Day 11 - leaving Barcelona

It was hard to get up early in the morning, but all students managed to be at Sants Estació in time for the train to Barcelona Airport. It was not easy to say goodbye to our friends in Barcelona, but we hope to meet again. We will come back to Barcelona again, and we hope to see our catalan friends in Norway again as well.

Day 10 in Barcelona

It was cloudy and rainy today, but we managed to see parts of this beautiful city on our last day here.

The teachers involved from Escola Massana and Stangnes upper secondary school met in Sitges for a nice lunch and a summary of the Comenius project so far.

(Pictures to come)

Day 9 in Barcelona

This was the day to relax a little bit after five hard days at school. Some of us went to Parc de la Ciutadella in the town centre. Others went for shopping.

Kite Building

During the second exchange in Barcelona in March 2014, all the thirty exchange students made fifteen kites inspired in the natural forms present in Gaudí's works.

Kite Building Instruction

Cécile Dediue Augé made a thorough instruction in Catalan. This instruction is now translated into English (by Cristina de la Cruz) and into Norwegian "Nynorsk" (by Magne Leon Heide).

You might use this Construcció d'estels / Kite construction / Drakelaging free for your own purposes on internet, but we appreciate that you make some small credits to the makers of this instruction.

On internet:

Kite Building workshop

The actual kite building work shop at Escola Massana, March 21-31 2014, is documented on the video "Gaudí Inspired Kites Workshop".

Day 8 in Barcelona

Today was the last day at Escola Massana. We started with one hour of Catalan language.  And now we went to La Boqueria, the famous marked in Barcelona just a few meters from the school. Here we walked around learning some Catalan words for food. We nearly looked like guiris.

Yesterday nearly everyone finished illustrating his or her kite. Today we made all the rest of the kite. It was many things to do before they were finished.

After lunch we went by bus to Port Olimpic and then to one of the nearby playas. Here we started to make all the kites to fly. Some of us had problems with this, but in the end, we made all fifteen kites fly in one or another way. One of them went about one hundred meters up in the air. It was fantastic to see all the kites flying.

The local TV also visited our kite exhibition, and you may see a very short report at this site. (28.3., 12:20 minuts).

Day 7 in Barcelona

This day started with a strike at the school. All the Catalan students stayed outside for nearly two hours while the Norwegians were allowed to enter the school. We also got half a quarter of an hour's "lesson" in the background of this strike.

Two of the students have made this report of today:

Today M. and I was working hard on our Catalonian draco. We nearly finished it. We decided to go for skulls and bones because it has been a great inspiration for Gaudi in his work. We also decided for a dragon because of Saint Jorge and his laying of the dragon. 

After school, we went to eat some good Serano and Chorizo sandwiches, and then we travelled to Sabadell Center. M. showed med all the best of graffiti. I est moi impressico !

We were joking about M. being an official graffiti tour guide, taking people around Sabadell, explaining different pieces.

After this tour we went to the local graffiti shop, here we met the world famous graffiti artist Werens. We both enjoy his work, and it was a pleasure conversating with him.

Werens also signed my graff blackbook and to my surprise, he gave me a copy of his new book "Florsss".

M. and I agreed that we have had a lot of fun this day. And as Ice Cube says: "Today was a good day."

Day 6 in Barcelona

Today we (the Norwegians) started our Catalan lessons. Catalan is quite a different language from Norwegian. We soon realized that they take our /e/ as an 'a'. The Norwegian name /Marie/ sounds for Catalan ears like 'Maria'. Otherwise, Catalan 'b' and 'v' both are pronounced like our Norwegian /b/. We also listened to Catalan music, and learned some useful expressions in Catalan.

Then some students from the second year at Escola Massana told about a project in history. This was about "La Maternitat d'Elna". This was an institution founded in 1939 I the town Elna in southern France. Here some 400 children were born whose mothers were refugees from the Spanish Civil War.  They were interned in concentration camps in southern France. Some 200 Jewish children also were born here. Gestapo closed the institution in 1944.

Most of the day however was used to work with our kite project. We completed our sketches, and then we made them into full scale on paper.

At lunchtime, we left school. Some of the Norwegian students went shopping.

Day 5 in Barcelona

Today we started with a visit to La Sagrada Familia. This basilica was designed by AntoniGaudi who became involved here in 1883. We had a guided tour in English through this large church.  The church have eight towers going up to 170 meters, and there are ten more to be built. Actually the church will not be finished until 2028 they believe. There are many windows in the church, which make the light come in with different colours at different times of the day.

From La Sagrada Familia we went by the metro, and started our first kite workshop at Escola Massana. Our teacher Cecíle Dedieu gave a lesson in the history of kites and the main ways of constructing a kite. Today we started to make sketches of the decoration. We all hope that the final result will be amazing.

