Sperm Whales and Galaxies

Today Megan and I got a lot of walking in! We had an amazing lunch in the caf (something that tasted like pot roast with potatoes and gravy), and then we walked to Camp Nou, which is where FCBarcelona has their home futbol games to get tickets to tomorrow's game. It took a little finding, but it's hard to miss a stadium! We bought tickets in the nosebleed section, then explored their humongous gift shop. Afterward, we walked back up Ave. Diagonal to the metro Maria Cristina and took it to Las Ramblas. We then proceeded to walk around MORE and find cheap FC Barcelona scarves in touristy shops. They are all the rage at games, and people cheer with their scarves rather than with signs, etc. We found some good cheap scarves and a really cool passageway off of Las Ramblas, which we couldn't explore at the time because we had class. My classes today were semi-interesting, and my teacher was hilarious as ever. He gave us an order of magnitude sheet (size of atom, person, earth, galaxy, etc) and it was all in spanish. He told us it was an opportunity to improve our technical spanish and science terms...We also taught him how to say 10x-3 and other things in english. I learned today that the Milky Way Galaxy is "La Via Lactea" in Spanish, which is fun. In Med. Oceanography, I learned that Sperm Whales will go to great lengths to get their favorite meals, which are Giant Squid that live way down, 1000's of meters in the Ocean. Xavier (my teacher) compared the squid to cake for the whales. Haha. Dinner was amazing again, plenty of roast and good potatoes, and now I've gotten my homework done and am ready for sleep! Have to rest up from Rome on Thursday night!!

Oh, and for those who have listened to my many complaints about the Goldwater Scholarship, to which I am currently applying, I am almost finished! I have been working on it since October, and have had my essays edited millions of times (well atleast 10 times), and I'm entering all of them on the online form tomorrow evening. They sound excellent (which they should, with how many times I've changed them), and I am excited to see the outcome of my efforts. Wish me luck!

Milk!

I think I may have found a substitute for the massive amounts of milk I usually drink while at home. It isn't perfect, but it will keep me from becoming calcium-deficient. And no, it isn't the queso they put on everything here, because oh do they love their cheese. What happened was at breakfast a few days ago, I was trying to get some cold, funny tasting milk and it was out. The man next to me pointed me to a large metal container with a spout. When I tested it, I found it had HOT milk..I didn't know what to do with my glass of steaming milk till I noticed some chocolate powder nearby. After mixing the two, I had what turned out to be a delicious creamy glass of hot chocolate! It is really, really good! Probably not the healthiest way to have milk, but I'm willing to have hot chocolate every morning.

In other news, my plans to visit Tarragona yesterday failed miserably because of the wind advisories. I and some hallmates instead decided to nap and then visit Las Ramblas and the Museu d'historia de Catalunya. We had a lot of fun, as you will see when I post photos, with the interactive areas of the museum. Afterward we went to a restaurant and had afternoon tapas, before heading back to our dorm. Megan and I then napped, had dinner, and eventually got ready to go out. We visited Pipermint's, a bar famous for its LARGE and expensive (think 6 or 13 L) drinks that come with lots of straws. I did not feel like going in on that experience, I'd rather spend my money in other ways. Afterward, we went to a club nearby called Mary's Place. The atmosphere was pleasant and not a crazy-drunken-smoky club scene, but we left after a little bit, didn't feel like finding another place, and went home.

Oh, and this morning when I checked my email, I discovered that IES had sent out a bulletin yesterday warning us about the wind advisory. They also warned us to stay away from the coast where the wind was strongest. Turns out that when we went to the history museum, it was right on Port Vell, and we then walked the entire length of Port Vell..Oops! But it was afternoon by that time and we never felt any strong wind gusts, they had died down by that time.

Wind!

We are not going to Tarragona today because there is a wind advisory with gusts up to 75 mph...not my idea of fun, or anyone else's. Here in Barcelona the gusts are up to 45mph-ish and it's still pretty bad. This has the feel of a tornado warning back home, because we keep hearing people screaming in the hallway (excitable girls, i'm guessing), and doors slamming, and then we went to look at the balcony area and got recruited to stand on some signs so they wouldn't blow away! So we watched some people trying to remove the very large red signs from the front of the building while we stood on others and finally moved them inside. We only moved two, and it looked like there used to be more, so I wonder where the rest went...There are scoots overturned and a stopsign completely blown over, and now our lights just flickered. All because of a windy day! Who knew? Our plans now include going to a few museums in town and napping later in the afternoon. I still wish we could be on our way to Tarragona or Montserrat, but there are plenty more Saturdays.

Pigeons

Barcelona has a lot of Pigeons. And they are really fun to walk through while going through the Plaza center at Plaza Catalunya on the way to class. Photos to come.

