Dogs, Sales, and Fanta

Last Wednesday we got to do another fun activity with our program: a Catalan cooking class!  This was an activity that I had been looking forward to as I love to cook and I wanted to be able to learn how to make some Spanish dishes.  It was a lot of fun cooking a big meal for ourselves and then getting to eat it.  We made four dishes, the first one being a modern version of Spain's famous gazpacho.  It's basically a cold tomato soup and ours had pesto sauce, allioli (garlic mayonnaise), and grated cheese topping it.  As an avid tomato-hater, I didn't have any of it, but I was told it was very good!  The next course was a tortilla española (omelet with potatoes and onions) that I helped to make.  It was my job to cut up the onions and whip the egg whites.  It's such a simple dish, but it tastes so delicious!  Unfortunately the pans in my apartment are awful and I don't think I'll be able to make it here since everything sticks to them, but it's definitely something I'll do once I'm home again!  For the main course we made another one of Spain's famous dishes, paella.  It was absolutely delicious.  Ours had shrimp, cuddle-fish, clams, and mussels in it.  The spice that makes paella so distinctive is the saffron in it.  Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world, for just one gram of it, it costs around 5€.  Saffron comes from a flower and it takes over 100 flowers to make just one gram, hence the expense. For dessert we made crema catalana, Catalunya's version of creme brulee.  Flan is traditionally from the south of Spain and creme brulee is obviously from France.  As Catalunya is in the middle of the two, crema catalana is almost like a mix of the two.  It was absolutely delicious, probably my favorite of anything we made. While I currently don't have the ability to make any of these due to my limited kitchen supplies, I'm definitely going to bring these recipes home to bring a little bit of sunny Barcelona to Wisconsin!

Unfortunately I've been sick with a bad cold for the past week so I haven't been up to too much besides going to class and trying to get better.  So instead of telling you all stories of what I've been doing, I thought I could try and tell you about some observations I've made about life in Barcelona!

1. The dogs in Barcelona amaze me.  There seems to be a decent amount of them all over the city and none of them are on leashes. Ever.  They simply follow their owners wherever they go. At first I thought that they must train their dogs to do this when they're young by starting them out on a leash, but then I saw the cutest little german shepherd puppy the other day and he wasn't on a leash either!  I really do not understand it at all. If I brought Storm (my dog) here and let him off of his leash, I'd never see him again. He would be running all over the place, smelling everything and saying hi to every person he saw.

2. Las Rebajas are crazy.  Las Rebajas (or sales) take place twice a year, once during January and the other during the summer.  It's like a national, month-long Black Friday.  Every single store has almost all of their items on sale for 40-70% off. I don't understand it at all, but it's great!  I haven't bought too much as I'm hoping to be able to travel a bit around Europe and the rest of Spain (I actually just booked a ticket to Prague!), but it has been fun to shop around and see what the stores have to offer!  I did spot an absolutely gorgeous python-skin jacket at Gucci for only 5,900€, if anyone wants to make a donation.

3. They play the exact same music in clubs here that they do at home.  I'm not quite sure what I expected, but it is pretty amusing to hear heavy accents scream out "New York!" during Jay-Z's Empire State of Mind.

4. Orange Fanta is everywhere.  If you order one at a restaurant they serve it to you with an orange slice in the glass.  The Spaniards can't get enough of it!  I like orange soda just as much as the next person, but I really don't understand the obsession.

5. If you want to fit in with Barcelona fashion, wear a scarf and a pair of knee high boots (for girls, of course).  These seem to be the two essentials.  Sadly, I didn't bring either with me, so I'll have to take advantage of Las Rebajas!

6. This isn't really an observation, but if anyone is interested in seeing a bit more of what Barcelona looks like, Shakira's Loca video was shot about 20 minutes from my apartment this past summer.

That's all I can think of for now. Always remember that I love getting questions from people about life here and I'm more than happy to answer anything!  Also, if anyone is interested in the recipes for any of the dishes we made, I'd be happy to send them to you!

