Saturday, March 24
Turns out I’m really not good at keeping a consistent blog. The month of March has flown by, and now I’m realizing I haven’t written in my blog for a good three weeks. Thinking of what I’ve been doing three weeks ago seems like too much to write about at the moment, so I’ll take it easy on myself and start with today.
Today (Saturday, when I’m writing this) was great. I’m pretty picky about what a good Saturday consists of, and this one was close to perfect. I think anyone who has a rigid schedule of school or work can appreciate a good Saturday. I woke up at 11:00, met some friends for brunch… and I had PANCAKES for the first time in months. So delicious. When we finished brunch around 2:00 pm it was raining, and spring rain is one of my favorite things… like when the sky is clear (never quite figured that one out) and the air is warm and it’s sprinkling lightly, just perfect. Even more perfect since I brought my umbrella. So following pancakes and rainstorm was a great after-rain-before-dusk run through my neighborhood and up towards Mt. Tibidabo. The neighborhood above where I live is filled with old early 1900s mansions and beautiful churches and parks. After my awesome pain-free run was dinner (always a dreaded event, refer to past entries) and tonight’s dinner was incredible followed by crepes for dessert, which I’ve been missing dearly since gorging myself of crepes with my brother last weekend in Paris. So to sum it up, sleep + pancakes + spring rain + good run + crepes = stellar Saturday.
Tonight was interesting, but also good. I met two friends, Natalie and Brendon, for a movie. Natalie spotted a movie theater that shows American movies in English with Spanish subtitles, so we decided to go there and get our English fix. She picked a movie with the Spanish subtitles “Infiltrados” which anyone can guess would be “Infiltrated” in English. So thinking this is a new movie that came out since leaving home, we thought we’d take a chance knowing nothing about it and decided to see it. Basically “Infiltrados” somehow translates to “The Departed.” Now I have seen “The Departed” three times in the theater and tonight I paid thinking it was something I’d never seen before. Oh, the thrills of wasting money due to language barriers. I’ve gotten so good at that. At least I like the movie. And it was really good to hang with some people I don’t socialize with very often, and I got home before the metro closed at 2:00 am, meaning I saved 15 euro on a cab. So in the end it was a good night.
And now it’s really late, and I haven’t written about the most exciting events of the past few weeks… family visiting and going to Paris! It’s kind of daunting to sit down and try to write about Paris and spending time with the fam, because they were both such huge events. So I’m going to sleep, and writing again tomorrow will me on my list of things to do.
Sunday, March 25
Today was uneventful, but altogether a good Sunday in Barcelona. Katie and I met to study and ended up playing around the city until the sunset. Studying is overrated, anyway. I have to confess, I made my first trip to McDonald’s today. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it was worth the lowering of standards. Their ice cream cones are 60 cents (about 5 euro less than any other ice cream in this city), and they had a promotional sign near the door that had a big picture of a happy meal and big letters saying, in English, “Do you wanting?” which we thought was entertaining, I guess we’re easily amused.
Anyway, I want to write about how great March has been, which will take awhile. I’ll try to re-cap the past two weeks. The second week of March was the week I’ve been waiting for more or less since I got here. Not to say I haven’t enjoyed myself, but of course I’ve been waiting anxiously for the arrival of my family. My cousin Megan flew in on Friday, and my parents and brother flew in on Saturday night. I dragged the jet-lagged group to the much-anticipated FC Barcelona vs. Real Madrid futbol game. This is one of the biggest games in Europe, more or less the Spanish Super Bowl but with a lot more rivalry and political stuff behind it. I think most of my excitement was that I could watch it with my Bryant, who is actually a soccer fan, as opposed to my friends here who don’t know a thing about it. We wondered through the university area and found a packed bar to watch the game. I felt bad dragging everyone to the bar the night they got here, but I think everyone (especially the boys) really enjoyed the game, or at least the first-night together in Europe. Tie game, therefore no rowdy fans in the streets, at least in our area.
