...In Which Sarah Becomes Obsessed With Castellers

Hola a tothom,

It's been a good week or so. As you can probably guess from the title of this post, I have continued going to practices with my castellers colla, and with gusto! I've been to three now, and I learn a lot every time I go. Practice on Tuesday was really fun, because there were less people and more inexperienced people like me, so we spent more time on basics, practicing how to climb, etc. I got stood on a lot, and my shoulders were really sore afterwards, but I was happy about it. It was a very similar feeling to how your collarbones feel after you've just started backpacking - bruised and rubbed on, but accomplished (can collarbones feel accomplished? Well, mine did, anyway). I also learned more about how the pinya is set up and got to be in a position called contrafort, which is one person out from the very center, directly supporting the people who are being stood on. I still don't completely understand this, but it seems to me that sometimes the pinya is just made up of a mass of people all standing around with their hands in the air, whereas sometimes it is extremely well-organized, with everyone in a specific position (crossos, contrafort, bens, laterals, primeres mans, segones mans, etc.), and each of the sections exactly square to each other. In the latter case, it almost seems that the pinya needs to be more precisely organized than the tower itself; if it's lined up slightly wrong, they'll take the whole thing apart and start over. Anyway, clearly I have a lot to learn, but it's all very interesting. I'm also pleased that people remember my name more and more. This past Thursday, we had to practice inside because of the rain, which wasn't as fun, but it meant we were all concentrating and had to be really quiet to hear the cap de pinya calling out positions. At one point he came over to adjust how I had my hands and asked what my name was. When I said Sarah, he said something like, "Another one?!" I laughed and clarified, "Amb h" ("With an h"). In Catalan, the letter h is pronounced "hac," so when I said they could call me "Sarah amb h," he agreed and shortened it to "Sarah-amb-hac, Saramac." We'll see what my name ends up being ... thus far people tend to refer to me either as "Sarah-amb-hac" or "Sarahhh," with an exaggerated sound of aspiration on the end. Either way, at least I'm differentiated from the other Sara's.

Let's see - other exciting things from this week: Yesterday (Saturday) I took a day trip to Girona. It's a lovely little city, half-perched on a mountainside. I was supposed to go for a tour with the Language Voluntariat from UPF, but, unfortunately, I missed the train and had to catch the next one an hour later. By the time I got there, the tour was almost over. Luckily, I had the phone number of my friend Belén, whom I had met last weekend and who is also in the Voluntariat, so I called her and met up with them. I caught the tail end of the tour, which was nice, and then Belén, her boyfriend, visiting from France, and I went to eat lunch. The Fires de Sant Narcís were happening, which are kind of like a weeklong street fair/festival, so there were lots of vendors out with delicious food. We ate in a big park where there was a creepily deserted carnival set up between stands of sycamore trees, then decided to go back to the old part of the city to explore a bit more. We saw the Ramblas, which is much smaller and nicer than the Ramblas in Barcelona, the cathedral, and a good part of the old Jewish neighborhood. We also had coffee (of course) and went in a wine store where the French boyfriend asked in not-very-good Spanish if he could try many of the different local varieties, which were housed in big barrels with taps, before finally buying about 3 liters' worth, which the store owner presented to him in old plastic Coca-Cola bottles. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of Belén and me on one of the bridges in the old city:


Belén and her boyfriend had to leave at about 6:30 because they had dinner plans in Barcelona, but I decided to stay on and explore the city some more. I bought a delicious traditional chocolate pastry and ate it sitting on the old city wall, which dates to the 9th century. Here's a picture, for your viewing pleasure:After enjoying my pastry and getting some odd looks from passers-by, I hiked around the slightly-less-old city walls (from the 14th century) and watched the sun set over the University of Girona, the cathedral, and, in the background, the mountains:

It was really beautiful. I could have lived there, I think.

To end the evening, I had seen in a program that there would be castellers, so, of course, I had to go! The only problem was, I had no idea where the plaza was where they would be performing. I was going to ask someone, but then I saw someone walking by in a castellers outfit! I decided to just follow along - surreptitiously, of course. This proved problematic when he went into a bar and started chatting, and I couldn't just stand outside and wait. A very silly half hour or so then ensued during which I followed various castellers around the old neighborhood, trying to be discreet, periodically losing track of one group and then spotting another. Finally they seemed to be converging on one small plaza, so I noted it in my mind and decided to go to a cafe for a bit, since it was still a while before they were scheduled to perform. Shortly afterward, however, I heard the traditional music that's played while a castell is in progress! I thought, "Oh no, they've started early after all!" But no, they were actually having a parade through the city, so I jumped up and went along with them! We processed across a bridge and wound our way through the newer part of the city to an entirely different plaza that I never would have found on my own, traditional instruments playing the whole time. Then, after much organizing and milling around, they finally started making castells. I only got to stay for a few, because I had to catch the last train back to Barcelona at 9:30, but it was a lot of fun to watch them and actually know what was going on. Plus, it made me that much more excited to imagine myself all dressed up in my shirt and faixa, actually participating in an actuacion. I can't wait!

