Castles of people and other summer observations

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More of my musings and homages to Catalonia. No Orwell pun intended!

On Sunday I saw towers made of people and it wasn’t some freaky horror movie but an unusual but impressive Catalan tradition. These towers of people or Castellers  are basically, teams of towns folk climb up in a sort of gymnastic display, trying to make the tallest and most stable human tower as possible, despite a few wobbles, most of the towers were easily 4 or 5 people high (20-30 feet in old money) and they did this in 30c heat. I am not sure of the historic purpose of it all and I am sure it is something brave and noble but it is worth seeing once or twice though I am being coerced into seeing them at least 5 times and I am practising my surprised face which I can usually only express once or twice. 


The completed tower
Starting the tower











In other things that have been crossing my mind in the heat are things like: Do Spanish dogs understand English? Anecdotal evidence would suggest yes, once rewarded with food after certain commands they soon learn some basic English commands and I wonder if I should try this tactic with my students? I also have it in good faith from a reliable source that if you try to speak to a dog from Quebec in French as spoken by Frenchman, it will think you are an idiot.

And the final strange thing to cross my mind is the phrase "One Swallow doesn't make a summer" well on Saturday I saw hundreds of the damn things, they are noisy and it was definitely summer so if one doesn't make a summer, one hundred does!

July 8 2013

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