Wandering through the City

Yesterday we went to take the Placement Test on campus which wasn't too bad, I don't think.  We still haven't gotten the results and we're supposed to start class tomorrow?!  They're very slack/slow here.... After the test, we finally went to get our 3 month pass and it was only 100 euro!!!! Amazing! So then Micaela and I went shopping a little bit around our house and we learned what was close by and where everything was.  We found two good stores right near our place and I bought a few things :) Very cheap! And the rebajas (sales) are amazing!! For dinner, we went over to our friend's dorm and Tim made us chicken parmesan!!!! It was soooo good! So we had a family dinner and Anna was introduced to our group!  Then we came home and we got to meet Jill, our other roommate!! Finally! Today we didn't do much but sleep in and Micaela cooked us breakfast-- toast with egg cooked over hard and cheese :) It was the first time I had an egg like that! It was good! Then Micaela and I wanted to to go to the beach but it didn't really work out as planned... we kinda just hopped on the metro and guessed where to go and didn't use a map hahaha. So we ended up roaming around and got totally lost. But we did find a really cool mall with some good shops! We planned to eat dinner at the pizza place across the street because it's Anna and Jill's friend's last night!!! It was so depressing to see them say bye and thinking that'll be us in four months! Tomorrow classes start so I gotta' get to bed, yet I have no idea when they begin hahaha gotta love Spain! Night night.

My Favorite Picture So Far...

Parc Güell

I Never Want to Leave

So this morning I slept in until 1pm :)  It was amazing... I've been so exhausted and all over the place, hopefully my sleep schedule will become more of a routine soon!  My roommate Anna who was here last semester had some of her friends over and we went to eat lunch at FresCo.  It was a really neat buffet for 11 € and had lots of fresh veggies, soup, salad, pizza, pasta, chicken, fruit, froyo, coffee, etc.  The best part was that you could get refills on drinks, that never happens here!  After lunch, I've been trying to review some grammar rules and stuff because our Placement Test is tomorrow! Exciting, I know.  There's really big sales right now after the holidays and all of the other girls went shopping but I decided to stay home and be productive! Aren't you proud, ma? :)  My roommates said they never really do anything on Sundays so I guess it'll be my lazy day or time to roam around the city.  Oh, guess what?!? I got an interview with the board of Medex Academy at Greenville Hospital for a summer internship! That means a Skype interview... how weird is that gonna' be?! Oh, and I finally got my classes assigned.  So I'll be taking a 6 credit Spanish language course, Hispanic Poetry and Contemporary Spanish Literature.  Thank goodness I got the Lit class because that double dips into the credits I needed and my senior year will hopefully be super easy :) Oh, and PS. I saved my photos wrong and my memory card messed up so I lost my photos from the first three days, how freaking depressing!  I'm stealing some from my friends that I will be able to post but a lot of the fun ones of the group have disappeared foreverrrr :(

Picnic in Parc Güell

This morning we went to the grocery store for the first time! I was surprised at how cheap everything was!!! I got a good amount of stuff and it was only 14 euro! So that was a good and I'll finally have food... lately I've kinda been starving myself! hahaha.  We were planning on meeting two of our friends at Parc Güell but we ended up not finding them so Anna, Micaela and I had a little picnic :)  The park is sooo nice, Gaudi is incredible!  I took lots of pictures and we hungout a lot listening to this one street performer play his guitar.  It was pretty nice!  It did get a little chilly so we headed home.  It was in the 50s today but pretty windy and when you're not around a lot of people, it gets cold.  We tried stopping by to get our metro passes but it was closed so hopefully I can get it tomorrow!  I took a nice siesta and now I'm about to cook dinner before tonight!  It's the first night we're going out with Anna! Exciting!  I still think I'm a little off on the time because I haven't had any routine and everything is at different times anyways but I'm getting closer!  The students that go to the other schools are beginning to arrive now... I can't believe it's almost been a week!

