This March break, 11 students and two faculty members are traveling to Spain to explore the life and works of Teresa de Ávila, a renowned Spanish mystic. Please enjoy the blog post below from Abby ’27 about the group’s afternoon in Valladolid, where they learned about Teresa of Avila’s writings and relationship with God, played the traditional game Chapas, and created their own rosary prayers.:
After our afternoon in Tordesillas, we took a 20-minute bus ride to our hotel in Valladolid. Once we checked into Hotel Recoletos, we had about two hours to unwind and settle in before our next adventure. After settling in, we all gathered back at the lobby and met Professor Maria Isabel, a professor and historian at the University of Valladolid. We all made our way to a room in which we were able to learn more about Teresa of Avila and her relationship with God.
Before we began our discussion, Professor Maria Isabel introduced us to a game called Chapas, it is a race that is played with bottle caps, and whoever gets their bottle cap closest to the end line wins. After a remarkable win by Allegra, we started our discussion of Teresa de Avila. To begin our discussion, we all had to work together to assemble some of the work written by Teresa by Avila. After successfully assembling all of the works together we discussed what each written piece meant to us and what it told us about her relationship with God. After our discussion, we learned about rosaries and made our own prayers, using sentences written about the past, present, and the future. We then recited our sentences in a 5,5,3,2,1 pattern and ended each section with a chorus written by Mr. Jan. Finally to end the night we went to eat dinner at La Molona. At La Molona, we ate many things such as, croquetas de Jamón y queso (Ham and Cheese croquetas), bread, calamari, melted provolone with bread and french fries with ham and eggs.
