La meva segona setmana aqui en Barcelona!

Can you believe I've been in Barcelona now for half a month?! Actually more than that; it's been 16 days to be exact. My three months here is definitely going to go by really fast.

Lately I've been finding it increasingly difficult to find time to blog. First it was because I was so busy shopping classes. Now that I have my schedule all set, homework is keeping me busy. It's now Saturday night... Let's see if I can manage to describe my whole week in one blog entry :P.

Monday and Tuesday are kind of a blur because they consisted of shopping classes. But on Wednesday, us exchange students finally got to register for courses! During shopping period, I had all these plans of arriving super early on registration day in order to be the first in line, to ensure that I'd get my preferred classes. But when the day actually came, I ended up running late. That was tolerable... until I missed my bus! Here in Spain, you have to stick your arm out to signal the bus, otherwise they assume no one wants to get on and they just zoom on by. So I didn't stick out my arm because I didn't know... and then I had to wait for the next bus.

In the end I got to school at 9:55am, five minutes before registration time. And all of the other exchange students were already there. I was last in line and thought for sure that I wouldn't be able to get my classes... Lucky for me, it turned out that no one else was interested in the classes I wanted! I think it was also because a lot of the exchange students stuck together and registered for the same classes. But I am pretty much the only exchange student in all of my classes. It's kind of daunting but at least I got the ones I wanted! YAY! I'm taking: Portfolio, Typography & Calligraphy, Exhibit Design, and Design Management.

I'm most worried about Design Management because it's more of a theoretical course, rather than practical, like my other classes. But I was interested in it because we get to go visit a lot of local design firms :D. The group is also quite friendly. Some students like to practice their English with me, but I don't want to speak English! So I have this odd deal going on with a few people where they speak English and I speak Spanish or Catalan :P. That way we both get to practice.

Oh yes on Wednesday night I gave a presentation in Catalan for my Exhibit Design class. Hehe... it was only for 4 minutes but I spent at least 3 hours preparing for it. I had to look up almost every word!! I could've done it in Spanish, but I thought I'd give it a shot in Catalan since the course is taught in Catalan and I knew that most students were presenting in Catalan... Speaking of languages, I've been meaning to find myself a Spanish and Catalan class! The government here wants more people to learn Catalan so they offer courses for free. I just need the free time to actually look into these courses rargh!

Onto Thursday! On Thursday afternoon, some of us exchange students organized what came to be known as "the walk". We had been talking for a week or so about going on a walk together, but never actually got to doing it until Thursday. We started at school and walked along the beach all the way down the Barceloneta. Then we walked back to school and went to a cafe. I think we walked for at least 2 hours!

Here are some pictures from "the walk":

Museu d'Historia de Catalunya

Here's the port again!


I forgot the name of this sail-shaped building but I read about it briefly in my guidebook. It's a fancy new hotel - except it has been criticized somewhat since it looks so similar to the Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai.

A boxy tower that we spotted on the beach. I'm still not quite sure what it is exactly...

The boardwalk and the beach

This is a lifeguard tower. We couldn't figure out how exactly the lifeguard gets off this thing in order to go save people. What do you think? There's no way he could jump off... it's too high. And climbing down the ladder one step at a time would take forever...

Walking!

The Mediterranean


A pineapple-shaped tree :)

This is a fancy hotel. My roommate told me this is where all the movie stars stay when they visit Barcelona. So I'll be going there if anyone famous comes in the next three months ;).

Some neat urban furniture by the beach

View from the back

We decided to head towards this fish sculpture, designed by Frank Gehry I think

Here we are at the fish sculpture! CATWALK is apparently a giant club here. My school booked it out to have a party on Thursday night, but I didn't go :p.




Doesn't it look like it's going to fall?

After the walk/cafe, it was about 5:30pm. I decided to stick around the area because I had a class at 7pm. So me and another girl (Natasha from Israel) decided to walk around some more. We made our way to a district called Raval and walked through the Rambla there. Then we made our way back to La Rambla, from where I walked back to school to go to class. But when I got there, there was a sign on the classroom door saying that class had been canceled! Meaning I could have gone home at 5:30pm... Oh well, at least I got to go home at 7 rather than 10pm.

I spotted an American Apparel here in Barca! The picture is blurry because I took the photo really fast as there was a yelling lady making her way down the alley towards our direction.. and I got scared. The area around my school gets kind of sketchy at night.

La Rambla de Raval

We walked by a gallery with an interesting installation.

Before I knew it, it was Friday! I only have one class on Fridays from 3:30-6:30pm. So I stayed home and did homework from 10am to 3ish. Then I rushed over to school for class... only to find once AGAIN that my class had been canceled. This time, the teacher had told us last class. But I didn't realize it, because he had said it in Catalan and I hadn't understood :P. Haha I can only laugh at myself. Since I had already gotten to school I decided to stick around and ended up exploring the gothic quarter for a bit.

This is the ceiling of the lobby of my school

This leads to the stairwell. You can't really tell, but it's this big vortex-like structure...

More pictures of the pretty lobby:




Carrer Ample

My school is located in a plaza, complete with a pretty fountain on one end...

...and a beautiful church on the other.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Elisava is a school within this University.

This is a doorway located in an alleyway that leads to school. The text describes a bit about the beginning and founding of Pompeu Fabra University.

Elisava Escola Superior de Disseny

This is a building in another touristy plaza near my school - Placa Reial

While on "the walk" the day before, I had spotted this candy store. I decided to make my way back there to buy myself some candy :D.

A Chinese dragon at La Rambla

Neat facade

Later that night I went to watch the new Will Smith movie with Kindra and one of Kindra's friends. The movie was called "Seven Pounds" ("Siete Almas", meaning "Seven Souls" in Spanish) and I had no idea what it was going to be about from watching the preview. It turned out to be quite a sad movie. But I like Will Smith so I enjoyed it.

And that brings us to Saturday. I had a very full day today. I met up with a friend from my Catalan class back at Brown. There is lots to say but it's getting late and blogger takes forever to upload photos! So... I think I will save it for my next blog post.

Tomorrow I'm going to go back to El Lokal and see how I like it. This time the sermon will be in Spanish so we'll see how much I can understand... I'm also hoping to take an Alpha course which they are offering starting tomorrow. From what I know, the Alpha course is an introductory course to Christianity open to anyone and everyone. They offer it all over the world and it covers all the basics of Christianity. I think it will be good for me because I feel like I've always sort of learned things as I went, rather than really sat down and learned the basics.

'Tis getting late. Bona Nit a tots!