you're not going to get your patatas bravas.....!!!!!!!!!

This past wednesday, Barcelona won their third and most important championship of the year, the champions league!!! They played against the awful, dirty, and SMELLY Manchestur United in Rome (fair territory). There was a group of 10 of us who went to watch it together, and LUCKILY, about an hour before the game, we found a great little bar that had room for us right in front of a hi-def TV!! It was so fun watching it there, although there were was one little problem. We all ordered our "watching the game" beers, which are mandatory. (not by the restaurant, but because you're watching the game. And some of us were hungry (me included, obviously) so we ordered some patatas bravas, tortilla espanola, etc etc. These tapas are very easy and very accesible anywhere in barcelona so we didn't think there'd be a problem, but an hour after ordering them we still hadn't gotten anything. Now, service in Spain is SLOW, but an hour later is definitely a fair time period to say something. So I go up to the server, and I ask him (in perfect spanish because i had practiced silently in my head 10,000 times before i went up there) where are food is and he said, "oh, you're not going to get your patatas bravas, our cook decided he wants to watch the game and he's not making any orders". And he was 100% serious. OH ESPANA!!!!

The game was great though!!! We won 2-0, and there were a lot of hotties (above) to watch. That guy specifically is Xavi (pronounced Cha-vee) and he's the love of my life. He's also one of my "go to"jokes here in Barcelona. Sense of humor gets lost in translation very easily, but I always tell people that I'm dating Xavi from the FC Barcelona team and they laugh instantaneously. I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad that they laugh so fast. :)

Miss everyone!! Yesterday was my 3 week countdown...now its 2 weeks 6 days!!
xoxo
jess

in an updating mood lately...

just kidding, i´m just putting off studying for finals.

I will tell you guys about Ireland....
it was very green!
I got to see my very best friend, Elle, and her lovely boyfriend...Ethan!!!! We were in Dublin for a few days and Galway for a few days...both were VERY FUN. Here are my favorite parts about Dublin:

1)The bar we went to on teh very last night where they allow anyone to come and play Irish folk music...there were probably about 12 musicians playing together without any sheet music...and they were great!!!!!
2)One day when we were walking to get some food we saw a group of 12-14 year olds playing a game but one of the boys was sitting to the side and all of a sudden I hear ¨HEY BABE!¨and he was looking right at me. So I laugh and I say ¨HI!¨ Then he proceeds to say (in his little Irish accent, mind you) ´I love you!´and this time I laugh even harder, and say Ï love you too! and then he turns to the others and goes ¨LADS!! SHE LOVES ME!!!¨ it was hilarious...! he´s gonig to grow up to be a heartbreaker

The best part about Galway was when we took a day tour to the cliffs of Moher and see the countryside...which is...VERY GREEN!!! so fun!!!!

OH!!! I almost forgot...when we were in a bar in Galway a girl was talking to my friend Elle and she was trying to guess wehre I´m from and she said SPAIN!!! HOLLAAAA!!!!! now if only the SPANIARDS thought I was from here... :)

Lost in Translation

I've been meaning to tell you guys a few stories about serious misunderstandings, mostly my fault (scratch that--all my fault).

When I was in middle school, high school, college spanish classes, we ALWAYS talked about "false friends" which are words in your second language that look extremely similar to words in your first language but DO NOT MEAN THE SAME THING. for example, "carpeta" looks like the english words carpet, but actually means folder in spanish.

1) well a few weeks ago I went to a carnival party for the kids at the after school program where I volunteer. I showed up early to help set up and stuff and when I got there one of the girls that works there, Maria, opened the door for me. I said "Hey, how are you, How are you doing" etc (in spanish) and she gives me this look and was like "i'm horrible! Estoy MUY constipada" I'm VERY constipada. I gave her a surprised look, thinking to myself, wow, that seems like a lot to share. But then she went on to say that her throat hurts, her nose was runnings, etc. The light in my brain finally switched on...Constipada does NOT mean constipated, it means congested............................................ ah ha! never stop learning haha

The next few stories are not "false friends" stories, but misunderstandings...

