February 25- but yesterday´s post

hola!

I am writing this post from my hostel in Barcelona. I am actually just going to type what I wrote in my journal yesterday. It´s split up into different sections- hope you enjoy!

Feb 24
And so Barcelona begins...

As I write this, I am sitting at the port in Barcelona. The sun is slowly climbing higher in the sky and the day is beginning. Barcelona has already been quite the adventure. The bus ride took 7 hours and left Aix at 11PM. Ashley and I took sedatives hoping to sleep the bus ride away. Mission not accomplished. Needless to say, it was a long 7 hours. As we stepped off of the bus, weary and worn and began collecting our bags, we were just in time to see the rest of our group step off into a cab. Still groggy, it took us a minute to realize what had happened. At first we thought they had gotten the cab for us. As their cab sped off we realized this was not the case. They handed us a piece of paper bearing our hostels name before they left. We just stared. Shady business. We laughed because we couldn´t believe it. Ashley, Amy, Ryan and I walked around, slightly bewildered and not fully awake. How do you ask for a cab in Spanish? Luckily Ryan had studied Spanish and asking someone for help. We halied a cab without any problems and proceeded onward to our hostel. We´ll be optimistic and agree with what Ryan said- the other girls just had faith in our ability to get a taxi in a language we didn´t know and somehow find our hostel.
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Sure enough we did and tried to check in. When we reserved the rooms, they said we could check in as early as we wanted to. Turns out, this was not true. The rooms were not vacant for us yet. So we left our stuff there, and went to kill time in the streets of Barcelona. Allow me to say, that the city is slightly shady and night. We were surprised however at how many people were out and about. Ryan, Ashley, Amy and I wandered around until we found the port. We had gotten food before we left, so we sat and ate a little breakfast. Afterwards, we went to a flea market that had set up near the port. We also strolled along La Rumblus which is this famous street in Barcelona. The street was lined with animal vendors and street performers. The street performers were elaborately painted and acted as human statues. One "statue" winked at us, gave us glass pebbles and conned us into taking a picture with him. We laughed and kept walking. We stopped at Starbucks (aaah, finally a big coffee) and chilled out for a while, still killing time before the hostel. Ryan is an art major and he drew our pictures while we drank our coffee. After Starbucks we checked out this ridiculously huge market. So many colors and choices- it was overwhelming. We walked around the city for a while and then decided to try to find Ryan´s hostel. We walked for 30 min to get to the area and then couldn´t find it once we were there. We kept asking locals for directions. We got contradicting directions and were even told at one point that it didn´t exist. We did finally locate it and then Ryan treated us to a metro ride back to our hostel. We all took naps back at the hostel- we completely crashed.

Later that night, we reunited with the other girls and all went to a flamenco dancing place that an Irish woman I met at the market had told us about. It was a real hole in the wall. Really for locals and luckily for us- cheap. It was the coolest thing ever!! The dancers were amazing and it was nice to be in a place that was really Spanish, not simply a show for tourists. There was a band that played- 2 singers (one man, one woman), an acoustic guitarist, a man doing precussions and another man at a bongo. There were two dancers- one man and one woman- who took turns dancing. They both were amazing. The woman was fierce. She was the definition of confidence and the whole performance she had this great look of pride and power on her face. The man was PHENOMENAL! I´ve never seen anyone dance so hard before in my life. He was so into his dancing. Sometimes his face looked like it almost hurt to dance like that- his lips would quiver and show his concentration. Other times he would stare down the audience like it was a bull he was about to face in an arena. He wasn't cocky but he was confident and each move he made showed his self-assurance. He was sexy and sensual but never in an obvious way. He wore black velvet pants and jacket with a red button down shirt and a scarf. He certainly looked the part. He used the coat when he danced and would tug at it or swirl the bottom of it. He tapped his feet faster than I thought it humanly possible. One of the coolest parts of the show was when the music stopped and he slowly stopped his feet from moving... pat...pat..pat. stood still, took a very casual step forward and then slowly built it up again until he was furiously tapping them. He stomped so loud, I´m impressed the heels of his boots didn`t break. That was a cool part of the dancing- the dancers were the primary drummers. The music followed them. The dancing was in no way secondary to the music. At the very end of the show, the dancers brought up two little girls- ages 4 and 8 I would guess. They were clearly daughters of the dancers or the band. The 4 year old was dressed in a full flamenco skirt that reached the ground. It was adorable. They both took turns dancing for the audience. Both had unbelievable stage presence, especially for being kids. When the 8 year old started to dance, her face changed experssions and she looked just like the older dance- every bit as confident and proud. The 4 year old was the same. There was no trace of fear or shyness on her face as she danced in front of the whole audience. It was an awesome show and a great way to end our first day in Spain.