So I’m going to lump a few days together, but post a separate post about my project work.

Monday morning I started my program: the Compostela Architecture Institute or Compostelas for short. We started off with a welcome from the mayor and the director of cultural activities (or something similar) of Santiago de Compostela and then went up to the roof of the highest building in the old town to get oriented. After a break, we went to our lecture room and studio and were introduced to our instructors, the director of the program and our projects (more on that in the next post). Monday afternoon after lunch we had a lecture about the monastary where our classrooms are and a tour of the facility. Then we took a bus to see the “site” of our project and ended about 8:30p.

Tuesday the program gave us the morning off to do any errands (since we work during the times that shops are open) and anything else we wanted to. Then we had a lecture on the Manifestation of Ideology in Landscape — a topic I’ve never come close to thinking about before. Did you know that landscape wasn’t even a concept in Western cultures until the mid-Nineteenth century? It was kind of fascinating.

After lunch we were yelled at by our instructor and then he gave us a 90 minute lecture on Galicia, which was also really interesting.

Random facts:

• Galicia (the province where Santiago is) is approximately the same size as Tokyo.
• Galicia is the largest producer of Eucalyptus in Europe and has the largest Eucalyptus tree in the world (at over 50m tall)
• Galicia has approximately 3 million people and another 1 million Galicians live in Buenos Aires.
• Tectonically/Geographically Galicia was at one time a neighbor of New York and Ireland and thus has similar soil and rock conditions.
• The rias along the Western coast of Galicia are a mix of salt and fresh water in a way that is only found here, Chile and a small portion of Tokyo.

After our lecture, I walked about 5 km out of town on the Camino de Santiago and then back (with a detour to someplace that I still haven’t identified, but will try to ask someone tomorrow). I figure that yesterday I walked close to 15 km including the walk to class, back to the dorms, back to class and the Camino walk. Needless to say, I was pretty tired this morning.

Today is a national holiday, so everything is a bit unusual. We have no class, but we are definitely expected to make progress on our projects. I woke up late (I worked late and the walking apparently tired me out more than I thought) and then went to the cathedral square to observe the pilgrims arriving and to attend the pilgrim’s mass at noon. Since today is the festival of St. James, things were unusually crazy and some sort of important person attended mass at the cathedral, so the mass was delayed and then it may have been a regular mass and not the pilgrim’s mass. I will try again on Saturday to attend the pilgrim’s mass. I also spent a good deal of time sketching, thinking and trying to organize my ideas about my project.

In an hour or so I plan on heading back out to see the fireworks and the festival, which is similar in character (if not in size) to a fourth of July celebration in DC.

Photos are posted here.