2) I was walking with my friend Andrea and there was a dog I wanted to pet, so I attempted to ask "does your dog bite" before I pet it. Unfortunately, instead of asking the owner "muerde este perro?" which means "does the dog bite?" I said "muere este perro?" which means "is your dog DYING?" The owner gave me a really mean look, said NO, and walked away....I did not end up petting the dog, and Andrea did not stop laughing...for an hour or so.

3) A few weeks ago we took a trip to Ibiza, a party island outside of spain, for a co-birthday party. We got to the dock because we were taking a night boat (about 10 hours) to the island. When I went up to the ticket window, the lady asked me "llevas un coche?" which means "are you bringing a car?" (You know, how you can bring a car on a big boat if you are planning to drive wherever you're going") Somehow, I heard "llegas en coche" (which means are you arriving by car) and interpreted it as "are you going to Ibiza (AN ISLAND) in a car". I answered "no! voy en barco" (I'm going on a boat). She laughed, realizing that I had misunderstood her completely........and repeated the question. She laughed, I laughed, my friends laughed, and the whole staff (there had to be like 5 of them) in the office started laughing....I'm really awesome.

xoxoxo
jess

PS barca won another championship game the other day!!!! Now on may 27 they play against Manchester United for the CHAMPIONS LEAGUE!!!!!

la copa de rey!!!

Okay, I know that I obviously haven't updated in forever and I'm overwhelmed with it, so I figured I would just update what's recent and do older trips when I have time...so here we go!!


This is a picture of the Barcelona football/soccer team after the won the Copa del Rei (Copa del Rey in spanish)....It was very exciting and the streets were FILLED with people celebrating and watching the game...I stayed at home and watched it with 4 Real Madrid fans (Real Madrid is Barcelona's biggest Rival...) so I also had a lot of fun :). It was exciting...a team that I cheer for has never won any kind of championship!!!!!!!!!!!! haha

more to come later...

ciao bellos!

bueno chicos!!!
porfa perdonenme que no haya escrito nada por más de un mes....

if you can read that you rule

you guys i´m still having so much fun here in BCN. sometimes i have anxiety issues when i think about going back!!! i got back a week ago from semester break. YES it´s true...we had christmas break which lasted for like 4 weeks and i traveled to greece, brussels, madrid, and wandered around bcn with my fam, then had two weeks of a lot of school and exams, then 2 more weeks of VACA!!!! when we were leaving italy (my last destination of that break), my friends and i were discussing how hard it will be to get back to "reality". hah....hah...hah

me and my friend andrea went to Istanbul, Turkey then to Italy where we met up with our friend Mo. Istanbul has been my favorite place so far because the food was DELICIOUS!!!!!! and the guys were so hott!!! but actually the guys are so hott in every country i go to but turkey it seemed like there was an exceptional amount. plus they love american girls so it just seemed too easy. hahaa....but we drank a lot of tea, smoked a lot of hookah, and played backgammon!!!! plus my favorite cousin reenie was looking out for me and emailed her friend Chad who lives in istanbul...he took us all around and showed us a lot of good places. for the superbowl we went to the american consulate and i pretended like i cared at all about who won (but of course i was rooting for the cardinals....) and i was sad for 4.3 milliseconds (if that´s how you spell that word) until i was on to flirting with another marine. the marines were so cute and very hospitable...i missed my dad´s chili but hanging out with marines can distract you from the delicoius, spicy, amazing chili i´m accustomed to (barely)

in italy we flew into milan, took a day train to venice, walked around venice for 4 hours then took a night bus to rome, and walked around rome for 2 days before we travelled back home. my favorite things in italy were the colosseum and pizza...it´s really amazing how you learn aobut all these places when you are 8 years old in school then years later you are literally walking on history!!! i love it!!! there was a building in rome that was built to celebrate the unity of italy and there were these 2 guards guarding what is called the tomb of the "unknown soldier". as interesting as that sounds, we were more interested in the cute guard on the right hand side. even from afar a girl knows when someone is looking at her so me and andrea started messing with him....we were smiling and giggling and waving and we could see that he was grinning....so we took it a step further and did the "CALL ME" hand motion...(hand=phone, put it to the ear, and mouth the words CALL ME) so the best part was that he smiled even bigger and shook his head YES (thank goodness!) in front of all the people that were taking pictures and whatever...

