Welcome to Catalunya! Come in, come in, My home is your home!
My tutor and the school director picked me up from the airport, after a few hour delay, first from the French air strike, pffh, and next from my luggage taking forever to come out. I waited a half an hour for my bag and then another full HOUR for my guitar because it had to come out of the "special baggage" terminal. I even had already gone to the lost luggage services and they just hadn't brought it up. Ay... Thankfully that was the only hiccup in the journey and I arrived and was chauffeured to a place I believe I will come to adore throughout the year, Malgrat de Mar. It may turn out rainy and humid, but it is a small "
grandecillo" seaside town that booms on tourism during the summers. I will be an auxiliar in one of several primary schools that are here, and it only has just over 100 students, ages 6 to 12 and one class for each grade.
My first day, Paquita, a darling mother who lives above where I am staying and where may be "home" for the year, took me on a tour of Malgrat, really a 20 minute walk in a five block radius through downtown. I went to the townhall, the phone store and the bank. A tactile elderly gentleman changed my watch battery for about 5 USD and even put it on my wrist for me. I didn't fully understand his question because he was speaking in Catalan and grumbled Spanish. I don't encounter such friendly elderly folks in the USA.
Everything is in Catalan; the children who live upstairs, who are students at my school, shy away from English, but speak Catalan and not even Spanish in my presence; they are quite darling and I look forward to seeing the rest of the school on Monday. I will learn Catalan this year! The posters and everything on the street is in Catalan. At the supermarket, all of the price tags are in Catalan but because I went to a chain that is in all of Spain, the products are the same I know of from previous years and with the same mix of labels in Spanish and sometimes Portuguese or another latin language. It is good to read the labels and the price tags for a vocabulary lesson.
"Tinc calor" means I am hot and I am not too hot here but very comfortable just basking in the sun so far.
Yesterday afternoon I met the daughter of the director of the school, both named Blanca and went with Blanca, the daughter, to Barcelona to meet some of her friends. It was a festival of Barcelona and there were loads of booths of NGOs and volunteer organizations so I spoke to the RedCross as a backup for volunteering at the Consulate in Barcelona.
In Barcelona there are always street performers along the Ramblas, or I guess you could say place that people ramble or stroll. The first two photos are from Barcelona and the last three are Malgrat, the church, a street view (can you see the sea in the background?) and the sea. :)
