Like any other person who's just about to change their life, I feel super excited (I get to go to school directly across the river from the Guggenheim, I get to live in one of the best food regions in Spain, I get to travel, etc. etc), nervous (who will I be friends with?, how the hell am I going to be able to communicate with people?), and am suffering from a serious case of cold feet (why would I stop my life and leave all my friends and family to travel there?, I'm seriously not ready to do this!). Ultimately I know that my trip will be amazing, so right now I just need to focus on not forgetting to pack anything (which will for sure happen)...I guess the countdown is down!!

written by  Laura Hanson on December 30, 2009 from Minnetonka, United States
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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View from my hotel

This morning we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and went to the Prado museum...it was fun and interesting to see all the pictures that I learned about in my spanish classes in real life! This afternoon we had free time and my roommate and I discovered that our favorite part of the hotel are the electronic shades in our room, which is definitely helping us recover from jet lag. Our group then went to Reina Sofia museum to see Picasso and Dali art, which was for sure more of my style of art. We were able to see the Guernika picture which was huge and amazing, and even more exciting because my group is visting Guernika next Friday.

The weather is a lot colder than I planned, but I'm still enjoying the people (or most of them) and being able to have a lot of free time to walk around and explore the city! Tomorrow we are going to Toledo for the day and Sunday we're finally heading to Bilbao!

written by  Laura Hanson on January 8, 2010 from Madrid, Spain
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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My room at my homestay

My host mother Jone, or Juana in Spanish, is very kind and my roommate Summer and I decided that she looks super fun and laid back...and I'm guessing purely on initial judgment, that she was quite the party girl back in her day. Anyway..she introduced herself and immediately established that she doesn't speak any English at all...this will be interesting. We drove back to her apartment, which is a sort of suburb of Bilbao, and I love it..it's super cozy and clean here, and each of our rooms are more modern and sort of Scandinavian in design and decoration. She made us pasta and fed us ice cream cake and peaches for dessert, and I have a feeling that I will return to the States about 500lbs heavier with all this food! After settling in, Jone showed us how to get to the metro from her House, and we were able to walk down to the sea! Yep, I live about a mile and a half from the Bay of Biscay..

Tomorrow we're meeting up with the rest of the girls in the city center for a little tour and shopping. It will be interesting because I've never taken the metro before and Summer barely speaks Spanish..an adventure for sure!

written by  Laura Hanson on January 10, 2010 from Bilbao, Spain
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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Casco Viejo

Tomorrow we're doing our orientation at the university and get to meet more international students studying there!

Casco Viejo

Biodiversity Center

Today we went to Guernica, Guernika in Spanish, and visited the Peace Museum there. I think that if you ever visit Spain and are in Basque Country, you should visit this museum. There are a lot of museums in the world that house some of best art work or most famous art work in history, there are some that house interesting historical artifacts, there are some that are just very interactive and fun, but very rarely do these museums, even the most famous ones in the world, truly evoke such strong emotion that you leave feeling changed. This one does. The museum itself is small and plain, but the message, that universal call for peace and the remembrance of such a violent act could quite possibly touch even the most stoic individual. It was beautiful in every definition and worth the trip! We also visited the Biodiversity Center on the nature reserve on the outskirts of Guernica. It was more of a lighthearted trip and the center was amazing! It was just fun to walk through and look at all the pictures and wildlife they use to teach biodiversity!

Animal Room at the Biodiversity Center

Biodiversity Center

Peace Signs by the Guernica Peace Tree

Countryside in Guernica

I had a great time on our first excursion! After we got back from our day trip, Summer, Natasha, and I were able to participate and experience another important aspect of Spanish culture: soccer. This evening we were walking around looking for a little pastry to tide us over until we ate dinner, when we came upon a HUGE crowd of people in front of the Hotel Carlton in the Plaza Mayoua. Well it turns out that the Bilbao soccer team, Club Atletico, is playing against Real Madrid tomorrow, one of the top teams in Spain and the world. Knowing that some of the best soccer players in the world were coming to Bilbao was almost too much for me, and it was amazing watching them walk off the bus in my city! I was freaking out the whole time, and Summer even let me sit on her shoulders so I could get a better look at them over the crowd! I hear that Bilbao and other Spanish cities go crazy when there's a match and I can't wait to participate tomorrow!

