El Fin de Semana

First weekend in Barcelona! Highlights include...

Friday we went to Parque Guell, which is a park designed by Gaudi. It was super awesome..extremely gorgeous. It had nice views of the city and awesome architecture (no surprise there). Meanwhile, at Parque Guell, it started to downpour!! Lots of rain, which made some of our park go-ers a little unhappy (cough Alex), but the rest of us enjoyed it a lot. After the park, we navigated our ways on the busses back to Placa Catalunya, and then returned home.

Saturday everybody slept a little later than expected (totally unrelated to the previous night's activities..) but it felt good to finally get some sleep! Rachel (CC friend) and I putzed around her "barrio" (neighborhood) which is called Gracia. That night, we met up with Ryan Payne, another CC kid, and his roommates and went to the Placa. The Placa at night has a very different vibe than it does during the day. First of all, it doesn't have frickin' pigeons flying around everywhere. I swear during the day there are SO MANY BIRDS! I feel like I am in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. They fly really fast super close to you. The worst part is, people feed them from there hands!! They think it's cool to have these gross birds on their arms. Not for me. Forget Swine Flu, I am now scared of Bird Flu! Anyways, at night I do not have to fear birds but there are a lot of men walking around trying to sell you water, coca cola, beer, and drugs. These men are not Spanish. Most were from Pakistan and Northern Africa. They hide their stashes in the bushes and run to get them when somebody wants something. Could they be a little more obvious? It's like, all of a sudden here comes a Pakistani man emerging from the bushes holding a little bag..I wonder what is in it? It's amusing.

Today, following a recommendation from Maria, we went to a beach about an hour and some change away from Barcelona, called Sitges (pronounced See-Ches). It's a gorgeous little costal town with beautiful beaches and was much less touristy than the beaches in Barcelona. It was neat to explore. We had a small world moment, as we were laying out on the beach, all of a sudden we saw Austin, a fellow CC student, with some other girls from the program! What are the chances.

Tonight for dinner we had Paella, a traditional Spanish dish, and it was great! I really am enjoying the food that Maria is cooking us..I am just not enjoying the serving size! She gives us HUGE servings and expects us to eat it all. In Spain, it is very rude to reject food or not eat everything, so Katie (the roommate) and I always walk away from dinner very full.

Tomorrow is the first day of classes! It's actually super nice, this coming week the only class we have is Spanish, and it's only three times a week..so it's looking like this week will be pretty chill as well. We have a little sailing trip planned, along with a tour of Picasso's work. I'm very excited.

Hasta Luego!