Camp: Arenys de Mar

At the beginning of each academic year, GBU Barcelona organise a weekend away: "Campamento Inicio de Curso". The camp was being held at Arenys de Mar, a lovely little beach town on the Costa Brava. There were palm trees outside the house we were staying in, something that, although normal in Barcelona as well, still makes me feel like I'm constantly on holiday. The lovely views of the Mediterranean on one side and the hills dotted with white houses on the other also made me feel far away from the world of work and uni. 

The house was pretty big, and apparently used for children's holiday camps. There were two big dormitories - one for girls, one for boys - each decorated for children, with around twenty blue bunk beds which were ready for us with pillows and colourful blankets.

The dining room was also decorated with colourful pictures. These ones were graffiti style cartoon paintings of pirates with menacing speech bubbles warning diners to sit up straight as it's better for your spine. 

We played some amazing original team games, so I'm now expert at diving across rooms and sliding digestives biscuits down my face while wearing a plastic helmet. There was no definite winner, so after the tie-breaker was a prize ceremony. This, in typical Spanish style, began an hour after we were timetabled to go to bed, and spontaneously turned into a big dance competition/fiesta with everyone going slightly crazy. 

The following day my friend Indi was on wake up duty and had diligently brought along the appropriate equipment to aid her: a colourful plastic trumpet. This was to ensure that everyone who wanted to was able to attend the early morning dance class outside.

On the way home I enjoyed a blissful rest on the train, with forty-five minutes of constant holiday views of the sea and beaches out of the train window. The lady I was sitting next to couldn't understand why I kept swapping seats and taking pictures - I guess views in another country always seem more exciting than those at home!

Drenched in Terrassa

Date: 21st October

Destination: Terrassa

Reason: Florentine reunion; Worship Concert
Company: Indigo and Ingrid

Early last week my friend Kelly wrote to me and told me that she was going to be in Barcelona this weekend. Kelly is one of my friends from the church I went to during my term abroad in Florence and, along with a group of friends, she was coming to Barcelona on a cruise organised by Missione Rem, a Christian network in Italy. She told me that on Sunday they were all going to a church in nearby Terrassa for a worship concert, and if I was free I'd be welcome to come along and bring friends with me. I was up for this, so I recruited Indi and Ingrid - two of my lovely friends from GBU - and on Sunday evening we got the train together to Terrassa.

Surrounded by mountains and the sea, Barcelona tends to be warmer than the cities around. The second we got off the train you could feel the difference in temperature: Terrassa was cold. Using our phones for navigation, we began the 1km walk from Terrassa train station to the church. As we started walking the heavens opened and we were welcomed by terrential rain, thunder and lightning. As we walked up the streets that had quickly turned into rivers, I began to regret not bringing a coat or an umbrella. Indi had bought a coat with her, and Ingrid an umbrella, so they were slightly more presentable than I was when we arrived. I arrived drenched and dripping wet, looking like I'd had a shower in my clothes. Somebody rushed off to find us t-shirts or a change of clothes, and minutes later I was presented with a beautiful, dry, limey-yellow T-shirt, with a Catalan bible verse in brown print.

Vius o Sobrevius? "
Jo he vingut perquè tinguin vida i la tinguin en abundància". Joan 10:10

Are you living or surviving? 
"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full". John 10:10

It was lovely to see my friends again and to hear how they'd been since I left Florence in August. The worship concert was cool as well, and was held in a mix of Catalan, Spanish and Italian, with simultaneous translation into or out of Italian so that everyone could understand!

Indi, Ingrid and I had been organised enough to look up transport for our return to Barcelona beforehand. The last train was at 2315, so we decided to get the hourly nitbus (nightbus) to get back to Barcelona. We had planned on getting the 0035 bus which arrives at Plaça Catalunya at 2am so we left the concert early, leaving plenty of time to call a taxi to take us to the bus station. The taxi didn't come, everyone left, and as the pastor was locking up the church about an hour later he asked us if we were ok. He kindly offered us a lift to the bus station, but we ended up missing the bus by a couple of minutes. With an hour's wait until the next bus,we went to a nearby bar for a xocolata desfeta! 

Indi, Me and Ingrid
Midnight Xocolata Desfeta!

Xocolata desfeta literally means "melted chocolate", and although unfortunately it isn't melted chocolate, I have to say this amazing dense chocolate gloop was the next best thing and definitely did it's job in warming us up!

The following day I joined my friends again - for lunch and for some tourism - and then we said our goodbyes at the port... 

Cari amici di Firenze: 

Buon Viaggio!

Mi è piaciuto tanto potervi rivedere, 

soprattutto qua a Barcellona! 

Spero che il resto della crociera 

vi sia andato benissimo! 

Migliori auguri a tutti,

A presto!

:-)

Sagrada Família with my friends from Florence!

