Barcelona

Sept 20

Oh wow what a crazy week! This week I began my classes and my internship at the Women’s World Bank. Classes have been going great. I am taking 3 classes including History of Spanish Culture, Contemporary Spanish Novels, and Spain & the EU. All of my professors are wonderful. They are so passionate about what they teach and these classes are so interesting because everyday I am learning something new about the wonderful country and world I am in!

My internship at the Women’s World Bank has also been quite an experience. I am working directly for the president of the organization; however my first week was a bit frustrating. This first week has involved lots of secretary type work, such as answering the phones, which is quite difficult considering how fast the Spanish speak! It is one thing to be able to talk in Spanish to someone in person, and quite another to try to take down phone numbers, names, and address over the phone. Although I was very overwhelmed at first, I feel I have definitely improved and this second week has been more of what I hoped I would be doing at WWB. I have been doing lots of translating from Spanish to English of partner’s websites as well as using my French! Soon I will be helping to plan for a big WWB Conference in November. I am very excited to begin working on that!


This past week was INCREDIBLE. A group of 8 of us decided last minute to head to Barcelona (before it starts to get colder). The group included BU, Northwestern, and Michigan students. We took a 9 hour train ride from Madrid to Barcelona, where we laid in train beds that were the size of about half a normal twin size bed. We left at 10pm on Thursday night and arrived in Barcelona at 7am on Friday morning. Needless to say, it was an interesting experience but definitely worth the ride, especially when we arrived to beautiful Barcelona and headed directly for the Beach!! It was so hot and just gorgeous. We spent the day at Port Vello and enjoyed swimming in the Mediterranean. Later in the afternoon, we left the beach and checked in at our Hostel. The Sun and Moon Hostel was surprisingly very nice! We had one room for the 8 of us, and we shared one private bathroom. It was like going to summer camp . . . Friday night we went out for a little but were extremely exhausted from the trip and had an early night.

Saturday morning we awoke to LOTS OF RAIN, so we decided we would head to the Picasso Museum. The Museum was great, and I ended up buying lots of postcards – my favorite part of the museum was seeing Picasso’s renditions of Velazquez’s Las Meninas. Saturday night we went to a club called City Hall. We arrived at 2am (considered early for the Spanish) and since we didn’t know where we were going in the club we accidentally walked into the V.I.P. room. We ended up being able to sit all night out on this gorgeous balcony and pretend we were really important. We had a blast and didn’t sleep all night – we ended up having to go back to our room and having to check out of the hostel. I would do it over again in a heartbeat.


After checking out of the hostel on Sunday Morning, a couple of us decided to go to church at Barcelona’s Cathedral Basilica. The cathedral was beautiful and gave us all goose bumps. The entire mass was said in either Latin or Catalan. After mass, we walked around Barcelona, watched street performers, stopped at Farmer’s Market (they had chocolate cheese and spicy chocolate), and had a small lunch. We then headed to La Sagrada Familia designed by Antoni Gaudí I have never seen anything more impressionable in my life. Gaudí worked on the cathedral for 40 years of his life until he died in 1926. The cathedral is still unfinished, and as you can tell by the scaffolding – it still has a long way to go. We walked all the way up the stairs through a tiny winding staircase and had the chance to look at the amazing view of Barcelona. After taking a billion pictures of la Sagrada Familia, we went to Park Guell, the home and park designed by Gaudí. The park looks like a crazy fun land with beautiful mosaics and homes. From the top of a hill at the park we had an incredible view of the one of the things Barcelona is most famous for: the contrast between the mountains, the ocean, and the huge city – all together. We were speechless.


After a wonderful weekend in Barcelona, we headed back for a 9 hour train ride arriving in Madrid at 7am . . . and going to work at 9am. Running on almost no sleep but definitely worth it! Thank god for the Spanish siesta ;)