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.

PETA called. They want their bulls back

This past weekend was really great. We took our first excursion with API to Tarragona to see Costa Dourada, which was about an hour away by bus, and it is this old Roman town on the coast. It was absolutely beautiful. We took a walking tour with a tour guide who hated us because we wanted to take pictures of everything and he was trying to hurry us along, but about 25 of us and only one of him meant we got our pictures and he just got angry.

 Funny little sculpture you got there

 that red and yellow flag is the flag of Catalunya

Our tour guide who looks like he's about to throw a punch. He probably wanted to.

 But can you blame us? It was so pretty!

API had lunch for us which little did we know was going to be about a 3 hour all you can eat tapas, muscles, clams, bread and olive oil, and paella followed by ice cream and creme brulee extravaganza. Needless to say we were stuffed and then we got to go to the beach for a bit before we all passed out on the bus on the way back. 

It has been really hot since and sunny since we got here, which has been great don't get me wrong, but yesterday it rained and finally cooled it down a little bit. My friend Annie and i went to get tapas for lunch and smart one over here didn't bring an umbrella or anything so it was another lunch that lasted 2 hours too long since it was pouring and I had the big bad camera with me (it's safe don't worry mom!). But we finally made it and thennnnnn BULL FIGHT!! Catalunya (the area of Spain that Barcelona is in) recently outlawed bull fights, so last night I saw the second to last bull fight in Barcelona EVER. A big group of us went and we were all excited and all of the fighters costumes or outfits were really cool and when the bull first comes out it was so exciting to watch them with the red capes and then the swords came out... The first one was pretty hard to watch because, the rumors are true everyone, they pretty much torture the bull and kill it while everyone watches. And there were 6! But some of the guys from our group met a local hombre who started telling them all about the bull fights and when they blow the horns and what everything means so that was really neat. A few facts from our friend for ya

1. Kids used to be able to go to bull fights, but now you have to be at least 14 to get in.

2. We were at an amateur bull fight so they are still in bull fighting school. The bull fighters we saw have probably been in bull fighting school for 3 or 4 years (kind of like going to night school, they have day jobs and then bull fighting on the side) and are still only fighting bulls half the size that the pros do. He said these were probably 300 kilos and the professionals go up against 600 kilo bulls. WHAT?!

3. The professional bull fighters are to Spain as rock stars are to the U.S. They can make a ton of money from it and live crazy lavish lives with women and parties, Kid Rock-esque, but a lot of people don't like them too because so many people don't support the bull fighting tradition anymore. 

   I'm really glad I went because it was definitely an experience, but once was enough. 

 TOROS TOROS TOROS

winners of the night

This weekend is the festival of La Mercé in Barcelona so I'm really excited for that and I booked flights to Rome and Prague today with 2 friends of mine for later in the semester! See ya summer babysitting money, I've got some Europe to see. ¡Olé!

Blisters and Bliss

Last night I got mistaken for a local! A woman was lost and asked me how to use the metro to get back to where she was going, which of course I knew, looking like a local and all. In hindsight I really hope I told her the right way... But yesterday we had our placement exam to see which level of spanish classes we will be in and got to see the campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) for the first time. Here it is, my school for this semester.                              
                                                (click here -->)   War Damn UPF

Definitely picked the right school. It is super close to the beach, which will probably be dangerous for my studying habits, but it is really cool and I'm excited to start classes and get on a schedule. Starting Monday we will have 2 weeks of just intensive spanish classes every day and then after that we will start our other classes as well. I finally found out what I'm taking! Monday through Thursday I'll have my Spanish class every morning and then on Tuesdays and Thursdays I will have Comunicación y Sociedad en España y Europa from 3-5 and then Imagenes de España en el Cine Contemporáneo from 5-7. Not too shabby. I'm really excited to start meeting locals too, so hopefully that will be easier to do going to the same school.

