Thanks for the sendoff, Barcelona.

Every time I tell someone I'm studying abroad in Barcelona they tell me to watch out for pickpockets.  Barcelona is legendary for their petty crimes.  During our first day of orientation we were told that about a third of all the students that come through this program are pick-pocketed at some point.  Those numbers seem to be about right as I do know a number of people that have gotten things stolen during our time here.  I'm guessing you can see where this is going. Even though I've been ridiculously careful my entire time here to not get anything stolen, today someone took my wallet and my camera out of my purse without me noticing.  Let me tell you the tale.

As I told you in my last post, the weather here has been absolutely incredibly and I've been taking every opportunity to lay out on the beach. I've done tons of relaxing, listening to a book on tape, and homework.  I've even discovered the secret to get the ladies that come up to you and say "Masaje, massage? Cinco euros for massage!" to leave you alone (you just completely ignore them).  I didn't have Spanish class today so after my morning class I decided to go to the beach to do a little relaxing and study for the last day of my Spanish final tomorrow (it was a three day final). I was laying there for a while and I got thirsty, so I took a drink of water out of my bag, put it back, and closed my eyes again.  My bag was sitting right next to my head and I wasn't really worried about it. About fifteen minutes later I opened my eyes and saw that my bag looked as if someone had gone through it.  I frantically opened it to see that both my wallet and my camera had been taken.  I was so upset, I had two debit cards in my wallet that I knew I had to cancel right away, plus a bunch of personal things that I always carried around with me.  I had a quote in there that my dad gave me on my 18th birthday and the Beyonce diva license my best friend Hayley gave me when she took a trip to Florida our senior year along with many other things.  And my camera! I've only had this camera for about eight months and I absolutely loved it.  I had to buy it last summer when my old one broke and I hadn't been planning on buying a new one any time soon, but I'm the type of person that always has their camera on them, constantly taking pictures.  The only thing I can be grateful for is the fact that I am leaving here in five days, so at least I have pictures of pretty much everything in Barcelona that I wanted to take pictures of.  Because my metro card was in my wallet and I had no money, I had to walk all of the way back to my apartment which took about an hour.  Once again I was so glad that it was nice out so the walk wasn't horrible, but I still would have preferred not to have to make it.

I was able to cancel my cards before the thief could use them and luckily I had another debit card from a different bank in my room so I'm still able to have access to some money before I get home.  I was pretty upset when it first happened, but I've definitely calmed down.  It'll just be a pain having to replace everything I lost and missing the things I can't replace.