"This is taste!"

Typical Spanish bocadillos with cerano ham and cheese on a freshly made baguette finely paired with a few bottles of wine. :)

Frisbee and soccer on the playa!

That’s a typical Friday afternoon in Barcelona… :)

Oh and did I forget to mention that nudity is allowed? ...and apparently, it's popular to come over and chat with one another.

I love my life!

How I got randomly asked out twice in Paris

First time, I’m standing outside L’Opera house and just taking in the view and architecture.

Tried to see a show, but my lack of French failed me... :/
After a few minutes, I’m at crossroads about where to go next, so I sit down on the steps to look at my guidebook and decide from there.

As I’m about to leave, a man a few feet away says something in French. I never learned the phrase for “I don’t speak French,” so I stare back blankly trying to remember the pronunciation for “Je ne comprends pas” (I don’t understand). But he gets the hint and asks if I speak English. So we exchange a little bit of convo, where I’m from, how long I’m staying, etc. I’m ready to leave when he asks if I’ve been out for drinks yet in Paris. O boy… I know where this is going now. I try to brush it off causally, saying yesterday I had a long day, I was tired, so no. So then he asks about dancing, have I’ve gone out dancing. Parisians are so persistent! I can’t remember my response, but I knew I had to leave soon before I buried myself too deep in this conversation. Eventually I told him I had to go, and that it was nice meeting him. Au revoir.

The second time I was walking down the street heading towards the Pompidou Center.

Pompidou Center. No it's not under construction. This building by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers is like a building turned inside out. They took all the structure, pipes, and guts of the building, color-coded it and exposed it for all to see.

All of a sudden I hear French being spoken to me. My response is, “No francias, pardon!” So this man starts to speak broken English to me, explaining how he only knows a little. He asks where I’m going, and I don’t know why I answered what seemed to be an innocent question, but next thing I know he’s asking if he can walk with me. I’m trying to play dumb because he doesn’t know the verb for walk but makes the gesture for walking with his fingers. After a while, I say, “you want to walk with me to the museum?” “Yes!” is his response. Ok…

Really awesome escalator on the outside of the building. It's how one gets to all the exhibition spaces

So in my head, I’m thinking, Great, I wanted to see this exhibit in peace. I need to go to Nadia’s room in two hours to get my suitcase and leave for the airport. How am I going to get this man to leave me alone! Thankful this guy was cheap because as we were standing in line, he asks do you need to pay to get in. Yes, you do, but I don’t know how much, I answer. So we make a deal that I would call him in an hour after I’m done. So that’s how I got Jean-Marc’s number. Sorry if he was disappointed that he’ll never hear from me again!

View from the top of the Pompidou Center! So pretty :)

I didn’t know men in Paris are so forward, and that a drastic age difference is no big deal to them. Both of them were at least ten years my senior. Sorry but I find that creepy. Go hit on someone your own age.

more pics from Paris to come…

Cadaqués, THE summer gettaway spot in Catalunya.

So it’s too bad my friends and I visited it mid-winter...

But it was nice to experience the place without the normal tourists and people cramming the beaches and restaurants like they do in the summer! Granted it never snows in Catalunya, so the weather was just crispy and a little windy.

Cadaqués is a sleepy fishermen’s town off Costa Brava where Salvador Dalí spent his childhood and later vacationed. It’s the picturesque Mediterranean town with its white houses and blue window trimmings and doors! There was unspeakable beauty in the tranquility of the place. Just the locals and us wondering the tiny streets.

We had our own private concert in this tiny town church we stumbled into. The organist was simply playing for God, and the music drew us inside. So we sat down, listened, and did a little wandering around for 15 minutes.

I finally sat down and sketched for awhile. Is there a resemblance?

 

Best of all, Sean brought his kite, and the windy conditions were perfect for flying! I was the unofficial photographer and used his fancy camera to take these sweet pics.

Unfortunately, Dalí’s house is closed this time of year, so we only wondered around in his front yard. He’s got this tree chained to the house though…

People here are very pro-Catalan and Catalunya. Maybe I should explain that regionalism, not nationalism, is more popular in Spain. People don’t consider themselves Spanish but instead Catalunian or Gallego or Andalusian, etc. Catalunya wants to separate itself from Spain because they have their own separate language (Catalan) and history. It wasn’t until Isabela and Fernando linked the two kingdoms through marriage back in the 1400s.

Sean, Hannah-Hunt, and I splurged on a fancy dinner at a family owned restaurant, Casa Anita. I tried some of the best sea bass and gambas (shrimp) I’ve had in my life! We ended up with a bottle of wine on the house since they forgot our dessert.

I would live here if I could… but maybe just as a summer home like Dalí.

I <3 these pics, but it too bad I'm doing the the-sun-is-in-my-face-I-can't-see-squint-smile.

Yay for Cadaques!

Making spanish friends is hard work

I've seriously considered starting up smoking just to make Spanish friends during class breaks. Spanish people need their descansos, so every 1.5 of class there is a 10 minute break where everyone gathers outside talking, smoking their cigs. Meanwhile, I'm just chilling and pretending to be vaguely interested in something I can waste 10 minutes on.

Yesterday I had my first day of class at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC, but not to be confused with Uof I at Chicago). They have a school of architecture, ESARQ (Escole Superior de Arquitectura) at which I am taking one class, Composicio IV.

The first day kinda sucked. I got there early, and everyone is outside the classroom all chatty with their friends. (I think there's some kind of rule where you don't enter the room until the professor gets there.) And here I am, standing all pathetic by myself. Ten minutes is a really long time! But at least I got the classroom right!

I soon found out that this architecture history class was not going to be research paper based. Yay, no boring research papers. Nay, finding a 4-person group! That part has been stressing me out since yesterday, especially since I only exchanged a one word convo with another person.
"Is this seat taken?"
"No."
However, today I made 5 new friends! without having to light up. lol And one of them was a Polish girl, who is studying abroad from London, so we spoke Polish, but she's dropping the class since she can't understand Spanish. 3 more are part of my group. Magda, Eva, and Sergi. I kinda lucked out and picked their names out of a hat because the professors said the foreign students must disperse amongst the groups, so for better or worse, they are stuck with me.

But we're meeting tomorrow to visit and analyze the Mercat de Santa Catarina.

It has a pretty awesome roof.

From there we have to make an architectural exhibition for 8-10 year old kids, write a 4 page paper about it, make a model, and design an educative game. Que chulo, no?

Gossamer mountain monastery

God walked among us on this sacred mountain. It’s like He took foot steps and left behind a trail of clouds. The fog in the morning and early afternoon made this monastery feel like a secret treasure wrapped neatly in a gossamer blanket.

The early morning started with a train ride and the scenic but not exciting rack rail, cremallera, to the top. (Unfortunately, the Aeri, the little German cable cars, and the funiculars are not operational during the winter months. Lame. It seems a lot of tourist things are put on hold this time of year…)

Although I have no picture of the funicular, this ride to the top would have been super chulo.
There’s not much to say besides; the monastery was a tranquil trip, nothing big and exciting. Just beautiful scenery, a cat that followed me around until I fed it, a daily boys’ choir performance, and magnificent church architecture.

However, the whole experience gave me time to reflect how lucky I am to be here. It took years of saving babysitting money in high school to working hard in college, but I finally made my study abroad dream come true. :) Thank you, God, and thank you everyone else who made this possible or influenced me in anyway. Yay!