Three McDaniel-ites in a Faraway Land

Since one of my classes is on nationalism, specifically, Catalan nationalism, our program's activities on Friday were very fitting.  We climbed up the side of a mountain to get to this tiny little restaurant to eat calçots.  Calçots are a type of onion that only grow in Catalonia. They grill them over charcoal, dip them in romesco sauce, and eat them!  The hike up the mountain was a little rough, we were told it was only a mile, but it was a very steep and hot mile!  The temperature was around 70 degrees and none of us were well prepared. We were all wearing jeans and because it has still been a little chilly in the mornings, most of us had jackets as well.  It was well worth it though, even if it was a struggle!

This is me eating one of the calçots. I'm not a huge onion fan, but they really were great!

These are the charred remains that we had to peel off before actually getting to the onion.  It made for an extremely messy part of the lunch!

At the end of dinner we were able to experience a traditional, Catalan way of drinking. This apparatus is what they pass around the dinner table, everyone drinks from it.  Typically they drink wine out of it, but as we aren't allowed to have alcohol when we're with our program, we only had water.

This is the outside of the restaurant. I'm so glad we were able to go with our program, because there's no way I would have been able to find this tiny place without them!

After we ate the calçots, we had a huge lunch. I'm still not used to how much the Spanish eat for lunch, or how long they take to do so! We had salad, bread, tortilla española (similar to an omelet with potatoes in it), peppers, fried potatoes, lamb, sausage, beans, mousse cake, AND coffee!  We were easily there for three hours.  The reason I say this experience was very fitting for my Catalan nationalism class is because they had a sign on the restaurant that said something along the lines of, "My food is Catalan, my language is Catalan, independence is what we strive for."  Typically people from the United States have heard of the Basque country and how it wants to be an independent nation, what I didn't really know before coming here is that there are two other provinces in Spain that feel the same way, just not as strongly.  Galicia (located right above Portugal) and Catalonia each have their own languages and cultures and would like to be separated from the rest of Spain.

This weekend was very exciting for me as well because my friends from school, Luke and Rebekah, came to visit!  They're studying abroad in Budapest this semester and before their program starts they decided to travel across Europe starting in Barcelona, then heading to Nice and Monaco before finally ending up in Budapest.  On Sunday we were able to go to a really nice park in northern Barcelona that had a really cool labyrinth in it!  It's one of the oldest parks in Barcelona and it was absolutely beautiful.

Outside of the labyrinth there was a little China garden we went in first. It was a gorgeous day out and I thought the reflection in the pool looked really pretty.

This is the labyrinth.  We were able to make our way through it fairly quickly, thank goodness!

There were a couple of other trails as well. On one of them we ran across this really pretty little waterfall!

On our way back to the metro stop we came across what was probably the weirdest park I have ever seen.  It had every single punctuation mark there is on the ground on this hill.  This is a picture of me sitting on an exclamation point being exclamatory!

 That night we were able to go to my first ever professional soccer/futbol game!  It was FC Barcelona (Barça) vs. Malaga (a city in the south of Spain).  Even though we were in almost the highest row, it was still an amazing cultural experience.  I've never been to an American football game, but I have been to a couple of Brewers games.  When I go to a baseball game, the game is the last thing I pay attention to.  There's so much else going on! It's the exact opposite at European soccer games.  They don't serve any alcohol at the stadium and the focus is completely on the game.  Luckily soccer is fairly easy to follow and it was easy to get into it with all of the cheering and singing going on around us.

This is Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona. It seats 99,354 people. In comparison, Lambeau Field (home of the Packers) can hold only 73,128.

After the second goal we scored. They get so excited!

The seats on the other side of the stadium spelled out FC Barcelona!

Rebekah, Luke, and me after we won, 4-1. :)

This was a perfect weekend for them to come as I didn't have any homework.  We were able to do so many fun things in such a short amount of time.  It was great to see some familiar faces in such a faraway country!

