So as some of you know, I started an internship this week. Our program gives is the option of being placed at an internship position for the duration of the semester, and I am working for a local artesian named Jesús. He owns a craft shop called "La Gargola", named after te gargoyles on the cathedral right across from his shop. He makes beautiful metal arts with crazy engravings, but he also teaches classes to a group of American high school exchange students twice a week. These kids go to some boarding school in New England, and their Spanish is terrible. Jesús' English is passable, but my job is to translate and make sure everyone understands one another during classes. That's not to say my Spanish is spectacular, but there it is.
Jesús is very kind and enthusiastic, and he's particularly fond of Macklemore. The high schoolers consist of 9 boys and 1 girl. They're... High schoolers. Hah, I feel so dumb saying that considering I was their age not long ago, but it's weird to see the difference a few years can make.
Anyway, so that's now how I sped 3 afternoons a week. It's nice, because I'm not sure what else I would do, since I only have three hours of class a day, four days a week. Segovia is amazing, and I really do love it, but there's only so many times I can walk to the castle. Here's a few pictures from the shop!
Jesús has pictures all over his walls of all his former students and assistants.
On Thursday, our whole program had a mini excursion to the cathedral in Segovia. You're not supposed to take pictures inside, and I had one of the outside in an earlier post, so here are a few of the pictures I did manage to get.
In other news, I've been in Barcelona for the weekend! I think I came in with really high expectations, and try haven't really been met. Barcelona is one of those cities with a lot of hype but not really all that many attractions, made worse by the fact that it's just so expensive. That said, I've seen some udeniably cool things here, like the Sagrada Familia and La Mercé street festival. But, all in all, kinda eh.
The other bizarre and different thing about Barcelona is that the people here overwhelmingly speak Catalan. To be clear, this is not Spanish. In fact, Spain is like the only place in the world where no one speaks "Spanish." The people here speak castellano, which is the version of the language that spread (mostly by force) from the Castilla y Leon region in central Spain. Barcelona, which is in Cataluña (or Catalunya in the local spelling), has most of its signs written in Catalan first, and Castellano second. There are a lot of tourists here obviously, and I've found quite a bit written in English, Russian and Japanese as well. Catalan is a little annoying because it sometimes seems like the spelling is changed just a little just because they can. Mostly, I can understand what I'm reading, but not what I'm hearing.
Anyway, I've been here staying at a hostel with two people from my program, Alana and Garrett, and Alana's friend who just moved to Madrid to teach English. I took a night train Thursday night, which was an adventure and a little exhausting, even though I lucked out by getting a sleeper car with a bunk bed. I'm not so lucky on the way back, and will have a seat that doesn't even recline. I've been warned many times about how avid pick-pocketing is here, but so far I've been fine.
When we first got here, the girls fell asleep, but Garrett and I went and walked round and saw the Barcelona Cathedral and the Picasso Museum. Fun fact: Picasso is from Barcelona and the city is ridiculously proud of that. The cathedral is beautiful, but we didn't go inside, and the Picasso museum was pretty cool, especially with a student discount.
And here's a few of the pictures I managed to get inside the Picasso Museum before I got yelled at.
These are examples of some of his earlier works, very different than the Picasso stuff most of us are familiar with now.
In the beautiful museum building, before I used baby shampoo for my hair and it turned into dread locks.
The streets in Barcelona, right by the Picasso Museum. The line to get in was about 30 minutes long, since it's one of the bigger attractions here.
Garrett is like a walking talking map, so I usually just let him go and I follow, and trust him to get us all where we need to go. But on the way back from the museum, we got a little sidetracked and ended up at the Christopher Columbus memorial statue. Columbus is at the top of this freakishly talk pole with all of these symbolic things around him that I don't understand, and a lot of lions. Here's some pics.
Columbus is pointing out to sea, out to America (land of the free, home of the brave!) I'm not sure this picture does justice to how tall this thing is.
Me pointing out to the good ol' U S of A.
(These colors don't bleed!)
After all that, the girls woke up and we went to eat lunch. Remember, spaniards eat lunch around 2 o'clock. Anyway, this meal was so good it just has to be shared with this handy dandy pic stitch I put together a few days ago just for this purpose.
This is house pink wine, gazpacho (a traditional Spanish vegetable soup served cold), beef cheek and rice, and catalunyan creme brûlée.
Happy and full, we took the metro to la Sagrada Familia. For those of you who aren't architecture nerds, this is an enormous and incredibly detailed Christian building that began construction in 1909. The architect behind this project was Antoni Gaudí, and there are quite a few buildings in Barcelona designed by him. But this is a special one, even though it can't be called a cathedral without a bishop, and it can't have a bishop until it is completed. And the target date for completion is in 2026, 100 years after Gaudí's death. The Sagrada Familia is incredible and even though we didn't go inside, it definitely made an impression.
Friday night, the bartender at our hostel recommended a tapas bar frequented by locals that serves champagne and pork based tapas. They had amazing pink champagne, and even better burgers (meat, ham, and bacon - that's it.) I'm still not over it.
Saturday, I slept a lot. We walked up and down La Rambla, which is probably the most famous street in Barca. It's filled with cafés, restaurants, and souvenir shops. At the end is the Plaça Catalunya, which has two fountains and even more people. And then I napped a lot. And we went out and walked around. Conveniently, this weekend is La Mercé, an annual music and arts festival in Barcelona. There are stages set up at a bunch of the plazas around town, and every one had music from bands and orchestras. We even ran across a drum line playing in the streets.
The Barcelona Cathedral lit up at night, behind a stage with an amazing orchestra playing.
This morning, we went to Camp Nou, which is the stadium FC Barcelona plays at, and it's apparently the largest stadium in Europe with 100,000 seats. This was SO. DAMN. COOL. I'm just going to overload you with all the pictures I took.
Nike sponsor in Barcelona - NW represent.
My BFF Lionel Messi.
Now, a list of things I miss about the US (besides my friends and family) that Barcelona really made me realize:
1. Costco pizza
2. Cheap fast food
3. Water fountains
4. Autzen football
5. My mom's cooking
6. Paved streets that don't smell
7. Chocolate bars
8. Not being wary of pick pocketing
Love you all!
Looks awesome! Laying around in beautiful Spain can't be too bad... ha Have fun!
ReplyDeleteLove reading about your travels!!
ReplyDelete