Checking in from NYC

So yesterday I spent over fourteen hours in airplanes as I made my way back to the States. I arrived in New York at about 4.30 or 5 in the afternoon and loaded all my things on me like a hermit crab and took the subway to my aunt's apartment. Having woken up at 5 AM Spain time in order to catch a 5.30 shuttle to the Madrid airport, and going to bed around 11 PM EST, I spent approximately 24 hours awake, not counting the naps on the plane. I also read 120 pages of Junot Diaz's Drown, watched two movies, and did a sudoku puzzle or two. I thought I would be more surprised or something coming back to my home country, but it felt fairly normal. The only strange occurrence I had was trying to formulate questions in Spanish to ask officials before realizing it was okay to speak my native English. The only thing I lost going through customs was an apple I bought the day before. I told the guy I hoped he would enjoy it before he told me, "Nope, it's just heading to that yellow trashcan over there." Oh well.
I'm feeling pretty relaxed and rested having slept ten-and-a-half hours last night and another two hour nap shortly following breakfast this morning. I'll be seeing a few shows while I'm here, and I'm looking forward to that. I went out to dinner with my aunt last night and witnessed a crazy car accident right across the street. I'm currently sitting in the Starbucks (it's evil, but I needed Wifi [wee-fee]) that the Benz shot backwards into, breaking a few windows. Apparently, like NYC, Starbucks never sleeps. So it goes. I leave for Springfield on Sunday shortly before noon and don't have any real plans ahead of me for my time here in New York. I'll be home for a few days before heading out to California for the remainder of my summer, going on a river trip then working on building a house until early August when I head back to school. It's been a good summer so far and I look forward to the coming weeks. I'll be writing a post of the remainder of my travels shortly. It will comprise what I did in Barcelona, Valencia, Córdoba, Sevilla, Lisboa, and Segovia before I returned to Madrid in order to come home. In the meantime, I'm going to wander and explore New York City.
Until next time,
much love, be well, and thanks.
Lauren

Thoughts from Portugal

As I sit in the sunny room adjacent to the kitchen of Lisbon Central Hostel, I am thinking of the conclusion to this wonderful journey-experience of mine. Of course, I haven't been able to capture it all, but I feel grateful for that being the case because it justifies a return trip sometime in the future. Right now, I'm determining the next step in my travels. To Pamplona for San Fermines (the Running of the Bulls), or straight to northern Spain for a nice afternoon whitewater rafting trip in the Pyrenees? It almost feels wrong to have the privilege to have that be my main concern right now. Traveling solo has been a rollercoaster (or montaña rusa) of emotion, at times feeling incredibly at ease and at others, nearly breaking down crying (like when I was lost in Sevilla, trying to find my hostel at 11.45 at night). It would've been great to have found a travel buddy, but I think not having one has allowed me to do a lot of reflection, which I am grateful for. Since I have been traveling, I have felt more of a desire to go home, whereas when I was in more semi-permanent living circumstance with my host family in Madrid, I didn't want to leave at all. I didn't want that to be the case, or rather, didn't want to admit that, but I have to be honest with myself. Going home is an important element in the traveling cycle. I head back to the States early Thursday morning from Madrid, landing in New York City (or Nueva York) in the early afternoon that same day. I'm looking forward to it, but I'm also a bit sad to leave the Iberian peninsula, my home for these past six weeks. I am certainly glad that I chose to stay within the peninsula and explore more of Spain instead of doing the standard "Eurotrip," jumping from big city to big city in different countries where only a phrasebook could help me instead of my own language capabilities. Anyway, I leave Portugal today at some point, returning to Spain. In my remaining days here, I will soak in as much as I can before my return home.
With gratefulness and love,
Lauren

be well.

FOUND: missing sub-sections from previous post

These two pieces are sub-sections of my previous post. I was having difficulty reformatting the huge font that it kept returning to. Anyway, to form a more complete picture of that last report, here you go.

