Dunkin Donuts, stop following me

It's not even my second full day and already I've fallen a bit in love with Barthelona (the th added for the lispy effect). My jetlag is almost completely gone, which is super great, and getting on a spanish time schedule is getting way easier. This might have something to do with going to see "Hombre Lobo" last night with Irene and my other roommate, Christiana, who is from Munich and is in Barcelona for some biology gig. We didn't get home til around 1, which is relatively early for Spain standards. The movie sucked, and I think it would suck just as bad if I saw it in English. Ah well!

This morning I roused myself and excitedly hopped on the metro to head into the centro of Barcelona. It was about a 20 minute ride, which got greatly more exciting when this guy hopped on and started singing along to a boom box- one of the songs sounded suspiciously like the irish tune "whiskey in the jar".. but I doubt it was.. you never know. I got off at the Placa de Catalunya, which is where the main boulevard Las Ramblas begins. Las Ramblas is about a 1.5 mile walk in which there are tourist traps, bunnies and birds for sale, tons of human statues, lots of street musicians, and I even saw.. a Dunkin Donuts. But it was called Dunkin Coffee, but still, am I in Boston? 

I meandered down the Rambla to the end, which is near this huge statue of Crisofol Colom (Christopher Columbus) and then I decided to get purposely lost and ended up in this amazing neighborhood called Barri Gotic (Gothic quarter). Lots of winding roads, little hidden bars and shops, and tons of plazas everywhere. Plazas are huge in Spain, they're everywhere! I ran into the main cathedral in Barcelona and then stopped into this little cafe for a "cafe solo", which is basically a shot of espresso and you're there for like 3 minutes. I thought it best just to walk around as much as possible to figure things out, and ended up back where I started. The architecture is stunning, lots of old buildings, and lots of funny American chains scattered around, though I only saw one American Apparel and 2 Starbucks.

Came back to the apartment and met my other roommate, Estelle, who was in southern Spain until last night, and she is leaving for Mexico on Sunday so I won't see her much (ho hum, what a boring life!). Irene was interested in learning how to cook quinoa and I vaguely remembered, so I made this stirfry of quinoa with assorted vegetables that I bought at the fruteria which is literally right next door to my apartment building. Cooking together for the afternoon meal is a big deal to my roommates, and eating a large lunch is pretty much the norm. Then I had a siesta, and am now contemplating going back out to find a mobile phone.

So far, so good! My roommates have been very welcoming, and I've only been here not even a full 2 days! This city is intoxicating, I hope to move closer to the center after my program ends in 4 weeks. I start the TEFL program on Monday, so I have a few more days to explore and get to know ms. lovely barthelona.

Interesting Spanish Fact: everything is listed first in Catalan and then in Castellano, which is the Spanish that I learned to speak. One of my roommates, Estelle, speaks both fluently as she is from a Catalan family but the other, Irene, doesn't really speak it. I love hearing Catalan- it looks almost french but its entirely its own language. So far I've learned how to say please, "si us plau". yay!