To Continue...

This evening for family night, my Mother cracked open the brightly colored tin filled with the tasty lebkuchen from Lebkuchen-Schmidt... mmm... Since I can remember, every Christmas some very dear friends from Germany have been sending my family these delights. As I indulged in a simple yet sinful sugar-coated square, I was taken back to our visit to new old Nürnberg, the city where these cookies were baked, and I remembered my much neglected blog.

I return for a moment and write:

Oviedo taught us a little about Spanish life. Businesses opened late in the morning, closed in the afternoon for lunch and siesta, re-opened until late at night and people stayed out partying until the next morning... some until 6 in the am. What a life!

We were up to see the last of the carousers as they stumbled home and headed East then South toward Santiago de Compostela. Being Pentecost Sunday, we wanted to make it on time to hear Mass in the great Catedral. Three hours later, we arrived in the city and parked in the first place nearest the Catedral that we could. We were never quite sure where any of our hotels were on this trip, but we always had a general idea and we knew our next hotel or rather Seminario-made-Hostel was next door to the Catedral. Woowee that was amazing! It wasn't the fanciest or most modern of situations, but it was truly memorable.

Our Hotel Seminario was managed by an old sweet little lady. She took care that her guests were comfortable and then left us to our devices. We dashed across the street to the Catedral hoping to catch a glimpse of the Pomp and Celebration that would accompany such a great feast day... We were just too late to hear Mass, but we did catch the tail end of the swinging of the famous Botafume

iro of Santiago!

To add to Santiago... this is a very important pilgrimage shrine and one of the old customs is to embrace the golden gilded statue of Santiago and then to venerate the relics in the casket beneath the altar. We partook and the embrace was unforgettable. It was like hugging an old friend whom you love dearly and hadn't seen for so long. It was really beautiful to see those pilgrims, who had taken the month long walk of Santiago, finally reach their goal, tears streaming down their faces, as they embraced their and my friend.  

Unfaithfully Yours

Gentle Reader:

Please forgive my lack of purpose in continuing this blog. I wish that a full schedule, little time, perhaps even impaired digiti could be my excuse, but that would be a falsehood. I'm in the best of health and I've had more than ample t

ime. It has not been time idly spent, it simply has not been applied to the recounting

of my adventures. So, I will not give a day to day chronicle of my recent European junket, but rather a breezy narrative

should suffice. I will include some of my scribbles when I, unfaithfully yet faithfully, scan them. :)

But to continue...

Where did I leave off? Has it already been five months? Incredible that such a little word "time" describes something

so immense. Ah! I remember, or rather, I review my last post: COVADONGA...

Beautiful Covadonga! It was so

spiritually enchanting. One was not really on earth in this viridial mountain sanctuary.

The drive over from Oviedo was a pastoral delight and the drive back was no different. I believe that this is a favorite destination for the weekend warriors as there were many motorcyclists and Domingueros in our way. Can I blame them? The Church gallantly (I say gallant not only for the architecture but because it is the place where the great Don Pelayo with a handful of warriors held off and destroyed the vast Islamic forces that tried to take over Spain in the Battle of Covadonga. If I could find such a hero... sigh...) greeted us from its mountain perch and we headed straight for it thinking that the shrine with the Madonna was within. As we drove up and up and up, we discovered that the shrine was on the other side of a little ravine and open to Nature and all of her elements. We joined a gentle devout throng as it made its way to the little cave that floated over a gurgling water-fall and a

pproached the Virgencita in a sea of blossoms. We left our petitions, descended the long staircase and Isabella and I, engaging in one of the local customs, drank of the fountain that draws its water from the pool under the falls, but not without hesitations be

cause as an old song says:

The Holy Virgin of Covadonga

Has a Fountain bright and clear

And the maid who drinks its waters,

Will be wed within the year.

I could go on about Covadonga, but we were only there for a few hours. For more on Covadonga (http://www.santuariodecovadonga.com/).

Needless to say, we returned to OVIEDO. This was a lively city and Isa and I had many opportunities for algunos paseos de compras!

Journey

So,
Here I am in Madrid! It´s been a crazy yet fantastic trek!!

Day 1. Arrive in London, take a 3 hour bus ride into the city and around 5 in the pm begin to see London. We ran through the V & A museum which was amazing and then met up with Joe Blewett and his buddy Brad and wandered through London with them. Our Hotel was in a great spot, but small... we were next to Hyde Park!! A landscape architects dream spot!

