Rome & Pisa part II

Hello all! It's been a very busy past few days. We finally arrived home in Barcelona late last night after a full 12 hour day of traveling. Picking up where I left off in my last entry, that was our main touristy day. Saturday night, we went out with Fabio to Trastevere, which is a big nightlife area in Rome. I bought a t-shirt at the pub we went to that says something in Italian on the front and the back...although I don't really know what it says. I liked it anyway. The pub was kind of similar to Ginger Man or Flying Saucer as it had lots of international beers. After that we went and sat on some steps in the nearby piazza and people watched for a couple of hours. Becca bought me a rose from some guy selling them. We slept late on Sunday, and Becca and Erin went to see the Spanish steps. Sam cooked dinner for us that evening, we had pasta carbonara and salad. It was great...there was probably enough pasta to feed 12 people. After dinner, the girls got ready to go out and Sam's lacrosse coach, also named Fabio, came to pick us up. Will and Sam walked to the Trevi fountain and we got to go in a car and meet them there. The fountain was my favorite thing I saw in Rome for sure. It was so beautiful all lit up. While hanging out there we met some other traveling Americans. They said they had been to Barcelona for a couple of days and it was one of their favorite cities in all of Europe. I saved one of their names in my cell phone so we could be Facebook friends. So I have a new friend from California that I met at the Trevi fountain. Pretty cool if you ask me.
On Monday, Will, Becca, Erin and I went to grab lunch at a little cafe near the apartment because Sam had class during the afternoon. We walked around a little while, then I took a nap and they went to see a church. I like churches, but I've seen a lot of them and I was out till 5:30 in the morning the night before, so napping won that day. When I woke up, we all went to get gelato. I had 2 flavors, pesca (peach) and something that starts with an F that I can't remember, but it was just milk/cream flavored. It was soooooo yummy and very cheap -- I wish ice cream in Barcelona was that cheap. After gelato we went to the grocery store and it was my turn to cook dinner for the group. I made shell pasta with sauteed onion, garlic, and zucchini with 2 types of cheese melted in. I don't want to brag, but...you know. We sat and had some wine and digested for a while, then waited for Sam's friend Jessica to come over. When she got there, we all went up to the roof of the building and listened to music and looked at the views of the city. It was really nice and felt good outside. It was a good relaxing final night in Rome. On Tuesday, we bought slow train tickets back to Pisa, which takes 4 hours, then we had to sit at the airport for about 3. At least there was good shopping in the Pisa airport. Becca and I each bought a little bag of tricolor farfalle pasta to give to our host mom (she LOVED that, we had it for lunch & it was so good) and I also bought a wedge of parmigiano because I'm a cheese freak, obviously. Anyway, we slept on the slow train, ate pizza and shopped in the airport, then took the 1-hr bus trip from Girona airport back to Barcelona. At that point, at the bus station, we were maybe 6 or 7 blocks from our apartment, but too exhausted to walk so we got a cab.
Today was our first day of the new session of school. We are in the same classes, Art and Cinema. I already like class so much better than last time. It's so much more interesting to watch Spanish films and talk about Spanish art and architecture than it is to study verb tenses. We have a different professor for each class, and they are both very nice and patient. After school, we came home and ate delicious Italian pasta with mushrooms and ham, and then Becca went to meet some friends at the beach while I went to get my hair cut. After some intense google searching, I found somewhere that spoke English (I want to practice my Spanish as much as possible, but when it comes to my hair it's too important for mistakes!) and headed over. It was really cool inside, decorated with exposed pipes and brick and big ornate gold mirrors on the walls. Marco cut my hair and he was incredibly nice. He did a great job with my layers (because I'm sure you care about that), so although it was a little pricey, it was necessary and I'm happy with the results :)
Tonight I think we're going to L'Ovella Negra pub to meet some new people from school, and hopefully some locals or people from other countries.
I love and miss you all. 1 more month here!

XXOO
Leah

Pisa and Rome

Buongiorno. I think that's how you spell that. I am so exhausted right now but Italy is amazing! We flew to Pisa late the night of our final exam (Thurs) and met Sam at the airport. Our hostel was a 10 minute cab ride, and we shared a room with 2 guys from Germany and a girl from Australia. It was very cheap but I had a pretty crappy night's sleep since it was really hot and we had the window open so it became very noisy outside around 6am. We all woke up and got ready around 10 so we could check out by 11. The only thing on our agenda was to see the leaning tower of Pisa, so we went to buy our train ticket to Rome and headed that direction. The tower was really cool to see. We took lots of pictures, as always, and did a little souvenir shopping along the side streets. Our train didn't leave until 3:45, and at this point it was only 1 or so, so we went to get our luggage from the hostel and go somewhere to eat. Everything Italian was mostly closed at that point, like things are during Spanish siesta, but we found a really good kebob place to eat at. I had a chicken sandwich that was kind of like a chicken gyro with yogurt sauce and it was tasty. Then we found a minimart and bought some wine for the 4-hour train ride to Rome. We opted for the slow train, which takes 4 hours instead of the fast 1-hour because it saves you about 30 euros. Plus, it's not like it's a drag to take a train through the Italian countryside. The train car was air conditioned and had nice seats, so I have no complaints. After arriving in Rome, we met up with Erin who had arrived in Rome a few hours before, and checked her and Becca into the hostel. Sam and I went to the apartment we are staying at and took showers and hung around. We didn't feel much like going out because the day of traveling kind of took the energy out of us. The next morning (today) we woke up around 10 and showered and got ready, then waited for Will to arrive from England. He showed up around 1, and we went to the metro to go to the Colosseum. We purchased a ticket that allowed entry to the Roman Forum, the Palatine hill, and the Colosseum. It was crazy hot outside, but I've heard it's been over 100 in Texas almost every day this month...not quite THAT bad. After walking around and seeing the ruins and the Colosseum, I was dying because we hadn't eaten anything and it was around 4. We then took another bus to the Pantheon and ate pizza at a small restaurant next to it. The waiter was very taken with Becca and kissed her hand when we left. When he gave us the bill he also brought a bottle of Italian "sexy wine" for us and said it was free. It was pretty good, strawberry flavored wine, normally 15 euro so I guess we got lucky. Or it was because he liked Becca. Anyway, now I'm just at the apartment resting, the girls are at the hostel, and Sam, Will, and Fabio (the son of Sam's family friends) are at the market buying things to make pasta carbonara for dinner. Not a bad little vacation at all. I hope everything is great at home! Good times here and many more to come.

