WELCOME TAPAS 2nd SEMESTER

During the night of Friday, 17^th of September, we went to meet for real our new big family.

The evening began at the La Tiza Bar, in one of the best bohemian neighbourhood. In the beginning, the atmosphere was a little bit quite, until we start to know for real each one. We were almost 30 people at the bar, people from North of Europe, West of Europe, Asia, Latin America, United States, from different countries but with the same interest, to get new friends from all around the world.

We stayed until midnight, tasting typical tapas, pintxos, drinking beer and cubatas, and all the magical moment was registered by the good look of our new brother and friend, Vinícius Hashrama. 

We talked about everything from policies to jokes, from asian culture to latin culture, about countries, people, experiences, wishes and everything that comes to our mind.

Unfortunately, after midnight we had to leave the bar, but the good time was not over yet. We are living in one of the most night city in the world, Barcelona, and specifically those days the weather was perfect and we decided to walk until find some good club to dance until the first sunshine.

BICICULTURAL

One week ago, new international students arrived in our university to stay for a semester. Is always good to arrive in a city that you don't know and go for a ride with someone that can explain the history of this new place that you're visiting.

Thats was exactly what we did on Sunday, 12nd of February, we did a guided bike ride through Barcelona.

At 9h30min AM we meet everybody in the Born neighbourhood, where we could rent a bike and meet out guide, the Architect Jaume Carné.

Around 10AM, everyone already had their bikes regulated, all tires are full of air and the lazy of Sunday's was out of our body in this morning.

The first stop was in the monument of Colom, where we start to know a little bit of the history of Barcelona. Jaume start to teach us about the romans, the wars, the old city of Barcelona and about the small villages that were not integrated in the city, like Grácia, Sant Andreu and La Sagrera.

After a quickly panorama of the history, we take our bikes and ride through Parallell Avenue until arrive in the heart of one of the patios of the Example. In this stop we stayed for a while, because now Jaume told us about all the urbanism plan, made by the Catalan engineer Ildefons Cerdà.

His plan was to unify all the small village around Barcelona with the center of the city. In the 1850's the city wall strait-jacket was demolished to allow the expansion of Ildefons Cerdà's l'Eixample. Cerdà's plan was the first example of urban planning and was heavily influenced by the ideas of Karl Marx and other social thinkers of the time.

The l'Eixample was planned using an extensive grid-iron pattern. The development rapidly spread to connect Barcelona to the outlying towns, which were incorporated into the city at the turn of the century.

The area of Gracia, for example, was Spain's nineth-largest city before it was swallowed by Barcelona's growth. The rigid blocks of Cerdà's grid give way here to narrow streets arranged haphazardly, and the change in atmosphere is striking. Many streets in Gracia consist of small, two-storey buildings, and a series of small squares.

Around 2PM, we already had visited the most important patios, heard the important facts of the history and out new students already had an idea about the city, that why we stopped in some bar to take a beer and eat the spanish traditional omelet, tortillas !

CHRISTMAS DINNER

When the end of the year approximates, the leaves of the trees flies, the wind increases and the cold comes to remain, however we did  not leave that these factors takes our so beautiful and international energy away. 

We know that the cold bring with them the desire to stay at home, but the heat brings joy for all, then why not do a dinner with people of all continents so that we can know us, heat us and transform a night of winter in almost a piece of intercontinental summer ?

We transform our 17 of December during the night in our big special peace of international culture. At 10PM we meet all students in the restaurante Tapas Locas to start our Christmas Dinner.

Everything started with a perfect energy. The beautiful feeling of love was in the air, even if a cold breeze, our love make the place so warm like a house of a grandmother. After talking, eating a lot of food, drinking, and eating the desert we almost could not have energy do to nothing, but like a big family we seek energy in the depths of the soul and went to shake our body in Opium Club.

We stayed dancing and sweating until the sun shine again in the horizon.

THANK YOU EVERYBODY !!!!!!