My Friday was uninteresting, and tomorrow I'm travelling to see Roman ruins at Tarragonia (sp.). Good night!

Wednesday

Today was rather boring. I went to history class and learned about how the countries in Europe have evolved and changed over the years and got tons of maps to prove it. Then I went and wasted two hours on a computer in IES Center 2, and then went across the street to look in a store real quicklike. Spanish class was next, and I learned more Spanish, haha. After class I went back to the room, looked up some REU's for the summer because I need to fill out applications soon, and then worked out in the neat little gym the dorm has downstairs. I took a nap before dinner, where we had lamb roasts. The lamb was good and it was the first time I have tried it. Now I need to do homework...

Tuesday - Acceptance

Today I had class at 3:45 and 5:30. It is a nice change after a 9am day! Megan and I left at 2 so we could stop by the boqueria market and get our favorite muffins. We also found peanut butter aka Pate D’Arachide while we were walking around. My first class today was Sustainability. It seems like it will be a cool class, and the teacher is nice, though he seems a bit off into space, the kind students will take advantage of. He is also the teacher of my 5:30 class: Mediterranean Oceanography and it is in the same classroom, so that will be a long 3 hours! Oceanography will also be a neat class. We are taking a field trip to the aquarium on Thursday! The teacher was really cool in that he let the class out early so people could go watch the inauguration live. I was ok with watching it later on the internet, but there were some crazies in the class who would DIE if they weren’t able to watch it live. I met up with Megan after class to find the Apunts store and get more books for classes, and then we found a neat grocery store and got conditioner and I found some mousse. Conditioner is more expensive here, and hard to find. I guess maybe Spanish people do not use it as much? Oh and before I met Megan, I found a schedule for the NitBus, which will be helpful when going out because it runs all night from certain stops and one is near our dorm. I was also asked for directions by some tourists who tried to speak to me in Spanish! I think that means I looked sufficiently like a local, plus had a nice, friendly Kansas face!  I was about to blow them off for vendors, but they asked about a street I actually knew about so I helped them out.

Us American students made another great leap at dinner tonight. Max and I wanted to leave since we were done; however, others were not. We told them to go ahead and clang, but they didn’t. But when we started walking away, the whole cafeteria again started banging and laughing, without any prompting from our table! This is great news for us since it means we are interacting with everyone, but it also means that now when we want to leave separately, we won’t be able to do it without drawing loads of attention.

Another interesting fact about dinner tonight is that they served squid. Whole, little, mini-octopus looking squid. Sadly, I did not try them since there was chicken up as well…

Tonight while walking through a metro tunnel between lines, Megan and I heard a tune from Kill Bill. Turns out it was coming from a flute player sitting on the floor with an open case for money, you know the type. However, he was pretty good! On the way back we walked through the same tunnel and that time he played the tune of “Winner Takes It All” from Mamma Mia. We tipped him, because he made both our days! Now it’s off to bed for another 9am tomorrow…

One last thought: In Spanish class at home, we were taught to say Como estas? (How are you?) for a greeting. We were taught Que tal? as well, but only as an afterthought. However, everyone here asks me Que tal? and I don't think anyone has asked me como estas? yet. Perhaps como estas is more of a latin american trend?

Monday - 1st Day of Classes

Yesterday went fairly well, as far as the first day of classes goes. I got up, ate breakfast (which was better because they had actual ham and cheddar and I toasted my bread), and ran with Tara and Caity to the metro and to class before 9. We got to the IES center just in time and separated to find our class. My first class of the week is History of Europe: Building Contemporary Europe. Sounds interesting, right? Well, it might turn out to be, if we learn cool medievil things. Otherwise I will be bored in the class. I had to introduce myself, which was not good because my voice is halfway gone because of my cold. After class I walked to Casa de la Mantas (House of Blankets) to get a towel, then took the metro two stops up to Universitat, where I then walked some more to get my books for spanish and history class. I then walked back to another bookstore to get my other spanish book, and then I walked to the computer lab and checked email and fcbook till class started at 12:25. Megan switched into my intensive 150 class so after class we parted ways and I went home and worked on my Goldwater app. So fun...Dinner would have been uneventful, but we were finally accepted by the spanish students!!! By accepted, I mean they all clanged their glasses when someone at our table got up before the whole table did! Remember my mentioning that strange tradition? A couple girls at our table started clanging when Max and Brittany got up, and before you know it, the whole caf joined in! We laughed so freakin hard, it was great. After dinner, I decided to go with Tara, Elana, and Ana to a bar where they were meeting some friends from home. We went to a place on Las Ramblas called Bar Bosque. The inside looked like elves should live there; tables were build around trees and leaves were everywhere. It was also inside a wax museum so there were neat wax statues and set-ups as well. I met two of Elana's good friends who were traveling through, Georgia and Frankie.

