España Here I Come!: 6 Weeks Down and 1 to Go

(Tania and I on the beach, beginning the San Juan festivities at about 10:30pm)

(A ton of IES people at the beach as the party is winding down)

(Our diverse group of girls at 6:30am: May, Shefali, Saran, Me, Tania, and Kayla...the beach is trashed!)

(And so were we...haha. Cartwheels in front of the Arc de Triomf at 7:00 am..hahaha)

(At 8:30am we finally made it home!)

Sorry I haven't posted anything new in the past week. I've been busy, as usual, trying to fit everything in before coming home.

Monday after class me, Tania, and Saran went to Tibidado which is the highest point in Barcelona. We had to take a train, a trolley, and a tram to get up there. There's a church, pretty views, and a pretty lame amusement park. Haha. It was cool to see every side of the city and everything that surrounds it. Behind Barcelona there are a bunch of pretty little mountains with houses built up the side. Then we returned home to rest before all of the festivities...

As I told you all about, San Juan was an insane holiday - like the 4th of July on steroids. The party started at after everyone was done with work on Monday and lasted until sunrise on Tuesday. We left the apartment at about 10:30 pm and got home at 8:30 am. There were fireworks, campfires, concerts, and people everywhere! We went down to the beach where a bunch of kids from our program were hanging out. There were also a lot of other foreigners and I got to meet some British and French men. Haha. It was such a great night until our fun was ruined by a guy who snatched my friend Kayla's wristlet. All of her cash and credit cards and even her cell phone was in there. Poor girl didn't even do anything wrong.

All the businesses and schools were closed on Tuesday for the holiday...basically so people could recover. We pretty much slept all day and did homework.

This week I had the chance to go to Casa Batlló, one of the Gaudí houses that I did my research paper on. It was really interesting to see it up close and personal. And despite what Dad thinks, there are some very practical parts to the building, like his ventilation techniques to keep air circulating. All the doors and windows had some sort of individual grates that you could open to the outside and you could turn them at any angle to get the appropriate amount of circulation. Hah! ;)

Me and Tania went to the Ciutadella Park where there's a little pond with row boats for rent. We decided to go before class and it was SOOO hot out! Little Tania couldn't row for the life of her so it was all me. Haha. Something really disturbing though was that there were a ton of dead ducks floating in the water! It was really gross and made me wonder why they were dead.
Daniela and I finally used our Bus Turistic pass this week. However, we thought it was pretty stupid because we'd already done practically everything on the route so we just sat on the bus without getting off. It was okay for her though because she's still limping around the city with a crutch.

Thursday night I went out with Daniel and his girlfriend to some bars and was supposed to meet up with some other people but it fell through.

Friday me, Daniela, Shefali, and Kayla went to Sitges which is only about 30 minutes away by train. It was such a cute town and was so much more laid back than in the city. The beach is divided into several different coves. We were on one that was really peaceful and they had funny paddle boats with slides that you could rent by the hour. The water felt great because it was REALLY hot out...but when we were about to leave we peaked over and saw that the next cove was full of men! Gay men! Not a woman to be seen. Then I understood why it is called the gay capital of Spain. Haha. But it wasn't even as queer as Key West it's just acceptable there and everyone is open about it. Either way it was a great little coastal town.

Today me and Daniela traversed the crazy flea markets and did some other shopping. I'm not feeling to great today so sadly I may not be going out tonight for our last weekend. But oh well.
I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend and I can't wait to see you all next Saturday! Love you lots.

Danielle