Que pasa?

Wednesday I wake up still sick. I roll out of bed, put on a hat, grab a granola bar...I'm ready for the day :) We all metroed over to the Barcelona waterside to meet Cece for a tour of Forum, a large series of public buildings within urban planned area of rejuvenation designed by a firm she worked for. Since it looked like it was going to rain we walked around the urban spaces. The area was built to revitalize the waterfront, create more beautiful public space, educate locals and be able to support the education of people from around the world. Across from the museum that showcased Barcelona's initiatives in public planning and green initiatives was the Barcelona Civic Center, the largest auditorium space in Europe. The site is over a water purification center as well as some roadways. Its very interesting. There's playgrounds for kids, paths with bungee "stepping stones" that launched you in the air, and playful polka dotted detailing in certain parts. I could ramble on about the interesting urban design, but I tend to be too long-winded as it is.

The museum was awesome because it has a model of the entire city of Barcelona. Its massive. Its beautiful. If I had to do something of that size I'd die. It was really impressive though.

Wednesday afternoon we had studio. We went out into the city to draw a figure-ground, white paint (represents the voids and negative space of the city) on black paper (becomes the buildings). We paced out a square within a plaza and from those proportions made our own scale. Then Mateusz and I worked together to map out our path North out of the plaza until we hit another plaza. Our end result was slightly abstract, but really interesting. It helped our visual understanding of spatial voids in urban environments.

We went home and I took a siesta (hooray for culturally acceptable napping!), until dinner. By this time I had regain some vocal ability, but I still wanted my bed ASAP. The evening was low-key and we celebrated yet another delicious family dinner.

Thursday I worked on some homework during the day and did some poking around the sidestreets in the area. We have some nice hole-in-the-wall stores.

In the afternoon we had studio again and this time we were in-house. We were working with the figure ground white-on-black relationships again. This time we started with a part of a city (a little hunk of Florence) that we transferred onto the black paper (I did mine backwords so with some finagling and marker I got it to work- oops). Then we started to define the primary, secondary, and tertiary arteries of the city that would, once extended, become the broadways, streets and alleys of void space. We also had to include some civic buildings to insert within the context of "our city." With some of the assignment done by the end of class, we hung them up to look at out progress. Each person attacked the project with a unique interpretation. I was curious to see the completed plans on Monday.

I worked in studio until I had a nice chunk of work done. Stacey had left to meet up with a friend from home that was coincidentally also studying in Barcelona. The game plan was for a group of us to meet up with them later on and go to a bar or club to experience some of the famous Barcelona nightlife.

Hawra, Jessie, and I were invited to Grande Via (the apartment of PJ, Emma, Nick and Kristin Clancey) for dinner. PJ impressed us all with lamb baked with mushrooms. The girls chipped in with potatoes and asparagus that completed a delicious meal. We all socialized and laughed our way through a few hours of conversation and a few bottles of wine. Since it was almost 11 we migrated to my apartment on Plaza Universitat, which is just a few blocks down the street, to meet up with the group of girls.

Walking back to the apartment we found the rest of my apartment, as well as Josh Humphries and Stacey's friend Brendan, waiting for their check at the tapas restaurant located right next to the entrance of our apartment. The raved about the food, which I know had to be good because several people had recommended it to me before my arrival....can't wait to try it!!

We headed upstairs and finished getting ready to meet up with Brendan's roommates and some of their friends (he lives in an international college dorm). We metroed over to his dorm, which is right next to the huge bus depot, and then met his friends. Our group then grabbed a caravan of taxi's to Sutton , a popular nightclub that they had a contact with. We arrived a little after 1 am and were some of the first people in the club! Barcelona nightlife is very different from DC. Drinks cost 11 euro ($16!), which was fine for me because I was enjoying myself meeting new people and exploring the club. It was fashion week in Barcelona, so a bunch of really attractive people, presumably models, were in attendance. The DJ was okay, but as the night got into full swing, the music got better. Models in angelic outfits also were dancing up on the stage. I dragged some of my friends out to dance, when more of our friends showed up at the club and we left to greet them. Finally, I was able to get on the dance floor and had a great time until 5 am....when the rest of my entourage decided to leave, so I reluctantly hailed a taxi back to my apartment.

I woke up on Friday afternoon. The Spanish have these lovely inventions of wooden, interlocking shades that make any room a tomb. Fabulous if you don't care what time it is. I worked that afternoon on studio work and laundry! It was really exciting.

Friday night, Hawra and I decided to take Olga up on her offer and meet her and her students for dinner and multilingual conversation. Hawra and I walked to Restaurant Pandarma, which on the map looked a lot closer than it really was. Entering the building we were slightly confused on the actual location of the restaurant. We then saw an arrow pointing to stairs that hugged the right wall and rose up the back of the lobby. After ascending the stairs we were greeted by the hostess, who after a quick game of cherades, led us to a back room to Olga and a large group of people.

When we thought ESL students, we thought 20-somethings at University. The people in the room ranged in age from 22-75, professional, student, wanderer. They were American, Spanish, Italian, French, and El Salvadorian (is that right?). We began introducing ourselves to this eclectic group of people. Some were very apt and confident in their English, why others knew less than I know of Spanish. The one rule of the night was you weren't allowed to sit next to someone of the same nationality and between our two large tables we did pretty good with the diversity. I was placed between Fatima, a 30-year old architect from El Salvador who practices in Barcelona, and Ramon, a middle-something unengaging man native of Barcelona. Hawra, who sat on the other side of Fatima, and I began testing our Spanish out, while Fatima patiently tried to interpret. Conversation lulled every now and again, we switched over to solid English sprinkled with Spanish, and began to talk about everything from favorite architects (hers was Kahn) to family. We tried to get Ramon to interact, but he just kinda sat there. He eventually rotated and Olga sat next to me.

Some other characters at the dinner table were Owen, an American student who was flamboyantly charismatic; a couple native from the city who I never caught their names; Valentino, an exuberant traveler from Italy; Jonathan, another American and his gorgeous Spanish girlfriend Sophie. There was two older ladies sitting farthest away that I didn't get to meet until desert.

Maria-louisa, one of the mysterious older women, was the funniest person I met all night. When Fatima got up to talk to some of her friends, Maria-louisa cam right over and sat with us. She was rapidly talking in Spanish about her life, her family, and her beloved sister. I caught most of it and was able to translate for Hawra, who sat with a puzzled look on her face for most of the conversation. Maria-Louisa would employ the whole table in a translation game when either I didn't understand her or she didn't understand me. Everyone would laugh at our staccatoed conversations and Maria's anecdotes. She also tried to persuade Hawra and I to go to Brazil, which is where he sister lives, because the men are "Muy, muy, guapo!!!!" (she says this as she does a little dance and closes he eyes). I was cracking up. She's 75, by the way. We laughed and talked though desert and coffee. Some people began to trickle on home. As we said our good-byes to our new friends, I asked Hawra what time it was.....1 am! We had just fallen victim to the Spanish 4 hour dinner :) It was fabulous.

(Gotta run to Spanish class! I'm going to catch up soooooon!)