Aaron Visits Casa Batllo

 WE PASSED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Those six of us and the teachers are my "TP" group, which just means we were all watching each other during the teacher training sessions. There's more CELTA kids, maybe some of them will make it into the blog, but I've been trying to be careful not to write too much about the other people on the course, because it is (mostly) a thing not done.

In fact, I'm not even going to correctly identify the people in these photographs. For the purposes of this blog, the two tutors are named Wombat, and Charlie, respectively, while starting clockwise from me, the students names are

:Mary Sue Elizabeth, Mathilda, Bernadette, Valeria, and Xavier.


As a way of celebrating my passing the course on Saturday, I went to visit on of Gaudi's snazzier architectural works bookended by eating disgusting amounts of food.

The more I travel along the Passeig de Gracia (a major shopping/eating/having fun street) the more I wish I was living around there, in the l'eixample district.  The Gothic Quarter is fun but its dark a lot of the time and kind of drippy. Uptown about ten minutes from where I am is the more modern areas and the city transforms from narrow streets and stone buildings to more modern structures and wider expanses. Also, and very importantly, the city gets greener as it moves out of the Gothic Quarter. The Ciutadella is "kind of" in that area, but with the exception of that park, the gothic quarter can feel very drab even in really nice weather like today.

The newer parts of the city make a point to plant trees in the middle of the wide boulevards, and the areas around the University and the Sagrada Familia and host of other places also have lots of nice green park space.

Also, in the rest of the city, the intersections all form octagons around a central square so that apartments can look out onto it. The result is pretty cool because the city puts a lot of fun things into the larger intersections, such as rental bikes, playgrounds, tiny parks, etc.

The Passeig de Gracia starts just above where the language school is, coming off of Plaza Catalyuna, where a very large and obnoxious department store is, the Corte Ingles. I spent about an hour in the Corte Ingles, an 8-story monstrosity which looks like it was transplanted from Times Square, and couldn't find the two things I was looking for: tissues, and shaving cream.

Several of Gaudi's more entertaining works are on the Passeig de Gracia, including Casa Batllo and La Pedrera, which are two very psychadelic buildings squeezed into the rest of the cityblock.

Here are some pictures:

The one with the colorful roof is Casa Batllo, the big white on is La Pedrera.

Casa Batllo was really amazing, because the interior is just as wacked as the outside. There are no straight lines anywhere in the structure, and the doors, windows, and stairs are all vaguely sea-themed and meant to evoke animal bones, sea shells, etc..

Chimneys

A staircase

Aside from the crazy roof and chimneys, the neatest part of the building is a giant central enclosed courtyard with landings looking out on either side, and tiles which gradually become more blue as you move up the structure. You can see that pretty distinctly in this picture:

The museum itself was pretty overpriced and on top of that, they trapped me in the gift ship where I spent MORE money, but overall it was worth it.

I had lunch at a restaurant called Qu Qu, which doubles as a large take-away food market, and tried and failed to explain to my waiter what "wind" was, and because I couldn't convey the message, every five seconds or so I had to interrupt my patatas bravas with trying to catch the water bottle before it fell on the people sitting next to me.

Qu Qu is somewhat more well-known as a fun place to eat on the Passeig de Gracia, but I thought my dinner was more fun at a trendy/organic place a few blocks away called Habaluc. Supposedly in the "gay" part of l'eixample (or as I've heard people call it recently, "gay'xample") they served me patato wedge SKEWERS drenched in some kind of pumpkin/garli aoli/balsamic vinegar sauce. It was more interesting than delicious, but it made for a pretty neat food. The potato skewers looked nothing like the picture below, but its a rough approximation.

Last night I was able to experience watching a football game (real madrid vs. FC Barcelona) with real live Barcelonans. It was pretty fun, as every few minutes, people began to chant, and people who make exclamations at plays that didn't have any meaning to me at all.

The announcers for the football game were really great. They used a lot of exclamations so that even if I had no idea what they were saying, I could "feel" what they were saying. Here is an excerpt of what they said: (spanish words spanish words) VELLAR! (spanish words spanish words) XIMENEZ! (spanish words spanish words) PELOTA! (spanish words spanish words) VELLAR CON LA PELOTA! (spanish words spanish words) FERNANDEZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the people I met was excited that I was from New York, and she started singing Jay Z. When I tried to explain that I wasn't from Jay Z's New York, she told me to "shut up" and that I was mistaken. Which is fine, because I'd much rather be mistaken and actually live in New York. I got in trouble because then I started telling people my father was a hot dog vendor in Central Park, and then when they believed me or asked me for more details I had to backtrack.

House parties where half the people speak a different language can be difficult and I think for a lot of the time the group segregated itself along CELTA/non-CELTA lines. At one point it got too awkward and I said goodbye to everyone and left for ten minutes before I decided that I wanted to come back and stay after all.

There were some attractive girls there but I didn't talk to them until four hours into the party (because of the language barrier) and then when I asked who they were they asked me why I was asking who they were four hours into the party (apparently they spoke English).

But then we all went out to a bar until six in the morning, and four of the CELTA students (including me) travelled in lockstep back to the metro station.

The wonders of technology:

tonight I was talking with four different people on four different channels of communication. I was speaking with people on facebook, on skype, and on gchat. If Marga came in and asked me to turn off the light, that would have made five; she didn't but she COULD have. So I'll be on the record as saying that I could have been talking to five people at once. I couldn't talk to anyone on my phone though. That thing is out of minutes.