Fact: it really is a lovely day. Fact: I didn't have any classes today due to the general strike in Spain against labor reforms. Fact: this sadly also prevented me from going to the zoo, like I had planned to today. Fact: there have already been "violent incidents" and arrests and for once, I'm glad I live in the mountains so far from the city center. Myth: this will be an exciting blog post.
Well I guess it might be exciting, I wouldn't know. I haven't written it yet, but it will only contain information from Monday until now. I'm doing it this way because Sunday night I will be in Morocco and don't plan to bring my computer. I'll start out the blog with a little summary of what my Semana Santa (holy week, which is a countrywide religious holiday and equals no class/spring break) trip will entail. I leave bright and early tomorrow morning to catch a flight at 7 am to Marrakesh. Then, on Saturday, my group and I will head out into the desert on camels (I am not making this up, regardless of how shocked anyone who knows me may be) where we will spend the night and then ride back to Marrakesh the next day. Then on Monday we fly from Marrakesh to Seville, where we will spend two nights and hopefully see some flamenco, among other things. Then on the 4th of April, we will be in three different cities in less than 24 hours. We leave Seville on a train to Cordoba, where we will only be for about 6 hours, but all we want to see is La Mezquita, a really beautiful mosque, and then from there we will take a bus to Granada, where that same night we have tickets for the Alhambra (which I am SUPER excited about!! Number one on my list of things to see while in Spain! I've already printed my ticket :)). We spend one night in Granada and head back to Barcelona late the next night, arriving around 11:15 pm. So it's certainly a whirlwind tour of the south of Spain (+Marrakesh), but I'm super excited and it shouldn't be too bad because I'm also super organized, as always. Of course I was the nerd of the group who made an itinerary with all of our transportation and hostel information for everyone, but it made me feel much better. Today I tried to pack my bag (one backpack for a week, yikes) to Ryanair standards, which are tiny, and I still have some work to do. I'm just really hoping they won't check, but they're the super budget airline and apparently really strict because they absolutely pack the planes full and can't have anyone disobeying the baggage size rules. Luckily, only one of our flights is through Ryanair, the others are through Vueling, which is also a budget airline, but much, much nicer. Anyways, so you'll get to hear all about that not this coming Sunday, but the next. That'll likely be a monster of a post. I may have to split it into two parts. Onto this past week:
Monday, as it typically is, was uneventful. So really this blog only covers three days, haha. Oh well, on to Tuesday! Tuesday was more exciting because I don't have class until 4, so in the morning I took the metro, funicular, and then a bus up to the Tibidabo church I tried to go to a few weeks ago. This time I made it :). It was really neat and I'm glad I went. The church is literally on top of a mountain (not like a huge rocky mountain, it's like a little green mountain with trees, but still!) So the views were really great and it's also right next to an amusement park. I didn't think it would be open, but I wanted to just go in and look around because it's pretty old and I thought "Old, abandoned-looking theme park? Awesome!" I wasn't disappointed, it was pretty cool in a somewhat creepy ghost town kinda way, with the carnival music still playing but no one on the rides. So I walked around it and there actually were a few people, but not many, and not many of the rides were open, like I expected. But then, as I was leaving, I heard the roller coaster running! Turns out it opened at noon, which was like a few minutes after I got there. I was by myself on this adventure, so it wouldn't have been as fun, but hopefully sometime before I leave we can get a group up there to go ride the top-of-the-mountain roller coaster. Then I walked over to the nearby (although not quite as near as it looks) Collserola Tower, which is basically just a giant telecommunications tower. It's apparently architecturally significant, but I don't see why, it's kinda ugly. But that's not why I went anyways. There's an elevator that goes up to the top and I wanted to see if that was open, because those would be even better views than at the church, but it wasn't open yet. Tourism is a pretty big industry here, but I'm here during the off-season, so a lot of touristy things like that aren't open right now. Maybe if I go back with some friends to ride the roller coaster, we can take the elevator to the top of the tower, too. Afterwards, instead of taking the bus back (because I didn't really know where to get on it and since I had already walked like half the distance back to where I got on the funicular by this time) I just walked back to Vallvidrera, the cute town I had ended up in last time I had attempted this journey, where I could get on the funicular and head back down the mountain. Thing is, I wasn't dressed for a hike (jeans, flats, jewelry, etc.) but that was what I got, because the signs pointing to Vallvidrera pointed to on trails in the woods. Luckily, it was a beautiful day up on the mountain so it was a pleasant walk, but my feet did not thank me and I ended up with blisters for pinkie toes, among other locations on my feet. Oh well, goal accomplished anyways, one thing I can check off my list.
