Modern Day Conveniences

Dryers were probably one of the best things that were ever invented. My fellow Americans, please do not take for granted that you, most likely, have one at your disposal. I do not have that luxury. I hope it doesn't rain.

Ocata

So on Saturday a few of the girls and I visited Ocata, another beach town outside of Barcelona. We can't seem to be able to wrap our mind around the idea that we can go to the beach at the end of SEPTEMBER/beginning of October because it's still warm enough outside. Actually, it was hot, not just warm. You know you live in Illinois when...

The air was so fresh there, without all the smoke of Barcelona. Generally, I will like a place if it doesn't have the BCN smoke. Also, this beach was so much better than Barceloneta where there are janky people bothering you every 4 seconds to buy a massage for 10 euros, or something ridiculous like that. Another classic Barceloneta phrase is "¿quieres coco, quieres coco?" ad infinitum at the speed of lightning. ANNOYING. This did not happen at Ocata.

There was also this really cute little Spanish boy there with his parents. He was watching his dad swim in the Mediterranean, and I watched him. No, that's not creepy; he's just a cutie! Plus, the sailboat adds a nice touch, no?

And, and, AND... there were REAL seashells. Not just the trash that you pick up because you think it's a seashell and then you discover that it's really only a crushed McDonald's fry bag that has been weathered by the salt water.

I spent a good hour collecting cool seashells. I plan to buy a bowl or something so I can display them on my desk. I enjoy creating a homey work atmosphere.

Living Artistically

I love Barcelona. It inspires me to be creative. The people inspire me to dress artistically, think in Spanish, to take neat pictures...

My mom always says that one must live artistically. I love when she says that. There are some days that I feel like I'm living just to survive and some days, perhaps, are more artistic living. I like to combine the two. Artistic living meets survival tactics when living in Barcelona, Spain as a foreigner in a foreign land, or the extranjera del extranjero.

How the Artist Survives
1. Starving artists have a tough life. Who likes to be ravenous all the time? It sucks. Well, in Barcelona you're a ravenous American tourist for about the first week or so, maybe week and a half, until your stomach shrinks...And then you're just hungry after that. Consider it your first step toward living like a European. Europeans are hungry because food is so damn expensive and then what you do pay for is about the size of your fist.

So... the artistic life-enthusiast goes to the market down the street and buys fruits, veggies, and the extra-virgin olive oil in which to cook them. (Splurge on the olive oil in the glass bottle because the veggies are inexpensive). Also, buy the garlic press from the hardware/kitchen store on Carrer L'Olla for 5 euros. Saute veggies. Hardboil an egg, eat a pice of wheat bread, and some yogurt for dessert.

2. Gym a bit expensive for your budget right now? Walk everywhere. And sprint up the 3 flights of stairs, groceries in each hand, to the attic apartment that you share with your 55 year old señora and her cat. Then sign up for the gym after you realize you miss lifting weights with sweaty men around you, regardless of what language they speak.

3. Entertainment. Listen in on Spanish coversations and look up the words you don´t know later. Repeat for Catalán conversations.

Take your Canon Rebel with you on the metro. Or just stare at the people on the metro by looking at their relection in the window across fom you. Entertaining, guaranteed.

Read the political graffiti. It's everywhere and it's free literature that communicates more than most things that are in print these days.

"Turn off the television and read a poem."

4. Music. The señora provides music every day. Take advantage of it and sing along with her as she sings to the cat in Catalán, "La meva Cuca está bé!"

Sit on the terrace and listen to the Carrer Verdi sountrack featuring passersby, motos, birds, dogs, kids playing, the occasional rainfall, Cuca meowing/yelling, the neighbor playing the piano.

5. Sick of the crowds and smoke in Barcelona? Go to Sitges, the quaint beach town along the Costa Brava about 30 min away by train. Go with friends. Take photos of each other posing on the rocks and make other people take photos of you all together. Sit in a coffee shop and talk girl talk until the storm outside passes.

