Well hello there, yet again I end up writing this at night. However, now I'm really glad that I split the week into two posts because hopefully I won't have as much to write and won't have to stay up late to write it. So if you haven't noticed, I did post another blog on Friday of this week that talks about my week Monday through Thursday. It was a busy week so I decided to split it up. If you haven't read that yet, you're doing it wrong! Go back! This is only about Friday through today, Sunday, although I don't have much to say about today so it's mostly about Friday and Saturday.
So on Friday, I only have one class, which is Spanish. I still struggle in that class although I feel like it's very slowly getting better. However, I decided to get a tutor for Spanish and after class on Friday I met with her for the first time. Her name is Anna and she's a language professor, I think she's more associated with the Business and Culture program at CIEE so I hadn't met her before, but I think our first session went really well. I was happy because I felt like it really helped me a lot and I look forward to continuing to meet with her because I really do want to improve my Spanish but I just feel like I don't learn much of anything in class (the professor is a really sweet lady, but not the best teacher I've ever had and the Spanish method of teaching is in general much less organized, hence my struggle). So it's just a little extra help once a week, it means an increase in my Spanish homework because now I have homework for Spanish class and for my Spanish tutoring sessions, but that's okay. It'll be worth it when I become fluent, right ;)? I had talked to some friends earlier in the day, Hailey who volunteers with me and her host family roommate, Marena, and they'd mentioned taking a trip up to Montjuic after Spanish class and invited me to come, so once I was done meeting with Anna I contacted them and headed up the mountain to meet them.
Side story: I was able to contact them after buying a second Spanish phone on Thursday :(. Mine broke in Berlin, I still don't know why. It was working one morning and then I went to check the time in the afternoon and it wouldn't turn on. I tried charging it, taking out the battery, the SIM card, all that jazz, but no luck. So I had to go to Vodafone by myself (Helen had gone with us to purchase phones the first time and spoken all the Spanish) and communicate well enough to get a new phone. As far as communication goes, it was a success, but I had to pay the full price for the new phone even though I had a working SIM card because it's like a cheap package deal and they don't let you buy just the phone. Oh well, I have a functioning cell phone once again. I had gone since Berlin without one because I didn't wanna go through the hassle of buying another and it really wasn't all that inconvenient since I don't use it much here, but I figured I should probably have one for emergencies. Or contacting friends to meet up and go sight seeing :).
Anyways, bringing me back to my main story, I took a funicular and then a cable car up to Montjuic Castle where Hailey and Marena were waiting. The view from the cable car was so pretty! Mom, you would've hated it. It was made of mostly glass. But you could see the city and all the way out to the sea. When I got up there we walked around the castle, which was really cool. I'm totally a sucker for anything remotely Medieval, so I was especially pumped when I was standing by the castle and there were people below on the grounds doing archery! It was impressive. The only bummer is that I wished they had been wearing like Medieval clothes, haha. It would've made it so much more authentic! But if I were ever going to take up archery, I think Medieval castle grounds would be the place to do it. We ate lunch at the top of the castle with an awesome view of the city, no big deal ;). Then we went back down, I had a round trip cable car ticket so I took that and Hailey and Marena walked and we met up again at the Olympic Stadium.
The Olympics are really important to the people of Barcelona and from what I can tell they take a lot of pride in their Olympic buildings and whatnot. It was the 1992 Olympics that really put Barcelona on the map as a place to be, before it had been relatively unknown and had kind of an industrial reputation, but it's obviously changed drastically since then. Overall, the Olympics had a really positive effect on the city. I hope no locals read this, but we all agreed that the stadium itself was a little underwhelming. It was pretty impressive from the outside, but inside was just an average stadium, and kind of small. Aside from that, it had a sad little gift shop but said sad gift shop had a Gaudi calendar (which I purchased) and some really nice postcards (which I purchased 3 of). I plan to hopefully make a scrapbook of my trip when I get home, so I'm saving all kinds of things and collecting post cards because their photographers are far superior to my own skills. So that'll be my summer project. After that, we began our walk back down the mountain. Hailey and Marena went home, but I took a quick detour to Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion. It doesn't matter if you know what that is or not, basically I just had to study it a lot and it's been on a fair number of tests that I've taken so I felt the need to see it in person. I was too lazy and cheap to pay the 3 euros to go inside but you can pretty much see the whole thing from the outside. Maybe I'll go back and go inside another day, but being all modern as it is, there really isn't much of an inside, so we'll see. I don't have any particular fondness for his architecture, it's just one of those things where I've learned so much about it and seen pictures in textbooks so it was cool to actually see it. I touched it. That night I went to bed pretty early, luckily we were finished with dinner at 8:30 (crazy, right?!) because our host family was headed to their beach house for the weekend. Even Juan went for a night! He's becoming pretty mobile on his crutches even though he hasn't had his knee surgery yet and his whole leg is in a brace. Anyways, we had to get up early the next day for our day trip, so I made sure to get lots of sleep because that's what I do :).
