First week of classes and Las fiestas de Santa Eulalia

Hello:)

I've now had one week of classes, and I think I'm going to survive. It might actually be pretty fun, who knows. I'm taking Intro to Catalan and Masterworks of Catalan Art from the study abroad center, and I'm sure that they will both be lots of fun, not stressful, and very useful for living here. My classes at the UB, however, are going to be a little bit more challenging, mostly because I don't know the system very well. I'm taking Panorama of Modern Spanish Literature, and Morfology/Lexicology of Spanish. I can understand both of the professors well enough, I think. It's just going to be tough to gauge how much work I need to be doing outside of class. The library is beautiful, so that's a plus, but so are all the other places that I'd love to be exploring instead of studying. Let's just hope I find the right balance.

 

After 4 days of class, I had my first 3 day weekend! That's a change that is not going to be hard to get used to at all, and it might just make up for Vanderbilt's annoying habit of ignoring Monday holidays. On Friday, I went shopping with some friends. The stores here are amazing, and I can walk to most of them. I'm going to miss that when I get back. This weekend was also one of Barcelona's big festivals, Las fiestas de Santa Eulalia, so on Saturday, we went exploring to see what was going on with that. We found Catalan music, dancing Spanish children, vendors selling all sorts of fun things,parades, and Castellers. Castellers are teams of people that build huge human towers. The smallest are little kids- they looked like they could have been as young as four. It was really fun to watch them, but it made me nervous because I thought they were going to fall. I'll put up some pictures: 

And here's a short video clip:

Crazy, huh?!

This morning (Sunday) I went to church again, heard a really good sermon, met some more new people, got phone numbers and email addresses, information about bible studies, and set up lunch or coffee dates with a few of the people. I love how impossible it is to leave-there's just alway someone else coming up to introduce themselves and talk for a little while. I guess that's exactly the way it should be. 

Next weekend we have a trip with all 30-something of us to Sevilla and Cadiz. I'm super excited for that too, and I can't wait to tell you all about it!