LKP

D.O.N.E.

Session 1 of school is officially over. I just took my final exam and it was actually really hard...but I didn't study that much. Probably not what my family wants to hear, but I only need a 50 to pass and it transfers back to A&M as pass only, not a grade. The grading scale is very different here, and the whole exam is out of 10 points. I got a 7,10 out of 10 on the midterm, whatever that means. On my grade conversion chart it says I got a B, so that's cool. Anyway, I liked my class but I can't honestly say I'll miss it. I'm ready for new people to come for session 2 and have new classes. I'm taking Art and Cinema next time, which is a whole lot more interesting to me than grammar and language. Plus, we found out classes are a lot shorter. This time was 9am-2pm M-F, and next time it's only 10:45-2:15 M-F. And Becca and I are in the same classes this time, too.
Well, our flight leaves tonight at 10:30 but it's out of Girona airport, 1 hr 15 min away. We plan to leave our apartment at around 6:15, grab the bus to Estacio Nord bus station to the airport, where we should arrive around 8. Our flight boards at 10:05pm and we get to Pisa, Italy at almost midnight. Sam is going to meet us there and then we have a hostel for the night. Tomorrow we will go see the leaning tower, have lunch, and get on a train to Rome. Erin is flying from Bcn to meet us in Rome on Friday, and my other friend Will is flying in from London on Saturday. We are hoping to go to the beach at Sorrento on Sunday, but we'll see what we feel like doing. Yesterday morning I booked another flight (definitely the last trip I can afford) to go to Sardinia with Sam. It's a beach on the Italian coast and it looks pretty incredible from what I can tell on Google images. The family he is staying with have a house there and they are letting us stay there. I'm flying in Friday night, July 8, and staying until Monday July 11th. He'll be staying there and flying into Barcelona July 14th so we can show him around the city. :)
Anyway, done with session 1 of school and it feels good! Only 1 month and one week left of my summer in Spain. And so much left to do!
Mom--talked to Marla Tonsi a little bit on Facebook and told her about my trip. She told me to tell you and Dad hi for her.

XXOO
Leah

Roses y Cadaqués y más, oh my

Helloooooooo. It's been a few days since I've written, and I had an amazing weekend. Like I mentioned last time, Friday we missed our excursion to Girona, but Saturday morning we got up early to meet our group for the bus to Costa Brava. It took about 2 hours to get there, and then they let us have free time for almost 6 hours. Well, technically... there was a tour of some "ruins" that everyone was supposed to go on, but it didn't look that interesting to us and we had seen the same type of ruins at the history museum the day before, so Erin, Becca and I kind of snuck off and went to the beach instead. We laid out on a gorgeous beach for wayyyy too long. I thought I put on sunscreen but if you saw me right now you wouldn't know I even had any. It burns. Luckily with my skin it will turn into tan in a few days, but I completely forgot to apply any at all below my knees so my shins and feet are on fire. Oh well. After laying out and swimming all day, I had a bikini (the name of a ham and cheese sandwich) and a Coke for lunch, and we headed back to the bus for Roses. Roses was the small beach town where our hotel was. We were so exhausted we just pushed past everyone, got our room key, and passed out until it was time to eat dinner around 10. Erin, Becca and I got dressed and walked around to pick a restaurant. We were convinced by a waiter who said they had "the best paella, from the bottom of his heart". He seemed so sincere. It was pretty good. We sat there and talked and enjoyed our meal for a good 2 hours or so... We thought we would go out that night, like to a bar or a club, but everyone was feeling so tired from the sun we just called it a night. I ended up sleeping a full 9 hours in the hotel, which was really nice. The next day, Sunday, we got back on the bus and headed to the port, where our own private boat came to pick us up and take us to a little fishing town called Cadaqués. The boat was insanely nice. It was a double decker with a slide going off the top, a snack bar, and an underwater viewing tank where you could see all the fish swimming beside the boat. The best part was it was just for our ISA group. We hung out on the boat and took pictures on the way--the trip took about 40 minutes. Cadaqués was seriously the most beautiful place I think I've ever seen in real life. It had the whitewashed houses with blue shutters that you think of when you picture a Mediterranean town. There were boats floating out in the water, and the water itself was so clear you could see right to the bottom. I've never seen anything so pretty. We took probably 200 pictures, no joke. I put on ten pounds of sunscreen, but I'm staying out of the sun for a few days for sure. My shoulders got it pretty bad. I also cut the bottom of my foot on a rock while at the beach so that doesn't feel too nice. Anyway, all in all it was by far one of the best weekends yet and I definitely want to go on the same excursion again in July.
That's it for the past weekend. Today after school I actually got to meet up with a good friend I haven't seen in 6 years. I met a guy last time I was studying here in Barcelona named Anssi who is from Finland and a couple of years older than me. He's the only one I've kept in touch with the whole time. It was so great to see him. We walked all the way from Plaza Catalunya to my apartment, probably a mile and a half or so, and grabbed some lunch. He is leaving Wednesday so we planned to meet up tomorrow evening and go to Camp Nou or Parc Guell or something like that.
One more story I forgot in my last entry. On Friday when we were going to the beach, the funniest thing ever happened. We saw the metro about to take off but the doors were still open, so we ran to catch it. I slipped inside and Brooke and Becca were (I thought) right behind me. Becca had a cup of soda and she got her arm and the cup stuck in the door of the metro...when she tried to get out, the soda basically exploded everywhere and they were stuck behind while I was still on the metro, surrounded by people giving me the evil eye for being associated with the girl who spilled Coke everywhere. It was the funniest thing. When the metro started to take off, all the soda started sliding to the back and all the people screamed and tried to dodge it. You probably had to be there to understand how great it was, but trust me.
I miss you all very much! I can't believe I'm almost halfway through my trip already. Time is flying. We leave for Rome on Thursday and Sam and I are hopefully planning a day trip to Sorrento on Sunday.
Mucho amor,
LKP

