Anyways, first up was La Mercé, which was in Barcelona. Mercé is just a huge (understatement) festival to honor the patron saint of the city of Barcelona. It actually lasts the whole weekend but unfortunately I was only here for the first day. The day I was here I got to see the “gegants” and the “castellers”. The gegants, or giants, are just that. Giant puppet type things that have people inside of them. They parade through the city and some of them even dance together. There is also one made to look like an eagle that does a special little dance too. Its kinda hard to explain so hopefully the pictures below will make my weak description a little more clear. The castellers, or castle-ers, are groups of people who build a human castle. They literally climb on top of each other, standing on their shoulders, until they are like four or five layers high. At this point, a small child, probably about age 5, climbs all the way to the top. Don’t worry though—they wear a helmet. It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen, and the whole time I was watching, since I was standing right at the base of some of these human castles, I was thinking about what I would do if suddenly the whole castle came crashing down. Thankfully none of them did. Again, this is hard to explain well so hopefully some pictures will help. There are other traditions such as a fire run and huge concerts and fireworks shows that I missed out on, so I guess I’ll just have to come back next year.
The reason I missed part of Mercé was because I was at Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany. For those of you who don’t know—Oktoberfest is an annual festival in Germany. It lasts about 3 weeks, more or less, and since it actually ends the first weekend of October, most of it occurs in September. Its basically an enormous fair with tons of rides and “tents” sponsored by different beer companies. Quotations are definitely necessary because the “tents” are actually massive structures with capacities in the thousands. The beer tent I went to (as did most of the other kids from Richmond who were visiting the same weekend) was called Hofbräu-Festzelt and had a capacity of almost 7,000. Inside the tents are hundreds of tables where you crowd around with your friends to enjoy steins of German beer. Some tents, like the one we were in, also have a stage and a band. We actually got a table right near the stage so we could hear the music pretty well. It was amazing to see 7,000 people cheers-ing at once. It was also really cool when the band would play a song—some in German, some in English—and everyone would be singing. I would have liked to have more time to see more of the tents so, again, I guess I’ll just have to come back some day.
After a long weekend we started class on Monday. I have only been to each class once so far, so its still early, but I really like them as of now. Well, most of them. I am enrolled in a Spanish Literature class in the regular school, which means there are regular Spanish students, and a regular Spanish teacher who talks super fast and mumbles half his words. I know it is going to be pretty tough so hopefully I will survive. All but one of my other classes are in Spanish as well but since they are designed for international students, the teachers understand Spanish isn’t our native language and speak a bit more clearly. My comprehension is already noticeably better and hopefully by December my speaking will have improved a lot too. Ahh—December. It seems so far away now but I know it will be here in the blink of an eye. One month down, three to go, and I can’t wait too see what else Barcelona has in store for me.
Besos,
Jess
the gegants of the city "dancing" together
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