Coming to a Close

Well I've been dreading writing this entry. I officially have one week until the end of my program.



This has been one of the most growing experiences I've had. I've learned so much about not only the Spanish language or the culture, but also about myself and, though it sounds corny, human nature. I've learned more about what kind of person I am: I love being in social situations, I love meeting new people, but that I also really enjoy time by myself.



I've gotten to the point where I'm a little tired of traveling and living in another country, but I also don't want to leave the people here. Everyone lives on the east coast so chances are, I won't see many of these people again. And knowing that, having been hanging out with these people for the entirety of four months, really really saddens me. Yes, I'm planning on flying to Maryland at some point in the hopefully not-so-distant future, but how would I be able to see everybody? Some live in New York, some in Philadelphia, some in Florida....this is just really unfortunate.



But I don't want to talk about the end of this amazing experience negatively. I've seen such amazing things.

I remember visiting Park Guell with my floormates, all of us not really knowing each other, but wanting to.

I remember the mandatory trip to Tarragona with IES: we were all freezing our asses off because they didn't tell us it would be incredibly windy and chilly. I remember the 'faux-hike' that we went on which consisted of a slight incline up a paved road. I remember eating multiple course meals with paella, fish, salads, chicken, and vino. I remember spending an hour trying to take pictures of us all jumping on this cliff at the beach.
I remember eating at a restaurant in the Swiss Alps in this village called Murren. We had sat outside and had an utterly fantastic view of the Swiss Alps. I remember eating a large pizza as we watched skydivers fall from high up above us.

I remember Carnival at Sitges: the ridiculous costumes and outfits worn by the gay community as they put on the best drag-parade known in western Europe. I remember meeting someone special there.
I remember the green hills of the Basque country and the coast of San Sebastian. I felt like I was in one of Ernest Hemingway's novels.

I remember the ridiculous nightlife of Barcelona--the people were all dressed up fancily and drinking mixed drinks like socialites instead of study abroad students.

I remember Costa Brava and exploring the beach town of Cadaques with a good friend. The white-washed walls, the little flower pots on the windowsills. The blue and red doorframes.
I remember thinking how much of a weirdo Salvador Dali was while visiting his museum in Figueres.

I remember my parent's visit and sitting mortified in the backseat of our rented car as they asked an armed police officer, one of many holding machine guns trying to create a barricade, for directions.
I remember Carcassonne and the ridiculously beautiful architecture of the old walled city.
I remember Rome, Corfu and Athens. I remember meeting many more people from all over the world. I remember the thrill of riding around ATVs in Corfu, the heat and the delicious food of Athens and the beautiful streets of Rome.

I remember so much more that I just can't put into words. I now understand why it is that everyone who has come back from their study abroad experience don't know what to say when people ask how it was. Its impossible to try to help someone understand what you went through if they haven't had similar experiences. Its ineffable.

FC Barcelona Beat Real Madrid!!

This was utterly ridiculous. There were hundreds of people in the street on Las Ramblas, a famous boardwalk area in downtown Barcelona. People were climbing the trees, the street lamps, screaming, yelling, chanting and singing the Barcelona fight song ("Barca! Barca! Barca!") and throwing these mortor things into the crowd that would explode (actually quite scary) and people were lighting flares. The majority of the people were drunk and pickpockets were roaming the streets like no other, but it was an amazing experience! I couldn't leave! Never before have I seen such celebration after a sporting event, and the majority of the people out there were college-age students. It was both terrifying (because of the explosions...one of them exploded right where my boyfriend and I were standing and I couldn't hear out of my right ear for a few hours. It was so much fun though and it was such a fantastic experience to be there in the thick of it!

Spring Break!! Rome, Corfu, Athens!

My first impression of Rome was horrible thanks to a cab driver who charged us 30 euros for a five minute taxi ride! I was yelling at him in Spanish which, of course, did us no good since we were in Italy where ITALIAN is the main language. Good grief.

The hotel that we stayed in, though, was really nice and centrally located--literally 10 minutes from the Colosseum. We went on our own walking tour and visited the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, and we walked around until we found a place to eat. Italy was just how I expected it to be: beautifully rustic and quaint. I remember seeing photographs of the cobblestone streets and the light from the lamps that outline silhouettes of couples as they walk around in Trastevere. Rome, at least, is exatly that. There were people doing side-walk art with bright colors.

And the gelato! Oh my goodness, if heaven could be bottled up and mass-produced in edible material, it would be the nutella-flavored gelato I had at this gelateria. The older man who was selling it was so confident: he said that if we didn't like it, we wouldn't have to pay him. I was tempted to just tell him that I disliked it, but how can you hide such bliss? I figured being honest was the way to go: I've been raised to be a good girl.

