Madre

3/24/09

My moms is here yay! We are having a great time.

She got here on Sunday afternoon which was the day after the concert (which by the way I felt like I was going to be trampled to death in, but was still fun when we moved to the back of the crowd). I left late, ended up taking a cab, couldn’t get into where I said I would meet her, it was a lupe fiasco but we ended up spotting each other through the arrival gate doors just like in them movies and had a teary embrace.

On Sunday we just brought all of her stuff and found the B&B (mistake on my part to take the train and metro which left us hauling the luggage up and down flights of stairs). We found the place right away though, and it’s a really cute apartment run by 2 guys (A couple? I think yes) Kiku and John : Kiku is nice and funny and helpful : We heard John puking last night. Guess which one we like more.

On Monday after my classes we met up and went to lunch at the restaurant with the culinary students that has a nice menu and atmosphere but is still inexpensive because we are the guinea pigs from the students work. I’ll give ours an A+. After that we walked down La Rambla and went to the Boqueria market, a lot of it was closing already, but we saw a lot and bought some fruit from one of the stands. Then I gave mom a little walking tour of the Gothic Quarter (I had just had to give a tour with a group for my Spanish class so I had the info.).

That night Antonia had us over for dinner back at my apartment. Mom actually understood a lot of what Antonia was saying, (that high school Spanish pays off.) and I interpreted the rest. Antonia made the traditional stuff – tortilla de patatas, pan con tomate, fried calamari and a fruit salad. We sat in the living room and chatted and I gave mom the tour of the apartment. (She mentioned my room looked bigger in pictures/on the webcam… so if you thought my room looked small before… it’s smaller). I also introduced mom to Maria on the way to dinner (my friend, the dancer who works at the store on my block) and Marta (the sweet little cleaning lady). Both of them, and Antonia and Chessie said right away that we look a lot alike, especially in the eyes. What a great compliment to my mom.

As we left Antonia told mom some nice things about me (of course who wouldn’t) And I went with mom back to the B and B. Today we walked to La Sagrada Familia, which is incredibly close to the bed and breakfast, and then walked down to the Picasso museum (which is not so close). We had some great Tapas tonight at a little bar, from Kiku’s recommendation. Tomorrow we are heading for a pretty big trek at Montserrat, I have never been there before, but I hear it’s beautiful. 

Jamón Jamón

I saw my second Spanish film today in which someone is beaten to death with a ham leg.

Sitges

     We took a day trip to Sitges on Fer's last day.

El Desnudo

3/7/09

Fer is gone, even though it was fun having her here, I am glad to have some alone time now so I can get some things done. Parc Guell was great, the weather stayed beautiful while we walked around and we decided to sit at the café for a little while and get a coffee. We walked up to what we THOUGHT was going to be the little room in which you order your food and drinks. As it turns out: Men’s Urinal. Woops. Didn’t even realize it until we were too close for comfort and were definitely noticed by everyone inside.

Oh but that was not the last uncomfortable encounter we would have with indecent men that day…

After sitting outside while the sun went down, it started to get a little bit colder, we were both in T-shirts so we decided to walk home. As we were leaving the park I hear a ‘psst psst’ coming from somewhere above me. I look up on the ridge and lo and behold. Naked Man.

I don’t know if I’ve written about it before but this is the THIRD time a naked man has approached me and/or my friends. The first was by Montjuic and the last two were in Parc Guell. I’m pretty sure it is the same guy because he always uses the ‘psst psst’ technique to get our attention. A harmless fellow really, just getting his kicks out of shocking people I guess, he waved at us while standing proudly as we scurried away. I’ll go to Parc Guell again with my mom. Perhaps she’ll get the pleasure of spotting him as well. Always a treat…

Thea and I are supposed to be switching rooms so she can have her own room and I will be moving in with Chessie, as it was agreed upon in the beginning. I’ve taken down all my décor and organized my clothes and stuff for the move, but Thea seems to still just be chillin. Bettah him than me – I’d rather keep the room. I do feel bad for Chessie though, I know she wants to be done dealing with Thea, who rarely emerges from her room. I think we may stop seeing her altogether when/if she gets her own room.

Warning: I start rambling right about herrrrre so feel free to stop reading…

I’m sitting in El Mos right now,  the cheap sandwich place we usually go to, I bought a café con leche simply because it’s one of the cheapest things to buy. Just trying to kill some time before my next class/presentation. I’ve made a to-do list for myself, but of course left all of the supplies needed TO DO the list at my apartment. I did book Sevilla tickets for me and mom for a weekend she is here, which I am excited about because I have been really wanting to see the south of Spain. I need to get on booking my Greece hostel as well. Spring Break 2009 WOO ((SB shuffle))

I got a ticket for Girl Talk (A DJ) for this Friday night because he is coming to Razzmatazz (the biggest night club in Barcelona, one of the biggest in Spain). I’ve been to one of his concerts before at Iowa and it was crazy so I’m sure this one will be even more so. It was only 12 euro, which is a great deal considering Razzmatazz usually costs 12-15 Euro just to get into on a regular night anyway.

I think the pigeons had some sort of game going amongst themselves today to see who could make me flinch the most. (It was a tie amongst all of them for the win.) A while ago I decided I would not fear the pigeons in Plaza Catalunya, I would walk through them with confidence and they would make a path for me and sometimes they would all take off in a swirl around me and I would feel like some sort of deity. But todayyy they were NOT havin it. They were literally flying right for my face and would swerve at the last second. I’ve ducked in panic at least 3 times today so far. Embarrassing.            

