Travel-tastic!

Hola amigos y familia! I'm finally starting my blog before 10 pm! I hope that means I won't have to stay up late finishing it, because I'm super tired.  It was definitely a busy and eventful week.  I had my first studio pin-up, a Spanish midterm and a presentation to give speaking in Spanish, and then I hurried and finished up my homework for the week so I wouldn't have to worry about it during our 3-day weekend.

Early Friday morning, Cara, two other girlfriends of ours (Lindsey and Abby), and I took a taxi to the Barcelona airport and from there took the one-hour flight to Bilbao.  (At least they said it was an hour, but I'm convinced we were only in the air for 5 minutes. Either that or I fell asleep ;).)  It was so pretty flying in, with all the mountains. And it was so green! (Probably because it rains all the time!) We got Bilbao a few hours before we could check into our hostel, but none of us had much luggage so we walked around the city for awhile in the rain and took some pictures.  Then at 10, the Guggenheim opened and we figured that would be a perfect start to the trip since it was the main attraction, as well as an opportunity to get out of the rain.  I really enjoyed the museum, and  since we went right at opening on a Friday morning, it wasn't busy at all.  The main attraction of the Guggenheim is the building itself, of course, but there was one exhibit there that I really enjoyed.  It's an exhibit by Richard Serra called Matter of Time (in case you wanna Google it :)) and he makes giant metal sculptures for walking through and it's really disorienting the way he does it, but it was really neat.  We walked around the museum for quite a few hours, although I'm not nearly artsy enough to appreciate most of the artwork there.  We did get a free little audio-guide with our tickets that you held up to your ear like a cell phone and that was helpful in explaining what in the world I was looking at. Overall, I really enjoyed the museum, and then we went out into the rain to find our hostel.

None of us had ever done the hostel thing before and it was definitely an experience.  Since I don't have anything to compare it to I don't know, but I think the hostel we stayed at was pretty nice as far as they go.  It was similar to staying in the dorms at school, so it was fine but we all agreed we'd much rather search for cheap hotels in the future.  We dropped our stuff off and the headed over to the Casco Viejo (Old Town) on the metro in search of some pintxos for lunch.  Pintxos are the Basque region's form of tapas and they're usually served on a piece of bread.  We happened to be walking around (in the rain, again) at kind of an off time; it was around 4, which is often considered siesta time.  In Barcelona and in many cities, businesses close for siesta, so the restaurants were open but they didn't have much of a selection available.  I tried a few and they were pretty good, but we ended up going to a little cafe for lunch because we were all still pretty hungry, as pintxos are not very filling.

We did as the Spaniards do and stayed in the cafe (away from the weather) for probably a few hours, and then we ventured out again and tried to decide what to do for the night.  We wandered around and found a sort of shopping center with a lot of different types of places, including a movie theater (and a pool!).  We decided to be brave and go see a movie in Spanish.  It was The Descendants, or Los Descendientes, so it was an American movie, but dubbed over with Spanish audio.  I was impressed that Lindsey was willing to go as she has zero Spanish experience, but it was a good night for a movie because we were all a little tired, so we wanted to do something pretty calm, and movie theaters are warm and dry (did I mention the weather sucked ;)?). The theater was really nice and I enjoyed the movie and felt like I was able to follow the story-line well, although I would like to watch it in English now to see how much I missed, just out of curiosity.  At one point I looked over and all three of my amigas were asleep ;), but I don't blame them. The seats were really comfy, it was dark and it takes so much active concentration to comprehend a movie in a foreign language, it was definitely a little exhausting.  So needless to say, we called it a night then and went back to the hostel to sleep.