We left for Corfu the next day and took an overnight cruise to get there. It was the first time I've ever been on a cruise ship and it was definitely an experience. There were four bars/restaurants on the ship, a pool and hot tub (which unfortunately weren't working...dang), cabins and airseats. The partying that was going on within our group of students was absolutely absurd. People were literally drinking every single second of every single day of this entire trip! And they started with this night on the boat. There was also a club on the ship, which we didn't realize until 10:30 rolled around and we started hearing old American pop songs playing very loudly. We went upstairs and sure enough, there was a little dance floor that was bathed in light blue light like something out of a really bad teenage romance movie. There were these five or so really really inebriated Polish guys who were trying to dance with all the girls on our spring break trip. And boy were they drunk! They kept on pulling my hand to dance with them and they kept on doing all these weird outdated moves (I swear, some of them must have been 65-70 years old....). At one point, one of the guys was dancing so hard that he fell to the ground for a second and scared us all half to death because we thought he was going to have a heart attack. I have to admit, I've never had that kind of worry before on a dance floor.
Anyway, the night passed by in a very entertaining fashion and by morning we had arrived to Corfu. We took buses to our hotel which was called the Pink Palace. It is literally this huge bright pink building located right on the water. It had a spectacular view, though being a person who never even wears the color pink, staying at a Barney-level pink hotel called the "Pink Palace" was a little too much at times. The moment we arrived, we changed into our bathing suits and went down by the water. It was too cold to go into the ocean so we lounged by the jacuzzi area. It was so warm and so refreshing to not be in cold rainy weather! We had gyros at the restaurant (you could get two for five euro, such a good deal!) and were fed a three-course meal and danced the night away.
We spent the rest of our time in Corfu doing things that ranged from walking along the beach, sunbathing, swimmming, and best of all: ATVing! We rented ATVs at the hotel and went around the island, up into the mountain area and down into Corfu-town. It was quite possibly my favorite experience from this entire semester! I loved being in control of my own mode of transportation after having been so reliant on public transportation and not only that, it was great to be able to do our own exploring. It was a group of six and we decided to get three two-person ATVs.

After a few hours of riding around, we stopped at a little store and ate ice cream. Later on that night was the Pink Palace toga party where we all wear pink togas (rented at the front desk), danced our butts off, and got to see traditional Greek dances, complete with breaking plates over people's head and drinking Ouzo (this black licorice-flavored hard alcohol....gross...). Altogether, it might have been one of my best days in Europe.

After that we left for Athens. The first day we got there, we got a walking tour of the city, the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus and the Olympic stadium. It was very warm while we were there too. That night, we had a traditional Greek meal with tzatziki sauce (I swear I'm addicted now), pita bread, lamb, chicken and an unlimited amount of white and red wine. Everyone was ridiculous. I met a couple of nice guys from Germany at the bar that we all went to aftewards: in general, its been an amazing experience meeting people from everywhere. Traveling not only lets you learn about different cultures, but you also meet so many interesting people!
I spent the next day with the tour guides of Euroadventures, where I intern, and we basically spent a good 5 hours eating food. Since they bring so much business to the local restaurants, the owner of a bunch of them invited us over and gave us free food the entire time. He kept on bringing us pita bread, gyros, these delicious roasted onions with cinnamon and tomatoes, ouzo, white wine, etc. I was incredibly full. Then later on that night, they took us to their favorite restaurant in Athens where we literally feasted. Since i've been eating so much dorm food here, I forgot what good food tasted like. It was amazing. I could not have been more content.

We left the following day for Rome again, so we went back on the overnight cruise (which was much more fun this time since we fully took part in the festivities) and once we arrived back in Rome, we went to an amazing meal at this incredibly popular restaurant called Toni's (How many of those do you think there are in italy? I feel like every Italian place in America is called Tony...or Luigi...or Romeo....or Pappa something). Anyway, the food there was very, very good.

All in all, the trip was fabulous, but it was so nice to get back to the comfort of Barcelona and to the people I missed in the city. But what a fantastic spring break. I'll never forget it.

Parent's Visit--Barcelona, Lagrasse, Collioure, Carcassonne, etc.

Well for those relatives of mine, you know that Marie unfortunately broke her wrist during her visit, but that didn't put a damper on things! (She's doing fine now too).
We first did a lot of sightseeing around Barcelona--we went to the Parc Guell, la Catedral de Barcelona, the gothic quarters, the waterfront area by Port Vell and the Ciutadella (with the copy of the Arc de Triomphe).

We then went to these little seaside towns on the coast of Spain all the way up into France. We came upon Lagrasse, which was this very cute, tiny little town. Hardly anyone was there aside from a very large group of students visiting from Carcassonne.
It was a lot of fun, though the beginning was a little rough. We ended up having a hard time getting out the Barcelona city itself and then we got even more lost around Figueres. They end up deciding that it would be a great idea to drive up to one of many police officers (they're all wearing bulletproof vests and holding machine guns) creating a blockade in the middle of a circular intersection for directions. They probably thought we were insane. But during this trip we also got to see the most well-preserved castle city in the majority of Europe: Carcassonne.

