Biel: "Eres muy guapa!"

Ay. SO much to say! Yesterday I was picked up by my new family and the six of us packed into a car and drove a surprising five minutes to my new home!

Let's start with my day before I got picked up: I woke up 10 minutes before I had to be at the office of my orientation that is 20 minutes away with a mapquest printout, and needless to say I got horribly lost. Luckily I can always count on the fact that it's okay to be 30 minutes in a spanish city. Afterwards the director of COINED told me to wander-and so I did, too much in fact! I got pretty lost again except this time I didn't have to be somewhere so I let myself get lost and only looked at the map once and made it home. I was so proud! Haha. Baby steps...

So one of the first things Gemma (the mom) told me when she picked me up was, "are you sure you want to do this?" haha. Living in a flat in the middle of Barcelona, and all I have to do is live with five other people in a 4 bedroom flat with one bathroom? Totally. Haha. I'm a trooper! Plus, when Biel (Be-el: the youngest) starts rambling in Catalan it is by far the cutest thing ever. When I gave him something yesterday the first thing he said to me was "eres muy guapa" Haha! He's such a womanizer already. Today he finally said my name-yelled it, actually, while we were walking down the street. Love that kid. Even if he does run across the crosswalks without looking. Ay!



Gifts!

My new flat surrounds a park with other apartments so it's really quiet at night, almost creepy considering i'm only a few metro stops away from the most famous parts of Barcelona. Today we went to Las Ramblas-the most popular shopping area in Barcelona. The tourists were out in full force! I kept telling Gemma that I didn't want to look like a tourist. So when she pointed out the architecture of Gaudi I didn't whip out my camera. I'll be touristy once I know where I'm going. We also saw the outside of the Gaudi museum. I'll go there later too. I have two months to take pictures of these things-no need to be crazy about it. I saw a person standing up on the top of a 2-story tourist bus while it was zipping around the circle in la plaza espanya yesterday and that was it. No stupid tourist antics for me-that lady looked RIDICULOUS.

So today we bought a piñata because apparently every birthday you have in spain you get to fill your own piñata. I feel like America needs to take on this tradition...



This is us at the fountain show-we ate dinner at 9:30 again today and walked back home at about 10:30...They stay up late! But the best thing is they sleep in too :)

Some other funny things that I'd like to remember:

-almost all of the TV here is old-because there's an option of watching tv in spanish, english, or catalan. So yesterday I watched some Boy Meets World and coming up next was Dinosaurs. Circa 1997, right? I enjoyed it.

-kids memories are always the funniest-listening to Ariadna explaining how she couldn't sleep the night Barcelona won was probably the cutest thing ever (she didn't enjoy the fireworks or the cheering...at alllll)

-if the TV is ever on it's on the soccer channel. I can't tell you how many games and random interviews I've watched already-guy friends, be jealous :)

-when i feel like my head is about to explode I watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother-like today when I bought a spanish to spanish dictionary and my head felt like exploding after awhile. I had used it read an article in the newspaper with a gory picture of a bull's horn going through someone's neck and out his mouth. Yes. IN THE NEWSPAPER. That image might haunt me forever. (P.S. the guy somehow didn't die...)

Sidenote: As of 2 years ago, bullfighting was made illegal in Barcelona-so that nasty article was from another city)

-I don't like wearing shoes!! :( No one wears real flip flops here unless they're lower class (or so it seems). This makes me very sad...It's pretty warm sometimes and everyone's in pants. They'd be pretty traumatized in the U.S. during the summer!

Alright that's it-that was a lot. I told myself I wouldn't write everyday but maybe to spare everyone an essay I'll start. We'll see. Tomorrow vamos a la playa para conocer a los abuelitos de Gemma. Adios!