ok so i just read that and i guess you had to be there but believe me it was hilarious....

now my favorite cousin mike is visiting!!! the first day he got ehre we went to razzmatazz with a bunch of my friends and we all danced till like 5 am!!!!!! he got tired after a while though because by like 445 am i saw him, eyes closed, swaying back and forth (not to any rythm btw) so that was my clue that spikey needed to go to bed...which he did and he slept until like 7 pm the next day!! haha.

classes are still really fun. life is great

i never go a day without thinking about how happy i am and how lucky i am...i know that this experience is once in a lifetime and i´m SOOOOOOOOOOOO lucky to have had the chance to do it. anyone who is reading this has helped me get to this point some way or another and i just want to say thank you again!! i love all of you and miss you tons. hope everything is going well for everyone and would love to hear from you guys!! jcollin5@illinois.edu

hellooooo

hey everyone!!!!

i haven't updated in so long...that's how i've been starting all of my posts lately...what can i say?? It just means that i'm busy or having fun...both are good things!!!

I just finished my winter break and it was great.  I started out in Athens, Greece and stayed with my friend Stephanie's aunt and uncle.  Her uncle is a native of Greece and their family is so great!!  Christmas wasn't as sad as I was thinking it would be since I was with a family like them....

Anyways, Athens wasn't as pretty as I was thinking it would be, but I had the idea of the greek islands in my head.  It was still really interesting!!  We saw the Acropolis which was amazing!!!  It's so old and the history there is incredible.  The old Olympic stadium was impressive too because it was made of complete marble and over all of these years it looks great....Plus I got a great Christmas present....a brand new baby cousin!!!!  Congrats Maureen and Kevv!!!  I can't wait to meet alex :)

After Athens Stephanie and I went to Brussels, Belgium and met up with Sam and Moe.  Brussels is a really pretty city as well...we went to a bunch of museums.  My favorite was the Musical Instrument museum they had because I had never gone to one of those before!!! They had all of these really sweet instruments from all over the place and from a zillion years ago to the present....

We spent New years in Brussels...it was toooooooo much fun.  

From Brussels I went alone to Madrid where I met up with my familiy!!!!  It was so great to see them!!!!!!!!!!!  Despite the overly crowded streets, the see-through bathroom door and the "a bit too small" hotel room, we had a blast in Madrid.  I think they had more fun in Barcelona.  Out of the two, I definitely like Barcelona more, but I'm slightly slightly biased.  We found a couple of our favorite places to eat and I took them sight seeing.  We drank a lot of wine, played a lot of cards, over all a great time!!!  I miss them now so much though!!!!

Well I hope everyone has had a great start to the New Year.  I really miss everyone but I'm enjoying Barcelona every day....

PS I'm so sorry there are no pictures but my computer crashed on me!!!!  I lost all of my pictures and music....:( so sad

xoxoxox

Jess

startin trouble in BCN

I don't know if it's the spanish air or the fact that I watched Rocky Balboa in Spanish the other day, but it seems like everyone wants a piece of me. Last night my friend's bag got stolen so she went to talk to the bartender about it but while she was gone I just pulled her things closer to me (so nothing else would get stolen) but coincidentally a guy was walking past and he thought I was pulling the chair closer to me because I was afraid HE would steal something...which I wasn't!!! But he started yelling at me!! Now I'm not a fighter but I wasn't going to let him think that....so we kind of got into it!!! It was SO fun!!! And the best part is, i'm pretty sure I WON the argument!!!

THEN this morning I went to the supermarket to get some bread and I was waiting in line with this older woman behind me. I was going to be next until another cash register opened up so I started to walk over there but then little miss sass tried to cut me!!! So I walked a little faster and got back in front of her..............HA! I won that one too!!! I know she was trying to start something with me........

