perfection.

last night, we had the most delicious dinner at this place called havana vieja ... a little cuban restaurant in the el rival district.

the neatest little light fixtures, so many brightly colored walls, and wooden furniture everywhere.. family style meals, it was ideal.

spent all day yesterday at the beach, after only 2 hours of sleep.. long day planned for today, with sleep not factored into it anywhere..



plane for paris leaves tomorrow morning, 6:55: hard to contain this much excitement.

crap for brains.

bad at updating.

life in the BCN is perfection.. my birthday went according to plan, pure perfection, a whole day at the beach.

lots of great food, paris this coming weekend, and too much to mention before my battery goes from 7% to 0% life.

today's monday... nasty monday, going out tonight?? probably.

tomorrow's tara's birthday.. chupito's and razzmatazz.

joyful life...!

fat tire

So far, I'm thoroughly enjoying the things that I'm learning in my economics class about the European Union and the makeup.. it's really interesting to see the way that our Spanish teacher perceives certain "problems" with the European Union, as opposed to our Estonian/US A&M professor.

Today we did a Fat Tire Bike Tour around the city which is quite possibly my new favorite way to see a city. We met in the old part of town at 4:00 this afternoon, and rode around getting a tour and stopping on the beach for sangria until we finished at 8:00. 20 euros well spent..

As an excuse to get to have some fun, our group of friends decided to make everyone have a "birthday" while we're in Barcelona so that we get a chance to celebrate. On our birthday, we get to choose what we do for the day, where to eat, and where to go out that night... tomorrow's MY birthday!! We're starting tomorrow by taking the earliest train (6 a.m.) into the city so that we can go for a run in the city before people take over the city. According to a magazine that we read on our flight to Rome, the best time to see the city is in the early morning before anyone's awake, and you can watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean.

Early to bed, to wake up super early.

so much..

... has happened since last (1st) update..

Life in Barcelona has been nothing short of perfect: I only have class on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m. and then we have the rest of the day to do whatever our heart desires.

After class, we either sight see in the city, or just go relax/nap at the beach before wandering around and finding a place for dinner.

Just to get you acclimated: we're actually studying outside of the city, roughly a 30 minute train/metro ride from the center of town (Plaza Catalunya) right at the top of Las Ramblas. It's just far enough outside of the city so that it's not a pain to travel back and forth more than 1 time in a day, but at the same time, just close enough.

My roommate, Mallory, is a Godsend! She's the kindest most optimistic person that I may have ever met, and is the perfect roomie.

Besides just Mallory (Spigel), here's a rundown of the people that consume the majority of my time:

Tara - the fashionista; Christina/Nina - the rock/the mom; Kyle - specializes in man-pris and dance moves; Kyle v2.0 - the other Kyle/the wanderer by nature; Tyler - bro sunglasses; Eric - looks like turtle; Scott - golf balls and patches.

We (6 of us) just got back from Rome a few hours ago.. while three (Nina, Scott, and Eric) went to Andorra for the weekend instead.



(Left to Right: Me, Kyle, Tara, Tyler, Mallory, and Kyle v2.0 at the Vatican)

our pictures from the weekend are here and here.

We had a blasty to say the least, and made plenty of memories.. mostly involving Kyle and Tyler talking about their new souvenir t-shirts about smashing the people and named themselves the "brothers' gollum". (strange kids...)


When we got back from Rome, we walked to this little vegetarian diner called "Organic" with the most incredible salad bar. I got spicy curry pizza (incredible) and between all of us we ordered everything on the menu.

Did homework for a little while, and uploaded pictures from the weekend... tomorrow afternoon we're doing a fat tire bike tour of Barcelona.. can't wait!

I PROMISE more frequent posting in the future..

españa

finally made it here!!

after a long pre-trip covering extensive mileage in central/western europe(italy, germany, czech republic, switzerland, and france), and a long day of trouble with public transportation systems, we arrived at universitat autonoma barcelona.


last night, to celebrate our arrival, we went out to a swanky club where we danced and caught the 3 a.m. bus back to Sabadell (the outskirt city where our university is) and crashed.

this morning, tara, nina, mallory (roomie), and i went on a run and discovered a really neat little greenbelt type trail where we can run in the shade/woods.

going to explore barri gothic quarter today..

expect more this evening!

finals.

it's 2:38 a.m. and i am working on an entry-level english mini-research paper that i barely started 2 hours ago.

class is slowly coming to an end, along with the rest of my organizatoins, and it is causing (2:39) me to come to the realization that i will be out of this country in less than 11 days, which (quite frankly) freaks me out.

i have massive amounts of things to accomplish still before the end of the semester, and (2:40) time is running out.

i sometimes wish that for one day that i could sleep late, not have any worries, and be lazy... read a book, and let the sunshine wake me up in the morning instead of my alarm clock at 6:30 every morning (2:41).

it's back to paper-writing...

VSL

Very Short List is a website/newsletter that sends you one e-mail update each day with stories that are worth your time but don't receive nearly enough press.



Nothing too political, mostly just random. But always worth reading.