I'm not a total loser.

1/10/09

            I actually made some friends today, believe it or not. Chessie and I are in the same Spanish class and that is whom we have our orientation with. We left at about 8:30 this morning and got to the center like right at 9 o’clock. The orientation was just a lot of information, most of which we already had, so it was not too exciting. Though our teacher speaks even faster Spanish than Sandra and Marta so it’s a little harder to keep up, but we did all right. We also had to do these “case study” things, which I think are mainly designed to scare the shit out of us, and definitely succeeded. They were all based on real things that have happened to IES students and some of them were quite horrifying… though a lot of them were the consequence of stupidity on the students part… like getting into a cab alone with a Spanish man after the clubs close sooo I think I’ll be a little more cautious than that. But Fabrizio (our teacher who is Italian but only speaks Spanish) assured us that Barcelona is an incredibly safe city aside from the rampant, rampant pick pocketing. Everyone has pretty much guaranteed us that we WILL be pick pocketed if we are not extremely careful, so I have been zipping everything important into the side of my purse and carrying it under my arm, and definitely won’t bring it when I go out at night.

            Anyway, so Chessie and I met Shane and David in our Spanish class and Shane suggested we all go to find the hard rock café together after class because we are supposed to meet there tomorrow morning for our orientation trip to Besalu and Vic. So after class we met up with Beth, a girl Chessie had met on the plane, and we all walked over together. Turns out it was like a half block away so we decided to go find a place to eat. We walked down the street for a while and ate in this café, we all had little baguette sandwiches and the boys had some pasta as well, everything was good.

            We had told Shane and David about the market that we had found yesterday and they wanted to check it out, so we all walked over there again. This time we explored deeper into it and it is hugenormous.. Aside from all of the produce (and there is TONS of it) and candy, there are rows of meat and fish stands. Everything is incredibly fresh, the fish looks like it could practically still be swimming, and the huge prawns and everything were still moving their little tentacles around. The meat stands were disturbing, skinned rabbits with bulging eyes and full pig heads and the like. Also huge dried pig legs, which is actually what is hanging in our kitchen right now.

            We walked around the market for a long time – Beth and I bought mango juice for one Euro and Chessie bought Strawberry juice, it was really just the pure fruit so it was pretty good. Then we decided to keep walking down Las Ramblas to get to the water. We walked for a long time until we got to a harbor with a huge HUGE statue of Columbus, because Barcelona is where he landed. (David knows a lot about Barcelona and actually told us that the market we were at is pretty famous as well – I think it was called St. Josep)  We walked across a pedestrian bridge and had a really pretty view of the mountains and palm trees and saw that you could take a Gondola ride up to one of the mountains, which I would like to do some time but also looks terrifying. At the end of the bridge there was a mall that is clearly geared toward Americans – there was a Claire’s and a Ben and Jerry’s and an H&M (which are actually everywhere here). So we got out of there, really not interesting.

            After that we decided to head back because we had been walking for so long and our feet were hurting at this point. On the way back we veered off into one of the many very small pedestrian streets that are lined with shops and we really twisted ourselves in to the point where we got pretty turned around. Then it started to rain. I had my handy umbrella that my mother slipped into my suitcase before I left though, so it was all right. I only felt bad for Shane because he was the only one without an umbrella and also happened to be the only one whose bags were lost, so the only clothes he had were the ones currently getting soaked on his back. He declined umbrella sharing from everyone though so, bettah him than me.

 Eventually David navigated us back to Plaza Catalunya and the IES center using a pocket map he had. It was about 4pm and Chessie was supposed to meet a college friend at 6pm so she wanted to hang around and Beth stayed with her – I think they ended up going to a café with some other IES people Chessie had seen outside the center. Chessie is a real go-getter in the friend - making department. She is a chatty gal and can pretty much strike up a conversation with anyone. David, Shane and I broke off and started heading back to our respective homestays, we exchanged numbers and planned to meet in the morning for our orientation bus before we parted ways. I managed to find my way back to the metro with little difficulty and came home and had a little siesta. And by little I mean 3 hours. Thea woke me up when they got back because dinner was ready – Marta made us some potato ravioli type dish with pesto, along with a ton of boiled vegetables again, it was real tasty. Dinner was over at about 9:00pm and we have just been hanging out around the apartment, both Chessie and Thea are very easy to talk to so nothing had been too uncomf. yet. Thea JUST got Facebook for the first time though and she is fairly obsessed with it. Tomorrow should be eventful with the orientation trip. Apparently I can ramble a lot more easily on a computer than on paper.

My Address in Barcelona:  Balmes, 448, (floor 8 apartment 3)

                                            08022 Barcelona