Catching Up on Two Months...

 Three of my roommates and I decided to take a day trip one weekend to El Escorial! It is free with our metro cards and only about an hour outside of Madrid, perfect for a Saturday trip. So we hopped on the bus and set out!

 I was excited to find out that El Escorial, a monastery and palace, is in the town of San Lorenzo, the city in California where I lived for the first four years of my life! It was kind of exciting. The truth is this sort of thing happens a lot in Spain, obviously with the Spanish claiming and naming most of California, there is a lot of crossover. These little similarities that I see every day give me a little sense of home and comfort. 

El Escorial was a Monastery for monks and the Royal residence for Philip II.

 It was just a beautiful day!

 We couldn't take pictures inside the palace but it was all very interesting!

 This day we took a day trip to Segovia, my favorite day trip so far! Segovia is about an hour North of Madrid, also by bus. This was our little CIEE army.

 The aqueduct is the most famous part of Segovia, constructed in the late 1st or early 2nd century AD. It is the most important Roman civil engineering work in Spain and consists of about 25,000 granite blocks held together without mortar. 

Hard to get four girls all together!

 Danielle, Jessica, Crystal and Me!

This is the Segovia Cathedral, the last Gothic cathedral built in Spain. We didn't go inside this though... 

 We did go inside the Alcazar of Segovia! The Royal Palace built in 1122! Here Laura and I are waiting to go inside and tour the castle.

Super mature hangin with some kid armor.  

Thanksgiving! Día de acción de Gracias! We found a turkey (not popular in Madrid) and divided up our tasks so we could have a great day!

 Then we found out our turkey still had feathers on it.... and like internal body parts....and blood. Super gross. After some minor (major) freaking out, we facetimed my mom to ask what the heck we do! This was all of our first times cooking a turkey. Jessica and Danielle took over plucking while I prepared the trimmings. Thanks Ma!

Hillary basting our bird! 

 She's ready! And delicious!

 Our table!

 desserts :-)

 Jessica hand made pumpkin pie! Even the little leaves on it! So crazy.

All the roomies! Left to right: Hillary, Danielle, Crystal, ME, Jessica!

Stuffed and happy! 

Last day trip of the month was to Cuenca! Cuenca is about 45 minutes southeast of Madrid in the Community of Castille-La Mancha, home of Don Quixote! 

This was the backdrop of our lunch, the center of town and so beautiful! 

The Cathedral of Cuenca! 

 One of the cool things about Cuenca are the hanging houses. They were built in the 15th century over rock and a gorge!

 I don't think I'm brave enough to live in a house hanging over a gorge!

It's been a great couple months exploring and living in Madrid! I am loving my 1st and 4th grade classes and co teachers. I am definitely not used to this cold and NEED to get a warmer coat basically yesterday but everything is going really great so far!

"This world is too big not to try and see it all."

Barthelona!

Better late than never right?? After some (much) prodding from my mom I am posting again! I know it will be worth it in the end, but actually taking the time to post is so time consuming :-/ 

Anyway, my roommate Crystal and I went to Barcelona on the weekend of October 9 because we had an extra long weekend! It was so fun. We took the bus (8 hours later...ugh) and stayed in a pretty nice hostel. We thought we had booked an all female room but ended up staying in a 10 bed dorm with 8 smelly guys. So that was fun. At least we were busy so much during the day that we were barely there!

Our first stop was the Sagrada Familia! This is one of the major highlights of Barcelona and the biggest work of Antoni Gaudí's. It began in 1882 and still is not finished, as evidence by all the cranes and construction going on in the picture below.  It is anticipated to be finished in 2026! So I'll have to plan to go back then and see the finished product. Crystal had been four years ago and she said it was already drastically different, imagine what it will look like in 10 more years!

The above picture is the Passion facade. It is more plain, simple and is carved with harsh straight lines to depict the bones of a skeleton. It is dedicated to the Passion of Christ and was intended to portray the sins of man.

This is the Nativity facade. It was the first facade to be completed, worked on from 1894 to 1930. It is dedicated to the birth of Jesus and was the artistic and architectural example for others to follow since it was the side most worked on by Gaudí.

The inside is so beautiful. The columns and roof are designed to look like trees and branches and basically everything represents something or other. 

The next Gaudí work we visited was Casa Batlló, or the House of Bones. In 1904 the Batlló family wanted to redesign their house and hired Gaudí to do so. They gave him free reign and wanted something to make them stand out.

This is a model of the house before and the refurbished house after!

Just some of Gaudí's interesting gothic, art nouveau additions.

The roof was one of the coolest areas, he wanted it to look almost dragon-like and you can see it does look like scales!

One of the windows that looks out onto the street.

We went on a walking tour of Barcelona and learned more about the history of Spain and the Catalonian history. This is an old church that had been shot at from planes by Franco's army.  They leave the walls as reminders of all the horrible things he did to them.  

Another beautiful Spanish sunset!

Casual water fountain

We had to stop by the beach!

Crystal and Me soaking up Barcelona!

Our final Gaudí work of the weekend was Casa Milà, also known as La Pedrera, also known as the Quarry. This was his last civil work built between 1906 and 1910. This was also commissioned by a family who wanted to redo their house.

hangin on the roof

These structures are covering the chimneys and doors to the stairs leading down!

So crazy!

We also visited the Olympic Stadium built for the 1992 Summer Olympics on Montjuic! (A mountain overlooking the city) 

Soooo, we went to get our tickets home and they were all sold out. Bus and train! We sorta freaked out but then there were bus tickets leaving at midnight back to Madrid...which takes 8 hours! Nothing we could really do. We ate a pizza and drowned our rookie mistake in sangria. Then we tried to sleep on the bus and as soon as we made it to the bus station in Madrid, I hopped on the metro and went straight to school! I made it on time but it definitely wasn't my finest day...Lesson learned.

"The start is what stops most people"