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 :).