Monday & Tuesday June 21/22

Monday morning I woke up a little earlier than usual, so I decided to get ready and walk around my neighborhood for a little while before heading to school. I was having my first class at the Sagrada Familia, which worked out nicely because it's only about a 20 minute walk from my house. I went to a open air market on my way to school and everything looked delicious! There were vendors selling all kinds of stuff from meats and cheeses to fresh veggies/fruits! Some even had pastries and yummy treats that I had to stop myself from buying at 11am.

I eventually found my way to the Sagrada Familia to meet my class. Our teacher took us on a tour instead of having our usual lecture, which was awesome. The building is one that was designed and started by Antoni Gaudi, but it was never finished in his lifetime. He actually spent the last few years of his life living in the church so that he could work on it night and day. He was notorious for his meticulous detail and it really shows in the cathedral! There are two facades to the building, but Gaudi only constructed one of them. His side, known as "Nacimiento" or "The Birth", depicts ..... da da da dahh ... the birth of Christ. It is insanely detailed and a little bit too much to take in actually. The other facade was done by another artist, who was commissioned to do the work after Gaudi's death. It is called the "Passion" and depicts Christ's death and betrayal. It is much more abstract and looks completely different from the rest of the building. There has been a lot of debate about this side, but unfortunately there is not much that can be done about it. During the war here in Spain, all of Gaudi's plans were lost in a fire and so the building is basically being constructed based on guesses from other works and plans people have seen.

The inside of the building is insane though. It is meant to look like the columns supporting the structure are trees and the ceiling looks like the top of a canopy in a forest. There is sparkling metalic stuff painted on all of the openings in the ceiling so it makes all of the light look like gold filtering into the church. All of the windows are going to be stained glass when the building is done, and the ones that Gaudi had already completed are gorgeous. We also took an elevator up to the top of one of the towers, and from there you can walk around the top to all of the other towers and eventually walk back down. The views from the top of the towers are amazing and I would put pictures up here if I knew how lol. Also, the stairs coming down look like a conch shell and are really tightly wound and make you dizzy when you try to go down them. There's also no handrail! All in all, I think this was one of my favorite tours that we've done here.

My second class that day was very relaxed. We went around the room and talked about which neighborhoods we were from and how they compared to our neighborhoods back home. I was one of the few kids who had actually prepared anything for the assignment, so I think that my teacher was pleased. She was at least smiling and nodding during my presentation haha.

After class I went to the ISA office to get some stuff done and then went out to dinner with Matt and Tara to watch Spain play. We stood in line for forever at this one bar that was supposed to be really cool, but then the game started so we decided to go somewhere else so that we could see it, and right after we left they started letting people in!! We had been second in line and we were so frustrated, but we ended up settling on this pizza place not too far away and watched in there. Luckily for us, Spain won and all the Spaniards were happy.

Tuesday was a very normal day. Went to class.... hung out.... it was kind of nice to not be running around like crazy actually.

Saturday & Sunday June 19/20

So I know this was a while ago, but this week has been tiring so I'm just catching up. :)

Last Saturday I slept in extremely late and then headed to the beach after making plans with a group of people from ISA. I got on the metro and by the time I got off at the stop by the beach it had gotten very cloudy and gross outside. Matt ended up being the only one to come and meet me, but while I was waiting for him it started to pour. :( We decided to hang out in the library for a while and look up some stuff we needed for class and also plan a possible trip for our free weekend. After a while it got nicer outside so we headed to the beach and just hung out there for the afternoon.

Sunday Matt and I went to the Laberint d'Horta. It is the oldest park in Barcelona and very beautiful. It's a bit out of the way, but it ended up being worth it. The park used to be owned by a very wealthy resident and when he died he left the park to the city. It's filled with really cool sculptures from the 18th century and in the middle there is a labyrinth! The picture at the top of the post is one I took from there.

We hung out at the park for a long time. We had lunch there and walked around. The park is huge and there are a ton of different little pathways you can take. We left just in time before it started to get cloudy and headed back into the city on the metro. After that we went and got hot chocolate and coffee at a little cafe that we found and it was delicious! The hot chocolate was kind of like drinking liquid Hershey's with just a tiny bit of milk. Yum Yum. After a nice little snack/break we both split and headed to our houses for dinner with the families and some time to relax.

