Barceloneta and Chelsea

A few days ago we went to Barceloneta. Barceloneta is a neighborhood of Barcelona that is right next to the harbor. We got to Barceloneta in the subway. We were supposed to take an immediate right to get to the aquarium but instead we took a slow right turn and we missed the right way: we ended up totally on the wrong side of the harbor. All around there were very cool buildings and restaurants. My first impression of Barceloneta was thinking that it was exactly like San Francisco, which I still do think now! We walked by a lot of restaurants, then by a large strip where people were selling all kinds of arts and crafts. There were necklaces, purses, and others. When we finally noticed that we had gone the wrong way, we had to walk all the way back down towards the old harbor. At the very end of the whole road was the big Aduana building, in other words an old customs building. In the harbor that we walked by, there were some pretty big ships, and also some sailboats that were always coming in and out. Once I also saw a gigantic cargo ship that seemed to come in and then go back out.

In Barceloneta we went to a very big aquarium called"L'Aquarium Barcelona". In the aquarium there were a lot of interesting fish and sharks. For instance there were some odd looking seahorse kind of fish that looked like a plant, except that it moved a lot so we could tell that it was a fish. There were also humungo sharks that swam over your head in the glass tunnel!

PS - you are probably wondering what the heck Chelsea has to do with this. Well, first, for those of you who don't know, it is an English soccer team. This is just a tip, but if any of the British teachers in my school ask you anything about soccer that involves the Chelsea team in any way whatsoever, always in some way or another answer "Chelsea is the best", or they will consider the answer wrong...

One hour late makes no difference

At school right now I am learning German, Spanish (four times a week) and Catalan. Catalan is the language that people generally speak in this area, that is, Barcelona and all of Catalunya. Catalunya is a region of Spain. Catalan is related to Spanish and French and Italian. I learn mostly Spanish, though, because all the kids speak it when we are out at recess. Other classes I have are English every day, PE twice a week, Science four times a week, Math every day, Art, Social Education twice a week, Computers, Religion and Music. We also have Assembly once a week. I have soccer (here they call it football in English and Futbol in Spanish) twice a week at school after school.

As I said earlier, I was really spooked out when I came to this school. But I made many friends quickly, they are really, really nice and they helped me out at the beginning. This week I went to a double birthday party, for two people. One is called Gian and the other is called Alejandro. And, for some reason, all of a sudden, at the end of the birthday party, a lot of my friends asked me for playdates. That was a really cool birthday. When we arrived everybody was jumping on really big trampolines, where I did front flips and back flips on. Then, after about half an hour, we went inside, and we had a snack of various kinds of chips, pop corn, coke and fanta, and very small sandwiches (bocadillas). Then we gave out the presents, and then we played some karaoke where we sang songs with microphones and boomboxes. Then we played videogames on PS2. I was with my friend Hugo and we played Formula 5 racing and NBA 2004 basketball. At the very end we went back to the trampolines right before being picked up. It was a great birthday!!

I did not tell you that we got lost on to the way to the birthday party and wasted about an hour, so if something had happened before the trampoline I cannot tell you. We were so late, in fact, that after a while we had to stop at a gas station to get something to eat because I had not had any lunch and I was getting a bit hungry. We made it almost all the way to the building, but then we could not find exactly the right building although we did pass it at least thrice:-) I mean three times... We went up the same streets about a hundred times, and we asked a thousand people for directions, and they kept sending us left and right - they all told us different directions. The only person who told us the right direction in the end was a gas station attendant.

The other good news is that I have also become friends with a boy who lives in the same building as us, and who goes to the same school too, just he is in the other class 4 (there are two class 4s in my school).

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.