conflictocatalunya asked: hi there, I'm researching Catalan autonomia en Espana, and i was really hoping i could ask you some things, seeing as you're there and you speak english and all.
Thanks!!!
Maura
Hi, I’m not sure how much I’d be able to help as I don’t actually know that much about the issue, but if you want to drop me a message with your email, I’d be happy to try.
Solo me queda hacer las maletas y salir de fiestaaaaaaa :D
Only one exam left to go! And it’s grammar, so let’s face it, I’m not worried.
On the last-weekend-in-Granada agenda thus far:
Last morning café with Jess
last exam (hachacha)
Christmas present shopping
IES farewell dinner/mingling whatever
Out with Jess, Meegan, Catie, Macarena, Sonia, Erika, María and who knows who elso, to fiestar all night
Watch the sunrise from Albaicín
Churros in the am?
Probably sleep most of the daylight hours
Saturday night, Catie and I will be the only one’s left, possibly going out with Lucas and his friends?
Sunday pack/cry over my suitcases
Monday, leave early in the am for Ireland.
I can’t believe I’m actually leaving. :(
I hereby promise this will be the last mention of soul-crushing class
because I am DONE! Thanks to some 1 AM revelations (organicismo, ideología feudalizante and aristitelocismo escolástico all sound exactly the same because THEY ARE THE SAME—the entire semester makes more sense now) the exam was actually manageable. (Aside from having to be on the opposite end of the city by 9 am, then awkwardly realizing I was standing at the bus stop, nose buried in notes, next to my professor… who probably thought I was dumb for studying when she let us use our notes, even though she definitely didn’t say that) Anyway…
The first half was analyzing two assigned passages from two texts, which as long as I have a text in front of me, I can make up something about it… the second part was theory, but I could choose the two I knew.
Then I went to class with half my brain dripping out the pores of my face, and blissfully sat there not importing un bledo what she was talking about.
I took an amazing siesta (in which I slept through the ambulance-siren phone ringing apparently), got up and read half a novel, went to Narrativa class, where I studied some more, then went to take the exam, which turned out to be two incredibly vague ”comment on these things” questions, to which I rambled descriptively about the texts, managed to talk more about “Fall of the House of Usher” then “La casa tomada”, made an authoritative conclusion about a novel I skimmed and bade farewell to Filosofía y Letras forever. It should have been more bittersweet, but after spending 12 hours in it, it was mostly just sweet.
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Barcelona report
Tumblr has been mad glitching lately, hence no posts (plus I’ve been busy having adventures).
Once again, far too many pictures (I think I took at least 600 on this trip, I’m apparently dangerous with no one around to reel in my picture taking) so I will just include links.
Saturday I toured Camp Nou, the football stadium.
Camp Nou + miscellaneous around town shots
Terribly exciting, if you’re me. I set out with only a vague idea of generally which direction I was going and wound up rather turned around but I did eventually get back on course. Tickets include the museum and a fairly thorough stadium tour. This was one part of the trip where it probably would have been more fun to be with someone, although it would have to be someone who could put up with my enthusiasm for Barça. I would have like to share my excitement rather than peer stoically at the pitch as if I was contemplating it seriously rather than thought-babbling oh my god, Xavi has breathed here. There also could have been quite a number of fun photos to be had, instead I had to do the awkward, ask someone to take a picture thing. About halfway through, I met a nice family from Bolivia and we shared picture taking and love for FC Barcelona, so that was cool. (Unfortunately, I look horribly awkward in most of the pictures) The circuit went all up and down the various levels of the stadium, starting down in the press room and away side locker room, out through the tunnel at field level, then up the stands all the way to the press box. My dream of running into Xavi on the street was never realized, but it was still sufficiently awesome to see the stadium.
I headed back to the hostel, only allowing myself to stray off course once, for that giant dragon shaped statue, which turned out to be worth it 100% over because it was a giant slide.
It was great.
I went back and took a shower, then completed my Barça-filled day by going out to eat and watch the game with one of the guys I met at the hostel. Oh, and Barça won of course. :D
Sunday I did the Gaudi things.
