España

            My ten day trip to Spain was so awesome.  It rained nearly every single day.  But it was the things we saw and the people I was with that made the trip for me.  We went to Salamanca, Avila, Segovia, Madrid, Toledo, Zaragoza, and Barcelona.

On the afternoon of Sunday April 1^st, we all boarded up the bus at Brussels and Liege, and then we headed off to Spain.  It took over 24 hours of straight driving to get to Salamanca.  But we also made very many stops along the way.  I found it very difficult to sleep in the bus.  The seats didn’t recline far back and weren’t very comfortable for sleeping.  Already on the bus ride there I met a few new people and I went up and down the isle of the bus and handed out my business cards to everyone.  I still have so many left even though I think I’ve given one to every exchange student I met, some Rotarians, my host families, and some of my Belgian friends.  I guess I’ll still be handing them out at Central States. 

The trip was fairly unorganized, and the Rotarians with us never seemed to know exactly where we were going or how to get there, none spoke Spanish, and I feel like we could have done so much more instead of having as much free time.  I love having free time, don’t get me wrong, but we just had so much of it.  I feel like we could have seen much more in Madrid and Barcelona.  In other places like Avila, Salamanca, and Toledo, we had really cool guided visits, but in the big cities we just seemed to have walked around not knowing what we were really looking at.  But it was the first time that they were organizing this particular trip, so I was never expecting it to be perfect.  Hopefully things can be better for the future exchange students in the following years.  The chaperones were all nice as well.  But it was kind of annoying and felt super patronizing when the one guy who spoke in English did so.  Even in French it was annoying when he explained things to us or gave us instruction because he would speak super slowly and just hold onto his words and never let them go.  We only had a few kids on the trip who didn’t understand French because they were living in the Dutch part.  And the rest of us who are fluent would have been happy to translate for them.  Oh well.  The little things like that are going to be the things I barely remember.  I’ll remember the friendships I made, the places I went, the things I saw, the jokes we made, and all the good times.  Even looking back on my life, I only remember all the silly high school drama when I really think hard about it.  It’s the good memories that come out first.  The bad ones weren’t important enough to leave much of an impression on me.

Overall, I really loved it, because how else would I be able to easily visit Spain?  I got to taste some wonderful new foods, like paella and tapas.  I met a couple exchange students with whom I became instant friends.  We created so many memories and inside jokes.  I also only came out with about 430 pictures because my memory card was full.  There were a few files that I had accidentally saved in there before, and couldn’t delete with my camera.  I didn’t have my computer with me either, so I couldn’t get rid of them.  I ended up going back and deleting a few pictures that were blurry or unnecessary.  I also ended up talking some pictures using someone else’s memory card.  He’ll be putting all his pictures on facebook, so I’ll be getting them off of there. 

In Salamanca, we saw most of the important things: the university, the new cathedral, la maison de coquilles, the roman bridge, and the main square.  The hotel was pretty close to everything, so we walked anywhere we needed to go.  To get to the main square from the hotel, we had to take a street with a ton of stores, so it was impossible not to shop.  This was the beginning of me spending all of the money I’d brought with me, and then the rest of what I got from the ATM visit.  It wasn’t extreme amounts of money (because I don’t have that) but it was definitely way more than I should have spent.

Toledo was a great place to visit.  We visited a nice cathedral and a little museum of Judaism.  In the souvenir shop there I bought a beautiful journal with a little clasp to close it.  But before we actually visited the town, we were brought up on a big hill where we got a nice big panoramic view of the town.  It’s beautiful.  We also saw the cathedral and the museum attached, a part of which is actually the sacristy.  There are a few works by El Greco, as well as some Italian painters.

In Segovia, there was a big roman bridge.  That’s the one big thing I remember about that city.  We had a tour in the morning, but it was unfortunate because it was raining pretty hard all day, and with the sound of the rain, and the fact that we needed to stand further apart with all our umbrella’s I wasn’t always able to hear the tour guide.  I was also very tired and not in much of a listening mood.  So I didn’t profit as much from that day’s tour.  Luckily I have brochures and such and the internet is available, so I can look things up later.  We tried to do some more shopping here, but we couldn’t do anything during our free time because the only things open were bars, cafés, restaurants, and taverns.  In Spain they do “siesta”!  Most places are closed from 13h – 16 or 17h.  We basically just walked around in the rain

Avila was one of the most fun places we stayed.  Once again we had a lot of free time, a lot of which occurred during “siesta”.  But the most interesting thing in Avila was the Holy Week (the week leading up to Easter) processions.  I’d never seen anything like it before.  Everyone was dressed up really weirdly.  There were women dressed up in all black with black lace veils; others that looked like members of the Klu Klux Klan, but with colours, were carrying awesome staffs and torch-like lights… it was so weird!  It was actually really creepy and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.  All of the other exchange students were sort of creeped out by it too.  But it is really a must-see.

In Madrid, we stayed in a hotel right by a subway station and a little mall.  I bought myself a much needed new pair of shoes.  My converse that I had brought with me are disgusting.  The backs are sort of breaking, they let in water, and they smell awful. It’s actually repulsive.  One of the nights in Madrid we went on a “3 km” walk to the Hard Rock Café.  Normally, I walk 3 km in half an hour, but this little walk took a good hour and a half.  So we arrived there just to have a look around and then leave.  All our feet were pretty sore because this was also at the end of a long day.  We ended up convincing the Rotary guys to take the subway back, thank heavens. 

In Barcelona I set foot in the Mediterranean for the first time in my life, but my feet were all that went in – it was so cold!  Some people actually went in all the way and went swimming.  It was barely even sunny out and no more than 20 degrees Celsius! 

Barcelona is an amazing city.  There I wish I could have done much more, but I really did enjoy the things I did see.  Most of the things we saw there were related to Gaudi.  The first thing we saw was some of the Park Guell.  It was gorgeous.  In some parts of it you can get a nice glimpse over most of Barcelona towards the Mediterranean Sea.  We also visited The Sagrada Familia Cathedral and it was completely mind-blowing.  On the outside it looks so different than any other church I’d ever seen, and then the inside was even more unexpected! There are some people who don’t like it much, but I personally love it.  Just after that, we went to “La Pedrera”, which was also very unique.  I ended up buying a little book on Gaudi there because I find his works to be so interesting.  On our last day in Barcelona, we had a lot of free time.  There was a huge market that we walked around in.  There are so many fruit stands where they sell inexpensive delicious smoothies.  They also had a lot of butchers with some sort of thing I was told was intestines in the windows?  It looked more to me like huge amounts of spongecloth.  A small group of us went and got Asian food and then we did a little bit of shopping.  

Pictures from the Sagrada Familia Cathedral