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.

I KEEP FORGETTING MY CAMERA WHENEVER WE DO COOL THINGS! A few weeks ago we visited the coastal cities of Lloret and Tossa- the cities themselves weren't very great, kitschy tourist pits, but the boat ride from Lloret to Tossa was so pretty, and sitting on the hills, looking at the overlapping residences against the uninhabited mountains and the sea, it was hard to process I'm at school right now. This weekend we went to Figueres, very near the border of France, to visit the Dali museum. What a weirdo! The building was painted burgendy with golden nobby things spaced in a design that kind of looked like insulation seeping out of walls, and there were giant eggs lining the roof. Some of the art was interesting, most wasn't, and the gift shop was really overpriced. But I'd really like to visit his home in Cadaques, and his wife's castle in some city pretty close to Barcelona. We also visited an unusual monastery built in the mountains instead of the plains that was far away from rivers and only had wells and cisterns for water, and that had terraces only good for grape-growing/wine-making. It was built there because Rome was being constantly attacked and so they moved some of the most important relics away from the city and to places that could be well-guarded, and so this mountain- and sea-surrounded monastery held the remains of Saint Peter (Saint Paul?). The poor people of the surrounding villages who couldn't afford a doctor would travel and pray near the bones, because they performed miracles, you know.

Anyway, we came home and were early for our reservation at a pizzaria, so we went to a bar. I drank a Voll Damm (hands down my favorite beer here, reminds me of home and how good Boulevard is- although a few nights ago I tried a Moritz Epidor, which was really interesting and fruity and also had an alcohol content of 7.2%, so I couldn't even finish it because I was starting to get pretty wasted) and then went to the pizzaria and had some wine, and got a little drunk on the college's money. I've been so indignant lately because Knox costs a fortune and never knew why- it's not that great of a school and certainly doesn't have the prestige usually associated with such a price tag- but recently realized that it's because they give so much of that goddamned money away to students for "research", like when they gave some girl and her friends money to go to Amsterdam for interviews, and so they spent a week high out of their minds and forgot to do the majority of their work. WHAT THE FUCK. Or at least these are stories that I've heard, whatever. But then I had the genius idea of applying for a grant myself, to see if I can stay here without going to school (duhh I hate school) and do things like volunteer at social centers and learn Catalan and find cool second-hand stores and "integrate with the community". This would be awesommeee and convincing the Director for sponsorship and the Dean for funds is my current project. Oh yah and homework too barf.

Anyway, I made a calendar of my last (six) weeks here, and have posted sticky notes on it to remind myself which days I should visit what. It's unusually organized of me. Today's list includes two markets and a cafe, and I will accomplish at least one market and the cafe. Having said that, I should put on more clothes than underwear and a Sonic the Hedgehog t-shirt, and I should clean my room, put on my face, do some stuff. Bye-bye! (Everyone says that here, like it's an English phrase people older than 3 use, and they say it with a really earnest emphasis; being here is so funny sometimes.)

Today was a good day, but I think it's because I woke up singing this song to myself and because I drank some very warm Earl Grey in my autumnally-chilled room. The brisk air would've felt marvelous if I had remembered that my black cardigan is a summer sweater, and if it hadn't been gray and dreary all day, and so the day was exaggeratedly cold and downcast. I've been in a funky mood, but today I felt good and so aprovechaba del día ("I made the most of the day"- for some reason every time I go to say "to take advantage of" while speaking English it always wants to come out as the Spanish verbo "aprovechar") and I almost finished the play we're reading in Contemporary Theater (umm, or probably should've finished reading a few weeks ago, but who can tell what our basic class assignments are- language barrier, blahblah), Los intereses creados by Jacinto Benavente. Reading some English synopses online, the translation is Bonds of Interest, and I've heard of that! So it's kind of cool to read it in the original language, and while in its patria, homeland. Here's part of my translations for today, the song Silvia recites when Leandro, her desperate lover, uses the just-audible melody to describe his sadness at the thought of losing her:

Soul of silence, that I revere,
your silence belongs to the ineffable voice
of those who die loving in silence,
of those who become silent, dying of love,
of those who, loving us so in life,
perhaps did not know of their love to express!

