I'm Home!

I’m in the airport, and soon I’ll be home! Of course, by the time this makes it onto the internet, I’ll be home for sure, and by soon, I mean in 14 hours…woo…
But I’m really excited, even though it’s like 9 degrees at home (while it has been 55ish here), and it’s going to be a rather long day. Last night I had to say goodbye to everyone, which was tough, because all of the people that I’m close with here are from all over the place- I’m trying to convince them all to end up visiting Chicago somehow this summer.

SO I said that I would elaborate on Catalan Christmas stuff. Barcelona is actually beautiful during the Christmas season- there are lights all over the place, and even though it’s nowhere near Christmas weather, but if you go to the right places, there are a ton people out shopping, and then it feels like Christmas.

Each main street downtown has a unique sort of Christmas light thing that is suspended over the street. For example, in Barri Gotic down Porta de l’Angel, there are these giant lit up star things suspended over the street. Because it’s Europe, and they love to save energy, they only light them at night from 6-9. I was actually sitting on a bench there a couple of nights ago waiting for the lights to turn on, and when they did, you could hear everyone on the street simultaneously go “Ooooh!”

On to the Christmas traditions! So in the US we celebrate Christmas as our main holiday, and do all of the family togetherness and gift giving on that day. Well Spain (and also part of Latin America- Puerto Rico, for one) has more of an emphasis on Three King’s Day, which is January 6th. My understanding is that the holiday season is more of a private celebration, and they don’t really do big parades or celebrations outside.

On Christmas itself, they don’t really put up a Christmas tree. Now you’ll see people getting mini Christmas trees, like ones 3ish feet tall, just because the tradition has sort of been imported, but it’s not really popular. What is more popular is the nativity scene in miniature. I’m sure you’ve all seen them at home, with the little figures of Mary and Joseph and stuff, but Spanish ones are crazy. I mean, they are still normal cresche sized, though slightly bigger, but they are really intricate.

You can buy them with working lights, and little handmade bridges and palm trees, and figures of chickens and cows and pretty much any possible thing you would expect to be in a scene like that. And there are a fair amount of things that you would not expect there. The one that is most notable is the figure of the Caganer. By the way, the Caganer is purely a Catalan thing, not a rest of Spain thing, so if you talk to someone from Andalucía about this, and say it’s normal in Spain, they will call you a crazy person.

The caganer figure is this little guy that is dressed as a traditional Catalan peasant with a pipe and a red gorra (a cap-y sort of thing, like a smurf). The thing that makes this interesting is he’s not just standing there, he is…pooping. Welcome to Catalunya. Wikipedia says it may have something to do with pre-Christian fertility stuff, but my Catalan professor was like “Yeah, some Catalan probably made that up to excuse our weirdness. It’s not gonna work.”

You’d think the poop ends there, but it does not. Instead of Santa Claus delivering gifts on Christmas, they have this thing called a “Caga Tió” or a “Tió de Nadal,” which translate to “Poop Log” and “Christmas Log,” respectively. So the whole way this works is you have this log- I am not joking when I say that this is an actual log, from the woodpile- and on the front it’s got this creepy face and smile, and it wears the traditional red gorra too. It also has smaller sticks on the front to kind of prop it up like legs.

So when kids are little, on Christmas they but a blanket around the Caga Tió “to keep it warm,” and they sing a song, and hit it with a stick in the hopes that the log “poops” gifts. While the kids are singing this song, the parents sneak small gifts under the blanket and every once in a while go “Look! I think it just pooped something! What is it?!” According to my good friend Wikipedia, here is the song that they sing- Spanish kids I showed this to said its right, but different families have slightly different variations of it.

caga tió,
caga torró,
avellanes i mató,
si no cagues bé
et daré un cop de bastó.
caga tió!"

poop log,
poop turrón,
hazelnuts and cottage cheese,
if you don't poop well,
I'll hit you with a stick,
poop log!

Since the log is relatively small, obviously it can’t pass the larger gifts, so those are brought later by the Three Kings through methods that we consider more conventional. Other than that, I know of no other strange Catalan Christmas traditions… it’s just food and family, like here. I’m bringing home some turrón, which is their Christmas candy, and tons and tons of Christmas gifts.

I actually thought my giant suitcase would be pretty empty on the way home, but it was completely stuffed. I bought most of my Christmas gifts here, and they took up half the suitcase. Also I threw in a bunch of stuff that I had noticed I don’t use/need, some books I bought and finished reading, all my school stuff from this past semester, and other random and sundry stuff.

