Visitas Especiales

The past two weeks, I've had some very special visitors!  I spent the weekend with my mom and her friend in Barcelona, which was fabulous. We had just enough time to get a good taste of everything that the city has to offer: delicious seafood, impressive architecture, astonishing churches, and the lively boardwalk along the beautiful Mediterranean coast.

When I say Barcelona, all you really need to know is Gaudi and La Rambla.  Antonio Gaudi was an apparently crazy, yet genius, architect that designed the Sagrada Familia and my favorite, Park Güell.  His designs are whimsical and impressive, with an obsessive attention to detail.  For example, the construction of the Sagrada Familia has been so complicated and intensive that it has already been in process for 128 years, and they "hope" to finish in the next 20 years...  Lucky for us, the unfinished project is still astonishing since many important and beautiful parts are complete.  Even luckier, the actual church interior was recently finished so that the Pope could finally bless it as a basilica, which just happened to be the same weekend we were there.  Yes, I got a glimpse of Pope Benedict XVI in his Pope-Mobile as I waved my "Benet XVI Benvingut a Catalunya" flag (Welcome to Cataluña).  He's got a pretty sweet ride.

Hola, Papa

Anyways, back to Guadi.  His numerous extraordinary fairytale buildings are scattered throughout Barcelona, but none impressed/delighted me more than Park Güell. First of all, it is an enormous green park, filled with pretty trees, flowers, and shrubbery that was impressive enough on its own, seeing as it is practically a forest in the middle of the city.  Then add in the charming little paths that lead to incredible views of the city, followed by an awesome mosaic bench that snakes around the entire plaza, which is above the "Room" of a Hundred Columns (really an outdoor area with columns, but still cool), and you've got yourself a great park.  But it gets better! I forgot to mention that this is the entrance to the park:

Notice the gate where the car is parked, that is where we enter.

I know, it is pretty spectacular, but my camera (or maybe my photography expertise) was hardly good enough to capture everything at once.  There are two crazy looking gingerbread-like houses that sit on each side of the front entrance, looking enchanted and delicious, with this grand opening to the Room of a Hundred Columns up ahead that was magnified by a happy little tune that a street performer was playing.  It felt like I was in Disneyworld.   Everything in the park was designed by Gaudi, which means that everything is cool to look at. He also lived in the park for 20 years, and I certainly don't blame him.

La Rambla was the second coolest thing in Barcelona, and it is essentially a neighborhood of the city in the form of a boardwalk that spills into the heart of the city's shopping (including a great food market and lots of fun booths along the pedestrian street) and entertainment.  The boardwalk is gorgeous along the water with the boats all lined up in perfect fashion, and there are tons of restaurants where you can find great seafood.  Walking past the boardwalk, the street continues into a fun and busy area with interesting sculptures, street performers, and cozy little coffee shops. 

We had a great time exploring Barcelona, but it was time to get back to Madrid.  My mom was able to stay and see all of the sights of Madrid, which was fun, too.  She met my host mom and got a glimpse of what my life is like living here. It was nice to have a piece of home here with me :) Her departure was coupled with the arrival of another special visitor: Nick, along with some other friends from DU.  As their official tour guide, I showed them around the sights of the city and even discovered a few places I'd never seen before, like the Glass Palace and the beautiful pond/nook of park behind it.

Nick came over for lunch with my host family, and he ate an authentic Spanish meal.  My host mom made a HUGE meal, with paella, meat, and potatoes (and fresh bread, of course) followed by fruit, dessert, and coffee, and I think he really enjoyed it.  The conversations were pretty entertaining since my host mom only knows a few words in English, and Nick knows about the same amount in Spanish. There was a little confusion at times, but my roommate and I were able to translate everything pretty smoothly, and Nick did well with what I had taught him beforehand. We sat around the table enjoying the food and company for over 2 hours.  My host mom really wanted him to come back for another big lunch the next day, but he couldn’t, so she was happy to see him stay around for dinner that night.  I'm pretty sure she loves him, and she asks me about him almost every day now.

Nick and I had a fun time going out with friends, eating the most delicious pastries, and walking around the city.  In the midst of all our crazy traveling, I think it was a much-needed relaxing weekend for both of us.  Despite some rain on Sunday, he was able to soak up a little bit of sun and enjoy the comparatively warm weather before heading back to London (although it was much too short a trip!).

After spending a week and half translating for both my mom and Nick, I realized how much my Spanish has indeed improved.  I have been frustrated because the fluency hasn't come to me as quickly as I'd expected it to.  Of course, I use Spanish in all of my classes and when talking to my host mom or the occasional Spanish friend, but there has never seemed to be much improvement from when I first arrived.  However, having others depend on my knowledge of Spanish really forced me to use it more, like asking for directions and recommendations in Barcelona or translating a menu, which made me very aware of my speaking abilities.  I have become more comfortable with the language and definitely have improved my diction, but I still have a long way to go before I would consider myself to be fluent.  That means I need to aprovechar  (make the most of) my remaining time here in Spain because it's almost December, and I'll be home before you know it!

