The falling tower of the Barcelonians

Last weekend there was a festival called "La Merced" in Barcelona. It's the biggest festival of the year, and it lasted several days. One of the things at the festival that was very fun was the human towers. They are called "Castells", that is, castles. On one of the castles that we saw, when they went to eight stories of people, the whole thing fell over. Nobody got hurt, but four of the people at the top fell into the crowd.

I did not take pictures of the Castells, but here are some pictures we found on the net:
http://www.onexposure.net/?photos=member&memberid=150&photo=5719
http://cellar.org/2002/humantower.jpg
There is a site called Castellers de Barcelona that you can go to to find out a lot more about them: http://www.castellersdebarcelona.org/eng/.

And here are some pictures of the castells we saw and of the whole festival this year:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/13577978@N04/sets/72157602188218164/

We wanted to go to a lot of other places at the festival, but for nearly every one the sheet that we had said the wrong place so we missed almost everything... My dad, Kaelan (who is my brother) and I, we also went to Plaza Catalonia to see the end of the festival (I also had to practice German with my dad at the same time). It was a big dance on Plaza Catalonia. Kaelan really loved it.

This week has been pretty normal, that is I went to school. But one thing that happened is that I got "sick" eating too much of my favorite tapas, which are tiny whole fried squids, called chipirones, or xipirons in catalan. At school I am starting soccer Mondays and Wednesdays starting next week. Now I am better at Spanish: I understand about half the things people say and I can speak a little bit of Spanish. I also know a variety of German words but they are such a variety that I can't make a sentence with them.

Flamenco

Last week on Sunday night we went to a place called Pueblo Espanol. The Pueblo Espanol is a remake from 1929 of different parts of Spain all put into one place.

At the Pueblo Espanol we had reserved seats at a Flamenco dance. For those of you who don't know, Flamenco is a kind of Spanish dance and music. At the Flamenco dance, there were five men making the music and singing, and there were five women in dresses dancing. Some of the dresses were very bright, and some of them were very dark. The music was all very fast, with guitars and vocals. All the men and women were clapping their hands all the time to mark the rhythm. All of the dancing is done by stomping your feet, and, for the girls, twirling their skirts. The dancers almost always danced alone. There was also one man who came to dance. Unfortunately though, I did not understand very much of what they were saying.

My brother loved the dances and kept staring with his mouth open at the dancers and singers there. But that did not stop him from eating half of our food... We ate lots of tapas, which are basically appetizers in Spain. My favorite tapas are xipirones, which are little fried squids.

Here is a cool picture that we found of a flamenco dancer:

http://blogs.elcorreodigital.com/media/hechizo_flamenco_farbe_01.jpg

Red Socks

Unfortunately my new school in Spain has uniforms. The uniforms consist of: black shorts, black pants, a red polo shirt, a white turtleneck shirt, a red sweater, big black leather shoes that give you blisters and make you sweat till your feet prune, and accursed red socks that make me look nerdy and look nerdy themselves! The socks are also very tight and stick to my feet... The school decides which combinations we wear, the summer one (red polo, black shorts) or the winter one (white turtleneck, black pants).

Anyway enough about the uniforms. On my street a school bus comes at 7:43 to pick me up. It is an hour ride to school. When I get there I go almost straight to class. At school most of the classes are in English but four of them are in Spanish. The day before school I felt really freaked out and now I still am a bit but I'm getting a bit better. One thing I don't really like very much about school is that all the other kids always speak in Spanish together and I don't understand much of what they say. Some good news is that our only homework is some things we don't finish during the day.

Barcelona: Goodbye Summer

We have been here since Saturday. In Barcelona we have an apartment with 2 floors and that’s really nice on one of the most famous streets, Paseo de Gracia. There is a picture of our building above. So far we haven’t done much. I have mostly been learning Spanish, preparing for the school year and updating my blog. My school is called St Peter’s (but it's not religious) and it has uniforms. The uniform is OK but it has shoes and socks that look very bad. The good thing for me is that the school is mostly in English (and some in Spanish). But all the students are Spanish.

I have also had some ice cream here, which is not nearly as good as in Italy but still good. We have also had some good Spanish food, but usually we eat dinner at home. Here they have 4 meals a day, and they are later than we do. Breakfast is at the same time as home, and lunch is at 2:00pm. Between lunch and dinner they have a little snackish meal called merienda, then dinner is at 10pm or 11pm, but we eat a little earlier than that.

A Good Summer Read: 6,000 Pages

This summer, since July 1, I have read more than I have ever read in my life in a short amount of time. I read 15 “real” books or more. They are Harry Potter 4, 5, 6 and 7 (some more than once), the Amber Spy Glass, A Series of Unfortunate Events 1 and 2, Sign of the Beaver, The Thief Lord, Tucker’s Travels, Scorpia, The Diamond Frontier, Eragon, Eldest and the Fall – and maybe some others too that I am not counting.