The thing was like 52 pounds, so it was kind of rough getting from my dorm, to the tram, to the metro to the bus, to the airport. Which was packed, I may add. Thank god for elevators. Of course, once I got off the metro, I had the good luck of using the only metro station in perhaps all of Barcelona that did not have an elevator. That was a great experience. Then I tripped all over myself trying the get the monster on to the bus, and looked ridiculous. But it’s on the plane now, and I don’t plan on actually carrying it anywhere until I come back to Barcelona (:

I leave Chicago on the 16th or so to come back. I probably won’t update over break, since the whole point of this thing is writing about Spain and travel, but who knows. Have a good holiday season everyone!

Last couple weeks of class!

I can't believe today was the last day of class! The last couple weeks have been pretty tame, mostly because everyone's got a ton of papers and projects and presentations that were shoved off onto the very last second. Also I've been sort of antisocial recently, because up until this point I was never overwhelmingly homesick, since I was so far away from being home the whole time. But as soon as we got within 2 weeks or so of leaving, I couldn't stop thinking "I WANT TO BE HOME RIGHT NOW." It's also kind of weird because most kids here are never going to come back, so they're all upset about leaving and everything... but the thing is, I'm going back for another 4 months, and I'll plenty of time for all of the nightlife and the going out (which I'll be way happier about when it warms up again). I am ready to go home now. But I'm sure I'll be ready to come back after break.

So I'm really excited about going home. Of course I get to see my favorite person ever (you only get one guess who this is), and his family, who I miss too. My grandfather is flying in from Tampa for Christmas, and my mom's cousin, his kids, wife and mother are also coming in from Ft. Lauderdale! I'm really really excited, our house is going to be crazy, but it'll be great to see family. And eat awesome Puerto Rican food (arapas!!!!).

AND everyone's coming home from school, so I get to see high school buddies! Of course Sarah's abandoning us for Ghana for a few weeks, but who can blame her for that :D Just don't get malaria! I am sad that I won't get to see my Case friends though... unless anyone is going to be in Chicagoland for Xmas. I miss you guys too! I will also miss some really cool people I have met here at IES that go to schools all over... We'll definitely keep in touch.

I'm actually kind of nervous about who I am going to have as friends next semester. The thing is that all of the new students (there are only about 6 full year students) are going to arrive the 7th or so, about a week and a half before classes, to start just their Spanish classes and have orientation. I think they're doing the orientation trip to Valencia again. Since I'm not taking a Spanish class yet, and already have done orientation and all that, I don't have to go again. Plus it means I get to spend about 4 weeks at home and have a normal break. The downside is that since I'm not going to be around the first week, my roomies and everyone else are already going to know each other, so it'll be a little bit harder to make friends. Hopefully they're going to be nice!

I'm actually really excited about a couple things for next semester. I've of course got the apartment on Gran Via. I haven't been to the actual apartment yet, but in general, all of the ones from the program are really nice. Also the housing coordinator gave me single!!! Wooo! They don't have that many singles, so I'm really happy they let me have it. The apartment is a couple blocks away from a metro stop 3 down from class, so it only takes me 15 minutes to get to class at Catalunya. It'll be so nice to not have a 45 minute commute anymore.

Also, I've finally got my schedule for next semester set! I don't think I'm going to have any problems at all with being bored... I'm going to have a lot on my plate. Technically, I'm only taking 15 hours again, but it'll be slightly crazier. I am taking: Church and State in Spain from 1492 to Modern, Nationalism in Modern Europe: Emphasis on the Catalonian Case, Barcelona: the City and its History, Gypsies in Spain, and the Research Methodology Seminar. Unfortunately, two of those classes are in English, but I didn't really have a choice. Oh well...

I wanted to continue with Catalan, since I think I've actually settled into the language recently, and it's gotten substantially easier for me to speak and understand. I think I've legitimately learned a 3rd language... :D Buuut unfortunately, the Catalan class is during the research one, which I need to take, because... I have an internship!!! I am actually disgustingly excited about this. I went and had my interview last week at the HR office for Dr. Echevarne labs. I should be all set- 8 hours a week in one of their microbio labs! Pretty much, I get to play around with bacteria all day! I'll set up and run cultures, learn how to id certain types of bacteria, how to tell if it's gram negative and such like that. Also I get scrubs, Hooray! Also, no Spanish class, means no Friday class (: I'm hoping I can use those Fridays a couple of times to shadow doctors in the area.

