Spring Awakening

Spring has well and truly sprung in Barcelona, seemingly overnight (or at least over one weekend which I spend in Dublin, enjoying the daffodils and tulips that have sprung themselves in the Botanic Gardens). I had a wonderful visit from one of my oldest and best friends, and I'm anticipating another from my lovely little Mum. The sun is shining that little bit more, the sky is that little bit bluer, and the lecturers are piling on that little bit more work. Make that a lottle bit more work - I spent four hours on a Linguistics assignment today. I've spring cleaned my room - Life Laundry as my older sister calls it - and some things are springing in my brain.

It's struck me that when you move abroad and have to live your day-to-day life through a different language, you really learn the importance of communication. Small things like buying food or asking where something pave the way for the big things like reaching out to people or listening in class. The whole point of going on Erasmus is to improve your language skills, which I feel I have in leaps and bounds - I used to be extremely shy about speaking Spanish in class, and I must admit I didn't make much effort for homework exercises or things like that, whereas now I know I have to put in the time to do things properly, and I have to try to communicate as best I can, which has made me happier and more confident about speaking Spanish.

The whole idea of communication is paramount in our translation classes, where Angels (teacher of Translation I) tells us "mmm we wouldn't say that, how can we express this better?" and Johnjoe (teacher of Translation II; actual name Juanjo) tells us that the message is the most important thing to convey. These translation classes are hugely helpful for learning Spanish, from bits and pieces of vocabulary to methods of analysing translation before starting the process, but sometimes it's almost overwhelmingly difficult to communicate the overall message.

One thing that is definitely not difficult about communicating while on Erasmus is talking to people at home. Say what you will about the constant contact people have with each other, and let the critics rage and rave about texting, Facebook, Skype and Twitter - means of communication are often what keeps me sane when I'm feeling sad, lonely or simply out of touch with home.

A lot of people highlight their opinion that the whole point of being away for a year is to cut yourself off from the familiar and throw yourself into the unknown with wild abandon. I agree with the latter, but definitely not the former. By all means, cut yourself away from the familiar as regards food and habits and things like that, but keeping in touch with friends and family has been an unbelievably huge support to me in the last six months. Last night I spent a total of over two and a half hours on Skype to four of the people closest to me - nothing of huge importance was discussed, but what made us stay talking (to two people in particular for over an hour each) was just the pleasure of being able to chat. About nothing. Last year in the study month my friend Laura and I gave each other the nicknames of Talky McChat and Banter McNatter, because we were doing a bit too much chinwagging and not enough studying. This year my friend Carina and I were forcefully separated in French class for engaging too much in the old bavarde. It's a given that there's a time and a place, but very little can top a good chat.

So let me chat just for a while. Last week I met the President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, who is a lovely woman. She is smiley and pleasant and friendly and involved, and she made an admirable effort to speak Catalan to boot. But this very pleasant instance (which involved free cava and cakes with the Irish flag on them) collided interestingly with two others.

One of these was an assignment for my class on teaching methods, whereby I had to find a video on the subject of gender inequality. The video I chose was a TED speech by Chilean author Isabel Allende, who spoke wonderfully about passionate, strong women. Never having been interested in my teenage years, I've lately felt the vague presence of feminism tapping at the door of my consciousness, and slowly that door has been creeping open. Last week, Isabel Allende blew it right off its hinges.

This had particular resonance for me as the other instance occurred a few nights previously, when I was on my way home from the gym. It was dark. It was raining. It was about 10pm. I was walking to get a Bici from the station nearest the gym (which is still in the back arse of nowhere in Barcelona terms), and I noticed an alarming frequency of girls. Girls standing in the rain. Young black girls my age, standing in the rain with hot pants and umbrellas. Not even someone with as innocent a mind as my own can be naïve to the incongruence of their attire, their half-attempts to seduce despite the adverse weather conditions and the lack of passersby. I saw a girl sitting in a car with a man. I've seen this sort of thing late at night, off the Ramblas, but never so obvious, so clichéd, so upsetting. It's one of the images of Barcelona I'll keep with me. And I can tell you it's not going to be stored in the same mental storage box as the Happy Lobster, the colour of the sky behind the purple trees in full primavera bloom, or the warmth of the sun on your face as you cycle down Carrer de Enric Granados in the early morning, while the shopkeepers and baristas clackityclack open their shutters.

