i am writing from montblanc, in spain, in the montains! i am working on a farm this week through an organization called WWOOF, world wide organic farming... something like that! it is so relaxing being here, for the next week i will be living on the top of a mountain, helping run a guest house and taking care of animals and helping out in the garden. also i will only be speaking spanish! this is really fun, but i realize there are so many more things i want to say that i dont know how to say. i can get by pretty well so far though and i am learning more words everyday. it took me a while to remember how to speak spanish, but i think i am getting in a good groove. i wish i could post pictures! it is sooo beautiful here, there are just rolling hills and mountains of green and the air is fresh and its so beautiful and life is so simple. its all about food and people and maintaining the land. everything is run on solar power, i think, and we only use the amount of water we absolutely need. water here is sort of scarce, its a strange mix because it sort of feels tropical but at the same time it is a desert... i dont really get it yet how it all works!
barcelona was incredible. i met amazing people through couchsurfing, not to stay with them but just to hang out during the days. Andres from chile showed us around the city by bike, Rosita from sicily hung out and we spoke in spanish about sicily and barcelona and she took us to a cool place for dinner and we all had a lot of laughs all trying to speak spanish! We also hung out with kathryn´s sister rachel who is studying abroad in barcelona and she was so much fun! really sweet person. barcelona is a beautiful mix of the beach, gaudi´s architecture, interesting people, good food, and a ton of stuff to do, all night long! people go out til like 5am, we couldnt handle staying out that late but we did have some good times! it was a great experience and i am excited to wind down now and sink into the simple lifestyle of working on this farm! i am the only volunteer right now, so i bought a book which i currently forget the name of, and i have been journaling a lot, and there seem to be a million places to go on walks to explore. right now though i am so tired from barcelona that i have been napping in the hammock and not doing a whole lot!
this experience since my semester ended has been so special, everything seems to be culminating to the next thing... like there are so many things about these travels that only can happen because of something in my past that has led me here. it feels like destiny. it is really amazing, i have to go now! adios,
jodi
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
amazing.
the journey has begun. my semester ended, i got really sick the last few days, just made it to the kew gardens and then it was all packing and trying to rest after that! the kew gardens are beautiful though, amazing collections of all kinds of trees and flowers and cacti and other plants.
i dont have time for everything really... but i had an amazing time connecting with my relatives in glenluce scotland! where they live is beautiful and they were all soo kind to me for having not known i existed and all. i stayed on the street where my great, great (yes count em) grandfathers sister lived. she married a man who owned a grocery store, they had a daughter named Mattie. Mattie is my great grandfathers cousin. She is now 92 years old, and she lives on the same street where the grocery store was where my grandfather went to visit maybe 50 or 60 years ago! It was magical driving around scotland, i saw a castle and robert burns' cottage, and most importantly i was in the company of some really really sweet distant relatives who took such good care of me. it was mattie and her son and daughter George and Veda. I even saw my great great grandfathers sisters grave! i know its sort of ridiculously distant... but it was a great trip.
after scotland i stayed in keswick with another distant cousin named Nan and her husband Sam. they live in the lakes district. the view out of my window was of a mountain and a field of sheep below it. i also had a keyboard in my room with headphones so i could play music! we went to see wordsworths cottage in grasmere and i mainly just drank tea a lot and ate good food and read my book and relaxed! i did a hike on the last day and it was beautiful,cant wait to share pictures. i will have to have a picture party at this point when i get back because uploading will take forever.
after that i flew to Florence to stay with Rachael and it was sooo amazing!!! My first night there rach and i went to an open mic at Be Bop and played a bunch of songs together!! The next night we were giving out food to the homeless with ppl rach volunteers with and they took us out for a huge dinner and i practiced what little italian i knew with everyone and ate more than any human should! but it was sooo delicious. wednesday i went to see the david and the boboli gardens and we all went out later that night to go dancing. thursday i met up with Emily and Jamie from LC and got a tour of san lorenzo from rachaels friend carolina. then i climbed the duomo and ate the freshest mozzerella ever! the man was making it at a market and i almost died when i ate it, we got a huge ball of it and went to the park. i love italy.
