Barcelona

Well sorry that this update is a little late but I’ve been really busy with traveling and school work as everything seems to be piling up right now for the end up the semester and before break. So anyways me and another girl from my CIEE group went to Barcelona from march 12-15^th, and I am going back there for a few days when mom and dad come for semana santa (Easter week). Barcelona is a very cool city and we were actually able to walk around and see the majority of the highlights in the couple days we had. The first day we walked to parc guell which is a park designed by Gaudi, very cool. We then walked to another cathedral and la Segrada female (which is also by Gaudi). The Segrada familiar is a really detailed building that was started over 100 years ago and is still being constructed with no end really insight as far as I know…needless to say it was really neat. After that we returned to our hostel and wandered around las ramblas which is a really big street with lots of stores, cafes, restaurants and street performers. This took us up to dinner because walking added a lot of time (we probably walked at least 10km in total) and we spent a decent amount of time at each thing location.

After dinner we decided to meet up with a kid I knew from Albion studying in Barcelona. He told us that the thing they like to do in Barcelona is botellon on the beach, a botellon is where a group of people get together buy some alcohol and go to a location outdoors and just any out. This sounded cool to us so we decided to go buy some drinks and head to the beach to hang out for the night. It ended up being one of the most fun things I’ve done here…we were just sitting on the beach enjoying the full moon over the ocean and singing songs, after we were singing for a bit a guy came up to us with a guitar and started playing and singing with us as well. This continued for a few hours and a few of the people that congregated with us left. After they left a group of teenage Moroccans came with a drum and some other instruments, we then continued to stay on the beach and dance with them for a while until we were too tired and just decided to go back to our hostel which was a good 30 minute walk from where we were.

The next day we walked around the city more, explored the port area of the ocean, las ramblas more and the gothic neighborhood. We ended up going to a place where there is an art museum and the Olympic stadium from when Barcelona hosted the Olympics. This also was a bit of a walk so we explored that area for a little while until dusk. Once the sun set there was a fountain show in front of the museum so we stayed for about a half hour to watch that which was really cool. The rest of the night we just relaxed, ate dinner and went back to the beach again to hang out although it wasn’t quite as fun as the night before. We woke up the next day and packed up and headed to the bus station thus concluding our trip. We got back to Alcala on Sunday afternoon and then the next wed night headed off to Valencia for las fallas because we had a short week due to father’s day here. Therefore las fallas will be my next update and hopefully I can get that up soon. Ta luego.

Paris

This past weekend was my trip to Paris; we left Thursday afternoon and came back Sunday evening. It started off a little hectic as I originally thought our flight was at 5 pm on Thursday afternoon but when I went to print off the confirmation e-mail I realized that it was at 3 instead so I had to run home after my class which ended at 12:30, pack everything and go to the airport. It all worked out because one of my sisters and her friend drove us to the airport, but it was a little crazy leading up to that point. We made it to Paris a little later than expected and we were planning to meet up with Pat and Matt (two guys from Albion that live my house at school). We were supposed to meet up with them at 6 in Cergy which is a suburb of Paris (where they were staying) and we were planning to stay in their hotel room the last night so that we would not have to pay for a place to sleep. We ended up making it to Cergy around 8 o’clock so they of course did not stay at the train station for 2 hours but we had no way of contacting them since they did not have a phone and I did not think my cell from Spain would work in France. Eventually I ended up getting my phone to work and called one of their friends (that had a phone) from France. Their friend ended up picking us up from the metro station and taking us to their hotel, so it all worked out…just a little crazy start to the trip.

That night we met up with Pat and Matt after they ate dinner and we went to an apartment of one of their friends. They were both there for they week with a business program…their task was to create a business connecting the culture of France to their own…they were also with other students from around the world such as Austria, Hungary, France and a few more. So back to my story…that first night we hung out with all of their new friends at this apartment which overlooked the city of Paris (very cool). We had some drinks and ate a few appetizers such as duck liver and escargot…neat experience.

We woke up the next morning to go to Paris (Pat and I slept in because we were too tired and I knew I needed the rest for the rest of the weekend after seeing how my body reacted to the lack of sleep on the Granada trip), the rest of the group left around 8:30ish and pat and I went around 11:30ish. Even though I tried to sleep in I still did not sleep very well and was very tired all day. We got to the city ate lunch, walked around by ourselves trying to meet up with the others (that didn’t work until about 7 o’clock), saw le Louvre, ate crepes, and went to the Eifel tower. We finally met up with the others at the Eifel tower and spent some more time there (going up to the top level) and then all went out to eat together. After dinner we headed back to Cergy to go out for the night since it was their last night in Paris. They had to leave at 6:30 in the morning for the airport so Alexa (the girl that went with me) and I had been worrying about what we were going to do after they left since we had been staying in their hotel for a free place to stay and we didn’t make plans for the nights after that. We finally decided to stay in their hotel room after they left that morning until the maids came to kick us out (which was about 9). We got up at 9, packed our stuff really fast and headed out towards the city where we planned to look for a hostel.