I got up and had breakfast with some people at the hostel, then I headed out (this time with a rudimentary map) for Parc Guell, the park designed by Antoni Gaudi. On the way I passed two of his other buildings, La Casa Batlló and La Pedrera and took a survey of ticket prices and hours. It turns out Parc Guell is quite far away, and it gets to be quite uphill toward the end, but I made it. Then, of course, once you get in, the park is more uphill, and I had to hike up to the lookout point at the very top. It was quite worth it though, for the view and sense of accomplishment. Gaudi designed all the buildings, bridges, paths, fountains etc in the whole park, it’s pretty cool. On the way back, I took a detour to walk past the Sagrada Familia, his unfinished cathedral. I didn’t go in, though if I ever go back I will, because I’ve heard it’s very much worth it. I headed back and decided on going to Casa Batlló, since the Pedrera closed earlier and I didn’t want to have to rush. The Batlló was really neat, it’s apparently still a functioning apartment building! I’m not sure why you’d want to live there with all the tourists tromping up and down all day though.
After dinner and heading back, I just hung out with hostel friends CJ and Tarit for the rest of the night. I spent about 9 hours out walking around both days, so needless to say I slept pretty well.
Monday morning we went out for breakfast then I packed up my things. They came along for a leisurely walk to the bus station, which involved novelty pictures climbing on lion statues, which CJ has yet to send me. I managed to catch my bus without a problem and the bus ride through some of the most beautiful countryside of Spain thus far went smoothly. I was quietly admiring the mountains covered in what appeared to be fairly legitimate trees, side by side with big flat stretches of farm land and thinking about how perfect it was, when I looked out the other side of the bus and realized we were no more than half a mile from the Mediterranean coast. Flawless.
More on Valencia to follow, I’m going to venture out for a bite to eat.
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Barcelona day 1 pictures →
it’s going to be too tedious and I’m going to be too lazy/busy being cool and adventurous, so I’ll just direct you guys to the facebook album for pictures. I don’t actually know much about any of the things I saw anyway, so I can’t be interesting about them.
Flags!
I don’t know why I have such a thing for flags, but I do. At the end of this semester I need to do a tally and see just how many pictures I have of the Spanish flag. (but a lot of these are Catalan flags, so it was new and exciting and entirely necessary)
so many!
and that’s just a sampling.
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Not to beat my own drum or anything…
…but I’ve never felt like a more capable human being. Sure it’s only been about 12 hours and this might get old, but so far traveling alone has been serene and wonderful. The great thing about not having a plan is that I never have to be in a hurry. (Dear Dad, thank you for the genes that contain your tranquil demeanor)
The only time sensitive thing I did today was catch the bus to the airport. Granada’s airport is about 20 minutes outside of the city, in Jaen. It’s tiny, check in and security was a breeze, I got on the plane, the flight was a breeze, landed in Barcelona, almost started to worry that I didn’t know where to go and catch the bus then realized that there was no hurry. Took a deep breath and followed the signs, turns out it’s all super facíl. Took the bus to Plaça Catalunya, looked around for the metro station and realized, once again, I’m not in a rush. You’re in Barcelona, sit down and enjoy it. So I sat in the plaza and ate an orange then moseyed down to the metro and followed the directions to the hostel. Public transportation is so wonderfully logical in Spain.
After I checked in, I decided to go for a short paseo. I don’t have a map, but I figured I’d just head down Avenida Paralel, the major street which the hostel is just off of, down to the port and back. I resolved to just stay on the big street and find a bite to eat and look around. Well, it didn’t take long before I got off course because I saw something interesting looking, then I started walking along the port, then I saw a pretty building and crossed the street, then I saw more exciting looking things up ahead. I spotted a statue in the distance that I resolved to walk to, then I’d turn around and go back, but that statue turned out to be the entrance to a park. So I decided on a paseo around the park, then I’d go back, but the park turned out to be full of interesting things, and not halfway around just outside the other entrance was this exciting looking arch. Walked down to look at that, finally drew the line for myself and headed back to the park. Found an amazing fountain/waterfall extravaganza, finally finished my lap and headed back the way I’d come. Dallied in the port, got a coffee and sat on the dock as the sun went down then moseyed back to the hostel. It’s super cute and the staff is making dinner tonight and it’s cheap, so I’m going to stay in and try to make some hostel friends. Or not, whatever, I’m having a blast by myself.
