Spain: Last Weeks and Last Thoughts

Well I'm back in the United States now, but for posterity's sake when I look back on what I've wrote to remember this trip I figured a closing post would be nice.

After Barcelona we had finals to study for and then the Ohio State students had research papers and projects due the next week after the students from other universities left. I meant to start my paper immediately (hah!) but instead spent Wednesday and Thursday of the second to last week hanging out with my host family and having one last hurrah (or two) with my friends from other universities who were leaving on Friday.

one of the last hurrahs

another hurrah

That Friday I had to say goodbye to my wonderful, wonderful host family and move into the Fund for the last week. My host family was truly amazing. They were always making jokes, talking to me, and making me feel supported while I was in a foreign country. I could ask them anything random about Spain and they would do their best to explain to me what I didn't understand. One day I had a three hour conversation with my host mother about Spain's views on abortion, gay rights, and sex ed in schools. It was really an unique experience and I'm so glad that I got to do it. They really treated me like a second daughter. One day, maybe around the third to last week, my host mom's mother (who did most of the cooking) noticed I hadn't touched any of the meat on my plate. When I explained to her that I normally don't eat a lot of meat in the States and it was just becoming hard for me to keep eating Spanish style, she made me vegetarian meals for a couple of days. It was just gestures like that that really really made me feel at home and welcome in their house.

my bedroom

View from my window

My host family (minus the abuelo and one host sister)

Saying goodbye was incredibly difficult. While my host mom and I managed not to cry, the abuela started crying a lot and it was really really hard to leave knowing that she was so sad. I exchanged emails with them, however, so I feel confident that we will keep in touch.

I spent Friday night in the TV room with the majority of the OSU students, watching the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics. Since I love everything British I was pretty pumped because I figured that it would basically be a several hours long tribute to everything British - and I wasn't disappointed. It was once again slightly weird to experience something that I consider so patriotic but in another country. Especially a country like Spain, where the Olympics definitely is not the phenomenon that it is in the United States.

The next two days I spent basically continuously in the TV room, watching the Olympics while I wrote my paper. It was incredibly interesting to experience the Olympics from a Spanish perspective, because they really have a different way of approaching it that is only really clear to me now that I am back in the States watching it on NBC. Firstly, they obviously focus on Spanish sports and Spanish athletes, and while we would joke about that and how much we wanted to see US athletes instead....they did cover the US athletes. I watched several USA basketball games where Spain was not involved as well as gymnastics, cycling, and beach volleyball. But here in the US all NBC seems to talk about are the USA athletes - not the athletes that are excelling but just the ones from the US. Which is different. The Spain channels also didn't run any human interest stories - it was all sports - and I really liked that. No bogus cuts to gymnasts describing their routine before we see it. Just sports, plain and simple.

It was also awesome to watch everything in real time, since Spain is only one hour ahead of London, and this has made me really excited for the Rio games because people that are on EST in the USA will have that same experience in four years.

During a writing break I went to the military museum in Toledo, the Alcazar. It wasn't organized in a very coherent fashion, but I definitely learned a lot about Spanish flags and acquired more knowledge about Spain's military history in the 1800s. It was still pretty simplistic, but in some areas I definitely needed that simplicity.

The courtyard of the Alcazar

View from the back of the Alcazar

After presentations this past Monday, I basically packed up my room and relaxed for the next couple of days. I took a trip to the Toledo mall with Alex for some prime shopping (Spain has RIDICULOUS sales in July) and I took some night walks around the town.

Toledo at Night

Wednesday I took off for Alicante for a couple of days with the gang. Alicante is a beach town on the Mediterranean Sea, south of Valencia. We had just wanted to go to the beach for a couple of days, so it was the perfect place. While there are some tourist sites in Alicante (I believe there are some Roman ruins just outside of the city), to be honest we just wanted to relax and and enjoy our last days in Spain.

