Hello Friends,
A lot has happened since the last post, but none of the topics are really related, so I'm going to number everything again.
1.We got a new roommate last week. Her name is Yuri. She is 21 years old and she is from Osaka, Japan. She was a little shy at first, but it is understandable. She is not only learning Spanish right now, but she is also still working on English. I have a lot of respect for her. It takes a lot of courage to move to a city where the third most spoken language (English, behind Spanish and Catalan) is only your second language. This adds a whole new dynamic to the language barrier in the house, but I think it will be fun.
2. Last Sunday, during my weekly "Get Lost" session, I found a really cool park and saw some really cool sites. But the part that will interest you most is that I discovered there is a large population of wild parakeets in Barcelona. Apparently, a group of them escaped a while back and they have been building their numbers over the years. It is becoming somewhat of a problem. The city is actually considering exterminating a bunch of them because they are afraid they will become a domestic pest. I kind of like them. They should just kill some of the pigeons instead, but thats my opinion. I told Chelo (Spanish mom) about the parakeets and she died laughing and said she had never seen that before. After she stopped laughing, she explained that what I actually said was that I saw a small, green, talking duck. Clearly, my Spanish is still not perfect.
3. This tuesday, we down to the Gothic Quarter and visited the Picasso Museum. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I think that is why I loved it so much. All of his famous works (the cubist stuff) are housed in the most famous museums all over the world, so this museum is dedicated to the works he wasn't famous for. He started painting when he was 8 years old. Many art critics say that when he was 14, he was on the same skill level as Rembrandt, but if your familiar with any of Picasso's work, this may sound odd to you. I've heard several people say things such as "that looks like a 5 year old painted it". This museum showed the evolution of his art, and from that I can really appreciate his well-known works now. He had the ability to paint beautiful portraits and landscapes, but after a while that was boring to him. He decided to paint things from several perspectives at once, or from perspectives that only existed in his mind. I know a lot of people still won't like his work, but this museum officially made me a Picasso fan.
4. Topic 4 is something that many people don't know about this part of Spain, but its one of the things that makes it so special. Barcelona is located in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, which for hundreds of years was its own country. They have their own language (Catalan) which is still widely spoken in the area, and the culture of the area is much different than the rest of Spain. In the early 1700's, the country became entirely unified as it is today, but not without much resistance from Catalonia and a few years of war. Catalans are a VERY proud people and they do not take lightly the idea that Catalonia and Spain are not the same thing. We Texans are very proud of our state and feel that we are different than the rest of the country, but we've got nothing on the Catalans. When a Texan says something about seperating and becoming our own country, he is usually half-kidding. When a Catalan makes a statement of the same nature, it is not a joke.
I have slowly been noticing the Catalan pride more and more, but last Sunday I saw something that really made it concrete for me. In the Gothic Quarter, or Barrio Gotico, there is a tall curved monument with a torch on the top. I stopped to read the inscription and was happy to find that below the Catalan and Spanish versions, there was one written in English. It stated that the monument was there in honor of the people who died defending Catalonia in 1713 and 1714. The flame on the top is always burning. Wow.... That is what made the "Catalan pride" real for me.
I have more to tell everybody, but this is already really long and I'm hungry, so I'll just have to write another one soon. Keep in touch!
Talk to you soon,
LC
Sunday, February 7, 2010
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