Excursion, part 2...read the lower post first please!!!

Sorry I had to break this into two parts. Here's me in front of the ruins (Belchite, Spain) I mentioned below.
Me and Sam---throwin up the peace signs!!! (not only because we're cool...but because we were in the middle of a war zone)
This is inside Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza. Pilar is the patron saint of Aragon (or maybe just Zaragoza...but i can't remember). During the Spanish Civil war (1936-39), three bombs were dropped in Zaragoza but only one went off and it is said that Pilar was watching over the city to keep its citizens safe. Zaragoza is a highly catholic city and Franco was a devout catholic, so that's why it was considered a "miracle". Professor Cardona told me otherwise---they were just old/bad bombs. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the cathedral, but Professor Cardona gave us special permission and he told us to just play dumb and say sorry a lot if we got yelled at...which we did :) He also got yelled at (for talking to loud) inside this cathedral by a priest who was praying...it was SO funny!!!

Now that I think about it the pictures were all over the place in these posts...but blogspot wasn't letting me upload the pictures how i wanted. You can see more pics of my trip HERE. I had so much fun...There is so much interesting history in Spain. It's overwhelming because there's so much information but it's fun nonetheless!!!

Excursion-Zaragoza, Fuendetodos, and Belchite (part 1)

Hey Everyone!!
Sorry it's been a while since I updated. I really hope you were able to sleep at night, even though there was nothing to read in my blog :( (ha-ha)

It was a normal week for me but this weekend I went on an excursion to Zaragoza, Fuendetodos, and Belchite, Spain. All three locations had something awesome to offer. Here's a picture of some of the directors and my professor (in the back). They are all truly great people. The woman in the middle is Pilar, the director of the program I'm in. The guy on the very left is her husband, the guy on the very right is Jordi (another director) and the older guy in the back is Professor Gabriel Cardona. I love them all!!!! The directors are so helpful and my professor is AMAZING!!! I was talking to them a lot, it's not because I'm a brown nose, it's because they are SUPER cool!!! (although I am a brown nose, as well). Professor Cardona is really funny, and he's also famous!!! He has a wikipedia page. That entry says he was part of the civil war (against Franco) and he's written more than 50 books!! He teaches History and makes it really fun to learn. (I love having professors like that...they always inspire me to teach and ALWAYS stick out in my mind).

This picture of them is in Belchite, Spain, where a Franquista town was bombed by the republic during the Civil war. The ruins still stand as a reminder of how destructive the Spanish Civil War (as well as all wars) is/are. It was really moving. There are more pictures HERE. NOTHING was left after the bombings. Houses, churches, etc. One website said 6,000 died in that particular town (but I'm not sure about that). It all happened about 70 years ago.
me in front of another "building"
We stayed Friday night in to Saturday morning. We stayed in this town: Fuendetodos. Population ~100 during the winter and ~200 in the summer. (that's what our tour guide said...and she lives there!!) There was ONE restaurant in the town...which we ate at for dinner (fri) and breakfast/lunch (saturday). It was so cute!! It is also the town where Francisco Goya was born. The link on his name is a link to some of his works. He was crazy!!! Besides his paintings, he's famous for "caprichos" which are stamped works of art. He carved drawings into heated copper (i think) then put ink on it and stamped them. We saw some of the original works and they were SO detailed!! Some of his works were really disturbing (aka Saturn eating his son) but others are very beautiful.
This is called La Aljaferia. Inside there is the Aljaferia palace, the Islamic palace, the Christian Medieval palace, the Palace of the Catholic Kings, and a new part where the Aragon Parliament meets. It was so gorgeous but each part was built in a different era. Christopher Columbus was inside the Palace of the Catholic Kings when he met with Isabel and Ferdinand to see about funding a trip to america!!! (I stood in the very same room as him!) I don't really like Christopher Columbus, but I thought that was cool.

Lunch on Friday: Paella and wine!!! YUMMYYYYY
Can't see it...but this was so funny. There were like 3 weddings that I saw on Friday afternoon. I saw this couple (on the left) talking to each other and smoking a cigarette all by themselves right outside of the church. I also saw waht seemed to be their family and friends talking/socializing. I just thought it was funny they needed a cig IMMEDIATELY after the ceremony.
Here's Mo, Me, Janeth, Sam, Stephanie, and Derek in front of a pretty fountain. Derek is our main guy friend, but this past weekend he decided to hang out with other guys instead of us girls so we're kind of mad at him. just kidding derek :)
One of the cathedrals we saw in Zaragoza. It's called La Seo. This type of ceiling is characteristic of the Counter Reformation in the 16th century. The counter reformation was the church's fight against Protestantism. The protestants believed in the INDIVIDUAL and the relationship between God and the individual. The Catholic church was powerful (but threatened by the rise of protestantism) and wanted people to believe they needed a powerful, catholic church to feel closer to God. The high ceilings are supposed to make an individual feel small yet part of a powerful group while they were in church.

