From KK: Barcelona...

Other than getting bitten in the leg by a massive dog in one of my student's houses and kicked in the back of the head with a soccer ball by some unruly kids on the walk home from the dog attack, things are just dandy. We are hoping for warm weather so we can spend this weekend out shopping/not buying anything during the rebajas or (rebaixes in Catalán), where everything in the entire country is on sale like 70% during January and February. 

We bought this book called A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona and it has a passage in it that encompasses much of what Barcelona feels like. 

Do you hear that? It's the pumping bass of a week long fiesta. It's the rattle of a silver cocktail shaker. The chirrup of a bar filled with tiny caged birds, the heartbeat of a group playing bongos in the park, the yell of a seller of butane gas, the hush of the sea on the beach at midnight, the silence of midday in a hidden library.

Can you smell that? ...It's fireworks, incense waved by a dancing transexual, it's olive oil cracking as it hits the fresh lobster, it's sweat, it's perfume, it's freshly ground espresso, it's the aerosol tang of freshly sprayed graffiti.

Do you feel that? It rumbles underneath your feet. It's probably the Metro- or maybe it's the groan of the city itself, restless, throbbing. Moving.

I am sitting the in library, among the students who are actually being productive, staring out the window at the pigeons and seagulls warring for who gets to have the roof across the street and heard the man selling butane. He walks up and down the streets with his cart of butane tanks and bangs on them with a screwdriver to make a loud CLINKCLINKCLINK noise, that is sure to be during your nap, no matter what time of day that is. If you want a tank, you just yell out of your window and he brings it up to your piso. 

I was also thinking about how aggravating it is that after three month they still haven't fixed our internet and I am having to sit in here in the first place, but then I started thinking about Spain and this poem about it. It's definitely a give-and-take kind of place. It's annoying that every 15 days we wait all day for the internet technician, who is scheduled to come at 9 am, and calls at 4:30 to say he is busy and will come in 15 days. 

At the same time, everything works like this, so if you feel like not doing anything and just using the mañana mañana technique, it's perfectly acceptable. It takes a little getting used to, and will surely make you lazy, but it's at least nice to live by the beach if you get to be lazy.

As usual, Doug is the exception to all laziness rules. He doesn't get to use mañana mañana and skip practice, but he closer to it than ever before. 

We are keeping a running pros and cons list we will have to post soon.

We still don't know how long we will be here. If we don't win the lottery immediately, we will probably have to come home early this summer, but will at least be here until May. 

We are going to have a crazy Spring full of visitors. It's about time my Dothan friends start catching up, as everyone who has visited thus far has been an Auburn swimmer!  

P.S. The seagulls won.