The Weekend That Was and Spanish Class Day Two: PLUS PHOTOS!!!!!

Backtracking quite a bit here, I finally got a chance to go to Montserrat, the "serrated mountain", and it rained most of the time. The train ride up to Montserrat, and then to the mountain itself, was spectacular. I now proudly present some photographs which are Aaron Dorman originals, which I think is a first for this blog:

 

As can be seen from the photos, the first cable car ride takes you halfway up the mountain, to where the original monastery of Montserrat was. The complex now has a hotel/hostel, a cafeteria, and a massive gift shop. The monastery, which is located in the taller structure, is very old but the current building is "only" about 150 years old or so. We spent a lot of time there during the rainstorm.

From that area, you can take another cable car (or just walk) up to an area on top of Montserrat, where you can walk around on several different trails, one of which leads to the actual peak of the mountain, although it was too far away for us to walk to with the remaining time. The top of the mountain alternated between being surrounded in fog and opening up for the tremendous vistas of the surrounding towns and hills.

I've also emphasized the really really creepy old church which along one of the trails on top of the mountain. It's probably haunted by at least three different malicious ghosts, from the looks of things. I'd give anyone at least 10 Euros to camp there for the night (the cable cars stop running at 7 pm).

I'd also like to point out the wonderful negatives I took with my camera phone, the only interesting feature which I cannot do on my normal camera, which has been broken for the past 9 days.

Here's another fun negative photo of the monastery I took:

Here's what looks to be the only photo of a person, it looks to be Joann (one of the women on the CELTA course) taking a picture herself:

And here's a gratuituous photo of the Magic Fountains, which has nothing to do with Montserrat:





Another last-chance opportunity that the CELTA kids acted on was karaoke night at the George Payne Irish bar, and that was quite a party, but I must say only if you were very drunk. Otherwise, if you were as I was for the first two hours of the show,  amount of obnoxious, sloppy enthusiasm was bound to make you depressed.

If you are into karaoke, I can only half-heartedly recommend the George Payne (on Sundays). The song list is just okay, and its really more about being stupid and getting the crowd going, as opposed to trying to sing a good song. The bar also lets people overstuff the list for singing; about three or four people sang (terribly) at least once every 1/2 hour, including a guy dressed like Usher who may have been a bar promoter. Also, the hosts of the karaoke night sang over people sometimes when they weren't good or if the song wasn't generating significant buzz, which I think is counter to the whole spirit of karaoke.

I wound up singing "New York, New York" (Sinatra version) because that's my "hometown" (close enough, right?) and also, if you're having a karaoke night, SOMEONE needs to sing that song, and it just so happens that the responsibility fell to me. Singing the song certainly gave me tremendous pride for where I come from.


Now, back to the present day, the Spanish course continues on, and the two girls in my class continue to say absolutely nothing. I have now learned that this is not personal; especially for the French girl, this is apparently just a character trait.

I won't make any judgements myself (just kidding, of course I will), but after an uncomfortable lunch with the French twins, the Korean girl, and an English guy who is sort-of friends with the girls, turned to me afterwards and mentioned offhand, "they're very French, those two," which was not meant to be taken as a compliment.

I've had a new teacher for the last two days, who seems to have adapted well to the fact that I'm the only person in the class who will open his/her mouth, but he indicated to me, in a wonderfully passive-agressive way, that this was an unusual and unusual frustrating class.

However, at least I am learning Spanish. So that's good right?

In the afternoon on Wednesday I was once again able to practice my excellent grasp of the language with Victoria, who I now can officially classify as a sexy librarian. She's got everything: the frizzy hair, the glasses, a pedantic disposition when touring museums. It was a pleasure pretending to know about the history of Teotihuacan with her at the Caixa Forum, a collection of part-time exhibits housed in a former fabric factory.

She didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about the excursion, although she did make fun of me when I used the word for "carpet" (alfombra) when I meant "umbrella." Once again, I was too scared to ask her to come with me to see the football match later that night.