Me in front of Catedral-Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Zaragoza.


OK, now read the post above!!!

San Sebastián-Donostia

This past weekend I made my way up to the Basque country to visit a town called San Sebastián. SS is home to one of the most famous film festivals in Europe!! I think it takes place in September...so there weren't any famous people.

Anywho, I went with 7 of my friends (most of them with whom I went to Valencia). San Sebastián is beautiful!!! I took lots of pretty pics. We took the bus there...it was an 8 hour ride but we took it Thursday night...slept through the ride so we would be ready to go Friday morning. We got to our hostel on Friday morning and rang the doorbell but no one was answering!!! so we just kept ringing it until finally we got in (about 15 minutes later) haha. Here's where San Sebastián is in comparison to Barcelona: (SS is right on the border of France and Spain...Barcelona is SE of it on the med. coast)


So once we got settled into our hostel friday, we took a nap and then ventured out. We sort of hiked/walked up a LOT of stairs to this mountain where we saw an amazing view of the beach and the city:


as well as an enormous statue of Jesus. The guy who was in charge of our hostel called the mountain the "jesus mountain" but that is NOT the real name of it! You can see pictures of the statue as well as many others here. The name of the album is very cleverly called San Sebastian. On the same mountain there was a FREE museum that had a lot of history of San Sebastian. Nothing TOO interesting. Mostly just wars..same old same old

My friends and I LOOOOOOOOOOve gelato so we got that both days we were there. This was a dog outside our gelato place....hahhaa



We didn't do anything AMAZING or see a lot of important places in SS. Part of it is there's not much to do or see in SS but we probably could have planned a little better. we had fun anyway. My friends are the besssstttt. Here's a picture of all of us in front of the beach the night we went out to eat.

Well I am exhauuuuusted! My classes today were kind of boring but I had the cutest substitute teacher for one of them so it ended on a good note. I was thinking about ditching that class too!!! good thing i didn't

i'm going to take a nap...hopefully i fall asleep. ernesto keeps singing "beautiful girls" which is a song that was popular about 2 years ago...he only knows the words "beautiful girls" and just makes noises for the rest of the words haha. i think it's funny but now that i think of it i do that to songs in spanish...darn it!

if you have time write me an email!
take care...jess

sharks can have over 20,000 teeth come and go throughout their life

That is just one of the amazing things I learned this weekend in Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal. Lisboa was gorgeous!! The streets where we were staying were really pretty. We stayed in this semi-famous hostel called Lisbon Lounge. It was super funky and decorated solely by the local artists of Lisboa.

We got to Lisboa on Thursday night and we just had some dinner and went to bed early so we could wake up and start sight seeing. Friday morning we went to the oceanarium which was SOOOOOOO much fun. If you didn't know, I LOVE animals. I guess the oceanarium in Lisboa is the second largest in the world and the first largest in Europe. It didn't seem to be enormous or anything but it was cool nonetheless. Here's a pic (dedicated to Auntie Linda) of some penguins at the oceanarium:



If you didn't know...Penguins mate for life (awww) and they have impermeable feathers!!! It also said that both parents have chores when it comes to taking care of the kiddies. This fact was also near the penguins: "It would require 100-500 trees to absorb all the CO2 emitted by a computer left on for a whole year". Sounds crazy to me!!!!

We also saw sharks, seadragons (they looks just like seaweed), and a thing called an Ocean Sunfish. It was ENORMOUS... the PICTURES don't do it any justice. It was also really ugly but it seemed to be perfectly content in the water. We also saw what "fish" looked like in the times of dinosaurs. In my pictures, there's a picture of one of the dinosaur-fish and it's size in comparison to a human scuba diver...SUPER scary!!!

I also learned that humans take over 37,000,000,000,000 kg (that's 37 trillion) kilograms of food products out of the ocean every single year.

Here's a picture of me, Stephanie, and my Portuguese boyfriend that I met at the oceanarium Friday afternoon. His name is Luciano and he's a very nice guy.

We also saw the St. George Castle (Castelo de São Jorge). Here's me and Sam pretending that we are in jail and very happy about it:

sidenote: I wish my name had one of those funny a's in it. Jessicã Collins


You can see more pictures of the castle in all it's greatness if you go Here. There was also a watch tower built for the castle...which you can also see....I need more details on the history of them, I couldn't find any!! :( Sowwy

Here's me, Sam, and Steph at an ADORABLE little bar called "chapito". (I promise that I have more friends than just them, but they are great friends!!). You can see everyone I went with if you look at my pics. Anyways, Chapito was really artsy and we listened to Fado, one of the most well known versions of Portuguese music. There were 4 guitars and a single singer. There were about 4 singers in total and they all had beautiful voices. I was really happy to be there, it felt very "european". There's two videos of "fado" at the bottom. I hope it works...



