No comprendo :(

Wahoo! Only a month after the fact, I'm finally posting about my trip to Barcelona. Better last than never, right? Right.

The trip started off swimmingly. Courtney, Tristan, and I went to the train station around noon to get a train to Geneva, from where our flight was leaving at... 6 something? [Can I say "from where" in English? It works in French.] We found out there was no train, only a series of buses making random stops because they were working on the tracks on that specific route. Three days out of the whole month they were working on it, and we picked one of those days. So we got on the bus, got to where it stopped (an hour from Geneva), and were told we had to wait something like an hour and a half for the next bus. Which would take us somewhere else, where we could get a new bus that would take us to Geneva... buuuut we wouldn't get there in time for our flight. Awesome! So after I talked to the train info lady, we wound up taking a cab. To Geneva. For a grand total of 100 euro. Aaaand Tristan lost her keys somewhere between Chambéry and wherever the heck we were. Culoz?

After the cab ride, we suddenly have plenty of time to spare at the airport. This involved wandering around doing a whole lot of nothing. Whee. The flight to Barcelona was uneventful. After a train ride from the airport and a few changes on the subway, we found our hostel. The directions on the website lied, of course, so we walked by it a few times before we found the right street. Went back to the main part of the city but couldn't find Cori. Nobody's French phone wanted to work in Spain. :( Thus mine was rendered useless as well; I could call and text, but it didn't do any good since no one could answer. Fail. Had really expensive tapas. I tried crocodile & cheese. It was actually pretty good.

I may be slightly crazy, but when the guy said crocodile I was like "Must. Try." If only to say that I have.

Best part of the night:
In a train station. I freaked out a little. It was awesome. Even though it was closed.

Sunday we went to see la Sagrada Familia. It's pretty much the most ridiculous church I've ever seen. They've been building it since the late 1800's and at this point the projected finish date is like 2030. Yeah. Not going to post any of the 200 photos I took because you can't see half of it in any of them. You can see them on my Photobucket.

From there we went to lunch, met Cori, and went up to this old castle-fort-thing. It was interesting. La Sagrada Familia stood out from the Barcelona skyline. It reminds me of a giant spider creature, like something you'd see in Harry Potter or LotR. Go figure. We wandered around Barcelona a bit, then went to dinner at a place called Les Quinze Nits. Super cheap, really awesome. Super long line always starts in Plaça Reial, but it's so worth it. Went back to the hostel that night, talked to one of the guys at the check in desk, watched part of Iron Man with him and an Egyptian guy at the hostel. Hostels are cool for meeting people. :)

Next day we did a walking tour of Barcelona (it was free! I love Europe). It rained a little. Sad face. Wandered down to the harbor but didn't go to the beach. Had dinner at a place called Travel Bar, which was just that; little hideaway place for tourists. The dinner was only a euro with the purchase of a drink; we split a pitcher of sangria four ways, which meant 4 euro dinner. Epic win? Yes indeed. Wandered a bit, went back to the hostel, went to a club. I was in a fantastic mood the entire time because my wrist had decided it hated me again.

Tuesday was our last day in Barcelona. Slept late, went to Park Guell, which is this ridiculous park that Antonio Gaudi designed; he's also responsible for a lot of the ridiculousness in la Sagrada Familia. Went to the beach for a little while (sunburn fail!). I didn't go in the water, but I'd been in the Mediterranean twice before so whatever. Cold water is cold. Went back to Travel Bar to meet up for a cooking class they offered at their sister bar near the waterfront. Cooking class was less "class" than "sit here and watch me explain how to make paella." Also learned how to make sangria. That went over well. Seafood paella was pretty good, though having to peel the heads and legs off the shrimp wasn't fun. From there we went with a couple people from the cooking class to a little shot bar called Espit Chupitos. Chupito means shot. How clever. This place has over 500 shots and it was pretty awesome. They don't tell you what's in them, but some of them are fun. Some of them were scary (like the one called "diarrhea." No thank you.). There was a Harry Potter one that sparkled (by lighting the bar on fire and throwing sugar in it). Bob Marley one was layered green, yellow, and red. Etc. They were pretty clever. Went back to the hostel after a little while, got packed, and went to sleeeeep. Got up super early the next day to get to the airport, flew back to Geneva, killed a few hours there before catching a train back to Chambéry.

Overall, Barcelona was probably my least favorite place. There wasn't a whole lot to do or see. The stupid church is its biggest draw, I think, except maybe for the beaches. I did really like the old city and the few Roman things we saw, but that was really it. The city also reeked of urine, which was less than pleasant.

When it comes down to it, I prefer historical things to big cities, I guess. Paris and London and Istanbul all worked because they've merged the old and the new. Maybe I'd have liked Barcelona if I'd had more time to spend in the old city, I don't know. If nothing else, I can say I've been to Spain woo.

Y helo thar.

