Sístole y diástole

I’m sorry I’ve been absent the last few days! Classes began on Monday, and they leave little time to do much else. Fortunately, however, we have been on our own for dinner, and it has been very gratifying to figure out how to feed ourselves. Gracias a Lonely Planet, we ate at Restaurante Ó 42 on Rúa do Franco Sunday night, and it was a feast! Everyone ordered their own ración and we all shared in the delicious pulpo, pimientos, tortillas y más. Unfortunately, the next day I got sick at dinner (we ended up choosing the restaurant where we ate because I had to run in without warning in order to not get sick on the street), so my classmates haven’t been allowing me to eat any meat since. (Perhaps tonight will be different!)

I am very glad that I decided to stay at that second dinner after getting sick, however, because it was the most fun I’ve had since we arrived. The company was wonderful (two Wesleyan students, two Vassar students, and one Columbia student), the food was delicious (if TINY), and the service was especially friendly (a treat in Spain, where servers are not working for tips). We played a rousing game of “never-have-I-ever”, taking sips of our wine for everything we had done that someone said they never had. Needless to say, by the end of dinner we were very giggly, and much closer than we had been before.

After dinner we strolled (a bit haphazardly, but laughing all the way) to the plaza in front of the Cathedral, and sang along with a group of costumed men who had gathered a crowd across from the monumental building. It wasn’t long, however, before we were called back by the city’s jewel to lie down in the middle of the plaza and gaze up at it, illuminated against the black sky.

Today we had the privilege of touring Santiago de Compostela with an art history professor. He had a LOT to say about the architectural set-up of the city, and I have to admit, I was too distracted by all that at which he was pointing to listen to all that he was saying. I did, however, take in the significance of the layout of the streets, which are constantly truncated by each other. It is impossible to see down a street more than 500 yards in either direction because they either curve, or buildings spring up and the road comes to a T.

The theme of blocked views is echoed by the city’s plazas, in which there exist no views between the buildings out of the plaza, rather the buildings overlap each other to create a sense of full enclosure. In said plazas, our professor also pointed out the way in which baroque architecture is always pointing upwards, drawing one’s eyes to the sky. Finally, our he emphasized the importance of the flattened corners on the buildings (rather than coming to a point, many walls look like the corner has been shaved off), however I never ended up hearing why this was the case.

I took a number of pictures, a couple of which you can see on this page, and soon I will post a link to an album with the rest of my photos. I hope you haven’t found this post too dry! The fact is that we don’t have time to have much fun right now, but I assure you that, before long, you will be hearing about all the fun, exciting things there are to do in Spain.

Un beso