So, overall I would say the week and the weekend were a success. I can't wait until practice on Tuesday now - also, we have a welcome dinner for the new members of the colla like me on Thursday night! I'm so glad I've joined - I think it's my favorite thing I've done so far in Catalunya. I'll keep you updated as to how things go!

Fins aviat,
Sarah

Arreplegats!

Hola a tothom,

Things have been starting to feel a lot more normal around here recently, which is nice - I'm busy, but I have a regular schedule (it took long enough!). I spend a lot of time in transit around the city and out to UAB, but that's OK, largely because a). the UAB decided to pay for my metro tickets, so I now have a monthly pass, and b). I finally got a bike on Wednesday! I got it through bicicampus, the program I wrote about earlier. It was so exciting! It's kind of challenging to find the best routes around the city on bike, because a lot of streets are one-way and/or, as happened to me yesterday, have huge demonstrations randomly occurring on them and blocking all traffic, but I'm still able to get places much more quickly, which is awesome. Plus, it's really fun to be able to ride a bike again! I have really missed it all summer.

OK, here's my big news of the week (although most people who read this blog probably already know it): I've joined a group of castellers! Yes, the crazy people who climb on top of each other and make human towers - there's a picture of them in an earlier post! The group (in Catalan it's called a "colla") is called Arreplegats de la Zona Universitària. "Arreplegat" basically means "piled up," so I guess I'm part of the pile! Normally, the colles are from specific neighborhoods or towns, and include a wide variety of age groups, including little kids who climb up to the top because they're the lightest. My colla is a bit unorthodox because it's entirely made up of people associated with the universities in Barcelona (any of them) - students, faculty, etc. Because we don't have young children, our towers are heavier and tend to be shorter, so we don't really compete against the other groups as much. I'm glad, though, because it lets people like me who have no idea what they're doing participate! All of this came about because of an event I went to last Saturday called "Català means feeling!" (so corny, I know) designed to promote Catalan language and culture for foreign students. I went on a tour of the Casa Amatller, a modernist house, then went to the Universitat Ramon Llull, where there was food, music, a wine tasting, an attempt at organizing speed dating (that was really funny to watch - I didn't participate!), and, finally, a castellers workshop. I was curious to see how it would work, and it turned out to be a small contingent of people from the group who came and did a few demonstrations, then invited people to participate. I volunteered, so I got to help with a few really small towers. Afterwards, I was talking to one of the girls in the group, and she invited me to come out to their practices! I was so thrilled.

I went to my first practice ("assaig," in Catalan) on Thursday. I got there late because I had class, and I was kind of nervous, but it was a lot of fun. The dynamic of the practice was a great mixture between barely controlled chaos and then everyone finally coming together right before they tried a tower and concentrating really hard. There were people walking around taking down everyone's names and making nametags so they could keep track of who was who, and when I said my name was Sarah, they all kind of groaned and said they would have to come up with a nickname because there were too many Sarahs. Then I didn't see the people with the nametags again for a while, and when I found them and asked if they had a name for me, they said I could just be Sarah after all, and all the other ones would have to come up with nicknames! It was still confusing, though, because they kept calling another one Sarah (or Sara), even though her nametag said Sareta.

I got to practice climbing up someone at the beginning (I still need to practice more - there's a very particular technique...), and then I spent most of the time helping form the pinya, which is the group of people at the bottom that provides support and spots for the people climbing. Quick vocab lesson on castellers: the group at the bottom is called the pinya, then the people who make up all the tiers are called the tronc (like the trunk of a tree). Then there are three specific positions that make up the top part, called the pom: the dossos, which are two people who stand on the top tier of the tronc (called dossos because there are two, or dos, of them), then the acotxador, who kind of crouches on top of them, and finally the enxaneta, who stands on the very top and waves ("fa l'aleta") to signal that the tower is complete. As I said, I was in the pinya the whole time on Thursday. Basically I would stand around and watch as the people in the tronc and pom got into position, then one of the captains, either the cap de colla or the cap de pinya, would grab me and place me somewhere, explaining quickly in Catalan whom I was supposed to support and how. I spent a lot of time holding my arms up in the air! We actually had one castell fall, which was scary, but it reassured me because we were able to catch everyone really easily and no one got hurt at all. The tactic of making a human cushion actually seems to work really well!

I think we're going to start having practices on Tuesdays as well as Thursdays, which is good because I won't have to be late on Tuesdays and that way can learn more quickly. I'm so excited to be in the colla, though - it's a lot of fun, all the people seem really friendly and welcoming, and it's a great way to practice my Catalan. If I'm ever in any big castells, I'll put up pictures! Haha, I have a lot of practicing to do before I get to that point... In case anyone is curious, here's the website of the colla (it's in Catalan, but it might be fun to look around anyway): www.arreplegats.cat.

