Anyway, enough people have asked me about my blog or mentioned my blog in their individual messages to me that I have felt guilty enough to need to write again (ex. Every once in a while I check up on your blog, even though you haven't updated it in a while!) I'm sorry for being so inconsistent! But I also greatly enjoy writing in this, so this is a real pleasure to share my experiences with you. A few of you know that having the opportunity to keep a blog was one of the reasons why I wanted to study abroad. Well, it's more like a symbolic action of the experience that I wanted to have--to be able to freely experience the environment around me and to encounter the world in a new way with a different perspective. I kept a blog in high school and sometimes (usually when I am in ultimate procrastination mode) I really enjoy looking back on it and reading all of my insightful comments that, to this day, I still don't know how I came up with them.
Since my last entry, many milestones have occurred: I have seen friends from Columbia, finally left Spain, and even left the European continent! The latter is kind of ridiculous, but I only validate it with my unique circumstances of my family living in Hong Kong and it being my semi-home (this association having gotten stronger since this last trip to HK--more on that later.)
So without further ado here are some of my stories :)
A Sunny Journey to Sitges
Sitges, the famous site for the crazy Carnaval that happens before Lent, is actually the Spanish P-town (prototype: international gay beach town), so Katie and I decided to take a little day trip there one lovely Saturday morning. The original plan was that we would be going with a few other friends from our program, and actually be social with people outside of our homestay. Alas, no one wanted to play with us (aka we have no friends), so we ended up going on our lone-twosome. Thankfully both of us are easily amused both by ourselves and by each other, so it was still a great time even without other friends!
Sitges is about an hour outside of Barcelona, and we took the train there (and didn't pay extra by illegally using our unlimited metro passes to get into the station...) A friend of mine from Barcelona told me that it would be a good idea to get off at the station after the Sitges station because there was a nice little path on the border of the sea that would lead us to Sitges. So we opted for the scenic route, thinking that it would take maybe an hour at the most.
However, to our pleasant surprise, the trek took almost 3 hours. But it really was vale la pena (worth it)! The views were beautiful, the waves were rolling, and the sun was shining. The only thing was that the sun was only shining on our right side as we were journeying along the coast, and so by the end of the trip, only the right side of my body really got any sun, and a lot of sun it got! I was slightly burnt, but again it was totally vale la pena.
Upon our arrival in Sitges, we began to search for the Japanese restaurant that a few of our classmates had recommended. We were about to give up, but thankfully we finally stumbled upon it with its Bamboo-related name. It actually was the first decent Chinese food that I have had in Spain!
After spending the rest of the day lounging on the beach, we opted to make a pitstop at the supermarket before hopping on the train. In true Spanish fashion, we picked up a plastic 1 liter bottle of Tinto Verano for the road and proceeded to drink it on the train. I honestly wish they would make juice box versions of this stuff. It's like juice.
On the train, we sat across from one of my favorite and one of my least favorite parts of Spain. The sighting of my least favorite thing was this overly-affectionate couple who really needed to get a room. The sighting of one of my most favorite things was the most adorable little Spanish child who kept on calling his mom who was sitting across from him on his plastic cell phone, while stealing glances at me and Katie every once in a while.
All in all, it was pretty great day :)
Paris, Je T'aime
The first thing that I felt upon arriving in Paris was that the city fits its romantic stereotype. The architecture, the people, the landscape... everything was just so much more beautiful and classy than anything I had ever seen in Barcelona. I usually think of Barcelona as being a really dirty and hard-shelled city. There is just a hardness here that is difficult to explain, mostly manifested through its people, I think. Not that I had much contact with French people because I was with Melanie (my friend from Barnard who is studying abroad there this semester) most of the time, but at least the background of Paris was more soft.
Another thing I noticed was that Paris is definitely a major tourist spot, but I didn't feel like the city really compromised its culture or identity to the invasion of tourists. Barcelona is a different story. Now, again, maybe it is because I was in Paris with someone who has lived there for some time, and lived their when she was younger as well, but I didn't get the sense that the city's life revolved around tourism, and that was a really nice thing.
I was extremely lucky because the day I arrived in Paris was the day that they had a strike in the transport system, so I rode into my friend's apartment completely free! Then the next day, I somehow pulled off sneaking into the station each time we took the metro. And for the rest of the time I was there, I used my friends' passes that they left behind when they returned to the US. I also saved on housing because I stayed with my friend in her apartment, so expensive Paris got to eat my bubbles!
There are so many highlights from my time in Paris...
- people-watching: I discovered the joys of people-watching in Paris because there were just so many beautiful people to look at! I did not see a single mullet or drullet while I was in Paris. When we went out one night, all the boys were quite clean-cut (but not in the boring way, just in the clean way, haha). No wonder Paris is one of the meccas of fashion. Unfortunately, to avoid awkward situations, I wasn't able to adequately capture these moments, so you'll just have to believe me! Except the picture I am including to the left is of this little girl on her way down to the metro station holding a little fairy wand and carrying a backpack that says "Oui, oui, oui, oui"--one of the cutest things ever.
