An Exciting Sunday
So yesterday was a very good day for 4 reasons.
1) I went to an English speaking Protestant church yesterday with Joyce and Sarah. Yay! It was actually a lot of fun. They were very friendly and I am looking forward to going back. It was a really small church, not many people but everyone was very warm and inviting and everyone spoke English! It was called International Church of Barcelona and it truly lived up to its name. There were plenty of Americans but there were also Brits, Canadians, Pakistanis, Persians, people from Africa, Latin America… all over the world! It was a very cool experience to see all the different cultures worship together.
2) I went to the Barcelona Cathedral after church to try to watch the traditional Catalan dances but I guess we were too late because there wasn’t much going on. There was a trio of people playing classical music on violins and a standup bass though, so we chilled for a little while and watched them before deciding to walk to Las Ramblas then back to Onix through the Eixample. As we were walking back, we stumbled across a small farmer’s market and I started poking around. I found a small section that had some fresh cheeses. For those of you who don’t know, I am crazy about good cheese. It could be anything from Gouda to fresh Mozzarella, Blue Cheese, Brie, or even just Colbie Jack. Today though, I hit the jackpot. I found some fresh goat cheese. The package I bought has 4 pieces, one with oregano and some other herbs, one covered in black pepper, one with a sort of pesto sauce, and another with a spicy red pepper sauce. I wish computers had smell-o-vision so that y’all could experience this with me!
3) Jennifer and I were almost back to Onix as we were passing the Arc de Triomphe and we heard music and chanting so we decided to go check it out. We found a huge group of people practicing Capoeira. It looked like it was a summer program to train these kids. The kids ranged from 5 or 6 all the way up to mid-twenties. I’ll let the videos do the talking……
I have two more videos that are SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER but they are being slow on the upload so check back in a few hours and hopefully I will have those up for you.
4) As I was walking in the door from all this, I ran into a group of people walking out to play soccer under the bridge. The sun was shining and you couldn’t ask for a prettier day so we went and played soccer for several hours until we were all ready to drop.
5) (Bonus random cool thing) There has been crazy music going on constantly since Thursday. On Friday night, we heard a drumline walk down the street through the courtyard behind Onix. Everyone had some kind of cymbal, bongo, whistle, or chime. There was more than 60 people just walking down the street and they had a following of about another hundred people. Everyone was chanting something and most people had some kind of drink in their hand. A group of us were tempted to follow them but we had just started cooking dinner. All day Saturday was a live music festival in the park just down the road. They had live music of almost every genre including jazz and country! I can hear some crazy loud music from the plaza below my window right now so I think I am going to make a sandwich, grab a beer from the fridge, and go check it out. (Turns out it was a huge celebration that we think was for a wedding. Streamers and confetti everywhere, lots of people cheering, lots of music. But they were wrapping up when I went down there)