Rumba concerts, La Castanyada, it's like...TOMA!

Mis queridos amigos,


Here I am, sitting on la terrazza in the November sunshine (it's 70 degrees F in November, how cool is that?!), looking at the view of Sant Cugat and trying to think of all the exciting things to tell you all about.  First of all, let me say, I cannot believe it's already November! Time has been going by so fast! I am enjoying school and my after school language and clarinet classes, and weekends always include a great time with my friends and family.  Apparently, el tiempo vuela cuando te diviertes!

Me, Pau, Irene, Dario, Miki, and Ceci at La Pegatina

Let me start with my first experience with Spanish music...La Pegatina concert! I have this one great friend from school, Cecilia, who is really into music. She sings and plays guitar, and we even performed a song together for an English presentation! So, she invited me to go to a rumba concert of a well-known band here, La Pegatina. We met up with some of her friends Dario and Miki, and then went to the concert in Cerdanyola, a nearby city.  Luckily we arrived early enough that we were in the very front, and it was definitely worth it even though we had to listen to and pretend we enjoyed the music of the much disliked opening band...haha. By the time La Pegatina started playing, it was dark and all the people were super pumped!  We had a blast jumping, dancing, clapping, and doing all those things you do at concerts. It was extremely fun, and also interesting to experience about this new genre of music. Although rumba originated in Cuba, it's really popular in almost all spanish-speaking countries. It was funny how a lot of the songs consisted of singing "le le le" in different rhythms, but at least I could participate in this part of singing along ;). Something pretty cool that happened in the middle of the concert was that people started building castellets, which are towers of people! This is really typical in Catalonia; there are castellet teams, and people do it randomly for fun as well.  Basically it was a great concert and I got to know some new people as well :). 

La Pegatina...I am actually in the crowd, you just can't see me:)

My next cultural and very Catalan experience was the weekend of La Castanyada.  This is a festival typical of Catalonia which is actually on All Saint's Day but celebrated the whole weekend.  It is kind of like Halloween in that it originated as a festival for the dead, but is celebrated in a completely different way.  Of course the customs of Halloween are starting to make their way into the celebration, but only a little (Catalan people are veryyy proud of their own culture).  The Friday before La Castanyada, our school had a celebration (which meant only two classes, woohoo!) in which different classes set up booths and activities.  My History of Music class was in charge of the makeup, so we had lots of fun with the fake blood and red lipstick.  By the end of the day half the school was walking around with looking like a zombie or vampire or something of that sort.  Anyway...back to the traditional stuff!  I'd have to say the most important part of La Castanyada is the food, which is delicious.  The traditional dessert of this holiday is panellets, small cookies made out of almonds and sugar, and usually covered in pine nuts.  Moniatos, or sweet potatoes, are also a popular favorite, and of course the most important food...

Roasting castanyes 

 The word castanyada comes from the word castanya, which means chestnut.  So, during this weekend there are a lot of people selling roasted chestnuts wrapped in newspaper.  This year, I was one of them! I went to Rubí with some friends, and helped them sell chestnuts for their organization, Esplai.  Most people weren't interested in buying any chestnuts, but I got a lot of practice saying "Voleu castanyes?" and "Quieren castañas?" (Would you like to buy chestnuts?).  After a few hours of unsuccessful selling, we broke out the stilts, guitar and megaphone, hoping that if we played and sang songs about chestnuts through a megaphone while another person was walking on stilts we would sell more.  We did receive a lot more smiles with this idea...but no interest in buying chestnuts...haha.  However, at the end of the day we had made 235 euros, que bien!  


Other significant things I've done lately:

"Do you want to go skating on ice?"

1) Indoor ice skating in Barcelona with Aina and Laura! It was lots of fun...and I only fell three times :)
2) Ordered some coffee and the waiter didn't try to speak to me in English...yay! My accent must be improving ;)
3) Afternoon at the puerto of Barcelona...great lunch right on the beach, walking in the sand, and watching the surfers wait for the good waves
4) Passed my math test (with word problems in Catalan) with a 7...YAY!
5) I was applauded in class for working with a dictionary..."Mira la Nina, tranquila, trabajando con el diccionario, aplaudimos!"
6) "Nina, tomorrow, we don't have Math, Science, Catalan, or Universal Literature."
"YAY!"
"I KNOW, it's like...TOMA!"


Well, I suppose that's all for now! I'll try to update soon :)
Love always,
Nina

Puerto en Barcelona

With Laura in Barcelona

"Corre, alemana, corre!"