- visiting the Mosque: With my newfound interest in Islamic art, Melanie and I went to the Mosque in Paris, and we went just in time for one of the prayer times. It was so interesting to see the imam make his call for prayer, and to get to peek in on the prayer gathering. I've written about my appreciation for Islamic art in a previous entry, but it was really interesting to see it live in the present day, as opposed to my previous encounters with the historic Islam. It's making me very excited for my upcoming trips to Morocco and Turkey in less than two weeks.- the food market: I really loved the outdoor food market close to Melanie's apartment. I've been to my fair share of them in the places that I've been (from Guatemala to New York to Hong Kong), and for me food is such a pivotal representation of a culture. There is so much involved in the relationship that a certain people group has with their food--it shows the geographical location and climate, the type of society it was in the past, and just the taste of the culture. In the French food market, I saw a lot of cheese, baguettes, roasted chicken, fruits and vegetables. A lot of the vendors seemed to be of North African descent (no surprise there with all the French colonies in that region). Mel and I bought our cheese and baguette for lunch, and eventually made it to an area inside a modern art museum. It may have been the best gourmet cheese I have ever tasted. It was creamy, with a very subtle but strong taste, and the perfect texture for spreading on bread.
- other important sites I visited: the Eiffel Tower at night, Notre Dame, a stroll on the Seine (the bank of which we had a little guacamole picnic), a cemetery (in which Jim Morrisson is buried, who I don't really know much about, but others did and they kissed his grave with their lipsticked lips, haha)Paris made me want to learn French. I've always preferred Spanish, with which I feel like I have a love affair sometimes, but Paris made me appreciate the beauty of the French language. I would love to return to this city again someday in the future. I didn't spend nearly enough time in it.
La Costa Brava (the Wild Coast)
This is one of the ultimate Spanish tourist destinations for Northern Europeans who want to enjoy the 3 S's of Spain: sun, sea, sand (+1: sangria =D). I went on a trip with my program to here, but unfortunately the night before we left, my right knee started to hurt a lot, and I almost thought that I wouldn't be able to go on the trip. Thankfully, I braved it and was glad I did so because aside from missing out on the trek along the wild coastline, I was able to participate in everything else.One of the highlights of the trip was when we went to the Dali Museum. Dali made my brain hurt. He is absolutely insane and genius. He had a fetish with bread, painted a portrait of Beethoven with octopus tentacles, decided to bury himself in the middle of the museum he created to celebrate his works, decided to design an apartment out of a woman's face... there is so much else that I cannot describe because there are not really words to describe his artistic expression.
Another highlight was in the Southern French town of Collioure, which we visited on our last day. It was quite incredible to have just crossed the border into another country without really realizing it, and then need to speak a whole other language. I supposed if I could speak Catalan, I would've been able to get by a little better for the few hours that we were there, but Spanish apparently does not sound too much like French. I actually did the same thing when I was in Paris--Spanish being my foreign language, I immediately tried to speak it because I was in a foreign context. I realize that this has been the first time that I have traveled in a country where I have absolutely no knowledge of the language at all, aside from the basic hellos and goodbyes, and even then I cannot read it in a phonetic fashion. Actually, I think French is very hard to read, with its silent t's and weirdly placed accents (yes, yes, this is from my Spanish-biased perspective).Anyway, my friends and I went to get gelato after lunch, and of course I couldn't adeptly communicate with the gelato-lady and fell into my default foreign language of Spanish. However, there were these two other women also ordering ice cream who apparently sounded like they were British, but also spoke French and (reluctantly) helped me in the communication, but not without commenting that "Spanish won't get you very far in France" to which I replied "well, I'm only going to be in France for 4 more minutes anyway, so it doesn't really matter to me." (Not) regretfully, my snarkiness got the better of me :-[ But it was a funny moment, to say the least.
Collioure was also fun because we actually got some great weather while we were there! Unfortunately, even though Franco promised us sun, sand, and sea in Costa Brava, we were left with mostly sand and sea. It is a lovely little town (aside from the catty British French speakers), and there is even a windmill and this cool little cube that sits on top of the hill (which you can see behind me in the left picture) that looks as though it has Arabic architectural origins. We went on an adventure to visit these two monuments, and although it took us some time, it was well worth it! It is very hard for me to believe that in just a mere 9 days, I will be leaving this experience. I'll be still traveling and embarking on a new adventure in various different countries, but the study abroad experience with my classes, my homestay, the life here... is about to be over. There is so much that I'm going to miss, especially the things that have become so daily and familiar to me that I don't even realize that I will miss them at this present moment. I will write in more detail about these reflections some other time, as well as about my Spring break trip to Hong Kong and Shanghai, but for now I must get back to my papers!
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