Party Paleys hit up Europe!

Hello blog reader! I hope all is well with you and you had a fabulous Thanksgiving. I had a great Thanksgiving, minus being in America, the (tofu)turkey, mashed potatoes, etc.. but I was able to be with my family and be very thankful.

Saturday, November 21st, after a day trip to La Garrotxa--a "volcano park" which was very cool, I returned to Barcelona to meet my parents at their hotel!! It was so very wonderful to see them, I am so glad they made the trip over here. That night we walked around my neighborhood, Sarria, went out for a delicious dinner and caught up on life! My brother arrived on early Sunday morning. For the next three days, we did many touristy things and I showed them the city..we walked down Las Ramblas, went to the beach, went to a flea market, Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia, the Gothic district, a cable car up to MontJuic...and so much more! We enjoyed paella, sangria, and lots of gelato many times throughout their visit.

I think the highlight was my family coming over for dinner with Maria. It went very well! Maria had spent the whole day preparing the house and the meal..which consisted of Tortilla Espanola (kind of an omelet, with onions and potatoes), Pan con Tomate (bread with olive oil and tomato, with cheese), and lots and lots of Jamon (ham). I was kind of nervous, seeing as a) she is crazy sometimes and b) she speaks no English..but there were no problems! My dad and brother speak some Spanish, and my mom can laugh, smile, and gesture just fine. We had great conversation and there were smiles all around. Maria loves guys, so she really enjoyed having my brother and dad in the house...fed them lots and lots of jamon. My dad really made her night when he left saying "Ciao Guapa!" ("bye beautiful!")..Maria is STILL talking about it.

On Wednesday, after Spanish class, we met up at their airport and rented a eurocar!! We then embarked on our journey to France! After a few struggles with the rental car (it took my dad about two hours to figure out how to put it in reverse!) and the GPS (which we named Rosa), we were on our way to Collioure, a small costal town that I had been to in my first month abroad. It's a beautiful, postcard town... it's dominated by tourism in the summer months, but empty during the rest of the year..so we basically had the place to ourselves. We wandered the streets and enjoyed the Mediterranean.

Thursday and part of Friday were spent in Avignon..an old walled city with the Palace of the Popes. It was a very neat town, with lots of history...and a Christmas market! We explored the town, checked out the palace and the Sur Le Pont de Avignon. We had an interesting drive back to Barcelona, listening to Taylor Swift (the only CD we had) with a broken GPS, so we had to rely on street signs and instinct to get us home. Luckily, only after one snag, we made it back to the airport and returned the car and all was well.

It was very sad to see the family leave on Saturday morning. It was a great visit..always good to see them during the holidays. It made me very thankful to be blessed with such wonderful family!

The big Christmas market in Barcelona started on Saturday, so my roommate and I went there during the afternoon and that night I saw the band Vetiver! I think it is kind of random they came to Barcelona, but I am not complaining. It was a great concert.

Next weekend: Amsterdam!

This marks the three week countdown.. in exactly three weeks from now I will be landing in the Cincinnati airport, immediately ready to go to Skyline and or Graeter's..

One Month Left...

Since Dublin, I have just been hanging out in Barcelona.

Last Tuesday, I went to an FC Barcelona game! They played a lower league team called Leonesa...which meant Barcelona won 5-0. It was great fun though, and very cool to see Camp Nou--the FC Barcelona Futbol Stadium. That place was huge. It would be wild to be there during a huge game.

Here is a video of one of the five goals...

Saturday, I went on a trip set up by IES to Montserrat. Montserrat is a town in the mountains about an hour North West of Barcelona by bus. It was absolutely beautiful. When we were driving there, it was very foggy, and then we passed through the layer of clouds once we got to the town! We were above them, it was very cool. In the morning, we took a tour of an art museum they had there, and then we saw a monastery and a cathedral. After that, we had some lunch and some friends and I took a tram up to the top of the mountain. The fog had cleared so we had some amazing views. There we hiked around a little bit and chatted on some rocks, while looking over Spain.

My family gets here this weekend!! I am very exited. We're going to hang out here in Barcelona for a few days, then we're renting a car and driving to some places in Southern France. I am really looking forward to it.

Work for my classes is finally starting to pick up..I have two ten paged papers due within the next month, as well as a big project and a couple presentations..should be fun?

After tomorrow, I only have one month left here in Barcelona! I really can't believe it..these past months have flown by.

That's all I got, I hope all is well with you, wherever you are!

"He's an Irish Monkey, He Likes His Potatoes"

This weekend I went to Dublin and loved every minute of it.

I met up with a great friend from Cincinnati named Lauren Dayton, who is studying abroad in Dijon, France. With Lauren were three girls from her program. Also, Lauren has a friend named Elliott from college who is studying abroad in Dublin. It was a great group of kids and we had a blast.

I am apologizing in advance for the bulleted list I am about to provide you. I feel like I would be repeating myself if I typed about each thing, because I would be writing ".....and it was great, and I loved it," so just assume that I thought everything was wonderful.