The next week I tried to split my time between school and hanging with the family, and in the end I basically ignored school for a week. We covered more of Barcelona than I thought we would, and I was able to skip class and join them to Montserrat, a really cool monastery in the mountains about an hour outside of the city. (This was the one thing they were seeing that I hadn’t seen yet.) My parents had rented a really cool apartment in Barrio Gotic, and I definitely benefited from this and was able to get a 10 day break from my host-home. Not that it’s that bad, but it was a welcomed break… in many aspects. That week is kind of a blur, but it was mostly sight-seeing, attempting to find enough food and water for Bryant, a constant search for public restrooms, lots of wine, and a whole ton of walking. It felt good to be familiar with the city that my family was visiting, and I think I was helped them navigate the city as best I could. And also, for the record, I think Megan is truly a saint for going along with my slightly insane family (I’m including myself in that category).
On Thursday Megan flew to Amsterdam, and the Masons flew to Paris. The only thing more hilarious to me than a Mason family trip, is a Mason family trip to a country with a language that none of us speak. I don’t know who reads this blog, but if any of you know the family dynamics and can imagine us trying not to stick out as foreigners, it’s kind of a joke. Paris was good to us. The weather was incredible (no rain!) and on Friday Bryant and I had something like 5 crepes a piece from stands around the city. Our hotel was about as bizarre as it gets, I don’t really know how to describe that. In one day we saw the Louvre (or a fraction of it; and as I expected the Mona Lisa is a let-down and Venus de Milo is incredible), Notre Dame, D’Orsay museum, took a boat tour down the Seine, and met up with our good friends Mike and Cathy Byrne for dinner and a trip up the Eiffel Tower at night. (Gorgeous, totally exceeded my expectations, twice as big as I thought it would be!) The next day we met up with a family friend Pierre, a Parisian that my dad went to grad school with. I don’t know when the last time we saw Pierre was, but I think it’s been 15+ years. Getting to know him confirmed there is in fact a man on earth goofier than my dad; he was awesome. He took us and the Byrnes for a pretty intense walking tour of the city. We started at Montmartre (saw a sweet parade, not sure if the occasion was the France-Scotland rugby game or St. Patrick ’s Day, or a combination of the two), then to Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysees, had a coffee at the Pompidou, and walked around the right bank (basically all over, I never knew where I was exactly)… we took the metro later on that day to have dinner at Pierre’s, which I think will be one of the those random memories of my youth that I will sill have when I am 80. I spent well over half of the night laughing and I think we had five bottles of wine. You can do that and still be classy when you’re in Europe, which is awesome. Paris was also kind of a blur. It’s sad that I’ll never remember every detail, but I do know that I had an absolute blast the entire time.
Bryant flew home on Monday (I was so sad, but tried not to let it show) and my parents took off for southern France. They came back and spent this past Friday with me before flying home, so it was good to slowly be weaned from them and adjust to Europe without family. It was nice to have them, and now it’s kind of lonely to come home to a family that you don’t actually know all that well. I really, really do like being here, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be sad to see my family go. I got spoiled big time when they were here, so now I have to switch back to living painfully cheaply and going to class. So sad.
However, before I get all sad and weepy about school, I can’t feel too bad for myself. Semana Santa (Holy Week, their spring break always coincides with Easter, Easter is the biggest holiday in Spain and everyone gets vacation) is coming up. I’m actually leaving this Thursday, which is pretty crazy to think about. I feel pretty unprepared to pick up and leave for 12 days. I’m sure there will be lengthy blog posts about this trip. Two weeks after Semana Santa is finals, so I really need to do something academic this week… which is unlikely. Studying abroad has ruined any study skills I once possessed.
Write more later, who knows when.
Much love,
Laura
Monday, March 26, 2007
Monday, March 5, 2007
Concerts, eclipses, and little kids
Saturday, March 3
(I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but usually how this blog works is that I write at home, and then it usually takes a day or two for me to get internet and post what I’ve written.)
Halfway though the program and I’m already facing a few “lasts.” For example, I think this will be my last relatively chill and calm Saturday afternoon for the rest of my time in Spain. Between family visits, lots more traveling, a group excursion with my program, and finals, this is my last Saturday to be completely worthless and relax. So that’s precisely what I did, by sleeping in until 1:00 pm. If I did this in Boulder I would be completely mortified that I wasted a day, but here I don’t really care. I’m studying abroad and my study skills have deteriorated into nothing, and I don’t feel like I have to justify sleeping in late to myself. Today would have been a perfect day for the beach, but apparently there was a political demonstration going on at the beach and Americans are strongly urged to stay away from emotionally-charged political activists, because chances are they hate Americans. Instead, I walked around my neighborhood, and then went to the smoothie shop for free internet (all the employees know my name and know I’ll order the cheapest thing and then stay till my computer battery runs out).
