Salvador Dalí is a genius, and peanut butter is God's gift to mankind

Highlights since my last blog post:

1. I am finally, FINALLY not sick any more. After killing approximately 2 trees worth of tissues, I think I'm actually healthy again. Thank the Lord, I will not be getting dirty looks on the subway every time I have to blow my nose.

2. I am now a proud owner of....yes. Peanut butter. You have to go the Corte Inglés to get it (the Corte Inglés is basically a super store...they'll have a lot of clothing brands, other floors will have electronic vendors, and then they have a grocery store that has PEANUT BUTTER). It's definitely not something that most Spaniards keep in their pantry, and many of them probably have no idea what it is.

3. It is 60 degrees and sunny here, and it is gorgeous. I walked around today and ran for a bit, which is good considering the absolutely ludicrous amount of calories from this weekend. A run was definitely necessary. My host mother's cooking isn't exactly healthy either. I really don't understand how can go on and on about how bad oil is for you, but then use so much butter/cheese/red meat. Oy.

A tunnel used for hiding during a bomb raid

4. This past week, our class took a trip to a bomb shelter in Barcelona. The shelter is from the Spanish civil war (Late 1930's, ended with Franco's take over and right around the same time that WWII began). They've kept the shelter in tact, and you can even see where Franco's troops dug in trying to find other tunnels of the shelter. The shelter is dug into a mountain, but the door just leads out onto a side street. If you were just passing down this street, you wouldn't have any idea what it was.

The shelter isn't like a building or anything, just a series of dug-in tunnels. People had about 2 minutes to run into the shelter and grab anything they might want to bring with them; there are little holes in the wall for people to put the possessions that they grabbed before running to the shelter)

Farmer's market on one of the main streets in Figueres

5. Figueres and the Salvador Dalí museum: On Saturday a few of us took a 2 hr train ride to Figueres, a small town north of Barcelona and pretty close to the French border, which is known for its Salvador Dalí museum. Even the train ride was exciting; as a proud born-and-raised Texan, I've never been on a regional train before, and the countryside is absolutely stunning. You pass by these antiquated, old-Spanish-style pueblos with the typical tiled roofs and small pastures, or more developed towns with narrow buildings in bright colors and such. Everything is green and snowcapped mountains are always in the background. Unfortunately, we were in the train the whole time and I wasn't able to get a picture. The town itself is one of these older, small towns that is just cute, for lack of a better word. Very different from Barcelona. Tourism has definitely changed the businesses of the town, but luckily there aren't many tourists in February. We did see a lot of French people, who come down to see the museum. Almost everything is in Catalán....the farther north you go, the closer you get to the heart of Catalunya.

Outside wall of the Dalí museum

The museum by itself was enough to make the trip. I simply can't do justice to the...amazingness of this museum. Dalí designed it himself; it is one of the three museums of his in Spain. The artwork is fantastic, and the museum itself is a piece of art. Dalí is a genius...insane...but a genius.

Unfortunately we didn't get a tour of the museum, which probably would have helped a lot because there is so, so much to every piece of his art work; however, his work is so complex that the point (or at least, what I got out of it) is to be able to stare at a painting on your on time table and notice all of the intricacies, and marvel in how one thing can look or merge into a completely different thing. I'm really not sure how to explain what I got out of it, but it was just phenomenal. I've never really been to an art museum where I actually laughed and enjoyed the artwork in it.

The museum itself adds to the artwork. This one particular room is absolutely massive, with a gigantic glass dome on top of it. The room isn't there to just showcase the artwork, it functions as a part of it. There are chairs where you can just sit and look at the room; it takes a good 5 minutes to take in every part of these rooms, which are completely covered with different types of art. (Also, that picture in the center that looks like Abraham Lincoln looks like a woman at a doorway when you're standing up close. We didn't realize that the little boxes all together made a face until someone took a picture of it and looked at it through the camera.)

We laughed at this room for about 5 minutes. There is this ridiculous staircase that you walk up and then you can look through a glass lens that completes the image of a face (the picture is taken through the glass lens). The lips are a couch; I didn't realize what the large archway was until we walked up the stairs. From looking straight on, it just looks like a bizarrely furnished room.

It's really not possible to show all of the amazing parts of the museum, but these give you an idea. It's so interactive, and you really never want to stop looking at one of his pieces just because there is so much detail and so much to look at.

(I still don't understand why it's in English....everything
else in the whole town is in freaking Catalán)

And just to demonstrate how we were very much in Catalunya and NOT Spain....graffiti on the wall outside of the museum. There was a ridge and you could look out and see this ridiculous, vast range of mountains in the background of the town. It was breathtaking; unfortunately, my camera died. But I did manage to get a picture of Catalonia's finest beforehand :P I knew about the Catalonian desire for independence before I got here, but I didn't realize how prominent it is. It is a very, very big deal here. And when you get to these smaller towns in Catalonia, it is really a big deal. I find it absolutely fascinating. I jokingly told my teacher that I was from Texas, "the best country in the world." He thought I was serious, that Texas is as serious about independence as Catalonia is. Love it.

Overall, a great weekend. Tomorrow we begin our real classes, which is both exciting (because I NO LONGER am in orientation, which I am STILL ecstatic about) and nerve wracking (because I am taking legitimate classes at the Universitat de Barcelona...nbd). I also have class at really bizarre times; 3 - 4:30 and then 6 - 7:30. The Spanish work on such a different time schedule.

Up next on "Comer, Jugar, Amor": Spanish cooking class with the program on Thursday, and Paris trip on Friday-Sunday! What will Haley do in the 1 and a half hour between her two courses? Will she ever discover how to get wifi at the university? And where is her classroom, anyways? Stay tuned!