Wait. I actually have to go to class here too?

Since I arrived here on the fourth, this has seemed like a vacation.  I've had to go to a couple of orientation things, but they've all been out in the city and very enjoyable.  Unfortunately, this feeling only lasted a week.  That's right folks, I did actually come here to study and classes did start this week.  But that didn't happen until Wednesday and that still left Monday and Tuesday for more exploration!

Monday morning was probably my favorite day of orientation so far.  We got a tour of Barcelona's gothic quarter.  Barcelona was founded in 15 BC by the Romans and there are still some ruins of the original city around.  It is absolutely amazing for me to think that I have touched the same walls that were touched by ancient Romans.  I also really liked that even though these ruins are over 2000 years old, they're not kept behind glass.  They are a functioning part of the city.

I love this picture because it shows the different eras of the city.  You can see the remains of the original aqueduct and the larger blocks on the bottom are from the original walls of the city.  The smaller blocks on top of that were added in the middle ages and then you can see the modern wall right next to that.

These are the steps outside of the old Catalan king's palace.  They used to hold city council meetings on these steps until they got their own building.

This is one of the governmental buildings in Barcelona.  On the top you can see the Catalan, Spain, and Barcelona flags.  

This little square didn't have too much in it besides a restaurant and a fountain, but it has a very sad history.  When people learn about WWII, they don't hear too much about Spain, but that doesn't mean Spain wasn't a part of it.  This is all shrapnel on the wall of a church.  The bombs that went off in this square killed thirty three children that were out at recess. They didn't repair the markings on the wall so that they would be remembered.

 After our tour of the gothic quarter we got a couple of hours off before orientation at our university, La Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, or UAB for short.  We found a cute little sandwich shop where I ordered "Un cafe con leche y una bocadilla con jamón del país y queso" (A coffee with milk and a sandwich with ham and cheese).  This meal incorporates a lot of what Spain is known for.  Go into any restaurant or bar and you will be able to get a "cafe con leche".  Spanish coffee is actually what we call espresso.  You can't get American coffee anywhere, but I don't know why you'd want to, cafe con leche es muy delicioso!  The sandwich was delicious as well, the ham was more like prosciutto and the cheese was great as well. Spain is known for having great ham.  The only problem with it is that whenever you order a sandwich in Spain, they rub tomato all over the inside of the bread, leaving a ton of tomato juice and seeds.  For anyone that knows me well, you know that I hate tomatoes with a passion.  Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking and forgot to order my sandwich without tomato, but I was able to scrap most of it off and still enjoy my sandwich.

After lunch we finally got to see one of the campuses that we will be having classes at for the rest of the semester!  I'm not actually at this campus at all, but it's still a beautiful building!

The building is over 100 years old and the inside is absolutely gorgeous as well.

The university orientation was for all of the different study abroad programs that bring students to UAB.  It was a basic introduction to how classes are going to work this semester.  One interesting part of the Spanish education system is that they don't have GPA's.  They grade out of 10 and a 5 is a passing grade. So if the students get a 5, they are happy.  On the other hand, if an American student were to get a 5/10 in a class, we would flip out. Not only would that be a failing grade for us, but it would also ruin our GPA.  Luckily the professors here know this and so they've devised a system where a 5 in a class here will equal a C in our home universities.  Spanish students also have a deal where if they get a 10 in a class (the highest grade possible), they get a free class the next semester!  That would be a great motivation to do well in classes for me!

Classes started on Wednesday and so far I think I'm going to like all of mine!  My first class was called Cultures Without State: The Case of Catalonia.  I really like the professor, which is a good thing because I have him for two classes.  He's really funny and I think he's going to make the material interesting.  We're learning about nationalism throughout Spain and the rest of the world.  The other class I have with him is Mediterranean Culture and History.  Our professor, Toni, introduced the class by telling us that even though the Mediterranean doesn't have much of an effect on the rest of the world today, Western cultures owe almost everything to them.  We will be studying the Greeks and the Romans and every other civilization that made an impact in the Mediterranean until the Atlantic took over as the important body of water in the world.