Like, real profound translation, right? Anyway, the profesora, Maria Josefa, said that the lyrics were especially impactful because such romantic poems weren't typical of the period, so they really stood out. The history behind the play is very interesting, and Maria Josefa is very interesting, too, as well as animated, and last Thursday she took everyone out to a Japanese dinner (we were supposed to go to a play but there was a shooting in El Raval! which is out of place in this city but enough to make us choose another part of the city for art-enjoying).

Anyway, the University of Barcelona was founded in the 15th century, so there are some parts that are ridiculous! necessarily so, to keep up with a tradition of apperances or whatever, but still, here are some pictures:

lots of muslim-influenced arches- though i could be mixing that up, seeing as i don't actually learn anything in history of art like i'd hoped, because the teacher's older than death, i told my sister last night, and only makes vague references to art in general between deep breathes and long (and most probably made-up) reflections about his life or musings of life post-sex, you know, that activity that gets one really dirty and that he used to really enjoy but now just leaves him tired when he even thinks about it or about the five women he's ever seen naked in his life- ohmygodtoomuchinformationthisisaclassaboutart!

up the stairs to the dean's office!

umm, dean breitborde wishes, okay?

second floor corridor leading to the library, overlooking patios like this

where i sit and do my homework sometimes, or sometimes i sit in our secret garden-esque garden, like i did today

(notice the lavender peaking through)

although you can see the tops of tall buildings peeking from behind the trees and are still reminded of the dense city.

After Secret Garden sitting I went to the new building to buy machine-dispensed hot chocolate, because it's a few centavos cheaper than in other maquinas on campus. But as I sat sipping, I realized how angry I'd be if I were in America being charged American dollars for such a thimble-full:

I mean, everyone knows how small my hands are. But the cups are fashionista enough, so. So. So I just went to the bathroom and decided that people would probably be interested to see what Spanish (and other mostly European) students scrawl all over bathroom stalls on pretentious college campuses:

Nope, no difference really, your typical "anti-patriarcapitalismo" represented. Sat in the library for a bit afterwards; in lieu of pictures of the towers of old manuscripts and neoclassical paintings that surround me while I study, here's just a little close-up of the old books locked up alongside me

I'm trying to be better at living life. Making plans to do things. I'm also making plans, I'm pretty sure, to only stay here for one term instead of two. With the six months looming ahead I've had more leeway to push things off until tomorrow, until tomorrow, and, truth be told, Barcelona's not that great of a city to just sit around in while putting things off. It's really pretty, there are a lot of buildings to be admired, but it's hard to make the transition from tourist to resident in even six months, without knowing the unofficial official language and only having a decent grasp of the official official language. So I definitely need to start aprovechando everything here, muy pronto.

the dumbest thing in the entire world

I keep trying to look for resources to teach myself Catalan since I missed out on signing up for courses at the University and since every government site regarding classes has information written, by law, only in Catalan, but every fucking "teach yourself Catalan" book is also written, instructions and all, only in Catalan. WHAT?! What sense does that make?! Why pass all these laws to protect a minority language and then make it impossible for anyone besides native speakers to learn it? All of the advertisements for Castillian (Spanish) courses have information written in English, why isn't it the same for the other? So these dumb "teach yourself" courses don't even have a translation of "Gentilicis means..." or a key of how you pronounce that dumb word. They're all just designed so that you pay money for an actual class, for an actual tutor, but I'm too cheap so I guess I'll struggle with it by myself, and in reality I'm really lazy and I know that in the end I won't really study it at all if it's like this, and that's just the dumbest thing in the entire world.

But whatever, I'm going to sign up for more intercambios someday soon so maybe I start making friends here, and maybe they'll tutor me a little.

I don't know what I'm supposed to blog about because sometimes I'm too lazy to recount all of the facts I've learned here and sometimes I worry it's too boring to read just about myself and my feelings or whatever, so I end up not writing anything at all, which I don't actually feel too bad about because I've noticed that no one's made a Kansas City blog, or a Galesburg blog, or whatever else, that I can follow when I miss people or want to see familiar things. Anyway, Sam's travel blog is more dismal than mine, so I feel okay.

