Welcome ERASMUS students!

Jairo y Ginna

La bebé del piso y la mamá

La mamá y el recien llegado

castellers

the artsy wall of horns at the theater

I love these baby forks

Last night was the official "welcome" to all of the mobility and erasmus students here at UdL.  There are easily 100 of us, if not more!  We all met up at the plaza in front of my school building (Rectorat/El rectorado) the oldest building (cerca 1275) where they hold school.  I like it.

From there ALL of us paraded over to this cool theater- rather new, posh, & artsy (aka I liked it a lot) and we watched an acting troupe of 3 perform the "typical" exchange student problems- it was hilarious.  We were all roaring and bonding through shared fears and experiences.  It was great.  The actors had fabulous accents (one of my favorite parts was "Vivian" the girl who spoke in a very Anglo accent- butchering the spanish pronunciation- but on purpose, b/c she's clearly Argentina (not the country.  Argentina means girl from Argentina).

After the play was done, we had the presentation of diplomas.  Not really, but they called off all the names of the students who passed the Catalan course we took, and I passed, but I didn't know I would have to go up and receive and award for it.  Funny thing, all of our professors (all three of them) and the two people in charge of the UdL/erasmus connection, the Servei Linguistic coordinators and the head of the Catalan department were all there.  In America, we would accept the award and shake a hand or two and sit down.  NOT SO IN SPAIN!  Every female gives dos besos to everyone!  Two kisses x 9 = 18 kisses.  Needless to say, the presentation only went fairly quickly due to the fact that so many of the Erasmus students are from other countries that don't know the dos besos rule, that they shook the hand of the guy giving the awards and ran off stage (but not so dramatically as I write it.)

Next, we all proceeded to the lobby of the theater for some of the comida típica de Catalunya.  Also, it should be noted here that if you say someone from Catalunya (this northern region of Spain) is "Spanish" they will correct you and say "No, I'm Catalan/Catalana" They have a lot of pride for this area and the history/future of Catalunya/Cataluña.  You can see from the pictures maybe, but everything was beautifully displayed and they gave us wine (típico también) and even truffles!  I don't think I took a picture of those because they were gone too quickly :)

Next, we went out to the courtyard and the castellers were getting ready to start what they do.  What is common to Catalunya are these towers of people.  They start with the base obviously, then others climb up the base people and then more people climb up and more people and they make a tower of people, sometimes up to 10 levels of people- but that's for the professionals.  I got scared a few times just watching b/c they were trembling so much from all the weight on their shoulders!  It was very cool though- and fun to see.  Some of us even helped at the base- we held up the other people by pushing on the backs of the base members so they wouldn't be forced backwards. 

Then, as if we still needed more to do/see, we all paraded to a nearby bar where the whole night was geared towards us (it was 10:30 at this point).  They passed us all free drink tickets as we walked in and there was a guy from RIVER (the biggest club in town) there too, passing out "beeps" they call them- they are credit-card sized passes that are good for free entry to RIVER all year long- well, forever probably.  The band (live band) came on ("Companys"- pronounced [comb-pahnge]) and played soon after we got there - and on the screen behind them were projected photos of all of the erasmus students and everything we've done so far.  

What I didn't mention before was that I took Ginna (It's really Gina, but she's always spelled it with two "n"s), my flat-mate along for the whole night.  She's Catalana and not even close to an erasmus student, but it was great to have her along.  She was afraid they'd kick her out, but I told her she could totally slide by the radar- and she did.  She told me to not eat the "mierda" (crap) part of the caracol (snail)- for which I am grateful.  She also laughed hysterically at the drama and we danced like crazy at the bar after the castellers were done building their human towers.  My flat-mates are some of the best things that ever happened to me.