Recovering.

Well hi there, I'm trying this new thing called blogging in the afternoon and not at 10 pm. It's nice because then I can go to bed :) and I highly doubt anything super blog-worthy will happen for the rest of the day and need to be included.  As I spent most of this week recovering from the Berlinfluenza, it was not a particularly exciting week, but some fun things did happen :). Really it's probably a good thing because maybe this post won't be super ridiculously long. I probably just jinxed it, but really. I can't have that much to write about when I was sick all week, right?

So Monday was mostly spent in a fever-daze and therefore was not only unexciting, but literally unmemorable. As I believe I mentioned in my last post, I went home from class early and inadvertently sent my host mom into super-mom/nurse mode. I must have looked like death. I certainly felt like it. However, before leaving class, I did accomplish one thing, namely buying tickets to and booking a hostel in Dublin, Ireland for our next long weekend :). I believe it's the first weekend in March and I'm excited :). We had wanted to go to London, but for some reason the plane tickets were just crazy expensive, so we decided on Dublin instead, which was like half the cost. Now we just have to figure out what we actually want to do and see while we're there.

Tuesday was when I finally got around to writing my last blog post.  As you know, I had felt better in the morning and was determined to make it to the class visit to the Sagrada Familia at 5. I started to feel chilled again around 4, but was not about to let that stop me and I may-or-may-not-have-accidentally-on-purpose left when my host mom was on the phone so she couldn't take my temperature... So I went and it was so worth it.  For one, I got in free when it usually costs like 16 euros, and it really was just breathtaking.  I mean, the outside is awesome and all, but from seeing the outside you just can't even imagine what the inside is like.  Gaudi was a big fan of geometry, and it's really apparent here, and he makes some of the coolest geometric designs. I really can't describe it, the pictures are on my Facebook, but they really don't do it justice.  If for whatever reason you find yourself in Barcelona someday and have a spare 16 euros, go. Just go. Even if you're not the least bit interested in architecture, it's an amazing sight.  That said, I probably overdid it a bit and felt like I had been hit by a bus on Wednesday.  I stayed home from classes on Wednesday, missing a studio pin-up.  I still don't know how I'm supposed to make that up because I haven't talked to my professor yet, but I have studio tomorrow so I should be able to figure it out then.  We're not allowed to miss studio, ever, without an excused absence. Luckily, it counts as an excused absence since I was legitimately sick and have a doctor's note to prove it.

Yes, I went to the doctor for the flu.  This seemed so silly to me and I didn't understand it at all, but Helen woke me up on Thursday and told me I had a doctor's appointment at 11:30 and Cara (who was also sick by now) had one at noon.  Since they have free health care here, I feel like they just go to the doctor all the time, for everything. Just a cultural difference, I guess, but I would have never gone to the doctor for influenza at home. Helen couldn't come with us because she had to stay home with Juan, so Cara and I went off into Barcelona alone in search of the doctor's office.  We found it without too much trouble, luckily.  The doctor spoke a mixture of English and Spanish and I spoke to him in English, since I don't know how to explain flu symptoms in Spanish (well, now I do).  He took my temperature, looked in my throat and ears, listened to my lungs and told me what I already suspected: I had a respiratory flu. Thankfully, my lungs were fine, whereas Cara's doctor told her she had something in her lungs, so she's not recovering quite as quickly as I am.  After that incredibly thorough exam, I was prescribed 4 medications and charged 70 euros for the visit.  I was worried how much 4 prescriptions would cost, but they were under 20 euros total, so not bad.  So I'm now taking 9 pills a day. Yay. They're apparently very liberal with prescriptions here (Drug seekers, take note! Just kidding...But really, I wonder if they have a problem with that).  Anyways, it was an experience. I didn't go on the class tour of Park Guell later that day because I had already visited Park Guell once and although I do plan to visit again, didn't wanna overdo it like I had on Tuesday, and I felt it was more important I made it to my Friday classes.

So I did go to class on Friday, which involved me being totally lost in Spanish class (shocking!), but I emailed a tutor and am meeting with her for the first time this coming Friday, so hopefully that'll help, and then a tour (it was a very tour-y week) of Hospital Sant Pau.  I felt it was important to go on the hospital tour because it kind of relates to my studio project where we're designing a cancer center, and it was pretty neat.  It's not a functioning hospital anymore, but it's like a giant hospital complex/village and it was designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, another famous Modernist architect (No, really, Gaudi wasn't the only one! Although he is the coolest :)). The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, although I was excited because I broke down and bought a McFlurry :) (for my sore throat, obviously...).  They're better here because you choose a flavor of syrup, like chocolate or caramel, in addition to choosing a candy! But I promise, I don't go to McDonald's that often, although they're super fancy here and totally don't have the cheap, sketchy, somewhat trashy reputation they have in the States.  And locals actually go to them, they're not even 100% for tourists like I would've thought. So yeah, the rest of the day was mostly trying to catch up on homework from the classes I'd missed, along with Saturday.  I literally don't think I even left the apartment yesterday, it was a very lazy kind of day. But that's alright every once in awhile.

Today, it's only 2:35 right now, but like I said I don't foresee anything super exciting happening for the rest of the day.  I did leave the apartment today though, which was nice because it's a beautiful day.  Today is the main day of the festival of Santa Eulalia, the patron saint of Barcelona (I believe), and another girl from the program and I went to see some of the festivities and even ran into the CIEE Berlin students, who were in Barcelona this weekend.  What we really wanted to see was the castellers, which are essentially human towers.  We're here in the off-season, apparently you can see it like every weekend in the summer, but they were doing it today for the festival, so we were glad we'd get a chance to see it... However, it didn't work out that way.  We did see a parade full of lots of giant statue things of people (pictures on Facebook, haha), which was interesting, but we were in the plaza literally right next to the one the castellers were in and didn't realize it :(. So, a failure on our part, but I was still glad I went. It was something to do and it was fun to see, anyways.  We plan to search for more opportunities to see them before we leave.

So that's all for this week, sorry it wasn't more eventful, but I mostly slept a lot.  I'm feeling better now, I really don't even feel sick anymore, maybe just like a mild cold, so that's good and hopefully I'll have more exciting adventures to tell about next week :).  At least it worked out in making a more reasonably-sized blog post :).  I hope everyone's having a wonderful February so far, it's really pretty nice here, and I'll talk to you next Sunday! Adios!