Strikes, Cakes and Free Furniture

Strikes

Courtyard at Uni

Following the University strike last Thursday and a bank holiday on Friday, I was intrigued when I arrived to class this Tuesday and heard my classmates talking about a strike that was apparently happening this week: Tuesday - Thursday. To my knowledge, the strike didn't end up happening, but I've begun to wonder whether it's some kind of conspiracy to give me an extra day off per week, in addition to my already three-day weekend. If it's not a university strike, it's a bank holiday, and if it's not a bank holiday or university strike, it's a metro strike...

Maybe I'm exaggerating slightly, but the frequency of these strikes has caused numerous debates in class, and has led my Literature teacher into a little rant about the fact that the word for strike in Catalan - vaga -  shouldn't be used to replace the Spanish word huelga, and how he doesn't want to hear his students using the Catalan word while speaking Spanish. This sounded more like something my Spanish Grammar teacher would say as she diligently teaches us how to correctly speak and write the language, in an attempt to turn us into an army of little grammatically-perfect robots. In her class I have learnt many useful things, such as the fact that hippy should be written jipi, the plural of barman is bármanes, and that the Real Academia Española - i.e. the people who write the rules of Spanish - recommend Spaniards not to pronounce Shakespeare as if they were copying English pronunciation, but rather as if it were a Spanish word: "shack - ay - spi - are - ay". 

Despite some of the weird things we seem to cover, I do enjoy her classes, which always start 15 minutes late as she falls into the classroom with her bag and books, reminding us of the 'quart d'hora academic': the fifteen minutes break at the beginning of the class for us to change classroom, or down a quick coffee. It was in her class I had my first class test: 4 paragraphs of unaccented text, on which we had to put the accents. Here in Spain marks are out of 10, and for this test one mark was deducted for each mistake. My mark - 2/10 - made me glad that Leeds doesn't count our marks for our year abroad, but also made me realise I still have far to go to become a grammatically perfect robot.

Free Furniture

In Spain, the equivalent of Christian Unions is Grupos Bíblicos Universitarios - GBU for short. I've been going to some of their international meetings which are held at my friend Indi's house, up on her roof terrace! The furniture on the terrace is an amazing mix of everything, bit and bobs put together from pieces of furniture that I think they've found on the streets, as every now then people put furniture they no longer want out on the pavement to be recycled. One of my favourites is the table which is made up of a bath tub, with a pallet and a sheet of glass on top, and bricks at the bottom to keep it stable. 

GBU: International Group!

On the way to GBU this week I saw a pile of furniture on the pavement and there was a little chair/stool that I thought might be useful up on the terrace. I got some strange looks on the metro, but it proved useful even before it reached its new home as I had somewhere to sit while I was waiting for the metro :). 

Cakes

Cakes!

And finally, I have been waiting for an excuse to make cakes for a while now, and this week was my flatmate Maite's Saint's Day! I don't think these days are celebrated here as much as they used to be; according to wikipedia, at one time they were more celebrated in Spain and Latin America than birthdays. However, you do congratulate the person - "Felicitats!" - and then maybe they have a meal or a small celebration with their family. Apparently my Saint's day - Santa Raquel - is September 2nd, the same day as Íngrid's! As for the cakes, the supermarket had all the ingredients I needed except for icing sugar, so I had to resort to a ready made packet of icing with an attached piping set...

Encuentro: Ciudad Real

This weekend I went to Ciudad Real with my church for a conference called Encuentro! Ciudad Real is about 200km south of Madrid, in Castilla la Mancha. I had underestimated the journey time between Barcelona and Ciudad Real... and I can't say I was that impressed when I arrived bright and early and half asleep at the coach at 8:30am to be told we'd arrive in Ciudad Real until the evening.

The journey
© Google Maps

We drove down the coast past Tarragona and Valencia before heading inland towards Madrid. The journey was actually quite fun, and views were stunning, with mountains, sea, immense plains (basically deserts), rolling hills, lakes and farmland! At 7pm, after nine and a half hours of music, films, sleeping, talking and eating, we finally arrived at the campsite and headed over to register and set up the tents! This weekend was the first time I'd been out of Catalonia since arriving a month ago, and it was interesting to escape the bilingual bubble of Barcelona and to be hearing and speaking just Spanish.

My new friend Ingrid and me about to put up our tent!

Peope arriving..
 ©Claudio Photography

Until now I have surprisingly not had any problems here with being a vegetarian, so when I booked my place on the conference I chose the option with food included, as I thought it would be easier than taking food with me. It wasn't until supper on the first evening that I suddenly thought maybe I should have written I was a vegetarian. Supper was a meat sandwich and a yogurt. I'd  only brought enough food for breakfast and lunch so, hungry, I asked the organisers if there was a veggie option. They told me that apart from meat sandwiches there was no other food on the campsite, but then they went away, telling me to wait, and they came back with a few slices of tortilla de patatas (spanish omelette), a cut up tomato and some nuts. It was quite yummy actually, but I guess I learn my lesson not to assume that the vegetarian diet is catered for here!

