This past week the big festival in Barcelona started- la Mercé. Last time I wrote I actually had no idea what the festival was about, or why they have it, but now I know that the festival is in honor of their female patron saint, Mercedes. Anyways, it started on Friday night with a parade that led to Plaza Sant Jaume- the plaza in Barri Gotic that houses the Generalitat and important government buildings. They opened the festival with some speeches, all in Catalan, which meant that I could understand maybe every other word. On the way there we also saw some older people in giant circles of 30 or 40 dancing the Sardana, the Catalan folk dance.
They had the "balls de gegants," where guys carry these giant statues that are made to look like old kings and queens, and move around in a sort of a dance. Apparently, they are really heavy, and the guys carrying the giants need to switch out every once in a while. In general, not that exciting. Right in the middle, it started pouring, so we missed the fun part of the opening cermeony(the part that included a ton of confetti). Apparently, its a tradition for it to rain during la Mercé, supposedly because the other saints are upset that Mercedes gets a festival and they don't, so they're crying about it. After dinner, we went to see the fireworks over the beach at Barceloneta. Very pretty, but nothing you couldn't see at home.
Saturday and Sunday were different. There were two things that you definitely would not see at home here. Saturday night was the Correfoc, which means "fire run" in Catalan. Pretty much, you just run around with fire. That's putting it simply though. It's a parade that starts near the Cathedral and winds it way down to the waterfront near Barceloneta for about an hour and a half. The parade has groups of middle/high school kid with drums, alternating with groups of 15 or so people dressed like demons, with their faces painted and carrying pitchforks. The parade starts around 8:30 pm when its already dark, so the demon guys are actually kind of scary.
What makes it crazy is that at the top of the pitchforks a few roman candle-esque fireworks are attached that spin around and spit sparks everywhere. So imagine 10 or 15 guys running, dancing and shouting like crazy people through the street with drums in the background, and carrying the pitchforks above their heads, spraying sparks all over the crowd on purpose, and grabbing people to run with. The fun part is that the crowd is supposed to run the Correfoc, so you get in the middle of the guys with the fireworks, and run with them, yelling and just making noise in general.
Fortunately, my professor told me to wear long sleeves and pants, nothing really flammable, and to have something to cover my head with. I was wearing a couple of layers, with a hood pulled up, a scarf around my face and sunglasses on. I felt silly, but when I got there, everyone else was wearing the same thing. It was ridiculous. At home the city would be sued in 2 seconds, since the demons were all chasing people, aiming the sparks at them, or grabbing people and running with them. I did get a few sparks on my hand, but they only blistered up a little, so they're really not that bad, considering that there were guys running around without shirts. They probably regretted that pretty quick... I took a few 30-seconds long videos and put them on Flickr. Really, take a look at those. It's hard to describe. They're really chaotic, so sorry about that , also once or twice I was too preocuppied with running that I completely forgot I was even taking video. There are also some pictures of my floormates and me with our faces all covered, and of the demons with the pitchforks.
To be honest, I'm not exactly sure where the tradition comes from, because when I went on the web to look it up, I couldn't find anything on it. We asked some random bystander, and he said that in the 1600s, demons were all over Barcelona, so the church called upon the angels to help. The angels drove the demons out, but the demons responded by running with fire on their way out, so every year they reenact it with the correfoc. But he might have made that one up on the spot, who knows. Anyways again that night we ended up in Barceloneta, so we stuck around for the fireworks on the beach with hundreds of other people around us. If you're ever going to visit Barcelona for one day, I'd do it for this one Saturday.
A close second (so far) is the festa de los Castellers. The Castellers are the guys I was talking about who make the giant pyramids of people. Except before I thought the teams were like 40ish, and there were only a few levels of people, but actually the teams are around 400ish, and there were usually 7-10 levels of people. That took place at Plaza Sant Jaume in the middle of the day on Sunday. We were actually really lucky in that on the metro on the way there, we sat right across from this older guy who was wearing the castellers uniform of Vilafranca (one of the best teams, they win a lot of competitions. Yes, there are competitions for this type of thing.)
So Zoe goes up to the guy and talks to him about it, since we both needed to write about it for our spanish classes. He said that the original purpose of building human towers was to scale castle walls in the middle ages, but now it is more of a way for people to get together and work toward a common goal. The casteller teams are familial- there are certain families that have been doing it for like 200 years. The guy said that his family was like that, and now his son is part of the team with him.
