Pictures! - Parc de la Ciutadella

June 5 - An easy day

 Wednesday I finally figured out exactly which train schedule to follow.  I ride three separate trains in the morning and in the evening, 6 total a day just for work.  I also finally got my ID today so that was pretty darn cool.  After work, I just decided to take it easy and get off my feet for the evening.  Not a bad plan. 

KD forgot to mention that he also took a bit of time to make sure his wife had a great day. She went to an Awards Ceremony today and when she came back on her e-mail was this great certificate!

This is a

Certificate of Recognition

presented to

Nicole Gordon (Hanks)

for          Outstanding Performance                   as a

Director for Boys and Girls Clubs of South Valley.

A special thanks to Nikki for being the best dance partner, wife, and friend ever!!

Presented with love

           To:            Nicole Gordon Hanks               

On:        June 5, 2013                               

                       By:           Kelley David Harris Hanks      

(It looks a lot better in person but I couldn't get it to transfer over so you just get to see the words.)

It was really sweet! Totally made my day! Only 15 more days till I can go!

June 4th - Beach!

So Tuesday I figured out how the banks here work.  I went to the national socialist bank of Spain, la Caixa, where I was able to pull out some euros directly from my account.  I also stopped by in the market at a panaderia where I got some croissants with ham and cheese stuffed inside.  They even melted it for me, and they were just over a dollar each.  Tuesday after work was pretty good. I walked through the Ribera again to try and see if the ruins were open by any chance, and they weren’t.  With a couple hours left of daylight I was not about to call it a night and head home, so I decided to walk the several miles down to the beach.  I made it to the beach of Barceloneta, and it looked gorgeous in the evening.  Unfortunately, I was still wearing my suit.  Then I thought to myself how ridiculous it would be if I did not go to the beach the first time I saw the Mediterranean in person up close and personal.  I took my shoes and socks off, rolled my pants up, and walked straight across the beach into the ocean regardless!!  I found a rock to sit on at the water’s edge, watched the sun set over the mountain and drew a quick sketch of my first time to the beach before walking back inland and heading home. 

June 3rd - First Day of Work

   My first day at the Consulate!  I have to say, I have certainly had better starts to the day.  When I arrived in Spain I changed my wristwatch, and yesterday I set my alarm to go off at 6:30 a.m. Unfortunately, I forgot to change the time on my alarm clock.  Needless to say, I woke up at 8:00, and rather than the leasurely hour or so I had planned on I was out the door in less than 10 minutes and running for the metro.  The force must have been with me because I arrived at the Consulate just before when it opened, and my supervisor had yet to arrive.  The morning proved relatively uneventful but exciting.  Anyway, they taught me how to get in and out of the consulate as well as my particular section of the consulate, and all the emergency procedures.

   It was a really cool and informative morning working with lost and stolen passports.  Lunch went well.  The other interns and a few employees walked down the street and got a good yet cheap lunch and took our lunch break.  Then in the afternoon I got to go to the prison to visit two American inmates.  I was very surprised both with the prisons as well as the prisoners.  We also got to ride in the cool diplomatic car, all black, tinted windows, cool license plate, etc.  We drove through the countryside where I got to see some vineyards and learn about the economy of Catalonia and such.  Pretty cool. 

   The evening was just as good.  I went and visited La Ribera y Barceloneta.  I saw Sant Pere de les Puel.les. which is an old Benedictine monastery built in 945 AD using Greek Architecture.  It was kind of scary walking down all these old, narrow Medieval dead-end streets with no exits by myself, but kind of cool.  All of a sudden I emerged in a large courtyard with a fountain in the middle and the monastery across the street.  I went in and only a handful of people were there.  As I mentioned, some have thought me French, and once again a woman came up to me and started talking.  I didn’t understand here the first time and asked her to please repeat, to which she asked, “Don’t you know French? I thought you were French.”  I got it the second time.  She thought I was a Frenchman come for mass which happened to be just starting.  Rather than correct here I just went in and sat in front of Saint Judas for a while until I had planned my route. 

