Adventures Abroad: Routines

It's funny how when something becomes familiar, when an action becomes a routine, its easy to lose fascination with what you're doing and who you're working with. I've noticed this a lot with sights that I see--things like the Cathedral of Learning, the Rockies...things that would normally fascinate visitors. I guess I take things for granted a lot. Which serves me well in the moment--I don't have to worry about being in awe of my surroundings and with people all the time and I can focus on the things that need to get done. But at the same time, I miss out on all the really, really cool things that are around me which I might never see again. Being away from things definitely helps me put things into perspective. When I moved out to Pittsburgh from Colorado, the first thing I started missing (besides my family, of course) is the Rockies and the ability to always tell which way is west. Not that that is something I use on a regular basis, but it was comforting to know that there was an easy way to figure out directions by just swinging your head around. The same goes for experiences in Palma. The walk to school suddenly becomes less of a curious peeking into bakeries and stores as I pass by and more of a running so as not to be late to class. Visits to Cala Comtesa are just a little more mundane, and stretching out to enjoy the sun seems more like a chore than a relaxing pose. It's such a change from the beginning when I though that everything in Palma was amazing. Not that it isn't--everything here is still really cool, but it's lost that edge that it once had. I've gotten familiar with everything. I need to explore some more. Maybe I'm just that type of person that is super restless and will never really settle down. Who knows...

Yesterday was a regular day of class, the usual lectures from 9:30-12:30. It's interesting material--an application of biology material to a field I have no experience about. It's pretty fascinating. Yet at the same time, the material is getting old. It's starting to repeat itself, trends are starting to show up. Instead of paying 101% attention in class I can easily move to 50/60% and still feel like I am retaining most of the material. It's an odd phenomenon, but one that I feel is something I experience in my regular classes as well. This would be the point where people would stop going to lectures to just copy everything off the powerpoint online. Yet there is not that option here. Class and participation are mandatory, and it all factors into our final grade. I'm not complaining though--the material itself is not terribly difficult to understand which is nice. The hard part comes in applying it in exercises and other tings that Salud (our professor) does in class. Ah well, things were bound to get boring at some point. The fun parts come when we get to apply material during excursions and snorkeling. After class, we went out to Illetes (again...) but this time, to do some fieldwork for our final presentation. This involved snorkeling at various areas and collecting data about the types of fish and marine animals living there. This is something not many people look at--its the obvious stuff people see and pay attention to: algae, sea urchins, jellyfish. But there is a wealth of animal diversity in and around Illetes, and that's something that's so easy to miss on a regular trip to the beach. We spent about 3-4 hours just walking around, snorkeling, and recording all of the different things that we saw. Although the water was cold (but warm compared to Atlantic beaches), the clarity was stunning and the amount of fish and other sea life was really cool to observe.

(The snorkel crew)

(The arm of a starfish...)

(We found a sea urchin!)

Today, we had another couple of hours of class in the morning (gotta get those 45 contact hours in somewhere), before I headed home to eat some lunch and work a little on my dental app. I then met up with Steph and Hannah at Plaza Espanya, and we all headed up to Bellver Castle to the west of Palma. The view from the top was stunning--its easy to see how small Palma is, yet now diverse the nature of the island is. The city is located in a valley of sorts--surrounded by mountains on one side, and the sea on the other. There's opportunity to go hiking, snorkeling, running--almost every outdoor activity can be found here. The castle itself was pretty cool--round to the core, with a lot of museums and artifacts, it reminded me somewhat of the organization of Towers but more old and more spectacular in its construction. After the castle, we headed back to the Plaza Espanya, where we made our way down to the cathedral and right back to the Plaza. Along the way we stopped at a tapas palace for a small snack. I had the chance to try Mallorquin bread for the first time soaked in olive oil and tomato (I head eaten it plain the first time...), and it was SO delicious--more so than the other, dry, cardboard-like bread that I thought it would taste. We had some good times chatting and catching up on life and what has been going on in our lives. I went home afterwards to work some more on my dental apps and eat dinner, then we went to La Ruta Martiana just like last Tuesday for tapas and cheap alcoholic beverages. Again, I can't get over how cheap/good the quality of things are--the tapas aren't half-heartedly put together in mass quantities--its clear that there is a precision and love put into each tapa. It was nice to get out and to relax with friends and have some good conversations.