The next morning we checked out of the hostel and got on a bus to San Sebastian, just an hour away.  It was raining there, too. The bus ride was beautiful, we went between all these hills with little farm houses and farm animals and at one point there was a whole double rainbow! It was like a postcard.  The town itself was just as picturesque when we got there.  It's the cutest little seaside town you could imagine, even in the pouring rain.  I can't imagine how beautiful it is in the summer.  When we got to the hostel, we were glad because it was more like a bed and breakfast than a dorm and a guy who works there took us on a walk around the town and the weather even cleared up (temporarily).  That night we went as a huge group to a cider house.  That was an experience.  There were a bunch of giant barrels of cider in the walls and they would tap one and people would line up to catch it in their glasses.  The traditional thing to do was to chug it immediately (they always only fill the glass about an inch), but I wasn't feelin' it. I did try it, but I thought it tasted like apple juice that had gone bad.  And then the food came out in huge platters, family style, and that was interesting as well. There was cod, and a giant steak that I'm sure was on the verge of still being alive, it was so red.  I tried everything, but mostly I ate a lot of bread.  The last course was cheese, fruit spread and walnuts.  Those who had had a little more cider cracked walnuts with their foreheads and still had marks from it this morning.  I didn't attempt that.  A large portion of the group went out to a bar afterwards too but we went back to the hostel and went to bed.

This morning we took a taxi, bus, bus, plane, bus, and then a metro and then I was back here! It sounds complicated, but it wasn't bad and I was actually really impressed at how easy it is for four young women on a budget to travel for a weekend without a car.  It was a really fun weekend regardless of weather, and it was interesting to see more of the country and how each new city in Spain we've gone to has had a completely different feel. I look forward to traveling more and this week we just have three days of class and then our program is taking us to Berlin for 4 days! I'm really, really excited for that, so that'll be in the blog next week! Gracias y hasta luego :)!

Exhaustion.

Hola amigos :). Unfortunately, this has been a difficult, somewhat stressful week. I'm just now finishing my homework for the night and it's 10:41. I should probably go to bed but I'm determined to blog tonight! I can't get off schedule already and if anything it might force me to be brief for once. Let's hope.

So to start off the week, on Monday our host brother Juan got into an accident on his moto. It had rained that day and the wet roads caused him to lose control. He's still in the hospital, but should be coming home on Wednesday.  He needed stitches above his eyebrow, he broke one vertebrae and fractured another, and he tore ligaments in his knee and will need surgery in about 3 weeks.  Needless to say, he will not in fact be returning to Milan for school. He was supposed to leave this past Thursday, and Monday, when he got in his accident, was supposed to be a going away dinner party with our host family and some friends of theirs :(, so that was cancelled.  Cara and I went and visited him in the hospital and he's in a surprisingly good mood.  He's being really optimistic about it and we were both really shocked at how well he was taking it all. They're renting a hospital bed to keep here in the living room as he's bedridden for a few weeks. Then the physical therapy takes about 4 months, so he'll actually be here the whole time we are. Poor Juan :(. And his poor parents, they were/are so worried. We really haven't seen much of them this week since they've been at the hospital with him.  It feels really odd, almost like Cara and I are renting an apartment except someone always cooks us dinner.  So overall, things have been very different this week.

Classes got pretty intense this week too (they didn't waste any time), but we did do some fun things too. As far as classes go, I started a new class about Gaudi that seems really interesting, plus it includes visiting a ton of his buildings for free! Including La Sagrada Familia! We have our first Spanish test on Wednesday, and I also have to give a presentation in another class, while speaking Spanish, and it's just a very busy week coming up.  I have my first studio pin-up tomorrow and just finished making my model for that.  I'm going to try to work ahead as much as I can this week because this weekend Cara and I and two other friends are flying to Bilbao to see the Guggenheim and we'll also probably spend a day in San Sebastian (we have a 3-day weekend :)). I'm excited to travel, this is our first independent traveling and I love airports :).  Then next week is when they take us to Berlin! I'm so excited for that. I know it's an educational trip, but I hope we have some free time to explore :).