See that TINY little person sittong on the steps on the right?? That's me. I'm in front of the "Igreja de Santa Maria Maior; Se Patriarcel de Lisboa Seculo XII". I'm missing a few accents but you get the point. In English it is the Church of Santa Maria Maior; Lisbon Patriarchal Cathedral. 12th century (second half). That's so old...but the cathedral was gorgeous. There were a bunch of really cool cathedrals, but this one is the most famous.
The church kind of made me mad because you had to pay to see certain parts....that's another story though!!! grrr







The airplane home was interesting. I was in the window seat, a man next to me, his daughter on the aisle (she had to be like 3.5) and his wife across the aisle on that aisle seat. Well he got up to go to the bathroom so I did too. His daughter was sleeping. When I got back he was already seated so I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him if I could get in. Well he told me to just climb over both his daughter (who was again...sleeping) and him. Now I consider myself a pretty agile person, and I'm not fat. But honestly, how do you expect me to climb over TWO people in that small of a space?? OH and I forgot to mention I had a cup of water in my hand. So I hold the cup with my teeth as I try to push myself up and over them (without waking the angel). It DIDN'T work and I spilled my water all over my seat (NONE got on him). 2 seconds later he was pretending to be sleeping. grrrrrr

His wife was a trip too. She was eating an apple (eating apples is normal). She would take a bite...chew it (with her mouth open (EW))...then spit the skin out...IN HER HAND!!! OK now where I come from that is disgussssssssting.

Back to her husband. So right before we landed, we got a yummy piece of candy. I was SO happy to have some candy. But the guy next to me had his face like literally right next to mine (my face was looking outside). If I turned it to look towards the aisle, I probably would have hit heads with him...that's how close he was!!! helloooo...personal space!!! To top it all off he kept loudly sucking on the stupid candy we got!!! grossss

It was so funny because Sam was across the aisle (next to the wife) so she understood what I was going through hahahaha.

To top it all off there was a guy about 8 rows back who was snoring so loudly I thought he was right behind me!!! It was really funny.....

This weekend was so much fun. I'm really glad I got to go and I would recommend Portugal to anyone who asked!!!

Well that's my trip in a VERY condensed nutshell.



Today I'm really homesick!!! I'm getting nervous about the holidays and stuff but I hope it will just pass. It seems like forever until I'll be home again. Homesickness always hits me when I'm not busy or when I'm tired/sleepy. It also hit me today when I made myself a really gross pot of mostaccioli and realized i'm a disaster in the kitchen...

how can you mess up mostaccioli??


i love you all! thanks for reading, once again. email me if you get a chance :)

and lets go bears!! and illini!!! muck fichigan...!!

Raval

Hola todos!!!!

How is everyone?? I hope you are all doing well. I know it's hard, because the cubs lost yesterday...but don't give up on them!!!! I just called my mom, expecting her to be excited to hear from me but she sounded a little off. I said "wahts wrong?" and she's like "ehhhhhhhhhhh the cubs lost yesterday". YOU GUYS!!!! they're going to do it!!!! ANYTHING is possible in sports...don't forget about the world series between the yanks and the red sox when the red sox were down 3 games to 0. THEY WON 4 in a row!!!

Rumor is that a lot of my family was at yesterday's game...you have the right to be in a bad mood. But only you guys. And it needs to be gone by the time they play tonight!!!! GO CUBS GO!!

Okay so back to Spain. I started my volunteering on Tuesday and I LOVED it. It's basically an after-school program for kids in the Raval neighborhood of Barcelona. Depending on who you talk to, Raval is the "bad" part of Barcelona. I disagree with this, since you have to be careful wherever you go in a big city. Anyways, I got to the place I met all my co-workers and they seemed GREAT. They are all really friendly and they have common interests as I...pedagogy and making sure kids have a successful future. That comes with the nature of the work we're doing. I work mainly with Veronica, and we have a group of about 8 kids, who range from 3-5 years old. They are absolutely adorable!!! Veronica introduced me to one little girl, Maria, who IMMEDIATELY gave me a huge hug and we were best friends all Tuesday.

I think anything they do is histerical, so I'm really not good at keeping them in order (I think the language barrier could have something to do with it as well) but when we were eating snacks at the table, Veronica turned around and one kid, Adria (it's a boy), stole one of her crackers (very slyly...I was the only one who saw it). Then he turned to me and he gave me the biggest grin ever...it was so funny. Veronica never even noticed!!

There's also a little girl (don't remember her name) who is older than the kids in my group but I got to talk to her for a bit. She reminded me SO much of Kaylee because she was a chatterbox and kept singing! I felt like she was the Spanish kaylee! :)

Alright well I need to go pack for Portugal!!! I leave tonight!! I'm super excited and I hope to hear good news about the cubs when I get back!!!! PLEASE cheer them on for me!!!


Much love from Espana
xo, Jess