Bring it on Barca

Hey friends.  'Hay Que Aprovechar!' (roughly translated as 'live it up') comes straight to you from my current post in Barcelona, Spain.  I've been here for about 5 days with nothing to do but get settled, get lost, and enjoy city living.  As many of you know, I'll be hanging out here for the next year as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, studying 'Immigration and intercultural education' at the University of Barcelona and helping Rotary with their service projects.  If you want to know more about the Ambassadorial Scholar program, which you should because it's awesome, check out the website here or just ask me.


Fair warning before I begin: Spanglish will happen.  If it's central to understanding what I'm saying, I'll explain.  Usually context and familiarity with any Latin language will be enough.  You might even learn something new.


As for life in E-th-pan-ya (local pronunciation) so far, me gusta muchisimo!  Most of the time I've spent at La Festival de la Merced.  La Merced is the patron saint of Barcelona, and as such gets a yearly party that is a week of (sometimes pretty non-religious) festivities.  I'm lucky to have arrived in time to see the zenith of Barcelona pride.  Just wandering around, I've happened upon parades of dancing giants, fire runs, fountain shows, airshows, human tower building, fireworks, concerts, dancing, book fairs, and people spontaneously singing in the subways.  More than any singular event, what's really impressive is the general festive spirit that has nothing to do with a commercial holiday involving presents or chocolate.  Families with small children are out until 3 in the morning to see what Barcelona's talent has to offer and celebrate their great city.


Below are a few shots from the fire runs and The Hives concert.  I've got more pics coming soon, but as I am an idiot and "formatted" my memory card (i.e. erased everything) I had to send it off for the information to get recouped.  Genna-with-technology fail.

I still have no idea why a religious festival would involve wearing devil costumes, but there you have it.  This was the "kid-friendly version" of the fire runs.  The adult one at night was rumored to have much scarier costumes.  By the way, this would not fly with U.S. safety precautions--definitely fire hazard material.

The Hives concert was in the middle of the street, and there were a verdadero tonnn of people squished up against one another to see the Scandinavian group.  And for good reason--they put on a rocking show.  Shamefully the Catalans (people from the region of Catalunya, Spain) knew more of the words to the songs than I did!

Outside of the craziness of the Merced, I'm just starting to get my life together and used to the pace of things. Going to bed at 3 and waking up at 1 pm has been the norm--which works out well for trying to talk to people on the West Coast, so Skype me (username: genna.beier) if you wanna talk digital-face to digital-face.

Bueno chicos, enough blogging;  it's time to head out for the firework finale of la Merced.  Keep posted--I'll be writing updates every week or so.

I don't want this to be a one-sided exercise, so please let me know what you're up to and how you're doing.  Not saying you have to start a blog or anything, just want to know how my favorite people are.

Abrazos!