Barcelona-- week one

It has been 10 days now that I have been "living" in Barcelona.

I put "living" in quotes to connote the fact that I am not a resident civilian...yet. I still feel my heart racing when I try to make it to the metro. I feel that I stand out when I don't cross the street at the same instant that all the other natives do. I know I'm the biggest American eye-sore in the room when I have trouble ordering a Stella.

I know all of this is a part of the "process", but man, they don't tell you about the absolute desperation you feel to be a part of a culture you've never seen before.

En Passeig de Gracia

Or maybe that's just me.

Even with all these obstacles that frustrate me beyond compare...I find myself wandering down Passeig de Gracia feeling more at home than I ever have in my life.

I touched pillars made by Gaudi himself in the Park Guell and felt an absolute shock and realization that this was somewhere I had been before.

I have always wanted to see Gaudi's works since I was a little girl. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my teacher showed us a photo of the Casa de Batllo. I remember telling myself that I would one day touch that house. In high school I wrote an essay on the works of Gaudi for a Spanish course. My second year of college I made a presentation of his collective works within the city of Barcelona and how magical the city was.

And now I am here.

I can't express how surreal this experience is. I talk to loved ones, I try to tell them-- but then again I really don't try. I feel that it is almost in vain to try to express the distinct de-ja-vu I feel every time I leave my fourth floor apartment, using my ancient skeleton key to pry the downstairs door open, walking in brisk morning air-- falling into the sea of the morning rush.

Casa Batllo

I don't know how to tell my mom that when I run down into the metro, I am a fish. I don't know how to tell her that when I am apart of the school of my fellow fish I feel completely comfortable, that this was something I knew I had done a million times before. That when we all round the corner to make the next train, I feel the same pulse and electricity that the other fish do, and I am apart of the same sea.

I am incapable of explaining to my lovely boyfriend that when I swim in the Mediterranean, it isn't for the first time.That when I lay in the Spanish sun, I am the Spanish sun. I am the Catalonian rays. As I float and drift across the gentle, salty sea, I feel as though I am being held in my mother's arms. That when I dive beneath the blue- green blanket I am only water too-- and that makes me so much larger than myself.

I know that this sounds...desperate. Almost "put-on". Desperate, yes. But fake, not in the least-- I wish this was a faulty feeling. The duality of feeling so ridiculously American yet inherently at home is confusing and dizzying in it's mildest form.

Parc Guell

As much as this feeling plagues me, it's also completely new and compelling...and I hope to wrap it around my and drown myself in it as I let the city inundate my body and infiltrate my mind. Cultural immersion isn't something that just "happens"...it's something you let happen--and I am so ready to accept spontaneous combustion in order to reborn from the ashes and perhaps be someone who knows more than one sky, knows more than one light and luminescence. One can only hope.

More to come later.

Besos,

A.