I ate my peanut butter and jelly sandwich in Vallvidrera and then headed back down the mountain and into the city. I still had about two hours before class so I decided to cross another thing off my list and visit the store Vincon. We had learned about it in one of my classes because it's been around since the early 20th century and played a big role in Barcelona becoming a sort of high-design city, but with unique design for the general public instead of for only the upper class (this was on my final I took the next day, so I know all about it ;)). So it's this really cool (surprising huge for being in the middle of the city) design store that just carries all kinds of unique objects. It ended up being a good place for gifts ;). It was really neat and I'll probably go back again before I leave, sometime when I'm not carrying a backpack and my feet aren't screaming at me. Anyways, I made my purchases and then decided to stop and get sorbet and do some studying at a cafe instead of at school (I deserved it after my hike, obviously). It was a good choice. Eventually I made my way to school, had class, turned in a ten-page research paper, and that was it for Tuesday.
Yesterday, Wednesday, I had my first final! That means I'm done with a class! I only have three now instead of four. And I counted the other day, we only have 5 days of class left, counting finals. What!? Insanity. I have a lot of studio work to do before those days are over. (It's what I was doing before I decided to blog instead.) The final was for my City in Visual Culture class, which is the elective I'm taking (I took!) in Spanish, meaning I wrote the essay test in Spanish. I don't know how it went, not as well as I would've liked though, I fear. I'm still worried about Spanish grading standards tanking my GPA back home. Oh well, what can you do? It's not like it wasn't worth it. After the final, Hailey and I finally returned to the school where we volunteer, after I'd been gone for probably a month and Hailey almost as long. The kids didn't hold it against us. Never a dull moment with those kids, that's for sure. I didn't have my gloves this time, of course, so this time they were after my jewelry. (Good choice, Megan, wear a dangle-y bracelet on the day you're going to hang out with small children.) They also like Hailey's hair, as it is long and bright blonde (the whole situation is probably more painful for her than it is for me, although having your earrings pulled on isn't enjoyable either.) But of course, I also got lots of hugs and kisses, and I danced with one little boy who remembered me; it was a good time, overall. We spent most of the time with one girl, Paula, who is literally the happiest, most enthusiastic person I've ever met. She's probably 13 or 14 if I had to guess and the whole time she was listening to the same song on her mp3 player and having Hailey and I listen too. It's like the most popular song in Europe right now and I've probably heard it 100 times since I've been here, and she kept saying "otra vez!" which is like "another time" meaning she was going to listen to it again. She spoke so fast and excitedly we of course didn't understand it all (at least it was Spanish and not Catalan), but the great part is that she didn't care at all whether we understood or not, she just wanted to talk to us and tell us we were her "mejores amigas", best friends.
Sadly, not all the children are that happy. Hailey and I noticed this time that one little girl, who we've seen every time we've been there and who always comes up to try to talk to us (unfortunately, she often speaks Catalan), hurts herself. She's probably 7 or 8, I think her name is Laia. We noticed yesterday that sometimes she just grabs handfuls of her hair and pulls them out, and she's made progress. Once we noticed, we could tell there were thin spots. She also took hard objects and pressed them into her skin to make an imprint, and in one of the conversations she tried to have with Hailey, the only word she kept saying that we understood was "sangre", blood. Of course we don't know many of the children's individual stories and I'm far from an expert, but I suppose she goes to that school for some kind of emotional or behavioral disorder that causes her to do these things and it made us sad to see her doing that, but we didn't really know how to help. Any dilemmas notwithstanding, I'll probably only be there one more time at the most. Hopefully I can go, so that I can say goodbye to them. I don't know whether they'd care, but I'd feel kinda bad not letting them know I wasn't going to come back.
Today, my class was technically already cancelled because the professor was going to be out of town, but it turns out it would have been cancelled anyways, because the study center closed at 2 today because of the strike (class wasn't scheduled until 4). I had planned to go to the zoo today and then work in studio, but that darn strike prevented it from happening. The bus and metro today were running at 1/3 frequency between 6:30 and 9:30 am and will be again at from 5-9pm, but for the rest of the day aren't running at all because the workers are striking (making it difficult to get to the zoo on the other side of town), almost no flights are going in or out of Spain today, lots of businesses are closed, etc. The study center closed early for safety reasons because it's so close to the city center. Quite a tumultuous little country right now. As I mentioned, the strikes have something to do with labor reform and the people (specifically unions and city workers) are not pleased, but that's all that I know. So I've just been doing studio work all morning and then Cara and I walked to the parrot restaurant, where we ate just last Thursday with Nathan, and hung out with Ricky the parrot while we had lunch. When we got back I painted my nails to prepare for my vacation (super important stuff) and then decided it was blog time. Unfortunately, seeing as I've reached the present, blog time is now over and it's back to studio time. I have a week after I get back from Semana Santa until our final review, so I want to get as much done today, before we leave, as I can. So that's the plan, and I'll be back next Sunday with all kinds of stories about my vacation! Adéu ! (One of the only Catalan words I've picked up, and I had to look up the spelling, haha.)
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