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| Date: Thanksgiving Weekend; November 24-27, 2000 Place: Barcelona, Spain |
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| One last story to sum up my November travels. It begins only three and half-short days after my return from Nice. Needless to say, sleep, laundry, and classroom work were three things that I was definitely falling behind on in November. As many of you know Thanksgiving morning began as every other Thursday morning does around here. Classes at 8:00, teaching, teaching, and teaching. So during the morning, as I tried to keep students focused, my own mind was back in the States. It was hard not to think about sleeping in and waking up to turkey cooking in the oven, watching the Macys's day parade, and watching football all day. But somehow I managed to make it through the morning. The school had a formal, Thanksgiving banquet that began at 12:30 in the afternoon, so it was only a half-day of classes. The food at the banquet was pretty good (as good as cafeteria style Thanksgiving could be) but I was rushed through dessert in order to catch the bus that would take us to the airport. |
| We arrived in Geneva airport a little after four o'clock for a six o'clock flight. This trip was a vacation, so I brought no work and was responsible for no students. My travel companions were Tracy - music (companion in Nice as well), my roommate Mary Katharine - piano teacher, and Russ � history teacher. Ironically enough one of the other teachers from school had organized a school trip to Barcelona with forty kids for the weekend as well. So we traveled to the city with many of our students. But we made a point to let the chaperons of the their trip to take care of the students needs, and to just be social with the students. The flight was very smooth. We fly Swiss Air, which was quite different than the Easy Jet that we were used to flying on. Easy Jet offers no perks in return for cheaper flights. Swiss Air has leather seats, snacks and drinks, and is very luxurious. It was a nice flight. I received the window seat, next to my roommate, and so I got to see the city lights as we flew into the city. Once we arrived we exchanged money, and found the bus system to get us to our hotel. The group of students had a chartered bus so they didn't have to worry about transportation. We were not sure how close their hotel was to ours but we were sure to find the other for one way traffic and one lane on the left for one way traffic and then a huge cobblestone road down the middle for pedestrians. On the road in the middle there were musicians lining the way and tons of magazine stands and park benches. It was beautiful out. |
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| I would say that it was about 55 degrees. Not bad for a November evening. As we walked down the path we saw a few of our students. Putting one and two together we figured that their hotel must not be far from ours, so we asked a few kids and got directions to their hotel. Once we knew we made our way over to see if the other teachers wanted to go grab some dinner with us. The other teachers were Giovanna - Spanish teacher and organizer of the trip, Corey - English teacher, Jeff- my German teacher, and Rudolf - activities intern and post graduate student from LAS last year. As it turned out the other teachers (except Giovanna) did want to get some dinner so seeing as it was already 11:30pm and we were just sitting down to dinner, we went right next door to their hotel for a little Spanish specialties. We all ordered paella only with different toppings. I had vegetable and most of the others had seafood combos. Of course no one ordered red meat. We also ordered Sangria. And my roommate, who up to now, never have a drink discovered that Sangria, was something that she quite enjoyed. Dinner was delicious although as we sat there we watched four kids run from the hotel after check in time. Yippy!! Sneaking out. The four of us that were not chaperons sighed with relief that we were not responsible as the other teachers got up to run after the kids. Got to love it. After dinner our group of four along with Jeff and Ruddy went for a long walk. We ended up down by the water where there was a long strip of discos. |
| Friday morning we all slept in till almost eleven. Nothing like teachers staying up late on a day that they had taught. Once we were all up and dressed (the tiny shower in the bedroom was quite a trick), we had decided that our first stop was to go see Sagrada Familia (the Temple of the Holy Family). It is a beautiful cathedral that they began construction over a hundred years ago and is still only 2/3 done. When we first arrived at the front of the cathedral we notices a long line because of a guided tour. So we decided to walk around the area, grab a little lunch, and then come back when the crowds had thinned out. The cathedral is right in the middle of the city so there were plenty of little shops and cafes around. I decided to go with my favorite as a little girl, a whole loaf of pain (all to myself). Everyone else grabbed a sandwich and we sat and ate on a street bench. The challenge was finding a cold drink to wash it down. It quickly became clear that cold liquid was not a concern of the Spanish. As we walked around we came across a store that was covered with hundreds of Iladro. I had to take everyone in to show them these beautiful things that my mother had always collected. I don't think everyone else was quite as excited as I was but they appreciated them just the same. After about an hour of walking around we made our way back to the cathedral. Our plan worked out successfully and the crowds had thinned right down. Mary Katharine and I decided that we wanted to walk to the top of one of the towers to see the city view. The towers were made of spiral staircases that were dark with occasional peak holes out to the city. I believe that we climbed over 350 stairs and we were both surprised at how NOT tired we were. We began to call ourselves the "chamois" (Swiss mountain goats). And had to attribute how good we felt after climbing all the stairs to our Swiss lifestyle. At the top we took a few minutes to take pictures. The view of the city was extraordinary. I knew that the film would not be able to capture it all. But as those of you ho know me must know, I had to try. Once we left the cathedral we decided to continue walking through some shops. I picked up some black with gold in-lay jewelry, like I had when I was a little girl. And I couldn't stop starring at the Spanish dolls like the one in the pink dress that I had on the shelf my pepe had made me, for so many years. |
| We walked passed all the discos and decided that would be where we would meet up tomorrow night. Our evening jaunt brought us back to our hotel at about quarter of two in the morning. As we had already heard, that was a very early night out when in Spain. We knew that the rest of our nights there would not be so early. |
| . Once we had enough of looking at the shops by the Temple we headed back toward the area of our hotel. We went up to the room for a short break to rest our feet and then we were out again. One street down from our hotel we came across a neat market with fresh sausages, cheese, wines, and Spanish treats. We picked up some sausage, cheese, bread, and Sangria. And after a few hours of walking around, headed back to the hotel room for a cheap dinner. We sat on our beds and had the sausage, cheese, and bread, and a little too much Sangria. We had a beautiful little balcony from our room, so our dinner (though not fancy) was complete with great conversation, and plenty of entertainment from the street. |
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