Moved In and Attempting to Fit In

So we finally moved into the apartment on Wednesday morning!  I learned the hard way how to figure out the alarm on mi telefono but managed to finally make it and see the place! It's so cute and I love it although the thin walls are somewhat of an aggravation.  I'll post up pictures soon once we clean the place!  Our apartment is technically the second floor but it's up three flights of stairs, carrying my suitcases up was definitely an adventure.  We got a tour of the area around our apartment from two of our program leaders and it was super cool.  I live in the neighborhood Gracia and it's one of the nicest and safest in all of Barcelona!  There's a cute plaza right down the street and lots of shops and stores and restaurants all around!  There's a nice pizza place right across from our apartment as well which we went to the first day :) A piece of pizza cut into four and an empanada and soda is only 4.10 euro. It's so cheap!!!!! Later in the day we got a tour of the API (my program) office and had a few meetings on health, safety, culture, etc which was helpful.  They have a room for us to study in, use the computers, print, etc and it's very nice!  All of the advisors are sooooooo cool.  I was very surprised, I didn't think that they would be so approachable and awesome but they're so easy to talk to and helpful.  Wednesday night we attempted to catch up on some sleep but of course I couldn't fall asleep till late!


Thursday morning, my roommate Micaela and I took the metro for the first time (!) to our campus at UPF.  We had an orientation session with lots of other international students, mostly from the US and Canada.  The session was very helpful, introducing us to the university, resources, available clubs and sports, what to expect in classes, cultural differences and all sorts of stuff! The school has about 10,000 undergrads which I didn't realize it was that big.  We got a tour of the campus and it is SOOO nice.  There are three different campuses but the one I'm at is Ciutadella.  It's practically a block from the beach! There are three buildings and they are ridiculously nice and clean and very modern and the third is a bigger library that used to be a water reservoir and is gorgeous.  The library looks pretty cool and I think I'll use it!  The place is 10x nicer than Clemson, it's incredible you would think that it's a private school.  It's in a good location too, I love it!  After orientation, we went to go see our friends dorm in the Melon District and it is RIDICULOUSLY nice.  It's a few years old and very, very pretty.  There's four different buildings attached to each other and each one has a rooftop pool and "refreshing lounge" to overlook the city!!!!! We're gonna' watch the sunset on it one night! After that, we met up with some other kids in our group and watched the parade para El Día de los Reyes Magos.  It's basically their big holiday that they celebrate in addition to Christmas but this is when all of the kids get tons of presents.  The parade was soooo cool! We walked around Las Ramblas for a bit while we waited for it to come by but it finally came at 7:30 and was over 45 minutes long! It was soooo cool to see, I cannot believe how much effort, time and money they put into it.  It was very cool to see the kids get all excited, they sit close and get candy thrown at them throughout the whole parade.  They even had little catapults to throw candy everywhere! Everyone would fight over catching candy and scrambling around! It was an amazing experience though to see the traditions and how involved everyone is.  Each float and group of people had a story but I'm not quite sure I understood it all haha.

Today is El Día de los Reyes Magos so most of the city is closed and we had nothing planned so I finally had time to catch up on sleep.  My roommate Anna who was here last semester had some of her friends over and they cooked us a lunch for the holiday.  It was very cool and homey!  We had a salad, tortilla (potatoes and eggs), pan con tomate, chorizo and bread and mushrooms and then had roscon de reyes for dessert.  That's the traditional cake for the holiday and it has a bean and Jesus cooked into the cake.  So we all cut randomly into the cake and Micaela got the bean which is bad luck and you're supposed to pay for the next get together and Anna got Jesus (it was actually Santa which was kinda funny) and that's good luck and she got to wear the crown that was on top of the cake.  It was pretty cool to do that tradition but we didn't put our shoes out for presents in the morning which all the kids do haha.  Tonight we actually cooked our first meal together-- pasta and peppers, onions, tomatoes, garlic in a tomato sauce.  Everything is so fresh and good! The peppers here are HUGE, I likeeee!  Tonight we're going to have girls night because we're all still exhausted and watch movies and paint our nails :) So far everyone is verrryyyyy nice and welcoming!! Our fourth roommate Jillian returns from traveling on Monday so we'll finally be able to meet her!

So I definitely have the metro down and like it a lot, tomorrow I'm going to get the 3 month pass that's 140 euro but it's unlimited so it'll definitely be put to good use!  It's cool because everyone in our group has been speaking Spanish and trying to practice it so we've been using it a lot but sometimes I get lazy.  A lot of people mumble and don't enunciate and I'm already deaf so I can't understand sometimes but I'm getting used to it.  I haven't had much of a culture shock or anything but it's very different that everyone keeps to themselves.  People will push you and not say excuse me which is kinda weird.  The people walk really slow which will take some getting used to because I get impatient.  Oh, and the food! At restaurants, they're such bad servers and so slow it KILLS me!  Yesterday we went to lunch with 12 people from our group and everyone got their food at once but me and Le and we didn't get it for over 10 minutes.  It was just so weird and she didn't say anything about it at all, very different!  But the food was good! 4 euro for a big chicken and pepper sandwich!  Also, having to buy bottled water is so annoying.  Lately I've been carrying around my water bottle and somehow finding water to put into it (there's not many fountains) because they don't give you tap water anywhere.  I had the water somewhere and it was really weird tasting but at the apartment so far it tastes really good/normal.