Ugh.

It has been a few days since I last posted, but I have had a pretty good reason for staying off of here. I have definitely been sick since Friday afternoonish. I'll fill you in on the details, but I'm pretty sure the reason was because I have been running around the city on a Spaniard's schedule till the early hours of the morning, and not catching up on all my sleep, and just adjusting to this new setting. After I posted on Thursday, Megan and I decided we should go to the Sutton Club. We had heard it was an excellent, classy place, and since there was no cover charge...why not? We would just go for a little bit; plus, it was within walking distance. We went and danced, saw a few people we knew, but it was primarily locals. Before we knew it, it was five am. Haha, so much for staying for a little bit. On Friday I wasn't feeling too well, but I figured it was from the lack of sleep, but my throat also hurt. By Friday evening I really didn't feel so well, and Friday night...basically for the night and most of Saturday, I had the "I just got run over by a train and then set on fire" feeling. Flu, maybe? Not only flu, but also coughing and sneezing and sore throat and cold symptoms. It doesn't help that the cafeteria serves all greasy, weird food that is NOT appetizing to a sick person. Last night after dinner, Megan and I decided to try and find a farmacia, but it was closed. We went to the gas station instead and bought sprite, orange juice, yogurt, and cough drops. Now it's Sunday, and I feel a little better, but I don't know if I'll venture outside yet, unless it is to find food that I can actually eat!

Milk, etc

I miss milk. A lot. I never realized how much I drank back in the states, until I came here where they almost never drink it! In the morning we have this strange milk, that is cool but doesn't have to be refrigerated, and has a weird aftertaste and a film on top. I put it in my cereal and then really concentrate on the cereal taste. At lunch and dinner the only drink choices are water in the dorm, or pop and coffee and alcoholic beverages when eating out. There are also juices at breakfast, which are fairly good. I am going to become calcium-deficient! Actually, that is highly unlikely because of the amount of cheese available. Spaniards eat cheese with everything! My spanish teacher told the class that Spain does not have the technology or the space or even perhaps the cows to make that delicious pasteurized, homogenized, icy cold milk we take for granted in the states. When I get home I am chugging a ton of milk! I miss having it for breakfast, lunch, dinner, in between...That's the end of my complaints. I love Spain!

Today, I decided to go to a bookstore to get my books for class, and I could not find the place at all. I'm fairly sure that my teacher told me the wrong address because she even drew directions for me and I took the exact route. I walked around the city for over an hour before I decided to try again tomorrow. I'll google map it and use those directions.

Tonight, a few of the spanish students in my hall took Megan and I with them to an Irish pub. It was very fun. They try to go there a few Thursdays a month and just sit and chat. It was nice to get to know them better. Their names are Chevy, Claudia, Eloy, and Albert. They all speak english, which is very helpful, but also speak some spanish to us in order for us to learn some more. They were very amazed by our small, country backgrounds, and just by Kansas in general. They want me to sing them a country song, and Eloy wants to play one on his guitar, lol. They are very up to date on world events as well, because we talked about the election, and about the evolution controversy in the states and how the spanish-speaking population in the states is growing so quickly. Overall, I am very glad Megan and I decided to go with them and I hope we are invited out again! Hasta Manana!

Tuesday in the City

I had eggs for breakfast yesterday morning!! It was a miracle, I didn't have to eat as much of the weird-tasting pepperoni sandwich meat/cheese. After, I went to class, learned numbers and alphabet (a refresher for me) and played bingo. I learned from the teacher that there are 1euro stores (like a dollar store!) in La Raval, so after class I found Megan and we decided to skip the scavenger hunt again and go find these stores. Megan and Max had been down to the La Boqueria before I found them, and they got me a delicious muffin, one that Megan and I had found on Monday evening. These muffins are 85 cents and they are mouthwatering! We did find some cheap stores, but no euro stores. We also saw some street actors dressed as statues and as the alien from Alien vs Predator and as edward scissorhands. I'm going to have to sneak some pictures of them next time. Apparently they get really mad if you take pictures without tipping them. After walking down las Ramblas, we went back to the room and napped before dinner. Dinner was not very good overall last night, but we did get little fried potatoes that tasted good. The pasta was a bit off. Later in the evening all the girls on our hall went out to Shoku's for Elana's birthday. It was ok and we danced some, but overall the place was a bunch of IES students there for the promotion (free admittance). They did not even play much spanish music. However, the place was right on the waterfront and the beach at night was beautiful. I cannot wait for the weather to warm up so I can visit the beach and swim!