The moment that we stepped off of the train, a wall of humidity hit us. Coming from Toledo, which had basically zero humidity, this was quite a shock. Only a couple of blocks away from the train station was our hostel, which was X Hostel Alicante. We had mainly picked it for its fairly good proximity and excellent reviews, but were delighted when we found that it was a youth hostel that offered things to do every evening.

After an evening of sangria on the rooftop terrace and (where else would Americans go?) some time at an Irish bar, we collapsed and slept til around noon the next morning.

the girls :)

Then we dragged our sorry selves to Corte Ingles, the large Spanish department store, for a quick lunch and then spent several hours soaking up the sun at the beach. It was so warm and the sand was so soft and perfect - I am so happy that this is where I spent some of my last days in Spain.

The Mediterranean Sea

The impressive Castle Hill

Old Alicante

One of the cool trees growing in Alicante - they had them everywhere!!

mmmmm Kebap

Friday night our hostel had a bar crawl, and since it was my birthday and we knew nothing about the bars in the area, we happily joined in. It was a pretty great way to ring in a birthday.

The boxcar children

A little sunburnt, but a lot happy :)

I spent my actual birthday mostly traveling (although I did have an awesome pizza with Alex) and packing, but that night some of us walked around Toledo for one last goodbye, strolling on top of the battlements of the old wall and along the river. The stars are so visible in Toledo, it really is gorgeous.

View across the river

Night walking

The Alcazar all lit up at night

Cathedral at night

 Some of the things that I will miss about Spain (other than my friends - who I am confident that I will see back at school!):
~ My host family and watching 'Pasapalabra' with them
~ Free tapas at the bars
~ Tinto de Verano
~ Traveling by train and the general ease of travel
~ Nights at Legendario, Enebro, The View, and of course.....O'Briens
~  Croquettes
~ Living in a city that is over a thousand years old, hills and all, and all of the history that I was constantly surrounded in
~ Zero humidity (in Toledo, that is)
~ The friendly Spanish people and their surprisingly optimistic outlook on life in the face of one of the worst financial crises in the world
~ Reliable bus system
~ The architecture in some of the bigger cities, like Madrid and Barcelona
~ The lack of dryers (useless pieces of machinery) and the general eco-friendly mentality
~ The siesta time, which could be annoying if you had errands to run, but mainly was amazing because literally everything shut down and you basically couldn't do anything but relax. I loved it. 
~ Euro coins (but not the 5 and 1 cent coins)
~ Kebaps
~ 3 Chicken McNuggets for 1 euro (and they totally were better in Spain)

.....obviously there are a lot more things that I'm going to miss, but these are some of the more obvious ones that are standing out to me.

Although I will miss Spain a lot, I am really content being home and relaxing before school starts. There is nothing like living in another country to make you appreciate your own.

Barcelona!

Well I'm supposed to be working on my final research paper for Ohio State (current status: 0 out of 10 pages completed) but I really can't concentrate and I think I would rather blog :)

Last weekend I went to Barcelona with mis amigos. We kind of went in several waves, with some opting to take the AVE (the extremely rapid train) on Friday morning while some others and I took the overnight train on Thursday. We left Toledo at around 7:30 and since the Toledo-Madrid train is takes only around a half hour, we had a couple of hours to kill before our train left to Barcelona. Trains from Toledo come into the Puerta Atocha station, but our Barcelona train left the other station, Chamartin, so we had to take a metro-type train that runs between the two. Interestingly, there were huge protests happening several blocks from Puerta Atocha, so as we were moving through the train station we were surrounded by protestors blowing whistles and chanting as they headed out to join the crowds. Many of them were carrying the flag of the second Spanish republic, demanding significant change.