In other next semester news, I'm deciding on where to travel next semester, since I need to budget in order to not be in debt by the time the year is over. It's alright, because all the money I've saved from summer jobs and everything was always meant to be spent this year, and when am I ever going to have the chance to travel Europe like this again? Probably not for at least 15 more years. So I've made the list of the places I'm want to visit, looked at some flights and at how much I've spent this past semester, and made some guestimations.

I'll be over what I have left to spend by maybe 200 dollars, if estimates are correct, but that is really not much, considering how much the whole semester is going to be travel-wise. I've got another account that I can take it out of, although I would really prefer not to. Also once I get home for the summer, it's straight to a summer job. That is, assuming I can find a job in this economy. So I can earn back a little bit of money without to much trouble.

What I'm thinking so far is doing a long weekend in Marrakesh, Morocco. Morocco is one of my top places to go- I know a lot of kids who went this past semester, and they all said is was amazing. Another weekend or couple of days I'll go to Granada to see the Alhambra. If my parents come visit over spring break (as I hope they do!) with my brother and sister, I'll wait and take off a couple of days of school and go with them. Otherwise, I'll just pick a weekend and go then. Some weekend I will definitely be visiting my Case suitemate Joy in London. Also I've got Spring Break during Holy Week (called Semana Santa, here in Spain), so the planned itinerary is Berlin to Prague to Budapest to Istanbul. I plan to get back for Easter, since it's a biiiig deal here in Spain. Aaaand that will be it!

It sounds like a lot, but it's about the same amount of travel that I did this past semester (Valencia, Tarragona, Zurich, Lucerne, Florence, Rome, Copenhagen, Paris, Pyrenees). But I'm really psyched for all the places I'm going. I know at least one person who's been to each of those places, so I've been emailing them about what hostels they stayed in and stuff like that, just to get an opinion from someone who I know.

The only thing I have left to do is convince people to go with me now (and book everything lol)... that does make me slightly nervous, but hopefully I'll meet some people who are thinking of going to the same places I am! I would like to go to Madrid too, since I've heard good things and it is the actual capital, but we'll see if I can afford it. I had also thought of doing Lisbon, Vienna or Greece (Santorini, or a nearby island), but I had to narrow it down. Hopefully I'll be back sometime before I die...

Well enough about all this travel business. This weekend I'm going to ski in the Pyrenees for the day, then I have finals, and then I am going HOME! It's ok Spain, I'll be back. How did I manage to write a lot about virtually nothing? Guess I'm talented... I'll update at the end of finals. Someone please remind me to elaborate on Catalan Christmas traditions, because they are very very strange. Because the notion of a fat man bringing gifts down a chimney isn't strange at all...

Wish me luck on finals!

Paris

Things since Copenhagen have been pretty uneventful- I've finalized plans for moving to an apartment (I get a single, yay!), my schedule, and I have an interview with a hospital set up for this Friday. The weekend before last I just spent finishing off a final paper to turn in early, so the next weekend (this past weekend), I wouldn't have any work. Because...this past weekend we had yet another Friday off, so I headed off to Paris with Zoe, Lindsey, Steve and Margaret to meet up with some friends of Lindsey's!

We got into Paris on Thursday evening, and a little more than an hour later finally made it to our hostel. We stayed in St. Christoper's, a new hostel in the north of Paris, in the neighborhood where Amelie was filmed. If you ever go to Paris, stay here, because it was pretty much one of the nicest hostels I have stayed in. Good price too.

Anyways, there we met up with Lindsey's friend Alyssa, who is studying abroad in Copenhagen with the same program that Ariella is. We were all kind of tired from travel and planing on getting up early, so we found a restaurant around the corner from the hostel and ate there. It was good- one of those places with little grills on your table, so you cook the food yourself. You'd think the food would cost less, since you're the one doing the cooking, but you would be wrong. Still delicious.

Steve met up with us in the hostel, and we made plans for the next day. We woke up pretty early on Friday, and headed out to Montmartre to see Sacre Coeur, the giant palace-y looking basilica. On the way there I misread the map, and we ended up going the wrong direction for a couple blocks, and ended up in the Red Light Disctrict Pigalle. It was pretty much a 4 or 5 block strip of sex shops, strip clubs and bars that include the original Moulin Rouge. I should probably see that movie sometime, huh?

