It's really feeling like spring here in Barcelona, which means perfect weather for strolling around a neighborhood in the sun or walking around barefoot at castellers practice, but not such a great motivation to stay inside and study... regardless, things are going along fairly well, both in my classes and otherwise. I really don't have much work, so I can't complain, though I have to keep reminding myself to go check out books from the library for various background readings. The only big project I'm working on is a presentation for my History of the Catalan Language class, in which I have to analyze a text from a certain region of Catalunya (or, more accurately, the linguistic domain of Catalan - my group has Mallorca) and contrast it with the standard dialect as developed by the grammaticist Pompeu Fabra and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans around the 1920s. It's a really interesting project, but a little overwhelming, just because I have basically zero previous knowledge to go on. But I've been reading a lot of articles and, little by little, learning what I need to learn... It makes me even more conscious than before of the language being spoken around me - and I mean language in the sense of the Catalan word "llenguatge" rather than "llengua" or "idioma," the register or manner of speaking rather than which language is being spoken (like when someone says, "Watch your language!"). There are a couple of Arreplegats from Mallorca, and I love hearing them use specific traits of that region, like the "article salat" ("sa" instead of "el" or "la" for the article "the" - ex. "sa gent," "sa poble" instead of "la gent," "el poble") or the form "mos" instead of "nos" or "ens" for the first person plural pronoun. Haha, now I've probably bored you all with too much grammar - it really is fascinating to me, though.
Let's see, what have I been up to since I last wrote? Well, two weekends ago was our big trip to Perpinyà with Arreplegats, which turned out to be pretty fantastic. We all had to get up reeeeally early Friday morning to go up to the Zona Universitària and bring all of our food and supplies down from our office to the bus, which was waiting in front of one of the libraries of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC). I'm sure all the kids heading to class were wondering why on earth about 50 people, at least half of them already dressed in bright green shirts and white pants, were so enthusiastically rolling huge carts stacked with tomato sauce and coke bottles down the hill from one of the buildings at 8:00 in the morning... Anyway, once we finally got loaded up and under way we got to Perpinyà pretty quickly, stopping only once at a gas station to go to the bathroom, give the people who had forgotten to bring food for the potluck dinner that night the chance to buy something, and make the obligatory pilar de 4 in the parking lot.
We arrived at the University of Perpinyà around 12 and immediately had a joint actuación with the university colla there, the Mangoners. They're a very small and new group, but were really enthusiastic and welcoming, which was fun. We each made 3 rounds of castells separately and then did a couple of joint castells, with castellers from both groups together. Because we had less people than we would have at an actuación in Barcelona, we couldn't make any castells of 7 stories, but we successfully made a 5 de 6, torre de 6 (2 people per story), and 4 de 6 amb l'agulla. The most exciting of these for me was the 5d6, because it was my debut as a baixa "a plaça" - in a real castell during an actuación, that is! That's right, I had 5 stories of people standing directly on top of me! I have to admit, it was harder than I expected it to be, even though I had been baixa for castells of 5 stories in practice. The one extra story made a big difference - it hurt my shoulders, but, more than that, just the sheer pressure of that much weight made it physically hard to breathe. My contrafort (the person right behind me, against my back) helped me a lot, though, and together we made it. Afterwards a bunch of people came up and gave me hugs and congratulated me. My "godmother," Maria, asked me exactly where I had been, and when I told her which direction I had been facing she realized that she had been in my rengla, the column of people directly above me - meaning she had climbed up me and neither of us had realized it at the time! It was a good actuación, even if it wasn't one of our biggest; it felt good to be back in the plaça with my Arreplegats.
Group photo: Arreplegats in green (of course), Mangoners in white:
Afterwards we headed to the headquarters of the Castellers del Riberal, the conventional team of the area (a.k.a. not from the university), where we were staying. They had a really nice space, with a big central area for practicing/eating, a kitchen, a bathroom with showers, and two smaller rooms where we put out sleeping bags and slept. Once we settled in, some of us got restless and started making pilars (the normal solution for boredom - hey, we are castellers, after all!), so we ended up having an impromptu practice that afternoon.
Practice at the local of the Castellers del Riberal:
Friday night was kind of crazy but a lot of fun, involving lots of music and dancing, baptism of novatus (including me! I'm an officially baptized Arreplegada now!!), surprise games organized by a few old-timers who came along even though they're not in the university anymore, etc... We also voted for L'Hereu and La Pubilla, which are positions that originally referred to the eldest son and daughter of a Catalan family who traditonally inherited the land/property, and now are sort of like Prom King and Queen, as far as I could tell from everyone's explanations - and I got elected La Pubilla! It was very exciting (and funny, since I still didn't quite know what it was when they announced that I had won it). I was given a ribbon with the red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag that says "Pubilla Perpinyà 2009" on it to wear around my chest all night, and at random times throughout the weekend people came up to me and said, "Visca la Pubilla!" Oh man, I love Arreplegats...