So. This time next week I'll have been home for almost two days. If you define home as a general "that side of the Atlantic," since my flight doesn't land til around six-ish at night. I have a lot to blog about: grades, a two-day trip to Geneva, a four-day trip to Barcelona. General end-of-the-semester reflections. Unfortunately, you're probably going to have to wait til I get home to read all that. My internets are disappearing on Saturday and I'm not getting home til Tuesday night. Sad face. Blogger hates entries that are copy/pasted from Microsoft Word, too, so I may or may not type things up over the weekend and try to post them when I get home or something. We'll see. Beyond that, nothing interesting has happened in my life. I've watched three seasons of NCIS in less than a week. Good times. I'm going to pack now. Ta.

You Know You're a Nerd When...

Monday [May 18] was my last final and a big last hurrah dinner with 23 other international students. We're a crazy bunch, let me tell ya. More on that later. We got back around 1130, I think? And then Courtney and I were up til 2-something trying to plan travels. We settled for Barcelona, whee! I didn't get to sleep til after 3 that night, which wouldn't have been too bad...

...except I had a 6:10 am train to Geneva, and had to be up at 5. Ewwww. I managed, somehow. When I got to Geneva I met up with Carolyn (the one from Italy/Turkey) and our friend Catherine, who lived on my floor my freshman year [I lived in her old room my past three semesters. Hee.], then graduated and ran off to Geneva for grad school. We spent 3-3.5 hours sitting in Starbucks talking about VCU, the Honors College, wreaking havoc on the world when we're all FSOs, and... scholarships. Yes. So to complete the post title, you know you're a nerd when you meet up with friends halfway across the world to talk about school and scholarships and other nerd things. Clearly, we're a special bunch. And I'm all the more excited now to gain a functioning knowledge of a third language.

After we left Starbucks we walked to the old city to get some lunch at Chez ma cousine. It was delicious. They had potato wedges and chicken and yum. We passed a protest of some kind on the way but we couldn't really figure out what it was for. After lunch we went to Clavin's church, which was closed. It was pretty huge though. And there's a museum underneath but it cost lots of francs to get into. Oh wells. We wandered around Geneva a bit more before heading back to Catherine's apartment. At which point we may or may not have harassed the National Scholarship Coordinator in the Honors College via Skype chat. He said something to the effect of, "I can only imagine the trouble you three have gotten yourselves into." Great to know people back home have faith in us. =D

We talked more about taking over the world. We made dinner. We watched CSI: Miami. The next day we ate the leftovers from dinner, because 2.2 pounds of pasta is a LOT. Back in town we went to a little store that had all kinds of American products that you can't get in Europe: Kraft Mac & Cheese, Betty Crocker, root beer, Mountain Dew, Reese's... it was amazing. And it made us happy. Even though it was a little expensive, but hey. You do what you have to do. We walked to the lake and got ice cream. Met up with two of Carolyn's friends from RVA. Walked around the lake to the massive water jet they have there. Sat in Starbucks with Catherine for another hour and some change after Carolyn left.

Pretty awesome two days. Solidified the fact that I am a nerd and I love it. :) And I love my friends. (Awwwww.)

Lazy lazy lazy

Wooooot. Today is made of win because I'm not doing anything. For starters, I slept until 12:30 and it was glorious. Why? Because in the span of a week I had 10 exams, plus a paper.

The paper was 10 pages long, and a comparison of Camus' L'Etranger (The Stranger) and Balzac's Le Père Goriot. Lee, Veronica, and I wrote the paper together, but it was a pain in the butt to do. Père Goriot was 270 pages of text. Period. No chapters or anything, just continuous story. Ugh. The entire thing was an ordeal, but we got a 14/20, so no one's complaining. I know it looks bad, but it's a B.

The French grade on a scale of 1-20. 10 is average/passing. 18-20 are impossible to get. So 16-17 is A, 14-15 is B, 12-13 C, 10-11 D if you equate it to the American system. I'm pretty sure it's impossible to get 16-17 too. So while the honors kid in me is frustrated over having gotten a B, the exchange student in me is glee-ing over having gotten a 14.

Oh, god. Completely unrelated, but I'm looking at Facebook where people are talking about unpacking all their dorm stuff and cleaning their rooms at home and I just realized I'm going to have to do that too. Oh, fail.

Anyway, yeah. 10 exams? Not fun. 6 between Tue-Thu of last week. Two each this past Monday and Tuesday. One I know I got a 15 on. That excites me because it was an oral exam too. Hee. Some of them I think I did well on, some I'm not so sure. I can find out my grades starting May 25, and I will defintely do so.

I have two more classes tomorrow and an exam Monday and then I am DONE. And then I will hopefully catch up on the traveling I never did this semester. D: For now, I'm settling for being lazy and cleaning my room. Kinda contradicting, I know, but my room is a mess and I didn't have time to clean it while I was having an aneurysm over all of my finals. So cleaning my room = less stress = me being more chill. Word.

