Here I am standing in front of the field. Behind me in the stands in reads "Més que un Club," which translates to "More than a team." Look how nice and perfect the grass is.
Here are the teams lined up for the team anthems. Barcelona on the right, Racing on the left.

Day 16 – September 13th – Saturday
Today has to be one of the longest awaited days in my life. Today we are going to a Barcelona F.C. soccer game! How exciting! Barça has been my favorite team since i picked a favorite team and stopped buying jerseys on how they look. As this may be a once in a lifetime experience, Ian and I went for pretty good seats, at a price. 84€ and I won't do the conversion for you, but we were in the 19th row from the field. In a stadium that is just a touch larger than the Horseshoe, we felt pretty close. Beforehand, we took a tour of the stadium and saw the locker rooms, the little chapel that is on the entryway to the field, and the team benches. We also were able to go up in the media booth to get a bird's eye view. There is also a museum in the stadium where they have all the different trophies that have been won over the years as well as jerseys signed by legends such as Diego Maradona and Johan Kruyff. Barcelona F.C. was founded in 1899 by a Swiss man named Joan Gamper, so as you can imagine, it has quite the interesting and varied history. Before the game, Ian and I went to one of my favorite restaurants in my neighborhood for a snack and a beer. When I told the waiter, who now recognizes me, where we were heading off to after leaving, he replied with the familiar battle cry of Forca Barça. We hopped on the metro where there were a lot of people heading to the game. We talked to one man, in English, who was going as well. It turns out he was from Turkey and was equally excited to see the game. There was also an older gentleman sitting across from me who, when he saw our Barcelona shirts, commented to a nearby woman something in Catalán. After he was done, the turk asked her to translate to English, but she said her English was not so good. When I asked for Spanish, the man turned to me and told me in Spanish about how he had been a season ticket holder basically his whole life and how he remembered back in the old days when it was truly a Catalán team. Now, only four of the twenty-two players are actually from Cataluña, so how can it be a Catalán team? Also, he said their focus has changed from fútbol, to dinero. He pointed to my shirt, which has the sponsor across the front, Unicef. He said, of course, Unicef is a good sponsor, but all the other ones, mostly beer and cell phone companies only mislead. Its about the sport not the money. He told me he was a journalist and showed me his card that allowed him media access. He showed me his season ticket card which showed how long he had held his tickets and then he told me he hadn't been to a game in four years. He was definitely old-school, and times have definitely changed, but I still enjoy hearing his viewpoint and I hope he knows it didn't fall upon deaf ears. As for the game itself, it started out great. Barça controlled the ball the majority of the time and passed around Racing (their opponent) as I'm sure racing would have done to the Crew. Yet at half time, still 0-0. At half time, Ian and I moved over to sit with my Spanish friend Jordi, who was close by with his girlfriend. Leo Messi, of Argentina, my favorite, entered the game early in the second half to the cheers and bows of the fans. The little boy sitting next to me stood up and bowed down, cheering Messs-iii, Messss-iii. They love him here and he did get a goal on a penalty late in the half. However, this was not to be enough. Racing followed with a goal of their own only about 8 minutes later and this was to be the final, 1-1, much to the dismay of the fans who whistled and waved their white handkerchiefs in disgust. I was disappointed not to witness a win, but it was still probably the highest quality soccer I've ever seen.

Day 17 – September 14th – Sunday
Today was Ian's last day in Barcelona and there wasn't a whole lot to do. As I said before, almost everything is closed on Sundays, so we just kind of walked around for a while and looked at the people. We walked through Las Ramblas, where Ian picked up a few post cards and then I headed home for lunch and he went off to the train station. That night, I met up with my friend Nicolas, who had been on vacation with his host family for the past few days. I heard about his trip, including when he ate and animal's face; the cheek, tongue, and brain. He drew the line at the eye, but he kept if down and had a good trip anyway. He said it was nice to be fully immersed in Spanish for the whole week, without speaking English for four days. Now he can feel himself getting better each day, as can I. But I will spare you all the trouble of translating and keep these entries in English.