I’ve already taken a ton of pictures, (as usual, about half of them are of flags or close ups of plants on a textured background) will share a few.
Made it through day 1 of soul-crushing presentation with all limbs intact
Considering how much I was dreading it (I assumed it would be sort of like Prometheus in Hades, where I am Prometheus and my professor is the vulture that repeatedly picks out my liver), day one of soul-crushing presentation was less torturous than anticipated.
Every person in my group is your-average-lit-major level of full of crap, so I didn’t feel quite as bad about my part. As with the last two groups, the professor began by going through page by page and pointing out things that ‘need clarifying’ aka, she thinks are wrong, and our trabajo had significantly less of those than the previous two.
I felt bad for Luis, because she basically pointed to one of his paragraphs, and in a round about way implied that he plagiarized it because ‘clearly wasn’t his own language’, which is total shit because the language was about the normal level of pretentious that I use all the time in English papers, and honestly not that much above what I use in Spanish. It wasn’t really that far-fetched to believe he wrote it.
She only had one point of contention in the whole five pages I wrote! Although despite my meticulous editing, she still opened with a rant about how the Spaniards should have corrected my grammar/semantics to make it clearer. At which point Jesús, who is awesome, cut in and said that he did look over my work and only made a few changes and thought it was good as is.
(I really love Jesús, by the way, and want to be his friend. He sort-of laughed at my sort-of joke, I think that means we’ll be friends)
I retained my ability to speak Spanish, and defended my statement that was under scrutiny with enough of a stubborn-confident charade that it seemed to work.
I did the same to another student who dared to question one of my questionable assertions.
Then we had an actually fairly decent discussion with the class that I didn’t participate in but I at least could follow. I still feel like maybe next time I should stand up and announce that for the record, I do understand what I read and hear, I just can’t process and produce worthwhile contributions quickly enough.
But in all, it went better than I had hoped, so maybe not all is lost.
Too bad this entire ordeal is worth 10% of my grade and the rest is riding on some ridiculous, impenetrable final exam.
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Soul-sucking project update
I forgot to mention that I did eventually finish my bit of the written trabajo and we handed it in last week, and also that class was mercifully cancelled on Monday so my destruction was postponed a bit, but now it’s looming again. I did manage to write a solid five pages, but it’s basically:
herpderp herpderp plot summary herpderp herpderp basicobservation herpderp herpderp vague statement herpderp herpderp overgeneralization herpderpherpderpherpderpherpderp
At least my grammar should be solid since my awesome grammar professor spent an hour going over it with me.
Hopefully, my profesor will quickly realize that I’m linguistically incapable of explaining my ideas in any more depth, and she’ll move on to pick on someone who gives better sport.
Symbolic illustration of what I’ll look at during tomorrow’s presentation:
Impulsive is better than indecisive, right?
So I may have made a rather impulsive decision but at least it’s a decision. My Barcelona/Valencia trip is already planned better than my Italy trip ever was. I have plane ticket and bus tickets and hostels booked, huzzah!
I don’t really have a schedule, but in Barcelona I want to see Parc Guell/all the Gaudi things, Camp Nou/FCB museum maybe (Barça’s playing away this weekend, so I still don’t get to be in the same city as them :( ), the Picasso Museum and otherwise just explore.
Valencia has a national park I may try to go to if the weather’s ok/it isn’t to difficult, as well as some art museums, beach and more off-the-cuff exploring.
I’m excited!
oh christmas….
I just realized I’ve been consistently writing ‘hostal’ instead of ‘hostel’ in all my posts.
I promise I know how to spell, it’s just Spanglish striking again.
I now also write ‘profesor’ instead of ‘professor’ always, and I will never be able to write an intelligent-sounding email to a professor again.
Line one: “Dear profesor…” “How did this girl get into Bryn Mawr?”
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