El Mercat de St Josep de la Boqueria

La Boqueria is a big open air, sort of, market. There is a big roof that covers pretty much the whole thing. Inside you can buy everything, today we bought some items for a picnic and walked over to the Ciutadella Park. It's quickly becoming a default picnic spot. Our goal for the picnic food was ham, brie and bread and maybe also wine. Most were accomplished but after seeing entire slaughtered pigs we felt like we should skip the buying of meat. Our brie decision turned out very much in our favor as we got like half a wheel of brie for three euro. And on with the photos......

Marzipan fruits and chocolate hedgehogs/porcupines?


meatttttttt


What????


I visited the CCCB, can't remember what that stands for buts its like a contemporary art center in Barcelona, and this was the front desk you walk down under this really fancy building into this giant warehouse like lobby and theres a tiny desk. I of course fail to capture the feeling of this lobby but here it is anyways. Mainly this is for my walker peoples, enjoy!

El Raval

Raval is kind of a younger hip neighborhood that we've been trying to explore. Last night our american friends host father took us out to a couple of really fun places with some of his spanish friends. We stopped into a very posh hotel to take a look around it was really amazing and they had this multicolored topiary outside. I would have taken pictures inside but there seemed to be too many big men standing around watching us. Among the things inside were lots of pig statues in either all black or silver. Again with the pig.



This photo really doesn't do it justice but there you go. I took that today when we were wandering around after brunch and we found the hotel again.

Anyways, before the raval tour last night we met up with our Lebanese friend Bassam who made some sangria with the help of his spanish roommates and I got to eat goat cheese from a tiny town in Lebanon next to where Bassam is from and also olives that his dad hand picked and processed, i saw processed because i'm not entirely sure of how they create olives, himself! The goat cheese was incredible, the olive was tasted way different than I am used to it was very dark and smoky, very good though. Bassam said he came to Spain to teach yoga and his dad tries to get him to come home by bringing him food from Lebanon. We also had tomatoes spiced with Sumac, interesting but I can't really describe the flavor there either.

ps- hamburgers here are made with ham, i don't really care for them.

ALSO, I figured out some more of the ham mystery. There is famed kind of ham, Bellota ham, from Iberian pigs that are fed with acorns and they have black feet. The meat then goes through a salting, curing, drying etc process that can take up to 18 months and fungi grows on it giving it a "unique aroma." It's usually eaten just sliced very thin. Let me just tell you, its delicious. I was told the really good stuff sells for like 150 euro a kilo. Cheap varieties sell for 30-40 euro a kilo. Rumor has it that obama requested Bellota ham which was actually barred by the FDA until recently in the United States. Learning, learning, learning.....

Jamon

The Spanish LOVE pork. It's everywhere and on everything. There are giant ham legs covered in a thin layer of wax in every single market, and there will be like 40 all together just hanging. I'll have to take a photo. They even have ham flavor ruffles. Lovin' that piggy. Apparently they also keep them as pets?!



In other news I am still sick, word on the street is that the farmacias have something for 7 euro that will kick my cold. I am so cheap though I don't want to buy it. Instead I eat 4 oranges a day. Romi, my host mother, laughs when I say naranja, orange, apparently I pronounce it wrong but I can't figure it out. She also fed me mini toasts with raw sliced salmon and caviar the other day. Luxurious yet I could only eat three before almost vomiting onto my little tv tray while watching Pasapalabra, a spanish word game show. Romi says it will help my Spanish. Our favorite player veronica has been on for four days in a row and will be on tonight too!

Here is a video example for you


In other news I figured out the school is only 15-20 minutes walking from my apartment so instead of taking 2 trains and walking 5-10 minutes I will just walk. Plus its supposed to get up to 68 on Friday. Today we're going to the Obama Bar to watch the inauguration! There is a bar that retitled itself Obama here. As one of tour guides told us Barcelona is weird, it's just a weird city.

Parc Guell

Here is Parc Guell. It is really gigantic and kind of in the mountains, there is even an elementary school hidden within it. Lots more Gaudi stuff here yada yada yada.



Yesterday we found a Flea Market in Encants which is about 7 minutes walking distance from my house. There were vendors selling keychains, old jewelery, vintage sunglasses, fabric, clothing and even used pornography. A lot of the people just had blankets laid out with tons of junk on it. My favorite was this vintage clothing booth. It was set up like a really tiny hallway but very well organized. It had some of the most amazing vintage clothing I've ever seen, a little pricey but the stuff is so crazy its almost worth it. The man operating the store was really funny too. He didn't seem like he wanted to bargain and would immediately tell us if something was too small before we could try it on. I held off on any purchases though. Most of the junkier items sell for a euro I found a sweet leather jacket that was like 40. It kind of smelled like cat pee there though and I saw the tiniest women I have ever seen in my life.

Anyways, I'm coming down with a cold from going out so much. We went to this place called La Champagneria where they have 2 euro bottles of champagne before five. We went after five and then they only have glasses but it's only .60 cents for a glass. The catch is with the times, after 10:30 they don't serve anymore champagne.

School starts tomorrow, finally, and I am happy that I will have something else to focus on. I'm excited to start my spanish classes. I think I get by just fine and I can have pretty nice broken spanish conversation with people but I'm really no where near where I should be. Most people speaken at least a little English, not the older people though mostly just the young ones.

