Barcelona, before and after

Before.
I have used 30 minutes of internet time over the past 8 days. Impressive, right? you try it. :P

I got my film camera out yesterday for the first time since I've been on the ship. took some pictures of Spain and Morocco as we passed by them.

We get to Barcelona tomorrowwww!! my first event is Lyric Poetry in Modern Spain, where I believe a Spanish poet is going to come on the ship and talk to us about what s/he does. I'll let you know how it goes. My next plan is to walk around the city with Emily! We didn't get the city orientation tour for Barcelona, since we could probably get a map and explore just as easily. :P Then after a few hours of that I have another SaS event: Flamenco with Dinner! I'm pretty excited about that one. :))

Here on the ship we have a choral group! (that's singing, for those of you who don't have a grasp on the English language). It's called the Coral Sea. ^-^ GET IT?! and of course, I joined in. :D We have had practice for about 3 days, but we don't get to be together again until after Italy D:  the songs we're singing are all sort of Irish-inspired, because the lady who is our director-person (yes, that's a technical term) is from Canada and these songs are from Newfoundland, where apparently the Irish settled? I didn't know, I don't know a whole lot about Canada in general. Which is kind of sad, really, when they're our next door neighbor. I wonder if schools in the north teach more about Canada like schools in the south seem to teach more about Mexico. or maybe it's just because I took a bunch of Spanish classes and I happen to live in the south. >.> At any rate, I've learned a more about Canada that I ever had before.

On a completely random note, it really annoys me when people mispronounce nuclear. just so you guys know.



We made it into the port at Barcelona!!

After
I got up at 7 this morning to take pictures as we were coming up to the dock. It was great, I got some pictures of the city and some cool landmarks like the statue of Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus) and of La Sagrada Familia by Gaudi (if you don't know what that is, google a picture of it, it's fantastic). I think I'm going to go see it up close and personal tomorrow. :D

OKAY SO. let me go ahead and try to tell you, in order, what all happened today. Primero: I took pictures, as I said, had breakfast, and went to our diplomatic briefing, where someone from the US embassy in Spain came and told us what was up. It was okay, relations with Spain are generally dandy, so he just talked for a long time about the embassy. which was okay, since I may want to work in an embassy one day myself, but I got a bit bored with it all after a while. So I started looking around at people and I noticed one chick who looked kind of like Hayden Panettiere, so I took a picture of her, and a few other people I noticed. :P

SO after that I went back to my cabin and watched part of Singin' in the Rain while I dozed off before my first SaS event: Lyric Poetry in Modern Spain. So at 11 I went up to the 6th deck to hear some nifty Spanish poetry. Three people came to visit us, all Spaniards. The first one to talk to us was a grad student studying Spanish poetry, Blanca, and she told us a little bit of the history and about some major influential poets for Spain. (she spoke Spanish, our Spanish prof, Pedro, translated. I felt awesome because I understood like 80% of everything she said. woo!) Then we listened to a modern Spanish poet, whose name I cannot remember. sorry. So he read a couple of his poems in spanish, and then our poetry prof read the english translations. they are beautiful, rich poems, I will try to remember to find out who he was so you can look him up if you feel so inclined. I think it's something like de duc musica? at any rate, his last name sounded like musica to me. Then we had a nice little Q&A session and then it was over! before I left I had a little mini-conversation half in Spanish and half in English with Blanca and Pedro. it was cool. Pedro said I had a good Spanish accent, and that I shouldn't get nervous when I talk, but I can't help it! I tend to feel intimidated around people who are native speakers and when I get flustered I don't speak nearly as well, which doesn't make me feel any better. It's a vicious circle.

OH WAIT. I need to rewind for a minute and talk about us coming into port. So of course they had to tie us to the dock, and those ropes are HUGE. so that was cool. I got this picture of a dude pulling it, and when I turn the image vertical, it looks like he's climbing up a wall or something. heheh. Oh, and they were, of course, Spanish guys who helped us get the gangway set up and such. So they were all yelling at each other in Spanish about what to do, and I just got all kinds of excited. :P I was standing at the ..aft. (had to think about it for a second) of the ship outside on the 6th deck along with a bunch of other people and there were about 4 little kids next to me who were being adorable and shouting hola! at these large men. and well, then everybody started doing it, including me :P  the guys were really cool about it, they said hola and buenos dias to us and waved, it was great :)

