Barceloooona

So the past two days I've been on my own, and have just wandered around. Again, my international approachability factor has led to more interesting experiences. I was in an art museum and an thai man motioned over to me to take his photo (people continually ask me for directions and to take photos of them).

It wasn't a great place, it was between two lamp posts and he signaled that he wanted them in the picture and then made some strange motion pointing to the spot where he wanted it taken, bent down, smacked his leg, said "okay!" and signaled to me, and then made the gesture if I understood what he meant. After multiple attempts, I just signaled for him just to go and do whatever it was he wanted. He went to the spot and then got on one leg and lifted his body up in some strange yoga position and then said "okay!", and I took the picture. It was pretty interesting, at first I had started to wonder if this was some elaborate plan to rob me since 4 days in Barcelona has made me suspicious when anyone does anything that seems a bit strange, but he wasn't getting close to me and he was handing me his expensive digital camera, so that seemed counterintuitive.

My paranoia comes from seeing 3 almost robberies in the 4 days I've been here. And I got to take part in one of them! I was walking and a beggar woman was holding a cardboard sign saying she was hungry and did the usual approach asking for money, but I thought it was strange she was getting so close to me and then I realized that she was shoving the cardboard sign close to my side so that I wouldn't see her hand go in my pocket. I instantly slapped my pocket (along with her hand) and yelled "Oye!" (Hey! in spanish). She acted all innocent and got away with a dirty look from me. Maybe I should have notified the cops or something, but I felt like, it looks like she's already got it pretty bad and they probably couldn't do much to her anyways, though I feel bad if someone else fell victim to her because I didn't do anything. She was gone 10 minutes later so maybe she moved on realizing someone had caught her. Well anyways, I'm obviously not well-versed in the world of pickpocketing.

Today I went to the Catalan Museum of Art and walked around the endless halls. There weren't many people there and it was pretty cool being in absolute silence for most the time I was there. Not a single sound. I'm still surprised that I'm getting into art museums, I seem to like the 20th century and earlier paintings, and it's not like I stand there analyzing them, I just seem to like to be surrounded by colors. I guess art history majors like my brother can explain in better terms my evoked feelings and sensations, but I'll just settle for that.

I seem to start getting really hungry in the middle of museum touring, but I've realized that its worth coughing up money for the expensive museum cafe food than it is to just leave the museum early due to hunger. And I don't know why, but that tomato and cheese bagguette sandwhich with a cup of milk was absolutely sensational when I was hungry. I guess I should try all traditional foods in countries when I'm really hungry and I'll fall in love with all of them no matter what.