Before my neighborhood excursion, I had a movie playing on my computer while cleaning up a bit, when this really adorable 3-year-old dressed like a little man (with a sweater vest and Dockers) walked into my room. I’ve met my senora’s grandkids before, but in a different setting, and he didn’t recognize me. He looked at me for a second, obviously stunned to see a strange lady in a tank top and shorts in his grandma’s house. Then, with no shyness, started rambling in Spanish about how he needed his toy cement truck and he knew it was in my room somewhere, and where was I hiding it. So I’m standing here confused, and this little kid is tearing apart my room looking for his toys. He finally finds the truck he wanted under my bed (NO idea how it got there, apparently there’s kids in my room when I’m not here, good to know) and then said “and I’m Nicholas” (obviously in Spanish) and walked out. It was so bizarre, he’s one of those really stubborn little kids with a lot of guts and a huge personality and I got a kick out of him. So I played trucks with him for a little while, but he was really bossy and got upset when I couldn’t understand him. I think in his mind “No hablo espanol, Nicholas. No entiendo eso. (I don’t understand that)” translated to “I don’t want to do what you say, Nicholas.” So he was annoyed by me in the end, and that’s when I decided to take a walk. But he was adorable and I hope the grandkids come around more often.
What else… last night was great. My friend Maggie’s parents are in town from Chicago, and they invited me to join them last night. We started with drinks and tapas at the craziest place in the world (if I was overwhelmed I can’t imagine how they felt) and then at midnight we moved on to dinner at a place that I’m going to force my parents to go to. By the end of dinner it was after 2:00 am and I had had a fair amount of drinks after four hours with them, so I got a cab and went home, got home at 3:00, which is pretty early by Barcelona standards (and then slept till 1:00 pm).
So I think I mentioned earlier in my time here that people in Spain have a different concept of time and efficiency. Example: If my advisor says to come see him in his office tomorrow, I have to ask exactly what time because he’s probably only in his office for about three hours scattered throughout the day. And then if he says 3:00, I should come at 2:00 just in case, and he’ll probably be there sometime between 2:00 and 5:00, or never show up. And if you have plans to meet up with a Spanish person for tapas or something, if you’re meeting at 10:00 then it’s better to show up at 10:30 and you’ll still wait for at least 10 or 15 minutes. (I just realized that this all sounds pretty sarcastic, and although it is a little bit, it’s pretty accurate also.) So being a pretty prompt person, this has been something I’ve struggled to get used to. I thought it was just a Spanish thing, but I was reading my friend Corny’s blog and apparently timeliness doesn’t translate well in Peru either. I’m copy/pasting a paragraph from his post because I think it’s hilarious, and it’s funny that something like that could be a commonality for our completely different experiences in Peru and Spain.
“So I watched the Peruvian news that plays on one of our 3 television stations before lunch. Today is the start of the national governments campaign to respect punctuality. At noon sharp, there was a celebration urging every Peruvian to set their watches to the same time and to try to be on time to everything from now on. Here’s to high hopes.”
I copy/paste people’s blogs into Word when I have internet, and then it makes for great English reading material when I’m at home.
Ok, I’m ending my boring Saturday blog. Turns out I’m going to a concert tonight (just found out… we had planned to but after spending five hours trying to track down tickets and failing, we had given up) so I now have to go tell me host mom I’ll eat a late dinner.
Oh I forgot. I saw two robberies on the street yesterday and no one did anything or really reacted. Men in business suits come up behind women on the phone, take the phone and run. It’s really freaky and I’m never using my phone on the street again.
More later on,
Laura
*later on*
Sunday, March 4
Another relaxing day in Tibidabo (my neighborhood) and this time I’ll actually do homework. I only slept in until 11:45 today (I am the epitome of lazy!) so that gives me a bit more time to get stuff done. Well, that’s the idea at least; we’ll see how much I do.