We got to the plaza early, which was good, becase me, Zoe and Lindsey are not exactly the tallest people, and we knew that the plaza gets so packed that you're pretty much smushed up against everyone on all sides. For someone my size, that makes it sort of hard to breathe, since you're always getting shouldered and elbowed in the face. Fun. So we were looking around for somewhere to stand, like stairs up to the government buildings or something. Well, there was nothing. But I noticed that a few of the lamposts were big enough to stand on, so we grabbed a random lampost. Unfortunately, that particular lampost have a bunch of policemen around it, and we figured we'd get yelled out, so we moved across the plaza to the only other lampost that was big enough for 3 people to climb on top.
It started getting really crowded about 15 minutes till the beginning, so we all hopped up on top of the lampost. The lamposts were all around the edge of the plaza, so I didn't think we'd be that close to the action, which I assumed to be in the middle of the plaza. I was wrong. Once up on the lampost, I notice a bunch of guys in green uniforms about 10 feet in front of us, a bunch of guys in red about 20 feet to the right, and more guys in purple 10 feet behind the red team. They were making the pyramids right in front of us.
Of course, my camera decided this was going to be a great time to die, so Zoe mostly took the videos i'll be posting, and I borrowed Lindsey's camera a buncha times to take some close ups. Those will be up soon. You should really take a look at them- it's amazing how huge these things were, and especially how intricate the whole process was. Since we were lampost monkeys, we could see from the top how they were setting up the different torres. For example, you'd have 4 guys making a square, then four more guys would stand in the middle, and grab onto each other, and then the whole mob of people would smush up around the outside, and hold onto the guy in front of them. On top of them, they would have another four guys, and another, and another ect, sometimes varying the number of people in each layer.
But really, it's hard to explain, take a look at the videos, at least one of them. One of them should be of one of the torres that fell- it's really scary, especially because you can see the little kids sort of tumbling down, but if you watch, the base is actually pretty good about cushioning the fall and pulling people out of the mess to get them medical care. Again, ridiculous. Take a look at it.
What was great about the castellers was that because we were so close the whole time, we made friends with the green team from Vilafranca. Along with the guy who we met on the metra (who we could see was part of the base, and who was waving at us a lot), the whole team was all making faces at us and talking to us throughout, yelling at us about being monkeys.
That's pretty much been my last 3 days... In other news, University of Barcelona decided to move my geography class to MW, so now I have 4 classes on MW from 9 AM to 9 pm, and I have one class on Tuesday, Thurs and Friday. Nothing like balance. I always signed up for a salsa class at the civic center near one of my friend's apartments. I know that I can pretty much learn salsa whenever and wherever I want, but when am I going to have the time?
When I talked to my advisor here, he said that for the most part, you can't volunteer at a hospital unless you have a formal internship (which i'll do next semester in a lab or hospital), and he also said that the university doesn't really have clubs or activities. Lovely. Well the Red Cross had some student volunteers running around Plaza Catalunya the other day, and when I talked with them they said even though my Spanish isn't perfect, I could probably help out somehow. I'll probably call the Red Cross here pretty soon too to ask about volunteering, once I get an idea of my class load. Also I hope Salva is wrong about that whole no activities at the university thing- I just need to research and see what all is going on.
I've got my first UB geography class in about an hour, so hopefully it will not be as boring as I'm expecting it to be. I'll write about how the class went and the end of the Mercé soon!
lunes, 22 de septiembre de 2008
domingo, 14 de septiembre de 2008
Diada, Barri Gotic, Parque Guell
This past week went by very quickly, since we had a few days off from our Spanish classes. September 11th here is a holiday (which is weird considering things at home), and since it was a Thursday, most everyone had Friday off too. Sept 11th is Diada Catalunya, or Catalonia Day, and pretty much functions as Catalonia's national holiday, even though Catalonia is not a nation, but a semi-autonomous province. It's sort of like if Illinois had some extra governing powers that other states didn't, their own language and culture, and wanted to have their own 4th of July.