llacuna matata, what a wonderful phrase

Sooooo things did not exactly go as planned today. We were supposed to wake up at 8 to meet the ISA group at 9 to take the bus to Girona, like I've been talking about for the past week...we decided to turn off our alarms and sleep in instead. I was up late watching a movie on my computer and Becca went out with friends, so we ended up sleeping until 1:30 in the afternoon. Oops. There will be another chance for us to go in the next session. After we were fully awake, we went to eat lunch in Plaza Catalunya at Pastafiore, a good place for cheap pizza and close to the metro/train station/buses. We met our friend Brooke, ate lunch, then got on the metro to go to the beach. We chose to go to a different metro stop called Llacuna (pronounced yakuna) because the beach is cleaner and less crowded. The one closest to our place, called Port Olimpic, is more convenient, but there are people walking around trying to sell you beer or a massage that bother you every 2 minutes. The beach was a lot of fun, we stayed from around 4:30 to a little after 7 and got some good sun. We just had dinner with Fina and Juan, and now I think we're going to head to bed a little early because we are going to Costa Brava early in the morning, and we actually want to wake up for this one. Love you!

Leah Kay

Moruno y kursaal

Those are the names of some tapas I just ate. They were soooooooo good. Moruno was in quotation marks on the menu for some reason...hope that's not bad...but it was a little skewer of marinated pork and it was tasty. Kursaal was bread with a slice of eggplant, tomato, zucchini, shaved manchego cheese, and a piece of asparagus on top. Incredible. I took a card and the receipt from the bar because I'm a loser and I want them for my scrapbook. I also grabbed the whole placemat, a piece of paper with all the tapas and pictures of them. I liked it especially because it's in Catalan.
Instead of school today we had a field trip. First we saw the oldest church here, the St. Maria del Mar, and it was awesome inside. There was a huge circular stained glass window at the top and huge arching columns lining both sides. It's hard to describe it accurately but I have pictures. I feel like I use the words huge and awesome a lot, but that's pretty much what everything is. After that we went to the museum of history and saw some Roman ruins that are preserved underground. Apparently in the 4th century or somewhere around then, where Barcelona is currently was an ancient Roman village. They showed us the room where they fermented wine and kept it, where they dyed their clothes and washed the laundry, and also some aqueducts. Pretty neat. Luckily the guide spoke very good English so I could grasp what was going on.
Yesterday we took the metro to a random stop on the Ramblas and walked all the way down to the end we haven't been to before, down by the beach. There is a huge famous statue of Christopher Columbus at this end, with statues of lions all around the base of it.
Today we were done at the museum around 2:30, and we walked around the Gothic quarter and shopped for a while. We had some pizza for lunch and then got on the metro to Passeig de Gracia, one of the big central stations where there is a lot of shopping and good tapas places. It's only a few bus stops from our apartment, and there is also a train station there, which hopefully we will use soon to go to some of the less crowded beaches outside the city. I'm exhausted...I think we walked around for about 5 hours today. Tonight we are going to a bar with friends from school...here you order 2 tapas plates for the table and they give you a complimentary bottle of champagne. Tomorrow morning we get up early and go to Girona and the Dali Museum, then early Saturday leave for the weekend in Costa Brava. Time is going by quick--1 week from today is our final exam and we leave for Rome that night!
Also want to add that I love my mommy and daddy and I'm grateful for all they've done for me, and I'm a spoiled brat.
Buenos tardes,
Leah

I'm getting forgetful in my old age

This is a little addendum to my Paris post. I totally forgot about the dinner we had our last night there, which is weird because it was one of the best meals I've had here so far. We decided we didn't want to go anywhere far away or have to take a metro or train to find a restaurant, so we walked down Ave. Diderot right by our hostel and looked at every menu we saw. A few things looked good but we wanted to make sure Allison had some good gluten-free options. We settled on a little Italian restaurant that had a huge menu of salads, pizzas, and pastas. We were excited because a Coke here was only 3 euro, whereas every other restaurant would charge almost 5. For one soda. I'm assuming no free refills in Europe, either. wahhh. It gets better though -- our sodas arrived in a HUGE glass with 2 big slices of lemon, a huge slice of orange, like half an orange really, and some kind of confetti decoration on a stick. I felt like maybe I was the 1000th customer and won something. As for la comida, I ordered spaghetti carbonara after looking at the menu for 3 seconds because YUM, and I don't get to eat much pasta in Spain. Becca ordered tortellini, Allison got risotto a la bolognese because the waiter was adamant about her getting that when she showed him her French instructions for gluten-free eating, and Mel ordered a quattro fromage pizza. Everything was really good, the service was great (the waiter teased us because we wanted to order dessert but couldn't finish all the food), and it was one of the cheapest and most enjoyable meals yet. The dessert menu was impressive and had pictures of everything. It was hard to pick, but Becca got 1 scoop of chocolate and 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream, Allison got a tartuffo (sp?), and Melanie and I shared a banana split. The biggest banana split I've ever seen, to be exact. The strawberry ice cream in it was the best part. I'm getting hungry right now just writing about this.

