Third day

Had an interesting conversation with Arthur this morning. He told me about a project he's working on for the German institute here. He works with two groups, leading them in performing German plays. One group is all teenagers, and his purpose there, coming from a social work background, is to promote social skills, empathy, confidence, etc, and language learning at the same time. The other group is adult, and that one is more for language, so that there is an interesting activity for them to practice German. He's also writing a play for this. Seems that people find all kinds of creative ways to have income here. Apparently the unemployment for people younger than 25 is 40%! I met one American the first night that teaches English, and he just walks around the squares and hands out business cards like a madman. Somehow he's able to make a living just doing lessons.
My only tourist attraction this day was La Sagrada Familia (pictured below with and without the stupid face). It's a cathedral Gaudi worked on for 40 years and never finished. However he left detailed instructions and they're still working on it.
Its very ornate on the outside, a bit much, but inside it's spacious and airy. Gaudi used nature as inspiration for all his work. There was a whole nerdy exhibit about his use of honeycomb, spirals, crystal shapes, double helixes, it was pretty interesting. The columns were made like trees, and where the branches branched off, he placed bulbs like scars on a tree.
Later I met up with Petz Schults, the sustainable designer I emailed before coming to Barcelona, at a gallery space where she gets together with some friends once a month to showcase their sketchbooks to eachother. She shared some interesting ideas about sustainable design and told me about some projects she's working on. There was a very warm feeling between everyone there, they were talking about New Years plans, and it was fun to get a peek into Barcelona social life.
Then it was time to move apartments. The next place I stayed was with Elvira, who is originally from Barcelona, and another couch surfer Tania from Moldova. Had an awesome dinner with Elvira and Tania, lots of talk about culture, especially of the eastern-european variety. Elvira has always been interested in Russian culture and and language and she knows almost more about my peoples than I do. It also helps that she's hosted over 100 couch surfers! The next day after we leave, she's hosting a guy from Belarus for 3 days and next week another person from somewhere else. I don't know how she gets the energy, but she should probably write a book at some point.
It's incredible to what extent Europeans are exposed to other cultures than their own. Both the girls did Erasmus, which is a study abroad program for Europeans, and everyone I've talked to seems to have done it. For example, Tania is Moldovan, but studying in Czech republic and is doing Erasmus in Portugal for a semester. Oh, and a flight to Barcelona is 30euro round trip from there. She speaks like 6 languages.
For me, even these four days in Spain are expanding my mind. Even though I'm constantly around foreigners in the US, and always have been, it's a different experience being a foreigner yourself. Maybe that forces you to be receptive and open to changing. Or maybe my mindset was already there.