As for the fun things this week, yesterday we went on a hike up a mountain that's like a ten minute walk from our apartment building (we'll probably return). It was really fun and totally gorgeous. We had awesome weather, it was in the 60s and sunny.  I hiked in my t-shirt and was perfectly comfortable (on January 21st!) At the end of the hike, we ended in a little mountain village and went to a restaurant where we had a calcotada. Calcots are basically giant onions that you grill and dip in sauce and they're so long that you have to basically just tip your head back and hold them way up in the air to eat them. It's a big mess, they gave us bibs.  This was followed by another 9 courses, for a 10 course meal overall (if you count coffee as a course). Obviously, you could have done that math on your own but I feel the need to emphasize TEN courses. It was insanity, but it was all very good. Then we rolled back down the mountain.

I'm going backwards, but on Thursday this week we had our first "intercambio" which is where we meet and hang out with Spanish students and the intention is that they get to practice their English and we get to practice our Spanish.  It was intimidating for me, even though the Spanish students were highly outnumbered.  I don't talk much in group situations in English, so in Spanish it was incredibly difficult for me. I probably spoke more Spanish to Cara on our walk back to the metro. (It's a touristy area that gets dangerous at night with robbers and whatnot so we wanted to appear as un-American as possible, although I'm sure our accents weren't convincing.) Anyways, it was actually really fun regardless and I promised myself I'd try harder at the next one.

Sorry my order is less than chronological, but then today Cara and I went into the city with all our homework intending to find a cafe to sit at instead of hanging out in our rooms. We were surprised to find that despite Barcelona's size, it shuts down on Sundays. Nothing was open...except a Starbucks.  So it was totally American, but we did our homework at Starbucks this afternoon.  If was the only place we could find ( without walking for an hour) with wifi, that was open. (We also tried to go grocery shopping but couldn't find a single open supermarket.) Conclusion: don't wait to run errands on a Sunday, it will be unsuccessful. Side note: I've been noticing public wifi is not nearly as widespread here as it is in the U.S., which surprised me because I feel like a lot of Spaniards hang out in cafes and coffee shops during the day, so I thought they would have wifi in those places. Oh well, hopefully we'll gradually find out which places do (and hopefully it's not just Starbucks).

Well I think that's all, but who knows. My brain is feeling like a puddle because I was severely caught off guard by the amount of homework I received this week as it still feels like a vacation. But no. And it's not even less homework than I get at the U (which I would settle for); it's the same amount. But hey, the scenery can't be beat ;), so I'm not complaining. Adios, y buenas noches :).

Acclimating and exploring

¡Hola! I'm just finishing up my second week in Spain, but it feels like I've been here a lot longer than that. It hasn't quite been a week since my first post, but my plan is to post on Sunday nights from now on because that's likely to be when I have the most free time. So here we go with blog post número dos! I ended my last blog post on Tuesday night, and Wednesday was a very full day.  I started with three hours of Spanish class in the morning and that is truly an immersion.  I don't believe my professor speaks a single word of English.  This makes the class very difficult, but I feel like I'm at least beginning to acclimate to her accent.  Each day I seem to understand a little bit more of what she says during class, but honestly the biggest problem with that class is not the language barrier.  The biggest problem is that this professor is probably the single most unorganized person I've ever met, making this the single most unorganized class I've ever taken.  For a girl who quit the girl scouts at age six because it was too unorganized, this is truly a problem and is driving me insane.  What makes it worse is that Cara and I have been coming home and having out host brother Juan go over our notes with us every day (did I mention her writing is also terrible, therefore causing us to take terrible notes) and helping us understand, but Juan leaves for Milan on Thursday! Then we're really going to be in trouble.  Oh well, I guess we'll struggle through it for now and just hope it gets easier. 