I also have a Spanish Civilization and Culture class where I'll be learning more about the history of Spain.  I learned a brief history of Spain in my AP Spanish class my senior year of high school, but it will be nice to get a more in depth look at it.  Then finally I have a Spanish language class. My professor is pretty young and he seems really enthusiastic about teaching us.  I think it will be a fun class and hopefully it will improve my Spanish!

When you think Barcelona, you think beaches.

Last Friday I got to experience two of Barcelona's (and Spain's) finest: paella and beaches!  In the morning my group met up to go to the Museu d'Històrica de Catalunya (History of Catalunya Museum).  To start our tour, we got to go out onto a terrace that overlooks the marina.

Where all the rich people keep their boats.

As you can tell from the picture, the weather has been absolutely gorgeous here.  Most days I start out wearing my pea coat, but more often than not I end up taking it off and carrying it.  They say that February will get a little colder, but I really can't complain when it is currently fifty degrees warmer here than it is in Appleton!  On the other hand, our apartment is freezing.  We don't have any heat and even though it's warm outside, it is definitely cold in here! We have little space heaters in our rooms, but they're serious about conservation here and we can't leave them on all the time.  We're not even supposed to leave them on overnight.  A lot of the other people in the group have been complaining that their water doesn't even get very hot, so they've had to take some lukewarm showers.  Luckily, ours seems to get fairly hot, as long as you don't take a shower right after someone just got out.  The hot water heater doesn't hold very much water so we need to space ours out.  

Anyways, after the tour of the museum, we took a short walk to a restaurant to have a delicious meal of mussels and paella!  For anyone that doesn't know, paella is a regional dish that the east coast of Spain is famous for.  It consists of rice, LOTS of seafood, saffron and other spices. Anyone that knows me well knows that I always order water at restaurants.  However, in Spain, you can't get tap water anywhere. If you ask for a water, they give you a bottle.  I'm not exactly sure why this is, the water that comes out of the tap in our apartment tastes fine to me!  

Everything at the restaurant was served family style, with a gigantic bowl in the middle of the table that we all ate out of.  

This is one of four bowls of mussels we were given. The best mussels I've ever had!

This gigantic bowl was only for three people! We had sooo many leftovers!

The paella we had had mussels, lobster, octopus, shrimp, fish, clams, and probably even more in it!  It was a little difficult to eat because everything still had the shell on it.  They cook it all whole (with the head still on it and everything) and then you have to use your hands to get the meat out.  But even though it was a lot of work, it was still absolutely delicious!

After our two and a half hour lunch, we got to walk around the Barceloneta neighborhood a bit more.  Like the rest of Barcelona it is gorgeous, but unlike the rest of Barcelona, it has BEACHES!

Even though it's not actually warm enough to go swimming, I'm definitely going to come out here to sit during my free time!

There were a bunch of people making elaborate sand sculptures right by the boardwalk.

One thing in Barcelona that I'm not a big fan of is the location of their street signs.  They're posted on the corners of buildings, making it nearly impossible to see unless you're standing right on that corner.  For someone who is new to the city, it makes it very hard to get around!

An example of the street signs.

On Saturday Teresa (my roommate) and I went grocery shopping together for the first time here.  Luckily there's a little grocery store about a block away from us, right next to the metro, so it's pretty easy for us to get there. It's one of the bigger grocery stores I've seen, but it's probably still only about a quarter of the size of any grocery store in the United States.  Everything here is smaller than it is in America.  I think it's the combination of having limited space for buildings and the lack of personal space that people seem to need. During orientation on our first day we had to do an exercise where we stood toe-to-toe with someone and had to ask each other questions.  In America it would be absurd to stand that close with someone, but here it is completely normal!  When I first saw the elevator in my apartment building, I thought they were crazy to think that two people plus all of my luggage was going to fit in there.  I have never seen an elevator so small but the sign in it says it's meant for four people!