Day 4 in Barcelona

Our project here in Barcelona is to use some of Antoni Gaudi's ideas in our kite project. For this reason we visited some Gaudi buildings today.

We started in the morning. We took the bus to Park Güell where all 100 first year's students from Escola Masasna met. This park was designed by Gaudi and built between 1900 and 1914.

All first year's students of Escola Massana was here to make small drawings, and of course, there was some waiting time in a chilly morning. It was quite cold before the sun started to shine, but then it was nice to stay here. We found many Gaudi motives to make drawings of, and the whole area was filled up with students making drawings. In the end one of the Escola Massana teachers made comments to the paintings.

From Park Güell we walked down to Lesseps metro station and then we went down to Diagonal. Here we visited the famous Casa Milà, better known as La Pedrera, in Passeig de Gracia. Our guide told us about this building, and because the elevator was out of use (really?) we had to walk all the way up to the roof. There are some very especial constructions here, and it is a wonderful view of the whole city from up here.

It was not easy to walk down all the steps, but we went out into the street, Passeig de Gracia, to look at another famous building, Casa Battló. This one we just watch the outside of.

We spent the evening with our Massana friends. I went with the mother of my friend to at shopping centre to look for new shoes.

Day 3 in Barcelona

This Sunday the Norwegian teachers and students have experienced many different places in Barcelona and its surroundings.

The teachers tell that they have been to the Hospital de la Santa Creu de Sant Pau, or more exactly Sant Pau Recinte Modernista. This modernista complex was built between 1905 and 1930, it was designed by the famous architect  Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and it is Europe’s foremost art-nouveau complex. The teachers had a nearly two hours guided visit to the pavilions at this magnificent complex. Hospital de la Santa Creu was funded in 1401 when six hospitals in Barcelona moved out of town to a new hospital building just outside the city walls. Until 1904 this was the main hospital in Cataluña. In 1902 the banker Paul Gil Serra donated 3 million pesetas to a new hospital which was finished in 1930. In 1929 Escola Massana was funded in parts the old buildings. 

Two of the students tell about their first Sunday in Barcelona: Today we went for a walk in our neighbourhood in Gracià and other places nearby. This is an old village with narrow roads and nice open squares with cafés. On the picture you can see people dancing at one of the Plazas i Gracia this Sunday.

After having been to Gracià we went to Barceloneta. This is a nice placeclose to the sea with beaches and restaurants. Afterwards we went to Parc de la Ciutadella. And wow, it was beautiful !! The park was full of trees and flowers, beautiful buildings like The Parliament of Catalonia. People was singing and dancing, or just relaxing in the green grass. We also found a zoo inside.

It really was a nice Sunday in Barcelona!

Day 2 in Barcelona

On Saturday we first met at the City Hall of Barcelona (La Casa de la Ciutat de Barcelona) in the centre of the Old Town (Ciutat Vella). Here we went into Saló de Cent and Saló de Cròniques.

After this visit we went down to Placa Reial where we could rest and have something to eat and drink. From here we walked down the famous La Rambla, and at the bottom there was a boat going along the coast.  .

We went for nearly two hours looking at the seaside part of Barcelona, we also saw the beach where we are going to have our kite exhibition next week. 

Day 1 in Barcelona

It really is a long way from the very north of Norway to the Mediterranean seaport Barcelona. We started from Harstad on Thursday evening and stayed over in a hotel at Oslo Gardermoen Airport. Early Friday morning we left for Barcelona, and arrived in nice weather. The train from Barcelona Airport to the train station at Sants Estaciò was easy, but the change to the metro at Sants Estaciò was terrible. There were a lot of stairs up and down, why don't they have escalators!! It was hard to carry all our luggage up and down and through all the tunnels.

Our friends at Escola Massana welcomed us in the schoolyard, and we were astonished about the nice surroundings. Escola Massana is in an old building; no, actually, it is in a very very very old building. This is much different from the Stangnes School. Some of the Norwegian students thought it was like coming to Harry Potter's Hogwarth School, from the outside this was the first impression for some of us.

After a nice welcome, nice food and drinks at the school, must of the students went with our friends to their homes. But some of us stayed at the school to participate in a drama course, preparing a play which will be in a festival in May.

All our families welcomed us in a way that made us feel like being home. Of course, there was a little bit "strange" food such as Spanish omelette and pan with tomatoes and olive oil; especial soups; chicken made in new ways, etc. But we loved this. 

Countdown for the exchange: 1 day!!!!!!!!!!!!!

24 hours!!!!!!!

You are almost here; we are very excited to see you in Barcelona. We are planning our free time trying to do our best.

We are going to prepare for you a good welcome lunch and to spend some time together around the school, Cécile and Cristina probably will explain the programme timetable for the next week and we can discuss about what to do in our free time.  Now that we already know each other we are going to have a lot of fun without any doubt.