Most of the day Saturday was devoted to napping, playing volleyball in the parking lot, reading the latest issue of the colla's magazine, the Arreplegator, and generally recovering from the night before (though an intrepid group not including me went into town to a rugby game all afternoon!). Around 7:00 in the evening the Castellers del Riberal showed up and we had a joint official practice. Afterwards we all had dinner together, then we had the annual - and very dramatic - guys vs. girls castell-building contest. After much negotiating we decided on a points system and that there would be 3 rounds of castells and a round of pilars, like a normal actuación. Clearly I was for the girls, but I have to say I ended up being incredibly impressed by the castells everyone made. Objectively the guys won with a 3 de 6 per sota, 4 de 6 amb l'agulla, 4 de 6 net (no pinya!) and AWESOME pilar de 5 amb folre (a folre is a second tier of pinya supporting the pilar from on top of the pinya!). However, the girls also did really well with a 3 de 6, 4 de 6, pilar de 4 net, and a history-making 3 de 6 amb l'agulla, the first time that castell had ever been descarregat (completed) by Arreplegats! It's both pretty amusing and inspiring that our girls or guys alone can make bigger castells than some other entire collas ... just think about what we can do together!
I came back from Perpinyà early Sunday morning to go to a small actuación with Poble Sec in Barcelona, thus missing the cooking of the traditional enormous paella, which tragically got knocked over and half-spilled everywhere (it really was tragic - I've seen pictures :) ). All in all it was a great weekend, and it left me even more proud and grateful to be an Arreplegat, as well as excited about our potential for this spring. Now we're really buckling down in practice and trying to get everyone extra-motivated to prepare for our spring Diada, which will be May 8th. We're working towards some pretty amazing castells - the 4 de 8, the 3 de 7 per sota, and the 3 de 7 amb l'agulla - which have never been made by university collas before. I don't want to jinx anything, because all of them will take a lot of work in the next two months and we're certainly not there yet, but I think we're on a roll. After Perpinyà, I think everyone can feel it. We've got the excitement; now we need to calm our jitters a little bit and really focus during the practices we have left.
Changing the subject slightly, while things are clearly going well with Arreplegats, this last week I've really enjoyed the time I've spent with Poble Sec. Last weekend was the inter-casteller soccer tournament, organized and hosted by the Castellers de Sants, which we played in. I think we ranked 11th out of around 30 collas, which isn't too bad I supposed, but the best thing was that we won the prize for best fan group! We really went all out, with a bunch of people (including guys) dressed up like cheerleaders with short white skirts and pompoms, lots of big signs, and a choreographed routine to our own version of "Mamma Mia!" ("Mare Meva!" in Catalan) courtesy of the 10-year-old girls of our canalla. I didn't dress up, but I went to cheer, and ended up having a really great time and staying all day. It was a great way to get to know a lot of the colla that I had never really talked to before.
Cheering at the soccer tournament (I'm the one in the black t-shirt and not wearing a miniskirt!):
After that, I was really looking forward to our practices this week, and they didn't let me down - I got to climb up to the second story in trial runs for the 4 de 6 and 4 de 7 on both Tuesday and Friday! I was pleased with how well it went both days - not that it was easy, but I did it and felt fairly competent. I was reminded again of how important the psychological factor is; I think the thing I did best was just to stay calm and keep mentally going over all the little things I needed to do (look straight ahead, raise your elbows, flex your knees a little, point your toes, don't lean inward, etc.). I might get a chance to climb up to the third story (Mom, I know that makes you nervous!), because on Friday I was doing an espatllera (practice pilar when everyone is holding onto a wall/pole) and climbed up to the third story on top of Benet, one of our caps de colla, who seemed very impressed afterwards and asked me how much I weighed (not an impertinent question in the world of castellers, since it makes a difference to the people you climb on top of!).
We also had a special practice for pinyas on Thursday, which I enjoyed a lot, even though I didn't climb in anything, since the point was to practice the foundation of the castell. Hector, one of the members of the tècnica, drew a diagram of a pinya in chalk on the ground, and we spent a good while just going over each of the different positions, taking turns explaining to each other the things we each knew how to do well and asking questions. Then we put it all together and made several pinyas very carefully, paying better attention to every step than normally happens during practice. I enjoyed it a lot because I felt like we were really working as a team, learning how to communicate and each be aware not only of our job but of the jobs of the people around us and how we could help them. We went to dinner nearby afterwards, which was also a lot of fun. I'm definitely glad I joined Poble Sec, even though I won't get to spend as much time in the colla - I've having a really good time getting to know a conventional colla as well.
Uff, that was a lot to say! Well, I hope you've enjoyed it - I'll keep you all updated as to how things progress. Two weeks from today is a big actuación with Poble Sec, called Santa Madrona, and then the next week two friends from Nashville, Hunter Claire and Elisabeth, come to visit... lots to do but should be fun! Plus I hope to spend even more time sitting in plaças and/or at the beach as the weather gets warmer! :) I suppose I'll find time to study somewhere in there...fins aviat!
Salut i castells!
-Sarah
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