All these things came together in one week and became lodged in my brain. I realise there's little I can do on my own to change anything right now, but with a degree in Spanish and Politics behind me and the inspiration of women I come across on my travels through life, Isabel Allende and Mary McAleese being the most recent, maybe there will be in the future. Not only is Erasmus about learning a spoken language, for me it's also about learning the language of life in a different country, and my experience living in a big, bustling, wonderful, electric city like Barcelona has opened my eyes to a huge amount, an extent to which I hope Cork will never close again. And maybe it's important to communicate these sort of thoughts, even though they're not the sort you have during chats over tea and Milka chocolate.

When giving a speech at a conferring ceremony in UCC last September, the author Theo Dorgan said in regard to those who were planning on emigrating, "send us your thoughts and your visions constantly, it's what the technology is for." I couldn't agree more. Then again, if I disagreed I wouldn't be writing a blog.

I've said enough for now, but here's a picture of the Happy Lobster to lighten the mood:

The Kindness of Strangers

I'm quite a friend-orientated person. I worry about them when they're sad or troubled, I miss them when they're not around, and I enjoy spending time with them. I like making new friends, but as I have an unfortunate propensity to be quite shy sometimes, I always feel most comfortable with my old friends. But something which has really struck me lately is the capacity for strangers to act like friends.

One example was last week, when I was introduced to Antonio. He had just retired and was hoping to spend a few months in Cork with his wife, starting in May. A mutual friend thought it would be good if we could meet and I could tell him a few things about Cork, and I wasn't going to decline because practicing Spanish is always a good thing, even if it does mean hanging out with a man in his sixties instead of people my own age. I hadn't met Antonio more than five seconds when he presented me with a gift to thank me for my time, a kind of teach yourself Spanish kit with a phrasebook and a cd. I thought this really was generosity which was pure of heart - I was teaching him about my home, so he wanted to help me learn about his - and I found myself genuinely lost for words.

But what hit me even more had happened a week previous. When Donnacha was visiting recently, we borrowed my flatmate's Bicing card so the two of us could cycle around Barcelona. It worked out in our favour almost all of the time, as we saved a lot on metro tickets as well as enjoying pedalling around with each other, something we had never done before. I adore Bicing, the scheme whereby you flash your card at a scanner at station, it tells you which bike to take, you take it, cycle where you need to go, and drop it off elsewhere. It means I don't have to buy a bike, or pay for huge locks to keep it safe, or replace it when it ultimately gets stolen, as it would in Barcelona. It also means that when I cycle somewhere and it's sunny, and when I'm ready to go home it's raining, I don't have to brave through the elements to get home if I don't want to. But for all its good points, it still means that whatever bike you use isn't yours, and as such people mistreat them. I've got bikes with broken gears, upside-down bells, stuck seat adjustments, punctured tires and a missing pedal, but unfortunately Donnacha was the one who got one with a slipped chain. Not having a huge amount of experience with cycling, he didn't know what to do with it, but luckily (depending on what way you view it I suppose) I have a bike at home that hates me, and slips its chain at every available opportunity. So I got down on all fours and rotated the pedal and hooked the chain back on, fixing the bike but covering my paws in oil in the process. As we were on our way to lunch I thought no problem, I'll just wash my hands in the restaurant, but then I remembered that en route there are a few public fountains, so I decided to give one of them a try. I scrubbed my hands under the freezing cold jet of water to no avail, but then all of a sudden a man came up to me and presented me with a small bar of pink soap wrapped up in a plastic bag. The previous week on my way to college I had seen a homeless man washing himself in the early hours of the morning with soap under one of these public water fountains, and I realised this man was probably in a similar position. It looked as though all his possessions were stacked up on his bike, and he seemed shabby but happy. And I was completely overwhelmed that this man who had so little would be willing to share it. And his soap got all the oil off my hands in one fell swoop.

