from Paris, in an apartment near le Sacré-Cœur

I miss Barcelona so much already. Isn't that silly? I miss the way the street signs look. I miss practicing my "hombre" and "adeú" and "hasta luego"s. I automatically say "perdon" when I bump into people here, and agree with "vale" or "mmm bueno". I was talking to Hunter about his Amelie poster and could only think to describe it as "fuerte". All of this is silly because I'm in one of the prettiest cities in the world and all I can think about is how long it'll be before I'm in Spain again.

Hunter and I had some pretty inappropriate adventures last night, and I spent all day sleeping and vomiting. But we're cooking dinner soon, being nineteen in Paris. He keeps saying, "What the fuck- we're in Paris right now," and I say, "I know! What the fuck- you live here," and then we try to imagine what our fifteen year old selves would think. The Eiffel Tour looks really small until it's right on top of you, and that's kind of what being in Paris is like: I walk around and forget how impressed I am, until I suddenly remember and feel very small and silly, like duhhh who could forget how massive the Eiffel Tour is, how does one forget to be impressed by Paris? There was a taxi strike yesterday and so my fare was insane to get from the airport, but the driver played classical music as we cruised along the French highways, and that was an alright silver lining. It's cold here and there's a string ensemble in one of my metro stops, which makes everything feel more like Christmas. Speaking of metro stops, Hunter's is the one in Amelie where she leaves the blind man. Isn't that neat?

my beloved manong and me/we go everywhere together

 Tibidabo is cold so close to December. (The art on the church's entryway isn't paint but mosaic- wtf?!)

Went to the Aquarium once (never, ever go there):

befriended a silver fish

did the tourist thing

met 007. (he had pointed to the glass and said, "oh! what is that in english?" and i said, "octopus," and he said, "octopussy? like james bond. i love james bond.")

home in a month and a day

i'm pretty bad at writing so here are some pictures:

Someone made a Knox PostSecret about me! (At least, using a picture of me; that's my smile, you see.) This makes me (almost unjustifiably) excited.

Made breakfast and mimosas with Raquel last Friday:

mmm- she loved them

 sauteeing some mushrooms and veggies in cheap cava

mhmm precious and delicious

haaaaaahaha, the truest picture i've ever taken

cleaning up after sofia's brutal attack- "what a bitch"

mmhmm, that's about right; right before meeting for an intercambio with jordi, who had us explain the geographical locations of US cities using cocktail olives, and who explained that spain is able to produce duff beer (they're ob-sessed with Los Simpson) by making it "duss beer" with crosses in the s's, though i can't actually find sources that confirm this.

saturday we went to coulliere, france to read poetry at antonio machado's grave. i didn't take pictures of that, but i did of this:

Rachel taking a picture of a pretty building. The village is pretty precioso, or acogedor, a synonym.

a basketball court in the middle of a monestary

woof

Then Rachel and I tried to do some long walk around Monjuic but EVERYONE was there

, so we decided to drink cafe in the Central Park of Barcelona and read the Sunday paper.

lisbon

If you're ever in Lisbon you must stay at the Oasis Backpackers Hostel and sign up for the X-Trip with Bruno, the anti-tourism tour guide. You'll see things like:

This building, the Amoreiras, which is infamous not only because it was the first in modern style but also because sex tapes were distributed soon after its completion, of the architect and the wives of politicians and other powerful men. Even though everyone in Lisbon has seen these tapes, the media more or less covered it up since there were so many important people involved.

Bruno, at the palace in Sintra where officials would work, talking about the once magnificent but now charmingly shabby apartments in which the aristocracy lived after the earthquake hundreds of years ago:

The palace of Sintra, built by King Fernando in the nineteenth century as a symbol for how much he loved his wife. The architecture is based off of too many styles to be properly categorized. The rooms are filled with so many original pieces that you can't take pictures, can only marvel at the insides of a nineteenth century royal palace. Bruno said it was a good thing that the morning was so misty and drizzling, because it really added to the whole mysteriousness of the building. We walked the Shower Walk underneath actual showers. On the bus ride up the winding mountain path he said, "On your left, if it wasn't so foggy, you could see a Moorish castle," which is a romatic idea, never in my life knowing what this Moorish castle looks like, amidst the trees and in the foggy mountains of Lisbon, if it even exists. He said, "This forest is really interesting because the King gathered all different types of trees from around the world and they all grew, American and Japanese trees alongside one another. That's one of the beautiful things about Lisbon: you plant any kind of tree and it will flourish." (He's really poetic; the kind of thirty-five year old European man I thought I'd fall in love with. I want to write him a letter that says, "You don't have to build me a palace," because it's an old joke in Lisbon: "When you say you love a girl, she waits for you to build her a palace.")

