It's been a crazy few days. The weekend was wonderful; full of exploring the city, visiting Barcelona's beautiful markets, dancing all night, and shopping. I'm more settled in now and more familiar and oriented to the city. The weekend was pretty low key. On Saturday, Nikki and I went to La Boqueria, Barcelona's food market. It was beautiful and bustling, full of fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, candy, eggs, and I'm sure other tasty treats. Sunday was our "recovery" day. After 4 late nights in a row, the group decided to take it easy. We all slept in, worked out, then rested a little more. We started our intensive classes on Monday, which have been pretty, well...intense. We meet for 3 hours a day doing intensive Spanish grammar and composition. My goal is essentially to perfect my Spanish and learn the subjunctive (which I found out I don't know after reviewing my placement test. Ouch.). The class ends on January 28, so since everything's accelerated, we'll have a midterm next Monday and final presentations and exams the following week. Woo...
I went for my first long run in Barcelona yesterday. I only intended to go run for about 30-40 minutes, but I ended up getting pretty lost, so...long run, right? However, it was a blessing in disguise. I realized my house is close to EVERYTHING: Monjuic, the mountain in the city where the Olympic Venues are, Las Rambla, the Port, Downtown...EVERYTHING. It made the city seem less huge and intimidating. Every new street, building, and taxi that almost runs me over makes me fall in love with Barcelona a little more.
Exciting news! As part of my program, we had the option of participating in an internship while we're here for the semester. I was offered an internship at Barcelona Ecología, a government agency that focuses on systemic sustainable development initiatives in Barcelona. The program has been existing for a while (not exactly sure how long) and they've been incredibly successful. Other cities around the world are starting to adopt the Barcelona model and the agency needs someone who can handle English language correspondence. I met with the head of the agency today and it sounds like it's going to be a lot of responsibility, but I think I'll learn a lot. The best part though? They want me to stay THROUGH THE SUMMER. I told you guys...I'm never coming back.
Well...that's all for now. Hasta.
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