It can be uplifting to know that the world is full of these random acts of kindness, but unfortunately you have to be aware that it goes both ways. A random act of meanness befell me and my friends on the beach at Sitges last Sunday night, when all of Cataluña was celebrating Carnaval in Spain's gay capital. The parade had finished and we had an hour before the bus was due to take us back to Barcelona, so we thought we'd head down to the beach to chill out under the stars with the rest of the partied-out partiers who weren't on the streets anymore. We were having a nice time talking when a group of six teenagers came over to us and started hassling one of the boys in our group. They started spouting in Spanish about how they were the Francoist police, shoving an identity badge in his face while they tormented him, asking did he have any drugs on him and why he had a Catalán flag on him. They yelled their fascist dogma at us for about five minutes before ripping the flag off him and trying to set it alight. When the flag didn't catch, they cast it into the sea. And they still wouldn't leave us alone. It took one of our number, a native Spanish speaker, to tell us to get the police for them to take fright and run away like the cowards they are. And so the circle is complete, where people can warm your heart with the kindest of gestures one day, others can erase all of that and replace it with anger as they invade your privacy and wreck and ridicule your belongings.

Given the tragedies that mark our planet as it spins on oblivious - from the economy collapsing and so many people tumbling into poverty to earthquakes destroying Japan and New Zealand - I think we could all use a little more kindness from family, from friends, from strangers.

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 :)

New Year, New Term, New Post

One would hope that after a lovely Christmas at home, I would be full of vim, vigour and vitality and want to hit the streets of Barcelona on this beautiful, warm January Saturday morning. If I wasn't doing that, one would think I would be studying for my impending university exams. what one would not presume is that I would still be in my bed, in my pyjamas, having watched four episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I would have to be struck down by the flu in my first week back on Erasmus, wouldn't I?

But enough of the melancholy, and to the important things: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, and homes away from homes.

As I had an American roommate, and as I have been imbued with my mother's appreciation and enthusiasm for holidays Irish people don't celebrate, I was all on to throw a Thanksgiving party this year. It wasn't big, just a few of my friends and a few of her friends, but around the table we represented Ireland, England, America and Germany. Now, I am a relatively alright cook, in that I rarely burn things or undercook things, and while my cooking isn't extravagant or elaborate or even very good, I felt confident enough to roast a bird for the celebration. Just not a turkey. I have no idea how to cook a turkey, and besides, I'm not sure my oven here could fit a turkey, and furthermore, we really didn't have enough people there to eat an entire turkey. So I bought a chicken, and we Christened it Turkey.

What I did know about Turkey was that he was free-range, and a good size, and corn-fed. What I didn't know about Turkey was that he still had a head. Yes, that's right, he still had a head. He not only had a head, but he was perfectly anatomically correct on the inside as well, which I only discovered after cutting off his head, telling my roommate somewhat squeamishly that I could see down its windpipe, and then taking a good look inside him. Said roommate deigned to stop laughing at me and taking pictures of the decapitated Turkey for enough time to cut him open and try to take out the guts. We got so close, we really did, but there's only so much chicken guts two girls can take, so off we went to the supermarket butcher, who cleaned him out within seconds, and looked quite amused while she did it.

That grisly ordeal out of the way, the chicken got put in the oven, and became part of a truly lovely Thanksgiving feast, which included roast potatoes and mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, carrots, pecan pie, lemon pie, banoffee pie and would have included a cheesecake if it hadn't been dropped on the floor moments before serving. We gave our thanks, and then we watched a few Christmas movies, and went our separate ways and went to bed. So I must say, my first Spanish-American-English-Irish-German Thanksgiving chicken dinner really was a huge success.