6. Feeling homesick because you can't talk to your family on the inernet? Write in your journal (not blog because you don't have internet access, remember?) and channel your feelings into creativity. Create something tangible from an abstract nothing. Don't go out and spend money because that runs out and the elation is only transient. Create something that lasts and that you can share.

7. (Really #6 continued) Change the ordinary. Make your bed differently, rearrange the items on your desk. Re-invent your wardrobe-- new combinations, or just organize it.

Take the same photo 10 different times, tweaking the frame ever so slightly.

There is art in every day life and only when you're able to recognize it in the ordinary are you living artistically. Thanks Mom, for helping me realize that.

Grilled Cheese, Books, and Tea

So I started my classes here at the University of Barcelona yesterday (I say "here" because I am, once again, typing from the library). I am studying "letras" at the Facultad de Filología. When I first came here I had no idea what Filología was, even in English. After looking it up, I learned that it is the study of a language and its literature, to put it simply. "Letras" is the equivilent of "humanities," or to further distinguish it, anything that is not math or science related--the important stuff.

My classes are bomb. I am taking Historia social española contemporánea, Barcelona en su contexto cultural, Intro lingüística, Análisis y comentario de textos, and Catalán. I think I will most enjoy the Barcelona en su contexto cultural class. We have a list of books, all written by Catalán authors (but Catalán authors choose Spanish as their literary language, so the books are in Spanish nonetheless) and we pick three that we want to read from the list. Our teacher said that we wouldn't need the books for another few weeks but, being the empollón that I am, I went with my friend Adam to FNAC (Spain's version of Barnes & Noble) and bought the first one-- Nada by Carmen Laforet.

I've already read the first chapter and am enjoying it so far. It's about a girl who is 18 years old and goes to post-war Barcelona to study Letras (my study!). Of course, I think I am enjoying it because of the narrative space. As Andrea traverses the facultad that I'm studying in right now and the familiar streets of Barcelona I love picturing them in my mind, thinking "oh, I was just there yesterday!" Also, the novel has a moody, gothic tone, illuminating a derelict Barcelona that existed in 1945 after the civil war.

I do not know this derelict Barcelona. The Barcelona I know is crowded with people (and dogs, actually) and then there are even more people outside waiting to get in, trying to make the city their home too. I love the idea of constructing your own personal Barcelona through experiences. Maybe someone else's Barcelona is different than mine because they live in a different barrio, or take different classes, or know different people. It all depends... pero, yo vivo para el sueño de vivir, eso es quién soy.

On another note, I made this pretty amazing grilled cheese sandwich today. Okay, okay. I can't take all the credit for the sandwich because I knocked off the idea from Sunsinger, a foody-wine place in Champaign. Anywho, I made the sandwhich with whole-grain bread (well, I think it was whole grain, my food Spanish is kind of shaky sometimes), swiss cheese, fig jam, and a sliced apple. Of course, many of the markets here don't have butter so I just used extra-virgen olive oil to grill it. It tasted amazing.

The only bad part about the sandwich was that I slightly burned my middle, ring, and pinky fingers on my right hand when I touched the frying pan like an idiot. Since Europeans do not have much need for ice, there wasn't any in the freezer to relieve my sizzling fingers. So, I used the next best thing-- a frozen fish fillet that I bought three days ago at La Sirena. It was salmon, to be exact. I carried my frozen fish fillet out to the terrace where I would eat my grilled cheese and sip my mint tea one-handed. I had to leave Carmen Laforet for after lunch because I was running out of hands. Cuca (Monste's cat) decided to join me on the terrace. We enjoyed each other's company and the breeze was nice. Then Montse came home and it was time to go to class.

And now I'm here, writing this, and helping the Spanish girl next to me access her login screen on the computer. See, I'm even good with computers in Spain! Go figure. Except, I'm still getting used to the Spanish keyboard...

And I still need internet.

Visc a Gràcia

The title would be Catalán for "I live in Gracia." And yes, I have an exterior window -- such a hot commodity. Most Barcelona flats have interior windows that usually look into the the laundry room, bathroom, u otros sitios desagradables como así.

