The Hootin' and the Hollerin'

You know those dreams where you’re going about your day, and you suddenly realize that you’re naked?  I don’t, because I don’t dream (or don’t remember any dreams), but that approximates how I feel sometimes in Spain.  Especially when I’m running.  While the list of things that I love about Spain continues to grow longer, the list of things that I will absolutely not miss is also growing.  At the top of that list is being moaned and shouted at while running.  Let me just make a PSA

LISTEN UP

to all of the men who have the stamina to stay out at the clubs until they close at 6 AM and then walk around the beach area the next morning: if I get up early to run, it means that I don’t want your sketchy club attention.  Phew! Glad I got that off my chest.

Today started off as sort of a fail: I missed the lab group trek over to the Friday morning meeting by mere minutes, then searched the building in vain for the next half hour.  Nobody that’s in the office at 8 AM seems to understand my lab’s routine.  Luckily, I didn’t miss much.  My lab kept joking that the slow subway service had spared me from an hour of intense boredom.

In contrast to the poor showing by Team Jess today, Team Amanda scored a slam dunk at lunch.  During a discussion of SONAR,

an electronic/techno music festival held in Barcelona this weekend, Amanda brought up Fat Boy Slim and what may be their greatest and most hilarious music video of all time.  Please spare three minutes of your life to watch it HERE.  I think that the good part starts around 0:35, if you’re too bored to spend an extra 30 second on YouTube (haha… ha).

Pro Spanish Tip of the Day: All short videos - whether they’re music videos, five minutes of laughing babies or red pandas, or a movie trailer – are called videoclips here (I don’t think the phrase “music video” exists), but pronounced in a pretty adorable way.  Say it with me: bee-dee-oh cleeeeeep.  I love it when they Spanglicize words in English.

After work, I headed over to the beach, but further down at the Poblenou metro stop to join a MeetUp group for some beach volleyball.  While I’ve run over in this area, I’ve never actually spent much time walking around on the beach.  I quickly realized why: it’s a hub for the beach-loving nudist community.  Since bathing suits are so small here anyway, you ALWAYS realize a few seconds too late that there is no piece of fabric protecting your eyes.  And most of the nudists seem to be wrinkly, old, and male.  Or female and merely topless.  Blinded, I staggered off in the WRONG direction and spent nearly an hour asking everyone if they knew where Boo Restaurant was and how I could get there (the group was playing at the net next to the restaurant).  In the end, Boo was right where I had started, but was hidden behind the vast sea of naked flesh.  Oh, and it seems to have an endless day party going on.

When I first arrived, the line included about 100 people, who then herded themselves out to the patio and stood motionless consuming cocktails.

This was one of my favorite MeetUp events so far, possibly the best one yet.  Unlike the movie, you could talk.  Unlike the runs, you got to spend time with the whole group, learn a new skill (almost nobody had played in, relatively, forever), get a bit competitive, and have a great time.  Oh, and it’s right by the swirling blue of the Mediterranean.  We split into 3 teams of 4 and had the winning team stay on the court after each round.  Every team got better with each round, so it was hard to guess who would win.  My team had an incredible streak of winning; we really worked well together.  I also realized that my instinct is to dive for volleyballs in a sort of slow-motion “Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo” moment to prevent it from hitting the ground.  One moment I see it coming and the next I’m faceplanting in the sand, sometimes after successfully bumping the ball back into play.

That's me in the blue shorts, serving!

While not playing a game, my team (me, Christina, Caspar, and Michele) practiced a bit but mostly watched the throng of men performing a highly coordinated bar fight.  They wielded green plastic bottles and practiced attacking each other with them.

 We figured it was a bar fighting class, and wondered in horror for a few minutes why there was a class to prep people on Friday afternoons before they went out to the bars.  While taking a few pictures, the guys noticed my camera and invited me over to join them.  The immediate result: ferocity and an unprecedented display of my paleness.

By the way, it turned out they were practicing Krav Maga, a noncompetitve self-defense system first developed in Israel (and now used by Israeli military forces).  It's one part street fighting, one part aggression, one part boxing, as far as I can tell. And one part comedy, if you're watching.

A perfect Friday afternoon.

Spotted: Mullet skirts.

I’m not sure if this trend is sweeping the nation or the continent or the world, but it’s HUGE in Barcelona.  Party in the front, goddess in back, mullet skirts come in all sorts of styles, fabrics, cuts, and styles.