Sorry it has taken me so long to post! I've been avoiding it because I figured it would take awhile to catch you up on the past two weeks but now that I'm bored in class, it seems like the perfect time.
After coming back from Italy, I had a week of classes. It was a very crazy week academically because I had a french quiz, an art Midterm, a political science paper, and a History midterm. All of these went seemingly smooth but I'm glad that week is over. Coming up in the next week, I have a political science midterm and an international studies midterm. It's strange that it's nearly the middle of the semester. As far as actual class goes, I think I have like 29 real days of class left. Starting March 12, I no longer have class on Thursday and I have school off from March 27-April 12 for Spring Break and our base course tour, so that's why the number of real classes is so low. For the most part, school isn't very challenging. The only class that could potentially be difficult is my History class, but we can write an optional paper at the end to raise our grade up to 20% so I'm not worried. Actually, all this grade adjusting that goes on here at MUDEC, really suppresses motivation. Oh well.
Ok,I'm sure you're more interested in Spain than my classes. Sorry If I bored you. We left for Spain late Friday night/Saturday Morning. Our flight left at 6am on Saturday and the Airport is a two hour bus ride away, so we took the train into Lux city around 1:30 and got a bus at 2:30. We we stepped off the bus at Frankfurt-Hahn Airport at 4:30am, we were rudely awaken by the coldest weather I have ever experienced. We had to grab our bags and walk about 10 minutes to the airport from the bus station. I was walking as fast as humanly possible (excluding Kelsey Gross pace) and by the time I got inside, there were tears streaming down my face and my whole body stung. Yet another reason Germany isn't exactly my favorite country. By the time our plane took off at 6, I was dead tired. Actually, I was dead asleep. I fell asleep on the runway and don't even remember the plane getting off the ground.
When we landed in Barcelona, our plane was late so we didn't get to hear the celebratory music Ryanair loves to play. Sad day. Also, no one clapped this time. I blame it on tiredness. The whole clapping for a safe landing thing kinda freaks me out. I'm not sure you should fly on an airline that praises landing. Shouldn't that be the norm? Ryanair is a breed of its own.
We got to our hostel a couple hours later. We booked a room for 8 only to find out they split us up 6 and 2 and put us in 8 person rooms with random people. Not a big problem this round, but I'll come back to this later.
We walked to Las Ramblas street where there are street performers and a lot of shopping. The performers pretty much consisted of people decorating themselves to look like statues and then curious people walking by would stare and the performers usually did something funny. Las Ramblas also had several street pet stores. I use the term pet pretty loosely simply because I don't consider a Turkey Vulture to be a pet. They were selling rabbits, ferrets, and other birds also. We ate at a tapas place for lunch which was tasty. Tapas, if you were wondering, is pretty much the Spanish term for small portion. It might mean something more to other people but to me, it's Spain way of tricking you into buying an appetizer for a meal.
Also, we walked to La Sagrada Familia which is a cathedral designed by Gaudi and is still being built today. We took an elevator to the top, took some great pictures, and then walked down. I absolutely hated the walk down because about halfway from the top, the stairs became spiral with a railing on the wall side but no railing or wall or anything on the side that showed to straight down drop to the bottom. I was convinced I was going to trip and fall to my death so I gripped the railing with both hands. I probably looked like an idiot, but 'd rather be safe than dead.
The next day, we took the subway to Park Guell. The weather was nice and sunny which made the park beautiful. It's a large park that highlights awesome views of the city and hosts live music. Also, there are several Gaudi buildings in the park which kind of give it the feel of Willy Wonka. Maybe that's just me? Anyway, the park was one of my highlights of the trip. I put some pictures of the park on facebook, so you can check it out there.
After visiting the park, we took the subway to the Espanyol vs. Deportivo soccer game. It was a ton of fun! The stadium was pretty much packed and the fans were pretty rowdy which was cool to be a part of. Espanyol (home team) won, which apparently doesn't happen too often so I'm glad they brought their A game for us. At the end of the game they played the Espanyol anthem, which we had stuck in our heads the rest of the week and continued to break out in song at random times. It's a very catchy tune. We went to the Dow Jones Bar after the game. It's an interesting bar because it's designed like the stock market and prices go up and down depending on what people buy but the coolest part is when the market crashes and everything is cheap. Well, somewhat cheap. It was a pretty expensive place.