On the way home from the supermarket I started singing Eye of the Tiger (in my head, not out loud...well...i'm actually not sure) It might be a good idea to stay away from those movies for a while...

PS here our pics of me and my friends at the Barcelona game on Saturday!! They won!!! 4-0 vs Valencia. The game was fun but it doesn't compare to baseball games....but I'm slightly biased.

fotos!!!

mis amores, he cargado nuevas fotos...
porfa, haz clic aqui
besitossssssssss!!
yessi

pooping logs, prince harry, etc etc

well hello!!!!

my lovely family and friends, i know what you’re thinking...i’m the worst “blogger” ever!! I have two (in my opinion) very good reasons for being so...1) i have been extremely busy and 2) i don’t have internet in my NEW apartment!

yes, that’s my number one update: i moved!! I really liked the people I was living with before but they were a little older and our lifestyles kind of clashed. You can ask me for details later on...but I decided to just move because it would have been a long year living there.

So far, so good! I really enjoy the people I live with although I haven’t seen much of them (we all have opposite schedules). They are cousins, a guy (28—Fernando) and a girl (26—Silvana) from Argentina. They’re accents are really different from anything I’ve ever heard but I’m catching on little by little. Silvana is dating a guy, Juan, who is super funny and awesome to be around. Other frequent visitors are Claudio, Fernando’s brother, and Gabriel, Silvana’s brother. Gabriel is super cute but I think he might have a girlfriend. (lame) Claudio and Gabriel, sadly, are moving back to Argentina because they truly can not find work here. The unemployment rate is going up and up and up and it’s constantly harder to find work. It’s really scary. Fernando is also unemployed but he’s not giving up quite yet.

So I love the people I live with, but I feel like I’m living in an ice-box. I am, at all times, wearing the following at home: thick sweatpants, a hoodie (with the hood on), at least one pair of socks, and slippers. I just bought new sweatpants actually and I love them!!!

Not this past weekend, but the weekend before I was in London and I got to stay with Lindy!! She came to Barcelona a few weeks before so it was so great to see her again. Plus, she let me stay with her!! Her and her friends took me out and about in London and I really had a great time. It was fun to be in a foreign country that spoke the same language because it was fun to understand everyone perfectly. Their accents are so cute/funny. I had a little mishap when I got to London. For some reason I forgot the pin number to my phone and I couldn’t get it to unlock. In other words, I had no way of contacting Lindy when I got into London!!! Thankfully, she had given me her address and I found the building okay. She lives in a dorm-like building so anyone can walk in but you have to go through locked gates and stuff. Well I had no way of getting a hold of her and the SUPER MEAN SECURITY guy wouldn’t call her for me!!! It was “too late” even though I had told him 1,000,000,000 times (not an exaggeration) that Lindy was expecting me and stuff. So I lost the first battle but then I turned on the “desperate-sad-exhausted (the 3^rd part was true) face until the other security guard went up to her room and asked her if she was “expecting a visitor” which of course she WAS. ugh! but the moral of the story is that my desperate-sad-exhausted face always works!

It’s so funny how dependent we are on phones. It was a huge bummer not having a phone in London because I met Prince Harry! He told me I was the most gorgeous girl he’s ever laid his eyes on and that I desperately needed to give him my number. WELL I don’t know my number and it’s in the phone’s memory (true story) so I wasn’t able to give it to P.H. I really would have made a great princess.

Anywho, my favorite parts of London were Big Ben, the sauce at this one place we ate at called “the rocket”, and the museums (which were free)!!! We went to the British museum and the Tate Modern museum (it's an art museum). I loved Camden market, which Lindy took me to on Saturday. It’s the biggest market I’ve ever seen with all kinds of fun things to buy...!!! Also, ladies, guys in London are gorgeous.