Pictures

My dorm, the famous bridge to Besalu, my dorm, and Meg in our room

Today was my first day of spanish class. It started at 12:25pm, so I slept in till 9:45am. I would have slept in later, but breakfast closed at 10 and I wanted breakfast, ha ha! Class lasted till 3:35, it was lloonnng..But my teacher is great, I like her already. She is a little, petite lady that is full of energy, and doesn't speak much english to us. I didn't mind because it was review, but the rest of the girls have no spanish class experience, so they didn't look too happy with her spanish explanations. Oh, and my classmates, there are currently 3 or 4 of them. I'm not sure where the rest of the people from orientation went...I'm not sure if I'll transfer out of this class to 102 yet. I like it because it will be review for a while, but I also don't want to spend 3 hours in class 3x a week! If I can find a more interesting class to replace the credits, I'll do that. Finding lunch is hard, too. I had the same thing for lunch and breakfast, a little sandwich with cheese and some sort of pepperoni slice on it, which is not appealing in the morning, but they don't offer anything else in the caf. Strange spaniards. Not too interesting..hopefully once classes start I'll find a good little tapas bar or be able to run back to the dorm and eat in the caf. I and all my hallmates are starving once our extremely late dinner rolls around and so we scarf down our food. After class we were supposed to start a scavenger hunt; but since no one had given our group instructions or a leader or anything, our group decided to skip it and we split up. I found Meg and walked around with her group for a while, then we ditched her group as well. We can't help it that scavenger hunts "gymkhanas" are boring and high-schoolish! IES is gonna need to change that one in the future...Tomorrow is exactly the same :(

Lazy Sunday

Today was really uneventful...I wrote the earlier post, went to the grocery store and tried to find shampoo and hand soap and laundry detergent (the spanish do not have a good sense of smell because everything smelled weird, not fruity or flowery), got an italian cappuccino at a small deli/coffee bar, and sat around till dinner. Megan and I just met our spanish floormates, who are really cool and speak english (good for us) and one guy even said he was going to keep speaking in spanish so we would learn faster. grr.. :) They are all just now taking exams from last semester, because they have the christmas break to study for them. Tomorrow is our first spanish class, although I do not think it counts for a grade yet. We'll see how it goes. The students in our dorm are interesting. At dinner, everyone bangs on their glasses when someone gets up before everyone else is done eating. We joined in tonight. We still feel like outcasts but that should change! It has only been 4 days. Speaking of, it seems like I have been here for so much longer than 4 days! It has barely been half a week. Meg and I think we have a good hand on the city already and are confident when we walk around and find places. We took a taxi home last night and explained our area well enough in spanish so that the driver brought us exactly to our dorm! I'm also so glad that I have a meal plan, because spanish food is expensive. There are no dollar menus...Megan and I have decided to split meals and share food so we can save money and try more things. That is all! Oh, and I joined a photosharing network on SnapFish, so I'll get the website to this page soon. All my pictures will go there because I don't want them all on Facebook. Until next time...

First Few Days

Hi to everyone! So far this week I have settled in, somewhat explored the city, and gone through orientation and a field trip. I went on the IES field trip yesterday and we traveled to Besalu and Vic. These are two medievel towns that have a lot of history surrounding them. I'd tell you more about their history but I couldn't hear half of what the tour guide said because there were so many people in our group! I'll look up the history on the internet. We left Barcelona at 10:20, but we were on the busses to leave at 9:30...We did not get back until 8:30 at night and everyone was exhausted and cranky because it was cold and rainy the entire day. We went to vic first, and took a 45 minute tour. I saw a beautiful church and a roman fortress, as well as the tiny winding streets of the town. Once again, I don't know the names of these buildings because our guide was hard to hear. After the tour was over, I met up with Megan and her, I, and two friends we met, Stephanie and Andrew, went to eat at Cafe Nou. We had hamburgers and patatas bravas, some sort of delicious cheesy potatoes. We then bought cheap umbrellas in the outdoor marketplace and walked around the town while complaining about the rain. When we got too cold we hung out in a coffee shop until it was time to leave, where I had a Coffee Choc. We stayed too long in that town...Besalu was next and it was much cooler, but we only had time to take the tour before leaving for Barcelona. During the tour we strayed pretty often to explore nearby, but went with the group to visit another ancient church, and a Jewish mitka. Besalu was beautiful, especially the bridge at night. I tried to get some good photos, but my camera is not the best for night photos. We finally got back at 8:30 and took the metro home, had dinner (I was starving like always!) and sat at our computers for a while. Meg and I then went out with the other Jewell boys, so we were safe, and I'll spare you the details of our escapades :). I'm going to have to buy some snacks to keep with me to hold me over between mealtimes, because I seem to be hungry all the time!