At four or five everyone will go home and we will introduce you our families. You will be able to open your luggage and make yourself comfortable.

Today the spring has arrived!!!

Now in Barcelona the weather is quite good (around 20 degrees at midday!!) so we will hope to have a lot of fun doing outdoor activities. We are preparing your rooms and doing the last details for making you one of the best Barcelona visit ever.

We hope that you will like Barcelona, and you will spend a good time with us!!

Countdown for the exchange: 2days!!!!

And here you have some more proposals about what we could do during our free time:

We thought we can meet some of the afternoons in some area of Barcelona to be together and have some fun. If you have a look at our blog (countdown for the exchange…) you will find information about some of the city’s neighborhoods where to spend an afternoon:

• Gràcia and its cozy squares: to walk around, to sit down to have something to drink in one of the squares, etc.
• Port Olímpic: it is possible to rent bicycles or, if someone prefers, roller skates to go along the seaside boulevard. 
•  El Born:  one of the oldest and nicest areas in Barcelona very busy on weekends afternoons and evenings.

We have also thought maybe you would like to spend a whole day out from Barcelona; Sunday 23rd or Sunday 30th  probably will be the best days to plan it. There are different possibilities, let us know if you would like to do one or none of them:

• Going to Port Aventura could be a tiring and funny option.  Port Aventura is one of the biggest rollercoaster’s parks, and actually there is the highest rollercoaster in Europe (an hour from Barcelona by coach).
• Another possibility could be going to Montserrat. Montserrat, a Catalan icon, is situated roughly 40 kilometers north-west of Barcelona Mountain (an hour and a half from Barcelona by train).

Countdown for the exchange: 3 days!!!

We know that you are a little worried about what we are going to do in the afternoons and evenings, but you don’t have to worry because here in Barcelona we don’t use to stay at home, we use to meet with friends and do different things, so for sure you are not going to get bored on the contrary, you could be quite tired as we are living in a very busy city. We would like to make you some proposals about what we could do during our free time.

One afternoon we could go to the cinema.  There’s one which is the biggest and it has 3D films but the films are only in Spanish, so it would be better to go to another one which is near the beach and all the films are on O.V. The best day to go probably would be on Wednesday afternoon because it’s the spectator day, the cheapest day.  Here’s the list of films this week so you can decide about it: http://www.yelmocines.es/cartelera

Another good idea could be going to Montjuic one of the evenings to see the Magic Fountains, which is a show of water, lights and music. It’s so beautiful and a very famous place. We can have an evening dinner there because there are many hot dog posts and then take a walk through Paral·lel, a boulevard where in the old times all the best theatres in town were.  The best day to go would be on Saturday evening.

We can also have a walk around La Ciutadella, it’s a park not far from the centre where there’s a big lake; we can hire some boats to row around it for a while. Maybe we could also go to Tibidabo which is a theme park on the mountain behind Barcelona called Collserola; we could also take a walk there to show you our nature. These are a good activities to do on Sundays.

Countdown for the exchange: 4 days!!!!

There are only a few days left… so we want to introduce you a little bit of the Modernism in Barcelona because our work next week will be inspired in this art movement.

In the 19^th century, as a consequence of the industrial revolution, it appeared a new art movement in Catalonia and it had a lot of impact in Barcelona. One of the most important artists from that moment was Antoni Gaudí.  It was a bourgeois movement and it looked for the aesthetic side of the city. A lot of buildings were constructed at that time and we can admire them in the center of Barcelona, some of them in one of its most famous boulevards: Passeig de Gràcia.

As you know we are not going to make snow sculptures here, because there’s no snow in Barcelona and the Pyrenees are not very near;  instead we are going to try to design  kites. These kites are thought to be inspired in Gaudí and in the techniques he used, one of the most famous one: the mosaic. 

We can see some examples of his works in  Barcelona, his well-known private houses as Casa  Milà, La Pedrera (unfortunately we won’t be able to see the facade of it  because it’s being repaired) ,and  La casa Batlló; an open public space : Parc Güell; his worldwide famous unfinished church: La Sagrada Familia.

Here you have a link where you can find more information and images about the Modernism in our city: http://barcelonamodernista.com/

Countdown for the exchange: 5 days!

As you know you will be given lessons of Catalan language once you will be in our school.  We post in the following you tube videos just in case you would like to know a few words before arriving.

Countdown for the exchange: 6 days!

ESCOLA MASSANA, OUR SCHOOL

 Our school is placed in the centre of Barcelona, for many young people, the best part of the city and were all tourists are. The school is half way between Las Ramblas, the most famous boulevard,  and La Rambla del Raval, one of the oldest neighbourhoods in town.