The funny thing is that while most nations celebrate the day that they declared their independence, or their first king or president was inaugurated, or their bill of rights was passed, here they celebrate the day that their independance was taken away. On Sept 11th, 1714, Barcelona fell to a months-long siege that was conucted by the armies of the Bourbon claimant to the Spanish throne, during the War of the Spanish Succession. Catalonia, in the hopes of remaining independent, supported the Hapsburg claimant, but was absorbed by Spain as punishment for supporting the wrong guy. I put up a few pictures online.
Anyways, they celebrate it with a lot of official things in the morning, and then a lot of separatist groups have booths and demonstrations in the afternoon. Other than that, nothing much happens. The biggest festival here is actually next week- it's Barcelona's annual festival, and goes for about a week (sort of like the taste of Chicago, but supposedly more dangerous. My professor mentioned something about tossing a goat off the roof of some cathedral).
It's called la Merce, and starts the 19th. The biggest thing they usually have each year is the pyramid builders. Its almost like a sport- guys from different towns have "teams" of like 40 or so guys, and they stand on top of each other to make a pyramid that is usually 4-6 levels high. Usually its built with a core of 4 guys that are in the middle and extend up to almost the top, and sits on top of a base made up for 20 or so people. Around them in the plaza, the crowd pushes in so there is no space anywhere. None of them wear any protective gear, since Spain in general is not big on protective anything. At the very end, 1 little kid, like 5 or 6 years old, climbs to the very top. They're supposed to dismantle it by each person sliding down, but sometimes it's just too much, and the whole thing collapses down on itself. Which means that there's like layers of people on each other, including the crowd, since they are pushed up so close. Last year the kid at the top fell, and died right there, so now the kids who are climbing need to wear helmets (no one else does).
The only other interesting things that happened this week were my wanderings around the Gothic Quarter of the city and my visit to Parque Guell. Barri Gotic just borders on the area that I have my classes at, IES had a profesor take us around that area. It was really cool, because the whole area is the original city, which was occupied in turn by native Iberians, Romans, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Moors (briefly), and modern Christians. The professor who came with us has her masters in medieval history, so she knew a whole bunch of really cool things about the city and the history of the places that she took us too.
Walking we passed by Els Cuarto Gats, a small cafe that Picasso, Dali and a whole bunch of famous artists used to hang out there. We went by a 3rd AD (maybe it was 4th AD, I don't remember completely) Roman graveyard that was accidentally found when some company was building new apartment buildings there (Plaza Madrid), and also parts of an old Roman aqueduct just sorta standing in the middle of Plaza Nova. Near there was also an area with the leftover columns of an old Roman temple, which was later placed with this huuuuge Gothic Cathedral. I snapped a few pictures, but i'll have to go back to actully take good pictures.
We went by the old throne of Castile and Aragon, where Ferdinand and Isabella received Christopher Columbus when he returned from his first trip to the Americas (ridiculous). Also the original entrance to the city, Porta de l'Angel. We also stopped by Plaza de Sant Jaume, where the old Roman forum used to stand, and the modern Generalitat stands (town halls, gov buildings ect). Neus, another professor with us, had grown up in Barcelona, and she told us how if you wanted to get in trouble you'd come down to Plaza de Sant Jaume on Sunday mornings back in the 60s and early 70s to dance the Catalonian National Dance, the Sardana. During Franco's time, speaking Catalan and any exhibition of Catalan culture was prohibited- so Neus said she and her friends would dance in front of the government buildings to protest, and the police would come out to arrest them and they'd all have to run away. Also at this plaza the soccer team (The Barca) goes after they win games (never) to greet fans and everything.
The next day I went with some friends to Parque Guell, which is the gigantic park that was designed by the Spanish architect Gaudi. We had no idea where we were going, so we kind of just got of the metro and walked in what we thought was the right direction. We overshot the main entrance, but it turned out that the side entrance we went through was way more interesting. That side of the city is more hilly, and the park is built on the highest area there, so you need to walk up this 45 degree slope for a while, and then there's 6 or 7 outdoor escalators, one after another, that take you up the entrance. Then there's more stairs. It turns out the main entrance doesn't involve any stairs, and is the part where you can see all of the tile and the tiled dragon that you see pictures of. The tiled part makes a sort of terrance that is held up bye tens of romanesque columns underneath- there's maybe 30-40 of them. Pictures of that will be put up soon. Also a few pictures from the very top, where we can see 2 more Barcelona landmarks in the distance.
