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 :).