After Spanish we went to a café for lunch, which is always more difficult than I expect. The reason for this is that most menus are in Catalan (as are street signs, metro signs, etc.). I don't speak, read, write or understand Catalan.  Granted, it's relatively similar to Spanish, but it's not like that's my native language either.  So essentially when something is in Catalan, I have to translate it from a language I'm clueless about, to one I'm "proficient" in, to English.  Needless to say, things literally get lost in translation.  Thankfully, Spaniards speak Catalan, Spanish, and many of them speak English, so we're able to get by okay.  Usually, whatever language you speak to them in is what they'll answer you in. 


After lunch we went to our second class, the first day of The City in Visual Culture. It's taught by our resident director, Magda, who is great. It's offered in both Spanish and English and when I arrived to the English section, Magda was surprised by the amount of people in the class. She asked who all was in advanced Spanish and we reluctantly raised our hands.  She then of course asked us to seriously consider taking it in Spanish.  I sat in on the Spanish section of the class that day (and on Friday) and as Magda's Spanish is much easier to understand, I could completely follow along.  So I'm going to talk to Magda tomorrow and officially switch into the Spanish section.  The readings are in English and she said she could send us the English versions of the powerpoints, so I guess the only thing I'm worried about are taking the tests in Spanish and doing our final presentation in Spanish too. But hey, might as well challenge myself and make the most of the experience, right?  Hopefully by then, I'll be comfortable enough with my Spanish that it won't be too big of an issue.  Since the language isn't the focus of the class, I know Magda will be willing to help if there's something I don't understand.  Maybe taking her class in Spanish will actually help me understand what's going on in my Spanish language class!


After that, we had our first studio session, which I had been nervous about for literally months.  However, it all turned out okay.  All the U of M students were placed into the intermediate studio, along with all but 5 older students with considerably more experience, who were of course placed into the advanced section.  Since the intermediate section is so large, it was randomly split into two studios with different projects (since there are two studio professors) and we were assigned said semester projects that very day.  This is very different from at the U, where they only reveal tiny parts at a time.  Also, we're actually designing a space, which may not sound like a novel idea for an architecture major, but my education thus far has been far more conceptual and theory based, with a focus on design thinking.  Because of this, the end project will likely be a really great addition to my portfolio and add some variety.  I really like the project my group was assigned. There's an organization called Maggie's Cancer Caring Centers with a few centers built throughout the UK and expanding now into other areas of Europe.  Although one has already been designed for Barcelona (without a site), we're essentially designing what we think would be an ideal center for this Mediterranean city (most of the projects have had very different climates and this creates a completely different design challenge).  It seems like a really great organization and I'm actually pretty excited about the project, although right now it's at the very vague stage characteristic of architecture projects which I always find a little frustrating. But that'll pass and it should be an interesting semester.


So that was Wednesday. We didn't have any free time so class was pretty much all that happened that day.  Thursday was pretty uneventful. We had Spanish again (woohoo..), and then had a meeting about cultural immersion and basically how not to be an American. I don't know how good of a job I'm doing, but I'm taking baby steps. At least now I'm extra aware of when I'm in the "American bubble" as they called it, like yesterday when I just couldn't resist and I got Domino's pizza for dinner, ha. I just was really craving some food that I recognized and it can really get overwhelming after awhile being surrounded by a language and a culture you don't completely understand.  Domino's was my way of coping, strange as that may be.  After the meeting we went grocery shopping with Helen, so that we don't have to keep buying lunch every day.  I made some stupid American mistakes that caused extra work for the cashier and I felt bad. Also, peanut butter does not exist here, which made me really sad. I love peanut butter. I should have brought some. I did find Nutella, though, which is also delicious.  That reminds me, my Christmas candy supply ran out :(. I guess I'll have to actually try to acclimate to Spanish meal times now.  The main problem is they don't really snack in between meals and just have huge meals, but I'm not used to that.  I can't eat that much all at once and my host dad always picks on me for not eating enough, but then I'm hungry again before it's time for another meal.  I'll need to buy some granola bars or something. 


