This photo is of the newspaper I picked up today...
I sat outside my classroom with a couple minutes to relax and I met some more people who are from Chicago, which was cool. Unfortunately today's lecture was very boring and my professor went over the history of Catalunya and talked about events that I already knew about. The good thing about my class Barcelona: The Cospopolitian City is that 3/5 field studies that are mandatory, I've already seen: Casa Mila, Casa Batlo, and the history of Catalonia museum. We are required to analyze these sights and write a brief report on them..which is nice since I can get a head start.
Once the class was finally over I went to grab another caffe since I had 15 minutes before my Spanish class began. Spanish class was fun and I always enjoy it much more than my other classes. Although it is 3 hours long, it seems shorter than my other classes that are only 1 hour and 30 minutes. We did exercises and most of them had to do with the Spanish culture, which was cool and interesting. We got our syllabus and unfortunately it looks like I am going to have a difficult semester ahead of me, but oh well.
After class my friend Nick and I went to the book store to get our last books. We returned to that same pizza place I previously ate at, and got an individual pizza and large water for only 6 Euros (which is pretty cheap compared to most of the touristy places where you usually pay over 10 euros). We walked back and he went to the IES Center to study because he still had another class, and I headed to one of the UAB campuses in Guinardo to check it out. There were a lot of locals and foreigners and I really enjoyed the campus. It's too bad that I didn't know I would be so close to a local university or I definitely would have taken some classes there (the UAB campus is one metro stop from my home stay).
I headed home to meet with mi madre because she was going to show me where the gym was. It turns out it wasn't a DIR gym, but another gym called Nicks. This was fairly disappointing because now I need to go to the gym in the city..in between classes or after them. I guess it's still pretty convenient but I still wish there was one close to mi casa.
While I was studying I heard some unfamiliar voices coming from the kitchen. I quickly found out that it was Anna's parents that were visiting. They were the nicest people and reminded me a lot of my senora. I thought that it was pretty cool that she had her parents come over to meet us. They sat with us and talked while we ate dinner, and they constantly told us how well we spoke..which was great to hear. I am certain that since I have been in Spain my fluency and pronunciation have improved a vast amount. Anna's parents left shortly after we ate and after dinner we just relaxed and talked.
The FC Barcelona game started at 10 and I decided to stay in and watch it at home rather than go out. The game was pretty slow and Anna and I began to talk about American entertainment. Much to my surprise, I discovered that almost half of the movies shown out here are from the US. They are dubbed, subtitled, or shown in Castellano, Catalan, and English as well. Quickly I realized that Anna loves American movies which I found interesting. She just recently saw the movie "Blood Diamonds" which was one of my favorites, and she also loves Mafia movies such as "The Godfather, Scarface, Goodfellas, etc.. We talked briefly about the US entertainment industry and how popular it is throughout the world.
We finished watching the Barcelona game, and they ended up tying 0-0 against Español, which is another team out of Cataluña. Their stadium is located on Montjuic (Mountain of the Jews) which is also in there area where the Olympics were held. After the game Anna asked me about my family and friends back at home which was fun to talk about. I am planning on showing her everyone on Skype which I'm looking forward to. We talked about smoking for a while because Anna smokes, as does her mother..who is actually getting a surgery done in a couple of days.
Well now it is time to read for my history class, which I am not looking forward to. Tomorrow I have classes at 10:45 and 3:45, so I will have some time to FINALLY join the gym and probably stop at a caffe to do some studying. My oceanography class is going to the Aquarium tomorrow, which I am looking forward to. The Aquarium is on my list of sights I'd like to see here in Barcelona, which is convenient...because now I get to go for free!
Hopefully I'll be able to take some great pictures to post tomorrow, assuming that I will have some time. This weekend I might head to Sitges with a couple of people, travel to another local town in Barcelona..about a hour from me, or stay here and do some traveling in the city!
Bona Nit