This part is a little confusing so try to stay with me…

Earlier in the week we were thinking that we would try a thing called couch surfing for the nights that we could not stay at Pat and Matt’s hostel. Couch surfing is a website online that has a bunch of people that you can look up and stay with them on their couch over night for a free place to crash. Since we were trying to save as much money as possible this option really appealed to us, so we sent out a couple emails to stay with people…no one got back to us so we thought we were going to have to look for a hostel. While we were on the subway heading towards downtown Paris we got a text message saying that we could stay at the place of one of the couch surfers. We were really excited that we wouldn’t have to walk around Paris searching for a place to sleep and that we were going to save the extra 30 euros that we were going to have to pay. Once we arrived in Paris we went looking for this guy’s house, and we found it without too much trouble. Once we got to the house we took a nap and then planned on going to the catacombs, but on our way out we found out that they closed at 5 and we were leaving the apartment around 4:45 so we weren’t going to make it. We then decided to go back downtown and see le Louvre and night, Notre dame, the arch and I wanted to try and go into the Louvre. We first went to the arch and then started heading towards Notre dame and le louver. We went to Notre dame first, and we got there right after it was dark so we got to see it lit up, which was pretty cool…we then walked in and there was a mass in session so we snapped a few pics and headed back to le Louvre. We got to le Louvre and it was really cool lit up at night so we took some pictures outside but then went in to find out that it also closes early (at 6 PM) so we missed the chance to go inside that as well. I knew I had to go inside at least for a little bit to see some of the famous art so we decided to come back in the morning before our flight. We went home, hung out with our couch surfing host and then went to bed.

We woke up the next morning after sleeping in a bit, packed up and headed to le Louvre with our bags. I went in by myself because Alexa had already been inside and walked around for about an hour before we had to head to the airport to catch our flight. We made it to the airport a little early and worked on some homework we had to do for our grammar class because our final was Monday morning. After doing some homework in the airport, I did a little bit more on the plane and then we made it back to Alcala around 10 PM. I finished up the rest of my homework and then went to bed.

I know this post is a little long, but I figured doing a play by play would be best to capture all the experiences we had, even though I left out a lot of them. Its nice being done with exams, but the only two I’ve gotten back so far didn’t go well at all so I’m a little bit bummed about that. I also am a little bit sick probably from the trip, lack of sleep, and the stresses of exams all piled up but hopefully that will get better and also when I get my other exams back hopefully they will be better than the first ones as well.

Hope all is well in your respective hometowns. Until next time, hasta luego.

Real Madrid and Midterms

So it’s been a while since I’ve updated the blob, mainly because I’ve been so busy over the past week and a half. Two weekends ago I went to my first futbol game in Spain…Real Madrid vs. Real Betis, Madrid won 6-1 so I was able to see a lot of goals although it was not a very good game. We arrived to the game a couple hours before to try and experience the atmosphere outside of the stadium before the game started. We found a café to eat dinner and drink a beer before we went in the stadium, I also bought a jersey of real Madrid and a scarf of Spain, the scarf says: “This is Spain if you don’t like it get out!” (after translation of course). Barcelona is also on a losing skid over the past few weeks so la liga (the Spanish league) is only currently a 4 point different between Barcelona (1^st place) and Real Madrid (2^nd). I hope to make it to another game at some point and hopefully have the chance to see a better game because I feel like the atmosphere would be much better at a closer/more important game.

Last week was also midterms so I spent the rest of last weekend studying for them and preparing myself for the week ahead. I had one Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and today. The only one I’ve gotten back so far did not go so well so my grade in that class might not be so hot at the end of the semester (I am still hoping the others went better, I’ll probably find out within the next few days). I was a bit bummed when I found out that I did not do well on this midterm because I spent a lot of time studying for it and I just cannot figure out how to do well in that class no matter how hard a try. I guess the language barrier is really having a bigger affect on the than I thought…I feel a little better that the majority of the people in the class did bad on the midterm, which means I’m not alone. I also lost my computer card for the computers at school this past week, it is the card that you need to put in the computer in order to log into the computers at school (a system which I think is stupid). So now I cannot use the computers at school anymore, but the worst part is the stupid card is going to cost me 100 euros to replace. Needless to say this past week was not my best week and I was looking forward to the weekend and my trip to Paris very much.

I’m starting to come to the realization that my grades might not be as good as they are normally in the US, but I guess that’s Ok because I want to get the full experience while I’m here and if I get a C or 2 I suppose it’s not the end of the world. It is somewhat hard for me to accept that fact since I have been focused on my grades so much my entire life but I am trying to get the mindset down that I’m here for the experience and to learn the language and all of that does not come from the class room. The next update I have is for my trip to Paris which I did this past weekend, and I am hoping that I can get to that either later tonight or tomorrow.