First Weekend at Pals

Pals is a paradise. I woke up to the sound of the Mediterranean waves crashing from my window. It's windy today, so the wind surfers are flocking to the beach. You can see them in this picture. Javi will teach me sometime I hope. Pals is an old medieval town, very pretty and filled with castles and wineries. By the beach, it's all a resort-type area. My family has a flat a few blocks from the beach, and Teresa, Irene's mother, lives right on the water. The above picture is taken from her terrace. I am staying with her and Paul this weekend; I really like her and she used to be a race car driver! Today, because it was so windy, we drove around Pals to a different beach, one by the mountains that shielded us from the huge gusts of wind. It was breathtaking, I felt like I had jumped inside a postcard. I swam for the first time in the sea. It was very salty, and a whole lot warmer than Lake Superior. I also met a boy who lives in the same area as we do in Pals. When you meet someone new here, you give them a kiss on each cheek. Dos Besos. I will have to get the hang of that. I am excited to make more friends. The kids are so sweet. Bruno went to an English camp this summer so he knows some, Blanca is so outgoing and talkative that I will probably catch on to the language quick, and Bea is the cutest and funniest little girl. They are fun. We will be in Pals the next five days, then we return to the city, and school starts soon. This is getting easier. Step by step, right. I love the sea!

The Cuisine..

.. In Spain is quite different!

FCB

Last night we had Gnoche Queso and another kind of noodley vegetable kind of thing and red wine and bread for dinner. Then we watched the big Barca vs Madrid futbol match on TV right after at 10:30. It was a big match and people here are really pumped about futbol (soccer, in America). Javi got more intense during the game than my grandma on a Sunday afternoon Vikings game. He jumped off the couch and pounded on the table and yelled at the players in angry Spanish. It was exciting.The Barca guys are very famous here. Messi is the best, and there are people wearing his jersey all over the city. Our flat is not far from the stadium where they play, and we could hear fireworks blasting after the game.

Today when Irene gets back to work, we are going to Pals. Pals is about an hour and a half away, and it's where the family has a flat by the beach. They go there every weekend. Unfortunately it has started to rain, so I may have to take off my swimsuit. I'm excited to be by the sea, and I will get to meet the kids. Bruno, Blanca, and Bea. Ages nine, five and two, I think. Ive talked on the phone with them a bit and they're already arguing who gets to show me to their classroom first. I'm sure being around them will make the adjustments a little easier. I've been a little lonely, so I can't wait for school to start so I can make friends my age. September 12th. Here I come Spanish physics!

A Glance of the City

8.30.12

Finally, some pictures! Here are some photos of my new world. Well, my new world for 4 1/2 months. This is the view from our terrace, which I am sitting on while I write this. Its nice. It's on the second floor of a building on Capitan Arenas street. Below you can hear all the bustling sounds of the city: the motor scooters, the honking taxis, the man selling fruit, the crabby woman at the cafe below embracing her espresso. That's what they drink here. Tiny little mugs filled with espresso shots,instead of coffee.

Barcelona is a huge city crammed between two mountains and the sea. Therefore, it cannot get any bigger. The first day, though I was suffering from major jets lag and could hardly stay awake, Irene brought me to top of both mountains. The first is called Tibidabo and is has a little amusement park and a huge chapel. Up there I could see all of Barcelona, and it kind of made my head spin. The second mountain is home to all of the old Olympic game arenas. Barcelona held the summer Olympics in 1992 and all the buildings and things are still there to see. Irene said that at that time, do many people came to Barcelona that they had to bring in huge cruise ships to house everyone.

The cathedral at Tibidabo.

The streets in Barcelona are lined with tiny shops. They're so different than American stores because sometimes only a few people can fit in there at once to they are packed with stuff. There are always flats above them. Because they're so close together, some people hang clotheslines between their terraces.

This is an old part of Barcelona. The buildings are ancient and echoey. It kind of makes you feel like you're in an old movie-maybe a black and white one. 

There are many churches here, and they are all so huge and beautifully constructed. I guess it's part of the culture. I find myself taking pictures of all the churches because I know my grandma would love to see them. "Ohhhh Cecilia!! Praise the Lord!!"

Walking around Barcelona at night made my second guesses about doing this go away for the moment. It is so, so cool when the sun goes down. I wish you could see it. A lot of the Spanish people come out of their flats with a chair and sit in the street so they can talk to people. All the restaurants are pretty much outside, and the temperature is very comfortable. Lights line the streets and motor scooters zip and zoom everywhere. We eat dinner around 9 or 10 here, so people are out till all hours of the night, no biggie.I like it.

