Another Day, Another Adventure

So the other day I was looking at my HUGEEE map of Barcelona that’s hanging on my wall in my room thinking I’ve basically seen all there is to see and done all that’s expected that I do. But then I took a closer look, and realized there was still SOO much of Barcelona I had yet to see! Each corner of my map had names I had never even heard of, and this is when I realized I better go exploring and see what I’m missing. So that’s exactly what I did. Some of this stuff I had seen before but never wrote about, and some were brand new to me too!

Las Ramblas Bouqueria

-huge outside market in the center of Barcelona with tons of fruits, veggies, fishes, meats, nuts, chocolates, breads, pastries, café items, and more! It’s the most colorful market I’ve seen and it's become a part of weekly routine.

La Bouqueria

Flamenco Class

-ciee (my program) has these themed classes just for ciee students. So I went to the learning flamenco class! I was one of only 4 students and had to get dolled up in pins and flowers and jewelry and hair clips and tap dance to what I thought was a very confusing beat. There was not a whole lot of instruction involved, as this was the teacher’s method … “okay im gonna clap, and everyone DANCE!”. for over an hour. So it was interesting, but fun nonetheless! The teacher was really cool and was born in Sevilla so she knew all there was to know about flamenco!

Me in my flamenco dance class

Spanish Yoga

-I signed up for a yoga class this week, and let me tell you, it was a struggle. My yoga skills are a little rusty, so there were a lot of advanced moves I had never seen, plus it was all in Spanish! So since I placed myself in the back row as not to embarrass myself, I couldn’t even hear what the instructor was saying, nevertheless understand him. There were multiple times during class when he came over to me to tell me to put my head down and relax my neck, little did he know I was just watching everyone else to make sure i wasn’t missing anything since I couldn’t understand a word! I’ve been here almost 2 months and my Spanish is improving veryyyyy slowly. It's actually very frustrating, I still can’t understand the locals when they talk at their normal speed, and have a lot of trouble speaking. They say it's supposed to be easy to catch on to once you’re here, but I guess my high school theory was correct, I just suck at languages. Simple as that.

Hiking and Calcotada

-So Saturday during the day was dedicated to a day trip that I went on with my program. We went hiking in the mountains that border the western side of Barcelona. It was a beautiful area of Barcelona where the rich people used to build their fancy seasonal houses up in the mountains. So the buildings are gorgeous, and it was a beautiful day! We hiked for about 1.5 hours until we got to a restaurant called Can Marti where we ate a delicious 5 course meal with way too much food. But well worth it because it was all traditional catalan food. The calcots were the star of the show. It’s a type of onion (grown in Northern Spain) that you grill, and then have to tear off the burnt layer and dip into this dip to eat the whole thing at once. It’s hard to explain, so just look at the picture and you’ll see. We also had tortilla Espanola, garlic tomato bread, patatas braves, beans, pork, lamb, and this other kind of meat. OH and the best part, was the wine, unlimited wine served in a jug that the whole table drinks out of because the spout is never supposed to touch your mouth. Once again, just check out the pictures. I also have a picture of me losing my grip and spilling the wine ALL OVER MY FACE. But that my friends, will not be posted. Only shown on an individual basis if specially asked for hahah. Anyway, on the way home from the restaurant, Kayla, Yasmin and I decided to ditch the group and take our own route home, we proceeding to not so accidentally get lost in the mountains, lose track of the path, and walk off the enormous meal we all just had. 

Quote of the day, “when in Barcelona, never stay with the group”

Picture from the back of the line. This is just start of the hike!

The view of Barcelona from the mountains

We found this patch of plants and decided to just jump in

Kayla and Yasmin looking at the view of Barcelona

We found a cat! I named it Tom and he walked with us for a while!

Peeling off the burnt layer of the calcot (extremely messy!)

And this is how you eat a calcot

And this is how you drink the wine. Now if you imagine the wine all over my face, that's exactly what happened shortly after this picture was taken

Girona

-So on Sunday we went to Girona, a town north of Barcelona. The town was extremely quiet and empty, but very relaxing and peaceful. Although it was a very pretty town, it was probably not the best decision to go on a Sunday when almost everything was closed. We walked around for about 3 hours, saw some roman ruins, walked through some parks, played on some swings, and took the train home.

The beautiful river flowing through Girona. (The red bars are part of the bridge)

View of Girona!

Carnival in Sitges

-So carnival is basically the European mardi gras. Its celebrated in tons of cities all over Europe, one of the biggest places being Sitges, Spain, a city an hour south of Barcelona. So I made sure to buy bus tickets and a colorful mask to celebrate! We got dropped off at about 10pm and didn’t leave until 3am (but really, I could have left at 1am, it was a long night and not too much to see). But there was an awesome parade with tons of dancers for each themed float. My favorite part of the parade was seeing each float have a secret, or not so secret, bar inside for all the dancers! They were constantly filling up their drinks and lighting cigarettes in the middle of their “performances”. So yeah pretty casual. After the parade was over we went and walked around and saw all the awesome costumes, then sat down and waiting for our bus to leave hahah. At Wisconsin we have two huge parties each year, the mifflin street block party, and Halloween, lets say that Carnival in Sitges was a combination of the two. (drinking in the streets + costumes)

Me, Kathryn, and Kayla throwing confetti on the streets

Just some random people who took a picture with us because we liked their costumes

One of the floats in the parade

So yeah a lot happened this week. I had my first midterm yesterday, i studied for about an hour. And I have one tomorrow, studied for about 2 hours. Even though I really miss Madison and Lake Mendota, this is an awesome break from school. But what I love about my classes here is that I still feel like I’m learning so much, but I don’t have to stress about tests or grades. Well, maybe I should a little, but whatever, 4 month vacation.

This weekend my lovely VIPers are coming to visit! (VIP = visitor and information programs, my job at school) and I can’t be more excited to spend the weekend with them!!

More updates to come, adios!