VIVA BARCA!!!

Hola todos!  I am writing this post the morning after the championship futbol game when Barca defeated ManU!  SUCH an incredible night!!!  Everyone went to a pizza lunch yesterday afternoon, then got changed into our jerseys for the game.  We got kebabs and walked to the Arc de Triomf (just a 5 minute walk from Onix) to watch the game on the big screen.  It seemed like all of Barcelona was there!!  The whole park around the Arc was packed with people.  We happened to be standing next to some other Americans who were on an IES program, so we all watched and tried to figure out what was going on together!  The game was insane!!!  When Barca would score, people lit off fireworks and cheered and ran around, it was crazy!

The Arc de Triomf right as the game was starting.  It was jam packed with people!  They streamed the game on the big screen at the front.

My delicious falafel kebab :)

Hannah, Dave, and me in our jerseys!  Messi of course!

The plaza after Barca scored the first goal!!!  It was absolute chaos!

After the game, we went to Las Ramblas to walk around and see the city after the big win.  It was really fun to see everyone celebrating and cheering - so much Barca pride!  We came to Placa Catalunya, where all the protests have been going on.  This a picture of the Placa - I had never seen anything like it.  There were so many people protesting, but it was very peaceful, contrary to what we had been told.  After walking through the Placa, we just went home because everyone was so tired.

Placa Catalunya after the championship game

This past week was busy again, but so much fun!  On Monday night, we went to an Irish pub and then went to the beach to see what it looked like at night time!  It was so pretty to see the moon on the Mediterranean.  Then the rest of the week was a lot of school and reading/essays again.  My friend Brittany and I have gotten in a habit of stopping at the mercado after school and getting a baguette, cheese, salami, and strawberries, and we usually eat all of it for dinner!  It is the best dinner, I don't think I'll ever get sick of it!

I slept in today, and then a group of us went exploring at Parc Guell.  It was so beautiful, and the view was incredible!  We stopped at a sandwich shop and brought a mini picnic to the park to enjoy the view.  The parc was started by Guell, but the project was picked up by Gaudi afterward.  The buildings on the parc premises were beautiful, and there were gardens everywhere.  I was surprised to see cacti in the gardens!  But even those were pretty.

View of the whole city and the Mediterranean.  You can see the Agbar building on the left and La Sagrada Familia on the right.

View of La Sagrada Familia from Parc Guell!

The old guard house to Parc Guell

Well I better go, I have a few assignments due at 10 tonight!  Love you all!  xoxo

Hola! Hope everyone is doing well!  I've had a busy pasts couple of days!  We were assigned 2 huge projects in my architecture class, so that has mostly taken over my weekend!  Our whole class was put into groups of two, and each pair was assigned to a street that runs North/South.  We were in charge of finding our street and taking photographs of each East/West intersection - Barcelona is laid out in a giant grid, with each block in the shape of an 8-sided octagon (like squares with chamfered corners).  These unique corners are called Eixamples, so our pictures had to show the 4 buildings in each Eixample.  We had to go at 2 different times of day, since the sun had to be perfect in each direction.  It took Hannah (my partner) and I three trips to get the pictures we needed, and it was about a 45 minute walk each way!  We had to stop for a few snacks on the way, my favorite was my usual chocolate croissant and cafe latte that I had this morning :)

Croissant de Chocolate y un cafe latte!

A big group of us all went to the beach yesterday - it was beautiful!  The weather was about 80 degrees and breezy.  We all went swimming in the Mediterranean..a cool 67 degrees!!  But it was so refreshing, and the waves were really fun.  

 

Barceloneta Beach

 

Afterwards, we ate at our now favorite restaurant, Geni's, and got more Focaccia sandwiches.  We call Geni's the Spanish Panera!  We all love it, and it's right on the beach, a perfect location!  After the beach, Hannah and I went to Plaza Catalunya to go to H&M (a huge clothing store).  We ran into a huge protest in the plaza - there are some political elections this weekend, and there's going to be a major party change.  The protests were a bit scary!  The plaza was so crowded and there were people making speeches and signs everywhere.  But there were also lots of tents and street performers - we saw an INCREDIBLE group on our way home!  Hannah and I sat and watched for about 30 minutes before we went home to make dinner.

 The protests in la Plaza Catalunya

Street Performers!  One guy was playing a didgeridoo and one guy was playing some steel drum type instrument and making beats on a computer.  It was really unique/good!

Today, Hannah and I went back to La Sagrada Familia.  It was just as breathtaking as when I saw it the first time.  Here are a few pictures!

 

We also went into a souvenir shop near La Sagrada Familia and got Barca (the Barcelona futbol team) jerseys!  Next weekend is the Champions League Final, so we had to get them before then to show our Barca spirit!

We don't have classes on Tuesday because of a holiday, so everyone is thinking about cooking a big dinner and then going out to the beach to a discoteca on Monday night!  There is always a discoteca that is hopping any night of the week here in Barca!

More updates to come!  All my love!

Beginning of Classes!

Hola todos!  I have a long day of classes today (from 9am till 7pm off and on), but I have an hour break now - it's so nice to just relax on campus.  It's been beautiful and sunny every day, about 70 degrees or so.  I'm sitting on a bench outside of a cafe, and it's really fun to just people watch and see what's going on around campus.  Everyone's finals here don't finish until the end of June, so campus is still very lively.