Well, not much has gone on to be honest since we got back to Barcelona. I went to a pub called L'Ovella Negra (black sheep) last night with some friends from school and it was really cool, it seems like a good local place to hang out so I'm sure I'll be back. Still need to figure out the NitBus, but we have the daytime bus figured out reasonably well. Tomorrow we have a field trip to a museum instead of class (wheee!) and Friday we leave for Girona and the Dali Museum. Saturday and Sunday we will be in Costa Brava and staying in a hotel (sucks, right?) and lounging on the beach all day. It is a hard life I lead. I'm hoping to go to the Barcelona soccer stadium, Camp Nou, this afternoon. I'll make sure to post again when something interesting happens! Also, it took me like 45 minutes but I finally figured out how to change the background of the blog to a photo I actually took. I took that picture of la Sagrada Familia last week and edited the colors so only the sky would be blue. I thought it looked cool since the building itself is kind of creepy looking, it belonged in black and white.
One more thing...I found a Barcelona travel book in my carry-on that I forgot about, and wrote down a ton of stuff I want to do. I thought I would share a few things. 1-a reasonably priced sushi restaurant. I've been so sad without sushi, and I read that it's actually really popular and tasty here, but most places charge 20euro per person, no thanks! 2-There is a specialty gift store called Papirum that sells handmade photo albums. I want to go and see if there are any I can afford- I'd love to put my pictures in a handmade Spanish album. 3-Museu Picasso, of course. I read it's free on the 1st Sunday of the month, so hopefully if I'm here on the first Sunday in July that can be our plan for the day. 4-Try orxata and/or granizado. Orxata, or horchata, is famous in Barcelona and made with ground tigernuts (anyone know what those are?) It's supposed to be kind of milky and sweet. Granizado is kind of like a slushy made with fresh fruit and crushed ice. I hear the lemon is best. I wrote down the best places to try both from my book. 5-La Pedrera de Nit. We've already been to la Pedrera, the apartment building designed by Gaudi supposedly without a single straight line or right-angle, but we didn't go inside. (side story: I read that back in the day when people lived there, a tenant complained that his piano wouldn't fit well in the room because everything was curved, and Gaudi suggested he take up the violin instead. HA) Apparently Fri and Sat nights from 9pm-1am you can go up to the roof there and have cava (Spanish sparkling wine) and watch the city. Sounds worth a few euros to me. 6-Piscines Bernat Picornell, or the big swimming pool used when they had the Olympic games here (I think that was 1992). I assumed it would be closed to the public, but it's not! andddd honestly there are 100 more things on this list but for the sake of boring you I'll say the last thing is the Icaria Yelmo cineplex, which is on the beach in Port Olimpic (right down the street from us) and plays new films in English. This might seem dumb, but I NEED to see the final Harry Potter film when it comes out :). That's all for now! Let's see if I can do all this by July 30th!

