a rather long, but no-grump, multimedia post

The power went off in the middle of my morning shower, so to keep the bathroom lit (and demon-free or whatever) I grabbed my laptop and played E.'s Second Annual Coming of Age mix*. I ended up playing "Say Yes" by Andrea Gibson for an hour, looping it in the streets and on the metro like it was a mantra I kept repeating. I got to my History of Art class and beheld the most beautiful man in the world: eighty years old, heavy bags under his eyes because he's seen so much, hands all shaky because he's so full of energy. Here are some of my [translated, paraphrased] notes from his lecture:

"I've been here for over sixty years, first as a student, then as a professor. I studied philosophy (which I got little out of) and theology (which gave me even less). I had wanted to find God, but what I found was this: God wants us to search for him, but he doesn't want us to find him. But for me, God is all of you, He is all of my students. You are very young, lamentably young; you brain won't begin to work until you're forty years old. I'm old, I've lived a very long of a life, but my spirit's much younger than yours. That's because art is living. There was a day when I thought, 'I'm going to kill myself- but first, I'm going to drink a cup of coffee.' As I was sitting there, desperate, I heard Beethoven's Great Fugue. Before I had been deaf- a deaf musician, it cannot be! But I was deaf, in total desperation, and with the music I began to live. No, now you're too young to understand, but one day you will be desperate, and art will save you."

After class- all full of love and emotions from this man, ready for art and for insight- I went to check out a second-hand bookstore in a barrio I'd never been to. It was closed (for keeps, I think, but it's hard to tell because all of the signs here are in Catalan, which doesn't help my foreignness at all), but it was fine because this is the building that once held it:

I wonder if the architects planned all the contrast- the colors, the materials, the texture. It just blows my mind, makes me so happy.

I strolled a little through the neighborhood, was thinking of turning around and sitting at a bar, ordering some water (because I always dress incorrectly for the weather here! yesterday it was too chilly for shorts, today it was too sweltering for flannel) when I saw that the Fundació Joan Miró was nearby and thought I'd walk to it. Here's the hill I encountered, that you can't even appreciate the steepness of without three dimensions:

 

And then when I reached the top of this- sweaty, without water, still in flannel and jeans- I discovered a set of steep, nearly never-ending steps:

But I put on Gulag Orkestar by Beirut and reached the top. (A note: if you're ever stuck under the Mediterranean fall sun in flannel and climbing lots of steps, turn on this song, it's a nice mood-fitter.) There were cute little oddities on the side of the path, like a mysterious door and decaying benches:

Hanging around the museum, you start to wonder why people pay time and money for this stuff, why they aren't sitting around making their own "Man and woman in front of a pile of excrement"s. So in the sculpture garden overlooking the entire city I made my own art:

"Tourist taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of tourists". It didn't stop there; on my way down the stairs I created

"beleaf". And on my way down the street I thought maybe I should turn into the Sartorialist of buildings, because I photograph them anyway, and because it's less awkward than asking strangers if you can take their picture. The only problem is that I don't actually know anything about architecture. Anyway, the beginning of the Edifitorialist (or whatever clever name comes up, although do I like that wordplay):

color upon color upon color

 

old bricks, modern curtains

spanish saloon

dragon wall

Afterwards I bought El Hombre Libre by Tolstoy at a used-book sale on the side of the Passeig de Gracia. Good day, but Spain's getting lonely. Thanks for the comments and for keeping in touch.

*The Coming of Age ceremony, born during the summer of 2008, is a festival that lasts anywhere from a few days to a full week. Celebrations have included the planning of self-improvement goals, long drives, booze, and goddess worshipping (from Artemis to Joplin). It always begins with a year's worth of self-reflection through song.

what the hell?

So my family here is unconventional, but one tradition they do keep is the genius one of Cake Sunday (which means that every Sunday the dinner dessert is cake, obviously). And this is what I've been looking forward to all week, Cake Sunday. Cake Sunday is the only reason to even start weeks, in my opinion. So last night I walk around the neighborhood for a few hours with Rachel, we eat patatas bravas and a chicken dish at a really cheap and trashy neighborhood restaurant, I talk about how excited I am that Cake Sunday has finally arrived, whatever. And then I go home and I siesta, await for the knock on my door telling me about dinner time, which really is just a formality until cake time. And so eventually I wake up, it's 11pm, my family's watching a football game with some amigos, drinking the cans of Estrella and bottles of Voll-Damm that've been hanging out in the kitchen this weekend, and I'm not eating cake. But not only was there no cake involved, but no dinner, either.

