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