Spencer Says (with some help from Jeff)

This is a picture of some of my friends I am missing back in Utah. It was at my last orchestra concert.

This last week We all went to Barcelona. It was one of my favorite places I've been to. There were really big streets like, Las Ramblas, with cool shops and sweet street vendors. I liked to just walk around and look at things. I wanted to rent a bike and ride around the city, but I didn't because Rickey sprained his ankle and it was swollen up huge (see photo below) and he couldn't walk. I had to wait for 4 hours with him in the Plaza Espana while my parents tried to arrange our ride (45 minutes back to the hotel.) So I ran for 30 minutes to find a KFC and then ran back to Rickey. We ate like kings that day.

There was a beach 2 blocks from our hotel, but I didn't go because I just doing other things. I did swim in the hotel pool which was freezing cold, but I won the swimming race against a few other students. I also really enjoyed swimming at the beach on our last trip near Santiago de Compostela. It was freezing also though! (see family photo)

We went to my favorite Cathedral in Barcelona, It was called the Segrada Familia. The main architecht who worked on it was Antoni Gaudi. He is pretty much the most famous architect in Spanish history. He is a Catalan (from the northeastern part of Spain. Catalans have their own Latin-based language, and they have a long history of wanting to separate from Spain (not to be confused with the Basque, some of whom also want to break away from Spain). Gaudi lived in the last part of the 19th century and early 20th century. He loved nature and he loved Gothic architecture, so he combined those things in his buildings. He did like new style stuff. This church was bigger than most cathedrals and it had some of the coolest architechture I have ever seen. It was awesome. Some people think it is surrealist, but it isn't. Gaudi was a very strong Catholic and he wanted this to be an "expiatory temple" to help pay for the sins of the 20th century. Gaudi died after being hit by a trolley car when he was in his 80s. The church was not finished and it still isn't. That doesn't stop thousands of tourists a day going through it, even as construction continues. It seems like the whole site should be a a hard-had only area.

On the last trip, we went to Leon, which was home to my second favorite Cathedral. It was huge and it had tons of stained glass. I wasn't supposed to take pictures, but I did. Many people consider this to be the prettiest cathedral in all of Spain, but of course that depends on who is saying it. Some students say I look like the unabomber with my hoody and glasses.

This is me and John-Charles ( a guy from our group) sword fighting in Segovia, a city northwest of Madrid. There is a TON of medieval history here, and it just makes you want to pull out a sword and start dueling someone. We thought this would be a cool little Lord of the Rings spot to fight so we did.

We visited some cool windmills in La Mancha, famous from Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. My Dad wanted to motivate me to read it so he offered me 30 bucks for reading the unabridged version. It was 1,050 pages so that's .028 cents a page! I actually enjoyed it. It was so windy at the windmills. I felt like I would almost be able to fly. There are many of these old windmills around in the province of La Mancha.