He llegado!

I'M HERE!!! Yes, I have arrived in Barcelona! I can't believe I'm here already. It still feel like I should be on break.. Well my flight was just alright... I flew from Beijing to Rome and then Rome to Barcelona. The first flight was 11 hours long but I didn't get in much sleep because the girl behind me was quite loud :(. She was an interesting one... At one point she marched beyond the curtain barrier into first class and demanded water. Then when we were about 10 seconds into landing, she suddenly took off her seat belt, opened the overhead compartment and stood ON her chair to get something. This made the flight attendant bolt up from her seat, slam the overhead compartment shut, yell desperately at the girl for her insane actions and run back to her flight attendant seat just in time to land. It was kind of crazy... I've never witnessed that in all of my plane riding experience.

Anyway, by the time I arrived in Rome I was sooooo tired! I had a four hour layover but I was afraid to fall asleep in case I overslept and missed my flight :p. So I just laid down and let the loud airport PA announcements keep me awake. I listened to so many Italian announcements, I think I can do an Italian accent quite well now... heehee.

There was a delay in departure but thankfully everything went smoothly from there. My family was so worried about me because I arrived in Barcelona around midnight. But I made it to my flat without any problems and then I met my roommate Kindra, who had everything prepared for me :). I don't think I could have found a better place to live!

So I guess today was my official "first day" in Barcelona. School doesn't start for another 3 days so I have some time to settle in. I woke up relatively early due to jetlag... The first thing I did was go to the grocery store to buy some essential stuff. Then I came home and wiped down my room - something I inherited from my super clean-freak mother and grandma :D. After everything was sanitized I unpacked and then went out to explore the neighborhood!

The Arc de Triomf is really close to where I live so I went there first and made my way to the Parc de la Ciutadella. It was kind of a drizzly day but everything was still quite beautiful. I visited Barcelona two years ago over Spring Break for like two days or so. So it's kind of nice because I've done all the touristy stuff and things look somewhat familiar. But still, I found myself quite lost today. After exploring my neighborhood I took the subway to Placa Catalunya in search of the tourist office in hopes that they might give me a map and direct me to the nearest "vodafone" shop (at that point I hadn't hooked up my internet yet). Anyway so I made it to vodafone and got myself a local cell phone. I am so proud of myself! Normally when I travel with family, my dad and sister do all the navigating, planning, arranging etc. My mom, brother, and I just follow behind them "like dummies" as my mom likes to say. But I did everything myself today! HA! Kind of sad but I'm proud of myself anyway :p.

Here are some photos from today:


Yay for bicing community bike-sharing! I'm going to look into getting a bicing membership in the next couple of days. I would definitely prefer biking vs. the subway. It's such a great system. I saw so many people using it today.


Arc de Triomf! I still remember exactly what happened the last time I visited here. I came with my sister and her roommate and we were walking along when I dropped my water bottle. This made the top of my water bottle become like a little nub and for some reason I thought it was hilarious...

Here we are at the same place, two years ago:


And back to present day:

A solar-powered christmas tree!

Pretty neat street lamp eh?


Zoology museum

The fountain at the Parc de la Ciutadella. It wasn't under construction the last time I came :(.

Close-up of the fountain.

I call this, "A walk in the park" :D. I think I will try coming here more often just to sit. Maybe I'll even come here for a run... haha...

I found the Tourism office!

Dunkin' COFFEE, not Donuts

MANGO
On my way to find the vodafone store - around Passeig de Gracia

After I got my phone all hooked up, I headed home and stopped by another grocery store also just down the street from where I live. I wanted to see how it compared to the other one... and also I needed to buy more food. From my two grocery trips I bought (in terms of vegetables) garlic, eggs, tomatoes, and broccoli. So I concluded that I can make broccoli-tomato stir fry, broccoli-egg stir fry, tomato-egg stir fry... but what else??? As my RISD roomies know, I'm not much of a cook. Hopefully my lack of a meal plan here will help me learn to cook for myself...

I've really been craving Asian food over Western food - I think because I just came from China. There are surprisingly lots of Chinese businesses here. I also saw lots of Chinese people walking around on the streets but they all spoke Spanish - which was... kind of unusual and cool at the same time. But then on my way home from the grocery store I saw a Chinese restaurant, with Chinese people outside of it, speaking... you guessed it, Chinese! Haha... so I put that all together and decided to ask them (in Chinese) if there was a Chinese supermarket nearby. Turns out there is one about 15 mins away. I think I'll go search for it tomorrow. Then I can eat dumplings and vinegar! YUM.

I met my other roommate today when I got home. Her name is Viviani and she's from Brasil. We are both still getting used to Spanish because she came here knowing only Portuguese. I think her Spanish is way better than mine though :p. I hope three months here will help me de-rustify my Spanish... and my Catalan too.

Well... this is the end of Day 1! I miss home a lotttttt. And by that I mean both Beijing and Providence. I am homesick but that always happens to me when I go to a new place by myself. In any case, I'm very happy with my study abroad choice. Barcelona is definitely a manageable city and it's just so beeyootiful!

Okay, sleep time now. Tomorrow morning I'm going to church with Kindra. I just hope I can follow the Spanish sermon :). And to end this post... here is a picture from my last night in Providence! I miss you RUFers!