Love you lots in los Estados Unidos,
Leah K

3 days in Paris

Bonjour! We had an awesome weekend, but it's great to be back at "home". Our flight to Paris left Barcelona at 8:35am, so we woke up at 5 to make sure we had the route figured out. After getting on the wrong train, getting off and getting on the right train, and waiting in the wrong line to get our boarding passes stamped (twice), we made it to our gate and boarded on time. Luckily neither of us had to check a bag. Once we arrived in Paris, things got confusing, as we only know about 4 words in French, none of which have anything to do with directions or "I'm lost". We found the metro station and talked with a couple of guys from Romania while we waited to buy our metro tickets. Once we arrived at the right metro stop near the hostel, we had some trouble actually finding Allison, but figured it out after about 15 min of wandering around. We checked into Blue Planet hostel, put our luggage in the luggage room and set off for the Arc de Triomphe. It was so cool and detailed, and we got some incredible pictures. It cost 6 euro for entry, and we walked ALLLLLL the 34578934 stairs to the top where we could see the whole city. Unfortunately it was a little gray and rainy off and on, but it didn't take away from the day. After the Arc, we walked all the way down the Champs-Élysées, which goes from the Arc de Triomphe down to the Louvre. Melanie got a butter and sugar crepe which was GOOOD. I stole some. We stopped into a few stores, but everything was naturally way out of my price range. Even the same stores that they have here in Barcelona were more expensive there. We got to the Louvre and got in for free. I saw so many things I recognized that were crazy to see up close in real life. The Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa were awesome. It was really hard to get close to the Mona Lisa because it had the biggest crowd in front of it and it's so small, but it's amazing to have seen it. By this point it was getting late and we were all getting sleepy and hungry, so we went to look for a restaurant to have dinner. We found a nice bistro that looked relatively inexpensive compared to others we had seen (not saying much...) I ordered roast chicken and it was perty good (it's hard to mess that up). That night I had a miserable night's sleep in the hostel because the mattress was worn in the middle so the wire frame was pressing into me all night, but I felt okay the next day anyway. We got up around 9 and met at 10 to head to the palace at Versailles. Stopped for a little breakfast at a bakery next door (I had a quiche lorraine and it was fabulous) on the way. After arriving at the palace and taking some pictures in front of it, we noticed the line to get in was ridiculous...it looked like at least a 2 hour wait. We went into the information office and Melanie asked if there was any way to avoid that line. Luckily we found out if we pay 1 more euro we get a guided tour in English with a small group, which was perfect for us...and we didn't have to wait in that line. We went off to find lunch while waiting for our tour to start, and found a great place right around the corner. I ordered French onion soup and o.m.g. it was the best in the world (obviously, what better place to get it than Paris). Yum. Then we went on our tour of the palace and got to see the king's quarters and the opera house. The opera house was my favorite--it was completely made out of wood, which the guide said was for better acoustics, but it had been painted to look like marble and it really looked cool. The king had a private screened box in the 2nd balcony so he could watch performances without being seen or bothered. After the tour portion we were allowed to walk around on our own. They were doing a special exhibition of different thrones from all over Europe - some of them were crazy. They had the little tent on stilts that people would carry royalty around in, and the chair that sits on top of an elephant for a king or queen to ride around on. Stuff I've only seen in movies. The hall of mirrors was the best part in my opinion. We got some great pictures here too but it was so crowded and we were getting tired, so we headed out and decided not to pay the extra 7 euro to see the gardens. That night, Becca and I didn't have a reservation confirmed at the Blue Planet because they were all full, so we searched around for a hotel. Allison found us a little one right around the corner that had 2 singles available, so we got our own rooms with bathroom and shower - such a luxury after the 1st night in the hostel. That night, we didn't want to pay for another sit-down dinner so we went across the street to a mini-mart and bought all kinds of cheeses and meat and bread and wine to have a little picnic at the Eiffel Tower. It was about as amazing as it sounds. We saw the sun set at the tower and watched it light up and sparkle every hour. Can't wait to show you all pictures of that. It was so incredible. We really enjoyed our little picnic and taking pictures and just hanging out. I got a much better night's sleep in the little hotel that night. Allison & Melanie wanted to wake up early to go to the Catacombs, but Becca and I decided to sleep in and skip out on that. Those ended up being closed, so they headed off to do a bike tour of Paris. Becca and I wanted to see Notre Dame, because Allison and Mel had already gone the day before we arrived. We woke up at 11, checked out, confirmed our reservation at Blue Planet for our last night, and headed out to get food and find the cathedral. I grabbed a cheap lunch as we walked--a hot dog in a baguette with melted cheese on top...how could that be bad? On our way across the river we saw an awesome little outdoor market with exotic birds, gerbils, spices, sachets, little tin signs and paintings and a lot of other great stuff. We hung out here for probably almost an hour just looking at the birds. I ended up buying a black and white photo of an old man walking a rabbit on a leash in front of the Eiffel Tower. I love it. Eventually we made it to Notre Dame, got a few photos, walked around it, and then went to find a place to eat and do more shopping. Becca ordered a croque monsieur and I got chocolate mousse because I had already eaten and I wanted to make sure I had mousse before I left. It was great but sooooooo rich and I couldn't finish it. Becca said it tasted like eating a Cadbury chocolate egg. So after eating, we spent a couple of hours walking along the river and looking at souvenir stuff. I bought some postcards for my scrapbook and we took more pictures. There are a ton. I think we must have taken 500 pictures in 1 weekend.
Well, all in all it was one amazing weekend. I miss you all so much and hope you are doing well in the U.S. I'll send out some pictures soon! I have to get to studying because we have our school midterm tomorrow (yikes) and clearly I didn't bring my Spanish notes to Paris with me.
XOXO,
Leah

Deseo que mis pies estaban limpias :(

Or for those of you who speak English, I wish my feet were clean. That's one of the down sides to being here...my feet are always dirty!!! Mommy forgot to pack me wipies for mis pies so I bought my own. Well, today was interesting...we got lost! I actually enjoyed it. We are trying to learn the bus routes because we understand the metro now, so we asked the fam which route to take to school. The stop is only 1 block away and it's nice to look out the window instead of being underground. So we took route 56 to school and everything was fine. On the way home, we decided to hop back on the same bus instead of taking the metro home. We assumed (You should never assume. You know why.) that it went in a circle and would bring us around back to our apartment. Wrong. We were going...and going....and stopped seeing anything familiar...and then the bus stopped and everyone got off...including the driver. Meaning the bus route just ended and we had no idea what part of the city we were in, or even if we were near a metro. We just got off and started walking, and luckily saw a metro stop. We were about 8 or 9 stops away from our place. Oops. We usually make it home by 2:30 but it was almost 3:30 when we finally got back, and there was no lunch for us because they thought we weren't coming home. Becca had tried this Chinese place by our metro stop one day on a rare occasion when we weren't together and said it was really good and a lot of food for cheap, so we went there. We split a plate of rice and chicken with mixed vegetables and surprisingly it tasted really good. I thought the meat would be questionable, but I was impressed, and I have had some seriously delicious Chinese food in my almost 22 years. After lunch we headed over to the ISA office to print off our boarding passes for Paris. The office is pretty cool, there is a department called "Actividades Culturales" which can help you find good local places to go instead of the touristy areas. We will have to use that resource for sure. There's also a "chill out room" with books and movies and couches. Boarding passes were successfully printed and we are officially checked in and ready to go...now the only problem is packing under 22 pounds worth of stuff for the weekend, as that is RyanAir's weight limit. If you check a bag or go over the limit, it's 40 euros.
In other news, I just signed up for the ISA excursion to Girona and Costa Brava next weekend the 17-19. I'm so excited about this. Girona has the Salvador Dali museum and he is my absolute favorite artist. And Costa Brava is...well, probably the nicest beach I'll ever go to. Not to mention we get to stay in a nice hotel, too.

