Holes to Heaven: March 2014

Traveling away from Barcelona is great, but it makes me miss Barcelona. A lot more than I imagined. Over the last two weekends I have been to Scotland and France, and it was a blast. But the part of me that wanted to see as much of Europe as possible in the months that remain has been completely snuffed out by the relative greatness of the city where I signed up to live and study. So anyways. On to happenings since the last post.

I saw The Monuments Men with two friends from school. Carolina is Italian, Mary is Catalan, so we spoke Spanish all evening, exchanging childhood stories and even drifting into Catalan here and there. The movie was eh. Mari (Italian, and in my Catalan class) and I did an oral presentation on cava, the Catalan version of champagne, in Catalan. At the end of class we surprised everyone with two bottles of the thing we presented. So, yes. We popped bottles in class. It was memorable. Two Fridays ago, Sam arrived from the USA on vacation from his work; he is hanging around until this coming Saturday and has been traveling to Glasgow and Paris with me to see our friends. The day after he arrived, we flew to Scotland.

Glasgow was very relaxing for a number of reasons. First, everyone speaks a variety of English. Second, Scottish people think southern accents are hilarious. Third, Alan's roommates were gone, so Sam and I had big beds to ourselves (we worked with Alan at camp last summer). We got to see the University of Glasgow, Alan and I bet on some football matches (only a few pounds), and we met Frazer and Ryan at a bar later Sunday night to catch up (those two lived on my floor in the residency here in Barcelona last semester). However, we turned in early, around 11:00 PM, because of an impromptu ski trip planned for early Monday! Driving from Glasgow to Glencoe, some mountains slightly to the north, we passed a serene lake called Loch Lomond and had great views of the countryside and water. At the resort, we rented what gear we had too, which was not actually that much because Alan's friends had donated some things to our cause, and headed up on the ski lifts to the mountains. We snowboarded and skied all day until the park closed, then drove back and showered to go to The Head and the Heart concert. The concert was amazing. I would see them once every day for the rest of my life, if I could. Tuesday Sam and I flew back to Barcelona.

After a few days of rest and recovery and homework, we flew to Paris. The first night, when we arrived, Sam was pretty sick, so we asked a taxi to drive us to a pharmacy to get medicine. The cab driver and the pharmacy worker were some of the nicest people ever! Take that, stereotypes. Anyways, after Sam had his medicine, we both got second winds, since we were actually within walking distance from the Eiffel Tower. So we walked there, took photos, and got a cab to the hostel. The next day we met Lorena for breakfast, walked around the Tuileries Garden, hit up the Louvre (too much art! honestly overwhelming), and then in the afternoon we met Miguel and had lunch, stopped by the PSG store, and went up to the top of the Arc de Triomphe. After a brief rest, we reconvened for dinner with some other friends, named Sabrina, whom Sam and I both met on our Appalachia service trip almost two years ago exactly. I tried escargot and I liked it a lot, actually. On Saturday the tour continued, with the lock-bridge, Notre Dame, the famous "I love you" wall, as well as the beautiful hill quarter whose name escapes me, where we saw yet another big church. Above all, the weather was amazing all weekend. Under all, both Sam and I were slightly sick (I had a bad cough the last day/night). Saturday night and Sunday combined were probably the highlight of the trip - we saw The Head and the Heart again on Saturday night, and on Sunday we made a trip to Versailles on the train with Miguel, Lorena, Sabrina, and their friend Cam. Versailles is pretty ridiculous; I was more upset that people were so grossly rich during those times to build palaces and live that way, when the French people were dying. But the gardens outside were beautiful. We took long, relaxing naps on the grass, and it was great. We had an early flight the next day, and were both kind of sick and tired, so we turned in early on Sunday night.

This week in Barcelona I have been doing some more work for classes. I just finished a paper for my International Expansion class, which did not take long in itself, but the case it was on was about 20 pages and took a while to read. This Thursday I was devastated to learn that I had my Catalan final exam - not because I don't like exams, but because Catalan is by far my favorite class. My film class only has a final paper due late next week, and my history/culture class has a final exam around that time, too. Economics finishes next Tuesday with a final exam, too. Since I don't have class in the mornings, I've been trying to show Sam some of the more touristy parts of Barcelona - we went to Sagrada Familia yesterday. It feels good to be back in Barcelona.

Not a bad first night. It did feel a little strange though, because we were basically the only people out and about at midnight on Thursday. Sam and I kept saying that it felt like everything was especially set up just for us, kind of in a Truman Show style.