Week 7: Settling In

Hola, Hola, Hola!

Que tal? [What's up?] This one is going to be short since I honestly haven't done a whole lot this week. Midterms are coming up in about 2 weeks and after that I'm going to Las Fallas de Valencia and going on my amazing Semana Santa vacay! This week, outside of class, all I really did was go running/swimming and study.

But, on Thursday, I did take a "Master Class" at the Reina Sofia that was all about Picasso's Guernica. I learned a lot about what was going on within Spain at the time and why Picasso chose to create a piece about the town of Guernica.

[And cue history lesson!] During that time, Spain was going through a civil war between the Republic and the uprising of support for the dictator, Franco. Also at that time, France was hosting the World's Fair and invited Spain to create an exhibition. Normally when a country is at war, they don't participate in these sorts of things, but Spain opted to participate as a way of asking for help from the other countries. So, Spain comissioned an art exhibition that was filled with propaganda about the civil war. For the main piece, Spain approached Picasso, who at that time was living in Paris. Picasso accepted the invitation in January and the work needed to be completed in July. For months, Picasso had no idea what to paint about. Then in April, the bombing of the town of Guernica happened. People were outraged and on Labor Day in France there were huge demonstrations asking for justice for what happened in Guernica. And that's when Picasso decided to create the Guernica [only 2 months before it needed to be completed!]. Unfortunately, the exhibition didn't do anything. No one stepped up to help Spain, and the civil war continued until it eventually ended with the dictator taking power. Something that I've really noticed is that talking about the dictator is completely taboo. Although he died about 30 years ago, its still an extremely sensitive topic for Spain to talk about and even today you can still see remnants of people rebelling against his rule in Spain. [And, end history lesson]

Like I said above, I've got some really amazing trips planned! This is what my travel schedule looks like:
March 15-17: Las Fallas de Valencia
March 22-30: Andalucia [Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada, and Malaga]
April 13-14: Extremadura
April 26-28: Canary Isands
I'm so excited for all of these trips, the only other place in Spain that I've got to see is Barcelona! I know, I know, how could I not have scheduled Barcelona yet?! I just can't figure out when the best time to go is, but don't worry it's definitely going to happen!

I've been here for a month and a half now, and I feel a bit like I'm failing at the whole exploring the city and culture part. So, I've decided that I'm going to try to go to at least 4 cultural type things each week. What is a cultural type thing? Basically, I want to go to art museums, concerts, take some random classes, go explore a new area of the city, ride the metro and get off at a random stop, that sort of thing. And then at the end of each week, I'll fill you all in on what I've seen/learned about! Which means the ridiculously long blog updates will be making a reappearance quite soon :)

I think that's about it for this week!
Besos,
Kelsey

PS--If you haven't seen Argo, I highly recommend it! It's really, really intense though so be prepared!