 Our campus at UPC!

Our official classes started on Monday.  A bunch of us have a six hour break between classes on Mondays, so we headed back to Onix during the afternoon.  I got a lot of work done during the day, so after my last class, Hannah and I went to the mercado to get groceries for dinner.  We bought some salami and cheese, and made grilled sandwiches - so yummy!  The salami here is DELISH!  Then afterwards, we went to an area called Las Ramblas to walk around and see if there was anything going on.  This area is famous for its nightlife any day of the week, so it was pretty busy even on a Monday!  It was a lot of fun, but we decided to come back on a weekend because we were pretty tired from the day.

Yesterday, I had my architecture classes.  Our professor is really eccentric and so nice.  We spent almost 2 hours of the class just going around and saying our favorite thing about Barcelona so far.  After classes, we went back to Onix to eat some snacks (mostly salami, yummm), and then went out towards the beach.  There was a full moon, so we wanted to watch the moon rise over the Mediterranean.  We stopped at a restaurant on our way to the beach to eat dinner - people eat about 5 or 6 meals per day in Barcelona, in case you havne't noticed :) - and had such a nice time sitting and eating that we missed the moon rise!  But dinner was worth it!  I had a turkey focaccia sandwich and a chocolate muffin, delicious!

 Focaccia sandwich, yum!

Besides eating and classes, I've mostly been doing homework.  I've written a few essays already and done a lot of reading for my ethics class.

I'll write more when I have more updates!  Love you all!

Beinvenidos a Barca!

Hola!  This is the first chance I've gotten to sit down and relax since I arrived in Barcelona!  It's been a crazy first few days!

Our group flight landed in Barcelona on Thursday morning (matching t-shirts and all!).  It was a really smooth trip.  There was a bus waiting for us at the BCN airport, and it took us right to Residencia Onix, our apartment complex.  It's really more like a hostel though; there are students living here from all over Europe!  My GT roommate assignment actually fell through, so I have a "random" roommate who shares my kitchen.  I met her on the first day and she was super nice!  She is from Spain and didn't speak much English, but she was really friendly.

After we got to Onix, we went exploring around our neighborhood.  First, we went to the market that is in the same complex as Onix and got some lunch.  After that, we just walked around to get familiar with the area.  We walked all the way to La Sagrada Familia, an absolutely incredible cathedral that is about 20 minutes away from Onix.  I don't have pictures yet, but I will take some and post them later!  It is truly the most breathtaking sight I have ever seen.

After our afternoon of exploring,  we all came back and cleaned up, and then we went to a Barcelona style dinner around 10:30.  We wandered around our neighborhood again, and found a small cafe that had sandwiches and pizza.  I just got some pizza, and it was delicious!  We headed back to Onix around midnight and went to sleep.

On Friday, we had orientation at school.  We walked to the metro as a group at 7:45, and two trains and a hike later, we got to Universidad Politecnica Catalunya, where we are taking our classes.  The campus is beautiful!  It looks very similar to a college campus in the States.  There are lots of little cafe's on campus that have sandwiches, pastas, and cortados - little shots of espresso mixed with milk that are so yummy!  During our actual orientations, we were already assigned a ton of homework!  But some of it is fun activities around the city - for my architecture class we have to take photos of certain buildings and write essays about them.  So those should be interesting!

After orientation, we made chicken fajitas in our kitchen and got ready for the night!  People in Barcelona don't really start their nights until about midnight or 1 am, so we had lots of time to kill before we went out!  Around midnight, we headed out towards the beach to see if we could find a good discoteca (club)!  Since it was still a bit early to go out to a discoteca, we ended up first going to a sushi bar right on the beach, and it was so much fun!  The tables were right on the water and we had a great view of the marina.  Some people ordered wine while we waited - wine truly is a huge part of Spanish culture.  After sitting outside and just hanging out for a while, we decided to try a club that was just across the street, still at the beach.  It turned out to be incredible!  I absolutely loved the music (it was mostly Spanish house music), and the inside of the club was decorated all in neon with lights everywhere!  It was a great way to start the weekend off! 

Today, we got up pretty early to go to a gigantic department store called Corta Ingles.  It was almost like Harrod's!  We got all of our errands done in the one store, including getting cell phones, hair dryers, groceries, and other things!  The store was in a really neat area, full of contrast between the modern stores (H&M, Zara, etc.) and the old architecture and buildings.  It was really beautiful.  On the way home, we stopped for a delicious pizza lunch!  :)

After resting for a bit, we made dinner and headed out to the museums - there was a special event tonight, and all of the museums had free admission.  The lines turned out to be hours long, so we only made it to one museum.  The best part of the night was the gelato we got after the museum!!!  It was SO delicious!  And the gelato shop was in a different area that also turned out to be really fun.  We decided that we need to go back there during the day, especially because it was chilly and rainy tonight.

Well I think that's all I have for now!  Miss you all so much!  (Mom, Dad, Leah, and Erica - can't wait until you get back from Hawaii so we can talk more!!)  Hasta pronto! xoxo