The descent of the blues, and how they blew away

Anyone who knows me is aware that overall, I'm a pretty positive person. Nothing really bothers me too much, I'm quite calm and mostly I take things as they come with a good attitude. For some reason, last week, all that changed, for the crappiest few days that I've had in a long time.

I don't know what brought it on, nor when it started. But it was Monday when I noticed it. This huge bout of despondency and apathy had come a-knocking to my door, let itself in, and plonked itself on the couch, without so much as a shall I put the kettle on from me. For the whole week, all I wanted to do was stay in bed. All day. Nothing interested me - not class, not fencing, not anything. Only negative thoughts inhabited my brain - all I could do with myself was make unfavourable comparisons to other people. She's on Erasmus and has more friends than me, he's more dedicated to learning the language than me, they've got better social lives than me, and so on and so forth. The only thing I can say is that if Last Week's Livi had met 13 Year Old Livi, they would have been fantastic companions for one another in total lack of self-esteem. Except Last Week's Livi didn't just have that to worry about - I also was concerned about money and budgeting, something I'm not used to at all, and my bank balance is screaming out for me to manage it better. An extension of that is getting a part-time job here to ease the pressure a bit, and a summer job in Ireland or elsewhere to give me something to do for the summer (as well as finance my fun for the summer). Add to that all the expectations that I was heaping on myself as regards college work and making the most of my ever-shortening time here in Barcelona, and the result is not pretty in the slightest.

Still, I trucked on. I went to all of my classes, did all of my homework, went to the gym, did my laundry, cooked my food, all pretty normal and standard stuff, but it taxed me much more than usual and I didn't get the normal amount of enjoyment out of it. And then something happened to lift me out of all of this.

It was Friday, and I had toyed with the idea of going to a concert all week. The plus side was that it wasn't expensive, and it was only a five-minute walk from my house, and it was Fran Healy - the lead singer of Travis, my favourite band when I was 11/12, and thus a huge player in the formation of my musical interests throughout my teenage years and right up to now. The drawback was that I had to go alone, and that made it unappealing given my already disaffected outlook on everything. But I pushed myself. I made a plan to buy my ticket on the way to the gym, and despite everything in the world telling me not to buy that ticket (bad weather, the guy in Fnac first mistaking the name of the venue and then not accepting my voucher or my card, the ATM in Fnac rejecting both of my cards, the invisible ATM in El Corte Inglés, having to trek all around the shopping centre to find a working ATM, the lack of Fran Healy's actual CD in Fnac for me to prepare for the gig), I bought the damn ticket. I gave the two fingers to the universe and told it I had had enough, and that my depression was to get the hell off my couch and out of my house.

So that night I strolled on down to Sala BeCool, and slid past a security guard that wasn't even the slightest bit interested in the fact that I had a DSLR in my bag and I would be taking photos all night (in Razzmatazz they're not cool with that, neither are they in Palau Sant Jordi). The support act was good, a young American guy in bare feet and a wifebeater singing about how his girlfriend didn't want him to cry, she didn't want a man, she wanted a stone. And then Fran Healy came on. And instantly, the second he started to sing and tell jokes and stories about the background of his songs, songs that had meant so much to me when I was younger and still mean so much to me today, everything lifted. He was singing all his new songs from his solo album mixed in with old songs that reminded me of being in primary school and the girls in my class making fun of me for liking Travis and not Westlife, of getting their third album The Invisible Band for my 12th birthday, of burning their next album from my best friend when I was fifteen, of welling up when listening to certain tracks from my favourite of their albums, of being seventeen and my first and only time seeing the band perform and how we interrupted their soundcheck, of the burning disappointment of their latest album, and of earlier that day, cycling down Avinguda Diagonal and listening to their back catalogue on shuffle. This was the band I grew up to, and I realised that as long as this guy with the stupid hat and the grey stubble and the Scottish accent was still making music, I would still be listening to it, and I would still be growing up. All those stupid worries from the last week vanished as I took photos of my childhood hero and sang along to songs that he had written when he was my age.