CervezaBeerCocaColaAgua

Yesterday morning Matt and I met up to get cell phones! So I do have a cell phone number now, if you need to get in touch with me/ just want to chat. It's free for me if you call my number, so if you want it just email me. I don't really want to post it in a blog lol.

After getting our phones we stopped into the ISA office to say hi and they gave us some good tips on things that we could go do while we're here. We had lunch in the Parc de la Ciutadella again and just lounged around for awhile. We played cards and just enjoyed the sun. It's been like 70 degrees ish here every day and there's a nice breeze since we're close to the ocean. It's so nice. There are some pretty amusing people in the park to watch. There are always men walking around yelling "CervezaBeerCocaColaAgua" trying to sell you stuff to drink out of their lunch boxes lol. It never stops. After our afternoon in the park, we just sort of lazily made our way back towards my house. We stopped on the Passeig de Gracia to watch the USA game in a nice bar and just hung out there for awhile. After that we walked around Gracia, the part of town that I live in, and just explored for a little while. We saw a lot of people, debated going to the theater close to my house, and eventually settled on a place for dinner. We were going to try to go to one of the places that Luke had recommended to us before, but the menu was in Catalan and we weren't sure what we would be eating so we went to a Lebanese pizzeria instead. The food was amazing and we shared a bottle of wine and watched the England game while we ate. There was a kid at the table next to us and he kept smiling at me. Finally he got up and very excitedly asked me if I was from England lol. He was still excited after I told him that we were from the States, and his mom talked with me for a minute or two. After dinner (at like 11:00) we went and sat in one of plazas close to my house.

It was so different than the United States. There were old people out, young kids, teenagers, and adults out drinking. There were men selling beer again for a Euro. A lot of dogs were running around without leashes and just playing with one another. The funniest thing that we saw was a group of drunk friends who ended up getting into this massive brawl and having the cops called on them. It was pretty hilarious to watch and nobody in the square was doing anything about it, they all just sat around and laughed and watched because this is part of daily life. After the cops came we headed out because nothing else amusing was happening there and we wandered into some other plazas. We eventually called it a night, but I think that yesterday was probably one of my favorite days so far.

I hope that all is well back home! Miss you guys very much and I can't wait to see you in a few weeks!

Love,

Sarah

Wednesday & Thurday June 16/17

Wednesday I had my first class as usual, but our second class was cancelled so we took the opportunity of a free afternoon to go watch Spain play in the World Cup. We went into a bar on the way to our meeting place for our tour for the day and just sat for a few hours to watch the game. We got some Sangria (i'm still not sure if i like it or not, it's different) and hung out... unfortunately Spain lost. :(

After the game week booked it to our meeting spot for our bus tour of the city. It ended up that only 6 people ended up coming on that tour. It's sad for the rest of them because they missed out. We took the bus all the way around the city up to Montjuic (catalan for Jewish Mountain), where the Jewish quarter used to be. There's a huge palace up there that now serves as a musuem that we're going to try to visit later. Our guide told us that during the summer they have an outdoor movie festival where they project a movie onto the side of the palace and people just sit around and have picnics and drink wine and watch films. That's definitely on my list of things to do while I'm here. They also have a fountain show on weekends at night time that's supposed to be really pretty. Montjuic is also where the Olympic village was built for the 1992 games. They've made it into a huge workout center now, but there's a lot of art and very beautiful buildings up there that were made specifically for the Olympic games.

After Montjuic we drove by the beach and Barceloneta (what used to be a small fisherman's village). It's really pricey now and uppity, but it's very beautiful. Barceloneta is supposed to have excellent seafood restaurants. We drove through the city some, past the Sagrada Familia, and up to Parc Guell. Parc Guell is a park constructed by Gaudi and is absolutely breathtaking. It's got a whole bunch of cool structural characteristics and every detail is planned out. There's a snaking bench that was specifically designed to clump people together so that people could start converstaions, there's small domes covering the ceiling of the open air auditorium area so that a person's voice could be heard no matter where you were seated, there's a sand covered open area that is mean to filter water and then collect it into a reservoir underneath so that if people built houses in the park they wouldn't be dependent on the old city of Barcelona's water supply. It's just really cool and decorative. We only got a short time in it then, but it's about a 10 minute walk from my house so I'll be going back. :)

After the tour Matt and one of the ISA guys, Luke, walked me home. Luke lives in the same neighborhood I do so he was pointing out good places to go eat or good plazas to sit in to watch people. We had some delicious fish for dinner and I went to bed very content!

