Francesa

Day 21 is complete and we still barely ever have a minute to sit down with our laptops, upload pictures or write to our family and friends. Everyday is the longest day I have ever experienced yet it also whirs by, jam packed with nuggets of culture and laughter. I have honestly never laughed so much in my life. I have also never slept better in my entire life. Every night when I lay my head down I fall asleep nearly instantly no matter where I am and I sleep the whole night through. When I wake up I feel like I've been dead. It is such a good, hard, dead, sleep. The type of which I have never experienced for such an extended phase in my life.

During our past weekend to France we had plenty of time to sleep on the charter bus. We drove about six hours north from Barcelona to the town of Montpellier and used this as a home base to explore the French countryside and a few surrounding towns. It was too bad that it rained the ENTIRE WEEKEND STRAIGHT because it was difficult to see everything that we wanted to. We made the best of it though. I must admit my favorite part of France was the food. On both Friday and Saturday nights we explored well-hidden, narrow cobblestone streets to find hole-in-the-wall restaurants. On Friday night we sat outside under an umbrella and ate for three hours. Monj and I split a steak (we haven't had beef in a month) and a huge salad. We drank wine and laughed and laughed. It was one of the best meals of my life. The waiter didn't speak very much English at all so we used our iphones with wifi to translate part of the menu. I was able to communicate the fact that I was gluten free and the waiter took the menu back to the chef and brought it back to me with lines scratched through all of the dishes I couldn't eat. It was very sweet. Even though the waiters know they receive no extra tip from customers (it is all included in the bill in Europe) they still work hard to be kind and charming. All the waiters we encountered in France were so sweet to us, even though they weren't used to Americans and we were difficult/frustrating to communicate with due to the language barrier.

While in France we visited Arles, Colliure and Aigues-Muertes. We saw the pink-flamingo winery out in the countryside and did a tasting of light rosé wine. The winery showed us around the buildings with the big oak barrels. Everything smelled like fermenting grapes. My favorite town, however, was Girona (this is in northern Spain right near the boarder with France). Here we had a short foot tour of the Jewish quarter and the old city center. The streets are VERY narrow and made of rough cobblestone. I was glad, as I am everyday in Europe, that I wore my walking shoes. It was moving for me to see what was left of an old synagogue and a carving in a wall where a mezzuzah once was. It was also slightly haunting to think of hundreds of Jews locked behind the stone walls as far back as the 14th c. and even eerier to realize that now no Jewish community exists in Girona at all due to the Holocaust. The day we visited Girona was the only day that the weather held. Thankfully we were able to walk in the sun along the bridge near the river down the center of town. Beautiful, tall, colored houses lined the river and overlooked the main street "la rambla" of Girona.

Though our travels were fun, it was nice to return to Barcelona on Sunday night. My stomach didn't stop hurting the entire time we were in France (likely a combination of gluten picked up at some unknowing restaurant, mixed with a fair amount of cheap wine) so being back in Barce meant that my stomach could take a deep breath as I put myself on a strict diet of rice, eggs, chicken and bananas. All of the food was worth it though and Monj and I had a blast in the fancy hotel that our program put us up in while in France. We even got a chance to watch American Pie 4 in French on TV one night. It was our first time seeing TV in a month. Quite honestly we haven't even noticed its absence.

Today after school we went to see la pedrera, one of the homes designed by Gaudí, which is located on a main street (Pg de Gracia) here in Barce. It was beautiful! The home has 8 floors, 4 of which are dedicated to serving as a museum about Gaudí, artifacts from his life and time period, and explaining his genius architecture. Not only are his buildings works of art centered around nature and color, but also they are marvels of engineering. Gaudí used gravity quite a bit to model and decide how his structures would stand. They are like nothing I have ever seen before. The interior reminded me a little of the Cheesecake Factory (this is embarrassing to admit but gives a good rough idea of color scheme and shapes) but the exterior was more like a natural sculpture garden. No wall is perfectly straight. It feels like everything is wavy or round and encased in winding metal bannisters. From the center of the house on the ground floor you can look all the way up and it is open at the top, like a cylinder! The floors are round like donuts and the center is totally hallow all the way up 8 floors. We had fun taking pictures and gawking at the fact that la pedrera was built 1906-1912. It seemed so much more modern to us! Gaudí was certainly ahead of his time.