So okay, where was I? RIGHT. poetry. well that ended and I went back to my cabin and fetched Emily and we went out and about in Barcelona! It felt like we walked a lot, but after looking on the map when we got back, there is still a lot of Barcelona that we left undiscovered. We got pictures of the statue of Cristobal Colon, and the cool lions that are at the foot of the statue. and yes mom, I did get a picture of me with the lion instead of just a picture of the lion itself. Then we walked a little ways up La Rambla, which is the main street of Barcelona in the city center and we went down some side streets and saw some cool things, some cool architecture, and some interesting people. There were neat street performers who were dressed up in various ways and would stand still, posed, until someone threw a coin in their bucket, and then they would burst into movement for like five seconds! we saw a couple get ladies get very startled by it when they threw their coins in, haha. A lot of the shops were closed because today was a Catalan holiday and everyone had a biiiiiig fiesta last night! There were streamers hanging on some lightposts still, I took pictures. Too bad we missed it!
So we walked down this one side street and got some gelato. NOM. and as we were walking down this road, we were glancing into shop windows and exploring and whatnot, and we happened upon these three old ladies staring into a shop window that was chock full of knives! both pocket knives and throwing knives! I really couldn't do anything but laugh.

Then these three dudes tried to hit on us, but we just walked away. you know, as politely as possible. they looked a little sketch.

Then we went to lunch in this open plaza full of different restaurants. and pigeons. We ate at an Italian one, Emily's choice. It was alright, I had some tomato bread though, which was pretty tasty. It's pretty much toast with tomato guts smeared on it like jam. don't knock it til you try it!

Oh! we found this candy shop! It's called Si o Si and we spent quite a few Euros there to stock up on snacks and candies for the voyage :P I didn't have a chance to do that in Halifax, so I was super excited to find some goodies!

After we got our candy, we walked around for a little while longer and saw some more cool things, and then went back to the ship for a quick siesta before I went out to see Flamenco! wait pause. actually, this was when I watched Singin' in the Rain. not in the morning. lo siento, I get my naptimes mixed up :P

At any rate, I very soon got up to get ready to leave. There were a LOT of students going to dinner and Flamenco. we filled 3 buses.  On the way there, they took us through a mini-tour of the city for about 15 or 20 minutes, which was really neat, even though the lady telling us about everything was kind of annoying. I found a lot of places I'd like to go to again though.

So we got to La Palacia de Flamenco and sat down at these long long tables that were perpendicular to the stage. We got fed our first dish, Seafood Paella (if you pronounce those L's I will punch you. double L's in Spanish make a Y sound) which was delicious. Then our funny host got up and told us about what we were about to see and yada yada yada. he also did a couple tricks. he is good at handstands. and can play the guitar. ...not simultaneously. I got a picture with him later. He is creepy looking.

THEN came the Flamenco show! along with our second course, which was chicken with some mushrooms and bell peppers and zucchini on the side. So Flamenco involves someone dancing while another person sings, very emotionally, and not always on pitch, though someone said that tonight's performance was "prettied up" a bit from what it is in more informal places. Usually when I think of Flamenco I think of a woman dancing, but men also perform Flamenco. There were two men in this show, one was older and had hair like Lionel Richie. The other was younger, with bad facial hair, and must have poured a bottle of water over himself every time he went backstage because he always came out with his hair drenched! when he spun around you could see the water droplets just spraying off of him. reeeeally hoping he wasn't sweating that much. ew.

Otherwise the Flamenco show was really neat. Oh, you might want me to describe exactly what Flamenco is. I mean, I didn't know much about it until I saw the show, so how could I expect you to? Well, it seemed to me that Flamenco is very much like the Irish Celtic Thunder shows. I'm pretty sure they wear the same kind of shoes. Though of course, there are different costumes, the ladies in Spain have their classic Flamenco dresses with either wide skirts for awesome spinning moves or hefty trains, also for awesome spinning moves. There is generally a lot more spinning in Flamenco, I think. and also a lot more hand movement. Like in Hawaiian dances. Also, Flamenco apparently originated in the south of Spain by some Indians who had migrated there. I think that's what they said. >.> But I'm pretty sure that's correct because the undulation of the singers' voices reminded me a lot of some of the Hindi songs that I have. Or maybe it's just coincidence that I noticed that. SO. In short: Flamenco is like river dancing + hula hand movements + spinning + hindi singing. It's quite the experience.

Anyway after that I came back to the ship. Thought about going out on the town, but then I ended up just chilling in my cabin with Emily, Sam, Megan, and Sami. We had a good time just hanging out for a little while. and now I'm really tired, I think that covers all the important stuff for today.
until next time!