written by  Laura Hanson on January 15, 2010 from Guernica y Luno, Spain
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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Crowd waiting for Real Madrid outside their Hotel

Last night some of the girls and I had our first weekend night out in Spain. Most people say the nightlife here is crazy and goes until the sun goes up, so of course we were all excited. We had decided to try going to this hip-hop club called Club Fever, which ended up being in the middle of nowhere down a long abandoned street in the side of a warehouse. As we walked down the street, it was like something from a movie...there were all these cars parked on the side of the road, with people sitting around them blasting music and cars racing down the street. It seemed pretty cool until we realized that the cover charge was 12 euros and that the other clubbers hanging out with their cars and drinking openly from bottles, looked like they were about 16 years old. Needless to say, we didn't end up going to the club and somehow ended up eating gyros and making friends with a older, Russian-sounding, chain-smoker at a Pakistani bar at 2:30am instead..which leads me to my final observation of the day...

Cool kids. The kids here are just too cool...way cooler than I can ever hope to be. A couple nights ago I saw a 10 year old boy on the metro listening to an ipod and texting friends at 11 o'clock at night. Last night these high school kids, who are always dressed fabulously, racing cars, going to clubs, and drinking openly in front of cops (the drinking age is 16 here)...waves of kids were on the metro at 3am, awake and ready to find a new bar to try out..and here we Americans are, in our 20s, asking kids almost half our age where cool clubs and bars are. Maybe it's because they speak a different language, or it's the culture, but the kids in Spain are just damn cool!

written by  Laura Hanson on January 17, 2010 from Bilbao, Spain
from the travel blog: Un Semestre en España
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The Hotel Where Ernest Hemingway Stayed

The Girls at the Wine Tasting

At the Pinxto place, I realized that I left my camera in the back seat of our taxi, but thankfully Logroño is a very small, safe place and not only did the taxi driver drive back to give me my camera, but he told me how he had driven to the bus station earlier to try to find me there. What a great guy! Anyway, we hopped another bus after lunch, and rode to Pamplona. We stayed at the Hotel Blanca de Navarra hotel, which is very nice and is where the King and Queen of Spain have stayed in the past! We had the night free so Summer, Natasha, Arielle, Ellen, and I walked downtown to find dinner and ended up in this cute, two story restaurant in the center of town and got a three course meal for a very good price!

This morning we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and met our tour guide in the lobby. We had a great tour of the city, which included a visit to the beginning of el camino de Santiago (where people begin their 800km pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain), a tour of the streets where the Running of the Bulls takes place, and a visit to the 3rd largest bull fighting ring in the world! After our tour, we went out for more Pinxtos and chocolate before we left for Bilbao. Pamplona and Logroño are both beautiful places with friendly people and amazing food!

Fun at the Bullfighting Ring

Harbor on the Mediteranean

The next morning, we woke up and decided to walk down to the harbor, which is about a mile and a half away from our hostel. The weather was perfect, and the sea was so beautiful! We spent the afternoon roaming around along the shore, took a siesta on the beach, stumbled upon a Gaudi fountain in a gorgeous park, and made our way back towards the center of town. Some highlights of the afternoon was Summer getting her lip pierced and going to the market a couple blocks away from where we were staying. Apparently Rachel Ray has been to el mercado, and it is amazing and huge...we got any type of fresh squeezed juice we could think of, there were huge stands of fresh fruit, fish, and vegetables, and amazing looking candy and chocolate booths as well. It is seriously a paradise for people who love to cook. That night, Camile (who had just arrived that day), Summer, Natasha, and I got ready and headed out for a night on the town. We ended up trying to follow this club promoter to her club, which ended up being about four miles away from where we lived and eventually gave up the search and headed back into town. We tried going to this club, City Hall, around 2am and met a promoter named Jordy, who was super goofy and we all were immediate friends. Deciding that the club wasn't worth the cover charge, we made our way back to our hostel, and ended up meeting a Swede, and a Turk who were sailing from Sweden to Turkey, and invited us to their boat for coffee the next day. Unfortunately we never found them again because all the information we received was that their boat was "the second from the left"...little did we know then, that with hundreds of boats sitting in several different harbors, there are many "second from the left" boats to choose from! Anyway, we ended the night at about 4 or 5am after making a stop at Pepe's for hot dogs and french fries.

