Halfway Point

Here we have the photo of a shop that sells only capes.

I crossed the street to get a better photo of it when a couple walked up and she was wearing a cape. And they both stopped dumbfounded and I heard her say "It... sells... capes." And then they went inside.

Today is the halfway point of my trip. 44 days down, 44 days to go. I'm having a better and better time. my legs are stronger, my Spanish is getting better.

In my class this week, there were three different women who worked in human rights in one way or another. one was the mayor of an Afghan city, or former mayor; she had to flee the country last year when the Taliban took over. another was an American woman who worked in Nigeria. and said she loved her work. She works in one of the most dangerous parts of Nigeria for the UN. the third was from the Philippines but works in some human rights capacity in Spain.

A couple days ago I went on another field trip with students from my school. This was to a place called CentroCentro, an old post office that has been converted to an exhibition space. Here's a selfie I took outside, and a picture I took inside.

There we saw an exhibition titled "Underground and Counterculture in 1970s Catalonia." This featured an exhaustive collection of photos, films, zines and periodicals that documented the movement. Of course, the last picture in the exhibition showed a very young Almodovar. I had never seen any of these images or artefacts before, and yet they were so similar to what you'd see if you stanged a similar exhibition and substituted "California" for "Catalonia." Download the leaflet (pdf).

The 16-ear-old from Iran was absolutely perplexed. You could have landed him on Saturn and he would not have been more perplexed.