dancing con fire

so i experienced the best thing of my life on saturday night. i went to this event for the festival called "le correfoc". going into this, i had no idea what to expect. needless to say, any sort of expectation i had was completely blown out of the water. turns out the correfoc is essentially a parade of fire. there were people in dragn, horse, pig, and gargoyle costumes and coming off of these costumes were basically fireworks/sparklers and they literally shot the flames AT people. so of course at first, i was concerned because a)i was not dressed properly since i thought it was going to be more of a show and b)i have never seen anything like this before. all of our comments were basically "this would never be going down in the states...AWESOME" so then, intermixed with the dragons, etc were spanish bands and firedancers. the firedancers were these guys with long poles that had the firework/sparkler combo on the end and again, they would direct the flames at people, but with the firedancers you could also go dance with them under the flames. so even though i was not dressed properly, i of course had to go dance with them! and let me tell you, even though i did get burned a little on my hands and feet, it was the best. experience. ever. and the burns were totally worth it.

after the correfoc, i met up with some other friends and the spanish guys, artur and sergi, again. they also brought another friend of theirs, vicky, so i now know a vicky and a christina in barcelona...

anyways, we all went to this place called the forum, which is essentially the largest slab of concrete in europe. it was a strange place because there is so much concrete, but then there is a carnival, and if you keep walking you get to an area for concerts. at the forum there were actually two concerts going on, so we went to a couple of the concerts there and pretty much just danced the night away. it was a blast. and free, which is always appareciated.

sunday, i got up after only a few hours of sleep (i am starting to learn these crazy spanish ways...and i love it!) and my roommate and i headed into the city center to see the castells. they were pretty cool, and i was excited to see them build the "human castles" in real life after seeing the pictures and hearing so much about them. however, i still think that the correfoc was the highlight of la merce (so far, it ends tomorrow, so maybe something better will come along) and quite possibly my life thus far.