Barcelona, Blisters, Colds, and Classes

It has been a hard week. Between blisters, registration for classes (que fracaso), illness, and all the consequences of these things… oh boy. Long. Week.

But let’s start with the fun part—Barcelona!!! This past weekend was spent very pleasantly in Barcelona, arguably Spain’s most international city alongside Madrid due to its proximity to France, and therefore Europe, as well as its size and appeal as a travel destination for foreigners. I adored the city, although I feel like it might have been a bit overwhelming to study abroad in because it’s so big, and also because many people prefer to speak the local co-official language, Catalán, as opposed to Spanish. In some ways, I could understand the Catalan better than my fellow travel companions because I speak French as well and some of the words were basically a mix of Spanish and French (exit = sortie (fr.) + salida (sp) = sortida!), but sometimes it was just bizarre and made me feel like my brain was melting. The fact that some of the buildings also appear to be melting only adds to the weird mental delirium! :P Antoni Gaudí was a modern artist around the turn of the 20th century who created much of what makes Barcelona so fascinating to me—he designed and built several awesome but bizarre houses (the melting ones, plus some that look like gingerbread houses from fairy tales), the Sagrada Familia Cathedral with its melting front and fruit bulbed turrets, and the Parque Güell, with rock tree formations, an undulating ceramic patchwork bench, and an adorable Salamander fountain. He was so cute I had to give him a kiss. :) The first day of our weekend was mostly spent running around the city to see these various buildings, and wandering through Parque Güell, where I bought a really beautiful swirly ring from a gypsy and the other girls got scarves, rings, and necklaces. In the afternoon, we wandered down Las Ramblas to the Market of the Boquería, a really lovely market where all the fruit, candy, dried fruit, and other products are displayed with such precision and organization that it seems almost a shame to buy anything and disrupt the displays! Every stand was like a posed painting, and the exotic nature of much of the fruit added to this impression. I bought a little fruit bowl for only a euro fifty for an afternoon snack, and feasted on the mango, watermelon, strawberries, coconut, cactus fruit, and honeydew quite happily. That evening, my friend did a really lovely decorative braid in my hair, which was super exciting for me because I am basically a tomboy at heart and can’t do a damned thing with my hair most of the time except pray that it behaves itself! :P This first night, we found an all-you-can-eat buffet with a gorgeous salad bar and yummy pizza and pasta and gorged ourselves. I think almost every single one of us six girls ate over three plates of food, and most of us regretted it after, but it was still a fantastic (and fun) meal.

Of course, being the bright, forward-thinking young ladies we are, we forgot that we had planned to have a beach day the next day, and now the prospect of displaying bulging bellies in our dainty bikinis didn’t seem quite so appealing. :P However, we held fast to our plan and made our way over to the coarse sand beaches the next day to enjoy the sunshine and a break from sightseeing. Only four of the six ended up staying all day, and I am happy to say that I was one of them! I am also VERY proud to say that I managed to avoid sunburn despite being under the sun the whole day—yay for sunscreen!! It was a wonderfully relaxing day, and a very much needed break from both the daily grind as well as the frantic sightseeing of the previous day. Unfortunately, I was a bit of a ditz and didn’t drink quite as much water as I should have; when we got up to go back to the hostel, I suddenly felt dizzy, nauseated, faint, and way overheated. Oopsies, heat exhaustion! I really should have known better, but I was lucky to have great friends with me to pulled me along through the metro and force fed me water until we got to the hostel, and then basically pushed me into a cold shower, after which I felt much better and was able to lay down for a few hours to regain some strength before dinner. Dinner tonight was much simpler and smaller—pizza at a little cafeteria next to the hostel, and then gourmet ice cream before girly chat time in our bedroom and to sleep.

Our last morning in Barcelona, we wandered the Gothic Quarter a bit and had a coffee next to the Gothic Cathedral before visiting the Chocolate museum, which was both charming and delicious—the ticket to get in was a chocolate bar!!! :) My favorite chocolate sculptures were the ones that reinacted scenes from the French comic Astérix and “Up!” I was super excited about the Up one in particular—it was so adorable!!!