Here's me in front of Big Ben:

Here's me and Lindy at the Camden market:

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving (duh) and I really didn’t miss any of you at all. HA just kidding, I did. But it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be because my program made us a great big thanksgiving dinner. We had to carve our own turkeys!!! There was one turkey per 6 people and they were delectable (cool word). Also, my mom and sister made me a great big batch of choc-chip cookies and molasses cookies!!!! It was just like t-giving at home!! I brought them to share (not my idea) but I’m glad I did because my friends and professors LOVED them. Two huge platters were gone before dinner even started...just like at home! I personally hate the rule “dessert after dinner”. I love having dessert before, during, and after!!!! my own little tradition continued....! One of my friends was so happy I brought the cookies, the very first thing she said to me (with a cookie still in her mouth BTW) was “you just made my f***ing day! oh and happy thanksgiving!!” it was so funny. home made anything makes everyone happy...

Then last friday I had people over (which was something I wasn’t allowed to do in my last apartment) for fajitas!! I cooked fajitas for 10 people!! It was so fun. We even had coronas to go with the mexican theme....everyone said the fajitas were good too!! I’m becoming quite the little cook...

Since living in this new apartment I’m also kind of a clean-freak. I dust and mop at least once a day!! And my room is organized!!! I know none of you who have ever seen my previous rooms believe that...but I swear!!! stop rolling your eyes

Barcelona never fails to intrigue me...I recently learned about "caga tió" which is a cataluna tradition. It looks like this:

I think tió is "trunk" in catalan. caga is poop. Starting this upcoming Monday, December 8 (feast of the immaculate conception), each family is supposed to give caga tio a little bit of food every night. Come christmas eve or christmas morning, caga tio "poops" out small gifts like candy or something. isn't that the weirdest thing ever??? I feel like Tim would have fit in well with Cataluna's christmas traditions...

School is fine...I got one of my midterms back and I got an A+! woooooo! haha, i hope it will be the same for the other two...duh duh duhhhhh. working at Raval is still so much fun, I hope my schedule will allow me to work there more days a week next semester.

well...that’s what’s new with me! I’m happy in Barcelona. It’s still really hard to be away from everyone but I’m changing (in a good way...i think) and becoming way more independent. It’s a great feeling :)

xoxo-jess

CoOoOoOoOLD weather!!!

My mom and my friend Elle told me that the weather has severely changed back home....I can relate!!! The high tomorrow is 16 degrees :( ....oh wait...that's celsius...haaaaahahhaaha that equals approximately 60 degrees F!!!! Poor babies :(

It was this time last year I really started to get excited to come to ESPANA!!!

I honestly hope everyone stays safe and warm!!!

OH!!! other good news. I've finalized my winter break plans.
Dec 18-24 Skiing in Andora (3.5 hours away) (never been skiing before!)
Dec 24-29 Athens, Greece with Steph!!
Dec 29-Jan 1 Brussels, Belgium
Jan 2 Madrid and I get to see MOM DAD AND AMANDA!!! YESSSS

xo
jess

visitors!!!

I had my first visitors this past weekend!!! Here's me, Lindy, and Pablo Picasso in the background. Last night me, Lindy, and some of her friends went to see the fountain show near plaza espanya. They really liked it because it's a gorgeous view of the city and the show is pretty to watch. Today we went to the Pablo Picasso museum. I LOVE pablo picasso. Plus it was free today! sweet!!! I feel bad for them because it's literally been raining on/off for a week straight so the weather isn't great to sight see.


This past Thursday I got to see Mr. Olson!! For those of you who don't know, he's my friend Maggie's dad, and he's an international pilot. He had a flight to Barcelona on Thursday so we got to hang out!! He took me out and I ate like a QUEEN!! THANKS MR OLSON!!! :)

PS don't you like his hat? We got one free witch's hat for every 3 pints of beer we bought.

oh, but there was drama. We were supposed to meet at 4 right in front of my university. It only takes 10 minutes for me to get there, and I had left at 3:40, PLENTY of time. GUESS whatttt!! the metro STOPPED working (randomly). So I was running around looking for another way to get there. I ended up taking the bus, which took forever. I was 15 minutes late and I was soooooooo scared he was going to leave, but he didn't! and i'm glad, because we had so much fun!!