Bon dia! (I just wrote in Catalan! yayyyyy!)

So, due to this strike in Barcelona and the surrounding areas, most of our teachers decided not to come to school today, so we weren't required to attend either. It's actually been quite a nice day since I got to sleep in and now have time to write this! Although the rest of my day will be filled with lots of math…oh well. Anyway, let me begin.

Woah man! What a crazy week couple of weeks. Getting off the plane in Barcelona, orientation, and even my first class seems like forever ago. The good thing is, it's actually been pretty great so far! I was pretty terrified for the first day of school because I was almost certain I would be a loner and my classes would be a waste of time due to my lack of comprehension. Luckily, I was wrong! As soon as I walked into Math on Tuesday, everyone turned around and smiled and said "Hi Nina!" Later they all introduced themselves and they helped me get to my classes for the rest of the day. There's a small group of our class (1B) who has almost all their classes together, so I wasn't ever alone or lost, which was good. Compared to Hohenfels, Angeleta is pretty big. It has four whole floors! Haha. A few of my friends here want to practice their English, so we have a system where they speak to me in English and I answer in Spanish. Now they're starting to speak to me in just Spanish though, because they know I need to learn. We all have a lot in common, as girls often do. Haha. So far we've had many conversations about language, culture, music, maybe some Gossip Girl...and all that good stuff. We're going to the movies on Friday to see "Eat, Pray, Love" or in Spanish…"Come, Reza, Ama." 

So, the following is my schedule at school! It's a little more complicated than at home, since there are no A or B days, and school even ends at different times sometimes. I'm getting used to it though :).

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
8:15-9:15	History of Music	Math	Philosophy	History of Music	Science
9:15-10:15	Philosophy	Universal Literature	Spanish Language	Math	Catalan Language
10:15-11:10	History	English	History	Spanish Language	History
11:10-11:40	Break	Break	Break	Break	Break
11:40-12:40	Math	History of Music	English	History	English
12:40-13:35	Universal Literature	Catalan Language	History of Music	Universal Literature	Math
13:35-14:30		Tutorial		Physical Education	Universal Literature
14:30-15:15
15:15-16:15	Physical Education
16:15-17:15	Science

So, some more interesting stuff about la escuela:

• None of the teachers have their own classroom. Instead, the different subject groups have offices. So basically it's always the teachers who are late to class, not the students. 
• Grades...1-4 = bad, and you don't pass (suspendido!!)  5-10 = good and, you pass! woohoo!
• There's this period of the day, the 30 minute break, where everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, eats a bocata, or a baguette. There's a lot of eating here in general…but I'll tell you more about that another time. 
• There are always people in the hall yelling and screaming, but the teachers don't mind.
• In English class, the students learn British English, so the textbook always has words like "mum" and "rubbish." The teacher even has a bit of a British accent, and we literally spent our entire last English class talking about fish and chips, pubs, and double decker buses. So stereotypical. Haha :).
• Also, regarding English, everyone speaks English pretty well, since they have been required to learn it since primary school. I wish we had to learn another language!. 
• Not a lot of homework is assigned, so when there's a test, it's a big deal. I have a math exámen on Friday…yikes.
• Spain is apparently the least formal of all the Spanish-speaking countries. Therefore the students call all their teachers by their first names, and loudly. I still raise my hand because I can't bring myself to call out "VICENTE!" every time I need help in math class…haha :). 
• For lessons, the teachers use Youtube all the time! I think that in at least half of my classes since I've gotten here we've watched a video on youtube. 
• A lot of kids come to school on a motorcycle. I'd like to learn to drive motorcycle…
• When a teacher is done teaching, you can leave class, even if there are 10 minutes left until the bell rings.
• Everyone has really great note taking techniques. They'll all neat and multi-colored…I suppose they've had a while to develop this since note-taking is the most important part of class. 
• In Physical Education, we've done a lot of skipping while holding hands. And running holding hands. And jumping over things holding hands. Basically there is a lot of holding hands, and we're moving around to Spanish pop music. It's very effective and in my opinion, and definitely a lot better than kickball and all that other nonsense.

So, I suppose that's about it. I'll let you in on the non-school related things soon :)

Love always,

Nina

Running in PE class wearing a Deutschland jersey:

Boy behind me: "Corre, alemana, CORRE!"

(Run, german, run….run, Forrest, run….haha)

Just Learn Your Verbs and Smile!

Hola mis amigos!