i am in bologna now staying here for a night before i go fly to barcelona to meet up with spencer and chris (they rock they were on my london program)! today i ate the best pizza ever, they rolled the dough before my eyes and put it in the oven and put it right on my plate fresh out of the oven. it was incredible. then i ate the best gelato ever... and almost died again. instead i came back here to update you all. i miss everyone and i am looking forward to the rest of my travels. wish me luck! lots of love to all of you,
Jodi
i dont have time for everything really... but i had an amazing time connecting with my relatives in glenluce scotland! where they live is beautiful and they were all soo kind to me for having not known i existed and all. i stayed on the street where my great, great (yes count em) grandfathers sister lived. she married a man who owned a grocery store, they had a daughter named Mattie. Mattie is my great grandfathers cousin. She is now 92 years old, and she lives on the same street where the grocery store was where my grandfather went to visit maybe 50 or 60 years ago! It was magical driving around scotland, i saw a castle and robert burns' cottage, and most importantly i was in the company of some really really sweet distant relatives who took such good care of me. it was mattie and her son and daughter George and Veda. I even saw my great great grandfathers sisters grave! i know its sort of ridiculously distant... but it was a great trip.
after scotland i stayed in keswick with another distant cousin named Nan and her husband Sam. they live in the lakes district. the view out of my window was of a mountain and a field of sheep below it. i also had a keyboard in my room with headphones so i could play music! we went to see wordsworths cottage in grasmere and i mainly just drank tea a lot and ate good food and read my book and relaxed! i did a hike on the last day and it was beautiful,cant wait to share pictures. i will have to have a picture party at this point when i get back because uploading will take forever.
after that i flew to Florence to stay with Rachael and it was sooo amazing!!! My first night there rach and i went to an open mic at Be Bop and played a bunch of songs together!! The next night we were giving out food to the homeless with ppl rach volunteers with and they took us out for a huge dinner and i practiced what little italian i knew with everyone and ate more than any human should! but it was sooo delicious. wednesday i went to see the david and the boboli gardens and we all went out later that night to go dancing. thursday i met up with Emily and Jamie from LC and got a tour of san lorenzo from rachaels friend carolina. then i climbed the duomo and ate the freshest mozzerella ever! the man was making it at a market and i almost died when i ate it, we got a huge ball of it and went to the park. i love italy.
i am in bologna now staying here for a night before i go fly to barcelona to meet up with spencer and chris (they rock they were on my london program)! today i ate the best pizza ever, they rolled the dough before my eyes and put it in the oven and put it right on my plate fresh out of the oven. it was incredible. then i ate the best gelato ever... and almost died again. instead i came back here to update you all. i miss everyone and i am looking forward to the rest of my travels. wish me luck! lots of love to all of you,
Jodi
Monday, April 7, 2008
Whirlwind Week
The end is in sight and there's no slowing down! Last week I had lots of work due (for London studying standards) and this week we have finals! So on days where I didn't do as much, presumably I was working on papers and studying ;)
After my spontaneous trip to Wales where I got to sit on the beach and play guitar, and work on the train ride back, I worked on my paper for Matthew's class about feminism in musicology and practice. It was really interesting but I probably didn't give myself enough time to decently discuss everything in this 8 page research paper.
Wednesday night I ventured to the national theatre with Dylan and our LC visitor from the Munich program, Cathrine (spelling?) who is a lot of fun and we all went to see "The Hour We Knew Nothing of Eachother," which is an hour and 45 minutes long, with absolutely no dialogue, but plenty of interactions and so much content. It takes place on a city street as characters walk by and the whole thing was constantly interesting and really hilarious. So glad I got to see it.
Thursday we had 6 hours of theatre class, all presentations, including mine on Community Theatre which is this cool idea/practice founded by Ann Jellicoe where you get a community together who has never acted or necessarily been involved in theatre and put on a huge production involving hundreds of people in the community, with the help of a handful of professionals (the playwright, and some who teach acting skills, stagemanaging). It was interesting but really exhausting to sit there for 6 HOURS!
