Metros, markets, and mountains, oh my!

The past two days have been a whirlwind of getting to know the other seventeen kids in the program, sightseeing, and figuring out how to get places. Thank goodness our apartment is right next to the metro, so it's pretty easy to get around for us.  I'm used to the metros in DC where you have to figure out what stop you're getting off at and then see how much it costs to get there and put the right amount of money on your card. Here you just pay per ride and you can go as far as you want, all for the same price.  You can also buy multiple rides at a time and it works about to be about 60 Euro cents a ride, a lot cheaper than DC!

Here are some pictures of my apartment:

This is my room, it's pretty big!

This is our living room/dining area. We haven't used it yet, but it will be nice for having friends over.

This is our tiny little kitchen! But it has a full stove, oven, microwave, and refrigerator, so I'm pretty happy about that. A lot of the apartments don't have all of that.

Our kitchen even has our washer in it!

This is what the electrical sockets look like here.

Yesterday we took a bus tour around the city with everyone in our program.  I'm so glad we were able to do that because we got to see a lot of the city.  There are places along it that I will definitely want to go back to. It was hard to get great pictures because we were on a moving bus, but I took a whole bunch just so everyone can get an idea of how beautiful the city is.

This is a building designed by Gaudí, a famous architect from Catalonia.

The olympic stadium from the Barcelona Olympics in 1992!

A lot of the vegetation is way different here than it is in either Maryland or Wisconsin.  There are palm trees everywhere and this was a pretty cool tree right outside of the olympic stadium.

Inside the stadium. This is where the olympic torch was lit by an archer.

The port.

The street lamps on this street were really cool.

Pictures can't even come close to doing it justice, but this is La Sagrada Familia.  It was started in 1882 by Gaudí, but it won't be completed until 2050. They are still trying to follow Gaudí's original plans.

This is the back of La Sagrada Familia.

On our way to a welcome lunch we were able to briefly stop at one of the famous markets where they sell absolutely everything. It was so packed in there, full of both people and stands.

 After lunch, which lasted two hours, we had the afternoon off.  We went to get international cell phones and when we walked out of the store, a parade was going on for Reyes Day.  Reyes Day is like their Christmas.  It means King's Day and it's the day that they exchange presents and everything.  We were in the center of the city, La Plaça Catalunya, and it was packed.

This is the street after the parade was over.  These types of lights are above a lot of the streets, making everything look really decorative at night.

Today, because of the holiday, we had the day off.  We decided to visit Gaudí's park, called Park Guell.  The park is up the side of a mountain.  It's in a really cool neighborhood called Gràcia.

Gràcia.

The entrance to Park Guell.

If anyone reading this watches ANTM, this is the place that the final runway was in season 7 with Caridee. 

There were benches farther up the mountain with beautiful mosaics on them.  The benches were also made to fit the curve of your back, so even though they were stone, they were very comfortable.

From the very top of the mountain you got a gorgeous view of the entire city.

This is what we climbed up to see the rest of the city. There are stone steps going up the side, pretty scary for someone like me who is both afraid of heights and also awful at stairs!

One interesting thing about studying in Barcelona, as opposed to the rest of Spain, is that everyone here is bilingual.  They speak both Spanish and the local language, Catalan.  All of the signs are in Catalan first, then Spanish, and occasionally they will also have an English translation, especially in more touristy areas.  Many of the words are similar, but still different enough that I can't always understand what the signs are saying.  It appears to be a mix of Spanish and French to me.  Many of the words seem to be shortened from their Spanish equivalent and there are a lot more t's.  Luckily all of the natives know that they need to speak Spanish in order to be understood by foreigners, so we haven't had any trouble with that!

If anyone has any questions about the life here, please feel free to ask! I'm trying to include as many details as I can, but I don't know what everyone wants to know!