Well, that's all I've got for now. My mom said she has been reading these out loud to people at work. I hope you guys are enjoying hearing about my experience as much as I am living it! More later.

xxxoooxxxxxx..... Leah

Feliz cumpleaños a papá

Today is our host dad's 64th birthday, and tomorrow is their daughter Sandra's 34th, so we had a huuuuuuuge, and I mean huge dinner. Let me try to remember what we ate... There was a salad with avocado, feta, and tomatoes, fried crab, fried shrimp, these little cheese things wrapped in phyllo, 2 kinds of bread, a quiche with ham and mushrooms, pizza, olives, potato chips, and sparkling wine. Oh, and 2 freaking cakes, a brownie cake with nuts and an apple cake. I have the biggest food baby ever right now.  I wanted to know the names of things in Spanish so I pointed at the little cheese things in phyllo and asked... I couldn't understand what Fina said, I thought she said "paquetitos" so I repeated it as a question and everyone cracked up. I thought I said something inappropriate or embarrassing...turns out what I said was "little packets" which is exactly what they looked like anyway, so go me. So I feel really bad because we never have a celebration for my poor real dad in the states. I think next year I will bake him a cake and put sparklers in it like they did for Antonio. We definitely bonded over dinner-- It was Fina, Antonio, me, Becca, the daughters Sandra and Cristina, and Cristina's boyfriend Conrad (the one who picked us up when we arrived). We talked about how expensive colleges are in the U.S., and we tried to explain the difference between private college and public. Sandra mentioned that Fina wants grandchildren and I said my mom too but I am too young. They laughed. Either they think I am funny or they think my Spanish is sad. Either way I had fun. We talked about the cat Lolo and they said his birthday is in July so we will have another party and another cake. Then obviously it will be my birthday...at first we thought it would be fun to go out to a nice dinner for my b-day, but after tonight I'm thinking we'll stay in for it...it's free after all!
After school today, I took a nap (per usual) and then we went to try to find our program office so we could print our boarding passes for Paris. Unfortunately by the time we actually found it it was 7:20, and the office closes at 7:30, so we will go again tomorrow. At this point it started raining and we called some people from class and met up at a nearby Irish bar called George Payne. They have 1 euro sangria and beer every afternoon. We met a guy around my dad's age that went to UF like Dad did, and he said they just arrived and asked for some good places to check out. Today was really really fun. Our friend Erin from school just got back from Paris last night and showed us all these great pictures--makes me even more excited to go!! Just 2 more days of boring school then we're off to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre and Versailles and all kinds of other French things!

Miss/love you all!
Leah Kay

Spicies potatoes

That is one of the menu options at a nearby tapas bar that is translated into sad English. Haven't tried it yet, but I like spicies, so maybe one day soon. School today was bleh, but some funny things happened I thought I should mention before I forget. Our profesora, Mar, was getting frustrated with us and said some of us are getting worse instead of better. She said maybe she should pick a new profession and asked what we thought she would be good at. Someone immediately goes, "policia!" which was pretty funny...she looked offended. Then someone said actriz, and one boy said "modelo" like, as in model...suck-up. She said he got +3 points for that comment. She talked to the same boy for about 5 minutes straight trying to get him to pronounce Urquinaona, which is one of the Plazas/metro stops here. Granted it is really, really difficult to say...it's like or-keen-ah-oh-na. Try saying that 3 times fast. Then we got to try to say "refrigerador" for 5 more minutes, even though that's not even the word they use for refrigerator here in Spain (they say "nevera"). One of our homework assignments this weekend was to write our own riddles in Spanish, and the class had to guess what it was. I made mine way easier than everyone else's...oops. Mine was "tinta" or ink...I just said something like, this object helps with writing and printing. Can be very expensive. Find me in a pen, like in your notebook or in a letter. Look for smudges. Others did a shark, a broom, and I can't remember what else but they were hard and no one knew the Spanish words for those. Sometimes class is really frustrating because I don't think we are all in the right level. Some people don't know the Spanish alphabet...which is like Spanish 101 day 1. There are also some people in advanced level that I'm pretty sure I'm better at speaking than they are...but I won't complain for getting an easier ride and getting credit at A&M. After our riddles, Mar handed out a piece of paper with Disney characters on it. We were supposed to pick one and describe them so the rest of the class could guess. I picked Aladdin and talked about how his best friend is a monkey and he doesn't wear a shirt. Easy enough. Well, that's all for now! Hasta luego
XXOO
LKP

Eres tu el trigo de mi pan ♥

Or in English, you are the wheat of my bread. romantic, no? It's a line in this really bad Spanish song in the back of our phrase book. We did a whole lot today. For lunch we had chicken and some ravioli type stuff with the weird imitation parmesan they use here that I'm still not used to. After lunch around 3:30 we took the metro 1 stop to La Sagrada Familia. I think that it has to be the most impressive thing I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of cool stuff in my day. It's insane how much detail is in it. We got a lot of great pictures. After walking around there for a bit, we headed home to grab our map and I asked mama and papa what bus line to take to get to Casa Batllo and La Pedrera (2 very famous houses built by Antoni Gaudi). We haven't taken the bus yet but there is a bus stop 50 yards from our house and it was much easier than the metro. We're hoping to start taking the night bus (nitbus) home when we go out at night instead of taking cabs because it will save us a lot of money and a bus driver won't try to screw you over like a taxi driver would. I haven't had any bad experiences with taxi drivers yet luckily, but I've heard people complain that they drive you all over town a very roundabout way to rack up the fare.
Our unlimited metro passes work for the buses as well. We went to Casa Batllo first and it was awesome. From there, we walked 5-6 blocks to La Pedrera and got more good photos for the scrapbook I plan to make. I've been saving everything in hopes to put it all together when I get home. After La Pedrera, we got back on the metro and got off on a stop called Jaume I which is near the Gothic quarter of Barcelona, and also where City Hall is. We walked around Carrer de l'Angel for a while which is a cool really old-looking street with lots of good shopping. I got a couple of nice things for my mama. Then we headed back to the metro and stopped at a restaurant near our apartment for some patatas bravas and a Bikini (kind of like a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, not sure why it's called that...) And now here we are, just waiting on Mama Fina to make us some paella for dinner. Our lives are so hard. After dinner its homework time, and our professors seriously have loaded it on this weekend-- I have about 6-7 pages of stuff to do. Hope whoever reads this is enjoying our posts!
Much love,
Leah Kay

Me encanta cava

Hi Everyone!