I have a bit of a reputation for being a total groupie at the best of times, and true to form I stuck around after the show to see if I could meet Mr Healy. In the past I've waited upwards of an hour and a half to meet a musician, sometimes in the freezing cold (Franz Ferdinand), sometimes in the rain (KT Tunstall), sometimes in the back room of Cyprus Avenue for two hours and they don't show up (Fight Like Apes). After two hours of playing onstage, Fran Healy didn't give himself a break at all, and didn't even put down his guitar before he started signing tickets and taking photos and shaking hands and making small talk. Still, I waited about twenty minutes. I told him how Sing was probably the first single I ever bought, and how I had been feeling low lately but that night had really cheered me up, he signed my ticket, I shook his hand, we took a photo together, and I went home.

On Sunday I went to the gym. When I cycle down Diagonal on a Sunday morning, the cycle path is jammers with families on bikes and scooters and rollerblades and skateboards - apparently you're nobody if you don't have three adorable children on wheels trailing after you. When I was cycling home, I stopped at the Law Department of the UB, where I used to take my politics classes, and I took my earphones out. Nothing. All the kids and the parents had gone home. There was no traffic on a six-lane road incorporating two tram lines that cuts through L'Eixample diagonally from the motorway out of Barcelona right down to the sea. The sun had come out after a drizzly morning. After I dropped back my bici, I had a think about the week I had. By any standards it was mediocre - nobody had died, I hadn't failed anything, I hadn't had any arguments with friends or boyfriend or family, I had a roof over my head and food in the house and a bit of money in my pocket, yet something had made that week different and important to me. And as I walked through the deserted streets of Sant Gervasi, with the afternoon sun shining dusty on the balconies of the apartments and the red bricks of the Mercat Galvany, and glinting off the lizard atop its weathervane, I realised that there is always going to be people to compare myself to, but that doesn't mean I should do it. Yes there are people who are also on Erasmus who might have mastered the language more than me, or made more friends than I have, but I couldn't help but feel that I wasn't wasting my time. I am content with my wanderings and my wonderings, my rambles and my ramblings.

I went home.

There was nobody on the couch.

There's a first time for everything

Today was definitely a day of firsts, and what more apt day than the first of a month and a season?

After a week of cloud and rain and thunder and cold, Barcelona finally cheered up on the first day of February and the first day of spring and decided to be sunny. As I cycled to the gym (more on that later), I remembered what it is that's so wonderful about Barcelona in the sunshine. The sky is incredibly blue, and all the buildings seem to look even more grand and imposing with blazing sun shining on them. Not only was this the first sunny day in a long time, it was also the first day the sun was actually hot, which was a really welcome change.

So, to the gym. Today was my first day at the University of Barcelona gym. And it was awesome. Not only is seriously cheap, it's also got great facilities and everyone there is unbelievably helpful and friendly. Every security guard, receptionist and instructor we met seemed to genuinely want to help us - whether it was helping us sign up, or telling us how to get through a door or turnstile (that one happened a little too often), or giving us a hand with equipment, every member of staff was amazingly nice. My first day at the gym also marked my first time ever going to a gym class. Now, I had my eye on yoga and tai chi, but we arrived too late for yoga and a friend wanted some moral support for another class. So instead of my nice relaxing afternoon, I ended up at Body Pump. This was an hour of lifting weights to target different muscles in your body, and man did I feel it afterwards. I was quaking in my boots beforehand at the prospect of weightlifting, but I actually found myself pleasantly surprised by how it was quite easygoing and meticulously organised. I don't think I'll be returning, but kudos to Body Pump nonetheless!

