A Day in Review: Connections

When you ask me to describe Barcelona in one word, I will probably drag you around in a circle like I always do when someone asks me to describe something in one word. There is no possible way any person could fully describe anything with a single word. I sometimes like to symbolize this moment as ´the moment when someone asks you if you like a girl´. Not only because of the fact that I drag the person around in circles until they give up, but also because there is no possible way high school drama can be apprehended with only one word, or in this case-- a yes or no. But of course if you really insist o having me regurgitate a list of boring words, I am only a URL away from an online thesaurus; but in full honesty, that is epically boring and something that any person can do. Instead, I will tell you a story of my birthday--yes that was today (better mark it in your calendar for next year, and the many years to come HINT HINT).

Now as you may have seen, I have titled this blog post ´Á Day in Review: Connections´. And what I wanted to stress in this blog post was the connectivity between our two cultures, and personalities. Coming from two different countries on the other side of the planet, this experience has been absolutely phenomenal but at the same time inspirational. Oh and of course ´éducational´ for our spanish cultural needs. But I find that it is the small obscure details that connect us. It´s not just the music and video games but its just that indescribable quality and tension that exists between our two groups of people. It´s human nature in a scientific sense, but I like to describe it as a common code that connects us to each other.

When I woke up this morning, my first thought was that it was my birthday. I´m being honest here. But my second thought was how this extremely kind host family was going to go about troubling themselves to celebrate my birthday. The result-- was impressive. From an absolutely fascinating science museum trip to a incredibly ´fresh´ restaurant experience, I have had undoubtedly the best birthday that I have had (yes parents, you have competition now). The next person who talks to me about Science World in Vancouver, I will chuckle in a polite manner and then suddenly change into an extremely dangerously serious expression and tell them that that museum is a joke--yes, its not even a joke, its really an excuse for a museum. I believe you have probably connected the dots and used your deductive logic to figure out that I only think this because I have visited possibly one of the most prestigiously designed science museums in the world-- The Cosmo Caixa. It´s massive, it´s cool, it´s funded by an extremely wealthy bank (not really during this recession but still very impressive), and of course it was very ´éducational´ as well. The museum features not only many historic artifacts ranging from fossils to ancient writing, but also many pavilions representing different scientific laws.

But wait, the fun didn´t end there. No, it never ends in Barcelona (not even in my sleep), but my heart stopped when I took a bite of Mariqueria Castro´s fish. Now I sound like some extremely spoiled travel journalist sponsored by some random travel agency. BUT ANYWAYS... this restaurant was able to effectively produce many plates of seafood to a very high quality. The food was fresh, and I could still taste the freshness even when it was cooked. A very fresh experience no? Now I´m just getting cheesy.

But to top off the entire day, was watching Chronicle in spanish, and also a very interesting game of bowling at you guessed it-- the bowling alley. The earlier seems more interesting, because I laugh when its not funny. It´s funny because thats what I do when I hear a single word I understand in spanish followed by a bunch of slurred sounds, very impressive how fast the dubbed speakers speak. So what happens when you mix a bunch of teenagers from two completely different futures together? Simple-- trouble for the parents and teachers, but a great time for the students and children. But now I must end my story here, not because I need to look ´sexy´ for anything, but because my spanish buddy is getting mad that I have written an essay and used it as an excuse for a blog. I think it could be much worse, but if he doesn´t stop me, I would probably write the internet here.

P.S. Sorry for the extraneous accents, I am using a Mac keyboard in spanish, it´s really testing my IQ.

Saturday

Writing this very late on Sunday, sorry for the confusion.

Yesterday was an open house day at SEK-Catalunya, so I went with Lucia (my buddy) to school.  On Saturday.  After observing Model United Nations -- which is difficult to understand in English, let alone Spanish -- I spent the rest of the morning with Jotham, Simran and Aliya, whose buddies were also there.  Let it suffice to say that playing Grounders on a playground you don´t know is extremely difficult and may result in scrapage of the skin.

For lunch (normally at two o´clock here in Spain), my host family, Connor, and I went to a nearby café, because the kitchen area was being used by some university students to film a movie.  That café has the most amazing orange juice ever; I could have drank three more cups.  Anyways, after lunch we hung around the little square by the restaurant, waiting to see the bike race that goes around Barcelona.  It took about thirty minutes for the first biker to arrive, another thirty minutes for the second, and an hour between that and the rest of the bikers, who must have been held up somewhere.  That´s how it felt, anyways.  Apparently there were more than two hundred of them, but I couldn´t count since we were sitting on a downhill slope.

Since that took so long, right after heading home Lucia, Connor, and I met up with other people in our grade, including Guille and Jotham, and Roger and Colin.  After eating delicious fries we went to a semi-fancy restaurant for dinner (thank goodness we had our own room) for one of our classmate´s birthday party.  The food there was pretty yummy, but there was so much of it.

