Oh Barcelona, how I wish I could have enjoyed you.

Sagrada Familia, from the other side....completely different!
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This past weekend, I went to Barcelona…..and had a simply awful time. It all started on Thursday after school, when we took the train to Madrid so that we could hop on an overnight bus to Barcelona. In Madrid while waiting for the bus, we stopped at a bar, and had some mussels as a tapa. Later that night on the bus, my friend Patrick was feeling sick; he had a fever. We made it to Barcelona after a night of uncomfortable, bad sleep and walked down to the water. Barcelona is absolutely beautiful, and the culture is very different from that of Madrid and Toledo. People are all very relaxed and the atmosphere is relaxed. It is amazing, absolutely amazing. We walked around a bit until we could check into the hostel, but unfortunately after about 2 hours of walking…the awful illness fell upon me as well, and I felt like I could barely move. When we checked into the hostel, I laid down, and didn’t move from that spot for the remainder of the weekend. A little while later, my friend Tyler was cursed with the illness as well. So, 3 of the 6 were sick….all weekend. While the other 3 went out and enjoyed Barcelona, Tyler, Patrick and I stayed in bed with no energy, weak, running to the bathroom every half hour, and we had severe stomach aches. I was having sharp stomach pains every 5 minutes. I simply couldn’t move. It was miserable. On Saturday morning, I started to wonder what was wrong with my body; I had never felt pain like this before….so I went to the hospital. They gave me an IV, and said I had food poisoning. I also received medicine for the pain, which helped a little bit. I went back and told the boys that we’d been cursed with food poisoning, which they were relieved to hear, because it really seemed much worse than food poisoning. Tyler said he had food poisoning in the states that lasted 8 hours; this time around, it lasted 4 whole days and the pain was just unbelievable. So, although we were relieved that no, we weren’t dying, we were upset that we paid money to do nothing but lay in bed. What a bummer. I was able to leave the hostel once on sat. for almost an hour to go to a market and get some natural foods. The next day, we had to check out of the hostel, which meant….I had NO BED! Oh, no. I attempted to explore, but I was walking about the same speed as a turtle. The group split up, and Andy and I went to see the Sagrada Familia and the to the Gaudi gardens. After that, I was almost dead and walking the speed of a snail by now. We went down to the Mediterranean Sea and sat. At this point, my neck and back started to tense up and I could barely move my head. We met up with the crew, and sure enough, Tyler and Patrick also had stiff necks that would barely move, and it had happened to all of us on the same hour. WEIRD. This of course, made me very nervous, and I was simply exhausted and still having sharp pains every 10 minutes now, and now I couldn’t move my head; what was next?! Finally, we got on the bus to go back to Madrid, and I slept well the whole way back.

In barca, by the Sea
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So, how did we contract this miserable illness; the mussels was our first and only thought. However, the next day when we got to the Fundacion, everyone was sick. Literally over half of us had the same illness. On that same friday, some people that had traveled to Cadiz got sick, some in London, some in Amsterdam; all of us “fundies” were running to the bathroom every five minutes all over Europe! Some people had it worse than others, but we all definitely had the same sickness. They sent most people home from classes, including me. The staff at the Fundacion kept saying it was a virus, but barely anyone believes that. I, and many others, believe that we were served bad food at the Fundacion some time last week, and it got us all sick. It doesn’t make