The next day we left for Madrid. We rode the nicest train I've ever been on. Very conducive to sleeping, which I took full advantage of. The weather in Madrid was colder and it rained literally the whole time we were there. I don't have a whole lot to say about Madrid because I liked Barcelona much better but we did spend day at the Prado Museum, which I enjoyed. It's a massive museum with over 100 rooms. It was mentally exhausting, but I saw a lot of paintings that I just learned about in my Art History class, and it was nice to see them somewhere other than in a textbook.
Our hostel in Madrid was very unique. We kept joking that we felt like we were on a reality tv show because it seemed like the Real World or Brother and Sisters or something. It only had a few rooms and everyone hung out together in the common room and some people cooked together. Also, there were two people who were living in the hostel and renting it as an apartment, so that was a bit strange.
We took a day trip to Segovia, which was a cheap hour bur ride away. It's a really old city with a lot of beautiful buildings. Also, there is a first century aqua-duct that went though the city.I don't think I've ever seen anything that old before. It's weird to think that it could have been around when Jesus walked the Earth. Although I'm pretty positive Jesus never came to Spain. Segovia also had a beautiful castle and cathedral. Seems to be the theme of many European cities.
The following day we left Madrid and headed to Toledo. Toledo in Spanish is pronounced TolAdo, sidenote for all you Ohioans out there. It was a small, quaint town. I honestly don't have a lot to say about it.
The last day of our trip we went back to Barcelona and the weather was decent again. It was Hannah's birthday so we went to the beach. It was maybe 60 degrees (and that's a generous guess) and tons of people were surfing. Seems insane to me. I was a little cold on land, I'm sure they were cold in the water. I did however touch the water just to say I've touched the Mediterranean Sea.
After hanging out on the beach, we were all pretty hungry so we walked for 40ish minutes on a wild goose chase for a taco restaurant our hostel worker recommended. We never found it. I'm convinced it doesn't exist. We ended up eating at some random restaurant and I ordered homemade pizza that may or may not have been homemade. My best guess says no. After dinner we just walked around and went into random stores. We found one selling unique art and jewelry that we stayed in for awhile. We wanted to eat gelato for dessert, but Spain's Gelato has nothing on Italy's. I got mint chip and it tasted strangely similar to listerine.
It started to rain a little but we wanted to see the fountain light show so we braved the rain, took the subway, and headed to the fountain. When we got off at the stop, we could see the lit fountain in the distance but because of construction we had to take a round about way to the fountain and by the time we got there it not only started to downpour, but the fountain turned off. We took refuge under a bridge to wait for the rain to subside. It didn't. So after half an hour or so, we walked back to the subway in the rain. Of course, this was the only day I didn't bring my umbrella. If you were wondering, a down jacket soaked from the rain smells a little like cat urine. It has pretty much aired out by now, thankfully.
We went back to our hostel at night, which I forgot to mention, was the same one we stayed at in the beginning of the week, and they split us up again. They split us into groups of 4 and 4 in two 8 person rooms with 4 random people in each. Dear Mediterranean Youth Hostel, the only reason we booked with you was because we thought we were paying for 8 people to stay together. Maybe you're wondering why I'm making such a big deal about being split up? Well, we had to get up at 5am to catch our flight, so we went to be somewhere between 12 and 1. Around 3:30 one of our random roommates came into the room, completely drunk, and thought it would be cool to throw up in our bathroom for 20 minutes with the door open. He also repeatedly turned the sink on and off to wash his pants which he apparently got something on. Maybe vomit? Anyway, no one wants to be woken up to the sound of someone puking. After he finished his charades and climbed into bed around 4, he passed out in 2 minutes top and was snoring ridiculously loud. I've never heard someone snore that loud in my life (and I live with some crazy snorers back at home). When it was time to get up at 5, we were all pretty angry.
We had some minor traveling issues, aka we missed our bus, but it all worked out in the end. When we got back to Lux, we just relaxed at home until it was time to go to the Buergbrennen. I'll blog about that later.
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