Ok a few observations and such.
1. They walk everywhere. EVERYWHERE. No wonder they have shoe stores on every corner because they wear them out every other day. By the end of this semester I'll have calf muscles of steel baby.
2. The city of Barcelona was built as a labyrinth. COOL. It was a defensive strategy so that if intruders attacked then they wouldn't be able to find their way out of the city. Well done then, Barce because you have sufficiently confused me more than once, leading to my growing calf muscle, worn out sandals, and desire to soak my feet every night and do it all over again the next day. Ahhhh Barcelona
3. The married women will wear a simple gold band or something on their finger, or a lot of times nothing at all, rather than some big bling like in the states. (This reminded me of you Kadie when you said get me a string and a plane ticket! haha)
4. Barcelona isn't too big on air conditioning, lamps, or drinking water. So the windows are always open, I've run in to many a table or wall at night, and I'm eating watermelon like it's my job. Ana leaves a candle on the floor in the middle of her room every night for us so we have some sort of light when we come in. Sweet abuelita.
5. In every store or restaurant I've been to, if they are playing music it is always American music. From my window alone I've heard pretty much everything from Taylor Swift to Kid Cudi to a guy playing classical music on his guitar.
6. Ana said we might burn the apartment down so we're not allowed to touch the hot water heater if we want to take a shower. Early mornings and she's still asleep? In the middle of the day and she isn't here? Helloooo cold showers. But then again I wouldn't want some American hooligans coming and burning down my apartment either. Touche Ana.
7. My spanish is getting so much better already!! And most people here are multi-lengual. Everyone knows Spanish, most everyone knows Catalan, then English, and a lot of people know French or Italian or Portuguese. It is incredible. They say it is a lot easier to pick up another romantic language once you know one, so that's my new goal. Get Spanish down and then maybe Portuguese? Italian? Piece of cake.

Hasta luego!

Somebody pinch me

The cab driver from the airport probably wanted to throw me out of the cab because I wouldn't stop talking about how cool and awesome and beautiful everything was when we were driving. But I'm here safe and sound!

 Our orientation was at a hotel in Castedefells, which is just outside of Barcelona and a maybe 5 minute walk to the beach, which I didn't hate. We had all afternoon while everyone was getting in from the airport to the hotel before our first meeting that night so everyone went down to the beach and I finally got to meet everyone else on the trip! There are 105ish kids on the trip from all over the U.S., but mostly up north so the clash of the accents has been pretty fun. I didn't realize how much I say yall but being one of the only people from the south, it has been brought to my attention that I use it all the time. Sorry yall. Our first meeting was mostly just introductions of all the students and 4 group directors from API who are all pretty young and Barcelona natives. The next day was the day of tours. We split into 4 groups, each with a director and then walked around the city and mostly getting practical tips like exchange dollars to euros at a bank and how to ride the metro, which is great for this directionally challenged girl. We got our first taste of La Rambla with all of the street performers, the market La Boquería, and clinging to everything we were carrying for fear of pick-pockets.

We were free for lunch so we roamed the streets and I had my first taste of tapas! (trying them out for ya, dad) and then we had a bus tour of the rest of the city, which didn't fare well for all of the people still jetlagged from the flight.


The next day we got to meet our home-stay abuelita! It was kind of like waiting to get picked for dodgeball as everyone waited for their name to be called out to be picked up. My host mom's name is Ana Barea and she is maybe 5 feet tall, 70 years old, and absolutely adorable. She makes dinner for Anjana and I at 9:00 pm but she doesn't eat until around 11:00 pm and then goes to bed around 1:30 am! How does she do it?? Anjana and I both get our own room and we each have a terrace that looks over our street below, la Calle de la Princessa (Princess Street).

This must be too good to be true.

Mi abuelita Ana!

Ayy this is kind of long, I'll try and keep the other ones shorter but I'm doing great, absolutely loving it here, and learning a ton already. Adios!