Ashwini's Web Album

Follow Ashwini through Barcelona

Visit Ashwini's School.  Here's a picture of my class on our trip to Parc de Collserola (I wrote about the trip in the Question and Answers page). My teacher, Vanessa, is sitting next to me. Can you spot us?

La Castanyada!  In Spain, the day before all-saints day (Halloween in the US) is celebrated by having a Castanyada, which is a feast of roasted Castanyas (chestnuts), roasted Boniatos (sweet potatoes), and Panellets (different types of marzipan desserts). Here's a picture of panellets... Yum!!

So this year, instead of Halloween, we celebrated La Castanyada at our apartment with my family and some friends. Here is a video: castanyada.avi. The Halloween video from 2G was awesome! Thank you for making it!   

A trip to the Pyrenees Mountains! Last weekend (November 7-9), we drove to La Seu d'Urgell, which is a town in the Pyrenees Mountains. I went with my mom, dad, Vera and Jordi (my mom and dad's friends), and my brother Avi. The Pyrenees are mountains on the border of Spain and France. La Seu d'Urgell has a Romanesque Cathedral (built more than 1000 years ago, around 1000 AD) and part of it is converted to a museum. The best part of the museum is that it has a book that is more than a thousand years old! It has many colorful drawings. I am trying to draw one of them. The book even has a picture of Noah's Ark! The museum also has some  frescoes from the cathedral. Frescoes are paintings on plaster. The paintings are made by coloring (with plants and berries from the forest) and putting lime on top.

I also went to a small town called Puigcerda (pronounced Puj-chur-da) which has a man-made lake. Avi and I fed some ducks there! There was an open air market and we ate xurros, which is fried dough that has sprinkled sugar on top (sort of like doughnuts). Then we went to a horse fair where people buy and sell big horses that work on farms. The horses were huge because they are work horses. We also saw some people trying to put a female horse in to a truck, but she wouldn't go in because her baby colt wasn't in the truck  yet! It was exciting to watch that.

Here is a picture with the Cadi range of the Pyrenees behind me. There are more pictures from our trip here (some photos have captions and comments, and some show the location on a map on the right). 

A trip to Figueres.  Last weekend (November 15) we went to Figueres on a train. There is a Salvador Dali  museum in Figueres. The museum building is very colorful and unusual. Salvador Dali is an artist who painted his dreams. He was born in Figueres. His paintings are usually very surreal (a bit strange and dreamlike) and my favorite picture is called "Soft Self Portrait with Fried Bacon"!! I also like his painting called "The Persistence of Memory", which has melting (floppy) clocks!!  Dali also designed a famous sofa shaped like lips!  You can see pictures of this sofa, and some paintings from the museum here.