At this Irish bar, we met a guy named Hans. He was from Holland. At first I didn't understand him and I couldn't tell if he was saying "Ireland" or "Holland". He told us he was going to school for "art" and for "painting", but we figured out he only paints walls...not pictures or portraits or anything. I didn't know you had to go to school for that?? Even though I could barely understand him, he was chatt and pretty entertaining.

Good news: Mari (one of the people I live with) knows how to cut hair!! She gave me a little haircut on friday night and it looks awesome!! I'm trying to grow my hair out but my ends needed some taking-care-of, and she did a great job! yesss

Hope everyone had a great halloween!!!
xo
jess

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

random

This has no cultural significance at all to Spain but last night I had a dream that I was at the cousin party and we were all eating twizzlers. For some reason the aunts were there. Anyways, we had two ENORMOUS bags of twizzlers (there was like 1,000 twizzlers in each bag) and I took 5 twizzlers and Melanie got really mad at me because I took "so many". She wouldn't talk to me for the rest of the night :(

why do i dream things like this??? Anyways I miss you all!!!!!! (and i guess twizzlers too)

i guess there's a first time for everything...

I don't know how this could have slipped my mind, but I forgot to include in my past post that on Saturday I saw my very first "neo-nazi parade". It was actually really scary, because one of their most hated groups are people from South America and I live with a Columbian family. There is ignorance EVERYWHERE!! Anyways, I decided to google neo nazis in Spain and a lot of times they have some sort of parade and proceed to a soccer game, which is exactly what this lot did. When they were at the soccer game they set off a couple of explosives but I don't think anyone died or got hurt. Spain is actually a REALLY racist country and with more and more immigration it's getting worse. Here is a site of a "former skin head" who is speaking at U of I. I got an email about it today...it was just a coincidence but stories like that are really interesting.

great day

I woke up today feeling under the weather. it PROBABLY had something to do with having too much fun last night. But that's neither here nor there. Anyways, it was a gorgeous day so I decided to cure my hangover by walking around Montjuic, a park really close to my house. It's a huge park with several gardens, museums, and the site for the '92 olympic games. It was about 70 degrees out, not a cloud in the sky, and I had a really nice time. I was kind of nostalgic because every 5 steps I saw something that reminded me of someone back home!!! I lucked out because there is a botanic garden that is FREE on the last sunday of the month...perfect!!!

Here's me in front of a cool staircase...checkout homegirl and her boyfriend. their face expressions are like "wtf". Also note that I am wearing skinny jeans. I actually bought TWO pairs. I'm officially a European



Here's me and ernesto at the fireworks on Wed for Merce! I live with Mari, Nelson (they are bro and sis) and this is their cousin Ernesto.



Check out the rest of my pics HERE. I uploaded 4 albums...so please check them out!! There are a bunch of captions in the one about the botanic garden.

yikes!

WOw!! Haven't updated in a while...lets see what is new? Life is kind of slow right now...

I don't know if I've written this already, but I only have classes on Mondays and Wednesdays this semester, which is GREAT but currently I'm a little bored. I've emailed a couple of people looking for volunteer opportunities so I hope to hear good news soon :)

Last night was the festival of Merce, which is a HUGE festival in Barcelona and it actually lasts anywhere from 7-10 days, but yesterday everyone was off of work to celebrate! So of course me and my friends have been taking advantage of the celebrations :). I'll post pictures this weekend. Merce is the patron saint of Barcelona...if you want to read more info on the festival go here.

More news....not exciting...but I just joined the public library and I'm currently using their WIFI! See, I told you it wasn't exciting but I'm getting to know my community more. All the little shops and side streets are so fascinating to me, I love just walking around and exploring :)

I hope this post finds everyone well. Sorry for the BORING post but hopefully life will get juicy pretty soon. Maybe I'll meet a gorgeous spanish-speaking man who falls desperately in love with me at first glance. ....maybe

PS Shout out to REENIE who's birthday was the 21st, to SCOTT who's birthday was yesterday and to my DAD who's birthday is on SATURDAY!!!

I love you guys!
xo-jess