The First Day

8.28.12
It's true. It does. And my comfort zone ended just around the time I stepped off the plane into an entirely different continent and everyone around me was speaking a different language at 147 miles an hour and I stood out in my blue jeans and flip flops and instead of being 2 in the morning (which is what my body felt) it was about 9 in the morning in Spain, just the time for people to zoom around uncomfortably close to you in scooters and buses and honk their horns and sell big chunks of raw meat hanging strangely from stands at the market.
I'd love to attach pictures to show how beautiful it is when you can see all of Barcelona squeezed between two mountains and the sea, pictures I took this afternoon on an overlook in the park of Tibidowa, but unfortunately my computer is missing along with a luggage bag that apparently decided to take its own route instead of following me to Spain.
Things maybe aren't going as smoothly as I had naively hoped, but it's a big change, big adjustments. I'm not going to sugar coat it, it's tough. But I can be tough too.
Fingers crossed that I get my luggage back soon. I'll put up pictures soon as I can!

My View From The Sky

I don't want to be cliche and talk about how magical flying is, but I'm not trying to be cynical and suggest that it's not, either. There's just something to be said about looking out the window as the buildings that used to tower over you become just little trinkets in the distance. Minneapolis is so cool from the sky, the lakes and rivers reminding me of the little worlds we used to build in the sandbox. Toronto was cool too, and Barcelona will be amazing, as it is a huge architecture-rich city on the Mediterranean Sea. Right now I'm sitting with my dad in the Toronto airport, figuring out my new iPad. This thing is very slick. The Toronto airport is nice, it's smaller than MSP and a lot more open but if you're not super into Tim Horton's doughnuts then you won't have many choices in the food section. I  have spent a while looking around the airport and picking out people I would make friends with if we were on LOST. My connecting flight boards in about an hour and this plane ride will be about seven hours and 45 minutes, putting me in Spain sometime in the morning (their time). That's longer than I've ever been in a plane, or probably even in a car. Wish me luck!

Saying goodbye wasn't hard until the last night when it all kind of crashed down on me. I have amazing family and friends back home, and although I tried real hard to pretend it wouldn't be, it was kind of tough to leave all that for 5 months. But I had a really great summer and have a great adventure ahead of me, so I am in a good place. I'm ready.

Flight Air Canada 814 is boarding. I'll write from Barcelona!

22 days: Suitcase upgrading

August 5 2012
Everywhere I have traveled in the past has been short term or close enough to allow me to hastily cram everything I needed in a blue adidas duffel. That faded old bag has been very adequately loved and is complete with the occasional rips or holes: it has survived countless hours on the softball bus and many nights dragged across a campsite or thrown into the back of the car for the next spur-of-the-moment adventure. My next journey, though, requires something a little more... sophisticated. I'm graduating from a $20 Dunham's adidas duffel to a real-deal, this-is-the-big-leagues, Chap's 29-inch Expandable Spinner Suitcase, complete with funny red fabric and a fancy trolley system. It has resided under my bed befriending dust and lost socks for a couple months, till just recently on a sudden overnight at Grandma's I decided hey, I'm going to test drive my fancy Spain suitcase. That thing is incredible! The number of nooks and crannies they can hide in a rolling rectangle is amazing.

But how do you fit five months of your life into a suitcase? This is my dilemma of the month. I leave in 22 days, now almost 21, and while I've figured out how to compact many articles of clothing and books and pictures and shampoos and notebooks into a small red piece of luggage, there is so much more I want to take that can't be shoved into a suitcase. I want to bring my mom so she can walk along the Mediterranean with the sand in between her shiny red toes, and I want to bring my brothers to keep me laughing on the unbearably long airplane ride. I want to bring my friends the Scannell and Summers families so that they can play tennis on clay courts every day and pretend they're Rafeal Nadal. I want to bring my grandpa so he can make me his special waffles every Sunday morning; and my grandma, because she would love it just like she loves everything. I want to bring Suester so she can continue to help me because I'm sure algebra will be even harder in Spanish.. I want to bring my friends so they can see a new world apart from a small town. I want to bring my mom's best friend Chrissy, because she would absolutely love the art scene, and Mr. McHugh, because we all know he'd get into some pretty crazy things, and my puppy, because he'll be a full grown dude when I get back and I don't want to miss his cuddliness. I want to bring all the people who encouraged me and helped me for the past 9 months (planning out this trip). But unfortunately, you can't all fit in my suitcase, however fancy and upgraded it seems to be.