Barcelona, briefly

---

So my day and a half in Barcelona was pretty good considering I spent a sizeable amount of it trying to buy a spanish sim card. But after about 4 hours my hard work paid off and I'm really happy with the plan i got. Thankfully the farm I contacted was okay with my last-minute request, and so in a couple hours I'll be headed to Les Piles, in tarragona for a few weeks. I will have almost no Internet access there, so it will be a while until the next entry.

Highlights of barcelona? Parc guell. It wa actually the only place I had time to go during the day, but luckily I've been to Barcelona before, so i wasn't missing out on things I'd never even had the chance to see. And I've found that whenever I'm in the city now I look for the greenest place. I think parc guell is one of my favorite places in Europe. I was planning to just eat my grocery store food for dinner, but I met an Australian girl in the parc (another solo traveler) and we decided to meet for dinner. I had also made friends with a German woman in my room at the hostel and so she came, too. I had two of my Spanish favorites for dinner: tortilla española and paella. I wa so excited, but the food quality really wasn't that good, so I was sorely disappointed. Oh well, the crema catalana we had for dessert was delicious. And we had some really interesting conversations over the meal. We talked about attitudes towards immigrants from poor countries and the situation of native peoples (although not in Germany) in our respective countries. I learned mor about Germany and Australia during dinner than I have in many years of history class. I love this kind of education.

So that's it for now. I realy lucked out with this hostel, peres tarres youth hostel. Relatively cheap, very clean, nice, free breakfast, free Internet. I recommend it to anyone going to Barcelona. It's pretty far from any tourist stuff, but the metro here is great. Oh, and did I mention that the Barcelona airport is the most chic, fancy, modern airport I've ever seen? It's really new and amazingly nice. Wow.

---

Comments

[heni krammer]

hi
Hi Maddy; So glad things are working out for you and you are having fun. We miss you and want to be sure you stay safe. Love and Kisses....Grandma Heni and Grandpa Dick

[Barbara]

Rebecca's baby
Hey Maddy, Rebecca had baby Elsa on Friday...7 pounds 14 ounces of beautiful baby girl. I'll send you a big email with photos. I have'nt had a chance to talk with her yet, so I don't know all the gory details...I do know she had a scheduled c-section, so knew when it was all going to happen. The Ida screening went really well. we had about 250 people and it was very well received. It's nice to have it out in the world. We've been working with some challenging girls in our WISE class in North Minneapolis. Hannah and Molly came to help with some shooting yesterday--so that was very helpful to have more people to work with the girls.. THere are 12 of them and they give us quite a run for our money. Girls from communities in crisis and they are very violent and angry and disrespectful...so, it's a slow process. I think we are making headway. We have 1 more week in this section and then will try and do another 8 weeks with them. I'm going to try and find a grant that can support us doing more work with them and trying to do a really formal evaluation to see if we can create a curriculum that can be proven to work with difficult girls. It is a beautiful day here today--sunny and warm. I am down with a UTI so do a little bit and then lay in my bed for a while. I"ve got drugs so I should be better soon...just need to listen to my body and lie down when it says! I love hearing of your adventures...it is so inspiring. I miss you terribly and can't wait to hear your extra stories in person! stay safe, healthy and curious. love you. b