AND THEN TODAY the bocadillo my host-mom packed for my lunch consisted of a few scoops of mashed potatoes encased in a tomato-rubbed hogie. What the hell, who eats potato sandwiches? What kind of balanced-diet does that lunch promote? Starch upon starch- if the idea behind this was to comfort me through my malnourishment, it failed.

Anyway, this could be a post that ends in me using my voice and talking about things, discovering that these are just wacky misunderstandings, but for now it just ends in head-shaking bewilderment.

--

I was just cranky.

[not] hangin' out

So my intercambios fell through; turns out the list of interested students was a year old. However I visited the site loquo.com and found other two people to talk to. The first guy was kind of weird, a self-described fiesta enthusiast; he wore bermuda shorts and a white button-down shirt with the first two buttons undone, exposing his tanned and hairless chest. He told me we should sit and drink coffee, but that really meant walk down to, around, and back from the beach for two hours. This wouldn't have been bad if I hadn't just walked around the city for two hours, and after a four hour tour of Barcelona in my stupid Spanish sandals my feet were all sad and throbbing. So I cancelled my plans for Friday night; just went home and- as a homage to Patrick Swayze, whose death I just learned about- tried to watch Ghost online, a weird Spanish-dubbed version. But it keep freezing and so instead I watched Donnie Darko (which I still don't understand, because literally every single word in that movie is loaded and I wish the director would either be more concise in his message or issue a SparkNotes explanation with every disc) in the dark and it was kind of creepy; I have to stop watching creepy movies in my room alone with the lights off.

Anyway, today I woke up at noon, meant to leave the house at 1:30 to meet kids at the beach but didn't manage this until 5. Shit. So I missed seeing them but was on-time to meet my second intercambio date, Pablo. (Although I was only on-time because I texted, "Look man, I'm super foreign, have no idea where I am; it'd just be easier if we met here instead..." and changed the meeting place twice.) He's exactly the person I want to know here. He kind of reminds me of J. Nelson for some reason; maybe it's the hair, one of the fashion mullets from home that I know and love, not one of the earnest, nothing-ironic-about-it mullets that everyone has here. He liked my funny Spanish and was impressed by my knowledge of and desire to visit Can Masdeu. He's a guitarist who lived in the south of Spain, where he learned the soul of flamenco; we're exchanging music someday, which is great, and he said he'd teach me how to make paella, which is also great. He goes to Algeria on Wednesday for ten days, but said we'd "hang out" when he gets back (doesn't understand that phrase at all, but it's like how I don't really understand how to use "quedar" when I want it to mean "to meet up" or "to hang out with" or whatever it's supposed to mean). We're at pretty equal levels of foreignness, so I pretty much really like him and can't wait to explore the city on our Bicing-rented bicycles. He wrote down some nearby beaches for me to visit that are better than Barcelona's, and doesn't his handwriting seem like it belongs to someone I'd enjoy?

Anyway, so maybe I'll visit them next weekend while the weather's still perfect. In the meantime I'm starting to settle in and remember how little money I have, so I keep opting out of late night hip-shaking at bars and discotecas, because I don't have five/ten euros every night for the beers and the other things that help me keep rhythm. Not to mention that I like free things better anyway, and in lieu of porches to sit on, and Andrews, Justins, and Noahs to sit on them with, I feel like reading and looking for small, cool, cultural things to do in the weeks to come. I've been sitting on benches a lot, writing and doodling and taking pictures. Here's a doodle from that day I was so frustrated (euphemism) with how slow-paced yet jam-packed orientation week was that I sat in the hotel's bar and downed a whiskey and coke before our last meeting:

And here's a picture of the view from my window; it's really pleasant because I just leave my window open all day and there are no mosquitos here, just sunshine.

word post, long post

Yesterday I ran into my first thunderstorm while on a many mile traipse* from the Universitat to my neighborhood, La Sagrera. I had to buy a newspaper for an umbrella, because none of the small specialty shops sold them, or none that I could find anyway. Got REALLY lost for a while, but then found a "mouth of metro", caught the purple line to where it connects with the red line and rode the two stops to my neighborhood. So I can navigate the city by myself, but only when I actually mean let an automated tram take me on a specific path to and fro' destinations. But directional savvy and general orientation are coming.