In case you doubted me, I am actually in Spain. And yes, they are obsessed with their carne. These shops have such a distinct scent that you can smell from down the street.

This is an apartment building in Sitges, a gay friendly beach town along the Costa Brava. It´s all artsy and cute there; I loved it there so much that I could cry. Es tan preciosa.

So, if you know me at all you know that I have an obsession with figs. I love them in any form -- dried, in jam, and most of all FRESH (black mission are my favorite). I have never seen so many fresh figs as I have here in Catalunya and they are all so juicy and delectable. Here's a taste of heaven, or at least a picture of it...

This is the crazy Cuca cat, Monste's baby. This cat rules the place and dominates the terrassa.

Very Brief Post

I have an hour before I have my Spanish linguistics class with Profesor Toni Torres. That man is "superguay." Any minute I feel that the button that desperately holds together his dress shirt is going to pop off and nail me straight in the eye, blinding me for life. A potential hazard that button is, as well as the panza that makes it protrude so.

I don´t have many philosophical musings nor photos to portray as of now, as I feel quite inhibited posting from the University of Barcelona library (in the facultad de filología) from a public computer. I feel like someone is reading this over my shoulder as I type this, though I´m guessing that he can´t understand English anyway, nor does he care what the girl wearing the green shirt to his immediate left is writing.

I am dying to make a real post soon, full of pictures and text, but I have a bit of a problem in that I don´t have internet access at my apartment. I live with a 55 year old catalana, a señora who exists for the sake of her cat, Cuca, and to maintain her apartments in Gràcia and the Costa Brava. Furthermore, I cannot acquire internet until I have my residency card with the number that declares my existence here in Spain. Until I obtain this number, I am essentially a nobody, another "extranjera del extranjero." This is the reason for my sparse posting and inevitable isolation from the rest of the world that exists beyond Barcelona. I love and miss the internet dearly, as I do all of you to whom I am able to pay virtual visits because of it.

Until later,
and hopefully later is soon
(but it might not be because I´m in Spain where time is irrelevant and even it´s abstract essence is only a nominal entity),
-Loca

An Arbitrary Life

We live arbitrary lives.

What does it really mean when someone says "live a meaningful life"? Any meaning that my life has is the meaning that I attach to it. Maybe to someone else, who doesn't value the same things that I do, I am living a meaningless life. Maybe that person thinks that my journeys in Spain are worthless, that Spain is just primitive country of backward people who are permanently scarred from enduring 40 years of everyone's favorite Fascist. And queue, Fransisco Franco.

My name, Jacqueline Gracia, is something that my mother decided to call me. Thank goodness she was kind and gave me something nice to go by, but the name has just as much connection to my "essence" as would the words (disregard the assigned meanings and connotations) "airhead," "pendejo," or "muffin." Of course I'm not saying that I'm feeble-minded, a ball-puller, or a delicate and delicious pastry (well okay, maybe a little bit of the last one), but I'm just saying that the words we use to reference aspects of our lives really have no connection to the "truth" they convey; that is, if a unified truth exists at all. Thus, my sarcastic quotations around the word truth.

Just as arbitrary as names are the dates of the year. Why should a particular day hold significance? In a practical sense, dates exist to track seasons, make plans, and for the narcissist in me, record my own personal time on Earth. I do have a mind for dates; they stay in my head and I remember them well. Perhaps, my ability to remember dates and times are factors of my United States upbringing, where time and dates dictate national culture. Thus, the dates I choose to remember are highly subjective; I remember them because the society in which I live values them.

In a broader sense of representation, I love when people parade around saying they've been "changed," "enlightened," "affected," and queue every other bombastic word invented solely for the purpose of bragging. And when I say love, I mean laugh. How can we even attempt to measure an abstract concept like change by concrete methods? Sure, maybe you can detect a change, but strutting around, repeating the word ad nauseum so that others believe you is only another method of representation. You are shaping your self-construct so that it's construed to others the way that you want it to be displayed. There is nothing wrong with that at all, but don't pretend like "change" just happens and that it's something you can't manipulate or control at all.