It took a while to get into the Christmas spirit after that because unlike Ireland, Barcelona doesn't go into Christmas hyper mode the second Hallowe'en is over. It wasn't until early December that the lights were turned on in the city, and that was when things really got crazy. The Feria de Santa Llucia is set up in front of the cathedral for the month of December, and is essentially a huge Christmas market specialising solely in figures to put in cribs. Big figures, little figures, crib shrubbery, all the animals you could imagine (I bought a tiny black and white cat for one of our cribs at home), and most bizarre of all, the caganers and the Caga Tiós. The former are figures, mostly of famous people (the entire Barcelona football team, the British royal family and Barack Obama featuring heavily), squatting down and taking a poop. The latter are logs that you draw smiley faces on and hit with sticks until they poop little gifts like turrón. I don't know why Catalán culture has such an obsession with poop, but to each their own!

I went home for Christmas on the morning of Friday the 17th of December. By the evening of Friday the 17th of December the entire country was covered in a thick layer of snow, so I really think I made the right decision as to when to get my flights. After spending the day in Dublin, I arrived at my house around 8pm, completely covered in snow, and my mum said it was the most typical cinematic clichè, but trust me, it actually happened! The next few days the rest of my family wasn't so lucky. With two siblings, three cousins and an uncle trying to descend on Cork from Edinburgh, Dublin, Lisbon, Geneva, New York and Malaga, and airports shutting down across Europe, it was a tad up in the air who would be home for Christmas at all. Fortunately everyone got home with delays here and there, with the exception of the cousin from Lisbon, who was sorely missed! Christmas itself was lovely, and involved much cheer of the Flynn persuasion - chocolate mousse, pyjamas, movies, penguins bearing Hershey's kisses, Christmas tree biscuits, and let's not forget the cat bringing in a live bird on Christmas morning, only to cover the entire hall with feathers and bird poop.

(Maybe poop is just inherent to Christmas everywhere, I just hadn't noticed it before)

I'm not usually a fan of New Year's Eve, but my friends and I made the very bright decision to count down the last seconds of 2010 in Galway. One friend who studies in NUIG very kindly put us up in his house, and despite being the only girl at a party of boys who all inexplicably decided to wear suits, it was a really great night. I had never got the chance to really explore Galway city before, having only ever been there once when I was but a 12 year old Girl Guide, and I was really glad I was able to - Galway is a seriously cool city, and one I hope to go back to.

My return to Barcelona was difficult after three weeks of being loved and looked after and surrounded by family. Thankfully, the boyfriend came with me to settle me back in. It was great to have him here, because I could stall my efforts of studying for a while and instead do fun things, like go for tapas, watch the Godfather Part II, sit in the Parque de la Ciudadela while the sun sets, and drink beer in the square of eternal flame. A good highlight was also getting to see the World Cup, for which we got a photo in the paper La Razón (according to Wikipedia, Spain's fifth-highest circulation general-interest daily newspaper based in Madrid), which can be seen in the third picture here. Now he's gone back to Dublin, and I've been hit with the flu, I have to face the gruelling task of studying for exams in contemporary Spanish theatre and political theory. Or at least, I have to sit in my bed and watch tv with a small guilty part of my brain telling me to do so.

My exams end on the 21st of January, and I have about two weeks free before I start classes again. The current plan is to work more on the Spanish language that I learned in the first term, and to go to Madrid for a few days to visit a friend who is on Erasmus just outside, in Alcalá de Henares. After that, I start a new semester and new classes. Being home gave me good perspective for the year, and time to reflect on what I wanted out of this experience. According to my first post to this blog, I wanted "a better understanding of the Spanish language and culture, some interesting and fun friends, and the opportunity to travel around Europe to visit other Erasmus friends". By and large, I'm halfway through the year, and by and large I'm halfway to those goals. Let's hope Madrid will be my first stop, followed by Lyon and Strasbourg, and maybe elsewhere. A belated happy new year to all, and I'll catch you up again when my life involves fewer tissues and study timetables.

Autumn Summer

I knew that coming to Barcelona would be a shock to the system in many ways, one of them being weatherwise. In the back of my mind I knew that I would be living in a place much much warmer than Cork, but I don't think it ever really sank in, because once it hit November I was fully prepared to dig out my boots and my coat and my biggest jumpers and hats and scarves and gloves, only to find that Barcelona in November can hit 20 degrees, easy peasy. Heck, this time last year it was so cold in Cork that I used to layer up at least as well as Mr. Shackleton himself. But in recent times I've found myself eating ice-cream on the Ramblas, and walking down Avinguda Diagonal into the brightest, clearest sunset I've ever seen, listening to Jape (from whom I've stolen the title of this post) and watching the people coming towards me with the sun behind them, like glowing orange ghosts, features hidden by shade.