Our voyage home was long but uneventful, other than the fact that I was now beginning to feel positively horrible—congested, exhausted, achy, with very sensitive skin—all sure signs that I’m coming down with something unpleasant. As I had predicted, I woke up Monday morning feeling miserable, and skipped my morning classes to be able to rest and try to get a bit better. Tuesday I also skipped my morning classes, and I am SO glad I did, because by Wednesday evening I was starting to feel better, and today I am all better except for a little residual congestion. Still, you all know how much I HATE being sick, so I was quite a grump at the beginning of the week.

To add to my grumpiness, I had registration for next semester’s classes on Tuesday at 4pm Pacific time… which is 1 am my time. As I do not have internet in my house and didn’t want to stay up, and wander out alone and sick at one in the morning to an internet café, I did something kind of maybe like having my parents register for me. Maybe. I mean, I would never do anything against Scripps rules like give my password out… but come on. No one would blame me if I had.

Anyways, the one class I NEED to complete my general education requirements is a Natural Sciences class. Of course, by the time my registration time came around, both the ones I had picked out as non-science-major classes that fit in my schedule were full. Haha. Ha. Ha. Ha. Yeah. I was not so happy about that. I suppose maybe karma is trying to save me up some good luck so that my plane doesn’t get stuck in volcanic ash on the way home, but still. It was just another blow to my mood during an already difficult week. Well, I wrote to the teacher of my preferred class, and I’m fairly sure he’ll let me in, but I still don’t enjoy the extra stress that registration added to my week. Happily, I got into my three other classes without any fuss—“Voyage et Exotisme” (French class on Travel and Exoticism through literature), “Within the French Salon” (Another French lit class, to be taken with my lovely Melissa!!), and an Intro to Latin American Culture and Civ class (because I think I’ve got Spain covered now).

The next day I was so stressed about writing to the teacher and hearing back from him as soon as possible that I almost RAN back and forth from school—under the hot midday sun, in sandals, while sick—twice, and in doing so, gave myself a very angry blister. Guess where the blister was? Not on the side of my foot, not on my heel, no, on the BOTTOM of my foot, right under my second toe. And it was BIG—it probably protruded a good quarter of an inch (I don’t actually know since I didn’t measure it, but it was a lot of protruding angry blister, that’s for sure). THIS, my friends, was the cherry on top, and suddenly, I wasn’t angry or frustrated any more. Oh no, now I was hysterical, and hysterical for me means that I’m all laughs and giggles—and on the precipice of a nervous breakdown. It’s a dangerous but surprisingly enjoyable state to be in. Well, luckily, things started turning around and I didn’t have to have any breakdowns. When my host mom got home from the movies (Wednesday is her night to go to the movies with her friends, she’s so cute!), I showed her the blister and she called her friend (who was a nurse) to ask what the best course of action was. Because the blister was on the bottom of my foot, there was nothing to do but pierce it with a needle and drain the fluid so that I could walk the next day. I was really nervous that it would hurt a LOT, but because the surface of the blister is dead skin, the piercing and draining process was relatively painless! Concha and I had a good laugh over it and off to bed I went, feeling much more cheerful. Concha always has this affect on me. :)

Over the past two days, I’ve been resting up, and the blister has been healing beautifully under the strict supervision of Concha and repeated sterilization with… iodine? Some yellowish liquid that she uses as an antiseptic liquid. Tomorrow I’m off to the beach with some friends for the day to “work on my tan”—by that I mean lie in the sun all day obsessively applying sunscreen and watching my freckles start to appear. My nose is already highly freckled and adorable. :)

I almost forgot! Monday is Día de la Cruz, and all over Granada they set up crosses and play traditional music and people dance Sevillanas (traditional dance, relative of Flamenco), so yesterday Concha started teaching me Sevillanas! At first she was just going to teach me the first part (there are four parts), but I did so well that we made it right up to the fourth part last night!!! She said that I learned more in a day than many people learn in months of classes—I was very proud. Anyways, she wants me to dance it with her for her friends, which I’m excited about. I just LOVE spending time with Concha—I definitely feel like she has been one of the most positive parts of my experience here in Spain, and she made this week in particular much more bearable. :)

I hope you all have enjoyed a less turbulent week than me, with considerably less blisters. ;)
Pura vida,
Kelsey