Passport to Paris

Hey people,

First off, yes I am continuing my theme of naming posts after Mary Kate and Ashley movies but this one I think actually makes sense in a weird way. That would be the fact that I didn't show my passport to anyone coming or going from Spain or France- weird. Also sad because now I have no stamp. Sorry back to the point now- I went to Paris this weekend!!!!

We left Friday morning and got to our hotel by lunch time. This hotel was the worst I've ever stayed in ever but that's ok because it was Paris. I went to a café with a few friends and got a sandwich on delicious bread and an éclair that weirdly had ice cream in the middle. Then all of API trekked over to the Louvre for a tour. It was so huge that I feel like we didn't even see half of what was in there but we did see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and a cool sphinx from Egypt.

The Tuileries

The Louvre

Mona Lisa

My friends and I ventured off on our own to find dinner and then to see the Eiffel tower at night. I think the coolest part was when it started sparkling, which it does every hour for 5 minutes. Then of course we got lost and didn't make it back to the hotel until 1 AM.

Sparkly Eiffel Tower

Saturday morning began with a 3 hour bus tour of the city that had two stops. One to see a great view of the Eiffel tower and the other to see the Invalides military hospital where Napoleon's tomb is.

Me and the Eiffel Tower!

Invalides

We ended the tour at Notre Dame, which is definitely one of the most beautiful cathedrals I've ever been to.

Notre Dame

After that we started to follow my insanely packed schedule, needless to say we didn't get to do everything but we did a lot and were exhausted by the end of the day. First we went to the lock bridge, then the Luxembourg Gardens, and finally the Arc de Triomphe. At this point we were too hungry to continue and went to find dinner.

Lock bridge

Luxembourg Gardens

It's actually fall!!

 

 

Arc de Triomphe

We ate at a café with a view of the Eiffel tower and I got French onion soup because it's just too funny that they only call it onion soup there. We ended the day by going up to the second floor of the Eiffel tower (the top floor was closed because of the wind) and the view was incredible. We didn't stay for long because it had started to get really cold and pretty late too.

Paris :)

On our last day we had the whole morning to ourselves so we went to the Musee de Orsay and saw lots of Van Gogh's and Monet's, unfortunately no pics sorry. We walked along the Seine on the way back to the hotel and finally left for the airport. The last thing I did before leaving France was to grab some macaroons for the flight- so delicious.

The Seine

Yay macaroons!

While in Paris I couldn't help but compare it to Madrid and was pretty surprised by what I thought about both cities. First of all I did love Paris, don't get me wrong it was amazing, but it is also very big, spread out, confusing and expensive. It definitely made me miss Madrid where everything you need is all in one spot and you can get tapas for like 2 Euros. The Paris metro is also pretty gross, while Madrid's is the cleanest I've ever seen. Another problem I ran into was the language barrier. People in Paris speak French- shocking I know- but the weird part was that even though most people spoke English it seemed to make more sense to try to speak in Spanish to me because I knew that I was in a foreign country. This tends to cause problems because no one speaks Spanish there. That definitely messed with my head. Another problem that I know I will unfortunately have with all cities in the future is the fact that things close. Madrid is the only place where everything is open literally all night long. My last observation is definitely in favor of Paris and that is the people. I've always heard how horrible French people are to Americans but I felt so welcome there, everyone I met was friendly and polite which was a pleasant surprise after Madrid. The people here are actually awful- I have not met a single person here who is friendly, likes Americans, or is not completely rude. Sorry that was a lot of info but I just have too many thoughts in my head :)

The ballet store <3 so many pointe shoes

Paris was amazing but I am sad that I didn't get to do nearly enough of what I wanted. That can be a good thing though because now I have a mile long list of all the things I want to do next time I go.

Love,
Sam

Segovia and Santander

Hey people,

So this post is about last weekend when I was traveling around to different cities in Spain. On Friday I went on a history field trip to Segovia with 3 other girls from Suffolk, our professor, and a lot of other kids from his class from University of San Diego. I can happily say he likes us better because they're all crazy and he spent the whole day with us :) The first thing we saw when we got there was the aqueduct which was amazing. It's still so in tact and also really looks like it could fall down any second I have no idea how it's still standing. After that we went to the cathedral and had lunch. Our last stop was the Alcazar (castle) where I climbed 152 stairs to get to the top, laid down on the ground for 10 minutes (I'm apparently very out of shape and I hate stairs), and then got to appreciate the amazing view. After that we headed back to Madrid.

The Aqueduct

The Cathedral

Plaza Mayor

Me, Jordan, and Kira where Isabella was crowned Queen

El Alcazar

The view

The next day API (my study abroad program) took us to Santander for the weekend. Santander is the capitol of Cantabria in the north of Spain. After a 6 hour bus ride we arrived and I was pleasantly surprised to find the weather was beautiful, which was great because we were right next to the beach. After getting a quick lunch and stopping for ice cream we went to see the royal summer palace and is currently being used as a summer school. After we saw exact replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria- so tiny haha. Then we walked to the city center and just wandered around for a while. To end the night me and a few friends got a pizza and a bottle of wine and chilled on the beach for a few hours.

