Barcelona Pictures

(Hint: Read the post below first for all the info on Barcelona...and then look at these amazing pictures!!)

Our first nine hour train ride...stoked about our Hogwart-esque train car

Standing in the Cathedral in Barcelona

The cloister of the cathedral. It was the most gorgeous cloister I have seen so far--cool fountains, palm trees, and tons of white geese

Standing in front of a cool bridge thing we found in one of the streets...admit it, you love the green pants and the cool scarf...you probably thought I was actually European...random fact of the week: someone thought I was German the other day in Madrid.

Arc de Triomf

La Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi

Cool view we had of some more towers of the Sagrada Familia when we went up the elevator to the top...then we decided to take all 275 stairs back down!

Another Gaudi building

En Serio...The hostal that we stayed at

Big old gun outside of the castle in Barcelona

We decided this was a gypsy carnival...we actually had no idea what was going on...but if you look closely, you will see that some of those children are sitting on toilets...awkward.

Over half of the people in this band were old enough to be my grandparents!!

Well, those are all the pictures I have for now. There will be more coming soon of the fountain show and some of the other cool sites we saw. We're in the process of passing around our memory cards right now so that we can get everyone's pictures because we took turns taking pictures so that we didn't have to take every picture six times. As soon as I get the others, I'll put them up!

Barcelona Blast

So like Tuesday of last week a group of six of us decided that we wanted to go to Barcelona. So we talked to our professors, booked some train rides and a hostal, and two days later we were on our way. We started out with a nine hour train ride to Barcelona (though it is only like a 2 1/2 - 3 hour drive) and felt like all we were missing were our capes and magic wands. Since there were six of us, we had the train car all to ourselves and didn't have to worry about any euro smells for 9 hours which was fantastic. Haha.

We arrived in Barcelona early morning on Friday and after having a quick bite to eat and locking our luggage up in the train station, we went and visited the Cathedral. We then met up with one of Madison's friends who is on study abroad in Barcelona with another university. While we waited for him, we hung out in the shade of a palm tree and took some pictures by the Arc de Trionf.

Our next destination then was the Sagrada Family designed by Antonio Gaudi which was absolutely amazing!! It's a church in the neo-gothic style, and it was interesting being able to recognize the gothic architectural elements combined with more modern elements. While there, we decided to go up to the top of one of the towers and got an amazing view of the city and were also able to better see some of the details of the roof and sides of the building.

After that we saw some more Gaudi buildings which were cool, checked into our hostal, got changed and showered, ate, and then headed for the parque de Monjuic. The park was huge, but we were able to found the fountains just in time to see the amazing water show with lights and music. It was one of the highlights of Spain so far. I'm starting to see a trend--if it has to do with water and fountains, it's probably going to be a hit. Haha.

Then we explored the city a little bit more before heading back to the hostal to go to bed. The next morning we were up at a decent time and had breakfast at the hostal before heading to the beach. We had a great time at the beach and hung out there for about half the day. Then we went back and changed at the hostal, locked our stuff up in the locker, and continued our exploration of the city.

This time we headed out to the castle. This castle was different than the other ones we have visited...there was some crazy gypsy carnival going on, nesquick was there handing out free samples of chocolate milk, and there were some crazy old people playing in some punk rock band. You can definitely say that it was interesting. It was also on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean, so we got a great view of the city and of the sea from the top of the castle.

After the castle, we went to "Las Ramblas" where we bought some postcards and walked around before heading back to the hostal and grabbing our stuff so that we could catch the metro. We arrived at the train station with plenty of time to wash our faces and get ready for our final nine our train ride. This time on the train we got a car with bunkbeds. So we got some sleep and arrived back in Alcala around 6:30am Sunday morning.

Pictures of Numancia/Soria/Covarrubias

I think this will be easier since I don't have much time to update my blog. So here are some pictures from our last group trip...(Make sure you read the post over Numancia/Soria/Covarrubias first though before you look at the pictures!!)