Day 2. We ran around Westminster Abbey and Cathedral and then headed to the Airport to leave fro Zaragoza... We arrived in Zaragoza and to our Hotel realllllllly late and on the night that Barçe won the European cup so there was a lot of noise and partying going on. Awesome!

Day 3. We went into the Catedral and visited with Our Lady of Pilar! The Cathedral and plaza are so beautiful... the stone is a golden yellow! We left the center of the town and picked up our rental car then headed for Burgos. What a pleasant surprise Burgos was!!!! And lucky us, we happened to park in a garage that was less than a block from our hotel... Burgos was awesome. Our hotel overlooked a pedestrian street that was lined with London Plane trees leading up to El Cid gate. More adventures followed, but for now, the Cathedral was Breathtaking. Mindboggling.

Day 4. Jumped into our car for Oviedo. Before Oviedo, we stopped by Covadonga. If you ever want to visit a place that is beautiful beyond your imagination, visit Covadonga. We paid our respects to the Virgen and then returned to Oviedo to explore the town.

Almost there...

    Tomorrow is the last official day for classes. I'm slightly overwhelmed by how quickly the time since I started this blog, actually since I started college, has flown by. 

    Looking back... four years ago, I attended an orientation for the Landscape admits. What a different person I was then. Leaving the safe-haven of my little High-school to the unknown of the huge University that UC Berkeley is, was kind of a big deal and I was about to meet some of the teachers and students with whom I was going to share the next four years of my life, kind of. As it happened, there was only one other undergraduate present at the orientation, the most social and fun guy ever, Dave Rhoads. Apparently it was a grad student orientation, but my advisor and friend, Mary Anne, assured us that we were welcome. Dave, confident to the core, introduced himself to the Landscape Department faculty and staff without a tinge of hesitation. My turn came... I was so nervous. Thoughts raced through my head... "What was my name again?"... "Everyone's watching me!" "Oh my gosh!"... "I look so stupid!" Luckily, I did recall my name and obliged the company by sharing that information in a voice that I don't recall ever using before, and, I was even so good as to mumble that I was a first-year Undergraduate. It wasn't a difficult phrase, but for some reason or another, the words came out all wrong. Gosh, I was such a cute, shy little girl! That was quite funny... There have been so many funny little escapades and embarrassing episodes in the past four years mostly consequences of my spontaneity and happy naivety. It was wonderful and I learned so much from those little things and those remarkable persons who wove in and out of my University life.   

     So now what? Easter has come and gone, I'll be graduating in ten days, and my plane departs for Europe shortly after. This will be quite an adventure, life outside of school. I've been in school since I was four years old for at least 2/3 of the year. It'll be so novel, so unfamiliar. I'm ready. 

My Odyssey

I will begin jotting the events of my Odyssey with today. I'm not sure if Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent and especially penitential in nature, is a particularly appropriate day to begin a blog in which one is recording the happenstances of her zany life. No matter. I begin today. 

Following the example of some of my dear friends, I take keyboard in hand or lap and write. I will be graduating from the University of California, Berkeley in just a few months now and hope to utilize this blog as a medium to keep friends, family, and my own self abreast of the forks and bends in the ambiguous future that I teeter into. 

Currently, I am studying Landscape Architecture at UC Berkeley. The impending question of "what will you do when you graduate?" has been on my mind for quite some time now. Some days I know the answer, others I don't. At the beginning of my senior year I had decided that I would pursue some sort of jewelry design education in Italy. The romantic notion still lingers in my mind, but during the semester, my best and most memorable semester at Cal, I shifted gears from the more extravagant aspect of design to a more practical. I plunged into the writings of St. Hildegard von Bingen and started incorporating the plants in her medicinal "Physica" and the ideas of her visionary "Scivias" into my own design process. I don't know where this will take me exactly, but this has been my thrust as of late: to create space that is spiritually and physically healing. Imagine, beautiful uplifting spaces perhaps attached to clinics, or convalescent homes that provide the ingredients for natural curing both literally and figuratively. Again, I'm still unsure of the who's, what's, where's and why's of this idea and whether this constitutes graduate school, research in Germany. I do know that I still have a great deal of probing ahead of me. It's full speed ahead!