The four girls woke up at 7:00am to walk to a grassy hill for morning yoga. Please note that since Barcelonians eat lunch at about 2-3pm and dinner around 9pm that we basically woke up at what feels like 4am. I taught my very first yoga class to the girls. The experience was amazing, but that was probably because of the atmosphere of being on top of a grassy hill surrounded by mountains (and not because of my teaching).
By 9:00am I was sitting in my first class in the last five months. It is interesting how my perspective on school has changed since going on my internship this fall. I genuinely wanted to learn what our professor Rosella Nicolini (the Spanish teacher) was lecturing on. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to do homework, take quizzes, write reports, or take tests. I do however enjoy sitting in class and thinking about the lecture. Heck, I don't even mind taking notes. Go figure: I actually learned a different perspective too. (quite impressive for the first day) We discussed trade policies (which normally sounds like death). She compared the United States NAFTA policy to the EU trade policy. Turns out that the United States doesn't necessarily make all the best decisions. We could actually learn things from other countries. The second class was very similar. We talked about EU history and Panina filled us in on some of the information that was too indepth in the first class. Besides the fact that my attention span has drastically decreased and I could barely stay focused for too long, I think I might not be pained by the "study" part of "study abroad".
The third educational experience of the day was going to the "Supermercat" for groceries. We had to take a metro to the supermercat and then struggled trying to get everything we needed (in Spanish). It took us over and hour and we only made once mistake: Nina bought half a gallon of shower gel instead of lotion for the group. Hey- live and learn right? And we will definitely not run out of shower gel on this trip.
The remaining hours of the afternoon was spent eating our sandwiches and preparing of the evening. A group of 18 people from our class went into barcelona for dinner. We went to a place that Tyler had found right of the main square. It was one of the best meals so far that I had in Barcelona (italian food actually). We had a long and lazy dinner, which is one of my favorite things about Spain. No one is in a rush. No restaurant rushes us out. We met up with one of Tara, Kyle, and Bailey's friends that are in Barcelona for a study abroad with Texas A&M arcitecture. Their group is exactly opposite of ours. While we have 27 girls and 7 guys, they have 30 guys and 5 girls. Hmm, seems as though we should be hanging out more often, right? They live in the city as therefore know places to go in the evening. We ended up in a bar that is literally a hole in the wall. The atmoshpere was definitely one of Spain and the people within the bar were mainly all Spaniards. It is interesting to note the difference between the way American and Spanish guys react to females. American guys look at a girl and then send their friend to go talk to her for him. Or they have a terrible pickup line or try to act cool. Spanish men have no shame in looking a girl up and down (very uncomfortable if you are not used to this) and are excited to see American girls enter the bar since they can be easily wooed. (who wouldn't be compared to the awkwardness of our texan boys?)
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