Courtney and Me in the Plaza Mayor

Ciudad Real

Friday lunchtime I'd arranged to have lunch with two of my friends from Leeds, Courtney and Emma, in Ciudad Real. Courtney's doing her year abroad at the University of Castilla la Mancha, in Ciudad Real and Emma's spending her year abroad as a teacher in Cuenca and had come to visit Courtney for the weekend. My only problem with our plan was that the campsite was not at walking distance from the city as I had hoped it might be, and therefore I needed to find a way to get there. The heat of the midday sun quickly knocked the idea of hiking the five kilometres of my head. My second, more feasible idea was to travel in by taxi, but then I had a better idea: hitchhiking. Having chosen my victims, I knocked on a car window and asked the two Spanish ladies inside if they were heading to the centre. They were, and they happily welcomed me on board! Once in the centre, it was lovely to see Courtney and Emma, albeit briefly! I got to see a bit of the town, and we had lunch together in the Plaza Mayor!

I'd love to be able to take credit for the photo, but it's another one of the official ones!
© Claudio Photography

There were numerous guests at Encuentro, including Matt Redman, En Espiritu y en Verdad (a Mexican group), and a lady called Marilyn Skinner who, although Canadian-born, had spent the last 29 years in Uganda. Marilyn shared with us some amazing stories of what God's been doing in Uganda and as she spoke you could see how passionate she was about Jesus! She told us how she had watched soldiers raid her house, put a gun to her husband's head and pull the trigger. The gun wouldn't shot, the leader of the group, enraged, yelled at the man to try again but again it wouldn't shoot. The men asked Marilyn and her husband if they were Christians, and then they fled. She also told us about her work with former child soldiers, with orphans and about church planting and amazing stories of hope about people who had previously been involved in raising the child soldiers. What an exciting life!

Me outside the main house at the campsite!

It was a lovely weekend and I really enjoyed getting to see a new part of Spain, meeting loads of people from all over Spain, and catching up with Emma and Courtney and hearing how they're getting on. It was also really fun and exciting to be camping again, and I loved it that at night it got chilly enough for us to enjoy hot chocolates outside at night and to wrap up in blankets, jumpers and sleeping bags!

Vall de Núria

Tomorrow I will have been here for a month, and this weekend I had the chance to go to the Pyrenees with my friend Íngrid! We set off early to make the most of the day, and despite it being a bit chilly at first, the weather couldn't have been better! I'm still getting over the fact that it's October and the temperature's still in the 20s! After the train, we got another train - the cremallera - up to Vall de Núria, and then a cable car a little bit further up the mountain. The scenery was absolutely stunning!!

We walked down Via Crocis, a path that goes down the mountain back to Núria, and which has lots of crosses down the side. On the way down, we met some friendly nuns on the way down who enthusiastically greeted us and asked us where we were from. They told us they called themselves "Café con Leche" (Coffee with Milk) nuns because of the colour of their robes! Once we were down in Núria again we walked round the lake and then we had our picnic lunch at the side of the lake!



In my last post I wrote about how I was now getting used to the Spanish/Catalan timetable. I now take that back. On Saturday night I went out for a delicious supper with Íngrid, Maite and two other friends, Sílvia and Bruna, in their town. Just as we were paying and about to leave I checked the time and it was 1am. Although I am getting more used to doing things at Catalan times, I think deep down the English part of me will always struggle to understand how supper can last until 1am... 

I have finally succeeded in signing up for the local swimming pool. When I went to register a few weeks ago, I was told I needed a Spanish bank account in order to become a member. I was still quite keen, so I popped over to the bank to get a bank account, only to find out banks are closed in the afternoons. Brilliant. The next day the bank was open, but they told me they couldn't make me an account unless I had an NIE (National Insurance Number). I had been told about the horrendous queues one has to face to get an NIE so at this point I half gave up.

A week later a friend of mine from Leeds told me he'd managed to get a bank account without an NIE so I decided to go back to the bank and check. I waited an hour to be told yet again (and in English) that "No", I needed an NIE number and that I'd have to come back. I told the lady that my friend hadn't needed one, to which she replied: "You're right, you don't". As she beckoned me into her office, I was left wondering bewilderedly whether this was a city-wide conspiracy to prevent foreigners - except from the select few - from getting a bank account here. My state of utter confusion continued as the lady, still stubbornly sticking to English, asked me why I wanted an account. I explained in Catalan that it was because I wanted to sign up for the pool and she looked at me baffled and said in an exasperated voice: "Why didn't you tell me at the beginning you spoke Catalan? There I was trying my hardest to remember some English"... 