Minta (Ann's old roommate) and I a little ways from the mouth of "La garganta de Yecla"

Stella and I with our professors in a little cave in the mountain path

Some of the arches and some of the people in our group outside the monastery of San Juan de Duero

Some of our group walking along the riverside path that inspired Antonio Machado and other Spanish writers

The top of the church that was in the cave - we started out completely in a cave and then ended up in this part of the church.

Here is some of our group at the ruins in Numancia - the site of the ultimate resistance of the Celtiberos against the Romans

Cathedral in Siguenza

Castle in Siguenza

Numancia/Covarrubias/Soria

Sorry it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Since the last time I wrote, I've been on two more trips. I'm going to start with the last trip we went on as a big group--to Covarrubias, Soria, and Numancia. Overall it was a fun trip, but nothing too out of the ordinary. We went and saw a Gothic-style church in Covarrubias which was about the same as any other Gothic church we've seen.

Then in Silos we got to listen to a "Gregorian chant" by the monks there at their monastery. That was really cool. It was basically a sung prayer that lasted about fifteen minutes, but it was very impressionable. We also walked along a small mountain pass called "La garganta de Yecla" which was absolutely beautiful and took a quick look at a palace, castle, and a church in Penarando del Duero.

In Soria we went to the monastery of San Juan de Duero where they had a ton of different styles of arches which were pretty cool. Then we walked down one of the paths that had influenced Antonio Machado, a Spanish poet--it was absolutely gorgeous. The path was right along the river (I think it was the Rio Duero?) and ended up at a church. It wasn't any ordinary church though. The church was a cave and was one of my favorite places I've visited in Spain so far. It was so simple with just the bare cave walls and then ended in a chapel up in one of the bigger rooms of the cave. Despite it's simplicity, it was absolutely gorgeous.

We then went to Numancia where we saw the site of the "ultimate resistance of the celtiberos against the Romans." They had some ruins/artifacts and some reconstructed houses in the celtic and roman styles. Then we made a quick stop later in Siquenza where we saw another cathedral and castle really quickly before heading home.

Then it was back to another "normal" four or five days.

My First "Normal" Week

So, after getting back from our trip to the north last Sunday night and eating and getting a lot of rest, we were back to "normal" school and "normal" classes. I had class each day (mon-thurs) from 9 to 10:30am. Then Stella and I went to Madrid a couple times this week. We went to the Real Academia to las Bellas Artes-a big art museum with stuff by El Greco, Goya, and several other famous artists. We also went to los jardines de Sabatini (the picture to the left is of Stella in the gardens), the plaza de espana, the plaza de oriente, and la iglesia de San Nicolas. We have a big notebook of tons of stuff that we have to see and do in Madrid, so we tried to make a dent in that list of things. We didn´t make a very big dent though. We also hung out and did some stuff in Alcala that we needed to do, like go to the oldest hospital that still exists and write about a couple of the different plazas here. We also talked a lot to our family this week and have learned a whole bunch of new words--some of which aren´t so good...haha.

I have my first funny story about learning the language now. The other night at dinner my brother said a word that I didn´t recognize. So I politely asked ¿Que es _____? He kind of smirked at me and told me to go look it up later. So, I was like oh great, what did I just say. Well, I found out later, and it is definitely a four letter word. Stella and I could not stop laughing in our bedroom though because I seriously must have sounded completely ridiculous at dinner. If someone had said the same thing in English to me, I would have busted up laughing, so I´m glad that our mother and brother didn´t bust up laughing and just politely smiled back at me. Haha. And then right after that Stella pronounced a word wrong, accidentally saying another bad word instead of "goat" like she intended to say. Now we´re both a little afraid to say anything at the dinner table. Haha.

Well, tomorrow we head off to Soria and Numancia for a couple of days. I´ll update my blog when I get back!