To say it was beautiful doesn't really do it justice. It was breathtaking and really makes you wonder what it was like back in the day. It makes you believe in princesses and dragons. We stayed in this very fancy hotel in the center of the walled city and ate at the little restaurants that were scattered around the different small streets. We also were able to go to a French winery and have a private tour and wine-tasting within this house that was built in the 1200s..? (I can't remember clearly, but I remember being shocked at how old it was).
Anyway, though I had to leave a little earlier than my parents for my spring break to Rome, Corfu and Athens. Descriptions on that, coming up!

Costa Brava--Parpignon, Figueres, Cadaques, Girona and Besalu

I've been epicly failing this whole blogging situation so here it goes again.

Costa Brava was a lot of fun and involved a lot of beautiful weather and great people. It was through the IES program and so we were altogether a group of about 80 kids traveling together in 2 different buses.
The beginning of the trip didn't start off too well. We first went to this exile museum which turned out to be not too intriguing because the entire thing was in Catalan and the tour guides didn't explain any of it to us nor did they translate anything, so we just walked around and looked at the pictures.

We then were originally scheduled to go to Collioure, but apparently there had been a very heavy snowfall and the town had been shut down for a few days. Because of this, none of the shipments of food to the restaurants had been able to get through. Since we were supposed to go there to get food, the tour guides decided to reroute us to Parpignon. It was quite a dirty city, at least the part where we had been dropped off. None of the restaurants looked appetizing and there was dog poop all over the ground: I felt like I was walking through a land mine. We did end up going to this old church-cathedral thing that was located right where our buses were stopped. It was interesting, though after having seen so many of them, it didn't stick out in our memories as much.
The Dali museum in Figueres was definitely a highlight of the trip for me. Having been taking this art history class specifically on Picasso, Dali and Miro, it was nice to go somewhere where I knew the material and could understand how certain art pieces reflected different portions of his life.



Cadaques was our next stop. This is a beautiful beach town right close to the border between Spain and France. It had turned into a beautiful day and we were able to eat our meal outside and walk along the beach. My friend Lucy and I went up into the area with the houses (which were all white---very much like how I would imagine Greece is....so beautiful!) and explored around by the church, took pictures by another viewpoint, and took more pictures just of the streets because they were so antiquated and breathtaking.
We then walked to the other side of Cadaques to where Dali used to live. We didn't get to go into his actual house, but we spent more time along the water, snapped some photos and relaxed in the sunshine.
We then bussed to Girona and stayed the night there. It was an interesting city and has this huge river that goes right through it. The houses were very prettily colored and the people seemed friendlier than the ones in the big city of Barcelona.

The next day we went on a rather long tour around the city (five hours....lots of walking), and saw the cathedral, the Jewish quarters and had really good pizza at this restaurant in the town square.
We spent the night in Girona again, and then went to the city of Besalu, a very ancient, preserved city that is surrounded by a moat. It was pretty amazing, one of my favorite places I've been to in Europe, I think.
During my time there, I was constantly thinking, what would I be like if I had been raised here? Its entirely removed from the outside world: there's only one way to enter it and thats through the bridge where you can technically really walk over. To get your main groceries, I think you actually have to exit the town, but I can't be too sure. I noticed that people were very relaxed and laid-back there. They lived in their own world. It seemed as if no problems existed in Besalu. I would assume that I would be less materialistic--being from a city, I do admit that I tend to fall prey to desiring and wanting things such as clothes and useful technological gizmos and gadgets. But in Besalu? I feel like the lifestyle is totally different. It was almost like the lifestyle there was still set in the olden days. I would be a totally different person.

We headed back to Barcelona after visiting Besalu and I arrived back at my dorm a little after 8:00. It was a fun trip, though I think the trip to the Basque country was more fun. Costa Brava is beautiful, but I felt a little rushed through some of the places and it would have been nice to be able to stay in a hotel in Cadaques instead of Girona.
On with the description of the next trip.....!

Rose Petals

I think there must have been a wedding here recently...I felt photographically inspired.

Me in Cadaques!

Coast of Cadaques!

This was a beautiful city right on the Mediterranean. So gorgeous.

"The Dream"

Dali uses a lot of repetition of form. This is a picture of Gala, his wife, lounging on clouds.

The Dali Museum

Basque flag

After years of decorating the tables at Mineral for family reunions with this flag, I finally see a legitimate one in the country of its origin. woohooo.

Replica of an 18th century ship

Berneo

Flags outside of the Assembly House

Sculpture in Gernika

Pintxos

Pintxos are Basque tapas. They are tapas on top of slices of baguette with toothpicks to hold it together. They are quite possibly my favorite food I've had in Spain so far.

