A typical day (as in, without fail this is what has happened 5/7 days):
7:30- Alarm goes off. Snooze set, alarm clock hidden/thrown on other side of room, combined with various spanish/english/french swear words.
7:35- Snooze goes off. Sleepy stumbling around as I try to locate phone and figure out which button is off, and which is my tennis shoe sole. Blearily get dressed (luckily there aren't many options, otherwise things would be even uglier...)
7:45- Breakfast time! This is the only non-enormous meal of the day. Some sort of birdseed-ish bread (I am turning into my mother) combined with hot chocolate number one of the day.
8:00- Brush teeth, reciting verbs in my head, get vaguely presentable.
8:30- Run to catch the metro!
*Note on El Metro: There are weird people on the metro. I've been practicing my observational skills à la Sherlock Holmes (the observational, investigative habits of that detective, not the arrogant lazy cocaine addict side). I've noted so far that there is a large population of vigorously chewing old men who chomp really fast when they look at my shoes. The first time this happened, I thought it was a single incident... I've seen five of these masticating fogies now. There is also a lot of people with snake rings, Hollister perfume, and the scourge of sweatpants in public.
9:00- Arrive promptly to school. Teacher is invariably on "spanish time."
9:05-13:00 School! This entails lots of verb learning (why so many past tenses?? French people only need three, why four? I think this is a question of quality over quantity.) and the nicknames for various monuments. Like the one below, which is nicknamed "El Consolador."
Teehee.
13:00-15:00/16:00- Wander around Barcelona. Hang out in bookstores. Stare at architecture. Get lost. Walk and walk and walk. Various adventures that have happened include
- Talking my way into a new metro pass after the machines spit it out. Not only did I get several "uses" on my pass for free, but the guy gave me a case. He said pockets were death to tram cards, and unless I was the grim reaper of paper, I should always always always (siempre siempre siempre) have a pass protector. Did I mention this exchange was in spanish? This meant while I understood the majority of this lecture, I could only smile and nod and say "no mato a los billetes." (Most likely grammatically incorrect, but in Marf-spanish means "I don't kill tickets.")
- Was eating an orange and had a french guy come up and ask me if I would give him my fruit. Unclear why he automatically spoke french to me (I don't really look french) but I told him fruit isn't too expensive here, and my favorite stall was just around the corner. He thanked me and left. So bizarre.
- Every single touristy offer gets directed at me. I try not to ooze tourista, but they keep coming... Nothing good so far.
15/16:00- Lunch! Huge, usually involving pasta, and delicious.
All Afternoon- Sleep. Read. Do "optional homework." Watch telenovelas with ridiculous plots.
20:30- Dinner! Huge, lots of veggies, good food (I swear, it is better than the restaurants here) and everyone quizzes me on what I've learned that day.
About the photos of before: so I went to this festival last night where you need to wear a hat because people chase you with devil tridents that have hazardous fireworks attached to them. And there is a giant pig which explodes in fire every couple of blocks and ambulances follow the parade and take people to the hospital as necessary.
It was GREAT.
But piano piano. Which is Italian for nDank a nDank, which is Wolof for poco a poco, which is spanish for little by little.
Doucement.
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