Well, the program officially ended yesterday, but I’m staying in Barcelona until August 2 to enjoy it on my own and relax a bit… here’s a recap of things that have gone on:
This past Tuesday evening, I went to the craziest party I’ve ever attended in my life. It was the biggest festival of the year in Mataro, Spain (small city outside of Barcelona), called Les Santes, and it was CRAZY. I got home at about 430 am and I was on the early side. It consisted of live music, dancing in the street, firecrackers, flowing wine, cookies, towers of human people, yelling, singing, and was basically indescribably amazing. No pictures because of the riskiness of the venture, but they wouldn’t do it justice anyway. Needless to say, class the following day was cancelled…
On Friday we went to two museums, Fundacion Tapies and Fundacion Joan Miro. Both were modern art that I didn’t really get/like/enjoy. But it was sort of interesting, I guess, and it was our last walking tour (sort of sad!).
That evening was our final dinner, too, which was also very sad. I had a very amazing steak (duh) and the wine was plentiful and wonderful. Good dessert, too. It was much less awkward than the first dinner, but it was sad to say goodbye to the professors for a long time.
Finished the exams, said goodbye to most, and here I am now. Today I went to Parc Guell again, one of Gaudi’s creations, and sort of wandered around and observed things for a while. It was hard, though, because it was so hot and the sun was really blazing. Siesta’ed until later tonight, when the last three of us went to see the Font Magica at Montjuic. Really gorgeous stuff. Basically they make a light and water show with the big fountain in front of the palace from the 1929 exhibition near Montjuic/Placa de Espanya and set it to dramatic music (i.e. Carmina Burana, 1812 overture). It was REALLY awesome and I have way too many pictures of it…
We’ll see what the rest of the week brings — going home on Wednesday!
Magic Fountain (Font Magica)
(more…)
Today was our first day of our classes. We woke up at 8:30 (ugh) and walked over to the Universitat to be there for our first class at 9:30. It’s called “Visions of War in Modern Spanish Culture,” and is taught by Prof. Antonio Monegal from UPF. We talked about war and how we’re going to examine it, essentially. It went pretty quickly and seems interesting. After that we stopped for a quick bite in the cafeteria, which was a mistake, because an hour into the second class my digestion started and I started nodding off. It was less exciting, because we talked about the history of Barcelona’s city planning (snooze) and yeah. I think the rest of the class will be better.
After that we went back to the residencia to rest up a bit before heading out to Corte Ingles to buy some groceries and our books for Monegal’s course. It was a nice walk, albeit hot, and we did get some good food to eat in the residencia when we’re too lazy/cheap to spend 7,5 Euro on a Coke.
We chilled in the residencia a bit before getting started on our huge amount of reading for tomorrow’s class (not many pages in number, at least compared to tutorial, but they’re in Spanish! takes forever). Since the World Cup game between France and Spain happened tonight, we wanted to make sure not to be out when it ended, because it didn’t seem safe either way. So two of us went to the Supermercat to buy some bread and peanut butter to eat sandwiches in the residencia. Walking around at dusk is kind of sketchy around here…
Tomorrow will be a tough day. Lots of class and homework to do. Hopefully the rest of our time here won’t be so heavy on the work.
Thursday three of us are going out with some genuine Spanish college students from UPF for our first Intercambio social event. We’re eating near our residencia and will be meeting some of the student’s friends from the south of Spain, who apparently speak a different way than northerners. They’re going to a club afterwards, but we’re not sure if we want to — sketch factor. Who knows, though!
That’s all for now — tomorrow is a tour of the Barri Gotic, so maybe some pictures will be up tomorrow evening or the following morning, since we have so much work to do. Adios!