That said, it gets bloody freezing too, like when you're sitting for an hour and a half in the highest tier possible of the Camp Nou watching Barça beat the crap out of AD Ceuta below, while overhead lightning strikes the rest of the city a little further away. Going to my first football match was an overwhelmingly positive experience, made better by two main factors - i) the presence of Donnacha and Julian, whose enthusiasm for everything to do with the match - from the scarves to the stadium to the players to the opening anthem - made it all the more exciting; and ii) the fact that Messi came on to the pitch late in the game. Now I'm no football expert at all, but I know who Messi is ("we are in the presence of God" Donnacha said to me when he came on to a standing ovation), and I now know he's a pretty good footballer, having seen him set up a goal and score another within a ridiculously short space of time. 5-1 to Barça, olé!

So I understand now why Barcelona is so proud of its football team, but another thing I got an insight into this week was pride in history. I take a class in political theory here, and the course up to now has been your standard Hobbes-Locke-Rousseau-Kant-Hume affair, with overviews of Liberal Conservatism and the Social Contract and all the standard topics that I've covered in UCC. Yesterday, we moved on to Fascism. The lecturer is interesting and engaging, and the material was as well, but what I found particularly interesting was his focus on Hitler and Mussolini. Every point he dealt with - mass mobilisation, the eradication of negative liberty, the lack of pluralism - was explained with detail given about Germany and Italy, and only very occasionally would he mention Spain. This didn't surprise me hugely, but what I noted was that if revolution is mentioned in any class in Ireland, our own example is quickly given, because we're encouraged from a young age to be proud of the War of Independence and the transition to a Republic. But Spain definitely differs in this respect, and oddly enough just today I read a perfect summation of this attitude in Colm Tóibín's excellent Homage to Barcelona:

"In Barcelona, no one talks about the war: it is not romantic or heroic: it is a trauma that everybody went through, everybody fears, and nobody wants to go through again"

So just as there are two sides to every Civil War, there are two ways of reflecting on your own country's Civil War.

Right now I'm waiting for my room-mate and my friends to wake up so I can make pancakes for them, and this weekend is looking pretty sweet, between the possibility of lying in instead of getting up at 8.30 to go to college and study, the likelihood of going out somewhere and having fun, and the definite Arcade Fire gig that I'm going to on Sunday night - my first time seeing them in the 5 years I've liked them, so to say I'm looking forward to it is a little bit of an understatement!

And it's just two weeks until I put my paws back on Irish soil, for the Belle and Sebastian-Donnacha's 21st Birthday Party-Arcade Fire Part II extravaganza, featuring a visit from my Mum, a film with my sister, and hanging out with all my friends.. Again, excitement is an understatement!

Home

When I thought about writing a blog about going home, a million titles popped into my head taken from songs about Home. Home, home on the range immediately morphed into home, home can be strange in my mind, because in many ways going home for the first time was extremely odd. Having never lived in a house other than the grand mansion of Lawndene Hall before, let alone living alone in a different country, it was exciting for me to return to something I had always taken for granted. Examples include having my clothes washed for me, having my meals cooked for me, being able to drive a car, and simple small things like there always being food in the cupboards and milk in the fridge. Not only did I get spoiled something rotten when I got back to Ma and Pa, I also found I had to take a number 8 bus on Saturday afternoon, and even worse a taxi that night (during the Jazz, what were we thinking?). I couldn't just zip my T-Trimestre metro card through the Pueblo del Obispo station and be in Calle de San Patricio in seven minutes.

ASIDE: Bit of Spanish humour for you there, look up those fictional metro stations in spanishdict.com to find out why. Speaking of my excellent blossoming sentido de humor in Spanish, I made my first pun in Spanish yesterday - we were drinking tea in a cafe and my friend didn't like her iced chai tea. She to me: no me gusta. I to her: no té gusta. A ha, ha ha ha.