After a nice dinner of Burger King (Chamartin doesn't have much by way of food) we hopped onto our overnight train. We had heard that were beds on the train and were extremely confused as we traipsed down the platform looking for our car, as none of the cars appeared to contain beds. Our confusion was solved when we reached the car and saw that we were in a compartment of six spots, three on each side, whose seats slid out to make quasi-beds. If everyone put their seat down then the entire compartment was like a gigantic platform bed. Obviously the major problem with this was that only Presney, Mel and I were in our compartment - the boys were in another - so we didn't know the other people that we were "sleeping" with. If I curled up in the fetal position I could fit well on my "bed", but once the person across from stretched out and put her feet on the edge of my seat, I took this as a license to extend her direction as well.

We slept on and off and woke up to the sun rising over the Mediterranean Sea. Our train pulled in at around 8AM, leaving us with a full day to explore Barcelona.  The hostel that us girls were at was a short trip away from the Barcelona station on the metro so situating ourselves was pretty easy. We got some breakfast, checked into our hostel (we were surprised that the room was ready so early) and then headed to Las Ramblas, the large shopping street in Barcelona. After wandering up it for a while we picked up a couple things and headed back to the hostel to reconvene with Alex and Lindsay, who had arrived fresh off the AVE. We then met up with the boys and headed off to spend the afternoon on the beach.

The beaches at Barcelona are, of course, gorgeous. Like many places in Europe, you can go topless and there are no open container laws. The water was the perfect temperature, and we spent several hours relaxing on our towels and taking turns dipping in the sea.

Blue sky and warm sand (photo Lindsay Crockett)

That night we had a delicious dinner at a Chinese restaurant, which might sound a bit weird at first but there are actually a ton of Chinese immigrants in Spain, so it was incredibly authentic. I think. I'd like to think, anyways :) Later the whole group hit up the area of clubs around the beach. We kind of got there late and the lines were incredibly long so we ducked out and headed down to the beach, where we found the "IceBarcelona", an ice bar between several of the clubs. It was kind of funny because it was definitely the last thing that any of us would have thought that we would be doing...but it was a blast.

Wearing our parkas in the ice bar (photo Lindsay Crockett)

Evidently the beaches don't close in Barcelona, so we finished the night by wandering on the beach back to our hostel, playing in the sand and the ocean and climbing weird rope structures.

The next day we slept in, so for breakfast/lunch I ended up having a kebap, which was amazing. They are seriously one of my favorite things to eat here. We met up with the guys at their hostel, which was really close to the Sagrada Familia and headed over there to check it out.

Still under construction!

Words from the Bible

Nativity facade

Gorgeous

Alex and I in front of the nativity facade

The Sagrada Familia was so much more magnificent than I imagined, and I liked it way more than I thought that I would. I'm normally more into traditional church architecture so I figured that I would appreciate the Sagrada Familia but not love it beyond belief....boy was I wrong. It's design is inspired by gothic architecture, but with Gaudi's spin on it. Obviously its a more modern take on church design, but everything is still so pleasing to the eye and there is just so much LIGHT. It's kind of like if the elves from Lord of the Rings had a church....this would be it. Its seriously just the coolest place ever. I would say that between walking around inside and the outside, going up in the tower, and wandering around in the museum in the basement, we probably spent upwards of three hours there. And we probably could have spent longer.

inside

stained glass

view from the top

We may look cute but we actually were terrified

Afterwards I wandered around the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona with the boys, as I was too sunburnt to head back to the beach with the girls. I'm so glad that I did though, because a) I had the most amazing margherita pizza with feta cheese on it and b) I felt like I got a better feel for the city. The old part of Barcelona is gorgeous, with narrow, winding streets, and little bars oozing with character tucked into the corners.

