Barcelona

We finally got in at around 6pm, and those of us with host families were greeted by them by the ISA office. Alexi and I met Luisa, our 71 year old señora. We loved her immediately; she is adorable and incredibly sweet. Right away she grabbed some of our luggage and went to get a taxi(we almost had a hard time keeping up with her). That night she took me prepaid phone shopping(even though it was right before 8 and the stores were closing), and she was all excited to show us the bus and the metros and around the block. There’s an internet café right down the street, it’s 1 euro an hour, and .15/minute to call the US. She has made us a small variety of foods, it’s mostly usually either pasta or some really thinly sliced fried chicken/fish/pork. It’s always good, we’re just worried about engordeandonos with all the fried stuff.. plus she always gives us a tooonnn of food. She makes us lunch too, for when we’re at school or going somewhere, which is usually a ham and cheese bocadillo, fruit, a little bread with nutella, and a bottle of water. Yesterday there was a little montaña de galletas too. and by that I mean a little mountain of cookies. We always give like half our food to jonathan though.

Anyway, the first night we all met up at the plaza Universidad(2 metro lines away, takes about 15 minutes), and ended up going out to las ramblas. La rambla is a huge pedestrian street with a ton of little stores and vendors. Its really cool looking, and really touristy too. I still haven’t been there in the day when everythings open, but at night it was packed and still really pretty. A few days ago was el Dia Nacional de Catalunya (Catalunia is basically the state Barcelona is in, but they’re really proud of it and a lot of people want it to be independent). Anyway, apparently we slept through all the cool stuff that happened. That was the first day we got to sleep in.. soo.. we slept until 1. but also, Luisa probably didn’t know all of what she was talking about. I helped her with a spreadsheet, we went over to the internet café, hung out for a bit at Melon District(apartments where some of our friends live) and came home for dinner.

The next day we took the language level test, which everyone was super nervous about, but it wasn’t really a big deal after all. We got a tour of the university, did some shopping, and then a bus tour. We went to Montjuic, which is a mountain overlooking the city and the sea, and got a really gorgeous view of the whole thing. Then to Parc Guell, which is where Gaudi lived, and saw all of the tiled benches and crazy houses and such. Later on we went to an Erasmus welcome party(L’auberge Espagnole anyone?), met some Americans who thought we were Spaniards, and met some Spaniards who were pretty cool.

*First Barcelona Photos

*Montjuic

*Parc Guell