Wednesday November 23 – Volunteering in Almanjáyar

                The presentation in my POE class I believe went well. She said I did a good job autocorrecting, like when I messed up I went back and made it right when I was speaking. Then I took a 30 minute bus ride to the barrio Almanjáyar, the poor barrio where the gitanos (gypsies) live. Carrie and I went to an after school thing for children where they go for an hour and a half to do homework and learn different culture things. The first group, kids from 8 and under, was leaving when we arrived and we were going to work with the second group which was kids from 9 to 13. They were the worst group of kids that I have ever encountered. They were always yelling and they never listened to the two main ladies when they talked. The kids were very offensive; they knew many sexual things and words and were doing inappropriate gestures and asking many inappropriate questions. The two main ladies either did not hear them or ignored them. The two main ladies always threatened the kids that they would punish them but they never did. One boy was especially rowdy and was sent home, which I guess is like the worst punishment but I do not think that he cared at all.

Tuesday November 22 – Catching Up on Homework

                I missed class Friday because I was in Barcelona and that day my civilization and culture teacher decided he needed to give a big assignment to the class to do in class, therefore I had to make it up today and finish it by Thursday. I got about half of it done and then had to think of a story to tell to my POE class tomorrow. I was having troubles thinking of a topic, but chose to tell the story of when Bo Pelini yelled at me because he did not know the rules of baseball while I was umpiring his son’s game.

Monday November 21 – Back to Class

                Not much happened today, we ate lentil soup today which I love and I did the little homework I had and exercised and not much else.

Sunday November 20 – Leaving Barcelona/ Election Day

                This morning all five of our alarms went off at different times as well as one of the other guy’s that was staying in our room. I think we upset the two other girls that were staying there because of all our alarms going off, the guy did not even mean to have his alarm on and his went off the longest. Nothing went wrong on our trip back to Granada except when we got to Malaga’s airport the shuttle was on a 20 minute break and we had 30 to get to the station so we had to get a taxi and they all were four people taxis but one guy said he would take us all, other than that it went well.

                Today was Spain’s presidential elections and El Partido Popular (Popular Party) won with their candidate Mariano Rajoy. I believe that they are the more conservative party because the other one is a socialist party. I also learned that they do not directly vote for the president here, they vote for senators and whichever party has the most senators, their candidate wins. On a side note, I also learned from my host mom that it is obligatory to vote in Argentina, if they do not they have to have a justification as to why they did not.

Saturday November 19 – Barcelona Day 4/ Barcelona Soccer Game

                This morning we were working on getting tickets to the Barcelona game, but finding the tickets were not easy and we were not sure how to get them after we bought them. We then went to a cool market on Las Ramblas but walking down the street there were flower, animal, art stands and street performers; there were also one of those guys that hides the ball under three cups and moves them quickly, it was obviously a scam but we watched him for a bit with our stuff being closely watched so they could not steal anything. He had a couple other guys that gave him 50 Euros and purposely guessed wrong, he would even knock one of them slightly up so everyone could see where the ball was, he tried to have me guess by shoving 50 Euros in my coat pocket but I did not want to take my hands out of my pocket so they could not take any of my things, he took the 50 Euros back when I did not do it. In retrospect I should have done it and paid close attention to my things then taken the money and ran, another guy told us to leave because they stole his wallet but he was able to get it back because he caught them in the act. Back to the market which is called La Bouqueria, it has a wide variety of many shops, from fresh fruit and vegetables and some that I have not heard of, there is candy, bread, meat, cheese and very fresh sea food, so fresh that they have the crustaceans on ice and they just get so cold they just do not move very much but they still move slightly.

After the market the others wanted McDonald’s for lunch so we sat on the second level of the restaurant and what we were about to see was very different. We could see a group of homeless people on the street and drinking, there was a lady that could not sit up on her own, and there was a man that was lying on her lap with one shoe on and one shoe off. Then there was a lady with a shaved head and a guy came up to her and she pulled her boob out and he sucked on it and then went on like nothing happened. They somehow ended up with a skillet of paella and after they were done with it they threw it in the trash, later a guy came by and looked like he was yelling at them for throwing the skillet in the trash. Again it happened, the same guy went up to the same shaved headed girl and sucked on her boob again, gave her a cigarette and then left. I did not think that I would see that, but I guess Barcelona is a party town.

We went back to the hostel to look at an email to see how to get the tickets for the game; we found out that we had to go to Camp Nou, the FC Barcelona stadium. We went there to the ticket booth and were able to get them there after we went to a bar to have a beer. Unfortunately it was raining and their pre-game style is not that of American football, I feel it is less crazy but it is still fun. We got into the game and it was amazing the stadium was really cool, we had nose bleed seats but were still able to see everything very easily. Pique scored a goal in the 18^th minute that I got on video, Messi scored a goal in the 42^nd minute. The half time was really boring, there are not shows and although it is prohibited to smoke in the stadium a cloud of smoke rises into the sky from all the smokers during half time. In the second half Puyol scored in the 53^rd minute and Villa scored in the 74^th minute, Barcelona beat Zaragoza four to zero. On our walk to the subway everyone walks in the middle of the street although cars are still trying to get through and we met some guys from Zaragoza and they were really nice and again I could understand them a lot easier than people from Andalucía. We crossed to go to the subway but there was a really long line so we stopped at a restaurant and ate while the line went down. After eating the line was gone but Katie Stohs wanted to go to the beach so we had to walk to another line to get there. We started walking and asked directions, this is where I learned some Spanish gestures, one guy said “hombre” which literally means man but in this case means do not do it and he also waved his hand like it was hot and he was trying to cool it off, he said that it was a very long distance but we did not take his advice to turn around and go back to the other subway. We kept walking and asked for more directions as we went and eventually ended up almost next to our hostel after about an hour and a half of walking. Katie Stohs still wanted to go the beach but the others did not except for Derick, her boyfriend, so they went to the beach and we went to the hostel and sat and talked for awhile before getting ready for bed. Katie Stohs and Derick got back around 2:00 and they we all went to bed.