2 October 2007 · Comment [3]
I'm in Barcelona, living in Barcelona!
Hey everyone! I have to go in a minute to meet up with a language partner (of which I have currently accumulated five and more are in the works and it’s a little bit disgusting but at least I’m doing something with my days), but I figured I should at least start a blog entry because otherwise I may never write another one and that would be sad. It’s kind of depressing to stay in one place after traveling for the past three months, oh hey! today is the three month anniversary of when I started traveling! That is neat. But yes, it’s a little depressing but mostly awesome because I’ve wanted to live in Barcelona ever since I first saw L’auberge Espagnole sophomore year of college and it’s pretty awesome to live in a foreign city and work on my Spanish every day, though I’d probably be more successful at this if I didn’t insist on listening to my ipod all the time, but that’s just because all these young hooligans keep using their cellphones to play awful, tinny mp3’s and the ipod’s a survival tool, really. Plus it is a little frustrating how most of the signs and ads are written in Catalan, so I can’t practice my Spanish by reading random things on the street and I know this is a pretty dumb American thing to say, but I don’t really care about learning Catalan because everyone here also speaks Spanish and basically no one outside of here speaks Catalan. But I guess I should be interested in learning it just for its beauty or something? I don’t know, I’ve never been very good at learning just for the sake of learning. Unless it’s like learning how to draw dumb comics just for the sake of learning how to draw dumb comics, which is pretty fun. Okay, enough rambling for now! I’ll probably come back later tonight and decide this is completely idiotic and delete it all, so savor the idiocy while you can, folks! I got me an appointment with a language partner.
Okay, back! The language partner didn’t show up, which is the first time that’s happened but it was fine because I was feeling lazy anyway so I just read for a while and got a shameful, shameful dinner at McDonald’s because that’s where he suggested we meet and then I just couldn’t resist the french fry odor. And I also got a salad to cancel it out and they gave me little tiny bottles of oil and vinegar for dressing and it took me literally a half an hour to unscrew their tiny yet incredibly well-fastened tops. But then it was worth it except for how the vinegar started to burn my mouth after a little while. Is it just me, or is this blog becoming incredibly inane now that I’m settling down? Maybe that’s just what I was afraid would happen so now it’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here, shiny pictures!
This is a street! And a sunny sky, which seems like such a distant memory because it rained all day today and it might rain all day tomorrow. But my family got here today! Oh I am so happy. It’s weird because I’ve been talking to them on the phone almost every day, so talking to them seems very familiar but seeing their faces move while they talk is so foreign! And fantastic. Foreigntastic!
Our apartamento! This is the bed corner. Jovanna sleeps in the bed and I sleep on that blue thing in the corner. At her feet. Like a SLAVE. But we’re switching for the second month so it’s cool.
This is our kitchen nook! Know what that huge pot is for? For heating water so I can take a shower that’s not freezing cold because we don’t have hot water. So apparently we moved to Barcelona AND the eighteen hundreds! Nur. Also note the lack of oven, microwave, and toaster. At least have a range so we don’t have to rub sticks together to heat our churros e’ery morn.
This is our table area! Featured items include: roll of toilet paper because the apartment is a vacation rental but didn’t come with any paper products so we just picked up the essentials, our seafood trap, our creepy painting of a guy with two disembodied faces floating behind him (much creepier in person), and White Teeth! Which is the third to last book that I have finished and I would recommend it but not as heartily as all the enthusiastic quotes on the cover would suggest that it should be recommended. Recently completed books also include Atomised and Eat, Pray, Love. Eat, Pray, Love is amaaaaaazing! You will love it. I promise. Even if you hate books and eating and praying and loving. And that’s a promise you can take to the bank, mister. Hey, unrelated! I just learned my new favorite phrase in Spanish. It’s “llorando como una magdalena” and it means crying really hard, but literally it means “crying like a muffin”!! The cutest phrase I have ever heard in my entire life. Also, apparently in Catalan, “pixar” means “ to pee”! Hahahaha, especially choice because some big graphics guy invented the name “Pixar” to imitate the way Spanish verbs are written with -ar endings, so Pixar is supposed to mean “to create pixels” but in Catalan it literally means “to piss”! Ha ha, backfire to the max.
This is our gardeny terracey thing! So pretty. Also pictured: our washer that doesn’t work. Not pictured: the fact that there are no laundromats within half an hour of the apartment and that yesterday I broke down and had to wash my clothes in the sink. Not even the bathroom sink, which is markedly less icky, the KITCHEN sink. Where we wash off our dirty, germy, dishes. Gross. Can’t wait to mooch off Duncan’s washer AND magical dryer when I go visit him in less than two weeks! Oh also, today I took my first hot shower in over a week in my parents’ hotel room and it was so fantastic! Never, ever will I take a hot shower for granted ever again.
This is our train station! It’s Vilassar de Mar, which is Spanish for “really really freaking far from Barcelona.” Ha ha, I kill me. But really, it’s Spanish for “Vilassar of the ocean.” And by Spanish I mean Catalan. I don’t know, it’s late and the internet’s almost closing, nur. But look how pretty it is! We have palm trees! And the beach! That’s the beach on the side. And our apartment is only two diagonal blocks away, which is awesome.
And finally, some bricks! From a random church in Barcelona from when I was walking all around looking for a laundromat. Not that I’m one to complain or anything, you know me.
(This is from yesterday. Or maybe the day before? Nur.) Okay! That’s our apartment and some bricks! I’ll come back and write a little bit about the pictures tomorrow, because somehow it got to be 10:45 and I haven’t called any of the people I was supposed to call so I better get on that. Later!
Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
« I'm in Santorini, loafing around on the internet for hours on end!» New favorite hobby: finding out how many hours I can sleep in a row!
So, this is unrelated to your current post, but apparently my LAST comment wasn’t posted…….
WHO IS THIS DUNCAN?! E-mail me all things. Or I’ll have to stalk him on facebook… like the Planeteers, the power is yours!
Lastly, I miss you <3 I hope you have the most loveliest time in Spain (especially since you get to visit the Rachana!!) and that I see you in New York as soon as you get back :D
— Catie · Oct 3, 08:33 PM · #
slave? oh, wait. it was you that insisted I take the bed, right? so that you could sleep with me when your brother came? CURSE YOU AND YOUR PROPAGANDA PROPELLING WEBSITE.
btw, when you try to sleep in my bed, you might want to watch out. that’s all I’m going to say.
— SLAVEMASTER · Oct 4, 01:45 PM · #
Hi! Sounds like you’re having an adventure
anyone would love to take! Glad you are keeping busy and seeing neat things. Say hi to your family and hope you have a great visit with them
— Arlene Deutsch · Oct 7, 09:42 PM · #