As per my mother's fervent requests i've decided to update my blog. I'm currently sitting in a cafe, trying to write a paper about French nationality and their attitude toward young migrants in the country. Clearly, i'm really focused on it. I think I wrote a couple months ago that I have been really focused in classes and such, hat however does not apply to my work outside of classes. However I mantain that I cannot help my lack of focus outside class when i'm living in Spain.
I do however really need to be writing this paper, I have put off a lot of my work either because it's been beautiful and sunny or because I've been traveling, and boy have I done a LOT of that. This past weekend I traveled up to the “Costa Brava” through my program for a weekend of visiting smaller towns on the Northern Mediterranean Coast of Spain and the Southern Coast of France, all nestled into the PyreneesMountains. Despite a day or two of wet weather, the scenery was absolutely breathtaking, and the towns absolutely charming. One of the highlights of the trip was visiting the Salvador Dali museum commissioned and designed by Dali himself. If you don’t know Dali…you probably do…he’s the one who painted the Persistence of Memory with all of he melting clocks on trees. Knowing that you can probably imagine what this museum was like, there was no rhyme or reason to it all but the tour guide gave us some interesting insights to his mindset and I found myself having a lot of connections with my own mentalities in some of my artwork. On the last day of the trip we hiked around a small Peninsula of one of the oldest and brightest lighthouses on this Coast. The hike was right along the rocky coastal water front of the Mediterranean and it was completely breathtaking. It wasn’t a very long or difficult hike but I did manage to shake myself loose from my group for a while and take it all in on my own for a little while. I cannot explain how wonderful it felt to feel like I was on the edge of the sea and the world. Basically I just repeated to myself how lucky and blessed I am to be able to be exploring the world an entire ocean away from home.
The weekend before this I was in none other than Paris, France! It was probably one of the best weekends of my life to date. It was such a great journey for me. I managed to make it to Paris by myself to meet my friend Dan who is studying there, and I managed to not get lost or kidnapped or anything! I’m really impressed with myself basically. The night I arrived my friends from school who are studying in London all met up with me there and we spent the weekend together. Honestly I don’t even know who I am to have a weekend rendezvous with some of my best friends in PARIS, FRANCE. I’m the luckiest girl alive, is who I am. We spent most of the weekend seeing some of the most famous sights and scenes in Paris and the WORLD. We went to the Paris catacombs that house more than 6 million bones, the LOURVE, rode a boat on the Seine, saw the Sorbonne, Sacre Couer, the Orsay (home to Monet, Van Gogh, Degas, and Rembrandt among others), Luxemborg Gardens, a million French churches of splendor, the Notre Dame, Victor Hugo’s house, the Arch de Triomphe, and of course…a culminating point in my whole young lifetime…the Eiffel Tower! (not to mention a million little adventures inbetween) I almost cried in the moment that I realized I was looking at the EiffelTower in person, a symbol and icon I’ve known since I was old enough to understand that there are other parts of the world besides Syracuse, NY. Actually, I practically almost cried every 10 minutes I was in Paris. I love it, the culture, the people, the LANGUAGE I’ve always been obsessed with the language, and the sheer oldness of just about everything. That’s the great thing about a city built in the Renaissance, there’s something ornate or some monument or statue or something around just about every corner. I plan to return asap. And the beautiful thing is that yesterday I received a thank you e-mail from Dan’s host mother, who let me stay in her house two days after the other girls left Paris, thanking me for the flamenco jazz cd I brought her and extending an open ended invite to return to Paris. Thanks Edith! Thanks Dan! Paris, I’ll be back again real soon.
Oh wow there’s so much I haven’t written about in here…backtracking further….all the way back to March 16….when I turned 21! I’m officially an adult! So of course what better way to celebrate being an adult than by being a kid. My friends here all took me out to a delicious authentic Mexican dinner, and I purchased my first alcoholic drink as a 21 year old, raspberry mojito anyone? A monumental moment if I say so myself. Of course being a Monday night one would think there wouldn’t be much else to my night….WRONG. When you live in Barcelona here’s always something happening. We managed to all stay out til close to 6am at a bar and local club. So most appropriately, I danced the night away on my birthday. I went home and managed to still get up for my 9am class the next morning…as in a couple of hours later, AND I presented on Barcelona parks for my art history class quite excellently if I do say so myself. See Mom and Dad, look how responsible I am! Haha. There is a note of truth to that however. I have definitely had to be a lot more responsible than I have ever been here. Between just trying to live and problem solve in a country that does not run on my primary language, and trying to maintain a life that is an ocean away. I’m sure I won’t even realize how much this experience has affected me until I am back in the States. And yikes! That’s just over a month away!