Barcelonians doing a dance in the square in front of the main cathedral. I think it signifies community, but don't quote me on that. The music was very beautiful, almost Irish sounding

Gorgeous

That night our group decided to split up, so Alex and I headed to the guys' hostel to hang out on the amazing balcony at their hostel. After a couple of hours there, we set off for the Dow Jones Bar, a bar where the prices of drinks depends on how popular they are on that particular night. Unfortunately for us, we went in the wrong direction and spent about a half an hour trying to find it. Since we had wanted to try the clubs too that night, we cut our losses and took a taxi back to the beach. We ended up going to a club called Shoku, which had a bit of an Asian theme. We made friends with some Danish guys and then danced and danced and danced - it was great. When we got tired we walked outside and sat on the beach for what seems like forever, just talking. Around four or four thirty we made our way back down the beach to our hostel and Alex and I got a crepe and a hot dog (guess who got the crepe, haha).

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed early to go to the guys' hostel to see Parc Guell with them. It wasn't difficult at all to get there - the Barcelona metro system is amazing and a lot of the lines intersect with others. We had our backpacks on the entire time because we didn't want to waste time going back to the hostel later, so we trekked up the hill that Parc Guell is on, hoping that the Gaudi buildings were close. Once we actually reached the park, however, we realized that the map at the park entrance didn't help us at all because we didn't know the names of the Gaudi stuff. At a fork in the road, we ended up going the wrong and spent a good half hour wandering amongst the other buildings and structures in the park, hoping to catch a glimpse of something recognizable. We did see some cool stone structures, however, and there were musicians playing everywhere, so it was quite pleasant (albeit hot) to walk around amongst the trees.

Barcelona

One of the non-Gaudi structures that was pretty cool.

So pretty

Eventually we found the Gaudi buildings, marveled at them, and then recharged on one of the Gaudi benches.

Dragon steps

Joey, Me, and Chris

The entrance (that we exited)

Love.

 At this point Chris and I split off because we were taking the train back and had more time than the guys who were taking a plane. We had a nice pizza lunch, I bought some postcards, and we leisurely made our way back to the train station before getting on the AVE and speeding back home.

It was an amazing weekend, and I'm so happy that I went. Barcelona is probably my favorite Spanish city, which is amusing because they don't consider themselves part of Spain at all. So I wonder what that says about me hahaha. But apart from the humidity (quite a change from Toledo), I loved the architecture, the beach, the food, and just the general feel of everything. It really was perfect.

Roman Ruins, Light Shows, and Cathedrals

This past week has been a hodgepodge of happenings - I didn't go on one big trip or anything last weekend but I still had a blast.

Last Friday I went on a day excursion with the Fund to Segovia - we left early in the morning and got back in the early evening. The main things to see in Segovia are its Alcazar (castle) and roman ruins, namely its aqueduct. We pulled in around 11 and were taken on a tour of the Alcazar first.

The Alcazar from a distance

Alex and I at the Alcazar

Its a great building and has a lot of muslim influence in its decoration, which makes it really interesting. Our guide was really engaging so that didn't hurt either. I think the thing that makes this Alcazar particularly intriguing (most Spanish cities have Alcazars - Toledo's is an army museum) is that Ferdinand and Isabella lived here and seemed to have an active hand in its decoration and expansions.

Looking out into the countryside

O-H-I-O on top of the Alcazar

Later in the day we climbed to the top of the Roman aqueduct to get a really good view.

The Roman aqueduct

From the top

And then visited the Cathedral.

The Cathedral

The gorgeous inside

Like ants

The courtyard

Rivendell

That night, back in Toledo, we strolled around doing our usual thing and decided to visit one of our favorite bars that we don't know the name of but call The View due to its impressive vista over the surrounding countryside. When we got there we found the entire area extremely crowded and realized with excitement that we had stumbled across a light and sound show that was being projected against one of the buildings. We had vaguely heard that there was going to be a series of light shows across the city that weekend but it hadn't really registered. The light show was El Greco themed, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of his death or birth or something (the light show wasn't incredibly informative - just awesome). Basically, the show used elements of his paintings and other paintings to show Toledo through the ages. Set to an incredibly soundtrack. 

