Life as a Euro...

Three weeks into my European adventure...I'd like to think that I no longer stand out as a tourist around town, but I could be really off on my assumption. The city is pretty familiar to me now (after getting lost about a million times you have to be good at directions..even with a reputation such as mine). I officially started the rest of my classes this week (we only had Spanish for the last two weeks)...they seem pretty legit...its History of Barcelona, International Marketing, International Strategic Management, and an Internship class which is to supplement the internship I'm doing at Yahoo! Advertising (this pretty much made my world).

Recap on the last two weekends...one weekend we went on a hike with our program to Tibidabo, which is a small mountain area. At the top we went to a Spanish restaurant that serves Calçots, which are pretty much super long onions that you eat with a special sauce. This is a very traditional Catalan winter meal. It was a very cool experience!! The meal also included a Catalan toast tradition which is toast with garlic, tomato and olive oil...heaven on a plate, and a purron, which is an Aladdin lamp looking thing that has wine...please see pics below for the full effect :)

The view from Tibidabo...helllooo Barcelona

wereee ready wereee ready

Purron

and these would be the Calçots

I'll make this for all of you...sooo good

Lauren demonstrating how to eat a Calçot

Weekend that followed, about 11 of us girls decided to go to Paris!! It was freeeezing but so amazing. PS everyone...Ryan Air is not that bad at all!! Anyway, we toured Montmartre the first night (my favorite part of Paris) and went to a Fondue restaurant. The food was amazing and the experience was fun (they also served wine in baby bottles...too bad we didn't speak enough French to ask why...our vocab was pretty limited to Oui). Only not so bueno part of it was that the owner wasn't so fond of us...yelled at us in French a couple times (I didn't get why he kept doing it if he knew we still didn't understand what he yelled the first time...I guess he got mad because some girls showed up late because their cab got "lost"), and then he kicked us out at the end because there were tons of people waiting hhaha. We just went with it and laughed. The next day we saw The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, The Arc de Triomphe, etc. It was a great weekend :) Oh and the hostel was nice!! Since there were 11 of us, we got an entire room...we called it the orphanage hah.

The cutest and best bakery I've ever encountered...you gotta check it out if you're in the neighborhood...Angelina

corny I know haha

I love all the little cafes & restaurants!

I thought this was soooo cool. Whoever did this, I'm a fan. 

The fondue restaurant

Our orphanage ;)

So this is basically what living like a Euro has been like...it has definitely been an "experience." I didn't really know what to expect from living in a different country and culture for 3 mths, but I feel like I have already learned a lot...not only about Spain and Europe, but about myself and home as well. I love how people here cherish every moment of the day...coffee to-go doesn't exist...people get coffee with their loved ones on a daily basis, which I think is pretty incredible. But I have also learned that this works for here...and as cool as I think it would be to do this in the US, it doesn't work with the rhythm of life that people have there. This is what makes me embrace the differences in cultures! The Spaniards I have met have been really nice (I mean people you interact with a little more than stranger basis). Sometimes, strangers you meet on the streets don't really know directions but still proceed to give them to you haha, which is all good, because I have time to get lost and explore (plus it has cured me-at least temporarily- from my bad sense of direction). I'll keep posting little Spain-isms on a regular basis so you all can see the day-to-day things that we see as temporary Barcelonians. 

Hasta luego!