That's all for now... dinner's in a few. This week I start real classes, and then it's La Merce so I'll write all about that later. I'll be putting pictures on flickr pretty soon.
The funny thing is that while most nations celebrate the day that they declared their independence, or their first king or president was inaugurated, or their bill of rights was passed, here they celebrate the day that their independance was taken away. On Sept 11th, 1714, Barcelona fell to a months-long siege that was conucted by the armies of the Bourbon claimant to the Spanish throne, during the War of the Spanish Succession. Catalonia, in the hopes of remaining independent, supported the Hapsburg claimant, but was absorbed by Spain as punishment for supporting the wrong guy. I put up a few pictures online.
Anyways, they celebrate it with a lot of official things in the morning, and then a lot of separatist groups have booths and demonstrations in the afternoon. Other than that, nothing much happens. The biggest festival here is actually next week- it's Barcelona's annual festival, and goes for about a week (sort of like the taste of Chicago, but supposedly more dangerous. My professor mentioned something about tossing a goat off the roof of some cathedral).
It's called la Merce, and starts the 19th. The biggest thing they usually have each year is the pyramid builders. Its almost like a sport- guys from different towns have "teams" of like 40 or so guys, and they stand on top of each other to make a pyramid that is usually 4-6 levels high. Usually its built with a core of 4 guys that are in the middle and extend up to almost the top, and sits on top of a base made up for 20 or so people. Around them in the plaza, the crowd pushes in so there is no space anywhere. None of them wear any protective gear, since Spain in general is not big on protective anything. At the very end, 1 little kid, like 5 or 6 years old, climbs to the very top. They're supposed to dismantle it by each person sliding down, but sometimes it's just too much, and the whole thing collapses down on itself. Which means that there's like layers of people on each other, including the crowd, since they are pushed up so close. Last year the kid at the top fell, and died right there, so now the kids who are climbing need to wear helmets (no one else does).
The only other interesting things that happened this week were my wanderings around the Gothic Quarter of the city and my visit to Parque Guell. Barri Gotic just borders on the area that I have my classes at, IES had a profesor take us around that area. It was really cool, because the whole area is the original city, which was occupied in turn by native Iberians, Romans, Carthaginians, Visigoths, Moors (briefly), and modern Christians. The professor who came with us has her masters in medieval history, so she knew a whole bunch of really cool things about the city and the history of the places that she took us too.
Walking we passed by Els Cuarto Gats, a small cafe that Picasso, Dali and a whole bunch of famous artists used to hang out there. We went by a 3rd AD (maybe it was 4th AD, I don't remember completely) Roman graveyard that was accidentally found when some company was building new apartment buildings there (Plaza Madrid), and also parts of an old Roman aqueduct just sorta standing in the middle of Plaza Nova. Near there was also an area with the leftover columns of an old Roman temple, which was later placed with this huuuuge Gothic Cathedral. I snapped a few pictures, but i'll have to go back to actully take good pictures.
We went by the old throne of Castile and Aragon, where Ferdinand and Isabella received Christopher Columbus when he returned from his first trip to the Americas (ridiculous). Also the original entrance to the city, Porta de l'Angel. We also stopped by Plaza de Sant Jaume, where the old Roman forum used to stand, and the modern Generalitat stands (town halls, gov buildings ect). Neus, another professor with us, had grown up in Barcelona, and she told us how if you wanted to get in trouble you'd come down to Plaza de Sant Jaume on Sunday mornings back in the 60s and early 70s to dance the Catalonian National Dance, the Sardana. During Franco's time, speaking Catalan and any exhibition of Catalan culture was prohibited- so Neus said she and her friends would dance in front of the government buildings to protest, and the police would come out to arrest them and they'd all have to run away. Also at this plaza the soccer team (The Barca) goes after they win games (never) to greet fans and everything.
The next day I went with some friends to Parque Guell, which is the gigantic park that was designed by the Spanish architect Gaudi. We had no idea where we were going, so we kind of just got of the metro and walked in what we thought was the right direction. We overshot the main entrance, but it turned out that the side entrance we went through was way more interesting. That side of the city is more hilly, and the park is built on the highest area there, so you need to walk up this 45 degree slope for a while, and then there's 6 or 7 outdoor escalators, one after another, that take you up the entrance. Then there's more stairs. It turns out the main entrance doesn't involve any stairs, and is the part where you can see all of the tile and the tiled dragon that you see pictures of. The tiled part makes a sort of terrance that is held up bye tens of romanesque columns underneath- there's maybe 30-40 of them. Pictures of that will be put up soon. Also a few pictures from the very top, where we can see 2 more Barcelona landmarks in the distance.