A friend of mine got some tickets to the Lily Allen concert last night, for 10:00 pm. We met a little before the concert started and had some cocktails, and then went to the venue called Espacio Moviestar. The venue was bizarre, but so is almost everything in Spain, so I’m no longer fazed. Lily Allen was great. I think the thing I like most about her is that she reminds me of one of my best friends Paula, because she’s sassy and has an attitude, and of course also has an incredible voice. She’s British and 21 and is already pretty making a name for herself. After the concert we ran into our friend Mike and some of his friends, and walked outside and there was a CRAZY eclipse going on. I don’t know enough about astronomy to know if the people in the U.S. saw the same thing that we saw, but if you did, wasn’t it cool?? Actually, if it’s night time in the states right now, (it’s 4 am there, early Sunday morning) would you be seeing the eclipse now? Or if it happened when it was light in the states (when it was midnight here, Saturday night) does that mean you don’t get to see it? Hmmm… now I’ve confused myself and I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about.
So after the concert was tapas and sangria, of course. We’re in Spain, and that’s all we do. I got home around 2:00 am and passed out exhausted. I feel better now, I think I finally caught up on some much-needed sleep. On to “homework” also known as wasting time. Midterms are coming up this week, but then the excitement in my life should pick up again, and thus the excitement in my blogs should pick up. Keep your fingers crossed!
Amor para todos,
Laura
(I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, but usually how this blog works is that I write at home, and then it usually takes a day or two for me to get internet and post what I’ve written.)
Halfway though the program and I’m already facing a few “lasts.” For example, I think this will be my last relatively chill and calm Saturday afternoon for the rest of my time in Spain. Between family visits, lots more traveling, a group excursion with my program, and finals, this is my last Saturday to be completely worthless and relax. So that’s precisely what I did, by sleeping in until 1:00 pm. If I did this in Boulder I would be completely mortified that I wasted a day, but here I don’t really care. I’m studying abroad and my study skills have deteriorated into nothing, and I don’t feel like I have to justify sleeping in late to myself. Today would have been a perfect day for the beach, but apparently there was a political demonstration going on at the beach and Americans are strongly urged to stay away from emotionally-charged political activists, because chances are they hate Americans. Instead, I walked around my neighborhood, and then went to the smoothie shop for free internet (all the employees know my name and know I’ll order the cheapest thing and then stay till my computer battery runs out).
Before my neighborhood excursion, I had a movie playing on my computer while cleaning up a bit, when this really adorable 3-year-old dressed like a little man (with a sweater vest and Dockers) walked into my room. I’ve met my senora’s grandkids before, but in a different setting, and he didn’t recognize me. He looked at me for a second, obviously stunned to see a strange lady in a tank top and shorts in his grandma’s house. Then, with no shyness, started rambling in Spanish about how he needed his toy cement truck and he knew it was in my room somewhere, and where was I hiding it. So I’m standing here confused, and this little kid is tearing apart my room looking for his toys. He finally finds the truck he wanted under my bed (NO idea how it got there, apparently there’s kids in my room when I’m not here, good to know) and then said “and I’m Nicholas” (obviously in Spanish) and walked out. It was so bizarre, he’s one of those really stubborn little kids with a lot of guts and a huge personality and I got a kick out of him. So I played trucks with him for a little while, but he was really bossy and got upset when I couldn’t understand him. I think in his mind “No hablo espanol, Nicholas. No entiendo eso. (I don’t understand that)” translated to “I don’t want to do what you say, Nicholas.” So he was annoyed by me in the end, and that’s when I decided to take a walk. But he was adorable and I hope the grandkids come around more often.
What else… last night was great. My friend Maggie’s parents are in town from Chicago, and they invited me to join them last night. We started with drinks and tapas at the craziest place in the world (if I was overwhelmed I can’t imagine how they felt) and then at midnight we moved on to dinner at a place that I’m going to force my parents to go to. By the end of dinner it was after 2:00 am and I had had a fair amount of drinks after four hours with them, so I got a cab and went home, got home at 3:00, which is pretty early by Barcelona standards (and then slept till 1:00 pm).