My abuelos are in town this week. The abuela cooks so much ridiculously good food that I just eat and eat and get sick off of Spanish tortillas, white bean and bacon salads, fried fish, and ribs, or costillas, that reminded me of the kind my mom makes. And the abuelo loves wine and cheese, so I'm privvy to these things after dinner; and the abuela loves fresh fruit, so that's my second, sweet dessert. It's really extravagant and I'm glad that they're staying for just one week, because I'd gain an absurd amount of weight. But then my padres here just eat frozen food, lots of fried food, and I think to myself, I fought so hard to get away from this diet in the States! So maybe I'll end up gaining an absurd amount of weight, anyway.

Yesterday I looked through pictures set in US cities and felt really sorry for all of the 2-story buildings. I think that's going to be one of the things I miss about Barcelona, the sensation of being swallowed up and lost in a maze, which is counterintuitive right? I almost slept through my history class last night, and was glad that I didn't, because Prof. Bertran (though usually we just call him by his first name, Prim, which is a common first name for firstborns, you know, like primero or whatever) took us on an excursion to see the Monasterio de San Pablo del Campo, which is the oldest church in Barcelona. Then he bought us Arabian cookies and showed us the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, which was built in the 15th century maybe and functioned until the early 20th, and is where Gaudi died after being hit by that tram.

Booked a ticket to Lisbon for the first weekend of November. I was planning to just go to Portugal and then to Paris for my birthday, but Prim is thinking about organizing a trip to Rome where we can stay in cheap hostels and eat pizza all day, he said, oh and to learn everything there is to know about Rome, because he knows everything, and I don't think I'll ever be able to make the trip with such a knowledgable and free tour guide that I guess I should go. So, yeah, money woes and it's just the beginning of October. The exchange rate's rough.

Prim explained some really cool things about the Spanish flag but I'm too lazy and much of a bad listener that I'd rather not recount, just encourage everyone to read about its history, especially the myth about Hercules and why there are columns. One fact I can recount is that the Mediterranean means "mid-land" because map-makers only knew about the surrounding countries of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, so they thought the earth was a big connected circle of land with the Mediterranean in the middle of it, and boarding the outside of the circle of land was the Atlantic Ocean, and where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic meet is integral in the history of the flag that I'm not going to explain. I presented an article yesterday in Grammar class about how Parisian designers are using geometric patterns found in Islamic and Roman architecture to create collections for women that don't involve bows and lace and don't make them look like dolls; with all the Islamic and Roman architecture I've been imagining the same thing, so I guess it's kind of cool that I'm just as clever as they are, kind of weird how everyone gets inspired by the same things at the same time, like the invention of calculus or whatever.

i lied

now that i'm more used to my piercing i'm getting pretty into showing it off. it helps that it doesn't hurt so much to flip it up and down now, and that cleaning's easier.

really i'm just procrastinating writing a grammar paper (ugh, grammar class), but i'm afraid to procrastinate a full post's worth, so here's just a teaser of my pretty and punctured face.

"jesús, jesús, por favor, joder"

I've been stumbling around the last few days repeating different combinations of these words. I'm exhausted. Wednesday night was the opening ceremony of Barcelona's four day fall festival, La Merced, which ended my every day posting streak, and my will to write at all. After class on Wednesday we went to the Placa Sant Jaume to see the gigantes- what a ridiculous tradition! Fifteen-foot tall, paper-mache figures dancing waltzes and polkas in circles; their faces are emotionless and their steps unnatural, but you're still surprised to remember that they're not actually alive. It's hard to explain, but for some reason it gave me the same kind of feeling of being ten years old and reading The Chronicles of Narnia in my grandma's living room before walking to school.

(Part of the gigante parade. They're obsessed with dragons here; there's a myth about how Sant Jordi defended the region from them or something; even Gaudí used it as inspiracion for the Casa Batlló.)

