A Friday in Barcelona

Hola! Today was a very nice day. Besides the weather being beautiful, it was also the last day of class- Yippie! I will be honest though, I am having second thoughts that maybe I should do another class next week. The reason that I will probably not sign up again is due to the fact that the class costs 200 euros. I realize now, that despite my frustrations everyday, that it was the only time that I really sat and listened to Spanish and spoke Spanish for an extended period of time. With that time, I was becoming more familiar with words and phrases that people would use time and time again. It would be like going to the grocery store- you would have a conversation that would typically stay the same from one time to another. Because much of the conversation would stay the same, it became easier to follow (near the end of the week) what the teacher was saying.

Anyhow, I say that but realize that I would prefer to take off next week and try and enjoy the 4 extra hours in the morning and just make a better effort to speak to my friends, like Cristina in Spanish. After class, I met up with some classmates and went to a Mexican restaurant. Our teacher suggested it and said it was the best in the city. It was pretty good though the tacos I had were a little plain- Literally chicken and corn tortillas : ) I ended up using their guacamole (which most of you know I do not enjoy) to give it a little flavor (I actually enjoyed it : ) - the guacamole).

Afterwards, a few of the classmates and I went to the beach. We stopped and bought one of the popular beach games here "paddle ball". It was nice to go to the beach with some other people (rather than alone- during the week) so that I could jump into the sea and not worry about people taking my stuff. We also enjoyed keeping our conversations (for the most part) in Spanish. The girls we were with only spoke French, so the only means of verbal communication that we had was with Spanish. I hope to continue hanging out with them again next week, they were a lot of fun.

After coming home and showering, I met up with Didier, Marc, and Oriol for dinner (at 10pm). We went to a great restaurant. Okay- have I told you about the smoking here? We were in a rather small room and I swear, when I looked at the tables around us- every single person was smoking. The table that I was facing, at one point, had all 6 people smoking at the same time- it was torture. However, the food was delicious and as always, the company was awesome.

Afterwards I met up with my friend Sergio and his friend, Tomas. We went to DBOY : ) ha ha ha! I had been there already with Didier and Marc, but was alright going again, becuase Tomas was ON THE LIST- and we could get in for free. It was fun, except for the smoking part (my throat hurts so much today- I feel like I swallowed ashes from a campfire). Sergio and I had a fun time taking random "artsy" pictures and him teaching me random Spanish phrases. I have forgotten all of them so I will have to ask him again and this time write them down.

I am looking forward to Saturday- Jen and I are going to take the train to Sitges- this should be an exciting day!

Mi maestra por la clase de Espanol.

This is the school- Oriol's apartment is down the street on the left hand side- seriously- 6 houses away.

These are two of my classmates. These are the girls from the U.S. Both are from San Diego and play volleyball on a competitive league and for their high school.
These are two more of my classmates. Bernadette is from Switzerland and the other girl, in the white, is Dutch. Both are really cool and very nice. This picture was taken at the Mexican restaurant. I love the art in the background.
These are three of the French girls in our class. The two on the end did not speak English. That forced us to speak Spanish the majority of the time- which was great.
This is Pauline! She is great- This girl is from Sweden, but grew up in France and goes to school in England. She has the best accent of anyone I have ever heard. She speaks English without an accent (though you can hear a little "English" accent now and then- she has so little accent that during a trip to Georgia, people were asking her what part of the US she was from). She also speaks French, German, and her Spanish is very good. I told her that she was the only one in the class that could speak Spanish without an obvious accent from their native tongue inhibiting the words that we chose to speak.
The guy in the picture was not in our class, but was friends with the group of girls from our class. He is German and is studying Spanish here for two weeks. When I met all of them on the street, he came right up to me and was like, "I love your t-shirt!" Ha ha ha! I had to laugh- he followed me around all the way until we were sitting down for lunch and made the girls move so he could sit next to me and ask me questions about working out- It was hilarious. The girls gave him the hardest time. The two French girls in this picture were oogling at this guy the whole time- it was cute to see their flirtation.
Umm... am I in San Francisco? and yes, that's toilet paper!
A "Happy Ending" massage- apparently : )
The beach with classmates!

Okay -this is what I am taking about in regards to hair and facial piercings. The hair is not as dramatic as many as I have seen, but hopefully you can see where she has her head shaved (all the way behind her ear).
The boys and me!
The boys!
Tomas being forced to be an object in Sergio and my photography.
Sergio y yo
By the ray of the dance lights- Sergio turned into an angel.

The best part of the worst "drag" performance I have ever seen.
This singer lip synced this terrible song as these back up dancers just bounced from side to side. It was so horrible! However- the lights were really cool and they wore some very interesting costumes. Sergio admitted that these "odd" shows are pretty typical of Discos in Spain.
Okay, so this picture was taken so that you could get an idea of how ridiculous the price of drinks are at this disco. This bottle of water- that couldn't me more than 8 oz. was 6 Euros- that's TWELVE (12) dollars. Oh yea- did I mentioned you can get 1.5 L for .80 euros at any place in the city! I understand being charged more in a bar, but seriously!