The light show in the distance

Saturday I spent the afternoon at the pool down the street from my house with my friends, and largely avoided getting sunburnt. That evening however, was spectacular. We randomly came across one of the other light and music shows being projected on the facade of a theater near the Fund and were captivated. It was even better than the show from the night before. After loving that one so much, we consciously decided to make the 1 AM show at the cathedral, which we figured would be the best one of them all.

There's a clip of the show at the theater that you can see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrMXnI0EPC0

The outside of the theater

The theater again

The cathedral show did not disappoint. As you can see it was different from the show at the theater - less technically impressive but more emotionally resonant.

The cathedral lit up

and again

obsessed

 If you're curious about the cathedral show, another person captured it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrL_WueOKIs

On Sunday morning I went with Alex and her host mom to Madrid for the morning to go to the Museum of the Americas, which Alex had to visit for class. I just tagged along because the museum is free on Sundays and because I was interested in seeing the Madrid Codex, one of four surviving Mayan codices in the world.

As many B-list museums do, they put the highlight of their collection in the last room so we had to walk through everything else to get there. Since Alex was at the museum for class, we tried to read as much of the labels that they had (the labeling was awful) and as many of the descriptions as we could stomach. However, it got a little hard to keep reading when we got to the largest exhibit in the museum - the part about "society". Now, the Museum of the Americas is about the indigenous cultures of North and South America, with a little bit thrown in about colonial Spanish culture in South America (and conveniently sidestepping any reference to the Spanish conquest and enslavement of indigenous people). That factor aside, I was a little appalled at how the museum just grouped every native american tribe into one lump culture. The descriptions of the artifacts made no effort to distinguish which artifact came from which region of North America. I thought it was a little offensive to have a museum about the peoples of North and South America without really talking about the different types of people - its a little demeaning to group them all as the same culture when they really were quite different.

All that remains of the Madrid Codex

Close up

This, at least, was what Alex and I took away from the museum. I think that because we are from "the Americas" and have both learned about native americans since first grade as well as being pretty familiar with the Mayan culture, this museum was already pretty simple in our eyes to start out with. I can honestly say that I did not learn that much. That being said, some of the artifacts were pretty cool - especially the Mayan codex, which was worth going to see since it was free. Also, the fact that this museum exists at all is amazing because I believe that it is the only museum on indigenous culture in the Americas in Spain, which is pretty weird considering the intertwined history. In the same vein, Alex's host mother seemed to take away a lot from the museum because unlike us she didn't learn about the native americans in history class.

On Tuesday in class I went to the Cathedral of Toledo, which was amazing because our teacher basically gave us a two hour guided tour. I'll spare you the details, but I liked how some of the pictures that I sneakily took on my iphone turned out.

Toledo was once the capital of Spain, but is now viewed as the religious capital

The Toledo Cathedral is the second largest cathedral in Spain, and you can tell that they're pretty proud of it

grande

This is behind the main alter

The light from this window comes down and hits the sun burst thats in the photo above, which has a hole that goes through to the main alter. Thus, on certain days, the sun shines through into the alter.

My professor explaining the treasures in the Treasure room....

...of which this ugly lamp "gift" from Toledo, Ohio is one.

This week I've also spent a lot of time talking with my host mother and her parents, the abuelos (what I mentally call them). After I barely touched the meat on my plate one night at dinner, the abuela and I had a discussion about how I hardly eat that much meat in the States and although I've been trying to eat how they do here (meat, meat, and more meat) its been getting kind of hard. So the next day for dinner she didn't give me any meat at all! I was extremely happy, and my stomach is incredibly thankful. She also gave me spaghetti one day for dinner, which was amazing. On the other hand, at lunch one day at the Fund they were serving lettuce with tomato and ham and mayonnaise on top. Which was interesting, to say the least. If I've learned one thing about the Spanish, its that they like their mayonnaise :)

Well I'm off to Barcelona this weekend! Hopefully I can post again soon!