Then came Friday, where we started the day with Spanish class, of course. I can't wait until this week is over and we only have it three times weekly.  Then for the City in Visual Culture, we took a walking tour of the Barri Gotíc, Barcelona's Gothic Quarter.  We found out, however, that that's a bit of a misnomer intended to attract tourists.  It is the oldest part of the city, and it is incredibly beautiful, but some of the "Gothic" architecture was actually not built during the Gothic era and was instead consciously constructed to appear Gothic at a somewhat later time (though still a very long time ago and not meant to be deceitful, but more to pay homage).  This disillusionment made me a little sad at first, but then I realized knowing the truth put me a step above tourists and there was really no reason to be disappointed because it is still a very historic and very pretty area.  I forgot to take pictures that day because I was taking notes for class, but I'm sure I'll return.  I went to bed early that night, so I could get up early in the morning for our day trip to Montserrat!


A group of 9 of us left on the 9:36 am train out of Barcelona (after I successfully asked for and got directions to the train station en Español!).  It was about an hour train ride and we watched the on-board thermometer continue to drop as we all realized we had forgotten to take into the account the possible temperature change from Barcelona to the mountains.  We got to Montserrat and it was definitely chilly.  Our train tickets included a round trip ride on bright yellow cable cars that took us part of the way up the mountains into the little town itself.  Montserrat is an adorable little town set right into the hillside, it's main attractions being the monastery and the hiking trails.  We visited the monastery first and it was absolutely beautiful.  Camera's weren't allowed in some areas, so I tried to take some sneaky pictures, but they turned out blurry. That's what I get for breaking the rules, I guess.  Then we split into two groups for the hike: a group of 6 who wanted a longer, higher hike and a group of 3 girls who had gone out the night before and were way too tired to hike, so they took the shortest trail. I went with the longer hike, although I was nervous about my athletic ability.  I was definitely at the back of the group, my short legs not helping at all, but it was so worth it.  We hiked for a few hours and it was so incredible.  We took tons of pictures, ate the picnic lunches we had brought up on the mountain, and even saw 3 cats! We have no clue why there were cats on the mountain, but there were and they were adorable and friendly :). We eventually got to a point where our group split again, having found out we had not taken the trail we thought we had.  We started our trail at the bottom of the funicular rail and hiked up to the top of it, but the trail we thought we were taking actually started at the top of the funicular.  4 people were determined to get to the highest point and take the trail we had originally intended to take, on top of all the hours of hiking we had already done, but I was not one of them.  It was another hour there and another hour back and I was just way too tired. I decided not to push myself too hard, and I don't regret it seeing as I still saw awesome sights and seeing as the other group couldn't actually see all that much more from the higher vantage point due to the slightly cloudy day.  So Nathan, who is not a huge fan of heights, and I hiked just another 20 minutes or so to an old hermitage on the mountain (according to the pamphlet we picked up, there's 13 of them scattered around up there!) and it was really neat.  Then we walked down and waited for the others in the food court/gift shop. They hiked down to the area where we had split up and then took the funicular back down to the town where we were waiting.  Then we hopped back into our cable car, caught the train and were back in Barcelona by nightfall. Needless to say, I was exhausted and just did a little homework and went to bed. (Just to make it explicit, I'm a boring person.)


This morning I slept until 10 and definitely felt and continue to feel the aftermath of yesterday's hiking.  Today consisted of more homework with a break in between for a trip to the beach house.  Our host parents were there all weekend and today we joined them along with Juan and Helen's mother, her sister, and her sister's two study abroad students from the U.S. as well.  Juan and his cousin like to argue about who is better: his Americans or hers.  The other two were really nice, they're through the same organization but in the Advanced Liberal Arts program as opposed to Architecture and Design, so we hadn't seen them around yet.  Their program requires a higher knowledge of Spanish, as learning the language is the focus, so they were both pretty fluent.  Helen made paella and therefore I had authentic Spanish paella for the first time!  I was nervous about the amount of seafood in it, which included mussels, calamari, shrimp and crayfish.  The thing about the shrimp and crayfish is they're still whole creatures when you put them in, so you then have to dissect them before eating.  It seems like a pain, but I wouldn't really know because I avoided the crayfish (I just couldn't do it, they were looking at me!) and only had one shrimp, which Cara dissected for me because I was clueless. I did try the mussels and calamari though, with the rice, and it was good.  I wouldn't say it's a new favorite or anything but I've seen restaurants advertise vegetarian paella and I think I might like that more. 