So far we've been just cooking for ourselves in our apartment, but I'm hoping that we'll be able to have a nicer dinner here one of these nights.  They don't have any spicy food in Spain so I'm hoping our Venezuelan roommate, Nestor, will be able to cook us some food from his country so we get a little spice!

Metros, markets, and mountains, oh my!

The past two days have been a whirlwind of getting to know the other seventeen kids in the program, sightseeing, and figuring out how to get places. Thank goodness our apartment is right next to the metro, so it's pretty easy to get around for us.  I'm used to the metros in DC where you have to figure out what stop you're getting off at and then see how much it costs to get there and put the right amount of money on your card. Here you just pay per ride and you can go as far as you want, all for the same price.  You can also buy multiple rides at a time and it works about to be about 60 Euro cents a ride, a lot cheaper than DC!

Here are some pictures of my apartment:

This is my room, it's pretty big!

This is our living room/dining area. We haven't used it yet, but it will be nice for having friends over.

This is our tiny little kitchen! But it has a full stove, oven, microwave, and refrigerator, so I'm pretty happy about that. A lot of the apartments don't have all of that.

Our kitchen even has our washer in it!

This is what the electrical sockets look like here.

Yesterday we took a bus tour around the city with everyone in our program.  I'm so glad we were able to do that because we got to see a lot of the city.  There are places along it that I will definitely want to go back to. It was hard to get great pictures because we were on a moving bus, but I took a whole bunch just so everyone can get an idea of how beautiful the city is.

This is a building designed by Gaudí, a famous architect from Catalonia.

The olympic stadium from the Barcelona Olympics in 1992!

A lot of the vegetation is way different here than it is in either Maryland or Wisconsin.  There are palm trees everywhere and this was a pretty cool tree right outside of the olympic stadium.

Inside the stadium. This is where the olympic torch was lit by an archer.

The port.

The street lamps on this street were really cool.

Pictures can't even come close to doing it justice, but this is La Sagrada Familia.  It was started in 1882 by Gaudí, but it won't be completed until 2050. They are still trying to follow Gaudí's original plans.

This is the back of La Sagrada Familia.

On our way to a welcome lunch we were able to briefly stop at one of the famous markets where they sell absolutely everything. It was so packed in there, full of both people and stands.

 After lunch, which lasted two hours, we had the afternoon off.  We went to get international cell phones and when we walked out of the store, a parade was going on for Reyes Day.  Reyes Day is like their Christmas.  It means King's Day and it's the day that they exchange presents and everything.  We were in the center of the city, La Plaça Catalunya, and it was packed.

This is the street after the parade was over.  These types of lights are above a lot of the streets, making everything look really decorative at night.

Today, because of the holiday, we had the day off.  We decided to visit Gaudí's park, called Park Guell.  The park is up the side of a mountain.  It's in a really cool neighborhood called Gràcia.

Gràcia.

The entrance to Park Guell.

If anyone reading this watches ANTM, this is the place that the final runway was in season 7 with Caridee. 

There were benches farther up the mountain with beautiful mosaics on them.  The benches were also made to fit the curve of your back, so even though they were stone, they were very comfortable.

From the very top of the mountain you got a gorgeous view of the entire city.

This is what we climbed up to see the rest of the city. There are stone steps going up the side, pretty scary for someone like me who is both afraid of heights and also awful at stairs!

One interesting thing about studying in Barcelona, as opposed to the rest of Spain, is that everyone here is bilingual.  They speak both Spanish and the local language, Catalan.  All of the signs are in Catalan first, then Spanish, and occasionally they will also have an English translation, especially in more touristy areas.  Many of the words are similar, but still different enough that I can't always understand what the signs are saying.  It appears to be a mix of Spanish and French to me.  Many of the words seem to be shortened from their Spanish equivalent and there are a lot more t's.  Luckily all of the natives know that they need to speak Spanish in order to be understood by foreigners, so we haven't had any trouble with that!

