful trip, everything went smoothly, we had good weather, good food, everything was good. Maybe it's my small amount of Irish heritage, but I just felt at home there. This coming weekend we have a program-organized trip to Valencia for one night, so that'll be in next week's post, along with whatever other thrilling things happen to me this week ;). Adios!

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.