Once we figured out that we were going in the wrong direction, we got to Sacre Coeur quickly, and climbed up the big stairs at the bottom of the hill to the top. On the way up, Steve got tricked into buying a bracelet- some guy approached him and had him hold some strings that he wove into a bracelet and tied around his wrist before Steve could say anything. Some people aren't just mean enough to ignore people like that.... :D

The view from the top was pretty, but it was foggy out, so the Eiffel Tower in the distance was kind of dim. After that we went back to the metro station and navigated our way to Versailles, the palace built by Louis XIV, the sun king. Versailles was huge but we spent several hours there and saw almost everything. We started with the main palace, and toured through all of the rooms there that we were allowed.

The rooms were gorgeous- they had preserved all of the original room decorations and everything was either pretty french patterned cloth or gold leaf. I really liked this palace in general, compared to other ones I have been too, because it had a lot of windows. The back of Versailles into this gigantic garden, so a lot of the windows were open to the garden. My favorite part was the hall of mirrors... it was still beautiful, and so easy to imagine courtiers running around in there. This would have been where Anne Boleyn learned to be French when he parents sent her to France as punishment.

We also saw Marie Antoinette's old room, where she had to close her balcony doors because the public was starving and demanding bread outside of her balcony, and about to attack her. One thing sort of annoying about Versailles was that there were these Jeff Koons pieces put in the middle of those elegant rooms- they were trying to show some comparison between modern art and the art of Versailles, but it was not a good juxtaposition. I mean, you would have this beautiful ballroom, and then a giant pink balloon animal in the middle of the room, or a lobster hanging from the ceiling, or a bunch of vacuum cleaners standing in front of an original portrait of Marie Antoinette. Strange...

Afterward 4ish hours there we went out to the gardens, which you could spend hours and hours in. They were pretty already, so they must be amazing in the Spring. I would most definitely go back there. Out in the giant gardens there were a few other buildings that we walking around in, including another royal residence that was used mostly by the Bonaparte family, and Marie Antoinette's private retreat.

There were also sheep and cows all the way back there! There were a lot of swans too- one of the guys in a work truck who was doing landscaping was driving around, and this swan-goose (it was too ugly to be a swan, but not the right coloring to be a goose. It was swan size though) just went and sat right where he was trying to drive. He honked at it a few times, yelled out the window at it, and when it finally started moving, tried to run it over. Ah, french road rage. Anyways the place is so big that they also rent out golfcarts so you can ride those around. Lets just say I was really happy to sit for that half an hour train ride back around 5:30.

Once we were back into Paris proper, we went to the Louvre. The Louvre is open till 10 and free for people under 25 on Fridays, so we had about 4 hours there. I was actually able to walk through almost every exhibit (I really wanted to see the Islamic art exhibit, but it was closed ): ), but I can completely see how you could spend a week there. Especially if you can read French- the little paragraphs they usually have under paintings and stuff were only written in French, which I can read if I try really hard. Even then I get maybe 50-75%, but it was just taking too long, so I stopped and just wandered around.

Every so often I'd see something that I'd recognize from textbooks or my mom's art stuff, and take a picture of it. They're surprisingly lax about cameras there. Of course I saw the famous stuff, the Mona Lisa, a few more things by Da Vinci, some Botticelli, Cezanne, Monet, the victory statue, and a lot more. I really liked the exhibit with Etruscan stuff.

We got kicked out around 10, and walked out the pyramid entrance. It was dark, and with the pyramid all lit up, the blue Eiffel Tower and the lit up ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde, it was pretty. But also freezing, like 35ish degrees. Oh well. We found a reasonably priced cafe in front of Palais Royal, ate, and then hopped the metro to get back to the hostel. It would have been nice to enjoy Parisian night life, but the metro closes around 1:30, it had been a really long day, and the next day was only going to get longer. We got back around 12:45 and crashed.

On Saturday morning we got up to meet Lindsey's friend Olivia near Notre Dame. She is a french history major and has been in Paris for the semester. Her french is also good, so she was really really helpful, and took us on a walk through the city to some really cool places, describing the history as she went. She was really nice to have spent her entire day playing tour guide with us.

