Hola desde Barcelona!

Alrighty. First of all, hello to all that will be reading this, estudiantes de espanol, familia, y amigos, saludos. Since this is my first blog post I’ll give you all a rundown of what’s going on: where I am, how my days go, how my traveling was, etc.

Obviously from the title you know that I’m in Barcelona. I’m studying here at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra for fall semester and I live in what my program calls a homestay: I live with a family that provides meals, laundry, a place to sleep and study, and all other essentials. My family is actually just one lady, se llama Carmen Garcia-Prieto. She is absolutely amazing and has been teaching me tons about Barcelona, Spanish, Catalan, y muchas otras cosas. Now Catalan, as you may or may not know, is the language they speak here. Of course the people also speak Spanish but these two languages are the official languages of Catalunya, the region in Spain of which Barcelona is the capital.

So, as for traveling here, it was exhausting and exciting at the same time and I’ll give you a run down.

1. Flew from Cincinnati to Philadelphia; got stuck in Phili airport and didn’t leave for Spain until 2 AM (muy divertido…)

2. Flew from Philadelphia to Madrid, the capital of Spain; arrived at 6ish and spent the next two days exploring what I could. Hopefully when I return I can give a better overview of the city.

3. Drove from Madrid to Toledo, the previous and ancient capital of Spain; great old city complete with walls and tiny tiny streets; got lost in the suburbs until 2 AM and had to ask for directions back to the hotel. Yay for practicing Spanish!

4. Drove from Toledo to Barcelona; now living with Carmen in the Eixample neighborhood of the city.

Overall seeing this much of Spain this quickly was a little overwhelming and it’s nice to be settled in and unpacked here, but it was definitely enjoyable and I got to meet the other ISA students studying in Barcelona, so it was thoroughly worth it.

Finally, and as a nice wrap up of this post, a little info on how it’s going here. In general nothing crazy exciting has happened so far but I’m perfectly content with that. I’ve been to my university, gone through orientation, and other than that mostly just explored or hung out with friends. Barcelona is a pretty big city but really easy to get around using the metro or really just walking even. Actually funny story about the metro, my first time riding it a guy pretty near me got yelled at and shooed off the train for trying to unzip and steal from a friend of mine’s backpack. That was a bit of a wake-up call but also pretty entertaining. As for food, my Spanish mom (Carmen) makes me breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It usually consists of something very simple like croissants for breakfast, bocadillos (or sandwiches) for lunch, and then a traditional Spanish or Catalan dish for dinner. The food here is really great but I’ll expand on that and other things in later posts.

Last thing, do you guys want me to write in Spanish or English? Or I could do both or something. Just let me know and please, ask me questions and get involved or this won’t be very interesting for you.

Until next time,

Corey