Everyone learned lots of useful phrases (such as "dudette") and idioms (such as why one cannot say, "I am excited to meet you!" in Spanish).  We also showed Guille, Roger, and Lucia Friday.  Yes, the one by Rebecca Black.  Also, Jotham and Lucia performed a...wonderful rendition of Adele´s Someone Like You.  Wine glasses are instruments, and all animals are gurillas from octania.

Wednesday, 21 March

It´s difficult to over-state the fun we had today.  I think not many would disagree with me if I say today was the best day we´ve had in Barcelona.

In the morning, I woke up to the call of my buddy´s mother (and the alarm on my watch, but the call was more effective).  I opened the window blinds and looked into a "monkey´s wedding", which, according to Ms. McFadyen, is the state of weather in which it is raining but sunny at the same time.  I got dressed and had yougurt for breakfast.

I arrived at school with my Spanish buddy Dani at 9:30, but unlike Monday and Tuesday, we didn´t go to class.  Instead, we met up with my friends and their Spanish buddies and waited for the teachers outside the school.  After the teachers arrived, we got onto a bus.  The bus took us to the famous Salvador Dali Museum.  On the bus, we had lots of fun talking and playing Truth or Dare.  The bus ride took about an hour and a half, so when we got there we were all anxious to stretch our legs and get some fresh air.  We were there early, so we spent 20 minutes being typical tourists outside the Museum.  Once the Museum opened and we were allowed in, we were tantalized by a variety of artwork, some created by Salvador Dali, some created by other artists.  One painting particularly stuck to my memory: when you looked at it up close, you will only see the back of a lady, but when viewed at a distance, the face of Abraham Lincoln is revealed.

After our visit to the Dali Museum, we returned to our bus and our game of Truth or Dare.  We were taken to a medieval town called Girona, where I had my lunch.  We were given around an hour of free time there.  I spent the hour hanging out and singing with my friends.

When we returned to the bus, we continued to sing, play games, make handshakes, learn Spanish cuss words, and other unproductive things like that.  At the end of the day, a lot of us were tired, but still excited for the dinner we´re having together tonight, with our Spanish friends.  Speaking of which, I have to go shower now and look good for tonight.  But today, I really had the time of my life, and I´m sure many others would say the same.

Cheers,
the King of Joy

P.S. Parents: If you´re not seeing your child´s blog post, it is because of technical difficulties, but I can assure you they are still alive.

Monday March 19

 

 

Well, today is monday, the first day that we start going to school. It is a very big school and there were many classes to attend. Luckily, the classes were not too long and some were fairly easy to understand whereas, there were some classes in Catalan. For the first class, I went to Spanish with Pol (my spanish buddy) and in spanish class, they went over their homework and.... that was all. It was very odd for me because I am used to having grammar lessons in spanish class. Then, we had Socials Science (which might be called Socials Studies in Canada), in that class, we went over more homework and then the teacher assigned some work related to tourism for the students to do. After that, we went to math which wasn't too hard fortunately. Then we had SECOND breakfast! During second breakfast, the parents would pack some sandwiches for us to eat and we would all meet up outside and eat. Then, it's back to class for us. We then went to French. In French, I did not do much because they had an exam, so I just sat there staring at the wall and out the windows. Then it was art, in art, they had to design a logo for a company they were creating. I did not have a company but I started drawing a few logos (which weren't that good). Then we had Lunch, which was in a cafeteria. There wasn't much food in the cafeteria but there were alot of people. I had chicken, it was pretty good despite the fact that it was a bit more dry than I was used to. After lunch we had a really long break outside. During that break I played a little bit of soccer but then I just left to go talk to people. After that, we had two more classes, we went to Lab, where we watched a video about the manhattan project. Then after lab, we went to English (which was another exam, but it was done in pairs so I worked with Pol). After english, we went home. At home I had an early dinner (6:00PM). Then I got on the computer and worked on this.

Saturday, March 17

Today was the day we arrived in Barcelona! Besides the long, boring flights, we had quite a lot of excitement and stress over speaking to our families in Spanish! I am quite ashamed to say I mostly speak to my family in English...but ANYWAY, they met us at the airport with awesome balloons and kindness and everyone was gone pretty quickly. From here I can merely describe my own experience. My family took me to their small village called La Garriga, which is quite close to SEK. It's a tiny place but I love it already. The buildings are so old and grand and I feel like I've been transported to another time! My family's house is quite amazing and large, and they were kind enough to give me is room with an awesome massive window. They have a cool puppy, a boxer named Darma who is very excitable. They have a billion fish, a few birds, some rabbits...it's pretty cool, to say the least. They kept encouraging me to take a jacket before we walked to a ten o'clock dinner, but I insisted that the weather was like summer for me! The food was great, even though I have dietary restrictions there was still so much to eat and it was so good and I'm really stuffed. A few things that struck me: they were so cool about sharing food! They double dipped and didn't bother using spoons to take sauces, just dipped the food in and I loved it. They were also very slow eaters, something I'm not used to at all! They took their time with everything they ate, and the conversation was slow, tranquil and not the loud rush that I'm used to. I hope everyone had the same great experience I did! Aliya :)

Thank you Joy Ming for creating this fab blog and presenting in assembly today, great job!