Vic and Besalu

1/11/09

            You know how when you go to college everyone is always like – “oh you’ll make a lot of friends, everyone is in the same boat!” and then you get there and you realize you are the only one who didn’t come to school with a group of established friends? That may have just been my experience, but what Im getting at is that it is actually true here. Everyone is so thirsty for friendships because a lot of people have come here on their own, and everyone is at least here for a new experience and is willing to branch out. It is really cool discovering a new place with people.

            Today we went to Vic and Besalu for our orientation field trip.  Both of them were very gorgeous. We went to Vic first and we had an on foot tour of the city (both Vic and Besalu are very small). We saw some beautiful cathedrals and a roman temple in Vic. After the tour we had three hours of free time so I explored with Chessie, David and Shane and two other people we just met that day – Matt and Cindy. Both Vic and Besalu were very very cold because they are up in the mountains and unfortunately it also started to rain. We went inside the Roman temple and talked to a guy in there who told us a little bit about the history of it (all in really fast Spanish so we got most, but not all of it). And then we walked back to the Cathedral so David could take pictures because he has a really nice camera (for the rest of us it was pretty dark and the pictures weren’t coming out very well, but I have some). The entire cathedral was painted in these dark gothic scenes and it was really pretty, we spent a lot of time in there.

            We were all really hungry so we started looking for a place to eat, walking through the narrow twisting streets of the city. We were really struggling to find somewhere because when we did happen to stumble on a food place it was either really expensive, or closed for siesta. Finally we found some IES people who had already eaten and they pointed us in the direction of a little bar and restaurant called L’taste. We rarely know what we are ordering here but we have not been disappointed yet. Today we had another baguette sandwich with ham and cheese and a spicy sauce. We ended up staying in the restaurant for a long time because no one wanted to go back out into the cold and we had already seen all there was to see in Vic. Our Spanish teacher, Fabrizio, was in the restaurant with a group of other teachers and we talked to him for a while, which was pretty entertaining. The restaurants here, I have discovered, are all very tiny and crammed. Whenever we go in somewhere we have to squeeze our group of 5 or 6 around two very small café tables. When we finally left we still had about a half hour so we just took shelter under an awning around the marketplace that was being closed down for siesta. I felt bad for the other orientation groups coming in after us because all of the shops were closing for siesta as well and there wasn’t really anywhere to go for shelter.

            After Vic we had an hour and a half bus ride to Besalu. I was planning on sleeping during it, but the views were so gorgeous I just had my eyes out the window the whole time; we drove through forested mountains with snow, it was really beautiful. Besalu was a very cool city. It was even smaller than Vic and had the same small pedestrian roads. We went into a Cathedral there as well, that was all thick stone and was even colder than the outside air. We didn’t have as much time to explore Besalu (15 minutes compared to Vic’s three hours) So we just wandered the streets until it was time to head back to the buses. On the way back I talked with Chessie a lot, which was nice, we are getting to know each other pretty well. When we finally got home, Sandra and Marta had dinner waiting for us – chicken and peppers with rice and bread. Chessie and I ate together because Thea wasn’t back yet. I think we are going to go out tonight, for the first time. My friend from home, Megan, who has been studying in Barcelona for the year, just got back from her 2 week winter break vacation so some of us are going to meet up at her apartment so she can show us some spots she likes to go, so I better start getting ready.