   I stopped by the Antic Mercat del Born, a collection of ruins from an ancient Roman village, but it was closed while they worked on the staircases.  I continued down the Passeig de Picasso and saw some weird stuff representing him and his work, and turned down la Avenida Marques de l’Argentina and walked all the way down to the Marina where I spent the rest of the evening browsing the market, watching the sun set over the city, and even sat and listening to a musician playing on the docks.  Mostly original work or Spanish music, but he ended with his own rendition of Message in a Bottle on acoustic guitar.  Since I had quite a way to get home on Calle Aragon I didn’t stay until it was completely dark, but overall a very nice evening.

June 2nd - Church

Sunday June 2 

Today I went to the ward here for the first time, which was about 150 in sacrament meeting. Priesthood was not quite as large, with a total of 7.  What I did find surprising was that almost the entire ward was latino, maybe 12 espanoles.  The good news is that the church is the same anywhere in the world, and so are latino wards.  It was just like all the wards from my mission, fun, loud, very social, and very kind/welcoming.  I also saw three sets of missionaries, two of which were sisters, which tells me that all in all we live in a pretty good sector of Barcelona.  After church ended we all went back to the house to celebrate Herlinda’s birthday.  When I say all, there were 14 of us, and the party went from 1 until past 6:00, the entire time being filled with small talk and food!

We had appetizers, a main courses, two desserts, and after dinner snacks.  It was certainly a great opportunity to practice my Spanish non-stop for a few hours.  Plus the food was good. Living with a Peruvian family what can you expect?  A couple of the traditional Peruvian dishes we had were ceviche y arroz con pollo.  Ceviche is raw fish marinated in citrus juice and served with plenty of spice and some vegetables.  Arroz con pollo may sound quite basic, but it was specially prepared after the Peruvian style.  For example, because of the peppers and spice the rice was green.  I have not eaten so much since the mission.  Yes I did change into stretchy pants.  By the time the festivities had ended I only had a couple hours so I decided to return to the Parc de la Ciutadela where I watched some more street performers, people watched for a while, and sketched the Arc de Triomf.

June 1st - First Day of Spain

   After sleeping in until 11:00, it was time to get up.  By noon I was on the streets.  I went up to the Consulate and back, a trip of about 50 minutes both directions, and stopped off in Catalunya on my way home.  In Catalunya I found La Rambla as well as FC Barcelona's official store.  After looking inside and discovering a jersey on sale for 51 euros (after a 40% discount), I opted for a different local to spend some money.  Across the courtyard was a giant building called Il Corte Ingles, (The English Court), which is Spain's largest chain of malls.  The store itself was 12 floors in total including both those above and below ground.  After thoroughly exploring the upper levels, I found my way to the subterranean levels were the supermarket was located and got to work trying to find lunch for the next week.  Who knew that shopping could be so difficult?!

    After browsing through the store I found the bread and water just fine, which is what I would need to survive.  I even found the marmalade without too much difficulty.  The problem came when I went looking for peanut butter and plastic bags.  In the entire supermarket there was only one type of peanut butter in one spot on one shelf, and it was imported from the United States.  Apparently the Spanish don't eat PB&J's.  After that fiasco, I got completely turned around looking for plastic bags.  Employees kept sending me to different parts of the store only to find the wrong plastic bags.  I actually kept ending up in the seafood section (not too difficult when you consider that it was two full walls of the supermarket).  While they did not have the plastic bags I was looking for, they did have a ginormous tank all along the counter on the outside where people could reach in themselves and it was full of lobsters and crabs.  Pretty cool.

    To make a long story somewhat shorter, I finally found someone in the cheese department who told me the bags were not even in the grocery store but in the pharmacy next to the drugs.  Go figure, why didn't I think of that.  At least the prices weren't bad.  The eight grain bread was just over a euro and 5 liters of water was about one and a half euros.  A piece of advice in Spain, try not to use bills because they will give you a stack of coins.  They even have two euro coins.  It was at this point that I decided to head back to the house and deposit my groceries at the house.  After another meal of shrimp (the big meal of the day is at 2 every day), I was ready to keep exploring.

