11/8/10 to 11/12/10= Just Another School Week

Nothing too exciting happened this week.  We got a few of the exam scores back and there was a wide range of scores on the midterms.  It is hard to judge what the scores actually mean since they use a different grading system over here.  They use a scale from 1 to 10.  For the US grading system, a 6 or lower would be failing, but I don’t think it is the same over here, because a lot of other students got fives, sixes and sevens.  I’m pretty sure the directors of the programs just make up our grades at the end, because the professors give them our exams and papers after they grade them, but I think that these only serve as “guidelines” for our actual grades. 

            I started and finished my first essay this week!  I have 2 essays due by December 1^st and another by December 9^th.  Three 10 page papers is not that bad I guess, since I haven’t had any other work this semester.  This first paper was about the reforms of the eighteenth century of Spain.  During the eighteenth century, the Bourbons (a French royal family) took the thrown from the Habsburgs.  The Bourbons reformed a lot of things, especially under Carlos III, helping to modernize the government and economy in the country.  That is my brief English summary of the paper I wrote in Spanish.  One down, two more to go…

            Friday, I worked on my paper some more in the morning.  No one was really around to do anything.  Half the kids were on trips this weekend and the other half were retaking the Pre-semester course final exam.  I didn’t have to retake the exam, but I met up with some people once they got out.  Emily and I walked around Las Ramblas and stopped in a gelato shop.  I got a gofra (waffle) with caramel syrup and whipped cream.  She got a crepe with nutella and bananas.  I’m saving my crepe experience for Paris.  We then went to the festival in Raval.  Raval is a part of Barcelona that has a large immigrant community.  Many of them come from Morocco or northern Africa.  The festival is meant to bring the immigrants together with the Spanish community, by allowing them to share their cultures with one another.  We caught the end of a Bollywood concert.  From there, I headed home for the night. 

11/7/10 The Pope and Pepita Come to Barcelona!

I slept in again.  My lack of sleep from the weekend had been catching up and I had a cold that was developing.  By the time I woke up, Pepita was home!  I was so happy to have her back.  She gave souvenirs to her grandkids and her other daughter (and family) also came over to welcome her back.  She got me a necklace too!  After she had given everyone gifts, they all left.  For lunch, it was back to the two of us.  I had planned to meet Amie and Erin at Sants Estacio after lunch (that is the big train station of the city and it is close to my apartment).  Unfortunately, I got a call during lunch not come.  They couldn’t take trains on the high speed train to Sevilla, so they had decided to go to Mallorca instead!  They said they off to find the ferry and that was the last I heard from them.  I spent the afternoon relaxing and doing some reading for literature. 

I also watched the Pope on the TV later that night.  I watched him as he left from the airport and as the king and queen waved him goodbye.  The king and the Pope both gave “thank you” speeches to each other before the departure.  I was happy that I did not attempt to see him at La Sagrada Familia, because I heard it was insanely crowded and exhausting.  Maybe if I was Catholic, I would have made a better effort to see the Pope.  Not to be irreverent, but to me the Pope is just another guy and not that big of a deal.  I took a picture of him on the TV though, just to say I saw him.

11/6/10

Needless to say, after getting home so late, I slept in on Saturday morning.  I slept until 10:30ish.  I couldn’t sleep much later though, because I didn’t shut the blinds the night before, so the sun was pouring into my room.  My whole temporary family was awake and lively as ever.  Cristobal was working.  I found out that they own a moto shop.  By moto, I don’t mean motorcycle or moped.  It is more of a hybrid between the two.  It is how most people get around the city.  Most stores are open Saturday mornings until lunch time and that is where he was.  I ate breakfast and enjoyed some quiet time when Francesca took the kids to the park.  I ate lunch around 1:00 before I left to meet up with Amie and Erin at their hostel.

            When I got to the hostel, Amie, Erin and McKayla were in the lounge updating their blog and figuring out where to go after Barcelona.  We relaxed in the hostel until Miriam and Tim arrived.  Once they got their, Miriam, Tim, Erin and I took the metro to Montjuic.  Amie was still recovering from our late Friday night and napped for the afternoon.  I’m not sure what McKayla decided to do, but she also decided to hang back at the hostel.  It was a pretty warm day and we started at the top of Montjuic at the castle.  It’s nice to walk around the castle and see the view of the city, but other than that it isn’t too exciting.  We then walked down through the park and Miriam led us to the Greek theatre.  I’m not sure how old it is, but it was really big and ancient looking.  A few groups of Spanish teens were hanging out on its steps.  We then meandered through some beautiful gardens.  I have to mention that there are wild/ stray cats all over Montjuic and Tim had the audacity to pick one up.  I am not a cat person, but he thoroughly enjoyed having it cuddle in his lap.  We walked down further to the palace and sat at some tables in front for a while.  From there we hopped on the metro back to the hostel to get Amie and McKayla for dinner.