El Norte

(Stella and I waiting for the charter bus before our trip; One of our program directors and I standing outside of the castle in Coca)

So, Sunday night we got back from our trip to northern Spain. I absolutely love the north. It is so much cleaner, and the cities are absolutely gorgeous. We started out our trip going to a castle in Coca, a small city between Madrid and Leon, which was absolutely amazing. Then we were off to Leon which was our first big destination. We went to the Cathedral there (a picture of it is down below), along with some other buildings and then were free to explore the city that night. At one of the local restaurants I had some red peppers stuffed with codfish which were absolutely delicious, and I also tried some of the Tuna and Gambas that my friends had. (Below is a picture of us in the plaza in Leon eating dinner. We got dressed up because it was Stella's 20th birthday. And every girl loves a good excuse to dress up :) ) All of the food that we had there was pretty good.

We also went to Ribadesella where we went to the beach, unfortunately though it was raining. Despite the rain, it was still gorgeous, and our hotel was right on the beach. It also didn´t hurt any that Stella and I somehow lucked out and managed to get one of the nicest hotel rooms there.

My memory is kind of failing me right now, so I´m just going to write about random places we went to because I no longer have any idea in what order we visited all the places. We went to the caves of Tito Bostillo in order to see some of the ancient cave drawings and also visited the reconstruction of the caves at Altamira. Going along with this theme, we visited various prehistoric museums and also visited the sight of one of the largest archeological digs.

We also visited the tombs of Pelayo and El Cid. Pelayo´s tomb was near Ribadesella up in a cave along with a small church, and the tomb of El Cid was in the Cathedral at Burgos. We also visited the statues of both of these men in their various cities.

One of the highlights of the trip was going to the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Although the modern art was extremely cool, I was not a big fan of the city. We also visited various buildings designed by Antonio Gaudi which were interesting.

Overall, the trip was fun and we learned a lot, although I have officially reached the point of information overload. And these last two days of classes have been difficult. By the time we´ve been sitting in class for an hour, I get to the point where my brain refuses to listen anymore. Haha. No, classes are good, but we did have to learn about several thousand years of history today in just an hour and a half...and my brain is now completely dead.

Oh, I did find a new exciting place to go in Alcala yesterday. Our friends took us to the Mercadio--aka a big flea market where the ferias had been. They have it every Monday, and I will definitely be going there a few more times.

Well, that´s going to be all I can write for now. I have to work on a report I have to give on our next trip this weekend when we will be going to Numancia and Soria. I´ll talk later.

Week Numero Uno

So this past week was mainly filled with classes...and by filled, I mean I had an hour and a half of class each day for only four days, but we did have homework. And we were also assigned to read three books in Spanish along with a ten page essay that´s due the last month of one of our classes. So that should be fun...not. Haha. Anyway, a group of us went to Madrid again, and we´ve been spending the rest of the time getting to know Alcala and hanging out at the ferias. Then tomorrow, we leave for a 6 day trip to the north of Spain which I am crazy excited for. It also doesn´t hurt that that means that we are already done with class for the whole week.

I don´t have much time to update my blog right now, but I did want to write a few things before I don´t have internet access for the next week.

First of all, I had my first bad experience with food this week. Our madre made us paella which we were really excited for because all of our friends have been raving about paella. Well, to make a long story short, our madre decided to make the paella with carne and seafood all mixed together, which was fine except that she showed us the live crabs before we left in the morning, which were trying to climb out of the shopping bag. Then we came home and they were sitting on our plates staring at us....not one of my favorite things to eat.

Also, rebajas are my best friend. This was the last week of rebajas, which are pretty much just sales, but all the stores have the sales all at the same time...and pretty much on a scale of que to bueno, they are amazing!! (Up top is a picture of us in the metro in Madrid after an amazing day of shopping, and below I'm sporting some of my amazing buys before heading out for the movie theater.)

Anyway, I´ve got to go. I´ll write more later.