-lauren

My Last Days in Madrid

Friday, as I mentioned above, was mainly consumed by the graduation celebration festivities, but it didn’t end there. We had an evaluation meeting for ISA that lasted longer than anticipated, one of the new girls for the month of July (Joquelyn) showed up to the house, Concha (my señora) made an awesome goodbye dinner, then most of the girls in the house (including myself) went out to meet up with some friends from school for a night on the town. At first we spent about a half hour walking in circles and getting a bit lost, but we finally found the group and hung out at a bar playing some 80s music and projecting some weird, old Spanish movie on the wall before going to a bar/club in Chueca. We ended up getting home at like 3 AM and my feet were torn up from a pair of shoes I borrowed from one of the girls in the house, but it was definitely a fun evening and a good way to spend my last night. The next day was primarily consumed with packing and goodbyes. I had hoped to have time and energy to go see the Orgullo Gay (Gay Pride) Celebration and Parade in Chueca, or go to El Diario de Ana Frank: El Canto de La Vida (The Diary of Anne Frank, the Musical), but I ended up passing out on the couch after finishing packing instead. The other new girl for July, Lauren (name stealer), showed up shortly after I awoke. My host sister Conchi finished her last bit of University in Pharmacy, so she, Concha, Cris and Santi (the other family members) got all dressed up to go to her graduation Saturday night. They left before I did, so I took a picture of them all jazzed up and said my goodbyes then. Afterwards, I went for a short walk around the neighborhood to get some (hot) fresh air and exercise before sitting on a train to Barcelona all night. I came home, ate dinner by myself, then took my bags and headed to the train station to leave the city that’s served as my home for a month. (But I’ll be back… at least to fly home, for sure.)

Post-Program Travels

So, as I said, I left Madrid. I took an overnight train to Barcelona and met up with some friends there. I saw Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia, Park Güell, and Casa Batlló. (Batlló I only saw from the outside though. Weird hours.) The metro was very different from Madrid’s, but at least every train was air conditioned, which was a plus. The festivities after the Eurocup victory lasted, for me, until 2 or 2.30 AM, but for others, it went on much longer. Consequently, I didn’t wake up very early yesterday. I also missed out on seeing some cool features like Museu Picasso, the Olympic Stadium, and CaixaForum, a bank-foundation-building that features art exhibitions free to the public, partially because I didn’t realize certain places are not open on Mondays, but also because there’s only 24 hours in a day. It just means it’ll be on my itinerary for next time. However, I did go to the Museu de L’Erotica with some friends. It was very, very interesting and weird at the same time. All kinds of multi-cultural and historical forms of pleasure-seeking documented primarily in the form of drawings and sculpture. Afterwards, a group of us went to dinner and said our goodbyes as it would be the last time we’d see each other in our time here, but it wasn’t particularly sad because there’s talk of a reunion sometime in the future. And so I went home to the hotel room of my roommate Rachael and our friend Emily, where I crashed on the floor for the second night in a row.

More or less my second half of my adventure...

Hello again, friends. I tried to keep it short(er) this time. Enjoy!

Santander
Like the excursion to Granada, we had a long bus ride to get to Santander, so we missed school this past Friday. On the way there, we stopped in Burgos for a lunch break and a bit of time to explore and we found the cathedral with about 30 minutes to spare, so we didn’t get to go inside to see all its features including the coffin of Mio Cid, the Medieval Poet (*correction: Warrior; there's a poem about him). That’ll have to go on my agenda for my next trip to Spain, which will include the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage through the mountain ranges in the north of Spain that spans almost the whole country, east to west. We got to Santander in the early afternoon, and our hotel was right on one of the seven beaches in the city. Amazing. The water in the Atlantic was really cold at first, but after being submerged in it, it felt pretty nice. The next day we went to some nearby smaller towns: Santillana del Mar, Comillas, and Altamira. We saw a really old (medieval times old) cathedral in SdM, a house (“El Capricho”) designed by Gaudí in Comillas, and the replica of the caves from 14,500 years ago before returning to the beach in Santander that afternoon. The next day, prior to our departure from the city, we went to the Palacio de Magdalena, a palace built for the royalty who helped to make Santander the summer attraction it is today, and the Faro de Cabo Mayor, the lighthouse on these beautiful cliffs that you can hike out on to. Amazing. After we finished there, we got back on the bus for a five hour trip home, just in time for the Spain – Italy game of the quarterfinals.