Fresh Vegetables at the Market

The next day we woke up, grabbed some fresh fruit and juice from the market, and decided to explore for the rest of the day. Camile had heard about a fashion event called the Brandery going on during the weekend, so we took the metro over there. We ended up not going in, but the building and location of the show was beautiful, and the people watching was great! Later that evening as we were walking home, we ran into Jordy again and he told us about a party he was hosting at a club nearby that evening. Because time is so different in Spain, we didn't end up leaving our hostel until 12:30am..when parties and clubs really start to get busy. The club was pretty fun and very trendy, and we ended up leaving about 2am. We walked back to our hostel, and as we were about to walk in the door, a guy grabbed my wristlet bag that I was holding, ripped the bag clear off, and ran away. Natasha and I ran after him, but this guy should of been in the Olympics, because we lost him a couple blocks down the street. Unfortunately for the guy, I only had: one check card (which I canceled right away), a half pack of gum, a student ID, some club fliers, and a hair binder in my purse...I was flat broke that night and didn't even have spare change laying in the bottom. Nevertheless, it was a surreal experience..and one that I hopefully will never have to relive! I heard that in the off-season in Barcelona, particularly during tough economic times, 80% of people are robbed..and we knew two other people from Bilbao who were pick pocketed over the weekend there. This is especially bad for tourists, because here, the Spanish police are essentially useless...they don't really do or care about anything, and I am told that you NEVER stop a police officer and ask them a question..they are notoriously disliked among the Spanish people.

Fashion Event

On Saturday morning, we woke up early in order to make it to the free Gothic walking tour that the hostel and a local travel bar offer to hostel stayers. The thing I love about Barcelona is the incredible amount of foreigners that visit..and during our trip we met so many interesting people from all over the world. In our tour group, the guide made us meet one other stranger and introduce ourselves...I met James from Liverpool who is a plumber by trade and an avid futbol fan like myself. Other tour group members included people from Australia, the States, England, and South Korea. Our guide was great and showed us all the interesting places around the city: the building that Picasso drew when he was drunk on Absinthe, the art school that Picasso attended and also the place where he lost his virginity, the Real Plaza that was funded by the Bacardi Rum family...etc. etc. The tour was fun, interesting, and ended with a pint of beer at the bar, so if you ever go to Barcelona and aren't a real fan of boring, historical tours...go to this one! After a paella lunch and siesta at the hostel, we headed out again to see some of Gaudi's famous architectural works: La Casa Mila and La Sangrada Familia..both were awesome to see and though I don't know much about him, Gaudi seems likes a very interesting guy, and his work is one of a kind. For dinner, we went to a travel bar, where we grabbed a cheap dinner and met a very fabulous and flamboyant hairdresser by day, waiter by night named Allan. After dinner finished at about 10:30pm, we went back and got ready for the night. There were some other groups of students in our Bilbao program staying in our hostel, so for our last night we planned to go out with some of them. We left for a club with the ridiculous name of Razzmatazz, where I was barely allowed to go into the club, because apparently I don't look like I'm older than 16. Anyway, the club was huge and amazing, with different levels and rooms that play different types of music...a room of every type of person. It was so much fun, we didn't end up leaving until about 5am, and weren't in bed until 6am...a bad idea considering the fact that we needed to leave for our flight by 10 this morning.

La Sagrada Familia

Our flight was extremely long today, it took us 1 hour to fly to Barcelona, and 7 1/2 to fly back...when we first booked the tickets, we knew that we had a layover, we just didn't know where. Turns out, our layover was in the Canary Islands...meaning the islands off the coast of Africa. Yep, we flew down 2 hours in order to be able to spend an hour in 80 degree weather, looking at the ocean, just to get on the plane and fly 2 1/2 hours back to Bilbao. It was great spending so much time in Barcelona, and it is interesting being in a new place, because after a while you really do start to think of that place as your place. The people were so friendly there, and we met a ton of great people both Spanish and foreign. I would have to say that my favorite person during the trip is a middle eastern man who worked at a sandwich shop down the street from where we lived, every time we passed by whether it be 10am or 11pm he would shout out across the street "Good Morning! Are you hungry?" and energetically smile and wave...and by the end of the trip we were returning the greeting. I will miss eating amazing gelato, or going to the market for juice, or seeing what random person will show up in our hostel room each day. It's nice being back in Bilbao, and we start classes with the Spaniards tomorrow, but Barcelona is truly an amazing place to visit.

Picasso's Art School