(more in the collection of "tourist taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of tourists")

alligator gargoyle: did you know that the word "alligator" is derived from the Spanish word "el lagarto", meaning "lizard"?

graffiti on the "wall walk":

Went to "the end of the Earth", a title which Bruno may or may not have made up; he tells pretty stories, even if the accuracy behind them is questionable. (He did tell me the real name, I just can't remember.) He said, "If it wasn't so cloudy, you could see New York City from here. It's not so far away; we are just neighbors with a pool between us; the Atlantic Ocean is the garden we share between our houses."

Can you imagine how it would feel, to think you lived at the end of the earth?

We went to a beautiful and deserted beach, my first ocean:

In Chiado, on our way to "the best gelato place in the world" (definitely the best gelato I've tasted, I'd agree; they swirled my fabulous mixture of coffe and raspberry).

Belem, where we visited a few monuments, like Pasteis de Belem, the famous pastry shop where they sell 20,000 pastels de nata each day, but also less delicious landmarks, like the Tower of Belem, the Discoveries Mark, and the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos.

 

The last picture I have is this one, of this silly Barcelona-sized building in the middle of Lisbon. Rachel wrote that the difference between the two cities is that Barcelona has low self-esteem and tries to overcompensate, whereas Lisbon's so self-assured that it can afford to be laid-back, unkempt. I like Lisbon a lot.

happy

Went to The Quiet Man pub last night where everyone was tattooed and pierced, dressed like witches or skeletons, dancing to rockabilly. Decided that I needed to be a little intoxicated to flail around, went to the bar with Rachel where the bartender tried to sell me a beer for six euro, was deciding on which shitty import to buy (no Moritz Epidor or Voll Damms- only Heinekens, bleh) when all the girls frantically rushed us out of the door, yelling that people were fighting; Grace was horrified, had stood atop her chair convinced that they were seeing a man get beaten to death. But they forgot my purse, so Rachel and I went back in to get it and everyone was tranquilo, bopping around, no blood splatters or roughed up men. Weird. Couldn't keep up on Las Ramblas with the fast and sober walking group so we decided to just lag behind, use the bathroom at Maximum Gelato (where every single ice cream scooper is attractive; one told me my eyes are "very beautiful" once and all his coworkers laughed; they recognized me, prancing in all tipsy and Spanish-speaking, asking to use their bathroom even though they were closed- what a strange thing, to be a regular at a gelato shop on Las Ramblas; every time I walk down Las Ramblas I decide I hate Barcelona- it's the most awful street in the world, I think, so touristy and crowded and filled with freaks, like the man who dresses as a flower and stands in a giant pot and who makes kissing noises at you when you pass). I convinced Rachel to go back to the bar with me and we danced for two hours, a portion of that with a cute Peruvian girl who had two friends named David, which I was unreasonably confused by at the time and so I kept pointing from one to the other when we were introduced, asking, "And his name? And his name?" Rachel and I sobered up by walking down the Rambla de Catalunya speaking in "So I Says" voices- I haven't lost mine after all! It was just hiding itself, embarrassed by that first night we went to a bar here and I started using it and everyone felt really uncomfortable. That's another thing that's kind of a bummer here- the things I take pleasure in make nearly everyone else uncomfortable, like dancing to rockabilly with Spanish hipsters or saying ridiculous things in Bostonian accents. Ate cookies on a bench, saying, "What the fuck? I'm eating cookies on a bench in Barcelona, drunk at three-thirty in the morning, after spending two hours dancing to rockabilly in an Irish pub with a Peruvian girl, and can't stop speaking in this voice." And then we listed various "What the fuck?" moments so far- "I spent forty-two euro buying drinks for Molly's birthday- what the fuck?", "I ate two entire jars of Nutella because I hate this city so much- what the fuck?" Maybe none of this sounds like a good time at all, but it was one of the first nights that I just went around and did things that I wanted to do, and I felt so normal, having fun, having a friend. The other night I was supposed to see Agora at a theater where all the movies are played in their original version and subtitled, but the tickets were sold out and Clare just wanted to go to bed, and so I walked to the theater by my house and watched the movie alone and in Spanish- it was really nice. I'm doing things- this is really nice.