Which brings me to fencing. I had been telling myself and anyone who asked for the last five months that I fully intended to join the UB fencing club, but this was something I was genuinely scared to do. My own fencing club at home is such a welcoming, eccentric place that I thought I had just got lucky, and that I could never get that lucky elsewhere, let alone through either a language I had a relatively good grasp of or a language I don't understand at all. So I pushed myself. Tonight I sat on the tram to the gym and steeled myself for the worst - that they would tell me they weren't accepting newcomers, that they would only speak in Catalán, that they would laugh at me because I'm a foilist in an epée club - the list was endless. Needless to say, I was delighted to discover that the eccentricity and welcoming atmosphere of a fencing club extended all the way to Barcelona. I was one of three newcomers that night, and I think they got a bit of a novelty factor out of my being a) foreign, b) a foilist and c) a girl (seriously, it was all dudes, except one other girl newcomer). The moral of the story is that I had a brilliant time, I'm learning a new weapon, I'm meeting new people, I'm improving my Spanish, I'm getting out of the house in the evening, I'm getting some exercise, and it's all just from fencing. It's remarkable what one thing can do for you if you let it.

(There were more firsts today, involving my first time cleaning up dog puke from a white couch, but you don't want to hear about that)

My classes this term don't start until this Monday, the 7th. Whereas last term I was doing quite airy-fairy things like Political Theory and Contemporary Spanish Theatre, this term I'll be studying Translation, Teaching English as a Foreign Language and Linguistics. If I'm honest it'll actually be my first foray into the world of more practical language-learning, seeing as in my last two and a half years (where does the time go?) of university, I've mostly covered things like Art and Literature in Golden Age Spain and Cinema and Identity in the Spanish-Speaking World. I'm looking forward to something a bit different and I'm hoping it'll expand my academic horizons a bit and give me some insight into what I would like to study after UCC. Currently looking at my academic future is like looking around when you're drunk - you can make out vague things that you're interested in, but you're not sure can you reach them, or even if you want to, and the rest is just a haze!

I think I've made good use of my time off after exams, not only in light of my million first times today, but also because I went to Madrid to visit a friend from school who's on Erasmus in Alcalá de Henares (about 40 minutes by commuter train from Madrid, a medieval university city and the home of Miguel de Cervantes, Spain's most celebrated author in its history) (oh and there were storks everywhere. Mad). Madrid is a city I've loved ever since I went on a school trip there with my Spanish class when I was in fifth year. It was my first time there and my first time in Spain, and we had a brilliant few days. The next time I went to Madrid was a year and a half later when I was inter-railing, which was a different experience but still awesome. This time was different again, but I still know a few areas of the city and I still really like it. The Museo Nacional del Arte de Reina Sofía remains one of my all-time favourite

museums, ranking just behind the Tate Modern. All the other great things Madrid has to offer, like the Museo del Prado and the Parque del Retiro, are all still great. What was best about the trip was seeing my friend, with whom I haven't been able to spend much time since August, so obviously the three days were completely jam-packed full of catching up. It was also interesting to see Erasmus through her eyes - in a big town near a capital city, instead of just in a huge city, and it seemed like a great position to be in. Everybody knows everybody in Alcalá, but then Madrid is less than an hour away. We drank cava, we ate the best pizza in Madrid, we got cupcakes from an American shop, we saw Guernica and Las Meninas - what can I say, it was a very memorable and fun few days!

Just to touch on something else, I saw the King's Speech the other night - it was really brilliant. Everything from the acting to the costumes to the really beautiful cinematography really caught me, and it definitely deserves one of the many Oscars it's nominated for.

The next few weeks hold a lot of exciting prospects - new classes, a little tripín to Dublin, a visit from the boy - all sorts of fun things. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention - today being the start of February means that it's my halfway point. I've been here five months and I'll only be here five more months. I could see it that my time is ticking down until I go home from here on in, but instead I choose to see that the weather will soon get consistently hot and sunny, and I still have plenty to discover in Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain and Europe and plenty of time in which to do it. I remain, as ever, positive of enjoying my time here :)