Today I bought my first European outfit, which I'm wearing with the sandals I bought with the streets in Spain in mind. (Fashion only, of course; I rarely wear anything for functionality, unfortunately for my feet.) But when I say "European" outfit I really mean another cardigan and a pair of "Texans"- which is what they call jeans here, tejanos, or "cowboys", vaqueros- so it's not very European, except that it came from a Spanish store. Really most of the fashion here is terrible. The women are really fond of "pirate pants", which have great billowing legs that taper off at the end, and crotches that sag to around the knees. And most men have mullets. I think this one's because America exports really weird things, and so Spaniards are currently following serials from the '80s and '90s, like Baywatch, Cops, and Married... With Children. (There are always one or two men on the busy streets who play techno music while Bart and Homer Simpson, small and cardboard, dance and wobble on pipe-cleaner legs. Duff Beer is in every bar and cafe I've been to.) But I've never seen so many older women with hair dyed bright and primary colors. My first morning in Barcelona there was this sassy seventy year old woman standing outside of the hotel, hip cocked, smoking a cigarette, wearing a flannel shirt with hair as purple as her ballet flats. Because this goes along with my whole image of myself as a character from The Neverending Story, I find it cool and endearing.

I emailed three people about intercambios (language exchange meetings where an English native speaks with a Spanish native, spending half an hour in each language). Two girls and a boy who likes to direct and edit films. I'd rather do the intercambios with girls because I'm better at striking up conversations with random men, but the problem is that they're all really random. I bummed a cigarette from a guy smoking outside of my hotel and talked to him; he had some piercings and some tattoos, a mohawk and kind of reminded me of Gnarly D., but when I asked him what he liked to do in Barcelona he said "listening to reggatone, going to clubs and dancing 'muy sexy'. You know what that means? Muy sexy," with really exaggerated pantomiming. Ay dios. I could've talked to the guy standing next to me on the train home, because he took out his earbuds and everything to signal that he was okay with conversation, but when he smiled at me he flashed a mouthful of braces and I could just hear Andrew yelling, "Tween! Fucking tweens!" and so I couldn't take him seriously. But I really shouldn't have been so much of a jerk, because maybe he was listening to something good, and I'd like to hear some good Spanish music because all I've heard is shitty soft-rock.

Being good at meeting guys on my own is a plus since I'm half-convinced I'll meet my husband somewhere. With the track record of this program, someone in our class will end up falling in love: Ragan and Prado met when she was abroad in Barcelona, so did Stephanie and Robin, so did my host parents, Pilar and Johnathan. Speaking of my host family, it's a pretty nice set up. They're pretty young, and he's from the States, so it's a super unconventional situation, and I don't have to go through the things that others do who have the traditional families, like being scolded for not wearing my slippers while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night even if it's five feet from my room, or for drinking too much water when the knowledge that it's so expensive here doesn't keep me from being thirsty. After dinner my family likes to watch Glee, which is sometimes really funny but sometimes really uncomfortable. For example, last night there was a minute-long scene- way too long!- with a bunch of white glee club members singing Kanye's "Golddigger", and I felt awkward. But then I sat in my room and watched Los Olvidados by Luis Bunuel alone in the dark, which was also uncomfortable, but in an artsy and pretentious way, and in the way that I was listening to Spanish without subtitles instead of watching an American export in English. Anyway, there's also a dog and a six-month old baby, and that's also good and exciting.

I guess that's it. Here are some pictures:

Sophie/Sofia. Best friends, but she's kind of uptight.

You can see the mountains from the roof terrace. All the buildings here are so tall. I can't remember having seen a one- or two-story yet.

 Me, the European Wanderer, ultra-self-contented.

luego, ciao

*I had no idea traipse had such specific definitions for each part of speech. Interesting.

picture post now, word post later

Look where I got all of my expressions from!

Ready to go.

Leaving Kansas City- how dismal.

How do you get to Barcelona? A secret only planes know.

Last American meal- we decided to go all out with the Big Macs and Angus Beef burgers. (Got to my hotel and realized that there was a McDonald's down the street; you know, the one right across the street from the KFC. Oh God.)