Went to sleep at 4:30 and woke up at 8:30 with a greasy face and no voice. Oh my.

So Manong Willie was telling me about how he and Ate Lisa live in a two-story house in Barcelona, and I was all like, "Oh no, this is obviously just part of this whole language barrier thing, there are no such thing as houses in Barcelona- to begin with, there aren't any two-story buildings at all." But they actually live in a two-story house in the middle of the city! Ate Lisa's employer is like suuuper loaded. They gave her a coat but it was too small for her so she gave it to me. It's pretty nice; it looks like this:

I mean it's kind of too small for me, too, but whatever. They live in the house for free (I mean, with some major trade-offs, the most obvious including Ate's long work days, Manong's inability to find a job in such a large and competitive city, and having to leave their six and ten year old daughters behind in the Philippines and only seeing them maybe once a year). I'm free to stay there on the weekends, and to have lunch on the weekdays (OMG of rice and pork adobo and all sorts of goooooood things, I'm so excited). It's so ridiculously nice, and Manong was surprised that my house- that every house- isn't like this in the States. The American dream, though, I guess:

Just the entry-way is impressive, compared to all the other apartments I've been in (never an actual house- wtf!), even contending with my pretty University or whatever, with the stained glass and the tiles being just a fragment, a small introduction to grandeur.

Neoclassical paintings, old photos, antique furniture, a fireplace (can you imagine? in the middle of Barcelona!). And yesterday morning I dressed in my silly, high-waisted pants on a whim, and so I was perfectly ready to sit amongst the knickknacks, like the chandeliers and various (slave depicting?) figurines.

Then I went to History and we toured one of the upstairs rooms; I don't really know what it was used for, but it's decorated with lots of historical depictions:

Then I went to see Urtain at the Teatro Romeo. SO GOOD. I haven't seen a professional production in years, and was surprised at how surprised I was at the quality of the acting. Anyway, Urtain's life was really sad.

Okay, I should do more things. Spanish rockabilly DJ tomorrow night! Lisbon in a week. Food with the family. Barca game on Sunday, I think. Intercambio tomorrow afternoon. Things things things.

I'm all brain-dead lately and I don't know why. I think I've been speaking English too much, walking around a lot; maybe it's just that being in a constant state of indecision is exhausting. The more I think about getting a Richter grant the sillier it seems. Barcelona is like one big stand-still.

My cousin, Manong Willie, randomly called me yesterday. I guess Uncle Bong finally called him and gave him my number. He wanted to meet up that day, took me to a Filipino restaurant and then to our cousin's house to meet some more fam, eat roasted chestnuts and drink Fanta, sing some kareoke- you know, the usual. Lani (I hope that's her name) is my second cousin, maybe (Willie and I have this really ridiculous language barrier to overcome that we pretty much didn't, so I don't really know how she and her husband are related to us); she speaks Spanish pretty well so we did a weird hybrid of English and Spanish, and her husband, Reyno, was pretty fluent in English, but it depresses me that I can't understand Willie. I imagine that another reason for being so brain-dead is that my inability to communicate due to language barriers has now increased two-fold. Ughh.

But Willie walked me to school afterwards. Went to the library with Prim, who gained us special access to look at old books. Ridiculous! I got to casually flip through Hartmann Schedel's Liber Chronicarum, written on lamb's skin in 1493- you know, no big deal. There were two copies of 16th century editions of Dante's Inferno, one that had been successfully hidden from the church during the Inquisition and one that was censured (like the scratching out of the word "Divine" before "Comedy", and other sacrilege and blasphemies). And a first edition Lope de Vega, and a text book (huge! with dimensions close to 1.5 ft x 1 ft x .5 ft) of Roman law, with professor's comments surrounding the text, with student's notes surrounding the comments, all tiny and perfectly scrawled, with hands with huge middle fingers pointing to the very important lines, and with the occasional 12th century daydreamin' doodle of a crown in the margins. The holes left by centuries of book worms were cute.