BRB, MOROCCO

Holy god. I'm shaking right now. I could just die. But that would be counterproductive. Oh my god seriously though.

I'm going to Morocco next year. I'm studying at Al Akhawayn Univsersity in Ifrane.

And the US Government is paying for it.

Oh. My. GOD.

There are no words to describe how I feel right now. No. Words.

In January I applied for the NSEP/Boren undergraduate scholarship, which pays up to $20,000 for students to go somewhere and learn a language that is critical to national security. It was ridiculous and frustrating and I've been waiting since February to hear about it. I got an email at the beginning of April saying "Hey we're still considering your application!" and that they'd announce the winners in May 1st. So needless to say I didn't sleep a whole lot last night and I've been up since 9 am going absolutely nuts: refreshing my inbox, refreshing the page with last year's winners on it, refreshing my inbox again, having a heart attack when I got a new but unrelated email... it's been bad. Being 6 hours ahead is just painful.

So Mom Skyped me and we were talking about it and both just being "omg i can has email plz?" And then she was looking at my Turkey pictures and I refreshed my email and almost died. I stopped, stared at it, and went "YES!" and then froze again. And nearly bounced off my chair. It was ridiculous. I just kept laughing and almost crying. And shaking. There was lots of shaking. I can't believe it. I'm grinning like a fool but omg. There were 896 applications for this thing. I don't know how many they actually gave out but OH MY GOD.

This is absolutely ridiculous. So ridiculous. Ahhhh. I was trying so hard not to just assume that I would get it. So hard. I'd applied for two other things to do over this summer but didn't get either of them and if I didn't get this I would have died, I think. I'm still about to die, but in a good way.

This is very quickly going to dissolve into ramblings, so I'm just going to stop now. I'll post the link to the website once they update with this year's winners. MY NAME IS GOING TO BE ON IT. AHHHHH.

This post lacks a witty title.

If you're keeping up with this, you'll probably noticed I skipped a few days. I've done the shorter days in Turkey first for the sake of having something written. Be sure to check back later and scroll down, because eventually everything will be posted in chronological order. And if you scroll down a lot more, I finally posted about Avignon. There are no photos up in the posts themselves as of yet, but there are or will be links to my photobucket for each post.

I ran out of titles.

Saturday, 4.18.2009

We went out with Ahmet and his sister Nalan for some sightseeing in Ankara. First we went to Estergon Castle. It's a museum now but I think it used to be a castle?



It was kind of small for a castle though. It had all kinds of displays of cultural things. Then we played foozball. It was highly entertaining. Next we went to a restaurant right next to the castle. There was çay, of course, (I burned my tongue!) and lots of nuts. Which turned out to be rather embarrassing because I couldn't for the life of me peel the shells off the pistachios. Or any of the other nuts. So after I accidentally sent a few flying across the table, Nalan cracked a few and gave them to me. Oh yeah, I felt special. I forget what the things we ate were called, but then there was quasi-ice cream for dessert. It was like turkish delight, but cold. Very, very cold. It also melts very, very quickly.

From the castle we went across the city to Atakule Tower (I think?). It's a huge tower with an elevator that you can ride to the top for a 360-degree view of... everything. You could only take pictures from half of it (it's surrounded by glass and parts of the glass are blacked out) because parts of it look over government buildings and stuff they don't want you taking pictures of.

Carolyn, being awesome.

From the tower, we headed off to... the zoo. Yes, I went to the zoo in Turkey. Nalan was wearing a shirt with an elephant on it. Either I didn't understand what the shirt said or I didn't recognize the elephant... somehow this became "I've never seen an elephant before." So we went to the zoo in search of an elephant, only to find out later that it had died two years ago. Hah, oops. Regardless, there was zoo. It was fun. But they had dogs there, which made me sad. :( There was also a hippo chilling in his own house thing with a pool. And he farted. And everyone promptly ran away. Hi-lar-i-ous.

Way to fail at being creative, C.S. Lewis. :(

I think we spent the better part of two hours at the zoo. After that we went to a supermarket so Carolyn could buy food. =P Apparently they don't have Pringles and Lay's chips and a bunch of other things in Italy. Spent more time at Ahmet's house. Went to dinner with him and Nalan and their friend whose name I can't remember. Fail? And we had all kinds of Turkish things that I also can't remember. There was ayran, which is a drink of yogurt + salt + water. Emphasis on the salt. It counteracts the insane spices in food. The salt threw me off though. There was also köfte (meatballs); specifically, I think Içli köfte? I somehow lost the list Carolyn gave me, but wikipedia is helping me remember. We had stuffed eggplant (some kind of dolma?) as well. And lamb kebab something or other. It was all pretty good, but there were lots of crazy spices going on; it was pretty harsh compared to bland French food and all the spaghetti I've been eating.

After our ridiculous dinner, we headed straight to the bus station for a fantastic trip back to Istanbul and lame old Europe.

peeeekchurrrs