The two-bed room I shared with Hannah M. Precious, yeah? Cozy.

Hotel Rialto, the birth place of Joan Miró, where we stayed. All of the architecture in the Barri Gótico, and most anywhere else, makes me so happy.

My first sea!

La Sagrada Familia. I literally dropped my jaw and gasped when we turned the corner to see this. It's literally the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Maybe you can't tell, but it's MASSIVE. The set of towers they have planned to go behind these is twice as tall.

The sky's always so blue.

 

 
 
















Park Güell. This guy's nuts.

My city. Not as impressive in tiny picture form, but notice the coast on the left, notice the cramped apartment buildings and the sunshine.

I'll figure out cutting posts later, so this doesn't take so long to load. The layout of these picture posts are kind of awkward; I don't like it much, but oh well, Blogspot. Settling into my new home, looking forward to a siesta and to life here in general.

landed

Here in Bar(theta)lona. Been thinking of things to describe but my computer battery's dying and so is mine, so updates later. Not many pictures- we're too obvious of tourists already, traveling in a herd of backpack-wearing blanquitos, so picture posts later when I'm free to wander the city alone and when I'm more focused on the important things to document and share. Just sayin' that I'm happy and safe.

preparing, but not really

I'm supposed to be cleaning and packing, but instead I've just assembled various outfits before throwing them on the floor. I've been looping this playlist since early afternoon, for a couple of hours at least:

"I Would Be Sad" The Avett Brothers
"Tickle Me Pink" Johnny Flynn
"Brown Trout Blues" Johnny Flynn

Last night Sam sent me a message from Argentina. I'm glad that so many people left before me, because they say things about being abroad that I wouldn't have prepared for, like, "I think the distance from familiarity, from the mother tongue, is starting to make me go a little crazy. Now, I only hear English in dreams, and can't find the words I want to say." But I don't know how you can prepare for stuff like that. I've been doing a lot of other mental preparation though, talking myself out of anxiety and into unprecedentedly high levels of self-esteem and -confidence. I used to really envy those characters in The Neverending Story who were born as old people and died as newborns, but lately I've felt like them more and more, like I can't wait to be forty or fifty or sixty because I'm going to be really vibrant, much more youthful and creative than I am now. Lately I've been gaining more conversational ground (you know, actually having things to say and then saying them), and I find this really promising. I am a promising individual. I'm excited to capitalize on this potential while in Barcelona; I'm getting excited to leave. I'm much happier because I talked to my parents and think I've decided against going back to Knox after Barcelona, to just stay in Kansas City and be productive in the planting gardens, making coffee, and going to community college kind of way. The only thing is that I'm going to miss everyone at Knox a lot; I think they're who I've always wanted to be friends with.

In the meantime I've been doings lots of Kansas City things. Everyone's back in town for my last weekend, so there are barbecue dates with my dad and Franzia sippin', porch-sittin' nights to be had. It's happy, sweeter knowing that my days are winding down.

plumagación: portmanteau, the act of navigating spain using the birds of fortuity; a highly anticipated travel blog

The other night I did some in-depth travel research by watching L'Auberge Espanole and Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona. And while the second one was completely uninformative and not even a very good film, the first one was absolutely appropriate, following a graduate exchange student at the Universitat de Barcelona in the dirty part of town where the houses overlap. So many beach shots and Gaudí scenery. Plus, I could totally imagine analyzing this movie for one of Prado's classes and [not] writing a [bullshit, surface-skimming, no-content] 2-page paper about the dominating mess motif and the ego's struggle of balancing the whims of the id and the voices of so many superegos.

Sitting on one of the benches at Park Güell (which is featured in my travel book), the protagonist says about crying on the plane to Barcelona, “You think you’re so happy to leave, that you’re so strong. Then the plane takes off and... It’s not easy to just leave like that off into the unknown.” I've been panicking at night lately when I think about packing my room alone, without my big sister to help me. Last night was so perfect, porch-sitting at Noah's. He humored me, playing "Brown Trout Blues" and that song about shaking your fucking hips once in a while. I wish he'd record soon, because I think hearing him would make me miss home less. But Andrew hasn't left town yet, and so I guess summer's not really over, not until my room's clean and my To-Do lists are scratched off.