Mealtime conversation is always interesting because I've noticed that the worries in the U.S. about always being politically correct and not offending anyone are nonexistent in Spain.  My host father is a huge joker, so he means well and isn't serious at all, but the things he jokes about would not be acceptable even for joke material in the States.  For example, religion and politics are not forbidden conversation territory.  The first weekend, I was jokingly told I was going to Hell because I'm not Catholic. (Cara is, so she's golden).  The other two girls who were there today are Jewish (or as our host dad said in his somewhat broken English "Oh, you are Jew!"), and that managed to come up in the conversation tonight as well, along with a family argument about Spanish politics where we all remained mute, Juan going around the table asking all the Americans what we thought of Obama, our host father making it clear he leans to the right and him informing us that only Cara would be allowed to marry his son, as she is the only one who is Catholic (as long as she's not a Socialist).  He's an interesting guy and he just always says very unexpected things. He also asks us often "Are you happy?" and means just in general, in life. But like I said, he means well (he always refers to us as "mi hijas", my daughters) and is really just joking, and although it was awkward, I don't think anyone left feeling too offended. Anyways, we went for a walk after dinner and then came back here to Barcelona.  On the drive back, I loved looking at the lights from the little villages stuck into the hills.  I've tried to avoid using cliche words like quaint and picturesque, but it's impossible because some of these places, especially the smaller villages around the beach house, are the absolute epitome of quaint and picturesque.


But it's about 11 right now and I should probably go to bed because Cara and I have to get up earlier than usual tomorrow.  Until now, our commute to school meant walking 5 minutes or so to the metro, a 5-10 minute metro ride (one train, no transfers) and then a 15-20 minute walk to the classroom building.  Not too bad, pretty easy, but as of tomorrow, there's construction on the metro and now we have to either take a bus and then a train or take two trains, which would involve coming out from underground, walking to another stop, and then going back down. It's pretty obnoxious and we're not happy about it, but there's obviously nothing we can do so hopefully we can figure it out in the morning (that's why we're giving ourselves extra time).  But that's all for today, again this is really long. I never even knew I had so much to say! Again, to anyone who got this far, thank you and I hope it wasn't too painful :).

The end of procrastination! For now.