Hope everyone is doing well - I'll try to keep you better updated!
Una abraçada,
Sarah

Love/Hate Relationship

Whew - sorry I haven't written in so long! It's been kind of a crazy few weeks. I've been alternating between standing in line for long periods of time and arguing with representative of Spanish bureaucracy on the one hand and then going to awesome, free festivals for the the celebration of Barcelona's patron saint, La Mercè, on the other. I'll vent briefly about the bureaucracy, then get on to the good stuff: sometimes I think all I do in Spain is stand in line! There's even an expression for the activity of standing in line: "hacer cola" (or "fer cua" in Catalan). The main thing I've been dealing with is extending my student visa, which I finally succeeded at on Tuesday. Hooray! I can legally live here now! It really shouldn't have been that difficult of a process, except that my residence hall decided to be uncooperative and not give my any of the information I need to register in the civil registry, a necessary step for extending one's visa. It was incredibly frustrating to be in a position of mediating for about a week between government officials who said, "You absolutely have to have the name and DNI of the director of your residence on this letter certifying that you live there" and people at my residence who said, "We absolutely can't put a name or a DNI on this letter." Ack! I was about at the point of saying, "Look! If you won't give me this information, then I clearly I can't live here anymore and have to go look for an apartment, thereby causing you to lose money! Don't you understand this situation?!" Fortunately, I finally got them to give me the bare minimum of what was necessary, and, after registering on Monday, was able to go to the Chief of Police on Tuesday, where I took a number and waited for an hour in a makeshift "waiting room" (a cordoned-off section of a garage with chairs set up) to be able to take another number and go wait in the real waiting room. Once I finally got up to a desk, I had everything and was almost home free except that my passport photos were too big (apparently U.S. passport size is not the same as Spanish passport size). I was about to lose it, but fortunately the lady said there was a place around the corner where I could take more pictures, and she gave me a special pass so I wouldn't have to wait in line again when I came back. So finally everything worked out! My current/next challenge is matriculating at the UB and UAB, which will undoubtedly involve more lines and paperwork.

As for fun stuff - there's been a lot of it recently, fortunately! La Mercè was pretty incredible. I've never seen an entire city participate in a festival so whole-heartedly for a whole week. Also, large-scale public events just seem to work better here than in U.S. cities. Maybe it's because everyone really wants them to go smoothly. I was so impressed when we had read in a guide that they were giving out free bread and chocolate at this museum, and then when we showed up, they actually were! What's more, everyone was being perfectly calm and civil about it - there were no lines (amazing!), pushing or shoving. You just walked up to a table, took your bread and chocolate, and enjoyed it. Lovely. A similar experience happened when I was wandering around the Parc de la Ciutadella, where there were all sorts of stalls and booths and stages set up, as well as troops of people dressed up like giraffes or giant ants playing instruments and walking around:

Inside a formal garden next to the Parlament de Catalunya, there were tons of really comfortable folding lawn chairs set up for people to sit in, while lovely guitar music played. Once again, I was amazed at how calmly people reacted to this. It felt very dreamlike, actually, in the sense that I found myself thinking, "Of course - why shouldn't I sit for a while in these chairs, listen to the music, watch the clouds, then move on and let someone else sit here?" Here's a picture:

Absolutely the most incredible thing I saw during the Mercè, though, was the correfoc. It's hard to describe, but I'll do my best. Correfoc literally means "fire run"; basically it was a huge parade through the old city consisting of teams of people from different neighborhoods and sometimes large beasts they had made out of paper mache (I think) holding excessive amounts of really big sparklers, usually set up on rotating poles so that, when lit, they whirled around in circles and sprayed a lot of sparks all over everyone watching. The people in the parade were ususally dressed up as devils, with long capes and head-coverings and fireproof gloves, as they were literally in the middle of exploding fireworks. I have never seen so many explosions up so close - it was crazy but so much fun, and everyone around me was so excited and into it. At the beginning, an announcer up on a platform next to me told a story in Catalan that I could mostly follow about some legendary creature that had always been associated with the correfoc but was forbidden by Franco, so some knights (interesting mix of medieval legend and recent history) went to rescue it and freed it from its chains, at which point it vowed to always protect Catalan culture and traditions. All of this was acted out, with lots of fireworks as well. At the end, as a sort of invocation, he said something like, now the festival will begin, "amb foc, la millora manera d'expresar la nostra joia!" ("with fire, the best way to express our joy!"). I loved it. I felt so proud to be able to understand and cheer along when he addressed us as "Barcelonins i Barcelonines!"
Here's the mythical creature whose name I'm not sure of:And a view from the sidewalk:
It was incredible.

OK, I need to get to bed! Hope that's given you a snapshot of what's going on here. I'll try to write more regularly - that will make it easier to keep up with everything, anyway!
Somriures,
Sarah