Dias 1-4

I arrived on Saturday night.  Tired and excited.  The hotel was amazing.  I slept most of the night until the next morning until people arrived.  In Europe they are much more concious about saving energy and water.  I even had to have my hotel key in a slot to have any electronic appliance work in the room.  Once everyone showed up we went right into orientation learning about the culture of the city, the rules of the program, academic information, activities, etc...  Most of the people are from the Midwest.  I have a "Guardian Angel" (which is like an orientation leader) named Luis Juste Valero.  We are already friends on facebook.  This is the first time I am being led by someone who is younger than me.  We all have to give him our trust even though most of us cannot understand him when he speaks Spanish.  However, his english is amazing.  He is very nice and is patient with us since my group of about 12 students asks many questions including how to say pretty much every word in spanish.  I can immediately see the laid back attitude of the spanish.  It is great.  They really seem to have a knack for enjoying life and not letting work take over their lives.

I am in my Home stay with Senor Paco (short in Catalonia for Francisco or Franchesco.... I forget) Resina.  We live in a nice apartment similar to ours in Chicago.  I live right near the metro en Poble Sec.  Paco owns his own resturant/bar called El Dorado.  He is very nice and relaxed.  He speaks a little english and I speak a little spanish.  We both work on improving our language skills.  Sometimes it is very difficult and we have to get a dictionary out, other times we can communicate and even tell jokes.  If I am tired I have a really hard time speaking in spanish especially with sentence structure and correct conjugations.  There are so many new words I am hearing, and sometimes people will speak in Catalan which is extremely hard to understand.

I start my spanish class tomorrow; I am in Intermediate A.  We shall see how that goes.  I need to change my other classes since I didn't get any I wanted/I need in order to get credit and graduate.  I have to figure that out soon.

Oh!  Today, January 6th, is the holiday "Los Reyes Magos" (the magical kings)... It has to do with the three kings and basically its like an even bigger christmas with family and presents.  They also have a similar tradition of a King Cake with a King inside (which if you find is good luck for a year (I found it in our cake)) and a bean (which means you pay for the cake or at bars do something stupid/silly/fun).  Los Reyes Magos Eve is a big night to go out.  I went to meet up with our guardian angles at about 1:30 am (standard time to go out here) with a friend but since no one has phones (because they were all sold out due to the shopping habits for Los Reyes Magos) we did not go to the right spot and ended up salsa dancing in Mojito club.  The mixed drinks here are VERY STIFF.  In the spanish culture it is not uncommon to have the same drink for more than 2 hours.  That is how stiff they are.  The drinking culture here is much more safe even though they party much later.  It is viewed upon negatively if you get drunk like people my age do in the United States.  

My first meal in my home stay was not typical.  Paco did not want to cook so we ordered Chinese.  It was great.  I thought it was funny the next day because everyone else had a traditional meal cooked.  My next few meals have been home cooked spanish style food and tasted very good.

I am truly having a great time and learning every day.  Here are some pictures I took today on a guided bus tour.

This is the house of Gaudi on paseo de gracias (the 5th avenue of Barcelona.... its weird how well it fits in which was a surprise to me)