That's all for now... dinner's in a few. This week I start real classes, and then it's La Merce so I'll write all about that later. I'll be putting pictures on flickr pretty soon.
domingo, 7 de septiembre de 2008
First Week in Barcelona and Weekend in Valencia
First Week:
So. I have been in Barcelona for a week, and it's gotten to the point where friends and relatives are demanding that I tell them everything. I set up this blog mostly for myself, just to record the places that I go so I don't forget, so don't be surprised if it's not written like a travel magazine or anything. I just don't want to forget anything, and some of you want to know everything, so here goes. Pictures of this famous "everything" are also available on Flickr, under the username ToriKSpain.
The flight in was uneventful, unless you count my phone deciding to not work once I got out of the country, and my mother subsequently worrying herself almost to death over me. But it was ok, as was navigating the airport, getting a taxi, and making it to my dorm. Right now the dorm is mostly empty, and so my floor has 10 or so Americans with our program (IES), and hardly any Spanish students yet. The students do not start class until around Sept 15-18, and should be moving in after Catalonia's National Holiday, Sept. 11th.
So right now the dorm is kind of quiet and lonely. My room is a nice double, and my roomate, Zoe, is from Maine and goes to Connecticut College. To be honest I was sort of expecting to have a Spanish roomate- I chose the dorms because of this, since I figured being forced to speak Spanish to native spanish speaker 24/7 would improve my fluency very quickly. I might be able to change my housing for next semester, but we'll see if I want to or not at the end of the semester.
It's ok though, since Zoe and really cool, and pretty close to my level in Spanish, so we've decided to start speaking Spanish all the time starting when the Spanish students move in. Hopefull we'll be able to make friends with them. The first few days I just took to settle in and figure out where I was in relation to my classes and the center of the city. We have class at Plaza Catalunya, right in the middle of the city, and a bus stop about 2 blocks takes us there in maybe 20 minutes.
Other IES students stay in dorms, apartments and homestays spread out through the city, so I didn't get to meet them until the third day, when everyone had gotten in and we had sort of a dinner meet and greet thing. The only problem with that was they had some bad techno music blaring the entire time, so conversation was mostly just screaming our names and where we were from at each other. Of course, I forget everyone's names right after I met them.
The same day we had Spanish language classes, where we met our professor and the group of kids who are going to be in the class. The professor, Pep, is the young catalan guy who is hilarious, and really helpful. Every week in class we're going to put together a newspaper, each of us writing an article or two for it. I'm excited for the class, although I was a little intimidated. I tested into the highest level, which just sort of assumes that you are a native spanish speaker, as were the majority of the kids in the class. But even though the professor spoke really fast I understood it all, so it'll be fine.
While the professor was really easy to understand, most people in the city aren't. They use a lot of slang that I haven't learned yet, or vocabulary that I just don't know, but I can usually get enough to understand what they are saying.
Weekend in Peniscola and Valencia:
This last weekend we had an orientation trip to Valencia and Peniscola. They separated us into the different Spanish levels, and had us in different hotels and buses according the proficiency level, which was nice because it meant that I got to meet people who are going to be in my classes. The bus drive down to Peniscola was about 2 hours, and then we had a guided tour around the fortified castle that belonged to some Spanish antipope from the 1300s. It was right on the coast and gorgeous, and there were no foreign tourists around. I guess the majority of their tourism comes from Spaniards who want to hang out at the beach for a few days.
After that we just headed down the coast for another 2 hours to get to Valencia, where we had even more guided tours of the sights before being allowed to relax at the hotel. The tours have all been really tedious and sort of annoying- some of the things that the guide was talking about was kind of interesting, but then there are the bored kids in the back who won't stop talking, so you can't really hear anything (I thought we grew out of the in high school guys). I kind of wish we had more time to look around some of the places that they took us though. Valencia was really nice and I plan on going back for their festival in March. I can't remember the name of the festival, but they have a contest to build the biggest, most elaborate statues and caricatures out of cardboard and papier mache, and after judging, they set everything on fire.