            We walked to a famous restaurant for dinner.  I can’t remember the name of it… “Ceveceria Catalana”?, but it is a popular tapas restaurant.  I got patatas bravas (home fries with a spicy sauce) and a bacon, date, cheese mini sandwich.  We ate an early dinner, so to kill time afterwards, we went to a gelato shop and chatted inside for a few hours.  After that we went to a well-known bar called “Chupitos”.  I went home before 1, calling it a short night.  I said my goodbyes to my friends, who were planning to take the train to Sevilla in the morning.

11/5/10

Thursday night Erin, Amie and I decided not to meet up until after lunch.  They had to try and get two more nights in their hostel or find a new hostel in the morning, so we didn’t want to rush things.  With my free time in the morning, I first decided to sleep in.  By sleep in I mean 8:30 am.  I was definitely awake before the two kids had left for school.  I had breakfast and then just chilled for a while, letting my breakfast digest before my run.  I was happy I finally had free time to run.  Apparently Pepita had told Cristobal (my temporary dad for the week) that I usually run a lot, so everyday he asks me how much I run.  Today I was finally able to prove that I am not lazy and that I was just preoccupied with midterms.  I ran to Plaza España, which seems really far from my apartment, but actually isn’t too bad.  It took about 50 minutes round trip.  I enjoyed the run because it was a wide sidewalk with minimal amounts of people.  I think that having people in my way is the worst part of running in the city.

            A run, a shower and a lunch later, I left to meet the biker group at the metro stop for Park Guell.  It was nice to see the park again.  It was just as busy as the last time I went with vendors and tourists.  We hiked all the way to the top of the hill and had a great view of the city and the sea.  Miriam and Tim (another Bowdoin student) met us at the top of the hill.  Amie and Erin were surprised to see Tim.  I knew he was visiting from London for the weekend, but they didn’t.  While in the middle of catching up at the top of the hill, a girl approached us and asked where we were from.  Turns out that she was from Falmouth, Maine and recognized Erin from high school cross country.  We chatted for a few minutes with her and then started hiking down to go to La Sagrada Familia.  On our way out of the park, Amie, Tim, Miriam and I got way ahead of Erin and McKayla.  We turned around to find them missing and were confused as to where they could have gone.  We started walking back up the hill.  Erin had run into her next door neighbors!  It is crazy to think that of all the places they could be in the world, they were both on the same street in the same city in the same country at the same time.  Erin’s sister was evening taking care of the neighbors’ cats while they were on vacation.  We were so astonished by our encounters.  A stranger and familiar family from Maine, but there would be more to come…

            We ventured to La Sagrada Familia.  We didn’t stay too long.  It was busy with all the preparations for the Pope.  We were there long enough to walk around the perimeter and get back on the metro.  We took the metro back to Amie and Erin’s hostel.  Their hostel was a great hangout spot.  It had a totally different feeling from the two hostels I had been in when I visited Rome.  The first floor was a giant lounge with bar style tables, pool tables and foosball tables.  It was filled with people too from all over just hanging out.  The hostel actually served dinner around 8, but had plans to eat at Les Quitze Nitz.  The restaurant was in the same plaza as the hostel and I had been hearing great things about for the last few weeks.  It is a restaurant with gourmet chefs in training, so the food is really amazing at an unbeatable price.  We went early because the line gets really long with waits that last over an hour.  I started with a tomato soup with pesto sauce, and then I ordered cannanolles.  Finally, for dessert I got “the Catalan Dessert”.  It was the best dessert I’d had in the city so far.  Some sort of ice cream and nougat covered with Catalan cream and drizzled with hot fudge.  It was a little chilly eating outside, but well worth it.  Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to get back there before I leave. 