So this is the first blog post I have ever written in my life. I've been putting it off continuously because it seems like such a daunting task, but the longer I put it off and the more I do and experience, it only becomes more daunting because I have more to write about.  For this reason, I've decided to tackle it now. Here we go.  I've been in Barcelona for exactly a week today, but it feels like much longer because I never would have guessed I could fit so many things into one week.  I've gone on walking tours, a bus tour, traveled to the sea, to smaller villages, visited a museum and gone out for tapas and I've come to an unarguable conclusion: Barcelona is the most beautiful city I have ever seen, as well as the most interesting.  Aside from this, it's hard to know where to start.  I've been pretty tired and jet-lagged, but I didn't want to miss anything and it's getting better.  When I first arrived in Barcelona, we spent one night in a hotel and even that first night I discovered all kinds of differences. For example: in the hotel, in order to turn on the lights, you must insert your key card into a slot in the wall. Take it  out and all the lights turn off.  It took a while to figure out, but it seems like a good energy saving idea.  The light switches themselves are also often outside the room that the lights are in, which took a while to discover, as well.  Also, floor 1 is not the ground floor. That would be up one floor, as I discovered when searching for room 120. The next day our host mom, Helen, came to pick up me and Cara at the hotel to take us to our new home in the city.  There we flipped a coin for the larger room (I won, but they're both very nice with great views and we'll probably switch half-way through the semester just for fun).  Then we met our host brother Juan, who is 22 and goes to school in Italy, but is home for the holidays currently (more on that later).  He helps us out a lot with our Spanish and even a little Catalan yesterday.  He picks on me and Cara for our accents, but he's really fun and I think Cara and I will both be a little sad when he returns to Milan.  Later, we met the father, also Juan, when he came home from his real estate job at 10 pm, just in time for dinner! I'm having a hard time adjusting to the later eating times, but I'm holding up thanks to my drawer full of Christmas candy that I brought from home :).  I know that's like napping when you're jet-lagged, but I wasn't about to just leave all that chocolate at home and I can't resist when it's 6 pm and my stomach says it's food time!  Anyways, I'm very happy with my host family, they're so nice and so helpful.  Helen is such a sweetheart and both Juans are hilarious.  But as I was talking about food, more on that.  I have tried more new food in the past week than in the rest of my life combined, I'm convinced.  A vast majority of it I don't know the name of and would usually stay away from, such as salmon (not a seafood fan), caviar dip, and ham shaved from a giant pig leg, but I tried it and I lived.  I wouldn't say I've exactly discovered a new favorite food, but Helen is a very good cook (plus I always have my chocolate drawer :)). With my dislike of seafood, coffee and wine (or alcohol in general) my tastes don't quite fit the norm for a Spaniard.  I've been thirsty almost since I got here, seeing as the Spaniards do not drink much water.  However, I do have a giant bottle of room temperature water.  The water here is almost always either room temperature or carbonated, which I didn't expect.  I also don't believe I've seen a public drinking fountain since I left the States, but it hardly matters seeing as I lost my water bottle on the airplane.  One girl lost all her luggage (but got it back), which was my worst travel-related fear, but all I managed to lose was my water bottle and my umbrella, which I replaced today. In Frankfurt, I was surprised by the fact that I was allowed only one carry-on (but that they'd check any extras for free).  Not wanting to check my laptop bag, I instead checked my backpack, but in my surprise and confusion, I forgot to check the outside pocket, which contained none other than one water bottle and one umbrella. I was bummed when I picked up my bag in Barcelona and realized what I had done, but I was just grateful my luggage had made the journey from Minneapolis.  Overall, it could have been much worse, so I'm not complaining.  As I said, I've already replaced my umbrella and I'm still debating whether it even makes sense to buy a new water bottle.  Speaking of shopping, that has been lots of fun.  In the past few days, once the orientation-type programming was over, we've actually had considerable free time.  A significant amount of which, has been spent shopping.  There are quite a few store I recognize, but I'm trying not to be a tourist and to shop at Spanish stores, which are often awesome.  Also, Barcelona is currently in the middle of the "rebajas" season, which is basically a ton of sales in every store.  It's like Black Friday, but it lasts for weeks and as far as I know, no one has been trampled.  It goes until the end of February and it began the 7th of January.  The reason for the date is that the 6th is a Spanish holiday called Los Reyes, where the 3 kings bring gifts to the children.  This is the day most Spanish children receive their gifts, instead of on the 25th of December from "Papá Noel", although it depends on the family.  