The days are so long here, and it makes the month seem that much longer. I feel like time here has stopped and I’m in a whole different world, feels weird that I don’t have my old world to return to, but I guess a familiar world of Texas and then that wonderful question of where I’ll end up.
After class on Tuesday, there was lunch, where nothing too interesting happened. We had salads that were actually normal, but mine didn’t have any ham on it, so it was just lettuce. That kind of sucked. Oh yeah, one girl said we all got a free coke with our meal, but it was a secret. So the whole table ordered drinks and when we got them, guess what, no free coke included with our meal. The girl offered to pay for the table because it was her idea, but they ended up giving them to us for free for that day.
I was very tired after lunch, but Sarah Beth and Bianca wanted to tour the Monastery. We went over and paid about 8 euros. We decided to do the unguided tour, but the girls got those audio tour guides you carry around. I passed and figured I’d be fine just reading the descriptions. I took Diego along to take pictures, which was fun, but I think the people there saw me on the cameras and would follow me a lot when I was taking pictures of him. It was a very long tour, I think we were there at least 2 hours. There were lots of art work and let me tell you right now, I’m Christian and all, but there are only so many pictures of Jesus and Mary that I can handle. Did people paint anything else? What bothers me, is that I can’t look at the painting and think, oh wow, look at Mary….I just think, so some dude was like, I hear/read about this Mary chick, let me draw a picture of her in whatever way I want. So when I look at it, I don’t feel like I’m getting any insight in what she looked like or went through. My personal feeling is that these paintings are like gossip, and people start to believe them and think that is what these people looked like and what exactly happened. We all know what happens in the telephone game. Of course, looking at it just as art, it is interesting, but usually what moves me is what is drawn, not how it is drawn.
At one point we ended up down in the tombs with coffin after coffin of kings and their wifes, children and the like. I thought the tombs were really awesome looking, but I just got this gloomy feeling down there and wanted to leave. Maybe it was the idea of being in the presence of dead bodies and lots of them. I usually don’t feel this way in cemeteries though, but maybe that is because people are under the ground.
We finally got to the basilica, and by this point I was very tired, and ironically, the free part is the highlight of the tour. I should probably attend church there since well the monastery is right across the street. After the tour, we headed out to talk to the travel agent to plan our weekends.
The lady spoke some English, so this helped a lot. We were there a really long time and reserved a trip to Italy, which we are planning to go and pay for today. We almost got a flight for this weekend to the Canary Islands, but it didn’t work at the end. We hope to go to Paris this weekend, but we are having problems finding a good price.
After that, Sarah Beth went to Church and Bianca had a group meeting and I went to nap. Sarah Beth didn’t actually make it into church because they thought she was a tourist and would not let her in. I ended up not having dinner that night and instead ate my chicken nuggets I had bought at the store and watched Run Lola Run.
I don’t know why, but in the morning I felt really tired and thought about sleeping in, but I only have 3 absences and don’t want to waste them. I got to class and at least 3 people were drinking red bull. I am impressed on their ability to go out and wake up, but I’m glad I’m not having to drink red bull to stay awake right now.
In my comparative class, my professor told us a good story about Mother Teresa. She was a dignitary at a function sitting next to a millionaire. The man turns to her and tells her his life story and how he was down to his last few dollars and he donated them to the Salvation Army and God repaid him 100 fold and now he was in this position of being really rich. She turns to him and tell him, “Do it again, God has proven he can be trusted.” Well this just made the rest of the evening awkward.
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