barcelona

hello again my friends,

i'm back ... it's a wednesday afternoon i had a final last night and a paper due tomorrow but i already finished it. i might try to work on a music paper at some point, it's not due until may 8th but i would rather get it out of the way...

so, now, barcelona.

well, we went on valentine's day actually we left on the 13th, friday the 13th and in europe they use military time so we were actually in the air at 13:13 (1:13) on friday the 13th... creepy huh?
i went with 3 of the friends i made here, kelly and julia are from monatana and maura also goes to qu. they told me they spoke a little spanish, to get by on... not so much hahaha we were fine though... i was very out of my element not being able to speak the language actually
we stayed at a nice hostel, highly reccommended. it was kind of industrial but we had a private room so that was nice.

i've learned that apparently, i'm not much of an adventurous eater so finding things i liked in spain was a little bit of a challenge especially because oftentimes, i couldn't read the menu.

i do have to say, i really wanted to see spain, particularly barcelona, but going on this trip was more about seeing my mom than anything else so when i couldn't find her on saturday i was really stressed out ---REALLY stressed out.

on saturday we went to las ramblas and la bocqueria. my friends were really excited about the bocqueria because it's like a big, fresh, market. kelly is a real foodie and she loves to cook so she was in heaven, maura will try anything once so she really liked it too. i thought it was cool, and i got a really good pastry there.

we wandered around a bit and then decided to try and find mom's hotel. while walking there we passed a market square with arts and crafts tables i really like those kind of things so we stopped for a bit. the architecture in barcelona is beautiful, i wish i knew more about the city because knowing the history would have made it all come to life.
i was expecting a smaller more rural type setting but barcelona was much more metropolitan, and busy than i realized.

after leaving a note for mom at the hotel (which she never got) we hopped on the subway to parc guell. i still am not sure how to say the name, i say it "gwell" others say "guy-el" so, i don't know. either way, i loved it. it was so pretty there, i loved the mosaics of everything. and to top it off, we had a beautiful warm sunny day which is a compete contrast to the weather in ireland in february. it was SO nice to just be outside in the sun and not have to be bundled in a coat under an umbrella. and i really loved the dragon/lizard thing at the front.

we got a fantastic lunch there, i still think about it sometimes hahaha ... in the park they have a little cafeteria thing and you can get baguettes there with differerent sandwich parts, i got ham and cheese and the cheese was melted on the bread and the ham was thin and delicious. i actually think it all tasted better because we were eating it outside.

so, i thought mom's group was supposed to come there that day so we were waiting around for 5 hours before i decided that it was starting to get dark and they probably weren't bringing the kids to the park at night. reluctantly i dragged my feet out of the park back to the hostel. we went out for dinner on las ramblas and MOM CALLED!
i was on edge all day and night until i talked to her, i was at breaking point because i wanted to see her so badly and i couldn't find her and no one spoke my language and they couldn't help me
but, finally we made our way to the restaurant she was at and when i found her in the back i just burst into tears... it was rather embarassing but i didnt care because i was so happy to see her.
ms turk said i made her and ms schneider cry too -- can't help it i was too happy and so relieved.

when they left we made a plan for me to meet her at the hotel the next morning. so i could go on the day trip with them. the other girls walked around barcelona some more and i met mom while she was eating breakfast. i got to sit next to her on the bus on the way to the dali museum and we got to talk the whole time, it was SO great.
dali is a weirdo by the way... he's the one who did the melting clock painting and a lot of other freaky things.

when we got back, some of the high school kids didn't want to go to the soccer match so my mom had to keep an eye on them instead. we brought them to las ramblas for some shopping. there were 5 of them and they were really nice. it was so funny how they kept trying to talk to everyone in their high school spanish. but hey, i was impressed that they were trying so hard.

i had to leave early the next day so my friends decided not to come to dinner with the group but the chaperones let me go instead. it was hard SO hard to say goodbye at the end of the night

i cried the whole taxi ride home and in bed and i even went so far as to think maybe this 5 months would have been easier if it hadn't seen her at all...WRONG
i wouldn't give that one day back for anything even though i still miss them all

i had a great time in spain, i loved the weather and the architecture and getting to see my mom but i would defnitely go back again after i learned more about barcelona because i don't think i appreciated it to its fullest