I am soooo incredibly stoked to be here right now! There are so many exciting things to tell you about, but I should start at the very beginning, a very good place to start.

I arrived at the Barcelona airport a little late because of a slight flight delay. My heart was pounding super fast as I got out of the plane and maneuvered my way through the airport to find my bags and then continued on out to the arrival area. At first I didn't see Carson, our wonderful Interhispania supervisor, so I was worried no one was there, but suddenly he appeared right in front of me and when he asked me "Como te llamas?" I completely forgot what that meant. After a few seconds I recovered, told him my name, and we waited for a few more groups of exchange students. On the bus to the hostel, where orientation was going to be held, I met some really nice kids from both Germany and the US who were staying at the hostel as well. When looking out the window, I was of course immediately intrigued by the palm trees all over the place.

The next two days were filled with 1) Barcelona sightseeing, which was beautiful, despite the rainy weather 2) Orientation! Yay! and 3) Frolicking around Barcelona due to the much appreciated freedom our supervisors gave us.

Our sightseeing was mostly done from the bus, but it was a great way to see the city, especially at night! We occasionally got off and walked around for a while for a better look.  My favorite things were probably Gaudi's various casas, which reminded me a little of das Hundertwasserhaus. La Sagrada Familia, also by Gaudi, was probably the largest church I have ever seen, and it's still not finished! The exterior designs were extremely delicate and creative, and the various sides of the church are completely different. The bus also took us to the harbour and down La Rambla, the main street in that area of Barcelona. Now, I think my new favorite city is Barcelona!

I really enjoyed the orientation on Saturday morning. I felt like everything was explained well enough that we now know what to expect, how to act, and how to be successful with our experience here. I know you can never be fully prepared for what's to come, but I feel a lot better about it than I did before. At the moment my biggest worry is school, but I guess I'll just have to go, see how it is, and deal with it.



I was kind of worried because the CIEE kids had all already met in Boston and gotten to know each other before they arrived, and I didn't know anyone, but that proved not to be a problem. All of my seven roommates at the hostel were really great, and I hope we'll be able to keep in touch. They are all in other parts of Spain, but we're hoping to maybe get together for the Madrid trip sponsored by Interhispania.

So, this morning most of the students left the hostel early -REALLY early- to catch a flight to their destinations. A few of us were lucky and were departing later. The entire morning I was so nervous, it was all I could think about. But at about 10 my host mother Giselle showed up, and I knew everything was going to be okay! She was so nice and seemed so happy to meet me, I couldn't help forgetting how nervous I was. We got in the car and drove to the outskirts of Barcelona, and were already home! The four dogs greeted me very nicely when I came in the gate, and the two cats gave me peculiar looks. The house is nestled in the mountains and has a beautiful view on the valley below it.  My host dad Joan also seems extremely nice, and my host brother Eugeni has been great as well. He's already given me the books I'll need for school this year and explained my schedule. I still don't completely understand it, but I'm going to start school on Tuesday so I guess I have a little time to figure it out! We've been speaking a combination of English and Spanish, but Giselle said that we should start only speaking Spanish soon. I agree! I'm surprised that I can actually understand a lot of what they say when they speak to one another or to me, but I guess the situation will be different in school when everything is in Catalan!

Tomorrow I have one more day to regroup before it all begins. Everyone says the first month is terrible, but I'm determined to make the best of it.  Hope you all are well!

"Learn your verbs and you'll be fine!" -the Starbucks Guy
"The best thing you can do is smile. They'll know you're listening." -Carson

Love always,
Nina

Please prepare for departure.

It's hard to believe that in April of this year, in the course of a few days, I made the decision to apply through CIEE to study in Spain for the entire duration of my junior year of high school. It's hard to believe that I did not walk through the doors of Hohenfels High School this year on the first day of school.  I didn't sit on the blue couches before the bell rang, I didn't listen to the reading of the endless school handbook, and I didn't stare in awe at the new arrangement of the lunch tables. 

I must say, it is exhilarating. I am, in fact, completely stoked about this experience, although at the moment, two days prior to departure, I also cannot imagine myself leaving everything and everyone in my lovely home in Germany behind. I've had quite a while to get used to the idea, but I suppose some things can't be imagined and need to be experienced. I am so excited that I will get the opportunity to see, understand, and absorb more of the world and it's people. 

Thank you for reading this! I will try and continue this blogging business, although it is new to me. Maybe some day I'll even post a picture, or write about where I'm going and who I'm staying with. That sounds like something for next time...

Buenas noches!

Love always,

Nina