Well my name is Becca and I'm Leah's roomie for the summer.  Leah (aka Pajarito) has been hounding me to post on this and I finally gave in. I have read the other entries that Leah posted and she has done an accurate job of summing up our time here in Barcelona, so far. For this reason, I'll start off by describing what I did today. I started off the day with a bocadilla (sandwich) and cafe con leche on the way to the metro. I met with my ISA group to travel to a vineyard and then Sitges for the day. Cava Codorniu is the vineyard we went to and it was quite nice. It is one of the oldest in Spain and has the largest cellar in the world. After touring the grounds and cellar, we were allowed to try a glass of pink and white cava (although I must admit that I somehow managed to snag 4 hehe).  After our tasting we were aloud to look around the gift shop and I ended up buying a pair of coasters for 3 euros. I was the last one out of our group left inside the building because I had to go get a book I had left in the cellar and then my coasters slipped out of my bag on the way out and smashed all over. My group leader named Antonio had to come looking for me and I felt bad but he is really cute so I didn't feel too, too bad :) Anyway, after we go on the bus we headed off to the very pretty port town of Sitges. Here, everyone was aloud to do their own thing so I headed off to the beach to relax for a couple of hours. After I relaxed on the beach for awhile, I decided to find myself some grub so I went to a bar with a terrace on the roof and ate tapas. It was very relaxing and I was disappointed that I had to leave. That basically sums up my day. There will be more to come but for right now, I just want to curl up with my computer and watch bridezillas :) Adios!

it's beginning to look a lot like España

Que tal everyone? Today was a pretty relaxing day. And by relaxing, I mean I accidentally slept until lunch time (2:30pm). Last night Becca, Chelsea, Haley and I walked in the rain to this little Irish bar. We met a couple of guys from Paris and attempted to talk to them for a while. There are actually a lot of Irish bars here, I guess a lot of people from the UK visit Spain? We got home at about 3:30 in the morning, and then I Skyped with mom and dad for the first time. Mom was excited, I don't think she's ever Skyped before. It's so much easier than e-mailing but also kind of sucks because I have to wait till they get off work for a decent time to talk, which is 3-4 in the morning here. This afternoon I met my friend Brooke at Plaza Catalunya where we walked around and did some shopping. We found out there's a Sephora, which is great.....annddd it's way more expensive than ours in the U.S. We grabbed some pizza at this place called Pastafiore which is a yummy place on Las Ramblas that I went to last time I came here. It's really good. Last time however, I left my wallet on the table and when I came back like 8 minutes later it had disappeared. I'm being much more careful with my bag this time around, I keep my hand on it when I'm walking and on the metro. Seeing as last time I had a few mishaps, i.e. the one I just mentioned as well as losing my apartment keys and having to pay to get the locks changed (muy caro), I'm on top of my game now. After eating, we had some gelato. I got lemon and Brooke got vanilla and crema y chocolate (in Catalan chocolate is spelled like Xocolate), in case you were wondering. Becca went to Sitges beach today. I think tonight we're going to go out for some sangria after dinner and possibly to a club or something. Saturday night is the big night to go out here in Barcelona.
A few things I discovered today-
Your dog can go in to the grocery store with you. The men at Sephora here wear more makeup than me. Some girls wear 6 inch stilettos during the day for no reason. No one will give up their seat on the metro for you. No one. Even if you are an old lady with a cane.
Miss you all and can't wait to go to Paris next weekend! Adios

LKP

Nap + tapas = napas

Mmm...napas. My favorite part of the day! I am so happy because it's Friday and I got out of school an hour early today. School isn't really that bad, it's just the fact that we are in the same classroom for 5 hours every day. There is an ISA excursion to Sitges beach tomorrow, but I'm not going. I went to Sitges last time I was here and it was really beautiful, but I decided I'd rather go by myself or with Becca than the whole ISA group.
So for those of you who don't know, we have 2 trips planned so far this month. Next Friday Becca and I are missing school and heading to Paris to meet up with my sister and her roommate Melanie. We are all staying in the same hostel. So exciting! I've always wanted to go to Paris. Some people we've met here said 3 days is the perfect amount of time to see it (since it's expensive it's probably good it's just 1 weekend). Then after our final exams on June 23rd we are off to Rome to visit Sam and his Italian friends/family. Can't wait for that either. We are staying there for 5 days and missing our first day of school of session 2 (no big deal, mom.) We really are having the time of our lives here. The meal schedule has definitely taken some getting used to...small or no breakfast, lunch at 2:30 and dinner at 9:45-10pm. Good thing there are tapas to hold us over. There are also a few weird things at dinner that I haven't tried. For example last night Fina served us mayonesa with our vegetables. They put mayonnaise all over their veggies here... I want to feel good about myself if I'm going to eat vegetables. I felt kinda bad because Fina actually makes her own mayonesa but...still. As far as tapas go, we have tried several, but I want to try almost everything before I leave. We've had patatas bravas, which are diced potatoes with a spicy sauce over them, calamares a la romana (fried calamari in rings), chorizo (awesome), croquetas (croquettes usually with fish in them, tuna mostly), tortilla espanola (very typical here, made with potato, egg, onion, sometimes veggies), and empanadas. There are a few I definitely want to avoid, like callos (tripe, a.k.a. sheep intensines). Um, nooo thanks!
The weather here has been less than perfect the past few days, kind of colder and drizzling. When it clears up the first thing I want to do is go to La Sagrada Familia. I walked around it last time, but never went inside. It's 15 euro for a tour and I'm thinking it might be worth it. I read that they probably won't complete it until 2026, and then it will be the tallest church in the world. It's so crazy looking and there is so much detail in it. I also definitely want to go to the Picasso and Dali museums. Dali is my favorite artist - he's so weird. Also on our list of things to visit is Estadi Olímpic de Montjuïc, back to Parc Guell and not trip and sprain my ankle this time, Camp Nou (soccer stadium of course), the Columbus monument, the Gothic church of Santa Maria del Pi, Montserrat (here I want to take a cable car up into the mountains). But those are just a few. I'm glad I'm here for enough time to do all these things, and hopefully some of them are free.
Also, thought y'all should know that Becca and I have new nicknames. I don't eat that much at meals and so my host dad says I eat like a little bird "pajarito" and Becca named herself un gran elefante. I quite enjoy this.
One more thing...I will have you guys know that I gave someone directions in Spanish today. It was kind of slow and I used a map, but be proud of me.

