Hola Everyone! I've decided to keep a blog of my semester in Europe. It's been a little over a week here in Barcelona. A lot has happened over this past week for me to talk about, and I'm not doing anything right now and have a lot of time to write, so this first entry may be a little bigger than the average entry. I promise to keep them short and simple in the future!
Well, I guess I should start off with the plane ride over. Joe and I left from Charlotte on Tuesday, the 21st, which was about ten days ago. The plane left about two hours late due to some weather problems, but luckily we left a three hour layover time for our next flight. The flight was not so great...I didn't get any sleep and my head kind of hurt in the end. But we landed in Frankfurt, Germany about 9AM their time. I thought the language barrier would be a problem but the airport workers and Lufthansa were very good with English.....some of them speaking better english than some Americans I can think of. But our flight from Frankfurt to Barcelona was easy and incredibly comfortable, and we were in Barcelona about noon on Wednesday.
From the airport we took a taxi to our new residence. The weather was incredibly nice...about 70 degrees and without any of the humidity that I am so accustomed to living on the East Coast all my life. We checked in to our dormitories and I was incredibly disappointed to find out that all of the Clemson students were living in single rooms in all different parts of the building, which sort of has a big negative effect on our overall cohesion, both socially and educationally. The first thing we did on Wednesday was walking along the Rambla, which is a big pedestrian road here stretching across the Gothic Quarter, and ate at an overpriced Catalan restaurant. The food was great though.
The next day we met our architecture professor, who so far seems like a really nice guy. He bought us all dinner on Thursday which was really, really nice of him. Friday we had off which gave us a three day weekend to explore as much of Barcelona as we can. We managed to explore most of the major parts of town, including Port Vell, The Barceloneta (aka the beach), Montjuic (the hill/park area where a castle and many of the 1992 summer olympics facilities reside), Port Olympic, the Barri Gotic, and our own neighborhood, El Raval. I have seen most of what I have wanted to see except for Gaudi's architecture and some cathedrals, which I hope to see as soon as I can get someone to go with me. I can say from all that exploring that Barcelona is an amazing place......way, way different from America. You can literally get anywhere you want in the Barcelona area by walking or by taking the Metro (subway), which is very inexpensive. The streets are really crowded but they are, surprisingly, incredibly safe. The only thing you have to watch out for is pickpocketing, which Barcelona is known for.
It hasn't been perfect here, though. A lot of things have bothered me, mostly the cost of this trip. I have already spent hundreds of dollars, most of it on just food. We have been eating out almost every day, which has been really expensive. We have been able to find places to eat for under ten euros, which is not bad compared to what I have heard about other European cities, but the conversion of approximately 1 Euro = $1.40 has been killing us. This is something that I just need to adapt to.....probably just need to find the less expensive places to eat and go to those places for lunch (which is usually had at 2PM) and just make something in my kitchen for dinner (which is the smaller meal of the day, had at around 10PM). Also I have been disappointed in how little I have seen the other Clemson students. I had always imagined that we would all live on the same floor or something....but it gets lonely at times when it's just me and Joe. I'm hopeful that this will change as the semester goes on and we start working with each other more. So far only two of our classes have started and we are only working on one assignment. Next week is when our true work load begins.
Maybe I am just a little disappointed because I have been looking forward to this study abroad trip for, literally, years. In fact it was one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Clemson....I have known since senior year in high school the strength and high participation rates of Clemson's study abroad programs for architecture. Also, maybe I'm a little jealous of the Clemson group in Italy that lives in their own building complete with studio, cooking crew and maid. But the city of Barcelona itself is everything and more than I have ever expected it to be...I want to experience this not as a tourist but as someone who is part of this amazing culture here. Anybody can visit Europe but the opportunity of living here with the people is a once in a lifetime experience. And I'm pretty glad I started this blog because it gives me a chance to reflect on that.
That about wraps it up....if you actually read that whole thing then I applaud you. I haven't started traveling to different cities yet....I probably wont get into that until after September. I'm sort of disappointed that our first group trip to Madrid, Bilbao and San Sebastian got pushed back to the 19th of September, but whatever. I'll keep this updated, probably with a new post every week or so.