Adios!

La Primer Día

So I've officially been in Barcelona for a full day! It honestly feels like weeks already!!! But I LOVE it!!!!!!!! So exciting I still cannot believe it!

So yesterday we had a Welcome Meeting and I met the other thirteen people in my program! We all go to school at Universidad Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and our group is so small, I love it!  I pretty much know everyone now which is really cool. We went to dinner at a really nice restaurant after the meeting and thank goodness, my program covered the costs! :) It was SO much food! We had four tapas (appetizers ish)-- patas bravas which were potatoes with a spicy tomato sauce on them... those were the best.  We also had these pieces of toast with a tomato and olive oil and garlic paste on them, have no idea what they were called. Also, there was a salad of tuna and pita and olives and then fried calamari.  I didn't try those because I'm still being a baby and hopefully I'll get over my seafood thing :) Then we had a choice of two meals, chicken or fish, and I chose chicken.  It was like a kabob basically, with chicken, onions, peppers and then vegetables on the side and more potatoes. It was very yummy! As for dessert, we had la creme catalan or something like that... basically a creme brulee.  Very rich... it was SO much food!  Also, we had a choice of soda and I tried the Sprite.  It tasted a little different but still good.  The bottles are so heavy! One thing that's going to take some getting used to is the service... they're so slow! I kept drinking my water so fast and it took forever to get more.  And our dinner lasted two hours! That was cool, I definitely got to talk to everyone!!

After dinner a group of eight of us decided we had to celebrate our first night a little bit :) First, we ended up going to a British African bar named Obama. How funny is that?!?! We walk in and the first thing is I see is Obama sitting on a bench at a table with his American flag pin on.  There was a band playing and everything was in English!!! They even sang Sweet Home Alabama!! It was so weird.  I felt like I was in the US! It was so packed we ended up getting a table downstairs by ourselves because it was so busy but it was fun! Our server was nice and she was wearing an American flag necklace and bracelet! It was so funny.  After that, we went to some other places that were recommended and strolled around.  We got offered a can of beer at least 20 times, it was very interesting! Guys just hang around with a six-pack of beers and keep offering it to everyone who walks by! We went to another place and it was completely empty so we took over.  I never realized how true it was that no one ever starts going out till 2 in the morning! Very weird!! It was a good experience for the first night! Definitely got lost a few times but our group stuck together and it was nice!

Today, we walked around the city a little but with our advisors and got a tour of some of the plazas and we took the metro!  We learned a few things and we stopped in at a cathedral which was really neat! Everything was so detailed, it was unbelievable!  We were starving so a few of us stopped in at Burger King because it was quick and cheap.  It was soooooo nice! I didn't believe it when I walked in but the place was so neat and clean and each fast food place has a bodyguard at the front door! The food tasted a little bit different but was still good ole' BK.  It's so weird, but these Spaniards must love some BK.  We passed four different ones when walking three blocks last night. They are EVERYWHERE.  Then we hungout for a bit and then met up again for our bus tour!  We got a bus rented and our advisors showed us all around the city and we got to take some cool pictures.  We just got back to the hotel now and are resting up before our Housing Meeting. How exciting!! We move in tomorrow! EEEEEEEEK.

I MADE IT!!

So I just arrived at the hotel and we're hanging out until a Welcome Meeting at 6 and then dinner at 8!  The flights surprisingly went really well! I figured there would be a delay or something, as my luck usually has it, but I made it without a scratch! I even lucked out on the flight from Philly to Madrid because the baby that was originally sitting in front of me moved to another seat right before we departed and then the Spanish lady sitting next to me moved to sit with her friend and so I ended up being able to stretch out for the long flight! The food wasn't too bad either-- salad, pasta with marinara, bread and a brownie. So I ended up traveling for about 25 hours and I'm finally in Barca.  I didn't really get to see much on the ride from the airport and I'm too tired to do anything now, I think I'm going to go lay down and rest for a bit. Adios!