I made it!

hey guys! this post is actually from yesterday but i just now got a chance to post it. (i have a very low connection to someone elses wireless and im currently stealing it, haha) Also, i got it fixed so you can post anonymous comments now and you dont have to have an account, sorry about that. also, i apologize in advance that this is so long.

Here goes...
I made it to Barcelona! This is going to be a really long entry because there’s a lot of new information, but also because there’s not a whole lot to do right now. We don’t have internet for a few days, so I’m just typing this up now and I’ll post it as soon as I can.

Let’s see… I left Texas on Thursday afternoon and flew to London with my friend Megan, arriving at 7:20am local time. I probably only slept like 2 hours on the plane, so it made for a very long ride.

After a 2 hour layover in London, we headed out for a short flight to Barcelona and landed at 12:30pm local time, which is 7 hours ahead of Texas. We spent about 2 hours waiting around in the airport for them to get us all of our information about housing and such. Then Megan and I finally got a cab and headed to our “home” for the next 4 months. The building is old and Victorian looking on the outside and is very pretty. We rang up to our Señora and she buzzed us in and then came down to meet us. After lugging all of our heavy bags up 2 very long flights of stairs we finally got to our cute little 3 bedroom apartment. Megan and I are sharing a very small room, and Carolyn, our 3rd roommate (who is also from TCU) is in the other room by herself. Everything about this apartment is very small and quaint… might take some getting used to. I’ll try to post pictures as soon as I get a chance.

We talked to our host mom for a while, with quite a bit of confusion and difficulty on our parts, but we definitely got the general idea of everything. She speaks absolutely no English whatsoever. She speaks really fast and her accent is often hard to understand, but between the 2 of us we can usually make sense of what she’s saying. She seems very nice, helpful, and easy going. She said we’re welcome to come and go as we please, but we just have to let her know if we won’t be home for dinner, or before we bring a friend over. She cooks breakfast every morning and sets it out for us to eat between 8 and 10am, and dinner is served at 9pm. Lunch is on our own since we’ll be in and out of school.

After unpacking, Megan and I both showered (in THE SMALLEST shower I’ve ever seen) and laid down to nap, but neither of us slept much. It’s pretty loud in our room with the sounds of cars, motorcycles and trucks constantly coming and going. The windows have to stay open pretty much all the time because there’s no air conditioning here. The windows are basically covered by wooden blinds, but have doors that can be closed if need be.

Around 7pm we heard Carolyn get here so we went out to meet her and her boyfriend, who is also studying in Barcelona. She’s very sweet, so things seem like they’re going to work out great. Megan and I then went to try to figure out the Metro system so we could get to the store and buy hairdryers and such. The ticket machine was quite confusing, but eventually we got a ticket and got on. We rode to the Plaza Catalunya, which is basically the big center of town… kind of reminded me of an older version of NYC. Not nearly as high tech, but stores and people everywhere. We found the mall and decided to split the cost of 1 hairdryer and 1 straightener because it was just way too expensive. We got on the Metro to head back home and about halfway home we realized we were on the wrong one. We had to switch trains and backtrack about 5 stops, get off and get on a different Metro. We JUST BARELY made it back in time for 9 o’clock dinner.

Elisabeth, our host mom, made tons of dinner. Spaghetti, a chicken dish, bread, and a peach. She’s half Italian so she said she likes to cook a lot of Italian food. She didn’t eat with us, because she goes out to dinner with her friends on Friday nights, so she got us all set up, talked for a while and then headed off to dinner. We are going to take turns doing the dishes every night. She has a dishwasher but she said it costs too much to run it, so we wash all of the dishes. She’s VERY concerned about water and electricity, so we’ve been reminded numerous times to take short showers, not to waste water, and to turn off all the lights as much as possible.

We cleaned up after dinner and here we are… 11pm on Friday evening. Hard to believe its only about 4 o’clock in the afternoon back home… although that means that I’ve been awake for about 34 hours now, with only a little bit of napping.

Tomorrow morning we’re going on bus tours of the city, and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves. I think I’ll buy a 3 month metro pass tomorrow since I spent about 5 dollars on just 2 rides today… can’t really afford to be doing that all semester.

Hope all is well back home, I miss everyone already!