In all cities, there is a parade featuring the 3 kings and in Barcelona, it's huge.  However, our host family invited us to come to their beach house and see the parade in a little village nearby.  Helen told us it was hard to see anything in Barcelona anyways, because of all the people, and we didn't want to turn down an invitation to do something with the family, although it was a tough decision and Cara and I had to think about it for awhile.  In the end, we went to the beach house and it was really nice.  The parade was cute, but it only lasted about 5 minutes and we almost missed it.  The beach house and the surrounding villages, however, more than made up for it.  The beach house is beautiful, with glass walls in almost every room, a pool (although it was too cold to swim), and a modern design.  The villages are the most adorable, picture-perfect little towns you could possibly imagine.  They're exactly like I pictured a Spanish village, and right on the sea, too!  We stayed at the beach house for two nights, and on Saturday we went to a market and it was just as picturesque as the village itself, although there were some dead fish staring at me which smelled pretty strong.  During our stay, we had multiple family gatherings and meals and went on a few walks around the villa that the house is in.  I met many people whose names I probably won't remember, but they were all so friendly. Oh and did I mention? Everyone in the family speaks at least proficient, if not fluent English.  It's nice to have that to fall back on when Spanish fails me, which it often did/does.  I've realized I'm not accustomed at all to a Spanish (as in from Spain) accent, but instead I'm used to either a South American or English accent, which makes a surprisingly huge difference.  Also, they speak so fast! When they slow down, I understand well, but when they speak at their normal speed or more than one person speaks at once, my brain hurts trying to understand anything and I tend to tune out.  It takes so much energy to listen to and comprehend a conversation in another language.  It's not at all like when I'm listening to someone talk in English and doing all kinds of other things at the same time.  I have to completely focus on the person speaking.  However, I miraculously placed into advanced Spanish, the first class of which was today.  Oh my, that was a challenge.  It was at 9 am, as it is every day this week.  The first two weeks are "intensive" Spanish, which means class for an hour every day and three hours on Wednesdays.  Judging by today, it may be a rough couple of weeks.  The professor spoke so fast and her Spanish accent is so strong, I maybe understood 50 percent of what she said the whole hour, and that's being generous.  I wasn't the only lost though.  When the professor stopped talking (apparently expecting a response from the class), all she received was about 15 blank stares.  Hopefully it'll get better.  Tomorrow my architecture studio and a class called The City in Visual Culture start.  I'm excited for The City in Visual Culture because I think we do a lot of on-site lessons where we travel to somewhere in the city. Yay, field trips :)!  I'm assuming we'll find out tomorrow which studio level we were placed in, which I'm really nervous about.  I'll be so embarrassed if I'm placed in a lower studio than the other architecture students at my level.  I hope we're all in the same one, just to avoid any awkward situations, but it depends on the strength of our portfolios, so I guess we'll see.  After Spanish today, we took a walk to the Museu de Xocolata, which is Catalan for Chocolate Museum.  Entry was 3.60 euro for students, but our ticket was wrapped around a candy bar and the museum was neat, so it was worth it.  Then we walked down to the sea and spent some time there, including shopping in an indoor/outdoor seaside mall and having lunch there (at like 2 or 3 pm, of course).  Later we went to see Gaudi's Park Guell, which is about a 15 minute walk from my homestay.  It was getting dark, so we didn't see it all but we fully intend to return another day. I got a little lost on my way there, but luckily I met up with Cara, Lindsey and Joe once I found the place.  That truly was lucky, because it's a huge place and I don't know how I would've found them otherwise.  It's probably the most amazing place we've visited so far, and that's truly saying something because we've seen some awesome places already, but Park Guell was incredible.  We were a group of all architecture students, so we all totally geeked-out about it and we all probably would've stayed all day if it hadn't meant walking home in the dark.  I'm really looking forward to going again because we barely saw any of it, but we did see where one of the runway finales of America's Next Top Model was!! I was pumped, haha.  The architecture is really amazing. We all agree it's really impossible not to appreciate Gaudi's work, whether you like his aesthetic or not.  The creativity and attention to detail is unbelievable, especially with something the scale of Park Guell.  Okay, geek moment has passed. Anyways, this is more than long enough. I'm too lazy to go edit it so I apologize for any typos or if anything doesn't make sense. Also, I realize this is one huge paragraph, but (surprise!) I'm too lazy to do that too. I'm an architecture major, not an English major, I don't have to write well ;).  If you actually got to the end of this, three things: congratulations, you're crazy, and thank you :).