This Thursday there is a student strike in my faculty, protesting against the increased university fees. One of my classmates was indignantly explaining to me that now the fees were quite a bit over 1,000€ per year. I couldn't help mentioning that in English the fees have just been raised to £9,000... Anyway, for me this strike couldn't be at a better time as this weekend I'm leaving Catalunya for the first time since I arrived! I'm off to Ciudad Real on Thursday morning for "Encuentro", a conference with my church! ...I'm so excited!!

Festes de la Mercè

Coffee and "Coca de Vidre"

Having just finished my second week of university and finally sorted out my classes, I feel I'm beginning to get into the routine of things here in Barcelona. Three of my favourite additions to my daily routine are: firstly the obligatory consumption of breakfasts: one before class, the other around 11am - In fact, my Catalan class my teacher told us we weren't allowed to come to his class without having breakfasted. Secondly, the imperative migdiada - or siesta as the Spaniards would say. And thirdly berenar, the afternoon snack. 

The bakery across the road from our flat has become a frequent provider of said berenar, and to some extent my second home here. Given the lack of internet in our flat over the last few weeks, the temptation of the freshly baked treats and the free wifi offered at the bakery have not only succeeded in transforming my flatmates and me into loyal regulars, but also led me to taste the majority of the traditional Catalan baked specialities they have to offer...

Íngrid, Maite, Esther and I have called our flat the PisTanaga. In Catalan, pis means 'flat' and pastanaga means 'carrot'. There is no intellectual reasoning behind this naming: it was a mere silly suggestion that has stuck. We recently realised that you can see the Gaudi's Sagrada Família from our flat, and that we happen to live on the same road! This discovery led Maite and me into a spontaneous hike home from the cathedral a few days later, and subsequently into a mutual recognition that we would not be repeating this trek on a regular basis as, despite being on the same road it is quite a few kilometres away.

Our first PisTanaga dinner party!

Last weekend the Festes de La Mercè - the town parties of Barcelona which are named after its patron saint 'La Mercè' - were celebrated over a long weekend! There was a plump program of activities happening all over the city, ranging from the traditional Catalan events such as castellers and correfocs, to general activities such as concerts and circuses. The front of the Sagrada Família was illuminated numerous times each day in a beautiful display of colours, lights and accompanying music, and at night the Parc de la Ciutadella was transformed into a forest of bright colours and entertainment at night, including a life-size tetris game, live music, robots dancing, and amazing juggling shows.

Correfoc 

Having already been introduced to numerous Catalan customs, such as Castellers - the human towers - and the Gegants - town giants -, the part of the weekend that most caught my attention was the correfocs. This Catalan tradition consists of people dressing up as devils and running along the streets lined with expectant crowds with fire and fireworks and accompanied by drumming and more fireworks. Given my choice of clothes for the event (i.e., short sleeves and open shoes), as the fire got closer I recoiled into the nearest bar to watch from behind the glass so as not to get burnt...

The closing fireworks of the Mercè - a.k.a the "piromusical" - were amazing - maybe the best fireworks I've ever seen! The location for them was superb: mountain of Montjuïc and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya positioned as a beaming backdrop, and the magical fountains lighting up the foreground with of the show at ground level metres of drizzling colours acted as a perfect complement to the fireworks. As the name piromusical suggests, these fireworks were accompanied by music blasting out of the many loudspeakers. :)  

Fireworks at the Mercè

This weekend has been quite busy too: on Thursday I ventured up a mountain on a dog walk with my friend Andrea who I met last year at Leeds when she was doing Erasmus. It was lovely to catch up, and the walk was so worth it as from the top of the mountain the views were absolutely stunning! You could see the whole of Barcelona, the airport and the surroundings too, and since we arrived as it was getting dark we watched all the lights as they began to be switched on!

Then on Sunday I tried out a church which was exciting because I hadn't been able to attend church for a few weeks. The worship was a mix of Spanish and English songs and then there were baptisms after the sermon! In the afternoon a group of us caught the Ferrocarril de Catalunya out to the countryside in the outskirts of the city for a welcome BBQ at the church offices! The surrounding countryside was beautiful and it was such a lovely opportunity to meet people from all over the world and to get to know each other a bit! 

Back in Barcelona, I headed out to a Medieval Market with my flatmates Esther and Íngrid in the evening. The market was set up near Plaça Espanya along a whole road which was filled with colourful stalls selling all sorts of things, from homemade honeys, wines and food to purses, jewellery and more. I think it was my first time at a medieval market, but here they seem to be quite regular so I'm sure I'll end up going to another one soon!

Íngrid and Me in Plaça Espanya!

One of the beaches in Barcelona where Maite and I had a picnic :)

...And to end the post, I saw these notebooks in a stationer's near uni, so here's a thought for the day in photo form:

"Each language is a different vision of the world"