A jazz concert!

I'm continuing to feel better, so that's good! Tonight my friend and I went to a jazz concert at a place called Jamboree, which is in the Plaça Reial off the famous Las Ramblas. Here is a picture of Las Ramblas, which is really just a long street with a lot of people on it:


At the concert, there were two bands. The first was called Rafa Madagascar Trio, and was (unsurprisingly) made up of three members: a drummer, a bassist, and a piano player. The bass had 6 strings, which seemed like a lot to me. Here are pictures of the first band:

The first band was pretty good, but the second band was even better. I especially liked that they had a saxophonist. They were called Clics, and there were four of them, including a double bassist! Here's a picture of the second band (the piano player is off to the left, unfortunately out of the picture):


Interestingly, the guy who introduced the bands and the performers made all of their announcements in Catalan. I like to think that it was because we were such a comfortable, intimate audience that they just asssumed everyone was a native, and we blended right in. We were able to get the gist of what they were saying, anyway.

We had to leave half an hour into the second show in order to take the metro home before it closed at midnight. We were sad to go, but we haven't really figured out the night buses yet, and we figured this would be easier. Plus, it's a work day tomorrow!

I can't believe it, but I'm over halfway through my time in Barcelona. It's been five and a half weeks since I arrived. I'm definitely feeling more comfortable knowing my way around and knowing what to expect in different situations, but I don't feel like my Spanish has progressed as far as I would have hoped by this point. I think I was expecting a lot more of an immersion feeling by being in Spain, but it turned out that almost everyone I deal with on any sort of regular basis speaks English. Also, now that we're not going to lunch every day, I am missing that opportunity to practice as well. I'm going to try to make these last 4.5 weeks as Spanish-filled as possible, and hopefully that will help.

I also haven't been exercising as much as I should be...