soooo, the past few days have been pretty nice.  this was the first official week of classes, and i was so happy that i was given a full week to get oriented with Barcelona and the time differences.  i absolutely love my Spanish teacher, she’s hilarious and her class is a lot of fun even though it’s two hours long.  my art history teacher is so dry that i get the urge to jump out of the nearest window every morning, but i guess i can endure his endless slideshows of paintings for the next 5 weeks.  there are only 12 of IES people that live in the dorms; everyone else either has a student apartment or is living in a homestead with a local family.  but i have to say, i really like where i’m at!  we get free food 3 meals a day at the cafeteria (in fact we’re heading down for dinner in just a few) and it makes things a lot more convenient when you’re trying to make plans.  we haven’t had a chance to go out too much yet, although yesterday two of my friends and i got pretty tipsy at a Spanish wine tasting (and then got McDonald’s on the way home, super classy).  my roommate is trying to convince me to go out to the bars and salsa dancing tonight, but i’m not sure if i want to because we have to wake up at 5:30 AM tomorrow for the Costa Brava field trip. it’s mandatory for everyone in our program, and we’re basically going to be bussed around to different sights/museums/beaches in northern Spain and France over the next few days (i should probs read the itinerary tonight so i know exactly what we’re doing haha).  oh, and my roommate and i have finally decided that we want to go to Porto, Portugal next weekend!  it looks absolutely beautiful and is right on the water, not to mention that we found a super cheap ryanair flight there ($100 roundtrip!). now we just have to figure out lodging and transportation ugh.  and if all goes as planned, the weekend after that i’m headed to germany to see one of my good friends who lives there!  i am just so happy and thankful to be here in barcelona, and the past 10 days have been simply amazing!  i know it can only get better from here!  see you in a few days xo hannah

all right, so i have some free time today and figure i would make another post here.  today is a bank holiday in spain (which they seem to take very seriously), so all stores are closed and our first official day of classes is postponed till tomorrow.  the past few days have been pretty great, yesterday we took a 45 minute train ride to this beach called Sitjes. it was amazing to ride through and catch our first glimpses of the mediterranean since we arrived!  we stayed all day, had some sandwiches for lunch, and saw quite a few topless women.  here are a couple of shots from the beach:

on saturday we felt touristy and went to see La Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell (the former is a massive church designed by Gaudi that has been under construction for the past 400 years and the latter is a public hillside park that is filled with beautiful mosaics). here is a picture of each:

that evening, we caught a fountain show in Espanya:

so that was pretty much my weekend!  everything else is going quite well, and i really like all the other ies people in my dorm (except for this one girl who’s a total bitch but that’s another story).  we were hoping to meet some spaniards, but sadly they are all moving out this week because they finished final exams. my roommate and i are planning on traveling to either morocco (if she can get her visa stuff worked out; she is an ecuadorian citizen) or maybe the netherlands or croatia!  some other people in our group are planning a trip to paris, but we wanted to go somewhere more exotic haha.  i am also planning on going to see my good friend in germany in a couple of weeks!!  well that’s all for now, hasta luego mis amigos!