Nietas

Blanca and Lucia, Antonia's granddaughters. Don't mind the oversized chin bandage, there was a minor bump.

Catching Up

3/14/08

I’ve finally got a bit of break from working - 3 tests and a project this week so it was a little rough. But I should start from where I left off because I’ve gotten behind on things.

London was a blast. I went with 9 of my friends and we got there pretty late on a Thursday night so we went right to the hostel where we filled up our 5 bunk room. On Friday we did the typical sightseeing, Parliament, Big Ben, the Tower Bridge, the Palace (Of course always exciting to be in the land of Princess Diana), had some delicious fish and chips, the real London thing. We went to Westminster Abbey later that night to see the choral evensong, which was really pretty. Unfortunately my phone wasn’t working so I couldn’t get a hold of Sara or Katie right away, but eventually we  got in touch so I met up with Sara that night. Sara, Mateo and I went to dinner while the rest of the group went to go see Wicked (I had already seen it and Mateo says ‘musical theatre isn’t exactly his thing’). It was great being able to catch up with her.

On Friday night I took the train out to East Croydon which is bout a half hour outside London, so that I could stay with Katie fo free at her 4 star hotel that her work put her up in. It was good to get away from the big group for a little which and pretty nice being able to be in a real hotel and a big bed. We had a free breakfast buffet in the morning too which was swizeet to finally have real breakfast. On Saturday Katie and I took the train in and met up with some of the group for lunch and then headed to the British museum where we got to see the Rosetta Stone and Katie and I highly enjoyed some African Dancing demonstrations. After that I broke off with Katie and we decided to head to Covent Garden, which is a cool area with lots of shops, performers and the like, I remembered it from my last time in London and wanted to see it again. We did some more wandering on foot before it was time to meet up with the every body at Big Ben. It was really beautiful to see everything lit up at night, Parliament, Big Ben and the London eye on the river. Since our flight was leaving so early on Sunday, we decided not to book the hostel for Saturday night and live the hobo life instead. Unfortunately everything in our area seemed to close down by midnight so we ended up riding the double deckers for a few hours before making it to the airport around 5am. All in all, London trip: success.

The week after that was our “study week” which is an absurd name to call it because you actually don’t have any time to study for your 3 midterms that will be happening in one day when you get back! It was basically 3 days of conferences in Barcelona and then we went to Navarre, Spain (stayed in Pamplona) from Thursday till Saturday. All in all Pamplona trip: FAIL. The biggest question on everyone’s mind was WHY they would take us NORTH in the winter. It was cold. There was snow. There was rain. There was sleet. There were walking tours. We did go to a vineyard, which was pretty cool, but we had a horrible tour guide for the rest of the sites who claimed English was his native language (as he was from England). But I would beg to differ. He seemed to know little to nothing about the sites we visited and when he DID talk it was long and drawn out and random and weird. I wasn’t havin it.

The good part of the trip was that we got to spend a lot of time with our friends and new friends from the program. We stayed at a nice hotel and hanging out there was a lot of fun. We also spent about 7-9 hours on the bus trips there and back and god knows how long in between our “interesting” site visits. We had to fill out an eval. At the end because this is the first time they have tried to do this. We are like the experimental group for IES. I assume they will not be going north next year. (And I hear the kids will also get a computer lab where the computers actually WORK.)  How lucky.

This week, like I said, has been busy. Katie was here from Saturday to Tuesday and my friend Fer has been here since Saturday and leaves on Monday. I felt bad I wasn’t able to tour them around as much as I would have liked, but I was glad that they had each other for the times I had to leave them to study or work. We did manage to get some fun stuff in, they went on the bus touristic and  we went on a boat tour on the Mediterranean which was gorgeous. We have been having some really nice weather lately. Fer, Chessie, Mateo and I had a long walk on the beach yesterday, which was beautiful. And now I’m writing this outside on my balcony. The sun is really bright and the sky is cloudless, the temperature is perfect, I’m sitting in the shade in a T-shirt, I think it will be beach time very soon.

In other news, my mom is coming to visit next week so I am very excited for that! I’m off now to go meet Fer, we’re going to see Parc Guell.

M.I.A

I have been quite behind lately with blog/responding to emails and messages because I've got some busy times right now with 2 visitors and 3 midterms this week.

Things I will remember to blog about: Trips to London and Navarra

I highly enjoy getting the emails/messages (and the actual letters of course, always the most exciting), so thanks and sorry if I'm slacking lately but after this week hopefully I'll have a litttle more time on my hands. 

Today we went to Jazz Si again and we asked Antonia to just have some sandwiches to go instead of cooking a dinner b/c we had to leave early. So she made us our sandwiches, wrapped them, and left them on the counter with our "names" on them:

Chesi, Tía and... Queli

Sickos

"How did you lose your voice? Did you drink something cold?"

-Antonia to Chessie-

Thea and Chessie are both sick right now. Needless to say, the slippers in the house rule is on crack down.

Antonia completely lost her voice last week and I was talking to her about it. Here is a lil excerpt:

"Well, I'm glad you're doing better. I hope I don't get sick."

"Yes, well I went to lunch with my friend last week and she likes to drink her beer cold. So she put some ice in my beer. That's why I got sick."

Obviously.