Later on at home, I laid everything out for Saturday and the trip to Valencia since I needed to leave home before 6:30 am. I rolled out of bed by 5:30 am and could already see a few people outside walking around. (or maybe they were still walking around from the night before?) I left home about 6:15 to allow 15 minutes to walk to the metro, about 10 minutes to ride and the rest of the time to wait for the train and get myself to the right spot on the other end. The train arrived just as I entered the metro and the trip only took about 5 minutes. The metro seats were already mostly full at this time of day--6:30 am on a Saturday. I arrived about 20 minutes early for the bus and ran into a Chinese student who was also going on the trip. We sort of latched onto each other for the day. We were joined later by another Chinese student and two young men, one from the Netherlands and the other from Germany. I was a little surprised during the day to be approached and drawn into conversations by a couple of the students in our group--ones from other schools. They were curious about me I guess since I am so obviously much older than any of them. Maybe they just miss their grandmothers!
I really enjoyed the festival. The fallas are truly amazing. Wikipedia does a good job of explaining the fallas and the festival: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falles. The design and construction of these scenes are extremely well done. I did not expect to see anything like them. At 2pm there was a firecracker show, but we arrived just minutes too late to see it. However, judging from the crowds leaving the area, we would never have gotten close. We didn't miss much though because there were many firecrackers after the show. People lit them everywhere. One area behind a fence was set aside for kids to light them and some were in there doing it, but many just lit them along the streets. The kids were all ages down to some quite young ones. People were also throwing down what we would call poppers here, but bigger. So it was a very noisy day.
We had a great time wandering around seeing all the fallas, eating paella, trying the "Agua de Valenica, " (this was orange juice and cava--the equivalent of Mimosas), watching parades of "royalty" in costumes with marching bands, and eating churros. By the end of the day, I was more than ready to return to Barcelona. We left Valencia about 9:30 pm and I was home by 2:30 am. This was my latest night in a long time!
Sunday morning I actually slept in and did not wake up until 9 am. I spent the morning re-organizing my things, washing dishes and doing a load of laundry. During the week I had located a church for Mass at 1 pm (I picked this time because the Mass is prayed in Castillian rather than Catalan) and arrived there about 12:45. At first I thought I was really late, but then it dawned on me that there was also a 12 pm Mass and I arrived at the tail end of that. So I stayed for the first part of the next Mass. This church is more along the lines of what I am used to with more people of all ages in attendance and music. The location and times are great for me so I will probably attend Mass here for the rest of my stay. It is good practice for my Spanish too!
The rest of the day was nothing special. I took a walk downtown to treat myself to cafe con leche and a croissant because I have been so deprived of them since leaving the Placa Catalunya area. This is not to say that I cannot get the same thing in my current area; it is just that I rush off to school in the morning and by the time I am done, it is too late in the day (for me) to drink coffee. I do drink the vending machine coffee at school but the best thing I can say about it is that I can get rid of all the odd coins in my pocket by putting them into the machine. The coffee only costs 50 cents, but I have used as many as 14 coins to buy a cup.
I wrote out postcards to my granddaughters and have had the television on with subtitles hoping it will provide another way to improve my Spanish. My final goal for the day is to organize my correspondence with the universities that I will be visiting. So far, I have been procrastinating on the project but I should reconnect with my contacts and set a time for visits. I will let you know how I did with that tomorrow!
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