¡Barça, Barça, Baaarça!

By far, the highlight of this week was a trip to Camp Nou to see a FC Barcelona game. That is, their soccer team, which just happens to be one of the best teams in Europe. I never really followed soccer before, but now I think I've been converted into a real Barça fan. I understand now why the world loves soccer so much, and I don't understand how it's not popular in the US. 

The stadium is huge, and we were in the nosebleed section, but we still had a good view of the game. We somehow ended up being surrounded by French kids and teenagers who were making paper airplanes and throwing them down into the stadium. There were some Catalonians behind us, from whom I learned some new vocabulary while they were yelling at the refs. The whole time, the stadium was buzzing with the sounds of horns blowing (we got there an hour early and there was a group of kids blowing their horns for 45 minutes straight before the game even started). The place was teeming with energy the whole time, and before and after the game the whole crowd united to sing Barça's fight song together, which might have been my favorite part of the whole thing. Barça seemed to have control of the game the majority of the time, and ended up winning 2-1 against Getafe, a team based just outside of Madrid.

In other news, I randomly got invited to a Calçotada this afternoon, which I have mentioned before, but this one seemed more legit. My friend's host brother was cooking, and my friend and I got to join him and some of his friends for the midday meal. To explain briefly, a Calçotada is the Catalonian equivalent to a barbeque. It starts with Calçots (which are leaks cooked on the grill), and continues with all sorts of different kinds of meats- sausages, pork, something that was vaguely similar to bacon, salmon, chorizo, etc. It was delicious, especially since my host family is vegetarian, and I have been craving some meat lately. I have never tried to buy leeks before, but if I can find them in the States, I'd love to try to recreate this Catalonian tradition with family and friends back home.

Week in Pictures

Hello everyone! Here are a few snapshots of life this past week. First, on Thursday, my Catalan Art class took a field trip to La Casa Mila, also known as La Pedrera, by Antoni Gaudi. True to Spanish conceptions of time, those of us who got there on time waited almost an hour before we went in, but it was totally worth the wait. Gaudi is sooo cool! I'm a little bit obsessed with his architecture right now, and la Casa Mila might be my favorite of his works. 

Next up, on Friday a few friends and I decided we were craving chocolate chip cookies, so we went shopping for the ingredients, and baked cookies together! It was kind of hard to figure out what baking soda was in Spanish, but we ended up buying the right thing, and the end result was delicious.

On Saturday, we had a program-organized trip to Tarragona, a city with ancient Roman ruins. Unfortunately, it poured rain all day, which made our tour around the old city walls not so pleasant. We were cold and kind of miserable, but it seemed fitting to me because we were seeing and hearing some very dark things. For example, the guide explained to us that the short pillars outside the walls were for leaving unwanted babies to either die or be taken in by someone else, most likely as a slave. Then we saw the ruins of the amphitheater where the gladiators fought. I couldn't stop thinking about this quote by CS Lewis from the Weight of Glory: "It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor...There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations-these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit-immortal horrors or everlasting splendours." 

On a happier note, I finished out the weekend with a wonderful Sunday: Church, lunch at a cheap but delicious pizza place, a walk through Parc Ciutadella with some friends from church, and skyping with the fam. I love Sundays, and this is one of the reasons why:)

Less like a tourist

As I write this, I am right in the middle of something that hardly exists in the real world, a four day weekend. This weekend Barcelona and the surrounding cities are celebrating their Carnaval, or Carnestoltes in Catalan, and so the whole province of Barcelona has school/work off tomorrow. Somehow most of the people in my program knew about this four day weekend beforehand, so most of them took advantage of the time to go on a trip to Amsterdam, Madrid, Paris, etc. I found out about it on Wednesday, and thus decided to stay here. It follows that I would go and see what was going on with Carnaval, but I ended up missing that too, but for good reason.

Friday was cold and cloudy, and the internet was down at my house, so I ended up spending a fair amount of time in the library reading and studying for the GRE. It sounds boring, but the library at UB Central is absolutely gorgeous-It has wood floors, spiral staircases, paintings on the walls, and cases and cases of books that are older than my country. I felt smarter just walking through the door, and it felt good to be productive for a little while. 

Saturday I met up with some friends in the morning and we went walking through Las Ramblas, and decided to go up to the castle at Montjuic. Monjuic is a (small) mountain on the south side of the city. We went there in our first couple of weeks in Barcelona, but we hadn't gone all the way up to the top. The Castle was cool, but sort of tainted by the fact that it had been a prison during the Spanish Civil War, and scores of people were executed there. Nevertheless it was a beautiful day and the views from the top were gorgeous. On the way down we found a beautiful park with a fountain and sat down and made bracelets out of the little daisies that were growing up with the grass. It was quite blissful. The parade for Carnaval was that night, but I had been telling friends from church that I would go to their Jovenes (young people) Bible study on Saturday night, plus I was just super excited about it, so I decided to go to that instead. The Bible study was supposed to start at 7:30, and I got there at 7:27, so of course I was the first one by quite a bit. Nothing is rushed in Spain,   which I really like in some ways, but have yet to get used to. We studied 1 John 2:1-6 for two hours and it was great. Everyone else had gotten a handout to fill out beforehand, so I wasn't really prepared. At one point we went around the circle answering questions and I got nervous and botched my answer, well, botched my Spanish. Oops. Next time I'm going to participate more and speak more eloquently, hopefully. At least I was there and trying. 

Today I ended up being at church from 11 to 5, because there was a fellowship dinner after the service. I got lots of practice speaking Spanish, and made progress in building some relationships within the church. I was the only American there today, so I was sort of alone, but one of the ladies, Mai, has really taken me under her wing, and she made sure that I was okay. The leader of the Jovenes bible study is the pastor's brother, and is also a singer. I bought two of his CDs today, one in Spanish and one in Catalan, both of worship songs. After the dinner I ended up helping to translate one of his songs from Spanish to English. It was him, another singer from the Dominican Republic who speaks English, a French guy who studies phonetics and knows English, and me working together. It was really fun, and we made really good progress. I didn't realize how hard it would be, but we had to preserve the original meanings in the song, the rhyme, the number of syllables, etc, while making it sound natural in English, and keeping it in phrases that would be easy for him to say without revealing his Spanish accent. I was definitely not the MVP of the translating team, but I helped as best as I could and made a few important contributions. 

Tonight, the few people who are still in town are going to Sitges to celebrate Carnaval, but I decided to stay because they were leaving before I would be finished at church, and I had some important skype dates that I didn't want to miss. All I ended up seeing of Carnaval was people dressed up on the metro and other random places in the city. People dress up in costumes for Carnaval just like we dress up for Halloween. Although it would have been fun to travel this weekend or go to Carnaval, I am happy with how the weekend has gone. I'm starting to feel less like a tourist and more like a person who lives here, and that, me gusta mucho.