A Perk of La Vida Coruñesa

Just figured I'd share one little perk of living in my favorite Spanish city: a cruise destination.  I used to see quite a few of them in the beginning of the year, and now I've seen two in the last week and a half; hopefully there will be more soon!  

On my way too/from the gym this afternoon, I passed by a Royal Carribean Cruise Line ship... as well as confused Brits, looking like typical tourists with maps and confused faces everywhere.  I actually ended up helping one couple who looked really perplexed; hey, we've all been down that road, I know that I certainly have this year!!

Cruise Ship and Los Cantones (one of Coruña's shoping centers).

Turning the Big 2-1 in Coruña!

Happy weekend from Coruña!! This week was certainly an interesting one since I took final exams, celebrated my birthday, went out with some friends from the university and was recorded live on Coruña’s radio... details to follow.  I can happily report that I did really well on both finals, and received great final grades for those two classes; this monday I’ll be taking another final and then two-Thursdays from now I’ll take my last exam.  

Now on to my birthday!  Celebrating my birthday, let alone my twenty-first was really great but a little difficult being away from home.  However with facebook/email and my awesome host family, I felt right at home.  The host fam bought me little deserts and even gave me a coin box, to start saving for my return, and a picture-frame so that way I could put a picture of all of us together.  Later on in the night, my friends and I went to two new bars in the city to celebrate and as always, we had a really good time.

On thursday night, I met up with some friends that I’ve made at the university.  It was really great getting to know them outside of the classroom and I truly hope we can go out another time.  Unfortunately early Friday morning Coruña suffered a pretty tragic event.  At around 5 am, a foreign exchange and one policeman were reported dead, and two other policemen were reported missing.  The city, and arguably the country, has certainly been effected by it seeing that it made national news and a conversation of the day in all Spanish homes and on the street.

At 11:30 on Friday morning, my housing director Pablo called me to see if I was interested in getting interviewed on the radio.  I agreed to go, and it actually turned out to be a really cool and rewarding experience.  The interview was hosted by my friend Katherine’s host mom, so it was a blast getting to know her through it.  In the interview, we talked about Friday morning’s tragic event and she asked me some questions about my experience thus far. 

I know this is really off topic, but I just wanted to share with you this video that I stumbled upon facebook.  It’s truly powerful (it gave me the chills) and its certainly worth the 4 minutes.  The video is about a teenager named Ben Breedlove who passed away on Christmas evening; he had a very rare heart disease, however that did not stop him from doing what he loved: living life to the fullest and being a mentor for others.  I know that it’s about a month old in terms of mainstream news, but if you haven’t seen it, I really encourage you to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalRandomness512?feature=watch

Elevator, Elevator

Happy Tuesday everyone... also a happy 21st birthday to my good friend Jim Cav!  I figured that I would share this piece of news with my followers: the elevator in my apartment building is out of commission for three weeks, starting today.  In other words, my host and I have to go down/climb up seven flights of stairs every time we leave/come back to the apartment building.  Although it’s quite aggravating, I guess I’ll be getting some nice leg workouts in; perhaps this could be the commencement of the wedding diet... it’s right around the corner Jack and Mike, just over 4 months from today!

With that being said, this reminds me of an interesting difference between Spain and the United States.  In Spain, everyone seems to live in what we as Americans call, the “downtown” of the major cities, whereas the majority of Americans live in the “suburbs”.  If you ever visit a Spanish city, you’ll find that there are apartments on top of every kind of space: business offices, banks, markets, retail stores, salons etc...  Although the majority lives in the “downtown” area of the cities, there are small towns, or the “suburbs” which have a pretty decent population size as well.  As far as my experience is concerned, it’s been really cool to live in Coruña since it’s decidedly cosmopolitan and one of Spain’s major cities thanks to its well known port.  Who would have thought that this western-Cranstoner evolved into quite the urbanite!

Finals Weeks: Coruña Edition

Another difference between the American and Spanish university system is the final evaluation period.  Unlike the traditional two-semester American university system, in which all students take their finals before Christmas break, Spanish students are evaluated from the middle of January to early February (depending on your major).  This Monday commences the finals weeks, something that I’m really not looking too forward to knowing that a big chunk of my grade is still undecided.  However, one of my professors just let me know that he is altering my exam, so I’m very thankful for that!  A big bummer is that I have my Political Sociology final on my birthday at 8:00 am, although I keep telling myself its better to have the exam on my birthday rather than the day after!