She started us off at Notre Dame. Outside in the front is a plaque from which all points in Paris are measured- it's the center of the city. Notre Dame itself really doesn't look that big (compared to other giant churches I have been to) on the outside, but from the inside, it is gigantic. There's not really much you can say about the church itself that will do it justice; it's one of those you have to be there kind of things.

It did make me want to watch the Hunchback of Notre Dame though. Maybe I'll watch that this week (: Anyways we were lucky and there wasn't really a line, which was the case with most places we went during the day. We didn't go up to the towers, but just toured around the inside and then continued down Ile de la Cité.

Next we went to Sainte Chapelle, the old royal church attached the the Conciergerie, the royal palace used before the royal family moved to Versailles. I think of all of the churches that I have been to before, this one is my favorite. Please look at my pictures, or google image it or something, because it is so so so pretty. Even the part of the church that wasn't for the royal family was beautiful.

Since St. Chappelle is right next to the Conciergerie, we wet there next. If Olivia hadn't been there, I would know almost nothing about this building. It's sort of difficult to imagine the place as a palace, since it is preserved in "it's last historically significant condition," as a prison that it was converted to after the royal family moved. It's actually pretty neat to see how they had converted area to prison cells, and it has some artifacts from the French Revolution and Terror, when it housed a lot of political prisoners. This is where prisoners were kept before they were executed.

You could actually see where Marie Antoinette spent her last days- where her old cells used to be and things like that. The whole thing was slightly creepy, but still pretty cool. From there we walked down Rue St. Honoré next to the Seine on our way to Place de la Concorde. On the way there, Olivia took us into the courtyard of the apartment where Robespierre lived with the Dantons. Next door was this really cute bakery, the Delices de Manon, which had a penguin chocolate wafer thing. It was delicious.

Sometime on our way Olivia took us through this enclosed plaza with trees and stuff that was surrounded with little shops, all of which were either extremely expensive old cafes from the 1700s, or high priced antique places. Here there was a café where Napoleon used to hang out when he was a student in Paris, and in front of another café, the place where the French revolution pretty much started was marked on the wall.

From there we ended up at Place de la Concorde, which has had a few different names, and used to be the place where prisoners were guillotined. This is where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were publicly executed. There was this giant Ferris wheel called the Grande Roue there, and also a big obelisk that the French stole from Egypt. From there we went down the Champs Elysee toward Arc de Triomphe. There was actually a Christmas market going on there, and it was fun to walk around. Arc de Triomphe is pretty, it just sort of sits there, so we hopped the metro to go over the Musee Carnavalet.

Musee Carnavalet is a museum on French history spread out across a few fancy houses of the old nobility. It's smaller, but pretty interesting, so we stayed there until we got kicked out around 6. From there Olivia took us to where the Bastille used to be. The building itself is gone, there are just some markers on the plaza, but now the area is big for nightlife. We walked around the streets and found a restaurant, and just relaxed for a bit.

Afterwards we took the metro again over to the Eiffel Tower, which was lit up all blue to look like the EU symbol. We went up to the top in the elevator and you could see the whole city lit up- it was so pretty. Although it was windy and freezing up there, it was worth it. It was also pretty cool to see all of the different places that we had been to during the day from up there. While we were up there, it "sparkled-" they had attached strobe light aaaall over the tower, and they turn then all on when the hour changes at night.

We took the stairs down, and by the time we had gotten all the way back up past the gardens, it sparkled again! We grabbed some warm up hot chocolate at a cafe looking out at the Eiffel Tower, and then got back to the hostel around one again. It was such a long day, that most of us were practically falling asleep at the cafe, so we just went to bed. Sort of- I stayed up a little to finish some postcards. I was facing the window of the hostel, and while I was there it started to snow! It was a pretty snow, with giant snowflakes- so I saw my first snow of the season in Paris this year!!!

On Sunday morning we packed up our stuff and checked out of the hospital. From there we were to Luxembourg Gardens to walk around, and passed by the Danton statue on the way. Everyone went to grab some crepes, but I went on a mad search to find stamps. On the way to find stamps I actually walked by the Sorbonne, and some Cluny remains. Then it was off to the airport, and home to Barcelona!!

It was a really good weekend, and although I didn't expect to, I really loved it. I liked all of the different neighborhoods, and the history behind everything and it was just a really nice city. It was beautiful even in the winter, and in the spring I bet it is ridiculously gorgeous. I would go back there in a second.