Although I could say I am glad our two courses are over here in Barcelona and that we have these last two weeks to focus on getting everything in that we would like to, I also realized that it meant that we had hit our, actually a little more than, half point. The fact that 3 weeks have already passed is unbelievable to me since it seems like we just got here. However, the amount of experience that we have managed to fit into just these three weeks is even harder to believe.
I can confidently say that I have come to an understanding of why people do live here, in Barcelona, Spain, and why I would potentially live here myself, in the future. You could say that I am still mesmerized by the experience as a whole, but how I would describe it, at this point at least, would be that I have accepted how beautifully, compatible I feel with this culture and the life style that comes with it. I will only cover the activities of my last week, but as a whole, these activities have only strengthened my love for this country and this city.
On Monday, we got to visit the famous Parc Guell, a magnificent sight filled with abstract, flowing buildings and built, originally, as a gated community by Gaudi himself. I will admit, I am usually not a fan of site-seeing, at least not for longer than a very short amount of time, but the effort put into these buildings intrigued me in regards to the community surrounding the reservation of this beautiful work of art. It showed me that Spain has a very, deep sense of cherishing its past, whether it is the people, the time or the mere history of something specific, like this Park.
On Friday, we took a tour of the Port of Barcelona, in which may have been my favorite excursion in regards to my unexpected interest in this international trade port. I had already acknowledged the many values engrained in Spain’s, or specifically Barcelona’s, social and cultural aspects of life, but now, to see the industrial, but extremely refined, aspect of their involvement in international trade, only brought me closer to the thought, a very raw thought at least; “They seriously know what they’re doing,”. Spain knows who they are and who they want to be, and it is very obvious through observation of an outsider. They are focused on what they can do better.?This is exemplified in their attempts of fighting climate change and being environmentally cautious, which is very normalized and not like anything I have seen in the states, such as their public dumpsters, which are found everywhere you look, that are dedicated to recycling, and the international port’s mission and, legitimate, attempt, to become more environmentally friendly by switching fuels and their ports fuel refining to the non-toxic form of LNG.
The exact aspect of my admiration of this country is their pure intentions of bettering their work and their policies for, not only the good of their people, but for the good of the world.