There are a lot of creepy men here and this weekend I felt like I was part of a parade too with so many whistles and jeers of "guapa guapa guapa". For some reason it bothers me much more in this city, especially this weekend; I talked to my friend about wanting to get my septum pierced and he said, "That's not a good idea; you'll ruin your face," and I said, "Exactly." Monday morning I didn't wake up to my alarm, took too long in readying myself, got to the metro prepared to be ten minutes late to class when I realized that I had left my pass in my room, tucked inside of my journal. I took this as a sign that I didn't really want to go to my Syntax class, and that I should take time to think instead, because I've been down lately, wondering if I'm supposed to even be here right now or if I should be at home growing up a little bit, and needed to figure it out before I signed up for four months of beginner guitar lessons during my first lesson that afternoon, which is more of a deal than paying for each month, unless I decided to only stay one term here instead of two. Walking around the Barrio Gotico I found a piercing place and walked inside for information. The guy told me that in order to get the "dainty" and straight barbell that I want, I'd have to spend four months with this ridiculous, huge curved one. I took this as a sign to stay here for longer than two months, to spend four months adjusting my fingers to guitar strings and my nose to this ridiculous gauge and myself to this foreign country, and at the end I'll be happier with all of these things and have two months of better times to go. So I went ahead and got it, and have been keeping it tucked away in my nose. It's a good private talisman, and you can bet I'm attaching lots of symbolic meaning to it and paralleling its healing process with my own. Aside from the general preoccupations that come with first piercings, I'm really pleased. Anyway, this is what I look like with my piercing:

(I don't expect to show it off for four months- except to creepy men on the metro as a way of saying "fuck off"- the hoop I have is just so ridiculous.)

In other news, my History professor is also one of the most amazing people I've ever met. Coming here you read about how student-professor relationships here are so different from those at Knox and so you shouldn't expect much interaction, but sitting in his class it's much more like you're sitting in a five year old's room who's telling you how cool all his stuff is; he's just so excited and he wants you to be excited, too, so he loves questions and jokes and tangents, and above all field trips. Yesterday I walked into class a few minutes late and sat through class blankly staring around. He patted me on the shoulder, smiled and said, "Lorena," (I love that he calls me "Lorena"; I thought I'd hate it but I love it) "Lorena, you're sleepy, yeah?" Exhausted. I had an especially hard time focusing because there was an opera being practiced or performed somewhere outside of our windows. He explained that there are free concerts every fifteen days at the University, and then that there are tons of other free concerts around the city, like the one at [some church whose name I can't remember]. He said, "You guys don't know that church? Oh my. Well, what if we leave class thirty minutes early and I'll show you where it is? That counts as a learning experience, right?" So we wandered around the city, popping in and out of buildings so he could explain the differences between Romantic and Gothic architecture; he knows everything- which is only a very small, slight exaggeration- and it's such a privilege to hear him speak. By and by people left to go home for dinner, and on our way to the red line he pointed out good stores to Guillermo, Miguel and me. One pastry shop, Caelum- Latin for "sky", we stand outside for a bit with him telling us how delicious it is, before he says, "You know what, are you in a rush? Do you mind if we go in for a few minutes? I'd like to get some cookies to take home." Standing in front of the wall of treats he says, "What looks good to you? I invite you to cookies; pick what you'd like to try." We ask for his favorite and he makes us each take three, leaving two-a-piece for him and his wife. We walk a little more and he points out historical things, pizzerias that we'll try someday when he takes us out to dinner, takes another detour at the Palau de la Musica to explain a little about modernismo art before we all part ways. Ridiculous, right?

Anyway, you can see that good things are happening all around, it's just my brain's having a hard time adjusting. Last night I had dinner by myself and just stared blankly around while I was chewing, trying not to think, because whenever I did it'd come out in Spanish, but really slow and not productive, like all the sentences I've been forming in conversations lately. A man next to me tried to make small-talk, which is the worst; it's hard to imagine that topics so simple are the hardest to find words for. It's hard for everyday tasks to be so difficult, and for them to be so difficult every day without fail. I had an interview on Tuesday for a job speaking English to two nine year old girls. I got incredibly lost, tried calling the mom a few times, consulted the map a lot before pulling over a stranger and asking her to use my map for me; by the time the mom called me back I told her, "I'm in the Placa J.F. Kennedy," but I think I said it all funny, not with a Catalan accent or something, because she didn't understand me, just asked, "Do you see the playground? Do you see this street?" and I didn't because I was in a different place, and I got so overwhelmed by being so foreign that I can't even walk down the street and I can't even explain that I'm lost that I started bawling in the middle of the street while on the phone with my potential employer. Por favor! But she ended up giving me the job anyway; she's really nice and the kids are funny; the five year old son shyly asked his mom if he could show me his FC Barca uniform but she said no another time. It's just that it's only the beginning of the fourth week and I have so many more to go; my nose, my fingers, my brain, all of me, I'm just adjusting, which takes time. In the meantime, more Edifitorialist pictures:

color/pattern overload

white walls, colored windows