So the strangeness of being home was one thing - after seven weeks of being a grown-up I was allowed the luxury of being taken care of for a few days, which was awesome. The next song that sprung to mind was one that I listened to obsessively during the summer, Fuel Up by Stornoway. The line in question goes it's nowhere you've been and it's nowhere you're going, home is only a feeling you get in your mind from the people you love and you travel beside. This was definitely something I experienced during my weekend in Cork. It wouldn't have mattered to me if my parents had moved into a granny flat above a Chinese takeaway in Macroom town centre, as long as we could still be chatting and looking up pictures of cats together I was happy (a family that LOLs together stays together). Equally, it didn't matter to me what I did with my friends on Saturday or Sunday night, as long as we just had the chance to hang out together again (though Mrs. Reidy's baked goods were appreciated as always).

The final one is by Villagers - can you wake me when we're almost halfway, I don't want to take this trip alone, cos I'd never reach my home. In a way going home was less about physically being in my house in Cork for a weekend, but more about the idea of the journey from Barcelona to Cork. Getting out of Erasmus Land and back to Cork Land was inherently good for me, because there are much fewer laws in Erasmus land (for example, it is perfectly acceptable to wear your pyjamas until mid-afternoon, eat entire giant bars of Milka chocolate to yourself, amuse yourself for free by playing with the iPads in Fnac and drink calimucho on the step outside your house) and it put my feet firmly back on the ground. Being away from my apartment and my flatmates and my university and my friends and the tapas and the sangría gave me the chance to reflect on all the things I still have to do here, and the aims I had before I came. And so I could return to Barcelona on Monday evening a bit more pumped for the rest of the term until Christmas. Except Aer Lingus had different things in store for us, delaying our flight four hours, which meant I left my house in Cork at 3.45pm and didn't arrive in my apartment in Barcelona until 1.45am.

Apart from that hiccup, it was a really great weekend, full of the normal expected antics like playing Super Mario Galaxy with Donnacha, having Curry and Beer night with my parents, drinking tea with Ms. Laura Hurley, being in the Bróg with all my friends and practically everyone I've ever met in my entire life being there (that's Cork for you, that'd never happen in Barcelona, except for the fact that when I was going to play on the iPads in Fnac yesterday who did I happen to see coming out of El Triangle shopping centre on Plaza Catalunya only our very own Nóirín Deady, Co-Ordinator of the First Year Experience in UCC), as well as the more offbeat antics such as doing a jigsaw puzzle (Donnacha to me: we fit together like two pieces of this jigsaw puzzle! I to Donnacha: thank God we have each other. Nobody else would have taken us. Now, I'm looking for a bit with some sky on it..), doing the Bandon Walk and having an entire Christmas dinner. Clearly a win of a weekend.

Unfortunately I didn't even have time to unpack or reflect on my lovely weekend, because the day after I got back I had to go to classes again, and work practically nonstop on an assignment I had due in to my Political Theory class on Thursday. I finished it on Wednesday night, all 1,000 words comparing the theses of Hobbes and Rousseau through Spanish. Leviatán and Del Contrato Social are no harder to read in Spanish than in English, because neither makes a whole lot of sense the first time you read it anyway.. It's one of those reading a paragraph three times before you even begin to understand it sort of things. Then I had another harrowing experience with the printers in the law library, someday I'm going to kill all law students and their useless photocopying ways. This week I also started my Spanish course for Erasmus students, and it's going really well - it's mostly Italians who think they know everything because let's face it, they're shit hot at Spanish. But there are some very nice people too. We had a sort of scavenger hunt around the Gothic quarter on Friday, which our group came last in because we didn't realise we had to turn over a page to actually answer questions and do tasks. Bit stupid of us really in retrospect.. But it was still good fun :)

Now I'm heading to Penneys, because we're having a Hallowe'en party in my apartment on Sunday and I have to look at ideas for costumes. The current one is Vampire Sarah Palin, but I'm open to suggestions!