Ahh sorry I am behind on updates...it has been a crazy and hectic few days here! The past few days have been really great and we have been trying to soak up Tarragona as a group before everyone except for 12 of us leave tomorrow.
I'll start with Thursday, June 6th! Thursday we had our las translation class and handed in our projects...whew it was so nice to have it turned in and all finished. After class, we had a break from 11am to 1pm before lunch, so Anne and I ended up walking to the historic district to find a coffee shop for us both to have some quiet time. We ended up finding this really cute place with a little room in the back that was completely empty! I ordered a cappuccino...yummy! We each grabbed our own table and I spent the entire time journaling and in prayer. It was so refreshing to spend the morning with God, just finding rest in that time and having time to refresh. It's been hard to find time like that to just sit without a time limit and rest in the Word and prayer. I haven't journaled that much in a long time and it was such a nice morning. We both had a ton of work to do on our presentation for Friday, but we knew that we both needed that time with the Lord to refresh and refocus on Him. I was reading in Jesus Calling, a devotional I'm going through, and talking about how God's presence is independent of our awareness of Him, because we are often blocked of that awareness by other things, such as worry. One of my favorite lines was "I am all around you, like a cocoon of Light." That was just super encouraging and reminded me that no matter where I am, God is with me and that is where my strength comes from. I don't need to worry because God is in charge of my life and always provides in every way for us. It was so great! After about 2 hours in the coffee shop, we headed back to campus for our last lunch at the URV. We were all a little sad because the food there is so delicious and that also meant our trip was wrapping up. For the rest of the afternoon, we headed to the mall to do a little shopping around. I finally bought a cell phone to use here because I figured for the extension it would be good to have one since I will be in a host family. It is literally the most basic phone, I feel like I'm in middle school again learning how to use my first phone! Back to T-9...definitely feeling a little spoiled by my iPhone right now!
Thursday night we went to a restaurant to have tapas...it was such a fail. For some reason, they thought that we were little French kids, so they served chicken fingers, fries, and water in the smallest cups ever. We actually loved the food, but it wasn't nearly enough and our professors were upset that the restaurant didn't serve us what we actually ordered. Our professors were so sweet and ordered us all sangria to drink. They brought out a few more tapas and then dessert...we were all still hungry though, not good! BUT after dinner we got to go see Flamenco dancing! Oh my goodness, it was so impressive and beautiful! Their art form is amazing and they make it look so easy! After performing, they invited us onstage to try and dance with them. Our group is so crazy, we each were trying and failing, but it was so much fun. We looked so silly, it was great. Then three of our guys stood up on stage with all the dancers and did a dance with them...we were dying laughing because it was so funny. After flamenco, we were going to head to a bar for a little bit before heading to our favorite discoteca, GreenBacks. It was Ally's 21st birthday, so we wanted to do something fun even though we all had our presentations the next morning. The bar we went to was pretty fun - we filled up the entire place, of course! After hanging there for a while, we went to GreenBacks. I wasn't too excited because I wanted to go over my presentation more but I ended up going for about an hour. It was pretty fun and we got some fun dancing in, so I can't complain!
Friday, June 8th was our last day of classes/presentations. I had my presentation for my culture and medicine class at 10:30. It was a 10 minute presentation and I was superrrr nervous! I volunteered to go first because I love getting it over with and I think I shocked Belkys that I wanted to be first. It went really well and I got good feedback from my professor, so I was happy! Thank goodness that is over! Then we had our last translation class at 12 for about an hour. At 2pm we were having a farewell lunch at one of the hotels in Tarragona. We had a 3 course meal - salad, seafood risotto, and a fruit tarte for dessert - delicious! After we were finished eating and all got some coffee, a couple of our students had prepared speeches to thank our professors and the university for their hard work. We each also got certificates for our participation in the program!
Since I got about 4 hours of sleep Thursday night, I was needing a siesta and slept for 2 hours before dinner...yesss! We had made plans to go to Barcelona for the night as our last hoorah! After dinner, we got ready and were going to take a train to Barcelona. Oh my gosh, me and 2 of my friends left a little later than everyone and ended up getting lost trying to find the train station in Tarragona. We were literally running for the train and I didn't think we were going to make it. We made it just in time (thank goodness the train was also a little late) and were sweating and tired from running. It was an eventful start to the night. Once we got to Barcelona, we had to take the Metro to the Plaza Catalunya, I was so proud of us for figuring it all out! We didn't get to the club we were trying to go to until 2:15 and then they weren't letting people under 23 in...bust. So me and a small group decided to head back towards the direction of the train station to find food and a free place to go to. What the heck, we thought places in Barcelona were open until at least 6 am. Wrong. We could not find any food places open and by that time it was around 3:45 and we were all pretty cranky. We ended up just kinda walking around and sight seeing the city, which was actually pretty cool at night. There were still a ton of people out, which really blew our minds, but we felt pretty European for being out. We ran into 2 other people from our group that couldn't get in anywhere either, so we ended up hanging outside talking for a little bit and then around 4:30 decided to head back to the train station because the first train back was at 6am. Along the way, we saw Gaudí's Casa Batlló...it was so cool, especially at night! We sat and looked at it for a little bit and then continued on our way. We got to the train station around 5am and literally sat down in the train station until the train came at 6am. I think we all passed out on the train ride back and we got back to the residence around 7:30am. We all went straight to bed and slept until 1:30ish. It was an interesting night, a little bit of a bust, but it was still fun to just hang out with people and experience the city of Barcelona at night. Today everyone is packing up to fly back to the states tomorrow. I'm just throwing my stuff in my bag and moving to my host family tomorrow sometime! I'm excited for the change and think that the next two weeks will be pretty relaxing with a smaller group of us. Sorry for the novel, I guess I better go pack a little bit!
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