:)

Things have been going MUCH better! I think I only get homesick when I talk to people from home a lot.

My new gypsy class is DEFINITELY going to be a challenge, but it at least seems more bearable than the music class I was in before. Can't change classes at this point anyways, so I'm just gonna do my best.

We made some new friends and that definitely helped. We went out to a bar with them the other night and had a fabulous time! We met people from all over the world... haven't laughed so much in a really long time.

This weekend in Barcelona is a huge festival called La Merce. There have been festivities going on since Thursday evening.... concerts, vendors, fireworks, etc. at all times of the day, ALL over the city. Yesterday evening we went to the Correfoc (aka the fire run). Numerous groups of people dress up like devils and run through the streets with what look like HUGE sparklers. People gather along the street to watch and many even jump in and run with them. It's definitely the coolest thing I've ever seen. Megan and I weren't adequately dressed for the event and definitely got burnt by a few sparks, but it was SO awesome to watch. It happened to be pouring rain, which we weren't prepared for either, but we had so much fun. I can't even describe what it felt like to see people with huge flames running towards you and scaring you with them. We watched for about an hour and a half, then made our way down towards the beach to see fireworks, but it was too far to walk so we just saw a few of them from afar. We stopped to listen to a percussion group that was playing on the sidewalk and had fun jumping around and dancing to their music. By the time that was over we were SOAKING wet and exhausted, so we made our way home.

Today we went out to see the Castellers (human towers). I have never seen anything like this in my life. They form a big platform of people on the streets, and layer by layer climb up each other to build a tower. I can't even imagine how strong you must have to be to keep your balance while people climb up your back and onto your shoulders. It was crazy to see the little tiny kids (who were probably 8 or so years old) climb up the backs of about 7 layers of people to stand on the top of the tower. Then they just slide all the way down each other, one by one, like a firepole to get back down to the bottom. We saw one of the towers tip over and it was the scariest thing I've ever seen! We saw it starting to sway and then all of a sudden the little kid on top tipped over to the side and the whole tower came tumbling down. The little kid must have fallen at least 40 or 50 feet down to the ground, where she was caught by the crowd... absolutely insane. We eventually made our way pretty close to the front, and we happened to see them getting ready to build a tower. We saw the little girl who had just fallen getting ready to climb up again. She was crying and looked scared out of her mind but just wiped away the tears and started climbing. I can't even imagine... what a brave little girl.

My parents finally booked hotels for Barcelona and Paris! They're coming in like 2.5 weeks! I can't believe it! My mom's going to work on all the travel plans for while we're in Paris and I get to decide what we're going to do in Barcelona! It's going to be so much fun to have them here!

Elisabeth wasn't home for dinner tonight but she called to say that she left food out for us. It was really loud and hard to understand her on the phone and all I heard was something about food in the kitchen and macaroni and apples. So we go in the kitchen and theres a pan full of macaroni and vegetables and an apple pie. We knew we could eat the macaroni but we weren't so sure about the pie. I knew she said something about apples, but was it "don't eat the apple pie" or "there's apple pie in there for dessert"?? We went with the latter and boy was it delicious. Now we're just nervously awaiting the moment when she arrives home and yells at us for eating her apple pie. Oh well... it was good! :)