Alright, so I totally have been dropping with this whole blog thing. It's been a crazy week starting classes and after a visit to Barcelona, it's been hard to find time to update. But, I will update now!
Back up a week and a half, to Wednesday, January 28. We left after classes to go to Barcelona, it was a long, long bus ride with a bunch of high schoolers... they were students from a local high school and it definitely enforced my not wanting to teach high school, or go back to high school myself. They played dance music for the entire 6 hours and it was so annoying. But anyways, we got to Barcelona and at night we explored downtown Barcelona. I really like Barcelona by day, but at night, it's a little scary. I got offered drugs a couple times, and cat called, but I definitely did not like it.
On Thursday we went to many, many tourist sites. First we went to Gaudi's Casa Mila. It's a great building. The roof is definitely the best part of the structure. We spent more time than needed at the house, since there is only so much you can see in the one apartment. The roof gave you a great view of Barcelona and some of the other sites. With the extra time that we had, my friend and I visited some of the swanky boutiques that we could never afford. Stores like Chanel, Lois Vuitton, Hermes, etc., etc. It was fun just to look at the things that we couldn't afford.
Next we went to the Sagrada Familia and let me tell you... wow... it is awesome. The inside is really not visible since it's under such construction. But again, the roof is really the coolest part. You could pay to go up into the towers by elevator (they don't let you walk anymore because it's too dangerous to your health). They view is even better than the one of Casa Mila. It's an amazing structure that will be even cooler when it's done. But one side is very old and almost drippy looking, and the other is very square and block like. The contrast between the two sides is really cool, and they make for a really interesting structure.
The next thing that we did was go to Gaudi's park. If you like mosaic, this is the place the be. I took tons of pictures of the mosaics that are in the park. There are benches covered in mosaic and lizards covered in mosaic. And also tons of really cool rock structures and tunnels and what not. It was a cloudy day so it wasn't the best day for spending a day in the park.
Finally, at night, we went to the National Museum of Catalonia. It was a huge museum and unfortunately we didn't get to see much of it. We only saw the parts that we were going to study in class. Which is kinda lame.... but anyways, we spend awhile there and then continued on.
The night activity was probably the best. We went to a soccer game between FC Barcelona, a huge team, and a smaller Barcelona team. The sports arena is amazing! I think it's the biggest in the world... or at least one. Even thought it was a smaller game, it was filled. It was kinda scary because there are so many people. But we kept together as a group and kept mostly safe. One of the guys in our group did get his wallet stolen... but he was kinda stupid about where he put it. He lost a lot of money though, which isn't good.
The next day we had another day full of stuff. We first visited an old cathedral and then after that we went to the Palau de Musica. It was by far one of my favorite things that I've seen so far. It is a music hall that has like the most fantastic interior. It's full of mosaics and really interesting sculptures. With amazing acoustics, I would love to go to a concert there.
In the afternoon we went to Picasso's museum and just walked around the city. The Picasso museum is another thing that is on the must see list. It's full of his work from the beginning, more formal paintings, to his work in cubism, to the work that he did on stage sets. It was awesome.
Saturday was a day of wine tasting, at 11 in the morning and paid for by Calvin College. :D We spent another 6 hours in the bus and then home again. It was definitely good to be home.
Finally! This past week was the first week of classes. It's been weird adjusting to classes. Yes, they are all in Spanish. The cool thing about this semester is that I really don't have classes on Friday. Which gives me many free weekends to do whatever I like! Good! Well that is enough for now, I will update more later!