Altogether that means about 6,000 pages in 2 months. I think I read so much this year because I had no camp to go to, so this is something to do and I enjoy reading. On average that is about 100 pages per day.

Cadaques: Did Someone say “Beach”?

Our house in Cadaques was very close to the water and the beach, and the main square. We drove the car as close as we could to where our house was. We had to drag all of our luggage a couple of rocky streets up a hill to get to the house. I did not help bring anything in as I was still feeling sick from the ride. The house was an old fisherman’s house from the 1800’s, and was owned by a violinist. It had 4 floors. The first floor used to be where the fishermen kept their fish, and it had 2 couches. One of them we accidentally broke later on and repaired. The other one folded out into a bed. The whole house had 8 beds and could sleep 11 people. Also we had a mysterious room that had no door and no trap door: we could only see it through a window.

The next day I found out the world track and field championships were on, and my Dad let me watch TV for the first time since we were in Europe to watch them. So the coming week I spent a lot of my idle time in the morning watching the championships on TV. The next day, we went to a rocky beach, and my dad and I went snorkeling. When Lindsay went into the water she broke her sandals, and suddenly miraculously fit in mine... When we got back to the house my feet were all orange from my new orange sandals. The next day we went to a big waterpark that was a lot of fun. We spent the whole day there.

Then, we went to an old Greek and Roman city that is being excavated called Empuries. The name Empuries comes form the name “emporion” which means marketplace because it was a big trade city. Also, right outside the city, there was an amphitheater and – now this is pretty disgusting so brace yourselves – there was a penis carved on the walls of the city which was supposed to keep the city safe. There were also mosaics on a bunch of the old floors, and there were water tanks called cisterns that were made so well that they still held water in them – so the water they had in them could be thousands of years old. There were also still piers and breakwaters to protect the ships on the beach. The beach was so nice there that we decided to come back the next day just to stay on the beach. Before we left, my dad sent me out to buy some bread on my own, so we could make sandwiches. I came back with bread AND caps for a capgun! At the beach, my dad saw a foot-long fish jump out of the water in the waves. I lost a tooth at the restaurant taking out my retainer. I tried to put it in my baby sitter's plate as a surprise while she went to the bathroom but she figured it out.

Tomorrow we are leaving for Barcelona. We are going to stay there until the end of the year. Then we go to Paris in France.

Cavaillon: Baby Emperor

We finally arrived around noon. But when we looked in there were still a bunch of people in the pool playing around – nobody had left yet of the previous renters. We went to ask if this was even the right house, and found it was… We were told we could move in right then, but, as they were still cleaning the house, we decided to offload our huge luggage and go out to lunch.

When we came back everyone was gone. On the outside there were a very big garden, a croquet area, a ping pong table, a badminton court, a petanque court, a pool, an open pool house and an outdoor kitchen. On the inside downstairs, there was a huge living area with 4 big rooms linked together and a kitchen. In the far room there was a piano, a table, and a couch. In the next room, there was just one big table and chairs. In the next one there was another big couch, a TV, and an Xbox that did not work. The front room had plants and a big closet with lots of clothes and shoes. Then there was also a bathroom and a desk to the left. Upstairs there were 3 bathrooms and 7 bedrooms. Two of my cousins and my aunt shared the biggest bedroom with me. At night the same day my other French aunt and uncle arrived with my 3-year old cousin Clara and my newborn boy cousin Julian. For the first few days everybody was concentrating on Julian. He was named after a roman emperor.

In the whole week we only went out once. The rest of the time, we stayed at the house playing badminton, ping pong, all kinds of pool games and other outdoor games. A few nights into our stay, we had a fashion show using each other’s clothes and the clothes that were left in the house. My cousin Ariel (he is a boy) and I dressed up as girls, and my little brother dressed up as a little girl with a purse. My cousin Morane (she is a girl) dressed up as Michael Jackson, my cousin Clara dressed up as a witch (although she looked more like a pirate), my aunt dressed up as Michael Moore and my baby sitter Lindsay also dressed up as a boy. The next day we went out to watch the movie Ratatouille that my French family had not seen yet (but I had). The bathrooms in that movie theater are like dungeons: we have to go down two flights of stairs then there is a long deserted hallway.

The next day my cousins Ariel and Morane, my uncle Michel and I went out to play golf. My uncle Michel and I kept breaking tees and my cousin Ariel kept pushing them into the ground. My cousin Morane was the only one who was not damaging them at all. Then on the way back we ate some pastries and pizza. French pastries are really good! That was our last day at the house in Cavaillon. The next day we left for Cadaques in Spain. As we were ready to leave I started feeling sick, so my Mom turned the AC in the van while we waited 20 minutes for my Dad. Right as my dad got back, I threw up. For the whole trip I had a garbage bag by my side so that I could get sick as needed. When we were almost in Spain I did it again, and we had to stop at Carrefour (a big French chain of supermarkets) to let me feel better and also buy me some medication. That was the end of our week in France.