On the whole as this semester is winding down I can’t help but fathom at how much time has passed since I’ve been here. It has certainly had it’s ups and downs. Most notably there have been so many moments that I have wondered if Barcelona was the best choice for me. I do not have a lot in common with the majority of the American students on my program. In fact I don’t even like my program that much, it’s extremely large with what I’d now guess to be about 400 students enrolled, and they do a terrible job of integrating us into Spanish society. Not to mention that didn’t allow me to take any classes in Spanish at the level of Spanish I tested into….Advanced Intermediate. It doesn’t make sense. So on that note, I still feel as though my Spanish is extremely primitive, mostly from lack of immersion and practice with it. That is however not to say it hasn’t drastically improved since I have been here. However despite all of this, I have gained some extremely valuable insights and experiences from Barcelona. I have learned to deal with people I don’t like, which is of course going to be an inevitable event in my future life. I’ve had to deal with a lot of cultural differences with Americans almost as much as dealing with the cultural differences with Spaniards, which is something I never expected. From this though I have learned to appreciate people and their mentalities in a new way, and as a result I have met some very interesting people and made some pretty decent friends on the program. On the note about my lack of Spanish immersion I have to think that perhaps I could have studied somewhere in Southern Spain where they don’t speak Catalan, and I for sure would have had much more daily Spanish exposure…however, I would not have had the experience of living in a Big International city. Being in this city has taught me a lot on the front of multiple cultures, not just Spanish. I have the pleasure of being immediately surrounded by it seems like 20 different languages a day from all tourists all over Barcelona, surrounded by the culture of travel and international business and ever continued modernization. Honestly this city may not be drenched in constant historical contexts, or have museums full of renaissance art, but it creates its own culture just simply by being one of the most international cities in the world. So I could be upset and regret that I haven’t learned as much Spanish as I’d hoped, or that I haven’t found a passionate Spanish boyfriend, or become a pro flamenco dancer, but instead I whole heartedly am thankful that I was able to come to Barcelona and experience life in a bustling city of such a diverse array of life. Besides, if I didn’t come on this program I couldn’t really have studied abroad at all, so you know, you play the hand you’re given right?
Continuing on my European journey, I will embark for Italy in about 2 days. I will be there for 10 days with Sarah Nagle and hopefully will see the ladies from London as they will also be in Italy at the same time. I’m mostly and shock and disbelief that this is happening, and cannot wait to step foot into Rome and the Vatican city. Not to mention the fact that we’re hitting up Florence, Pisa, Arezzo, and Venice….Sarah and I plan to pinch each other for 10 days straight just to make sure it’s all real. It’s really excited however, mildly to muchly stressful. While it is Spring Break for us, there’s stillalot of work for me to be done after I return, because when I return I will only have 2 more weeks of classes, and just about all of my work will be due then. Not to mention all the work going into planning a 10 day vacation in 4 major cities. So everyone is kind of stressed out but that is life, and I’m slowly learning to take it all in stride. Stress is probably the number one killer in humans, heart attacks and disease and all that is the byproduct. I’m working on less stress in my life, which is inversely related to the amount of procrastination and laziness I upkeep. Good thing I tried to give up procrastination for Lent…ha ha. I’m trying though I swear!
Anywho i’m off to finish these papers before class, and a little field visit to the Basque representative party in Barcelona, should definitely be interesting! So here you go, a nice little novel, hope you’re all awake and could make it past my 8 billion typos in here, I don’t really have the time to reread through this whole thing. Sorry I’ve been so not intouch with my journal, because it’s obvious that as soon as I begin writing I can’t stop. OH and I forgot to mention that Maria an Andrew will be going to almost the same place in Italy, except we will be missing each other by a DAY. How absolutely crazy is that? Anyway I told her that we’re going to compare and contrast stories the next family holiday we’re together. OH MAN IM SO LUCKY TO BE HERE!!!! Pinch me!