The next day of touring we went around the City of Arts and Sciences, and also the area where the orchestra plays and oceanarium are. That entire area is beautiful: Valencia barely touches the Mediterranean, but was originally built around a river, so the entire area we were at was at the edge of the city, right on the water. The oceanarium was huge- I'm pretty sure it's bigger than the Shedd, because instead of one compact building, it was composed of several large buildings spread out and connected that underground tunnels that went right through the aquariums, so you have fish and sharks swimming above and around you. Outside of each building was also exhibits with birds and sea lions. The aviary for the birds was ridiculous; it looked sort of like a large skeleton of a globe, probably about as tall as the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. The building for the Museum of Arts and Sciences and the Orchestra Hall looked equally ridiculous, as large, half footballs covered in brushed metal that sat on the water, and were hung with plants.
At night we just wandered around the city, eventually ending up at one of the gates of the old wall that used to enclose the city in the 1400s- there are 9 of the gates in the city now, and eahc is maybe 8-9 stories high, and completely made of stone. They still stand, although the city has grown around them, so you can walk through them to different barrios and neighborhoods.
One thing weird about Spain that everyone will tell you is that people are out all the time. It's like no one sleeps. Even on a Monday night, if you go the center of the city, at 3 am there will be an inordinate amount of people wandering around- going in and out of clubs and bars (a lot of which will stay open until 6 am or later, daily). Because of this, the American students I live with feel like they have to go out every night until 4 or 5, which I'm not really up to everyday. I'm hoping this is just a phase and people will get tired of spending 10 euro on a drink, or 20 euro cover charge to get into a club. Or they'll get tried of getting 2 hours of sleep before class, once we start actually having class.
To be honest, not having class is driving me a little crazy. I like having a schedule that I can plan around, because otherwise I'll waste my time sleeping in or going online or doing nothing, instead of making plans to go around the city. I'm also really excited for the types of classes that I am taking: I've got my Spanish 400 Composition Class, a History of the Mediterranean in the Medival Ages and Rennaissance, Catalan 101, Spanish Geography (not excited for that class), and US Political Perspectives of Latin America (or something like that... sounds interesting). Most of my classes will be in Spanish, with the exception of the history and catalan classes.
That's all for now... I'll try to update at least once a week or whenever anything worth sharing happens. (:
PS Sorry about the typos, I'm sure there are a bunch :/
So. I have been in Barcelona for a week, and it's gotten to the point where friends and relatives are demanding that I tell them everything. I set up this blog mostly for myself, just to record the places that I go so I don't forget, so don't be surprised if it's not written like a travel magazine or anything. I just don't want to forget anything, and some of you want to know everything, so here goes. Pictures of this famous "everything" are also available on Flickr, under the username ToriKSpain.
The flight in was uneventful, unless you count my phone deciding to not work once I got out of the country, and my mother subsequently worrying herself almost to death over me. But it was ok, as was navigating the airport, getting a taxi, and making it to my dorm. Right now the dorm is mostly empty, and so my floor has 10 or so Americans with our program (IES), and hardly any Spanish students yet. The students do not start class until around Sept 15-18, and should be moving in after Catalonia's National Holiday, Sept. 11th.
So right now the dorm is kind of quiet and lonely. My room is a nice double, and my roomate, Zoe, is from Maine and goes to Connecticut College. To be honest I was sort of expecting to have a Spanish roomate- I chose the dorms because of this, since I figured being forced to speak Spanish to native spanish speaker 24/7 would improve my fluency very quickly. I might be able to change my housing for next semester, but we'll see if I want to or not at the end of the semester.
It's ok though, since Zoe and really cool, and pretty close to my level in Spanish, so we've decided to start speaking Spanish all the time starting when the Spanish students move in. Hopefull we'll be able to make friends with them. The first few days I just took to settle in and figure out where I was in relation to my classes and the center of the city. We have class at Plaza Catalunya, right in the middle of the city, and a bus stop about 2 blocks takes us there in maybe 20 minutes.
Other IES students stay in dorms, apartments and homestays spread out through the city, so I didn't get to meet them until the third day, when everyone had gotten in and we had sort of a dinner meet and greet thing. The only problem with that was they had some bad techno music blaring the entire time, so conversation was mostly just screaming our names and where we were from at each other. Of course, I forget everyone's names right after I met them.