Thursday morning, my first class was cancelled so I went to the beach until 2:00. I got a bit of tan, and actually I got an awkward tan line on my face from my sunglasses. There were a lot of people on the beach for it being a Thursday, actually. In our second class we watched Vicky, Christina, Barcelona. That's literally all we did...watch a movie. I'm hoping that this class will continue like this, because it's just fun and really chill. I was glad we watched that movie, because I've been wanting to see it for awhile! If any of you haven't seen it yet, you should. It's pretty good.

After class, Matt, Tara, Dana and I made our way up to La Pedrera because we had a tour again. La Pedrera was amazing. It's on of Gaudi's most famous buildings. It's all curved on the outside with beautiful balconies. It was designed for the Mila family so it's official name is Casa Mila, but it's nickname is La Pedrera which means quarry in English because it just looks like carved stone. We got to go up to the rooftop and look out over the whole city. Even the chimneys are designed and sculpted. He wanted to make art that was "complete" so he designed everything from the roof to floor including furniture, doorways, handles on things, everything. Gaudi was all about functionality too so he made everything with a purpose. The windows on the bottom floors are bigger than the ones on the top because they needed more light to get in since the top gets more naturally. He did this so that it required less energy to heat in the summer. He also painted them darker so that they would absorb heat that way. He is just a genius. We also got to see one of the floors as it would have been when he designed it for the family, and it was awesome. After La Pedrera we walked to Casa Batllo which is like 10 minutes away and just looked from the outside. Inside it's supposed to have all of the stuff that Gaudi originally made for it, but it's very very expensive to go inside.

Dinner on Thursday was mushroom stew with meatballs and shrimp in it. It was delicious! I think my host mom is finally starting to get an idea for what kinds of foods I do and don't like. She was appalled that I didn't like tomatoes, but I've actually had bread rubbed with tomato (not slices) with cheese for a sandwich and it was really good.

Monday & Tuesday June 14/15

Monday morning I took a placement test for Spanish. Apparently, I'm "advanced"! Woot! We had some boring meetings for ISA about conduct and academics and then we had our orientation for UPF. At orientation they gave us a whole bunch of free stuff like translation books, maps around the city, and books about fun things to do while we're here. It was worth it to go just for those things. :)

Tuesday classes finally started. I'm taking two classes here : Arte y Artistas and Barcelona: the city and its history. The art one is in Spanish and my teacher talks waaaaay too fast. It's nearly impossible to understand her, even for the two girls who are fluent. We've learned about some pretty cool stuff though, including Modernism and all about the works of Gaudi. The class is going to focus on Catalunyan artists, which should be fascinating because we can actually see their work while we're here! Monday we're taking a tour of the Sagrada Familia (Gaudi's church which is very close to my house), and later next week we're going to the Picasso Museum in the Gothic quarter.

The other class is very laid back. Our teacher is awesome. She speaks Catalan as her first language, so her English isn't great, but the translations are hilarious sometimes. She made us all stand up and talk about where we're from and that was literally our entire class period.

After class we went on a tour of the Gothic quarter with ISA. We walked around for a long time and saw some stuff that I never would have explored if someone hadn't been there pointing them out to me. Some cool things that were there: columns from an ancient roman temple that have been preserved, the castle where Ferdinand and Isabella commissioned Columbus to go explore and where he later returned to them, old Jewish synagogues from before the Jewish people were expelled from Spain, the old cathedral, and much more. The tour was awesome and the people from ISA know so much, so it's nice to have them there to explain everything to us.

Sunday June 13

Sorry that it's been a week since I've written. Since it's a beautiful morning here I figured I could sit outside for awhile and update you guys on what's been happening over the past week.