Escola Massana School’s building is really old, so you will be able to appreciate the wonderful architecture from many centuries ago. Before being a school it was a hospital, actually it was the hospital where it is said Gaudi died, but you wouldn't say it because it really looks like an arts school.

Most of the school walls are full of amazing graffiti, teachers don't really allow doing graffiti on the school walls but the fact is that you never get bored walking around our school, not just for the graffiti of course, there are always fantastic art exhibitions in some special areas  of the school!

In our school there are many types of workshops classrooms where you can learn many different arts and its techniques: the painting classroom (probably the biggest and nicest one as it is an old Gothic gallery from the old hospital), the sculpture workshop, the jewellery and enamel workshops (which work tables are the oldest ones in the school), etc.

We are really sure you will like our school and we hope you love it as we do!

Countdown for the exchange: 7 days!

Another cool place in Barcelona is the Olympic village, the seafront of Barcelona.

There you can do some activities like swimming in the sea, take a walk… There are a lot of people that bring their skates or just run to exercise. There are also many places to rent bikes and during the walk are several sites that you can stop if you fancy to drink or to eat. If you follow the way until the end you can find the Sail Hotel, or Hotel Vela as we say here. If you go up the Hotel terrace you can see a precious views of the seafront. 

Who doesn't like to walk on the beach at sunset?

Building snow sculptures

During the first exchange in Harstad in January 2014, all the fifteen exchange students from Escola Massana and all the 31 students from the Visual Art Department at Stangnes videregående skole made eight Snow Sculptures.

The teachers at the Visual Art Department made an oral instruction in English accompanied by photos of the entire Snow sculpture constructing process. This presentation is now updated with text and new pohotos.

On Internet you will find this "Making Snow Sculpture" Instruction.

You might also see the video "Snow Sculptures" showing most of the prosess.

The "Snow Sculptures from zero to finished" is also on video.

And at last you can watch one snow sculpture grow up in the video "From snow cube to snow sculpture".

Countdown for the exchange: 8 days!!!

Some of us live in Gràcia; Gràcia is one of the Barcelona most traditional neighbourhoods.

Gràcia is a very lively neighbourhood and many young people go there to have a drink or to have lunch or dinner outside in one its squares. There are many squares around and they are very beautiful, with a lot of benches to sit down under the trees, bars and restaurant terraces to have a drink or a full meal, there are also many small and traditional shops. This neighbourhood is quite old; it used to be a village outside Barcelona in the old times. There are some musical clubs where local musicians and groups usually do concerts on Friday and Saturday evenings, the one we know and like it’s called Fontana.

Every Barcelona neighbourhood is different from the other ones, not only the architecture is different, also the kind of shops and the evening atmosphere.   Just tell us if you would like to book a place for having dinner all the Comenius Group, it could be a very good idea to have a good time all together.  .

            

Countdown for the exchange: 9 days!

Just only 9 days last and the nerves are increasing!!  Our families are looking forward to meet you and we have finished planning all the school activities for the whole week.

These days we are having a very good weather; it looks like the spring has already arrived. We are having between 15 and 20 degrees at midday. We expect you will be able to enjoy this warm and sunny weather when you come here, to Barcelona. But to tell you the truth, Mediterranean weather can change at lot, and more at that time of the year. 

Barcelona is a very touristic city and in spring is full of tourists, people from very different countries. It’s funny to see them wearing summer clothes when we are still wearing the winter ones. You can ask us everything about what you have to wear, and we will be very glad to tell you. Don’t forget to bring your snow boots and skiis!!!!

Now that starts the nice weather people starts meeting and going out, for example to have lunch in Las Ramblas, shopping in the Portal de l'Angel or go to the Barceloneta beach during the weekend to sunbathe. There are many concerts and cultural activities to do,  so we are sure we will always have something to do during our free time.

Countdown for the exchange: 10 days!

After two weeks here in Barcelona we are still working hard to catch up with all the homework that our classmates did while we were in Norway.

Now we are working to prepare your stay here to make you have a good time. We have already planned most of the activities we are going to do and the places we are going to visit. Otherwise it would be grateful if you give us some ideas of things you would like to do in our free time. That way we will make sure that you enjoy the time.

Last week our parents met Cristina and Cécile to arrange how everything will go once you will be here. Moreover yesterday all first year Massana’s teachers had a meeting to decide the school timetable during that week. 

We started our last sculpture project. We are doing abstract shapes to stroke with clay and then with alabaster. We will show you when they’ll be finished.

Here you have a colourful picture of the Parc Güell designed by  Gaudí and the landscape of Barcelona. Probably we are going to be there a full morning to draw. 

Memories

The open air exhibition at Stangnes is probably one of the things we most remember once we are again in our daily routine in Massana.  We realized the exhibition was an important event for Stangnes Skole and Harstad; there was the local television to record the event and a journalist from a national paper asking us questions to write an article about our project.