barcelona is as trippy as i would've hoped and I'M GOING TO PRAGUE NEXT WEEK

This Friday I went to Parc Guell with my apartmentmates. It was designed by Gaudí. IT IS AWESOME.


Cat.


The entrance to Parc Guell. Pay attention to the roof of the columned building. There are more pictures of that part later.


Ginger bread-esque house that Courtney plans to own one day.


I like Gaudí's texture the best.


Courtney.


Without Courtney.


THE BIGGEST ALOE PLANTS EVER??!


Arbols.






Barcelona! ...And smog.


Uggo picture of me.


Possibly the house of the guy that paid Gaudí to make Parc Guell?


Some vendors and some couples.


Don't call these benches "mosaics." Gaudí would be offended. Mosaics are made with regularly sized pieces (squares). Gaudí used irregularly-sized pieces. (These are on the top of that balcony that you could see from the entrance.)


Exit of Parc Guell as pictured from the balcony.


PROJECT RUNWAY. ya heardd???


Mmn columns.


Y más.


Notmosaics.


More notmosaics.


Me and the lizard.


Exit building.


Luke crying about how he only has 2 euros left.


Lee et Luke.


BB+, mi favorito.


Lee, Meganpurpletongue, y Luke.


Dragonfaces.

I'M GOING TO VISIT AISLING IN PRAGUE NEXT WEDNESDAY THROUGH SUNDAY! I couldn't be more excited.


Keep Marjorie close to your heart, as always.

poorly-organized thoughts

Classes started on Monday. Two of them are going to be fun and two of them are going to be lame. I'm really excited about my Mediterranean environment class because my professor is awesome and chill and is taking us on a trip to Girona! Excellent. Plus there is an interesting character w/ a mustache in that class who is friends w/ my friend Lisa and seems pretty sweet. We have to write a term paper w/ a partner and I hope to partner with him because (a) he is an environmental science major and (b) HE HAS A MUSTACHE.

The other class that I really like is my billion-hour-a-week Spanish class. My professor is nice and gives us interesting things to do in class. We speak a lot, which is exactly what I want to be doing. I am surprised that I'm one of the better students. No one here can speak. It's just Spanish, guys. It's pretty much the easiest language to learn. Anyway, that class is teensy bit of a bummer because I have homework every night and my first quiz tomorrow, but I think I'm going to get a lot out of it.

My art history class (with a focus on Barcelona) should be awesome, but my professor has thus far completely failed to make it at all interesting. And my literature class ("The Spanish Picaresque") sucks because it's full of English majors (read: faux-intellectual blowha). The professor is nice enough but asks really stupid questions like "What /is/ 'normal,' anyway?" Gag me.

In other news, all my apartmentmates decided to take classes at 8:30 in the morning (WHAT? THIS IS /STUDY ABROAD/. HONESTLY.), and on Monday they woke me up 2 hours before I needed to start getting ready. Luckily, Megan has a bag of the most amazing ear plugs ever and I've been sleeping well for the past couple nights.

(I am so excited for Aisling and Marjorie to get to Euroland. I cannot WAIT.)

Here is my tentative travel itinerary for my time "studying" abroad:
-January: Valencia, Spain (check); Terragona, Spain (check)
-February: Budapest, Hungary (if Marjorie is down)
-March: Girona, Spain; Paris, France; Amsterdam, Netherlands
-April: Prague, Czech Republic (if Aisling is down); then the cheapest flight I can find to anywhere -- probably to Rome, Italy or Dublin, Ireland

Some observations about Barcelona/Espana:
-All the Spaniards think it's freezing here. It's usually 55-60 degrees F.
-The street signs are on the sides of buildings. ¡Que dificil!
-The street corners aren't squared. I don't know how to explain it.
-"Vale, vale, vale, vale, vale, vale!"
-Spaniards <3 ham. They call ham and cheese sandwiches 'biquinis' or 'bikinis.' (<-- Only in Barcelona.) And their cheese (manchego, I think) is way better than ours.
-There are bars in the metro stations.
-I've only encountered one person who didn't speak any Castillian Spanish, and it was an 80-year-old man in a chess bar. But most of the signs on the street are in Catalan and so are a lot of the menus.
-The ladies wear boots a LOT (you know, because they think it's freezing), and they're really into wearing the same color boots as their tights or the same color boots as their pants. A monochromatic leg. I'm kind of into it.
-Rebajas/Rebaixes (Boxing Day sales) are about to end, so I bought an excellent shirt, some short boots, and a school bag (how did I forget to bring a bag big enough for books/notebooks?).
-H&Ms here have a lot more shoes, and they're pretty cheap (except for the boots).
-BB+ is the best bar in town.
-The bakeries are so, so, so, so appetizing.
-Tapas are kind of expensive.
-Everything is kind of expensive, except groceries and BB+.
-Women wear wedding rings on their right hand, men wear them on the left.
-Everyone has a balcony. There really aren't any houses at all in the city. Maybe, like, two.
-The average Spaniard dresses about 20x better than Americans do.
-Where I live is really, really sweet.