The same day we had Spanish language classes, where we met our professor and the group of kids who are going to be in the class. The professor, Pep, is the young catalan guy who is hilarious, and really helpful. Every week in class we're going to put together a newspaper, each of us writing an article or two for it. I'm excited for the class, although I was a little intimidated. I tested into the highest level, which just sort of assumes that you are a native spanish speaker, as were the majority of the kids in the class. But even though the professor spoke really fast I understood it all, so it'll be fine.
While the professor was really easy to understand, most people in the city aren't. They use a lot of slang that I haven't learned yet, or vocabulary that I just don't know, but I can usually get enough to understand what they are saying.
Weekend in Peniscola and Valencia:
This last weekend we had an orientation trip to Valencia and Peniscola. They separated us into the different Spanish levels, and had us in different hotels and buses according the proficiency level, which was nice because it meant that I got to meet people who are going to be in my classes. The bus drive down to Peniscola was about 2 hours, and then we had a guided tour around the fortified castle that belonged to some Spanish antipope from the 1300s. It was right on the coast and gorgeous, and there were no foreign tourists around. I guess the majority of their tourism comes from Spaniards who want to hang out at the beach for a few days.
After that we just headed down the coast for another 2 hours to get to Valencia, where we had even more guided tours of the sights before being allowed to relax at the hotel. The tours have all been really tedious and sort of annoying- some of the things that the guide was talking about was kind of interesting, but then there are the bored kids in the back who won't stop talking, so you can't really hear anything (I thought we grew out of the in high school guys). I kind of wish we had more time to look around some of the places that they took us though. Valencia was really nice and I plan on going back for their festival in March. I can't remember the name of the festival, but they have a contest to build the biggest, most elaborate statues and caricatures out of cardboard and papier mache, and after judging, they set everything on fire.
The next day of touring we went around the City of Arts and Sciences, and also the area where the orchestra plays and oceanarium are. That entire area is beautiful: Valencia barely touches the Mediterranean, but was originally built around a river, so the entire area we were at was at the edge of the city, right on the water. The oceanarium was huge- I'm pretty sure it's bigger than the Shedd, because instead of one compact building, it was composed of several large buildings spread out and connected that underground tunnels that went right through the aquariums, so you have fish and sharks swimming above and around you. Outside of each building was also exhibits with birds and sea lions. The aviary for the birds was ridiculous; it looked sort of like a large skeleton of a globe, probably about as tall as the ferris wheel at Navy Pier. The building for the Museum of Arts and Sciences and the Orchestra Hall looked equally ridiculous, as large, half footballs covered in brushed metal that sat on the water, and were hung with plants.
At night we just wandered around the city, eventually ending up at one of the gates of the old wall that used to enclose the city in the 1400s- there are 9 of the gates in the city now, and eahc is maybe 8-9 stories high, and completely made of stone. They still stand, although the city has grown around them, so you can walk through them to different barrios and neighborhoods.
One thing weird about Spain that everyone will tell you is that people are out all the time. It's like no one sleeps. Even on a Monday night, if you go the center of the city, at 3 am there will be an inordinate amount of people wandering around- going in and out of clubs and bars (a lot of which will stay open until 6 am or later, daily). Because of this, the American students I live with feel like they have to go out every night until 4 or 5, which I'm not really up to everyday. I'm hoping this is just a phase and people will get tired of spending 10 euro on a drink, or 20 euro cover charge to get into a club. Or they'll get tried of getting 2 hours of sleep before class, once we start actually having class.
To be honest, not having class is driving me a little crazy. I like having a schedule that I can plan around, because otherwise I'll waste my time sleeping in or going online or doing nothing, instead of making plans to go around the city. I'm also really excited for the types of classes that I am taking: I've got my Spanish 400 Composition Class, a History of the Mediterranean in the Medival Ages and Rennaissance, Catalan 101, Spanish Geography (not excited for that class), and US Political Perspectives of Latin America (or something like that... sounds interesting). Most of my classes will be in Spanish, with the exception of the history and catalan classes.
That's all for now... I'll try to update at least once a week or whenever anything worth sharing happens. (:
PS Sorry about the typos, I'm sure there are a bunch :/
Suscribirse a:
Entradas (Atom)
