Dos dias más...

I only have two more days before I leave Barcelona... I really can't believe how fast the time has gone by. I wish that I did a better job blogging about my time here but blogging takes a lot more time than you might think!

Anyway so my mom was originally supposed to come visit the day after my semester ended... We were planning on traveling together, just mother and daughter, for 10 days in Barcelona, Amsterdam and Seville. But she ended up getting a slipped disk in her spine two days before she was supposed to come and so she could not come in the end :( :( :(. It was really disappointing not only because we had been waiting to go on this trip since I began applying to Barcelona, but also because we had already booked all of our flights and hotels. I was also of course upset that this had happened to my mom. Slipped disks are apparently quite common but can take up to 6 months to recover and are very painful :(. It was just really unfortunate and I even considered going home to Beijing for 10 days. The cost was too much though so I had no choice but to deal with all of our already confirmed bookings...

Luckily I was able to cancel the hotels without any problems, but we weren't so lucky with the plane tickets... The airline I booked with didn't allow any cancellations or refunds. Moreover, they charged 35 euros for every single change you made and 50 euro if you wanted to change the name on the ticket. In the end I had to give up the Amsterdam trip and just lose the money :(. But Natasha ended up coming with me to Seville, and so we spent 4 days there this past week. We also managed to fit in a day trip to Cordoba and catch the Bodyworlds exhibit which was showing in Seville (I thought it was quite disturbing).

Seville is in the very South of Spain in the Andalucia region: the "real" Spain. It felt really different compared to Catalonia and we found that Spanish people in general were more friendly than Catalonians :p. More than once, local people would come up to us to offer help after seeing that we were completely lost :p. I had heard so many wonderful things about Seville and how it was the most beautiful city in Spain. It was definitely beautiful but for some reason I still like Barcelona better :). Barcelona is really a special place. I haven't figured out exactly why, but I feel like there isn't one person that has been to Barcelona and not liked it :).

In total I think I took some 600 photos in Seville and Cordoba (Natasha took 1150... she has a nice camera..) so I'm afraid to even begin trying to post them up! But I intend to do it one of these days... I've also been planning (it will happen one day... really!) on writing a post about RISD versus Elisava. It's been really interesting seeing how design school works in a different country and I wanted to share my thoughts about that... Speaking of sharing, I'll be doing a talk at the "what we do" event at RISD on April 11th (11:30am-11:50am at Market Square)! Even though I've been abroad, I've checked up periodically with what's going on at RISD... I discovered whatwedo.risd.edu and I thought it was such a great idea/event. I thought it would be nice to get involved on campus again so I'll be there sharing about my study abroad experience in Barcelona! Come out if you're interested in hearing about studying abroad :).

Before ending I just wanted to share something that I realized tonight while I was eating dinner. I realized that I've started to eat with a knife and fork here. Haha... it sounds funny but in the US I ate most of my meals with just a fork. I only used a knife if I had to cut my food (like with steak for example). But here in Spain, people use a knife and fork at every meal, no matter what they are eating. I noticed that it's used more as a tool for pushing food onto your fork... I really feel like people don't do this so much in the US.. or maybe I just never noticed? This has been my observation anyway... I never really ate rice with the help of a knife until now... I've also gotten used to having wine at every meal here, at least when I eat out. For some reason I just can't imagine doing this back in America :p... Man will I miss sangria!

So it really is a bittersweet feeling knowing that I'm leaving in 2 days. On one hand I'm sad to leave here knowing that I'll have to say goodbye to everyone. I also really feel that 3 months was just too short. I didn't get to do so many things that I wanted to do! It just means that I'll have to come back to Spain someday... On the other hand, I am super excited to go home and see everyone again!