If anyone has any questions about the life here, please feel free to ask! I'm trying to include as many details as I can, but I don't know what everyone wants to know!

Just dance, gonna be okay...

Let me just start out by saying that I arrived in Barcelona safe and sound! There were zero problems and all in all, it was pretty uneventful. If you care to know more details, read on.

Anyone that has talked to me in the past couple of weeks has known that I've been pretty nervous about coming to Barcelona.  I'm never comfortable in situations where I don't have an exact plan or know exactly what is going to happen, so this was a huge step outside of my comfort zone.  I didn't really start to get excited until I saw on the screen on my flight to Frankfurt that we were flying over London.  London! Then walking through the Frankfurt airport I got pretty excited as well. Never having been to Europe, everything was new for me.  Although I can say that two phrases everyone should learn in every language are "Excuse me" and "Sorry".  I kept wanting to say those things to people as I was walking by them, but I had no idea if they spoke English!  Anyways, I pretty much just passed out on my short flight to Barcelona, I was so exhausted.  After my flight, I was walking towards baggage claim and I passed a shop that was playing music. I heard, "Just dance, gonna be okay..." blaring from the speakers.  That's when I knew I was going to be right at home in Spain.  Any country that plays Lady Gaga in their airports is all right with me.

Speaking of airports, Barcelona's airport is huge. Absolutely monstrous.  I've been in my fair share of airports, Appleton, Green Bay, Chicago, Detroit, LAX, Honolulu, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and Frankfurt, but I have never seen an airport this big or this nice.  It looked more like a mall!  The taxis here are really clean and nice as well! It made a very nice first impression.

My apartment is fairly small, but nice.  The best part about it is that I have a balcony right off of my room and we're on the top floor of my building.  It looks out onto a courtyard type area, so I can't see too much, but it's still really nice. We have a little table out there so when the weather gets a little warmer (it's in the 50s right now) we can eat out there.  I only know one of the girls that I'm living with so far, her name is Theresa and she's from Pennsylvania.  The other two people I'm living with are from the Czech Republic and Venezuela.

I did get to take a nap this afternoon before orientation started, but I'm still exhausted. So it's off to bed for me. We're taking a bus tour and some other stuff around the city tomorrow morning so hopefully I'll have some great pictures for everyone to see!

¡Adios América, Hola España!

I was born in Minnesota, was raised in Wisconsin, go to school in Maryland, and starting in two days, I'll be an international student studying in Barcelona, Spain.

I've decided to start this blog as a way for those who aren't on Facebook (or even those who are) to see pictures I've taken, places I've gone, and what I'm up to.  I also started it so that I can have something to look back on and see everything that I will have experienced in my three and a half months there.  I think it will be almost like an online scrapbook for me to have.

I have everything almost set to leave Monday morning, only one thing remains: to pack.  I have always hated packing and unpacking.  I put it off until the last possible minute every time.  Thank goodness I've gotten used to packing everything when I come and go from school in Maryland, so I've gotten pretty good at cramming a ton of stuff into a small space, but I still hate it.  I'm the type of person that always thinks, "What if?" as I'm packing.  What if I need to dress up? What if I decide to go hiking in the mountains? What if I suddenly get an urge to read Dr. Suess? It's a constant fear of mine that I'll forget something that I'll need. Never mind the fact that Barcelona has a population of 1,670,810 people and probably more stores than they know what to do with. If I forget something, I'm sure it will be readily available to me.  But I still worry.

Anyways, I hope you all enjoy reading my blog and keeping up with my adventures.  Please feel free to follow this blog, post comments, or email me at acl007@mcdaniel.edu! I'm going to miss all of my friends and family here so much, I'll love hearing from you!

¡Adios!


UPDATE: I know some people have mentioned writing me letters and such while I'm in Spain (which I'll LOVE!), so here's my address:

Calle Espronceda, 348, Ático, 2a
08027 Barcelona, Spain