The questions were:
1.) What was your favorite cathedral/church and why?
2.) What was your favorite spot/place and why?
3.) What was your favorite food/drink?
4.) Give a blurb about something you learned/discovered/realized/thought about on the trip.
From Allison:
1.) My favorite cathedral was in Leon, because the stained glass windows were absolutely amazing. I also liked that they tried to keep it as much of a place of prayer as a tourist attraction.
2.) My favorite spot was our first castle. There was just something about climbing clear up a mountain and gazing down at the beautiful view, and realizing that people actually lived here hundreds of years ago.
3.) My favorite food/drink would probably be breakfasts of French bread and Nutella.
4.) The thing that struck me most, learning about all the cathedrals, was how much human politics was involved in cathedral building. Certainly part of the reason for constructing a cathedral was devotion to God, but it was also a strong authority symbol for the church. If you were a poor peasant, it would seem unthinkable to disagree with people who had the resources to build something as grand as the cathedrals we saw. Also, it seemed glaringly wrong to me to have a representation of Saint James ("The Moorslayer") trampling people with his horse as the focus of a building dedicated to God, but it really shows the focus of the church at the time. So much of what we saw demonstrated that they were concerned with keeping the church free from heresy, but again, there were both religious and political reasons for that.
1.) The cathedral in Auch: the sheer size of it! It was difficult to imagine anybody being able to build anything that grand without modern technology and machinery. Then as you walk in and look up, there were the stained glass windows that let in the sunlight, showing the dust swirling around. There was a stillness about the place that was really powerful for me.
2.) The castle in Spain. It was really cool to be able to climb around on the ruins without anybody else being there. It was interesting to think of how many people had walked the steps that we did, or how many people had stood on the top of the tower looking out over the plains. It was one of the most beautiful places I'd seen. We could hear the chickens in the village at the bottom of the hill, and we could hear the church bells chiming the hour in the next village over. It felt like I was looking at the entire world, like I could see everything.
3.) My favorite drink was the coffee in Spain. With waking up every morning after a long day of walking, it was nice to have something to help us wake up. And it had taste!! American coffee can't even compete. My favorite food was of course the bread. But the strange thing that I didn't think that I would like was the pate, made of goose liver. Normally, I'm the kind of person that would politely refuse to try the strange dish, but I took a chance and loved it.
4.) Historically, the thing that attracted people to Christianity at the very beginning was the sense of family and community that was offered. When we were in a cathedral in Fromista, I believe, we witnessed this sense of commutiny firsthand. We had just entered the small cathedral, which was in itself rather plain in comparison to the other cathedrals we had seen, and we realized a really large tour group from Germany was there. All of us inwardly groaned, thinking that they were simply tourists and were going to be in our way. After a couple mintutes of looking around and avoiding running into the Germans, we noticed that they had gathered in the very front of the cathedral where the ceiling is the highest. They began to sing. In German of course, so some of us didn't know what they were singing. I looked over to my left, where 3 from our group were watching with tears running down their faces. I realized, and stated, that the group we were watching so intently was the church. The cathedral was just a building, but the people that are in the building make it what it is.
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