Apologies for the late postings. I thought that I had posted the Carnaval one, but apparently I had only saved it. Last weekend my friend Rose and I did just about all of Paris in 3 days. It was exhausting, but I am absolutely in love with the city. I will give an account of the trip this weekend, but I have a field trip to be at early in the morning, so I am just going to post pictures for now! [View Full Entry]

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This week is the week celebrating Carnaval - hence the parade in Sitges Saturday. It basically is Spain's Mardi Gras - students don't even have classes in most places! However, the REAL festival was on Tuesday. We went back to Sitges after classes (my last one ending at 7) all decked out in our costumes. It was great to have two Halloweens in one year. There were thousands of people in the streets and one of the largest parades I have ever seen. No one has any shame here - people from 3 years old to 83 years old were dancing [View Full Entry]

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On a whim we decided to take a train from Barcelona to a small beach town about 25 minutes away by train (or an hour if you get off on the wrong stop like we did on the way back) called Sitges. It is gorgeous and the atmosphere and scenery is much more what you think of as "Spain" than Barcelona. It was cold (no, not as cold as Indiana... but cold) however we managed to meet a few gentleman locals (I would say they were old, but that would be an insult to a few relatives. Alright, they were old.) [View Full Entry]

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Holly and I decided at the last minute today that we were going to visit La Sagrada Familia, the "cathedra" designed by Gaudi whose construction began in the late 1800's and is still not completed. It was very easy to get to, as there is a metro stop called "Sagrada Familia" and when you walk up the stairs it is pretty hard to miss. It was fascinating to see the pictures of the progress of the work and to hear the story of the building. It has taken so long to finish because during one of the World Wars they had [View Full Entry]

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This past weekend we all loaded into buses and headed down to Valencia, the land of the oranges! On the way down we stopped in a small town called Tarragona. In Tarragona we toured the ancient ruins and ate lunch by the ocean. Some of the ruins included a giant stadium where they held chariot races. I think the best part of the entire trip there was when Lauren, Tina, and I bought our own lunch and ate it by the ocean. We had "pan con tomate" which is just tomatoe rubbed on bread. It is a traditional Catalan dish and [View Full Entry]

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Today and yesterday have been spent mostly sight seeing. Yesterday my roommate Holly and another girl Stacey and I went to el parque Guell which is a Gaudi park that overlooks the city. The park is huge and we didn't have time to see it all, but we want to go back. There are mosaics everywhere and even the rocks are carved into abstract art. I added pictures of the sunset, the skyline, and parts of the mosaics. Today after class we went to La Boqueria (there should be accents on most of these words, but I don't know how to [View Full Entry]

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I went down to the beach to take a run yesterday, and it was absolutely gorgeous. The area we were in is called Barcaloneta. There are hundreds of restaurants, shops, etc. There is a bike and running trail that goes for miles as well. My roommates and I went there again today to have lunch which wasn't all that great, but at least we got to go to the beach! It's not warm enough to swim yet, but I've seen several surfers and windsurfers. I added some pictures of our little afternoon together... unfortunately I haven't been able to pull myself [View Full Entry]

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there aren't too many, but here are a few pictures so far! [View Full Entry]

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We just got back a little while ago, and apparently we are early. The social scene here is unlike anything I've ever seen. I got all my luggage today... but I'm having a hard time putting mi bicicleta together. Goodnight! [View Full Entry]

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I am running dangerously low on sleep, but I've been warned that this is the city that doesn't sleep. No going out for me tonight though. Unfortunately our flight was delayed from Chicago to London and there wasn't enough time for them to get all the luggage to the other plane. So there are about 30 of us without any of our luggage. Thankfully I carried on my sheets, so at least I have a dressed bed to sleep on! I am praying that my stuff comes in tomorrow... especially my bike. The language has not been much of a problem [View Full Entry]

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