Aside from working on final projects and studying, I’ve been settling back into my routine and continue to enjoy my time here in Coruña.  I’m currently figuring out some travel plans for the next semester, so if you have any suggestions on where to go, definitely let me know!

New Year, New Blog

Alrighty, so I've failed miserably as a blogger.  Not even one post in December.  However, it’s a new year, so hopefully I’ll get my act together and start posting more often... I knew that you all were missing your biweekly dosage of más o menos!!

Thanks to a good family friend, Pati Paolella (pobrecita lost sleep over the renovation of más o menos), I’ve decided to take a new direction with the blog.  Instead of writing an overwhelming amount in a two-week period, I’ll be posting shorter entries every couple days.  

So to start, I guess I’ll rewind and give you a very brief description of my December.  In the beginning of the month, I went to Paris with 11 of my Holy Cross friends studying abroad in Spain.  The city is awesome, everything that I thought it would be and a little more, although I have to say that after my first semester travels, Madrid has been my favorite city.  Upon returning from Paris, I was left with ten days in Coruña.  After handing in a 25 page paper for my political science class (in Spanish!), I enjoyed pre-Christmas in the festive Coruña.  Two days before Christmas, I flew home for a two week vacation; it felt  truly incredible to be home with my family, and catch up with some friends, and although it was very difficult to return, now that I’m back in Coruña, I’m very happy to have the opportunity to enjoy five more months here!

Notre Dame in Paris.

Eating a french baguette... total tourist move.

From the Eiffel Tower!

The main Christmas tree in Coruña, mounted by cousin Paloma's company.

Coruña's Ayuntamiento (city hall) decorated for Christmas.

A Sweet Thanksgiving

Now that I’ve finally caught up on some much needed sleep, I figured that I would take some time to write about my sister and three of her best friends’ (also known as the sweet sisters) awesome visit to Spain!  But first, time for a brief reflection in this Thanksgiving season.  I think that being away from home for so long has truly taught me how thankful I am for everything in my life, most especially, my loving family and friends.  However at the same token, being in Coruña this Thanksgiving season has taught me how thankful I am for this wonderful opportunity to study abroad in Spain and for my amazing host family and friends here in Coruña. 

Back to the sweets.  Before they arrived in Coruña on Wednesday, the sweet sisters spent three days in Madrid, taking in all of the glory that Spain’s capital has to offer: a city bus tour, el prado, and even a Real Madrid game (jealous).  As soon as they landed in Spain last Sunday, I was so anxious to see them, however Wednesday afternoon quickly rolled around and I was reunited with my sister and her friends.  My host dad and I picked them up at the Coruña airport, and as always, the trip got off to a rather hilarious start.  After giving the sweets a big hug, we dropped off their luggage in my host dad’s car and sprinted to catch the shuttle that goes to the center of town.  The shuttle runs every half hour, but we knew it would be close given the time that their flight landed.  In any event, we literally just made and in no time we met up with my host dad who was waiting for us (luggage included) at the hotel.  After they checked in and got settled, I took them on a walking tour of Coruña; even though I got a little lost at one point, I was so proud to show off my little gem of a city and at the same time, it was so great to be in Coruña with people from home.  Later on that evening, we went for a bite to eat at Abica (my new favorite restaurant in Coruña) since 99% of their ingredients come from good-ol’ Galicia and after that, we went for drinks at a chic bar called Dux.

On Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning, we hopped on a train to Santiago de Compostela.  It was so great to show them around this beautiful city with such a rich religious history.  We went to mass at the Cathedral (refer to pics from a previous entry), did a little bit of shopping, and had delicious tapas in the old part of town.  It was really special to be in Santiago with my sister since one day, we hop to walk the Camino de Santiago!  Once we got back to Coruña, we had an incredible Spanish Thanksgiving dinner with my host family.  I can’t tell you how great it was for one of my real family members to meet my host family.  The dinner was so comfortable and relaxing, it really was second best to being home in Rhode Island having turkey day with my family at home; also a big shout out and thanks to my host brother Iago (who speaks perfect English) for helping me with all the translations!  After the dinner, we met up with my friends at our favorite bar, Pato Mareado and went to Grietax, one of my favorite discotecas in town.  

Friday afternoon we kind of took it easy, however Friday evening was quite happening thanks to my host mom.  The sweets were dying to learn how to make a tortilla, so my host mom invited them over to give a private lesson on how to prepare one.  I’ve got to be honest and say that this was one of my favorite experiences in Spain thus far; who would have known that making and eating a tortilla could be such great real-and-host family bonding time!  After dinner, I took the sweets to a bar that is currently displaying my host dad’s art and then later on we met up with some of my HC friends at another.  