Last Sunday, by some luck, Matt and I happened to be on gmail at the same time so we made plans to meet up for the day (since neither of us had cell phones). We meet in between our houses and just walked around the city all day. We started out on one of the largest streets in Barcelona, Avenida Diagonal. It is a very busy street with lots of shops and large buildings. Next we made our way down to the Passeig de Gracia (the street that my host family lives off of). This street is HUGE and is sort of like the 5th avenue of Barcelona. It has a lot of really expensive stores (Gucci, Bulgari, Rolex, etc), but it also has two of the most famous buildings in the city : The Casa Batllo and La Pedrera. Both of these houses were built and designed by Gaudi and they are absolutely beautiful. We walked all the way down the Passeig just looking at stuff and people watching. We finally made it to the Plaza Catalunya, which has a giant fountain and is beautiful. We took some pictures there and then made our way towards the ISA office to see if we could find it.

We couldn't, but by then we'd been walking for so long we figured it was time for lunch, so we walked a little further to a park that is right by our school. The park is called Parc de la Ciutadella and is constantly full of people of all different ages just hanging out. People bring blankets and picnics and just spend the whole day lounging in the parc enjoying the sunshine. We ate our lunch on a park bench and then explored the park for a bit.

The park has a couple of really cool things inside of it. At one end there is a huge beautiful fountain called the Cascada. It has a lot of statues of ancient roman gods and goddesses on it and the water flows out of the top and just "cascades" down a series of levels until it hits a large pool at the bottom. It's really pretty and you can climb up some stairs to the top and look down from a huge arch and see the park below. Right next to the Cascada is the Mamut (mammoth). I have absolutely no idea why it is there or what it represents, but it's like 10 times the size of a normal person. We watched this kid pitch a fit over having to take a picture sitting on it's trunk.

There's also some very old building in the park, such as the Catalunya parliament building and an old castle that was constructed for the 1888 Universal Exhibition. And last, but not least, there's a zoo!!! We didn't go in the zoo, but we saw a peacock just wandering around the park. Nobody else seemed really concerned with it and we've just kind of assumed that they don't enclose their zoo animals here as well as they do in the states.

After that we saw our school, the beach, some random little side streets that we wandered down, and then headed back towards our respective houses. I had dinner with my family that night and then googled our path for the day. It was 1o miles long. So not too surprisingly, I passed out asleep that night.

Barcelona Por Fin

Hola!

Since these past few days have been a whirlwhind I thought I'd take this break and write about what I've been up to!

Thursday June 10:

We woke up early on Thursday and all went to the Prado Museum. It was amazing, absolutely amazing. When we got the museum we had two tour guides and they split us up into a spanish-speaking group and an english-speaking group. I was in the spainsh one and I was pretty surprised that I could still understand most of what the tour guide was talking about. We saw the works of three major Spanish artists : Goya, Velazquez, and Murillo. The tour took awhile and then we were released for lunch. Matt and I decided to stay behind in the museum since we were already in there and look around some more. I'm glad we did because we got to see this amazing cloister that the museum had and a lot more art. Once we left, we went on a mission to find something to eat and ended up choosing a Thai restaurant. It was delicious and really filling, which was great because we were starving at that point.

After lunch we met back up with the group at the Reina Sofia (a fantastic modern art museum in downtown Madrid). We had a tour there as well where we looked at the works of Picasso, El Greco, and Dali. We got to see one of El Greco's most famous works of art: La Guernica. The tour was great because we got to hear alot of history about Spain while looking at the art. Matt and I stayed behind after that tour as well, and one of the girls named Tara stayed with us. We poked around some more and then headed back towards the hotel. The walk was supposed to take 15 minutes, but 40 minutes later we finally made it back. We were exhausted at that point so I went and took a nap and then got up for dinner around 9.

We went to dinner at a restaurant that we just happened upon while we were walking. Tara, my roommate Chelsea, Matt and I all ordered separate dishes and got told off by the waiter because he informed us that that's not how tapas dinners worked in Spain. :) Once dinner was over we headed to a huge nightclub in Madrid called Teatro Kapital. The club is a 7 story building that was originally a theater that is now an insane party spot for young people in Madrid. Each story of the building has a different "theme" sort of. The first floor was huge and was just a big dance floor that played techno music. The second floor was a Rap and R&B floor with fancy mood lighting and white drapes hanging everywhere. The third floor was just a bar that overlooked the second floor. The fourth floor was a Bacardi lounge area. The fifth was closed when we were there, and the sixth and seventh floors were chill floors with couches and stuff to sit on and relax. By some chance there was a club promoter outside when we got there and she gave us free passes to get into the club since it was still early in the evening. We waited there for the other people from our group to meet us and the spent the night out with one another.

