Salamanca

A lot of people who study abroad in Spain from UWO go to Salamanca (especially the people who go in the summer) and I had the option of going there for the semester. I love Madrid, but I've heard great things about Salamanca and have occasionally wondered if I should have studied there instead. However, after spending the weekend there, I know I made the right choice to come to Madrid. Salamanca was quaint and pretty with a fair bit of history, but also too small. Had I not gone along on the guided tours I probably could have seen every point of interest in the city in under three hours by myself. I enjoyed visiting it, and the trip was great because I got to hang out from some ISA kids who go to the other school that I like but never see, but by Sunday morning all of us were ready to get back to Madrid.

So anyway, check out the photos and my travel tip is: if you are in Spain visit Salamanca, but don't bother spending more than one night there. (But you should spend at least one night there so you can see the Plaza Mayor at night because it's absolutely stunning!)

P.S. The first few pictures in the album are from Ávila because we stopped there for a few hours before getting to Salamanca.

P.P.S. My mom comes to Spain in 31 days and I'm super excited!

Una procesión de Semana Santa

I meant to post this on Easter, but I forgot to. Throughout Holy Week various groups arrange processions which commemorate different aspects of Holy Week (e.g. Christ's death, the resurrection, etc.). On the Saturday before Easter I went to the procesión de la soledad and it was unlike anything I've ever seen. Everyone was pushing and shoving to get a good view of the figure of "Nuestra Señora de la Soledad" (my picture of her is at the top of the post). I got elbowed by so many little old ladies, and some of them even took to climbing up lampposts just to see what was going on!

Anyway, I put two little video clips together so you can see what happens as the procession begins:

Flashback (not the LOST variety though)

Today I saw this little girl who was probably about four years old on the metro. She was wearing these really cute pink glasses...and had an eye patch over her left eye. She had brown hair and, though she didn't look exactly like me, the resemblance was close enough that I felt like I was looking at myself from 17 years ago. It was strangely funny.

Barcelona!

This past week has been Semana Santa which essentially means spring break! Because a general rule of studying abroad is that if you have more than three days in a row off of school you have to go somewhere, my roommate Kathleen (and her dad and brother for the first two days) and I went to Barcelona. For the record, I think that's a good rule :-).

Barcelona was a really exciting city. It's on the Mediterranean Sea, so it's kind of a beach town, and yet if you traveled just up the main thoroughfare, Las Ramblas, and then went down one of the little streets you found yourself in an old Gothic neighborhood. If you went up the street from that you felt like you were on Michigan Ave. in Chicago. I guess to me Barcelona felt like it was a lot of different places all rolled into one. But as Kathleen's guidebook said, when you're in Barcelona "you're not in Spain, you're in Catalunya." And that sentiment was very true; Barcelona felt significantly "less Spanish" than a lot of the other places I've been...and it makes sense concerning the history of the region--Catalan culture and language were so repressed under the Franco dictatorship that now the differences between the region and the rest of Spain are highlighted a bit more as a matter of pride I guess. Honestly, I wish I knew more about Barcelona's history in general because I think I would have appreciated the city even more if I knew more about it, but also, by the end of the trip I missed the "Spanish-ness" of Madrid. However, I would definitely visit Barcelona again and again because there is so much to do there!

Anyway, the highlights of the trip were seeing the buildings and the park designed by Gaudí. I had seen pictures of his work before and I knew it was trippy, but just looking at these buildings that seemed to have no angles and this park that, as Kathleen's brother said, looked like Willy Wonka designed it really makes you reexamine your own perspective. Other highlights of the trip included hunting for beach glass on the shoreline (I grew up on Lake Michigan and never had seen beach glass like that before! I pretended I was finding emeralds instead of worn down pieces of beer bottles). I saw an amazing (free!) art exhibit about an abandoned prison and the grafitti found on the walls there and also these letters written by a woman to her lover, a political prisoner. I also enjoyed going to the Olympic stadium because I have memories of watching the '92 games with my mom when I was four and I think that was when I first learned about Spain. Perhaps the funniest thing on the trip was that the best meal I had was at an Irish pub--I don't know, it's just funny when I think that I was in Spain, but really in Catalunya (with the Sagrada Familia behind me--it's the most famous Gaudí building and is the picture at the top of this post) eating Irish food with a traditional Irish band playing in the background but hearing American pop music blasted over the speakers.

