Castells practice.
I have blogged about castells a few times now but here's a quick refresher: castells are a very Catalan practice. They are these human castles that take extreme effort, concentration, and intense teamwork to be successful. Flashback: remember when I went to that festival with all of the castells and Bo joined a castell? Well after he participated in that castell, he talked to one of the members and she invited him to come practice with them whenever he wanted. He's been going for the past couple months and this time he invited me, his friend from home who was visiting Barcelona named Peter, Saleh, and his roommate Brian. So the 4 of us joined Bo at practice for the Castellers de la Sagrada FamÃlia on Friday night.
We walk in and we were immediately greeted by some of the people there. The cool thing about castells is that anyone can participate in them. Men, women, children, teens, and middle aged people are all in this gym hanging out and all of them were super nice and actually happy to talk to us Americans. They also immediately threw us in the action which was awesome. They went out of their way and had the 5 of us make a cool little castell thing which was amazing except for the fact that since I was the only girl of the 5 of us I was forced to go up every time and it get's kinda scary. But it's less work than being the one climbed on so I guess I can't complain. Here's a pic of me being super successful:
Smiles on smiles.
The people who were making the base started adding us in for every castell they were building so I was in the base for a bunch of them. It was really cool to see and experience how much effort and concentration goes into castells. I was sore for like 2 days after practice and I really did not even do that much. I'm so lucky to have had the opportunity to go to this practice because it is truly a cultural event that barely any Americans get to experience, unlike the typical touristy things like bullfighting and flamenco dancing. So here's a shoutout to Bo! Thanks for joining a castells team and inviting me to practice!
Los Americanos
The rest of the weekend was unremarkable mostly because of the unfortunate weather we had. It was gray and disgusting and windy so going sightseeing or going to a park was out of the question. Luckily, seeing as I decided to experience the amazing Barcelona night life last weekend also, I did not want to go sightseeing anyway. If you know what I mean. Another highlight of this weekend was seeing an old American pal, Bree! Bree is in my sorority back at Illinois and is studying abroad in Verona, Italy. Her and her friends were in Barcelona for the day so we got to hang out for a little bit which was fun, it's always nice to see a familiar face in a foreign country!
One more thing that happened this weekend: finally went to eat churros and chocolate in Barcelona. The best part: the homemade whipped cream that was on top of the hot chocolate. I guess I have to give a shout out to Midge (my friend Lisa who studied abroad in Barcelona last spring) for telling me about the street Carrer Petritxol that has a bunch of places for hot chocolate and churros. Yummy.
You can't see the chocolate because of the whipped cream...mmmmm yum
And now for one of the most awkward things that has happened to me in Barcelona thus far. The metro fight that I was the cause of. A story I like to call...
A Foreigner in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time
Once upon a time, I was sitting in the metro on my way to class on a Tuesday afternoon. I was jammin' to some Ke$ha, people watching, enjoying life. The metro wasn't very crowded, but there was a crowd of primary school kids on a field trip or something. To my left, a girl my age was sitting and to my right, a man who was about 25-30 or so. All of the sudden, a woman who seemed around 50 motions for me to take my headphones out. I do, and she proceeds to tell me very sternly (in Spanish or Catalan who really knows) that when an older person gets on the metro, I should stand up and give them my seat. I was raised with some manners and I know I am supposed to do that, the only problem is there were literally no elderly people on the metro. So I'm dumbfounded like this lady just called me out so I go to stand up and give her my seat but then the man next me to stands up and this is how the exchange went (from what I understood, there were some parts I had no idea what was going on):
Man: Here, take my seat.
Woman: No I don't want it for me I'm just saying she should give up her seat for elderly people.
Man: (motions around the train) What elderly people? There's a group of little kids over there should she stand up for them?
Woman: No but she is just sitting there on her cell phone not paying attention to the people around her.
Ok so now they are actually yelling at each other. It escalated real quickly. The whole metro is looking. I stop understanding what is going on because I am terrified that I am the source of this argument. The man sits down and tells me that she is crazy and she hears him. She yells more. He yells back. He is saying something along the lines of, "______ could that be possible?" he said something like that multiple times and all I could understand was the could that be possible part but I wish I wasn't freaking out and paying attention. I am not exaggerating when I say they were screaming at each other and they were a solid 10 feet apart and she was mocking him and he was calling her crazy and I just didn't know what to do.
She exits the metro and the man sits down next to me and I tell him thank you for his help because I honestly don't know what I would have done if the spotlight had remained on me. Probably cried. Once I was about to get off, a different middle aged woman motioned to me and pointed to the sign saying reserved seats. There are 3 pictures depicting who these seats are reserved for:
1. A person with a cane.
2. A pregnant woman.
3. A woman holding a baby.
No where did I see a crabby middle aged woman depicted on the sign. I left the metro literally shaking and my hands went numb I was so confused and scared. Either way, I have made the decision to never ever sit down on the metro ever again. Standing only.
Fin.
Hope you enjoyed that wonderful story. I also decided to play an April Fools prank on myself and hit "Off" instead of "Snooze" on my alarm this morning and slept through 2 classes. Happy Tuesday to me!
This weekend I am headed to Granada. Hopefully I can get all of my work done by then...can't I just not do school and spend all of my time traveling? Ugh.
Angela
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