Friday June 11:

We got up extremely early and headed out for Toledo. The ride only took about 45 minutes and I slept for almost all of it. Driving into Toledo was amazing. The city is extremely old and all of the buildings look as if it was still historical Spain. Toledo is surrounded on three sides by a huge wall and on the fourth by a river. We took a bus tour as soon as we got there around the outisde of the city to get a good look from all the different angles. After the bus tour we did a walking tour through some of the churches/synagogues in the city. The churches were beautiful and it was a just a quick introduction to some of the history of Spain and Toldeo in particular. We had lunch in the city and then headed to the outskirts to our hotel for a little down time and a group meeting.

After the meeting I looked up some restaurants on the internet and Tara, Matt, a friend Dana, and I all headed into the city by cab to explore and find something to eat. We ended up eating at a vegetarian restaurant that I had looked up online, and it was amazing. It's probably the best food that I've eaten in Spain so far. I had fresh pesto pasta and it was delicious. Everyone said that they really liked their food and we went back to the hotel very full and content.

Saturday June 12:

Bus ride from Toledo to Barcelona. This literally took 8. It was extremely long and uncomfortable because there is absolutely no good way to sleep on a bus. The country side of Spain was interesting, not quite what I was expecting, but cool nonetheless. One interesting thing that I saw was that there are a lot of windmills out in the country. They are those huge white ones, but I saw a lot of them as we were driving. Spain is a very energy/environmentally conscious country. Electricity, water, and utilities are very expensive here.

Once in Barcelona our host families picked us up at our meeting place and brought us home. My host mother is very nice, but I think she's pretty disappointed in my spanish speaking. She actually told me that she wasn't very prepared to speak english to me because ISA had told her that I could speak spanish well. Ouch. However, I'm here to learn so I guess I'll just start talking more and more and hopefully get the hang of it again. In my house there is also her daughter, who is 15 and very nice as well. She helped me set up my WiFi so that I could write to you guys!

We had gazpacho for dinner and some tuna. It was good, but not my favorite thing I've ever tried. After dinner the daughter went to a friends house and so did the mom, so it was kind of odd because I was here in the apartment all by myself. I'm not sure if I like not having a roommate, because it means not having anyone to explore with. Tomorrow I'm going to try to go get a new card for my phone so that I can call other students in the group and actually meet up with people.

As for the house itself, it's amazing. The building is extremely old, but the apartment has a really nice charm to it. It has a nice patio outside where my host mom said I could have breakfast or sit and study. My room is nice. It's slightly small, but it has a desk and a bed and a wardrobe and I feel cozy in it.

Tomorrow my plan is to go explore the city and find my way around. Hopefully all goes well and it is nice and sunny.

Until next time,

Sarah

In Madrid!!

Hi everyone!

It's been a super long day, but before turning in for the night I figured I'd let everyone know that I got here alright. The flights went perfectly and no luggage was lost, which was fantastic. I got in at 7:45ish this morning Madrid time (1 am Raleigh time) and we've been doing stuff since.

We've already had a short bus tour of Madrid, met our other group mates, had dinner at a tapas bar, and now I'm just hanging out at the hotel using some free internet.

I hope that all of you are doing well and I'll update you more when stuff actually starts happening. Tomorrow the agenda is: two museums (the Prado is one of them), and then some free time to explore. Friday morning we head to Toledo for a day and the it's off to Barcelona!

The Eve of the Trip

Hi everyone! Just wanted to get this blog started before I left so that everyone could know that it was up and running. The first week of the trip is supposed to be mostly travel, so I'm not sure how much I'll be able to post. After that however, I will be stationed in Barcelona for the rest of the trip and will definitely have internet access.

I will miss you all very much. I'll be sure to keep you updated on my life, so please email me whenever, and do the same! :)

~Sarah