"The Mother"

This is a spider sculpture in front of the Guggenheim. Cool, yet a little creepy.

Basque demonstration

This was a demonstration in Bilbao against the change in the retirement age.

The Basque Land! (San Sebastian and Bilbao)

So for all of you Anchodoguys who are, I'm sure, avidly reading every blog entry that I post, I present to you the wonderful experiences that I have had in San Sebastian and Bilbao thus far!

The gist of this post is my declaration that I either want to a) become a millionaire and own a beautiful house on the waterfront of San Sebastian or b) that I want to live here for an extended period of time in my later years (heck, why not now? Mom and Dad, permission please? haha). But seriously. The land here is beautiful. I know I've used that word a fair amount in this blog, but I mean utterly picturesqe...breathtaking, really.

The plane first touched down in Bilbao (at an airport designed by the famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, no less!) and as we were about to hit the landing pad, I look out the window to see a herd of sheep just hanging out on the green hill nextdoor. It totally reminded me of you, Eddie. We then went straight to San Sebastian, to this sculpture garden by this artist Chilleda who is apparently a famous Basque artist/architect/sculpture artist. The weather was supposed to be chilly with potential rain, but it was a fantastically sunny day with clear blue skies. It was almost to the point where I needed sunscreen!



For lunch we were able to go to a cooking school and watch a demonstration on how to make four pintxos (tapas, but of the Basque variety), and then we were fed and served by the students of the cooking school. We had some fantastic food. I haven't eaten that well in so long! I'll post some pictures up of the food we ate. Be prepared to salivate.

We then took a vernacular to the top of this mountain and were able to see a panoramic view of San Sebastian and the coast...It was so much fun being in a region that has much more significance because of my family's origin. I can't explain how ridiculous it is that every single picture that I take of this place is beautiful. This is quite possibly my favorite place in the world....We walked along the water and then got back on the bus to take a bus tour of the Old City.

We then drove to Bilbao and had dinner at the hotel. They served us a three course meal starting with eggplant parmesan, steak and fries, and then tiramisu, which was great, but it would have been nice to have some authentic Basque food. The Rio de Bilbao (the name of the River that runs through Bilbao) is gorgeous. It is how I would picture Venice to be. We were pretty tired so we ended up going to bed not too much after (remember that we eat dinner later here, I swear I have a social life, haha).



This morning we woke up and had a bus tour of Bilbao. We went up to a lookout point to get another panoramic view, which was pretty amazing though it was incredibly windy so it was a little hard to get a nice photo, haha. Today was altogether a fantastic day, actually. We had a lot of free time, so we walked around Casco Viejo (Old Town) and got some delicious pintxos at this place crowded with a lot of locals, we experienced a protest regarding the retirement age, and we able to buy some souvenirs such as a beret (legitimately basque!), a very nice, intricate ring, a present for my mother, a basque flag, and some postcards.



We then went to the Guggenheim!! The Guggenheim in Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and it is quite possibly the coolest thing I've ever seen (it kind of reminds me of the EMP in Seattle). The museum was fabulous and to be able to have actually gone after learning so much about art and the significance of the Guggenheim and the amount of Pop Art and modern art that they have, it was really really really cool! I was able to identify works the artists of works of art (like Jim Dine's Venus de Milo's), works by Robert Rauschenberg, Serra, Gauguin, Picasso and we were even able to observe a famous modern artist in action. We walked into this room with a little lookout point in the center where we were expected to look down. When we did, we saw the artist Anish Kapoor sculpting a giant wheel of red wax, he was on his hands and knees kneeding this wax and cutting it into smaller pieces. He was wearing all white and his clothes were covered with what looked like blood from the dye. It was a very interesting thing to see, and it was almost like performance art. But to be able to see the artist in person was very, very awesome.



Anyway, now we've returned to the hotel and are watching a news report about the 8.8 earthquake in Chile and the potential tsunami thats headed for the East Asian countries and Hawaii?? Good grief.....

Anyway, I'm here for one more full day and arrive back in Barcelona around 9:40 tomorrow night, so I will update this blog entry as I go.

To come:
Two friends are visiting me next week!! They're both studying abroad in Paris and they're visiting me during their time off (though at different times of the week). The weekend after next I'm going to be going to Costa Brava, and then my parents will be in town!!!

Sitges Carnival!

So there is ths carnival at Sitges and its considered one of the biggest carnivals in the Catalunya area. It spans about 4 days and its a carnival that is hosted by the gay community of Spain. Its basically like Mardi Gras, with a lot more transvestites and a parade with lots of dressed up, feathered figures. We all wore costumes and we took a bus to get there. We left to get there on Tuesday at 7 at night and stayed until 3 in the morning! Quite possibly one of the best nights I'll have here!