I heard someone saying the other day that they've already been "changed" by being in España. Ew. That is just puke fried on stick and presented on a nice platter to be served for dinner. You don't need to tell me that you've been changed if you really have been. If the change is there, it will be evident, and you telling me only gives me another reason to call you a PHONY.

So yes, this concludes yet another post about representation. It's always a favorite topic of mine to discuss because it pops up everywhere.


P.S. I found an apartment in Gracia. I'm planning to make a special post about it later with pictures after I move in and am settled.

Watchful

My favorite photo of the day. I took it during my wanderings through Barrio Gótico. These kids were waiting for the bus, and the man standing there, I believe, is their abuelito.

My Wanderings

It's September 11.
In America, they mourn.
In Catalunya, they celebrate.

It's the dia de "independencia" here in Catalunya. In Catalán it´s called Diada de l'Onze de Setembre. I put independence in quotations only because, technically, Catalunya is not independent of Spain. It is, however, a comunidad autónoma. That is, it has the right to it's own flag and to govern itself while still being under the jurisdiction of España.

I had no class today, so I went wandering. I started out at Arc de Triomf, which marks the entrance to the Ciutadella Park. The park is so large and beautiful. There are fountains, and children, and grass, and winding trees everywhere. After leaving the park I meandered into the Barrio Gótico and Borne until I eventually made my way to Plaza Cataluña.

I loved this little one's Catalunya pride as she spun around with the flag attached to her back.

Bird droppings on the bench in the Plaza Catalunya. "Relationshit"

I love everything about this man from his style to his poise. He exudes such a cool character, reminiscent of my old high school English teacher, Mr. Pirtle. This photo was taken on a very busy street in Barrio Gótico. Yet despite the noise and passersby, this man just sat to the side peacefully, writing, lost in his own thoughts.

It's Toto, Spanish style.

Red flowers are my favorite. And here they are, covering the graffiti.

Apartment Hunting

So I have three weeks to find an apartment in Barcelona.
Yes, three weeks.

It has already been a week and a half and I have nothing. Though, the apartment I visited yesterday was definitely noteworthy, but not in a good way. It was located near Monjuic Park by la Plaza de España and the first thing that the blonde woman showing me the apartment says to me when I walk in is, "Perdón, pero la habitación está muy sucia ahora." As if she didn't know I was coming to visit. You'd think she'd bother to clean it a little...

I walked into a dank room with a small window that looked as though it's been covered in plastic wrap. The woman gestured toward a wood door that is detached from its hinges, leaning against the closet that it's supposed to cover. "The door will be fixed," the woman guarantees me. "Yo sé que la habitación parece diferente que las fotos del internet, pero las fue tomada cuando yo viví aquí con mi novio." Right.

I then glanced down at her stomach to see she was "embarasada." There is no way I'm living with a pregnant woman. Pregnant women turn into babies, and babies equal crying. No. Thank. You.

"Who else lives here?" I asked.
"Oh well I live in this room con mi novio." Hmm, I wonder what they do in their free time. "And two other chicas live here, and a man from Inglaterra too. The man, he sleeps all day and works all night. I never see him."

"So do you want to give me fianza?"
Is she serious? She really thinks after the broken door, messy room, and broken desk that I noticed on the way out, that I really want to live there. That's funny.

Today went better though. I found a place in the Borne neighborhood of Barcelona where the Barcelona government buildings are located. I don't think I'm going to take the place because it's a bit expensive and the lady there smokes which I'm not so keen on. Plus, she wouldn't allow me to have any guests, should someone from the U.S. want to visit me. But the Borne neighborhood is SO cool. There are tiny little streets everywhere with hip coffee shops and neat boutiques. It feels so avant-garde and cozy. I HAVE to live there, I've decided. Even if I only have a week and a half to find a place in Borne. It will be done. Even if I have to live in another place for a month or so until I find a place in Borne. It will be done.

It must.