On Saturday morning we made our way to the group meeting point for the day trip our program organized for us. We hopped on a bus and everyone pretty much slept for an hour and a half on the way to the Medieval (yes!) town of Besalu. When I wasn't sleeping, the scenery was so pretty. It was just like picturesque Spanish countryside, vineyards and all. Besalu was really neat, it's known to be one of the best preserved towns from that time period and it really did seem odd to see these authentic Medieval buildings with modern cars driving through the streets (which was crazy anyways because the streets were obviously not built to accommodate a vehicle). We were only there for an hour or so, but it was a very small town and I feel like I saw everything there was to see and even got some shopping in :). We ladies found a really cute store and most of us ended up buying something from there. It had a lot of great stuff and it wasn't tourist-y, so it was actually good quality stuff. I got a cute little leather coin purse for myself because I always forget that coins aren't worthless here (there are 1 and 2 euro coins) and I end up with so many of them. I can't say what else I got because I finally got started on my gift-buying for friends and family back home :). What I will say is Emma, if you read this, know you've officially been checked off my list ;).
We got back on the bus and it was just about another half hour to the town of Figueres, where the artist Salvador Dali was born and where he constructed his museum to himself. Yes, that's right, not only was he alive when his museum was constructed, but he constructed it. A museum of his own work. Obviously, he was a very confident man. What I will say about the Dali museum is that overall, it was one of the strangest experiences I have ever had and that judging by that place and the fact that he designed and made it, Dali was a very strange man. And understandably so; our guide only explained probably a hundreth of the symbolism in some of his work and that hurt my brain, so I cannot begin to imagine what was going on in his. So it was strange, but impressive and an interesting experience overall. After the museum, we had free time for lunch in Figueres. It's a cute town, lots of cafes as is typical here, so we chose one. The food was good, but it was literally the worst service I have ever had. Here's the thing: customer service? It does not exist in Spain. And I'm not being mean, I'm stating a fact; the locals know it, the foreigners quickly figure it out. They don't give tips here in restaurants (Jake, you'd love it ;)), so why would they actually work for their money? They don't. That's not fair, I've had a few servers here who were good by American standards, I had been pretty lucky until now, but they're not all good. They live a very leisurely lifestyle here in Spain, and for that fact, you cannot count on how long a meal will take. We didn't have much time and knew that this was questionable, but we had to eat. We asked for the check 3 times and actually considered just pretending to leave without paying so that they'd make us. Anyways, we were able to meet our group on time, so it was all okay, but it was certainly one of those culture shock experiences. We got on the bus and headed back to Barcelona, with most everyone agreeing it was the perfect opportunity for a siesta.
We got back to Barcelona and I did some homework, super exciting, then Juan got back and his parents headed back to the beach house for another night. We ordered pizza and watched a very odd Spanish movie called Volver, with Penelope Cruz. They had different accents and I struggled to understand a lot of it, but it was clear it was a very unusual plot. I didn't find it worth finishing the movie and instead I went to bed at midnight when I was done with my homework for the night. I don't believe I missed out. Today was uneventful, like I predicted in my last post, I spent most of it doing homework, working on my Spanish and my studio project. When I woke up this morning my first thought was that I had wanted to go shopping (I could seriously shop for weeks straight here) but then I remembered that despite its size, Barcelona shuts down on Sundays. It's a bummer and I really didn't expect it, but have grown to accept it over the past few weeks. I feel like in the States people wait until Sunday to run errands and things, but here almost nothing is open. Oh well, it was probably a good thing because I made a lot of progress on my homework instead of on depleting my bank account.
Tomorrow we have a program activity where some poor soul is going to try to teach me how to cook a 3 course meal. Then we get to eat it, which is good if yours turns out well, but I'm thinking I might have to sneakily switch mine with someone else's. Either way, I am excited and I think it'll be fun and probably entertaining, at least for those around me. Then for the rest of the week, I still haven't decided whether to go to Carnaval or not, I have a tour for Gaudi on Tuesday, and that's all that I'm aware of, but you never know what could happen! I guess you'll just have to tune in next time *suspenseful music*!
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