Besos,
Leah

Bon dia!

Okay everyone, I'm back by popular demand (or because Tiffany and my mom asked). Let's see what I forgot about in the last entry. Well when we flew into Spain the first day of our program, we started in Madrid. My friend Ivan picked us up at the airport super early in the morning so we wouldn't have to wait around 3 hours for the ISA group to pick us up (thx Ivan!) Our hotel was really nice. We slept and then had our ISA initiation meeting thing. After 2 days and a couple of walking tours in Madrid (it's nice, but no Barcelona), we took a bus to Toledo, which (I think) is the oldest city in Spain, and so beautiful. Everything looks so...old. and preserved. We had a cool tour here where we saw an El Greco painting in a church up at the top of a hill. I love looking at old art, I just hate hills. Everything was at the top of a huge hill that had like 7 sets of escalators installed into the side of it to help fat Americans like us get up there to the city. Becca and I are kinda in love with one of our ISA guides named Antonio. He is so cute. On the bus from Toledo to Barcelona (7.freaking.hours.) he was telling us all kinds of things we can't say to Spanish people or they would think we were crazy. For example, the one that comes to mind is you can't say the word for "rabbit" (conejo) off-handedly because it means lady parts. As if Spanish men aren't creepy enough, that might make it worse. So after that bus ride we arrived in Barcelona and everyone was greeted by their host families. They all had signs with our names, it was so cute. Our mom's daughter and her boyfriend, who is a taxista, came to get Becca and I. They were very nice and carried our luggage for us. Then we met our mom, Josefina, who we call Mama Fina now. She is adorable, probably even shorter than me and has dyed bright reddish purple hair. She is a great cook, we had tortilla espanola our first night and it was much better than when I had it last time I came to Spain. Her husband was traveling on business so we didn't meet him for a few more days, but he is great too. He is obsessed with Barca futbol, but who isn't here? They have 2 grown daughters named Sandra and Cristina, both of whom we've met now. Sandra speaks a few words of English and told us she is moving to London to find work at the end of the month and she is nervous. 

So far we've done most of our exploring on our own, and not with a big group from ISA. We went to all the cheesy tourist clubs down by the beach at Port Olimpic, which are extremely over-priced and kind of a joke around here, but it's part of the experience and it's a good place to meet other young international travelers. We met a group of boys from Scotland that were around our age that we ended up hanging with for a few days, and a weird guy from Paris who was really good at doing the moonwalk. 

Well, Becca is on a Gothic walking tour right now, which I kind of wanted to go to but didn't for 3 reasons: 1. I twisted my ankle on Sunday and it's still pretty swollen. 2. I needed a little nap. and 3. It's been raining all day and it's gross out. Good news is, she left me home alone with her Oreos, so I'm gonna get to eating her food. It's what good roommates do. I'll make her update this soon.

Adios a todos,

Leah

Our first entry!!!!

Howdy yall! We have been in Barcelona 1 week today and it's just amazing. I don't want to brag, but yes I do. We've gone to the beach a few times, which is kind of crowded but worth it because Texas beaches are gross. By now, we've gotten the hang of using the metro and are starting to wonder why we don't have them in Texas. It's so convenient and fast. We drink Sangria almost everywhere we go because it's the same price as beer and tastes better. Also makes it feel like we're on vacation and not going to school. The other night we went to watch the FC Barcelona-Man U soccer match at the Arc de Triomf with like 10,000 crazy Spaniards. When we won 3-1, the whole town went insane. Everyone was setting fires, marching around with megaphones knocking stuff over, and shooting off fireworks. One of the best nights here for sure. The only problem with Barcelona is we are burning through money like crazy -- it's hard to keep track of it. And the exchange rate sucks, which I keep forgetting.
School is alright. It's pretty hard because our teacher is very serious and of course speaks no English. I have to say I have already learned more here than I have in a semester of Spanish at school. My intermediate class is 5 hours a day 5 days a week - way more than I'm used to! But at least I'm learning a lot and it's helping us with conversation skills. Yesterday we learned how to give directions and ask for directions with a map -- pretty helpful stuff. Becca is in advanced level, which I will take next session in July.
Our host mom, Fina, and her husband Juan Antonio are so so so nice to us. They talk to us at meals and are patient with us when we try to express things in mediocre Spanish. She is a great cook and we have a great central location in the city. We live right by the same metro station I used last time I was in Barcelona in 2005. I think we got really lucky as far as our situation here goes.
Well, we are about to go out and buy our 1-month metro passes for June and go on a walk. We will both update this as much as we can! Love you all and we already miss everyone. FYI I will be back July 30th, and Becca will be back Aug 17th.

Sincerely,
LKP