            Because we had eaten an early dinner, we had time to kill before the bars would open.  A bunch of us just hung out in the hostel.  It was nice being able to hang out with friends from home and friends from my program at the same time.  A little after 10 we left to go to Oveja Negra.  I had been to this bar before and it had a pretty good bar atmosphere so Miriam and I decided to take our guests their.  Amie and Erin also invited two New Zealand girls that they had met in their hostel to come with us.  Emily and Morgan also met us to go to the bar.  A little later in the night, we had another “small world” encounter.  Miriam and Tim saw their friend from high school in the bar.  Her and her group of friends hung out with us for a while.  A little bit after midnight, we all left the bar to head to the clubs.  A kid in my program named Cruz became a club promoter for this guy in Barcelona, so he was going to get us all (by now a group of about 15+ people) into one of the clubs for free. 

            We were all walking down Las Ramblas when this kid called Tim’s name.  It was another guy who goes to Bowdoin.  I knew him from one of my Spanish classes.  He was studying in Copenhagen this semester but was visiting Barcelona for the weekend.  Another one of those same place, same time, “what are the chances?” run ins.  We eventually made it to the clubs.  A majority of the clubs in the city are in the same area near the beach.  Cruz had us all line up single file forming a line separate from the normal line that was waiting to get into one of the clubs.  I was waiting in this single fill line talking with everyone when all the sudden I see someone familiar looking in the regular line for the club.  It was Shelagh Mollahan (a friend from high school).  I’m pretty sure we both did a double take.  Then, she ran over and gave me a huge hug.  The last “it’s a small world” run in of the evening (or early morning at that point).  We started talking, but then the line I was in started to go in.  Shelagh grabbed her friend from the line and entered the club with our group.  We had about 3 minutes of catching up, before we had to go our separate ways in the club.  I found Miriam and some of the others, but didn’t see Erin, Amie or McKayla.  We then got a call from Cruz to go to a different club down the street.  Apparently, Erin, Amie, McKayla weren’t let in because they weren’t dressed nice enough.  They obviously didn’t pack club clothes for their bike trip and only had one set of normal, non-spandex clothes.  Unfortunately, their normal clothes—jeans and a nice shirt weren’t nice enough.  Everything worked out though.  We went to a different club with a less strict dress code.  I left around 3 am with Chris to take the night bus home.  Amie, Erin and McKayla left a little bit after with the New Zealand girls.  I was in bed by 4… long day, but lots of fun and I enjoyed sharing it with friends from home!  It’s nice having people to show the city to.

11/4/10 Finally Done with Midterms!

This morning I had to take my last two exams.  I had Literatura del Siglo de Oro and Guerra Civil.  They went pretty well.  Both were essay tests.  After I finished my last exam, I was so relieved to be done.  I was also waiting to hear from my friends Amie and Erin.  Amie and Erin were two of my roommates freshman year and took this semester off to bike Europe.  I was expecting them to arrive in Barcelona today.  It was hard to make plans with them though, because they did not have a cellphone and their internet was limited to what the hostel provided.  I brought a lunch to school, because I was expecting to meet them right after my exam, but when I checked my email I still hadn’t heard from them.  Since I hadn’t heard from them, I was finished with my exams, and hadn’t eaten my lunch already, I had nothing to do.  I decided to walk home with Lorenzo.  Even though it was a forty minute walk, I had nothing better to do.  The weather was beautiful and he always walks up Passeig de Gracia—the Newbury street of Barcelona.  It was so warm, I didn’t even need my sweater.  When we got to his apartment, which is right next to La Sagrada Familia, we saw the preparations for Sunday.  On Sunday, the Pope is coming to give a service in La Sagrada Familia.  They had set up tons of barriers and chairs in the street.  Within a one block radius of the Sagrada Familia was the VIP section (which they pronounce in Spanish as “beep”).  Many churches had a limited amount of tickets to this section and got to choose who would be able to attend the mass.  Within a four block radius, they had set up screens for viewing the service, even though the large amounts of people wouldn’t be able to see the Pope, they would be able to watch from the screens.  Also, my friend Lorenzo had access to the VIP section because his apartment building was within the one block radius.  This special privilege that he got was not without vain.  Apparently for the last week, there have been police officers in his building.  They searched all the apartments for things that might be used to blow up the Pope.  Only those people who lived in the building were able to enter for a week or so leading up to the event and they had to show identification to get in.  I thought it was pretty interesting how they went about securing La Sagrada Familia for the event and how they went about their security measures. 