So I think I mentioned earlier in my time here that people in Spain have a different concept of time and efficiency. Example: If my advisor says to come see him in his office tomorrow, I have to ask exactly what time because he’s probably only in his office for about three hours scattered throughout the day. And then if he says 3:00, I should come at 2:00 just in case, and he’ll probably be there sometime between 2:00 and 5:00, or never show up. And if you have plans to meet up with a Spanish person for tapas or something, if you’re meeting at 10:00 then it’s better to show up at 10:30 and you’ll still wait for at least 10 or 15 minutes. (I just realized that this all sounds pretty sarcastic, and although it is a little bit, it’s pretty accurate also.) So being a pretty prompt person, this has been something I’ve struggled to get used to. I thought it was just a Spanish thing, but I was reading my friend Corny’s blog and apparently timeliness doesn’t translate well in Peru either. I’m copy/pasting a paragraph from his post because I think it’s hilarious, and it’s funny that something like that could be a commonality for our completely different experiences in Peru and Spain.
“So I watched the Peruvian news that plays on one of our 3 television stations before lunch. Today is the start of the national governments campaign to respect punctuality. At noon sharp, there was a celebration urging every Peruvian to set their watches to the same time and to try to be on time to everything from now on. Here’s to high hopes.”
I copy/paste people’s blogs into Word when I have internet, and then it makes for great English reading material when I’m at home.
Ok, I’m ending my boring Saturday blog. Turns out I’m going to a concert tonight (just found out… we had planned to but after spending five hours trying to track down tickets and failing, we had given up) so I now have to go tell me host mom I’ll eat a late dinner.
Oh I forgot. I saw two robberies on the street yesterday and no one did anything or really reacted. Men in business suits come up behind women on the phone, take the phone and run. It’s really freaky and I’m never using my phone on the street again.
More later on,
Laura
*later on*
Sunday, March 4
Another relaxing day in Tibidabo (my neighborhood) and this time I’ll actually do homework. I only slept in until 11:45 today (I am the epitome of lazy!) so that gives me a bit more time to get stuff done. Well, that’s the idea at least; we’ll see how much I do.
A friend of mine got some tickets to the Lily Allen concert last night, for 10:00 pm. We met a little before the concert started and had some cocktails, and then went to the venue called Espacio Moviestar. The venue was bizarre, but so is almost everything in Spain, so I’m no longer fazed. Lily Allen was great. I think the thing I like most about her is that she reminds me of one of my best friends Paula, because she’s sassy and has an attitude, and of course also has an incredible voice. She’s British and 21 and is already pretty making a name for herself. After the concert we ran into our friend Mike and some of his friends, and walked outside and there was a CRAZY eclipse going on. I don’t know enough about astronomy to know if the people in the U.S. saw the same thing that we saw, but if you did, wasn’t it cool?? Actually, if it’s night time in the states right now, (it’s 4 am there, early Sunday morning) would you be seeing the eclipse now? Or if it happened when it was light in the states (when it was midnight here, Saturday night) does that mean you don’t get to see it? Hmmm… now I’ve confused myself and I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about.
So after the concert was tapas and sangria, of course. We’re in Spain, and that’s all we do. I got home around 2:00 am and passed out exhausted. I feel better now, I think I finally caught up on some much-needed sleep. On to “homework” also known as wasting time. Midterms are coming up this week, but then the excitement in my life should pick up again, and thus the excitement in my blogs should pick up. Keep your fingers crossed!
Amor para todos,
Laura
Friday, March 2, 2007
two months in
Well, my goal for tonight was to get a lot of homework done, but it’s already 10:30 and I just finished dinner with my Senora. She started talking about politics again, and I was feeling a little bit rebellious so I carefully thought of a phrase in my broken Spanish just to see if I could get a reaction out of her. Translated, I said something along the lines of “Regardless of who is elected next, the United States has some challenges in the next few years regaining allies and the respect of the rest of the world.” Of course I could have been more articulate if I wasn’t speaking Spanish, but that sentence is about as far as I can get in Spanish. In normal circumstances this comment wouldn’t get someone so riled up, but Claudine went crazy. So I’m not going to get any homework done tonight because I just heard the 2 hour version of my French host mom explaining U.S. politics to me and why Europe should support every U.S. policy unconditionally because Europe owes us that for saving them in WWII. All of her politics are based on WWII and Muslims. Whatever, at least it’s entertaining to hear her go off like that. Note to self: next time I have stuff to do I shouldn’t say stuff like that.