Friday:

-Landed in Dublin in the afternoon

-Toured the Guinness Factory

-Went to dinner at a great pub called O'Neills

-Had some cider and called it an early night

Saturday:

-Woke up early to go to the Dublin Zoo! I hold zoos to pretty high standards, seeing as Cincinnati's is pretty top notch, and I still enjoyed this zoo very much. We went right when it opened and it was a bit chilly, so we essentially had the place to ourselves. Going early was definitely a good choice because they had just fed the animals, so they were all very active. For example: we got to see tiger cubs romping with one another, we saw orangutans eating potatoes (very Irish), and got very up close and personal with a peacock.

-Saw the Wellington Monument

-Had lunch at a great restaurant

-Saw St. Patrick's Cathedral

-Explored St. Stephen's Green

-Walked around Merrion Square

-Went on a musical pub crawl, where we got to learn about Irish musical traditions, learn some songs, saw great performers, and laugh a lot.

Sunday:

-Went to a great brunch

-Saw the National Gallery

-Wandered the streets

-Went back to Barcelona

More things I liked about Dublin:

-Nice Irish people!! It was SUCH a change. The Catalan people are quite rude, cold, and snobby..so I really appreciated the Irish. Very friendly, always joking and laughing, very helpful, and a lot of Gingers!

-We had great weather. It rained every day, but only for maybe 15 minutes or so. For the most part, we had sunshine! Yes it was a little chilly, but I enjoyed the brisk temperatures.

-I just really liked the overall feel of the city. It definitely has hustle and bustle to it, but it's much more relaxed. It had an old feel to it with a big modern twist. I liked the open streets and the architecture

-I loved the amount of green grass all around the city

-I also liked the potatoes.........

So now I am back to life here in Barcelona. The weather has started to change a bit. It has been verrryyy windy here the past week, bringing in some cooler temperatures. Cooler being lower 60's (tough life, right?).

I came home to find that Maria was given an orange Canary as a gift from her veterinarian.... haha I didn't know that vets gave out presents, let alone birds. Maria already has a bird named Groc, and that has caused some major drama in her life. Groc was so great, and sang so much and was very chipper. About a month ago, she had the vet cut off a mandatory leg-band that domestic birds need to have..and well that caused quite the infection in poor Groc's leg...which then forced Groc's leg to be amputated!! Groc went into mourning and would no longer sing, and wouldn't leave his food dish area. Que triste. Well, every since the new bird, named Cay (pronounced: Ca-ay) joined the family, Groc has been back to his normal self! He is flittering around his cage, singing once again like he used to. Maria and I decided he was happy to have a friend, especially a friend with two legs. We also hope that Groc is not embarrassed by his lack of a leg. Drama in the bird world!! Anyways, that was something fun to come home to.

Not much going on this week in terms of classes (no surprise there). This weekend we were going to head to Prague, but plans fell through. I'm alright with that. I'm realizing I only have five and a half weeks left in Barcelona, so it will be nice to spend some more time here. I believe I will go on a day trip to a nearby town called Montserrat.

That's all I got, hope all is well!!

Past few weeks in Barcelona

Sorry for the lack of updates! Since Switzerland, I have stuck around in Barcelona and have kept pretty busy, so updating the blog kind of slipped my mind.

Let's see. I had three midterms the week after Switzerland.. Three in one week! Unheard of for a block plan student. Luckily these classes are not hard, so they were pretty easy. For example, my Mediterranean Oceanography midterm consisted of 20 multiple choice questions...and we knew the questions ahead of time. My other midterms had a little more to them, but weren't that challenging at all.

The weekend following midterms, I had two Oceanography field-trips, which I thought were pretty cool, most of the class did not. Friday we went to a small fishing town in Northern Spain called Palamos and we got to see all different types of fishing boats and gear and go to a fishing museum. Saturday we went to the Ebro River Delta and it was gorgeous. We saw different type of ecosystems that exist there and got to go a beautiful beach. We saw wild flamingos! I had never seen a flamingo in the wild before, so I was pretty pumped up about that. Unfortunately, the majority of kids on the trip were debbie downers, and instead of appreciating the experience, they just complained about wanting to go back to Barcelona the whole time.. very typical IES-Abroad students.

On Thursday, the Colorado College invasion began! Friends that are studying abroad in various countries in Europe came to visit for Halloween and we had such a great time. Thursday we went to Funk Night at a dance hall/bar type place. Friday, after seeing some sights, we went to a big 25 person dinner by the water. Saturday, we got into the Halloween mood by watching the movie "The Orphan" which was SO weird, walked around a the El Born neighborhood and ate delicious Mexican food and then got ready for Halloween! I have to say, I am quite impressed with how the costumes turned out. I was worried because there was no ARC, or good thrift stores, that we know of in Spain...so everyone had to get creative. Some friends and I dressed as "Noah's Ark Singles Only Cruise," because we didn't have enough people to have two of each animal. I was a giraffe (or, jirafa in Spanish), my friends were a tiger, a wolf, a cow, a frog, and a rooster. We went to another large dinner dressed in our costumes which was quite fun. After that we went to an Irish Pub/Bar in which my Noah's Ark friends and I won the costume contest!! We won 250 Euros!! It was so much fun! Sunday, after laying in bed until about 4, I met up with a CC friend Becca and we walked around Gaudi's Parc Guell.

All in all, this weekend was so great, one of the best I think I've had in Barcelona thus far. It was so awesome to see all the CC kids.

On Friday, I leave for Dublin to meet up with Lauren Dayton, a good friend from Cincinnati!

Hope all is well with you!