Every night for dinner, I eat diced tomatoes and zucchini simmered in white wine, garlic, and black pepper. Sometimes I add chick peas. It's delicious.

I can't think of anything more to say.

weekend trip to valencia and terragona

Bonjour! The weekend was pretty sweet, even though IES made us wake up at 8 a.m. or earlier everyday. And walk for miles and miles and miles. But everything was beautiful!

Friday we set out for Valencia at 8 a.m. and arrived around 1 p.m. We were randomly assigned roommates for our hotel rooms. My roommate was a girl from BC who talked constantly about her hair straightener and had a best friend who thinks "America is great, Spain sucks." No big deal because all I did in my room was take naps from 7-9 and sleep from 3 a.m.-7:30 a.m. After a teensy nap, we got split up into our bus groups again for a bus tour and then a walking tour of the city. I reconnected with a boy I met the first day of orientation. His name's Luke and I guess we're pretty good friends now. Anyway, Luke and I become obsessed with our tour guide, Jorge, for whom we created an entire tragic back story. The love was completely requited. At night I went to Calle de los Caballeros with two of my roommates and another girl that lives on Avenida de Sarria in Barcelona. It was a little bit of a bust because the street is famous for bars and clubs, so naturally, it's pretty expensive. We found a bar that was reasonable and then I met up with Luke and three of his friends who took me to a cheaper bar. So I kind of ditched my roommates, but I wasn't really down for another night of going to a club and watching them make out with Eurotrash. And Luke and his friends are awesome and more my kind of people.

Anyway, pictures from the city tour of Valencia:


Just a beautiful apartment building I saw.


The bullfighting stadium. I'm really into those sunflare thingys in pictures, can you tell?


Bullfighting stadium, again.


Another pretty apartment building.


I believe this is a Valencian Generalitat (government) building.


I don't remember what this building is, but it's amazing against the sky.


Valencian oranges -- kind of. According to Jorge, the oranges that grow wild are bitter and bad. I wanted to try them for myself, but chickened out on picking one.


This giant gold thing is inside of the Catedral de Valencia. It was a gift from some other government. Pretty sweet regalo, no?


Also inside the Catedral.


Outside of the Catedral.


Inside of an ancient merchant's market.


The sky was so pretty, all day and all night.


I guess I was a bad student in Valencia -- I don't remember what this building is at all.


On Saturday we went to L'Oceanographic, which is an aquarium. It's a part of La Ciudad del Arte y Ciencia, a huge complex of art and science museums. Then we went to the science museum, which was kind of a bust. Luke and I slept on chairs in the science museum because we were so completely exhausted. After our 9 hour day of tours, I caught a quick nap at the hotel before getting pizza and with Luke, Lisa, Drew and Anar. Found a dirt cheap bar close to the hotel later in the night where we ran into three of my apartmentmates. Lisa drew portraits of people on napkins. Headed back to the hotel kind of early to go to sleep.

Here are some pictures from L'Oceanographic and the science museum:


Luke and I fell in love with this beautiful seakitten!


I got such sweet pictures of these glowing jellyfish.


Right?


Anar swore this would be a good picture despite the aquarium's no-flash policy. Didn't really end up that way, though.


The Ciudad del Arte y Ciencia complex. I forgot to mention that the complex also includes an opera house.


Inside the science museum.


This exhibit was an optical illusion involving a mirrored view of the DNA double helix that made you feel like you were going to fall to the center of the earth/rise to the sky.


This morning we took a three hour bus ride to Terragona, which was back in the direction of Barcelona. We took a tour of Roman ruins and then had some free time to eat lunch. Terragona was beautiful and much less of a city than Valencia or Barcelona -- in a good way. The people didn't hate us for being American or stare at us. It was a really relaxed seaside town.

Pictures:


Morning flea market outside of a huge church in Terragona.


Part of a Roman amphitheater.


Entrance to the amphitheater. There was a cat rolling around in the dust of the ruins. What a life.


Terragona and the Mediterranean.


Terragona, with the GLADIATOR arena ruins!


Arena.


Inside the arena, where some guy later built a church.


Classes start tomorrow. I'm excited to have more alone time and less of a group schedule with my roommates. I like them and all, but it's annoying having virtually no privacy for two weeks straight.