Today after class (I HATE CLASS) I was in a pretty bad mood. I spent a few hours on the computer typing up papers for class and doing some research. I also spent about 20 minutes adding up everything I have to write, and it adds up to 73 pages of Spanish. Just thinking about it makes me want to be sick. (Science majors should never have to write that much, especially in a different language. I feel like I’m back in AP Language with Mrs. Dietrich except this time someone’s playing a mean joke on me and making me write everything in a foreign language.) So after class and school work and lamenting over my 73 pages, I met my friend Katie to go for a run. I haven’t run in months, mostly because every time I do my chronically disabled knee is sore for the next week. I thought I’d give it another shot today, mostly because I have spring fever and it was 65 degrees and gorgeous today. We ran through the fishermen’s neighborhood called Barcelonetta, down along the beach and port and up past the Arc de Triumph. During the run we counted about 25 men either making gross gestures or yelling stuff or in one case, running after us. Seeing people running, especially American girls, is like a once-a-year event and I guess that makes them want to cat call us even more than usual. Regardless, after the run I felt completely refreshed and rejuvenated, and I’m not going to let creepy men keep me from running. On the downside, I now know I can’t run by myself down by the beach even in the middle of the afternoon.
So those are the exciting events of March 1st in Barcelona. Running and my senora being crazy. Another interesting side note, I almost went an entire blog entry without mentioning food, which for some reason seems to be a common theme. So here it is, my news about food: I’ve eaten 7 apples since Monday. They have really good apples here and you can get three for a euro.
This weekend is going to be dull. Four of my good friends’ parents are visiting this weekend and three of my other friends are traveling (Rome, Swiss Alps, Prague… I’m jealous!) My only plan is a concert on Saturday night and dinner with a friends’ family at some point. I will have lots of free time. I guess that means I need to get all my work done so I can do nothing but play when my family arrives in ONE WEEK!!!!
More later!
Love,
Laura
Today after class (I HATE CLASS) I was in a pretty bad mood. I spent a few hours on the computer typing up papers for class and doing some research. I also spent about 20 minutes adding up everything I have to write, and it adds up to 73 pages of Spanish. Just thinking about it makes me want to be sick. (Science majors should never have to write that much, especially in a different language. I feel like I’m back in AP Language with Mrs. Dietrich except this time someone’s playing a mean joke on me and making me write everything in a foreign language.) So after class and school work and lamenting over my 73 pages, I met my friend Katie to go for a run. I haven’t run in months, mostly because every time I do my chronically disabled knee is sore for the next week. I thought I’d give it another shot today, mostly because I have spring fever and it was 65 degrees and gorgeous today. We ran through the fishermen’s neighborhood called Barcelonetta, down along the beach and port and up past the Arc de Triumph. During the run we counted about 25 men either making gross gestures or yelling stuff or in one case, running after us. Seeing people running, especially American girls, is like a once-a-year event and I guess that makes them want to cat call us even more than usual. Regardless, after the run I felt completely refreshed and rejuvenated, and I’m not going to let creepy men keep me from running. On the downside, I now know I can’t run by myself down by the beach even in the middle of the afternoon.
So those are the exciting events of March 1st in Barcelona. Running and my senora being crazy. Another interesting side note, I almost went an entire blog entry without mentioning food, which for some reason seems to be a common theme. So here it is, my news about food: I’ve eaten 7 apples since Monday. They have really good apples here and you can get three for a euro.
This weekend is going to be dull. Four of my good friends’ parents are visiting this weekend and three of my other friends are traveling (Rome, Swiss Alps, Prague… I’m jealous!) My only plan is a concert on Saturday night and dinner with a friends’ family at some point. I will have lots of free time. I guess that means I need to get all my work done so I can do nothing but play when my family arrives in ONE WEEK!!!!
More later!
Love,
Laura
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