1.5 MONTH UPDATE

Keeping up with this blog clearly failed..and once weeks have gone by, so many things have happened that make it even harder to update. So this will be my extremely condensed version of my past 7 weeks in beautiful Barcelona and some other cities along the way.

My weekdays always start here, the CIEE center at Passatge Permanyer. It's a cute little street where all my classes take place. I'm really enjoying my classes here. Spanish is fun, studio is chill, and my other 2 on Gaudi and the visual culture of Barcelona are awesome because we take walking tours to actually see what we learn about in class.

Residencia Onix, my home for this semester. I have my own room, bathroom, and share a kitchen with a local Spanish student. The space is small but I'm not complaining. Our program organizes day and weekend trips for us and so far we've been to a Cava tour (Catalan version of champagne), Sitges, and Galicia.

The caves of Codorniu where cava is stored.

The lady pouring us some draaaaanks.

New friends getting buzzed off free cava at 12pm!

The beautiful beach at Sitges.

The whole city reminded me of Mamma Mia.

One of the first nights in Barcelona, we went to Razzmatazz. It was huge, sweaty, dirty, and very European. We got tired of the pulsing house music after about 20 minutes lol..never thought I would miss annoying American club music so much. They definitely do not play bay slaps here :(

Besides night time activities, we have done quite a bit of exploring around Barcelona. I love walking down the street here because I'll always see something appealing...architecture, food, people, etc. My birthday this year landed on a yearly festival, La Merce. It's a Roman Catholic holiday and the city organizes a series of events during the week.

The gigantes at the opening ceremony of La Merce.

Castellers! This was pretty crazy..basically a competition to see who could stack the most people...

People getting ready for Correfoc, the firerun. They run down the street throwing fire sparks at people.

In retrospect, this looks like a terrible idea. It was fun at the time though but also quite painful because I wasn't dressed right haha.

Now about the food. I wish I wrote this when I first got here, back when I thought everything was delicious. I'm slowly getting over the novelty of Spanish food but once in awhile I'll try something and be pleasantly surprised. Like today! We went to Euskal Etxea and had some great tapas. Fried goat cheese and jam..who would've thunk it??

We also had a Cook and Taste class where we learned how to make a traditional Catalan meal.

HUGE pan of paella to feed all 12 of us.

The tasty tomato, mozzarella, pesto, and garlic appetizer.

Catalan Cream!

Really good egg sandwich I had awhile ago..I still think about this sandwich.

So much seafood in Barcelona and it's soo good.

Patatas Bravas! A typical Spanish tapa. This was from Bar Tomas, supposed to be the best in town.

Suizo! Thick chocolate with fresh cream that you eat with churros. Looking at these again is making me a bit hungry so I guess that's it for now. I have too much to talk about that I'll do it in separate post. I miss you all!