For some reason, it's really hard for me to come up with words right now to describe any more about Barcelona, so I'm just going to let you check out the pictures:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4

What I'm going to do the first week I get back to the States

I am going to eat these things at these restaurants:
1) Steak Grilled Stuffed Burrito--Taco Bell
2) Pepperoni Pizza & Garlic Knots--Politos
3) Hamburger w/ Pepper Jack Cheese--Becket's
4) Pepperoni Stix & Berry Stix--Toppers
5) $5 Footlong--Subway
6) Chicken Strips & Nickel Nuggets--Glass Nickel
7) Pork BBQ--Pearson's
8) Wings--Buffalo Wild Wings/The Bar
9) Short Stack--IHOP
10) Japanese Pan Noodles--Noodles and Co.

And I'm going to drink as much Diet Mountain Dew as I can find!

Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar is not just my favorite Spanish film director, but is probably my favorite overall film director (yes, he beats David Lynch and Wes Anderson). The trailer above is for his newest movie Los abrazos rotos. (If you've never seen anything by him go out and rent/add to your Netflix queue either Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Todo sobre mi madre, or Volver--you won't regret it.) This past weekend I saw Los abrazos rotos and while it doesn't come close to breaking into my top three or four favorite Almodóvar movies, it was such and enjoyable experience because I am in Madrid! It is completely different watching an Almodóvar movie in Spain than it is in the U.S. I've seen a lot of the places that were shown in the film, I was watching it in Spanish without subtitles, and I was laughing along with my friend (and about half of the other people in the theater) to the references to Women on the Verge... I don't know--I guess this was just one of those little things that will end up being really memorable someday. (Also I am glad that I got to see it now because it doesn't get to theaters in the U.S. until October or something.)

Last week I also toured the Palacio Real and it was gorgeous, but disappointing because I could not take pictures inside.

Speaking of photos, here are some from my wanderings last week.

Oh and I'm going to Barcelona next week for Semana Santa, so expect a big update with lots of photos after that!

Long Weekend

I found out on Monday that we didn't have to go to school this past Thursday and Friday because it was Father's Day on Thursday (which apparently is a national holiday--things were closed!) and then they just gave us off on Friday because they probably figured no one would show up anyway. Thus I had a long four day weekend in the city because I was too lazy to try to throw together a last minute trip somewhere.

I'm glad I stayed in the city though because my care package from my friend April finally arrived with my new camera in it! However, the arrival of this new package meant that I had to deal with the Correos again. I had the package sent to the ISA office and they emailed me saying that they had a slip to give me to go pick up the package at the post office in El Corte Inglés. This slip informed me that I had to pay 44 euros to pick up the package because of import taxes or something. While I was not pleased that I had to pay this, I was still excited to pick up the package. I got to the post office and then the lady told me that getting the slip actually meant that the package was in the district...but the package wouldn't actually get to the post office until the next day, so I would have to come back and pick it up then. Dumb--I'm just not sure why they would give you a slip saying "come pick up your package!" only to tell you that it doesn't mean you can actually pick up your package. But the good news is that it was there the next day and it contained my camera and other wonderful things.

The arrival of the package was not the highlight of my weekend though. No, the best part of the weekend was going to the Madrid Zoo/Aquarium with my roommate Kathleen! We saw pandas, koalas, sea turtles, chimpanzees, and lots of other animals. It was a beautiful day and the zoo is in this huge park called the Casa de Campo so it was fun walking around there a bit as well. The only sad thing was that my camera battery died, so I did not get any pictures of the lions, zebras and giraffes, but I'll add those to the post when Kathleen puts her pictures up.

Click here for zoo photos.