Futbol
SPAIN BEAT ITALY! SPAIN BEAT RUSSIA! SPAIN BEAT GERMANY! SPAIN WON THE EUROCUP 2008! All within one week, I got to experience the amazing and historic victories of “La Selección” from the quarterfinals to the semifinals to the finals. (I missed the two first games, one against Russia and the other against Sweden.) The first game I got to watch was the Spain-Italy game that was the night I came back from Santander. My host sisters had some friends over to watch it and so I got to hear the craziness and insults to the players firsthand. It was really quite fun. The Italy-Spain game was probably the most intense of all the games I watched as it was tied 0-0 through the whole game and into overtime, so they were forced to take penalty kicks. Spain: 4 of 5, Italy 2 of 5. It was exciting, especially since Spain hadn’t beat Italy in over 88 years. The next game was exciting too, but since we’d already beat Russia in an earlier game, it wasn’t much of surprise. (I also watched that game with my host sisters and their friends.) The finals were great, but the only downside was that I wasn’t in Madrid to celebrate. I was in Barcelona, but it was still pretty amazing. I simply had to multiply the celebration in BCN times four (or more) to imagine what it was like in Madrid. Anyway, that’s what’s been going on in Spain recently. It’s still making the main headlines here, and I’m sure it will for a while. (Consequently, the official jersey that I was hoping to buy is super freaking expensive — 65 Euros. Stupid exchange rate.) VIVA ESPAÑA!

Last Week of Classes Exams
The last week of classes flew by, as we technically only had three days of class then exams and no required attendance on Friday. Wednesday afternoon we had a free visit to the Reina Sofia Museum where we saw works of Miro, Dalí, and Picasso—including Guernica—among the works of many other modern artists. That night, I went to a play performed by the Centro Dramático Nacional. It was written by a modern Catalán playwright and its title was Catalán (Après Moi, Le Deluge) though the play was in Castellano, or what most of the rest of the world knows simply as Spanish. It was very interesting and well acted, but honestly I didn’t fully comprehend it all. (I’ll elaborate more on that in my blog.) The next day was my exam day. I felt pretty good about them, but when it came time to double-check one of them during the exam period, I started falling asleep. I finished it, but I was just wiped out. This whole summer school thing is new to me, and it definitely is tiring. Thursday night, ISA, my program, had a free goodbye dinner at a little buffet, but it didn’t really seem to be anything special. Not everyone showed up, not even all the ISA employees, but it was nice to hear what people’s post-program plans were and get goodbyes in. Afterwards, people went their separate ways to go watch the remainder Anyway, we had an optional little graduation and fiesta celebration on Friday at the other campus, so went to check out my grades and get free food. I passed everything with flying colors, but I didn’t get to graduate! I guess one of the administrators who was on the bus I was on forgot to highlight my name on the list, so they assumed I wasn’t there and as a result, I didn’t get to walk across the stage. Poo. However, I did get my diploma along with about 8-billion apologies afterwards, so everything turned out fine. Well, I take that back… the free lunch was salad with tuna and paella with all kinds of seafood, so I drank the free Sangria and ate a bunch of bread for my lunch instead. But in all seriousness, it was a nice little afternoon; the campus was beautiful and getting to hang out with my profesoras and friends from classes one more time was really nice.

[The section from here is being re-posted due to technical difficulties. Check the next post.]

And now? Now I’m in Valencia. I took a train this morning at 8.00 AM and got here about 11.45. I wandered around trying to find the tourist information stations that sold the passes for the city transport and discounts and I found them, then made an attempt (that failed) to get free wifi (pronounced wee-fee here), before walking to a hostel that I found in a brochure in the train station (and in my guidebook). So, that’s where I am now. In Valencia. About to find some adventure or other. From here, I plan to travel to Sevilla or Córdoba, then Lisbon (Portugal), possibly Salamanca, Pamplona, some little town in the Pyrenees where I can go whitewater rafting, and then back to Madrid to fly home. (Well, to New York, but the United States is home too.)

Sorry for the length. I have trouble eliminating details, and this, for me, isn’t too detail heavy, but so it goes. Until next time.

Be well, much love, and thanks.

Lauren