After class we raced to the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, which normally might take 45 minutes to get to but the Jubilee Line was closed--I read in the paper the next day there was a power failure and people were stuck on some trains for 3 hours! luckily i didn't leave sooner. I got separated from the group and asked a number of strangers who pointed me in the right direction so I made it just in time for the 15 minute late entrance into this awesome play about immigration into the UK and how challenging it is for people to go through this process with all the many cultural differences. It was SO good. Not to mention before we left, I made a dish inspired by Rachael-- pasta with meat sauce and garlic and deliciousness with red wine and dark chocolate with hazelnuts to follow (I had to indulge after 6 hours of class!).
Friday was beautiful outside! Tessa and I woke up early and I wore my sandals for the first time ever in London. It was also warm on thursday but i didn't get to go outside much. But yes we woke up early and made it 5th in line to buy front row tickets to see Hairspray the musical! We waited for almost 2 hours, and I wrote some letters to my long lost relatives in Scotland while we waited, and we got the tickets! then we bought picnic supplies and back to the flat to pick up my guitar, a few others, and some study materials and went to hyde park to the princess diana memorial with a sheet and laid in the sun and dipped our feet in the fountain and I took a nap and then played frisbee and guitar! It was SO NICE and WARM.
Saturday we took a trip to York, I had another picnic in the museum gardens there among some ruins near the river, and tasted some local brews at a pub, and then went to the open galleries all around town, one of which was in a guys house on Portland street, which was so fitting because it reminds me of first thursdays in portland where they open up all the galleries all over town late at night (except this was during the day). the art was really cool and interesting. i prefer small doses to the intense huge museums i've been going to everywhere! i ended the day going to evensong at the minster, which was a huge huge church, with a crazy painted organ, and a funny choir complete with a 9 year old girl picking her nose :).
Sunday... you won't believe this, but I woke up to HUGE snowflakes falling. In the morning I made a snowman, and went to see the olympic torch go by notting hill gate, and then ate delicious pizza at this italian pizza place in the area. THEN went back to make HOT COCOA to warm up... then we went to see more of the olympic torch, which was wild because the free tibet protests got soo intense they made the torch runner have to turn around and change his course. it was so chaotic with the protestors chanting, people cheering on the runner, police sirens going off, and churchbells of st pauls ringing in the distance, it was really overwhelming and incredible. after THIS dylan and i headed to the globe theatre to see an amazing mix of 5 minute scenes from shakespeare plays-- sooo good! we stood in the pit and it snowed again towards the end, it was absolutely freezing, but so amazing to see a performance in this space. and there's MORE, right after this performance we raced back to royal albert hall for a performance of british classical music. that building is soo beautiful, it was nice to be in big warm comfortable chairs after a day spent out in the cold. by the night the snow had melted, and now its sunny again but still cold.
talk about a weather shift! Today I've been getting some work done, and tonight we have a class performance where I'm going to sing a cappella with the group and maybe play a song on guitar. This is sort of the condensed version, can't wait to show pictures of the snow in hyde park! it was magical, and especially CRAZY considering i had been in sandals and a t-shirt two days prior to the snow!
OH one more thing -- My letters reached the relatives in Scotland and one has responded and is allowing me to stay with her for a night, I am soo excited to meet them! It is my grandfathers cousin and her daughter who I'll be visiting in SW Scotland. More on travel plans to come. I love you all, and think of you often,
Jodi
After my spontaneous trip to Wales where I got to sit on the beach and play guitar, and work on the train ride back, I worked on my paper for Matthew's class about feminism in musicology and practice. It was really interesting but I probably didn't give myself enough time to decently discuss everything in this 8 page research paper.