The Land of a Thousand Rugs

So the other day, I went to Africa. I rode a camel. It was cool. 

It really is so simple, but I still cannot get over the fact that I was in Africa.  Yes, plenty of people have been to Africa before, like my mom on business or my roommate to help out at a clinic, but of all the places I’ve wanted to see in the world, Africa just seemed like the least likely, a when-would-I ever-get-the-chance-to-go kind of place.  Yet, here I was, sitting on the top of a giant sand dune in the SAHARA DESERT! 

It was amazing to me how completely and utterly different it was from any place I have ever seen in my life, like an entirely different world.  In this world, donkeys, camels, and horses are a normal method of transportation, the women are hardly seen and practically covered from head to toe, and the first two most widely-spoken languages are totally incomprehensible (or even legible) to me. 

Fes Medina

The first day we visited the Medina, or city center, of Fes, which is the second largest city in Morocco.  The Medina is dominated by a labyrinth of small alleyways filled with little stalls selling just about everything (seeds, spices, fruit, vegetables, goat heads, squid, dishes, remote controls, clothes, medicine, post cards, thrones, rugs, and the list goes on…) It was really overwhelming trying to take it all in, especially since I needed to focus on not getting lost in the maze and avoid getting run over by horses or men carrying cases of (live) chickens.  

Brought to you by your local Moroccan Radio Shack...

All-you-can-bag Spice Buffet ;)

My favorite stop along our tour of the Medina was to visit a 4th generation medicine man, a doctor (as he called himself).  He showed us all sorts of herbs, oils, and powders that are each responsible for some miracle health benefit.  Five minutes into his presentation, he was walking around so that we could each sniff this mysterious black powder (through a piece of cloth)... He claims that it would  headaches, relieve sinus pressure, cure hangovers, and help with asthma among other things.  I have to admit, with a stuffy nose at the time, it really did do the trick! 

Next on our African journey, we headed to the desert.  We arrived via 4x4 SUVs just around sunset to the campsite, and it was beautiful! The sand was fine and soft, and the orangish/purplish backdrop against the sand dunes really blew my mind.  That is, until the sky turned black and stars started flowing generously into view.  It was one of the most remarkable things I think I've ever seen (Leaning Tower of Pisa, Great Barrier Reef, and the Redwood Forest included).  The stars were so bright and so numerous that I could barely pick out a constellation since there were SO MANY other stars in between them. I saw Venus shining brightly and at least a dozen shooting stars within the first few minutes.  If only I could have captured it with a camera...

In the desert we slept in tents called haimas, which are very sturdy and surprisingly warm.  However, we didn’t spend very much time in them as we were up at 5 am to see the sunrise, which was pretty phenomenal and included a sighting of Algeria in the distance.  We really dove into the African desert culture after that, fashioning our turbans to protect us from the hot sun and possible sand storms before we hopped on our camels to traverse the sand dunes in style.  We named our camel Penelope, Penny for short.  She was very well behaved and never spit or tried to buck us off, despite the rebellious streak that her nose ring may have suggested. We rode through the desert for a while, and it was fun (although unfortunately painful afterwards). 

Meet Penelope

We stopped in a small desert village to rehydrate and visit another rug shop.  They do weave some beautiful rugs, but having spent a few too many hours in the last rug shop in Fes and being hot and starving after a long morning in the desert, I’d had enough of looking at rugs that were definitely out of my budget.  The Moroccans are pretty impressive salesmen, though, and a surprising amount of people in the group bought rugs.  My favorite sales pitch was that our parents would be happy to find a Moroccan rug delivered to the doorstep because it is an “investment in our futures,” so clearly they’ve raised a smart kid!  A guy in the past took this advice, and now he’s so rich that he comes back and buys 30-40 rugs at a time… Let’s keep in mind that the cheapest welcome-mat-sized rug was going for 400 Euro, while the majority of the rugs cost several thousand Euros.  Sounds more to me like an investment in the fact that I would have to work two jobs for the next few summers…

Our final stop was in Meknes, a much more modern and almost European-like city, which was quite the change from the rural and poverty-stricken areas we’d been.  We ran across a McDonald’s, of course, Pizza Hut, and a movie theater playing mostly American films (including Hangover, which for some reason was called A Very Bad Trip instead).  This is also where we really discovered how tasty Moroccan pastries are.   We’d had some at a few hotels, but at the pastry shops in Meknes, they were absolutely delicious!! I wish I could bring some back for all of you to try, but I don’t think I’d even be able to keep them around until December without eating them first!

Unfortunately, the trip had to come to an end, and we had to go back to the real world where we’d have to go to class, do homework, and ride the metro (rather than an animal) to get around.  I had a fantastic time and actually learned a lot.  It definitely put my own world into perspective because I have been blessed in so many ways with everything I’ve been given in life.  I take so many things for granted that some of the people I met this weekend could never even imagine. I am very lucky! At the same time, witnessing such a different culture and way of life really opened my eyes to the beautiful diversity that the world has to offer.