Barcelona, Spain – Day 5
June 29, 2015
Sorry, it has been a few days since I’ve been able to get a post up, I’ve been so busy! I have barely even slept since I got here, it’s absolutely insane. So much to do, so much to see and experience and so little time!! These four weeks will be over in the blink of an eye I can feel it already, I can’t believe that even as I write this that I have already been here for over a week!!
Today was the first day of classes! I woke up early because I was nervous about getting there on time. Three of my other roommates also start class at 9:30 with me, so we walk over together and it takes about 20-25 minutes. The only issue today was that we left the apartment and started to walk over and then we realized that none of us actually knew where we were going! haha After we got that figured out, we got there and went to our first classes!
My first class of the day was Beginning Spanish II with Profesora Blanca. The class is super small and only has seven students in it, but ironically we’re all Cal Poly students! It’s pretty weird that it worked out that way, but it makes it really fun. We started off by taking a quiz to see where are Spanish skills are at and to see if we are in the right level or not. It was alright… The verbal section was the most difficult by far. After the quiz we went over expectations for the class and how the four weeks are going to work. Blanca wants us only to speak in Spanish when we’re in class and its muy dificil (very difficult) when I only remember so much Spanish from high school! But after the first class alone, I felt as though my Spanish had already gotten a lot better. I am really looking forward to seeing how my Spanish will be in four weeks! 🙂
After class we headed down stairs to this restaurant called Organics where you can build your own salad or sandwich. I only have a half hour break between my classes though so it is a little bit stressful to get food and have a break and everything in that amount of time. It seems especially weird that they only set it up to give us a half hour break because in Spain there is a lot of emphasis on lunchtime and taking a break. In Spain, lunch is usually at least an hour, but is generally two hours long and stores close all over the place, so don’t expect to shop or run errands during that time! And the same goes for Sundays, many stores and restaurants are not open on Sundays.
After lunch I had my second class, Contemporary Spain: History and Culture. This is a politics based class and today we discussed the second Spanish republic, the Spanish Civil War, and the beginnings of the ideas of Francoism.
After class we walked to Passeig de Gracia and did some browsing in the stores and walked the street for a little while. Then we headed home and took a little siesta before dinner.
We got dinner at an Italian restaurant up the street from our apartment and it was cheap and good!
After dinner we headed over to George Payne, an Irish Bar next to CEA that hosts beer pong on Monday nights. It’s really cool because people get there and play bp tournaments, but we didn’t get there early enough to play so we are going to try again next week. We spent a while here and ordered something called a “Blackout Tray” that every table in the bar was ordering. So that was fun.
On our way home we ran into a gay couple who gave us free roses that they had gotten from someone on the street and we all went to Chupitos (the place with the fire shots) together because they had just gotten to Barcelona from Canada.
Pretty solid Monday!
xoxo J