Wednesday night I ventured to the national theatre with Dylan and our LC visitor from the Munich program, Cathrine (spelling?) who is a lot of fun and we all went to see "The Hour We Knew Nothing of Eachother," which is an hour and 45 minutes long, with absolutely no dialogue, but plenty of interactions and so much content. It takes place on a city street as characters walk by and the whole thing was constantly interesting and really hilarious. So glad I got to see it.
Thursday we had 6 hours of theatre class, all presentations, including mine on Community Theatre which is this cool idea/practice founded by Ann Jellicoe where you get a community together who has never acted or necessarily been involved in theatre and put on a huge production involving hundreds of people in the community, with the help of a handful of professionals (the playwright, and some who teach acting skills, stagemanaging). It was interesting but really exhausting to sit there for 6 HOURS!
After class we raced to the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn, which normally might take 45 minutes to get to but the Jubilee Line was closed--I read in the paper the next day there was a power failure and people were stuck on some trains for 3 hours! luckily i didn't leave sooner. I got separated from the group and asked a number of strangers who pointed me in the right direction so I made it just in time for the 15 minute late entrance into this awesome play about immigration into the UK and how challenging it is for people to go through this process with all the many cultural differences. It was SO good. Not to mention before we left, I made a dish inspired by Rachael-- pasta with meat sauce and garlic and deliciousness with red wine and dark chocolate with hazelnuts to follow (I had to indulge after 6 hours of class!).
Friday was beautiful outside! Tessa and I woke up early and I wore my sandals for the first time ever in London. It was also warm on thursday but i didn't get to go outside much. But yes we woke up early and made it 5th in line to buy front row tickets to see Hairspray the musical! We waited for almost 2 hours, and I wrote some letters to my long lost relatives in Scotland while we waited, and we got the tickets! then we bought picnic supplies and back to the flat to pick up my guitar, a few others, and some study materials and went to hyde park to the princess diana memorial with a sheet and laid in the sun and dipped our feet in the fountain and I took a nap and then played frisbee and guitar! It was SO NICE and WARM.
Saturday we took a trip to York, I had another picnic in the museum gardens there among some ruins near the river, and tasted some local brews at a pub, and then went to the open galleries all around town, one of which was in a guys house on Portland street, which was so fitting because it reminds me of first thursdays in portland where they open up all the galleries all over town late at night (except this was during the day). the art was really cool and interesting. i prefer small doses to the intense huge museums i've been going to everywhere! i ended the day going to evensong at the minster, which was a huge huge church, with a crazy painted organ, and a funny choir complete with a 9 year old girl picking her nose :).
Sunday... you won't believe this, but I woke up to HUGE snowflakes falling. In the morning I made a snowman, and went to see the olympic torch go by notting hill gate, and then ate delicious pizza at this italian pizza place in the area. THEN went back to make HOT COCOA to warm up... then we went to see more of the olympic torch, which was wild because the free tibet protests got soo intense they made the torch runner have to turn around and change his course. it was so chaotic with the protestors chanting, people cheering on the runner, police sirens going off, and churchbells of st pauls ringing in the distance, it was really overwhelming and incredible. after THIS dylan and i headed to the globe theatre to see an amazing mix of 5 minute scenes from shakespeare plays-- sooo good! we stood in the pit and it snowed again towards the end, it was absolutely freezing, but so amazing to see a performance in this space. and there's MORE, right after this performance we raced back to royal albert hall for a performance of british classical music. that building is soo beautiful, it was nice to be in big warm comfortable chairs after a day spent out in the cold. by the night the snow had melted, and now its sunny again but still cold.
talk about a weather shift! Today I've been getting some work done, and tonight we have a class performance where I'm going to sing a cappella with the group and maybe play a song on guitar. This is sort of the condensed version, can't wait to show pictures of the snow in hyde park! it was magical, and especially CRAZY considering i had been in sandals and a t-shirt two days prior to the snow!
OH one more thing -- My letters reached the relatives in Scotland and one has responded and is allowing me to stay with her for a night, I am soo excited to meet them! It is my grandfathers cousin and her daughter who I'll be visiting in SW Scotland. More on travel plans to come. I love you all, and think of you often,
Jodi
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