    This time I hopped on the metro and went to the Arc de Triomf in the Parc de la Ciutadella.  The arch was huge and amazing!  I had seen a picture in a tourist book, but even so I could not stop my mouth from dropping and an irrepressible "wow!"  You come out of the metro and it seems to be right above you.  Walking through the arch, the other side is a large promenade lined with palm trees and strange blue lampposts, filled with all kinds of people playing music, dancing, performing, any and all kinds of activity.  The promenade empties into a large park which contains the zoo, a few museums, the parliament building, a pond with rowboats for rent, and a gorgeous fountain.  I spent the rest of my afternoon there just enjoying the atmosphere and watching everyone around: playing soccer, drummers, birthday parties, tour groups, people dancing on a slack line, etc.  I found a little table to sit at across from the fountain and sketched for a while to pass the time until it got dark.  They were setting up for a concert in the park, but I decided to head home where I had a nice snack of warm milk and chocolate before going to bed.

    The climate here is amazing, warm, humid, and all around pleasant.  The city is also super busy.  I don't know exactly how many people live here, but I have never seen so many people out on the streets all the time: on the metro, in cars, on bikes, walking.  They had entire streets for pedestrians only and even some of the streets with cars have giant middle sections for pedestrians to walk, sit, play on the playground, etc.  The atmosphere here is just great and the people I've talked to seem nice.  Thus far I have been taken for a German and a Frenchman. 

May 31st - Arriving in Spain

    We landed in the brand new terminal, and you could immediately tell that this was a different country.  If the language wasn't enough of a give away, then the whole bizarreness of Europe certainly would have.  For example, the do not have moving escalators, but moving sidewalks on an incline.  Rather than using all the space they could to provide for the greatest efficiency, the airport was full of long corridors with random courtyards of trees and seats.  After finally arriving at customs and immigration, I waited in a very long line to get my passport stamped and to finally step foot of foreign soil.  After talking with both the security guard and the tourist information desk, I decided to go with the most convenient and expensive option to get to the apartment rather than the cheapest.  Though this would typically be my first inclination, I didn't want to have to catch a shuttle, board a train, and walk the rest of the way to the apartment through the middle of Barcelona, by myself, carrying all my luggage.  The drive itself was rather pleasant.  A few things of note.  First, the cars are the same make that we have in the US, but they look like slightly mutated versions.  As a general statement they all look to be rounder, shorter, and smaller.  Looking back, I don't think I saw anything that seated more than five people.  All I could think of was Top Gear.  What I did see was an unusual number of mopeds, scooters, and motorcycles.  They were everywhere!  (Including parked on the sidewalks.)  Another big surprise was that Catalan was much more common than Spanish.  Though both are considered official languages, I'm pretty sure Spanish is only there because Barcelona is considered part of Spain.  For all intents and purposes the official language is just Catalan; how the people speak, all the signs, maps, everything.

    In total, the taxi cost 30 euros and dropped me off at the curb right in front of the house.  (Taxi's here have one standard rate and based on a meter; no negotiating, but on the plus side no manipulation on their part either).  Luckily someone was home to let me in when I rang the buzzer.  So now a few things about the apartment/living in Barcelona.  The doorknob is in the exact middle of the door just like a hobbit hole.  The light switches are all about knee level and tilt up and down.  The outlets are circular holes in the wall.  The toilet does not swirl, but instead crashed straight down.  All told, a nice, if small, apartment with a couple bedrooms, a bathroom, living rooms, kitchen, and balcony overlooking the Calle Aragon.  This very first day I found a metro stop and purchased an unlimited three month pass for 105 which works on all metro, bus, and train.  Lucky for me because to get to the consulate requires that I take both metro and train both directions.  That's 20 tickets a week just for work!  I spent the rest of my rather uneventful day unpacking and trying to figure out Skype with everyone while trying not to fall asleep too early.  Oh, and I had shrimp for dinner -- welcome to the Mediterranean.