A few hours later (now it’s very early Saturday morning), my host dad and I met up with the sweets to pick them up from the hotel and drop them off at the airport.  Upon arriving to the airport, we were greeted with a rather large check-in line and then 10 minutes later, we realized the flight had been delayed.  Thinking that it wasn’t too big of a deal, we waited a little bit until we noticed that people were starting to get stressed out, including us since the sweets had to make it in time to Madrid to catch their flight back to the States!  Turned out that every other flight from Coruña and neighboring Santiago Airport to Madrid was booked that morning, making it impossible for the sweets to make their other connecting flights back to Boston.  After three hours of figuring out a plan, the sweets ended up hopping on a plane to Barcelona, with connection to Zurich, finally leading them to Bean-town.  Quite the travel adventure.  It was really sad to see them go, but as I look down at the calendar, I’m only left with 25 days before Christmas break!  Although I cannot wait to be home, where has this first semester gone?

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures this weekend, but the sweets did, so I’ll be sure to post them soon!

Gotta Love The Puentes

Woah, that was an unforeseen break in blogging.  Sincerest apologies.  First off, can’t believe that three days ago marked my three month period in Spain.  Time really does fly!  All in all, these past three weeks have been really great; here’s a brief timeline of what’s been going on in and around Coruña.  

“Los puentes” (literally translated: the bridges) are one of the many reasons as to why I love Spain.  A puente is basically a long weekend (thanks to a holiday), however some puentes can be 4-day weekends if the respective holiday falls on a Tuesday or Thursday (because mostly everyone will take off the Monday or Friday).  In any event, I took advantage of the Halloween puente (All Saints Day) by trekking across Spain to Barcelona!  This was a super last minute decision since I was suppose to have a debate on Halloween, but man am I glad that the date got switched.  Not only was I excited to explore another region of Spain, but I was in great company which made the trip even better.  It was so great to spend the weekend with an assortment of HC friends from Spain, Ireland and Italy, however even better was the fact that I met Kit Wallace, who is now my real-life (not just FB friend)!  This meeting ordeal was kept secret from Kit (looking back, I honestly don’t know how Claire, Eva, Maggie and I pulled it off) but it was really funny and I’m glad we know each other now!

Barcelona was absolutely beautiful and I can now understand why its regarded as such a beloved city.  Barcelona is simply awe-inspiring at every corner.  I know that for me, each street (and even each corner) was so different then the next, however equally spectacular.  Eva described Barcelona well by saying that it is sort of dream-like, something I now completely agree with.  Although I got to see and walk around the entire city (thanks to the typical-tourist city-bus tour), I unfortunately did not enter La Sagrada Family, so I guess I now have a good excuse to return (which I definitely plan on doing)!

These past couple months have been extremely hectic and I’ve done quite a bit of traveling, so I decided to kind of take a break from constantly moving and stay in Coruña for November.  As I approach the halfway mark of the month, I can honestly say that it’s been really nice getting to know Coruña that much better and as every day passes, I appreciate the city more and more.  I’ve also come to realize that my study abroad experience is rather unique, however I wouldn’t want it any other way so props to HC for choosing Coruña as a study abroad site!  I’m a firm believer in the fact that you do your best learning in a small yet active environment, which is exactly how I would describe my experience thus far.

Although this month has been very relaxing, I’ve got two upcoming things that I’m beyond excited for.  First off, my sister Eliana and three of her closest friends (the sweet sisters) will be arriving in Spain in just four days!  They are spending the first three days in Madrid, and then on next Wednesday the 23rd they are flying up to Coruña and will we spend two days here and one in Santiago.  I cannot express to you how excited I am to see my sister and her friends, to show them Coruña and Santiago, and for at least one member of my real family to meet my awesome host family.  Second and lastly, I just booked a trip to Paris for December 6th-10th!  I’ll be spending the December puente, which is the puente of all puentes since the two national holidays fall on a Tuesday and on a Thursday (oh how I love the Spanish) in a city that I’ve always dreamed of visiting.

Casa battló, a great example of Gaudi's work.

Claire and I enjoying a quick Dunkin Coffee break... sad to say it is certainly not the same.

Barcelona's bull ring that has been converted into a shopping center.

Kit, Eva, Claire and Maggie on the city bus tour!

Parque güell, Gaudi's infamous park in Barcelona.

Bring on the rainy season Coruña... I'm ready!!!