Like I said, nothing very exciting happened on Monday. It was kind of a bummer having to go back and have such a long day (9 to 7) after the minimal classes I had attended last week because of being sick. I payed for this on Tuesday (not that it was my fault that I had to go to class) in that I felt like I had run a marathon the day before. Not that I'd know, considering my limited running capacity, but either way, I was tired. Anyways, I think I'm fully recovered now and back into my regular routine. Although the great thing about my life right now is that my "regular routine" included visits to multiple famous buildings this week for class :). We started off the week with a visit to Palau Güell for my Gaudi class. It's one of his earlier works, before his epiphany or whatever occurred in his brain to make him design buildings like the Sagrada Familia. For this reason, it's very different and not immediately recognizable as Gaudi, but it was still really interesting. You can definitely still see Gaudi in the ornamentation, though, and the crazy attention to detail. I'd live there. You know, if it weren't for all those obnoxious tour groups stomping through my house all the time. The interesting thing about visiting these buildings I've studied is that when you study the building, you usually don't consider the context or the surroundings of it at all and this one was particularly surprising for all of us. It's just like off on some random side street off of La Rambla, one of the main roads, stuck between two totally average looking buildings on both sides and all around. It's quite odd.
Then on Wednesday, I had a pretty busy day, and will every Wednesday from now on, because another girl in the program, Hailey, and I began a volunteering position at a local special needs school here (on top of having 3 classes from 9 am to 7 pm that day, yikes). It has kids of all ages, from probably like 5 to 18 and we're essentially playground monitors during recess. What this consisted of was standing around awkwardly and kids everywhere running up to us and asking all kinds of questions and almost getting my gloves stolen by a little boy who was apparently fascinated by them. A few kids liked my gloves actually, and one enjoyed my multiple earrings. It's way outside my comfort zone and I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, especially my Spanish skills, and I was glad there was another girl there, Mackenzie, who had been volunteering there for a few weeks already and kind of knew how things worked. The kids were really sweet, even if I couldn't understand them particularly well (I sometimes had to remind them to speak Spanish because I don't know Catalan), I got a lot of hugs and even did some face painting because it's Carnival right now in Spain. I might go over to Sitges, a nearby town, next Tuesday to see the celebration. I hear it's pretty crazy, it's essentially the equivalent of Mardi Gras, and I need a mask/costume if I'm gonna go. But anyways, that's beside the point. Hopefully it'll get less awkward as it goes on, I figured it would be good for me to do something outside my comfort zone and I hope it'll help my Spanish improve too. It makes my Wednesdays super packed, but what can you do? Gotta get the most out of the experience, right? Sometimes that means being super busy and that's okay. I wouldn't change a thing :).
Yesterday, Thursday, I had my Gaudi class again and another tour :) (such a great class). This one was of Casa Mila, or as it's known here, La Pedrera, which means "the quarry" in Catalan. It got this nickname because it's a gigantic building all made of local stone and when the workers were there every day working with the stone for however many years the consrtuction took, people walking by began to say it was more like a quarry than a building, or so the story goes. This building was more like what you'd typically expect from Gaudi. The outside is all curvy with intricate iron balconies that are all different. We started the tour by walking up like 10 flights of stairs (without being warned ahead of time; they just kept coming!) to see the roof/terrace area. It was, again, a really interesting building and I'm really enjoying seeing all these buildings I've learned about. Also, because I go with the class, it's all payed for and I save lots of money :). The view from the roof was really neat, you could see a lot of the city because the building is located pretty centrally. They had an apartment restored with period furniture and everything, it was neat. I believe next Tuesday we have one more tour and then unfortunately it's back to regular class for awhile, but even that is pretty interesting.
Then last night, we had our second intercambio (translation is roughly like interchange, exchange, something along those lines), which is where we go and meet with Spanish students at a bar and they practice their English and we practice our Spanish. Like last time, the poor Spanish students were sadly outnumbered, and to be honest I didn't speak much Spanish because there weren't enough of them to go around and I ended up talking mostly to other Americans... Whoops. It was still pretty fun though, I got two free "Coca-Cola Lights", not Diet Cokes, out of the deal, which is good because they're actually kind of expensive here. They're served in a glass bottle with a glass of ice and lemon, every time I've gotten one (sorry if I've mentioned this all before). No aluminum cans for the Spaniards, they're classy. I got home around 12:30 and was a little sleepy in Spanish class this morning. They do things so late here! It didn't even start until 9:30! (Which meant I missed dinner, which is also around 9:30, haha. Still not used to that.) I shouldn't complain though, because everyone else went out after the intercambio was done and got back really late, so I'm sure they were much more exhausted (although that's their fault). Believe it or not, I'm not much of a "going out" type of person and I wanted to get some sleep before class today, not to mention I'd had a headache all day. This made it irritating when I was waiting for my friends to decide if they were walking to the metro stop with me or not, ending with me walking, alone, as fast as I could to catch the metro before it closed at midnight after they decided after all that time that they were in fact not catching the metro and that I could have left earlier when I wanted to and not had to hurry as no one was coming with me anyways. Not that I really wanted to go alone, either, I had been hoping someone would come because I'm such a nervous person and I was scared to walk alone at midnight in Barcelona. Anyways, it ended up fine and I caught the train and got back okay, I just wasn't particularly sympathetic when they complained about their hangovers this morning.
Then last night, we had our second intercambio (translation is roughly like interchange, exchange, something along those lines), which is where we go and meet with Spanish students at a bar and they practice their English and we practice our Spanish. Like last time, the poor Spanish students were sadly outnumbered, and to be honest I didn't speak much Spanish because there weren't enough of them to go around and I ended up talking mostly to other Americans... Whoops. It was still pretty fun though, I got two free "Coca-Cola Lights", not Diet Cokes, out of the deal, which is good because they're actually kind of expensive here. They're served in a glass bottle with a glass of ice and lemon, every time I've gotten one (sorry if I've mentioned this all before). No aluminum cans for the Spaniards, they're classy. I got home around 12:30 and was a little sleepy in Spanish class this morning. They do things so late here! It didn't even start until 9:30! (Which meant I missed dinner, which is also around 9:30, haha. Still not used to that.) I shouldn't complain though, because everyone else went out after the intercambio was done and got back really late, so I'm sure they were much more exhausted (although that's their fault). Believe it or not, I'm not much of a "going out" type of person and I wanted to get some sleep before class today, not to mention I'd had a headache all day. This made it irritating when I was waiting for my friends to decide if they were walking to the metro stop with me or not, ending with me walking, alone, as fast as I could to catch the metro before it closed at midnight after they decided after all that time that they were in fact not catching the metro and that I could have left earlier when I wanted to and not had to hurry as no one was coming with me anyways. Not that I really wanted to go alone, either, I had been hoping someone would come because I'm such a nervous person and I was scared to walk alone at midnight in Barcelona. Anyways, it ended up fine and I caught the train and got back okay, I just wasn't particularly sympathetic when they complained about their hangovers this morning.
So that's all for this bonus blog post, coming up at my normal time on Sunday will be my sightseeing trip today to Montjuic, the day trip our program's taking us on tomorrow to the medieval town of Besalu and then the Dali museum in Cadaques, and anything exciting that may or may not (probably not) happen on Sunday, should be fun :)!
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