            Anyways, I took the metro home there and checked my email again, but I hadn’t heard anything from Amie and Erin yet.  I decided to go out with my friends for happy hour to celebrate the end of midterms.  I met a big group of people and we went to a tapas bar near the beach.  Here we got tapas and drinks and I had some amazing chorizo which is like sausage.  We stayed in the bar for a while and eventually left a little after 6 to just chat in a park.  It was here in the park that I got a phone call from Erin!  We planned to meet around 9 pm, so I went home for an early dinner, so that I could meet up with them.  I felt bad getting home, eating and leaving, especially now that I was done finals I actually had time to spend with the family.  I think my favorite part of the time I spent with the family this week was dinner time.  I would eat earlier with Neuz and Sergi, but their dad would usually get home from work in the middle of our meal and talk with us.  

            Amie, Erin and Erin’s friend McKayla were staying in a hostel in Plaza Reial, which is right off Las Ramblas.  It was really easy for me to get to, since this was kind of in the central part of the city.  It was great to see familiar faces in Barcelona.  I took them to the forest bar that I had been to a few weeks before.  It was pretty calm inside, since it was early in the night.  We sat at a table and caught up on each others’ lives.  I talked all about my homestay and they recounted their adventures throughout Europe.  We left around 11 and I planned to meet them at 1:30 the next day at the metro stop for Park Guell.  

11/1/10 All Saints' Day

11/1/10

On Monday, it was All Saints’ Day.  This is always the first of November and it is a pretty big holiday here.  I spent the morning studying, because I knew in the afternoon, we would be having a big family party.  Even though Pepita was on her cruise all her kids came over to our house around 5:30.  Not everyone got there until around 6:30 and we started eating shortly after that.  It was nice seeing there whole family all together, but it makes following conversations way harder.  I think that is one thing I have been missing out on here… group conversations in Spanish.  I can listen to Pepita or my professors and follow along just fine, but when multiple people are talking it is hard to follow the conversation.  Another thing that made it hard was the Catalan.  They knew to speak Castellano, because I was there and that wasn’t hard for the adults, but Juan Carlos who is my age was having a really intense conversation about the law and he naturally switched into Catalan because of how into the topic and conversation he was.  For food, they put out a bunch of snack foods and sandwich making items.  We did pan con tomate (bread with tomato and olive oil), which is how they make all their sandwiches.  Basically the method is this: cut a tomato in half and then forcefully rub it on the bread, and then drizzle the bread with olive oil and add meats and cheese.  We also had lots of finger foods like chips and crackers to enjoy with the meal.  For dessert, we had roasted chestnuts and roasted sweet potatoes.  These two things are always eaten for this holiday.  It was the first time I had tried roasted chestnuts and they were great!  Everyone left by about nine thirty, and I felt like I had just had Thanksgiving dinner.  I was stuffed and just wanted to go to sleep, but I studied a bit more.

10/31/10 Halloween!

Ok, so I have been neglecting this blog for a while.  My reason:  midterms.  I spent a while studying and taking them, so I haven’t had much time to write.  I’ll write about all the highlights of my last week though.  I will start with Halloween.  They don’t really celebrate Halloween here, except for the college crowd who uses it as an excuse to party, so I don’t have anything to say about Halloween.  However, this day was kind of a big deal, because Pepita left for her Mediterranean cruise.  I met with my friend Morgan to study for our exams in the afternoon.  Finally the weather felt like what I expected Barcelona weather to be… high 60’s.  Morgan and I studied all afternoon and we were really productive.  By the time I made it back to the apartment for dinner, I was greeted by my temporary host family.  Pepita’s daughter Francesca, who usually comes for lunch, moved in with her family to take care of me while Pepita was gone.  I wasn’t really looking forward to living with a new family, mainly because I had midterms coming up and I didn’t really want to be thrown out of my routine.  The idea of Francesca, Neuz, Sergi, Cristobal and their dog Kira seemed kind of overwhelming, but ended up working out great.  I always communicated my needs (like whether I would be home for a meal or not) and they were pretty respectful of my studying.  Occasionally I would take a break and draw with Neuz.  She seems to think I’m a really great drawer, which I’m not.  I’m probably only one level above stick figures, but it’s nice having someone praise me as if I were Picasso or Van Gough. We had a nice family dinner when I got back and I spent the night studying some more.

holiday.