So long teens, there's an adult in the house

We had our second trip with API this weekend to Montserrat, The Magic Mountain or Jagged Mountain, which are mountains, or I guess one mountain with a lot of peaks, about an hour and a half outside of Barcelona with a Benedictine Monastery at the top. It was so beautiful and so great to be out of the city for a day. Green and trees and fresh air and chacos! (It's the chi o granola side in me coming out). We took a cable car up the mountain and met our cute little tour guide, conveniently named Montserrat, who took us around the mountain. 

 Ok from left to right our tour guide said there is a pregnant woman, although I'm thinking it kind of looks like a monkey's face right now, and then an elephant, and on the right 2 mummies, one big and one small. Can you see them?

Our guide told us that there are really cheap hostels and hotels up on the mountain and a lot of times students will come up and spend a week here studying for a big test. Finals anyone?

So beautiful! We walked back down the mountain and then had some free time so we ate lunch and walked around the monastery and into the church which was absolutely incredible. And little did we know we would be guests at a wedding! We walked into the church and started taking pictures and then realized a wedding was going on in the front, but it was so bizarre because there were tourists and people walking all around and then the actual guests of the wedding just in a section at the front. It was beautiful, just kind of odd.

The front of the monastery

 The outside of the beautiful church

 Where the monks live!

 The big day, so proud of you two

 Sorry I wore chacos and nike shorts to your wedding...

And then... it was my birthday!! No longer a baby teenager, but the big 2-0! But even more of an accomplishment, Happy Birthday to my Papah who is now a spritely 80 years old! I wish I could have been in Austin to celebrate with the whole fam, but I did get to skype with most everyone and at least wish the old rascal a happy birthday. Love you, Papah! Thanks for letting me share your day for the past 20 years!

I love birthdays, as many of you know, so turning 20 in Barcelona with some great friends was not a shabby way to spend it! A big bear hug to Kate for planning the whole night. You da best! And my host mom Ana made me feel so loved with a little celebration of our own including one delicious cake, some good ole coca cola, and some cutie earrings she bought me! 

She told me not to take a picture of her because her hair was too fluffy but I think she always looks cute

It was another fantastic week and weekend here in Barcelona. Missing the fam, but thank you to Grandmommy, Aunt Jackie, Uncle Jon, Megan, Sam, Aunt Kathy, Uncle Sam, Ben, and of course mamma, pops, and broseph for the cards and gifts all the way over here! I am so blessed with incredible family and friends and love you all so much! Oh and to the roomies last year (shmels, shmates, abs, and kd) birthday wall vids are the BEST!

La Mercé

Ok sorry for the neglect, I've got some catching up to do.

The weekend of September 23rd-25th was La Mercé! It is a festival held every year in Barcelona to celebrate the city's patron saint, Our Lady of Merce or La Mercé. The story goes that the city of Barcelona was attacked by a plague of locusts so the city prayed to their saint at the time, Saint Eulalia, but girlfriend wasn't getting the job done so they prayed to La Mercé and low and behold, the plague of locusts went away. The good citizens of Barcelona then decided to ditch Saint Eulalia and named La Mercé the patron saint instead. One of our program directors told us that every year (give or take a few of course) it rains on the day of La Mercé, September 24th, because Saint Eulalia is crying over getting the boot and this year IT RAINED! So that was really cool, Saint Eulalia crying down on us.

The actual day is the 24th, but the festivities actually started a few days earlier on Thursday night with fireworks on the beach, concerts on the stages set up in plazas and parks all through out the city and TONS of people everywhere. Let me go ahead and let you know that they are all about dragons and fire during La Mercé. The first event we went to was the Procession of Fiery Beasts and Dragons, so pretty much a big parade of dragons and some other creepy creatures thrown in with sparklers and fire and different drumlines and bands through the streets.

Friday night's parade

This is actually right next to my friend's incredible apartment. Because we're living in a dream land.

The next day (September 24th, the actual day of La Mercé, rain day!) a group of us all met up and just walked around the city all day to different parks and stages. We found this giant mammoth sculpture in Parc de la Ciutadella and spent an embarrassingly long amount of time waiting for our own picture on it with all of the other 4 year olds....

Who wouldn't want a picture with this guy?

I want her skirt

The whole weekend was so fun because literally anywhere you went in the city there was something going on. While I was walking home for a siesta my friend and I just stumbled upon some other friends from our group waiting for Los Gegantes, a parade of these huge paper mache giants. It was soooo cool. And again, tons of people, lots of little kids trying to get under the gegantes with the people carrying them, and bands of these little flute things that I can only describe as Spain's version of the recorder. Bringing back those 4th grade memories. My favorite gegantes were the Gaudí head ones.

That night we all danced through the streets a bit and the next was the last and final day with the Human Towers and El Carrefoc! ("The Fire Run" in Catalan) The Human Towers were absolutely nuts. They have a base of men and then the women, and then these tiny little monkey children. They climb up each others bodies like it's nothing and then stand on each others shoulders, ending up with the base and then 8 more stories of people, so 9 total. The whole thing is really dangerous and people die from it every year in different groups that do it all over the country, but luckily no deaths in Barcelona, just a lot of nervousness. The youngest kids at the top have helmets, but my heart was still pounding every time as they climbed up. A nice older spanish couple was standing near us so they could explain more of the tradition to us. Whenever they are nearing the end everyone is supposed to get really quiet for the kids to climb up because it is so nerve wracking and a lot of the time either someone would signal that it wasn't sturdy enough to keep going or the kid would get nervous and then just slide down the ladder of bodies like they were a fire pole. But if they succeeded then the last kid would get all the way to the top, everyone would cheer, and then cross over to the other side and slide down. 

And last but not least, El Carrefoc! They had told us before it was a fire run and they chase people down the street so if you were going to be in you should wear your hair back and long sleeved non-synthetic clothing and all that, to which I figured oh, I'm not going to run in it, so no big deal. Wrong. If you go to the street of Carrefoc, theres pretty much no way of avoiding being in it. At first there is this dragon-esque creature on a big platform in the middle of the street that everyone follows farther down the street to "The Gates of Hell" where naturally they spark up all of these swirling sparklers and fireworks and dance with their huge spinning fireworks down the middle of the street that is packed with people followed by the dragons from the parade with a lot more fire spewing out of them too. CRAZY. It was so fun, but Spain you are so crazy. A girl in my class wore flip flops and one of the huge sparks landed on her foot and she got burned pretty badly, but luckily (and by luckily I mean because anytime the fire was coming straight at us I was crouched down hiding by everyone's feet), we all came out unscathed. 

A great, great weekend had by all.