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.
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