FINALLY

1/8/09

My god I am finally in Barcelona. The entire time I have been planning for this trip, all I was waiting for was right now, when I’m settled into my room and ready to start the actual fun part of studying abroad. I think I hit every range of emotion since I left the airport, but I think I’m finally past my anxiety and stress and onto excitement. On the plane ride there I sat next to a girl who was also studying abroad, but in Ireland, and we were both glad to have someone with us as freaked out as we were… but then she got a little too chatty chatty and really started freaking out even more than me and it was like woah, relax, stop talking to me I’m just a stranger. I watched a dumb movie – The Women, read a dumb note from Scotty that was actually not dumb at all and is now hanging above my desk, and slept a couple dumb hours before I woke up and basically had mental breakdowns the rest of the way to London.  The London airport was confusing like I remembered, but I had no problems getting to my next flight (side note: I think the chatty, freak out girl ended up getting lost because we got separated and I’m pretty sure she went to the wrong terminal. Womp womp.) Once on that plane I calmed down a lot, and joined up with more IES people to find our way around the Barcelona Airport to get our orientation info. I met up with one of my roommates at the orientation pickup and we split a cab back to the apartment.

I’m living in a homestay – an apartment with a signora and 2 other roommates (both from the D.C. area). I feel like I’ll get along with Chessie – she’s a vegetarian who wears sweet kicks and says things like “can I slice you a sweatshirt” instead of, “can I give you a sweatshirt”. Thea is a competitive horseback rider… not so sure how I feel about her yet, shes been nice enough, but has mentioned that she hates having roommates (like that was one of the first pieces of information she shared with me… her new roommate. What a gem.) and she keeps saying how she is “laid back”. I have found on more than one occasion that when someone stresses how laid back and easygoing they are, they are usually the opposite… I’ve got my eye on that one.

 Our apartment is your typical 64 year old’s apartment, lots of lace and trinkets and florals - gorg. It’s on a pretty busy street, so that’s cool, and we have a balcony with a nice view, I’ll have to assess it more in the daytime. So far I have met Sandra, who works for our signora’s mother. We haven’t met our signora yet because her mother is sick and she is in Seville with her. She probably won’t be back until next week. A friend of hers did stop by to welcome us though, Conchita, neither she nor Sandra (nor our signora we are told) speak a word of English. Awesome.

We are all on a pretty elementary understanding of Spanish so we have to translate for each other. We also met Marta… not totally sure what she does yet. But they are all really bubbly and fun and excited. They speak rapid Spanish, even though they know we can only half understand them. They are all really curious about us and I feel like we’ll learn a lot from them.

I have my own room for the first 2 months and then we will rotate and I’ll live with Chessie for the last two. It’s small but its got plenty of closet and shelf space and a nice little desk. I’ve got a little TV in here also, for all my Spanish channel needs. We don’t have our wireless password yet, but I did bring an Ethernet cord because I think of everything and am always prepared with the right equipment, so we’ve been taking turns on it. I’m writing this on MWord, I’ll slap it on into my blog when we get our wireless up and runnin. I’m actually falling asleep now because I have gotten only 3 hours of sleep since 8am yesterday morning (it is now 3:28pm Chicago time). So Ima go pass out for hours.