Aqui esta mi apartamento

With the wonders of google street view you can all see the outside of my apartment building! The entrance is just to the left of where those guys are standing and the gate is open as it usually is even though I always close it. My apartment building isn't really all that special but the neighborhood is cute with a really nice park. For those of you not familiar just click and drag a little on the google maps.


Ver mapa más grande

Here is a photo of this little plaza-esque vine covered thing right on the corner of the clot, clot is my neighborhood, park. You can see it on google map pretty well


With google map you can see Parc del Clot too!

Ver mapa más grande

un poco frio

It's been a little chilly in my room where I can find free internet so I'm my blankets typing right now. I think I'm beginning to adjust a little more and I find it a little less nerve racking to interact with the Spanish people. Plus I am using the subway a lot more and it's been really really fast and easy and amazing. Nothing like the time I got lost for two and half hours underground in new york.



Here is bridget, a fellow American student, and I at el mamooth statue in the Ciutadella park. The statue was dedicated, for what reason I don't know, to Picasso and is by Antonio Tapies. It's kind of like a central park for Barcelona. It was built on an old citadel, or fortress, that was built under Philip V during the 18th century, in 1869 it was decided that they would turn it into a park! They have a green house, currently under construction that is amazingly beautiful and old and this gigantic monument surrounded by waterfalls and a pond which is also undergoing some repairs.

The arc de triomf is just up a little bit from ciutadella park.



Here is La Sagrada Familia Church that has been under construction for the last 127 years. The anticipated completion is set for 2020 something. There is so much to it I'm not really sure what to say.




We stumbled upon another Gaudi building while walking around. This is the entrance to the Apartment building he designed. It's in a kind of posh neighborhood next to valentino and yves saint laurent.



Here is a really cute owl that I think lights up at night on top of a building. On my flight here an American said that she thinks owls are a sign of luck to the Spanish.



La Rambla is a touristy area full of street performers such as this one. I thought this one was especially funny, it has a tongue like one of those party blowers that sticks out at people.

todo en espanol

Hola!

Today was my third day in Spain. I've moved in with my host mother and tapped into some free wi-fi. Romi, my host mother, la senora, was very hip with the ability to connect with it. She speaks no english but likes it when I tell her english words sometimes. I explained to her the word buttery fly today which she found comical and then she asked me if I would eat rabbit. Today she took me to the market where I met some of her friends. I also met her newly pregnant daughter and her boyfriend/husband/I'm not sure. Romi is very excited to be a grandmother, she loves babies. She works as caretaker for two little boys.

There are tons of candy shops in Barcelona. Here is one called Happy Pills, it's very common for Spanish shops to use happy in their name. We also found Happy Shoes and .....I forget the rest.



Anyways, I have eaten more seafood in the past three days than the past year in Minneapolis. Today Romi made an incredible paella with two different kinds of whole shrimp, muscles and some other seafood that I was unsure about. Nonetheless I descended upon the entire platter and her daughter showed me to take apart the shrimp to eat it. I also had octupus in my paella on Thursday. It's really a world of firsts here. There are so many new things every single day its insane.

My apartment with Romi is a train stop away from La Sagrada Familia, the Gaudi church that is still under construction. Today we had a mini tour of it from the outside. Our Resident Director, Marta, is really smart and disected all of the biblical scenes for us. PS- there is a pizza hut across the street. Also from my window I can see the mountains, the tip top where there is a castle! Really insane, the apartment is small don't get the wrong idea. You can also see the agbar building from the balcony off the living room. It's just an office building for the water company of barcelona, get it agua barcelona!, but its quite beautiful although Romi tells me they hate it and they call it el phallo or the dick. It lights up but it is just so gigantic and huge its kind of an eye sore during the day.

Aqui esta el Agbar



Anways finishing up, its true, they do everything really late here and spending two hours at lunch is really not a big deal. It feels good to slow down a bit. Even though it's a huge city people tend to walk slower than I'm used to.

Todavía en Minneapolis

Right now I am still in Minneapolis. I'll be leaving on Wednesday, which is five days away. I am slowly preparing for my trip. I got an electronic Spanish/English dictionary recently that I've been playing with. They were much cheaper than I thought they would be and extraordinarily convenient. Today I went to the bank and bought some Euros for my trip. The exchange rate was 1.4-something I can't remember exactly but I thought it was pretty decent considering it used to be like 1.60 something.



I've been busy going through this online orientation that my study abroad program has set up. It mostly has things like how to deal with culture shock and orienting yourself in a new city. I found this photo of where I will be studying in Barcelona. I set a goal to join a club at the university in order to make new friends in Spain.



The title for my blog came from a Pedro Almodovar movie that I made my parents watch with me called "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" Splendor in the Grass, or Esplendor en la Yerba, is playing in a theater on the street in the Almodovar movie. I looked into it and found out its an old American movie starring Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. I found it on YouTube and watched it in 12 segments it was wonderful it's about love and youth and memory etc etc I'll ruin all of this by explaining it too much. The title comes from the William Wordsworth poem "Intimation of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood." Yeah maybe I've ruined it already sorry.