June 17th-23rd

Sorry I haven't been keeping up, but we have been very busy with school. I can't believe today is my last day in Barcelona. I'm so sad I have to leave but extremely thankful I got to come. This has been one of the best months of my life and I just wish everyone would come here instead of me coming home! Now that I'm looking back on it, I am also very lucky to have met the spaniards, because I would not have had near as much fun or near as much of a cultural experience. They have been the nicest and best hosts and hopefully they'll come to America so I can introduce you all to them. I still can't believe I got to live here for a month and that I'm lucky enough to have parents who let me do this. I'll never be able to thank them enough.

This weekend was a lot of fun! I finally got to see the FC Barcelona stadium, Camp Nou. It is the third biggest stadium in Europe I believe. It is absolutely massive and it is so cool. I was only somewhat a fan of FCB before coming here but I am completely and totally devoted now! The stadium tour is amazing and we even got to go down on the field!

Also, we went to a bullfight on Sunday, finally. They're being outlawed in Barcelona after this year, so I'm glad I got to go see one, but they're very gory. If any of you didn't know, they kill the bull in front of the crowd. We got into a debate about it in my class, and it was very interesting. I still think that it is a cool tradition but a lot of people didn't like it. Here are the pictures, enjoy! And if I can I'll try to update since I'll be here another week in Munich and Paris with my parents.

Here are the FC Barcelona stadium pictures.
Here's a general sign. The "Ç" has a th sound and it's Catalan.


This place is like a complex. I can't imagine how much fun this is on game days.


Here's the Olympic torch from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics


Here's me on the field. The seats say "More than a club" in Catalan. Yes, they're very proud to be catalans.


Here's another picture of the stadium. It is just gigantic


This is a part of the Barça museum. It's about 200 fans singing the FC Barça hym. It's amazing. Look it up on YouTube.


Here are the bullfighting pictures.
That's a girl in my program named Amanda, and a dead bull in the background. The matador stabbed it so hard it threw up blood. And it all happened right in front of me.



Just a cool picture of the matador taunting the bull. The capes are red to disguise the blood, not to make the bulls angry. Bulls are color blind. They respond to the matadors movements, not the colors.


This is a banderillero about to throw two sticks in the bulls back. I would never want this job but as you can see he has help. The matadors assistants all have pink and yellow capes.


As you can see the stadium isn't very full. It's because catalonians don't like bullfighting and want it gone. They succeeded.