Ice cream and the beach- perfect day

Palace

The boats

The next day we headed to Las Cuevas de Altamira, which are these amazing caves with some of the oldest and most detailed cave paintings ever found. Unfortunately you can't go in the real caves so we only saw a replica- which you can't take pictures of weirdly. Then we went to this awesome small medieval town called Santillana del Mar. We got lunch and walked around and I found a torture museum that made me so excited until I realized we had to leave and I couldn't go in :( Then we left for another 6 hour bus ride home.

It looked so awesome!!

That's it for that weekend but this weekend I'm going to Paris ahhhhhhh I can't wait I'm sooooo excited!!!!!

Love,
Sam

Midterms Ahhhhh!!!

Hey people,

I'm so sorry that it's been so long since I last posted but things have been crazy busy around here since midterms started. Also can I say- how is it possible that I'm already halfway done?? I am now at the point where I love it here so much that the idea of ever having to leave kills me a little bit. But it's ok because I still have some time left and lots to do. Besides doing lots of studying and paper writing I have been out exploring Madrid some more too. Last weekend I went shopping with Meaghan (my roommate) and later we joined our friend Brooke and actually went to Kapital. It is the biggest, most popular club in Madrid- it's 7 stories and all of them are different. It was really fun and insane and I have lots of stories that I won't write here because that would take forever. I finally feel like a real Spanish person for going to this club at 1 and coming home at 7 which is what they do like every night!

Kapital!!

The next day Meaghan and I went to the Reina Sophia museum and saw lots of cool art. It's more modern than the Prado and has lots of Picasso's in there. It was pretty awesome- here are some of my favorites.

A World by Angeles Santos Torroella

Guernica by Picasso (was not supposed to take this pic haha)

Magala Garden by Francisco Iturrino

I also finally went to El Tigre!! It's a tapas place that everyone loves and now I know why :) You go in and just order a drink and they give you a huge one followed by lots of delicious Spanish food for free.

soooo good!!

One more thing that I realized I haven't talked about yet is the English classes I've been teaching. I teach a 15 year old girl on Tuesday and on Thursday I teach two sisters that are 19 and 16. Their English is pretty much perfect so I'm getting paid to just help with homework and talk to them in English yay! This weekend I was traveling around Spain but I'll have to come back to that in a few days because I still have more studying to do.

Love,
Sam

Soaking in Some Culture

Hey people,

Sorry it's been so long but I've been super busy with classes and stuff since my last post. My classes for some reason have been seriously stressing me out and I constantly have to remind myself that they don't actually count. Aside from that I have been doing quite a few new typical Spanish things recently. I finally got chocolate churros!!! It's churros like in America only more plain and they give you a cup of melted chocolate to dip them in and you just finish it with a spoon when you're done. So delicious.

Then last Saturday API took us on a day trip to Toledo, which is a really cool old historical city. It became a major city in Roman times, the capitol when the Visigoths ruled, and an important center for Christians, Jews and Muslims during Moorish rule. It is also the city where El Greco lived in Spain and the sword capitol of the world. We took a walking tour through the old Jewish quarter, saw El Greco's masterpiece (no pics allowed), and went to the Cathedral. Me being such a history nerd I was in heaven the whole trip, but the Cathedral was definitely the best part. First of all it actually had the original 14th century stained glass still there! Also I don't actually know why I found this so funny but I'll tell you anyway, next to a beautiful statue that belonged to Queen Isabella was a little trophy thing that was a gift from the city of Toledo Ohio, just sitting there amid all the medieval treasures haha. Final fun fact that's not really historical at all, but still cool, is the fact that they had outdoor escalators just to get around the city.

The view of Toledo

 

14th century stained glass!!

 

Monday was another first when I went to a Flamenco workshop. I was unaware before starting that not only would I be learning an entirely new kind of dance, but that the whole class would be in Spanish. It ended up being fine and I understood everything she said, at least my listening comprehension has clearly improved even if I still can't speak it. We learned the first part of a traditional Flamenco called Sevillanas. At first we just learned the footwork, then added arms, fingers and finally went to dance the whole thing with a partner. It very quickly went from easy to difficult to impossible. You would be surprised how difficult dancing is when you're supposed to move your fingers too. However, we were told not to be discouraged because there are classes that study this first section for a whole year to perfect it. In the end I had so much fun and would gladly do it again. The only down side was realizing for the first time here how much I miss dance!

Couldn't stop turning it into ballet- fifth position lol

 

And this is a disaster

 

On Wednesday API took us to see an incredible show called Mayumana. When I showed up at the theater I still had no idea what the show was and I probably won't be able to do a good job of describing it here but I'll try. It was a group of people who danced tons of different styles and made music with just about anything you could think of- buckets, trash cans, pipes, water, and their own bodies. They also did this really cool thing where one person would make an epic song video taping each section, then playing them all back on repeat on a giant screen only to come back and dance to their new creation in the end. Of course following all this Spanish stuff my roommate Meaghan and I went to TGI Fridays and I almost died of happiness.

The theater

 

Dancing/ making a song wearing flippers
 

Well that's about it for now!

 

Love,

Sam