Thursday hooray

Fabulousness that is final jury. I, Irene Jorden, finished all my work before jury time!!!! yeaaaaaaa. I presented first as well. It went really well. All is well. Yea!


Oh and I cut my hair. I've been cutting, dying and styling my classmate's hair. It's pretty fun :)

Hawra was really sick today though, so after she presented she went home to sleep. Most of the group went out for sushi and fun. I wasn't really in the mood, so I went home and chilled. Hawra got up and we made dinner together. I had a nice glass of red and divulged in reading P.S. i Love you, which was a touching tear-jerker. My classmates don't understand how I can devour a book in a few hours. Sometimes its nice to just relax, especially since we're traveling for 8 days straight, starting Saturday....at 6 am!!

What a beautiful day :)

This is a video of the exterior of Maria del Mer last Sunday afternoon. The woman singing opera made me think of Grandma Ginny :)

My Mass experience

Mass last Sunday night where I witnessed three priests being ordained. This video is of a prayer where the lector sang the name of a saint and the congregation sang back "pray for us." It was beautiful.

Observations: Born

There is a specific area that performers situate themselves. Supposedly there is a sign-up system in which they rotate every two hours. Acoustically the music carries against the high walls and down the narrow streets, filling the urban landscape with this intangible experience.

Keeping it low-key

This weekend we kept it low key because we're trying to catch up on homework and sight-seeing. On Saturday we all just cleaned and did laundry. Not really eventful. We went to dinner at a gourmet pizza plaza called la Veronica. Yum.



Sunday packed in a lot more. Jessie Euler, one of my roommates, and I went running in the morning. Considering I haven't run in weeks, I didn't do too shabby. We ran down to the water and looped around. It was probably between 2 and 3 miles. Jessie wanted to "look around" about halfway through so I ran back to studio. During the run, the sun glared in my eyes and the smells of Saturday night, made the whole thing pretty unpleasant. I'll go again shortly, but until then I'll stick to my in-house ab and plyo routine.

After getting some studio stuff out of the way I headed back to the apartment to catch a shower before we headed out for out History/Theory project. By late afternoon we were at the site near the Cathedral Maria del Mar. There were street performers and people walking and enjoying the beautiful day. It was so pleasant and blissful....getting a gelato made it even better :) We had to document a pattern or record something interesting about the preset area. I chose to investigate the sedentary activity and the dialogue it creates with the urban spaces. I looked at things like people gather to talk, people lounging, people dining in outdoor cafes and crowds around performers. All these people affect the mood and experience of a space because they don't just pass through it, they occupy it. I think its kind of interesting....it might be bs.

After returning home (I'm starting to call it home! uh ooo) I finished straightening up until it was time to leave for 7:30 Spanish Mass at Maria del Mar. Since everyone else was either uninterested or just trying to finish work before our group date at Hard Rock Cafe, I went alone.

When I got to the metro platform the train had just left. As some people filtered by me on their way out, one man stopped a few yards away after making brief eye contact and started talking in Spanish. I was intently staring at the metro map until I realized he was talking to me. All I had caught was "muy guapa," which means very beautiful. I looked slightly confused and said "gracias" before returning to my intense studying of the metro lines. He began talking to me again, and I looked utterly confused. I responded in his tongue that I did not speak Spanish. He first asked if I was French. I laughed and said no and said I was American. Over the next 3 minutes I conversed in abrupt Spanish and charades that I was a student, although I was "solo" I had someone in America, and that although coffee sounded wonderful I was Catholic and needed to pray. It was entertaining to implement my Spanish until my train came and I hopped on to head to church.

I got off the metro and everything looked different in the dark. Shortly I realized I had headed out in the wrong direction so I asked an older Spanish couple where the cathedral was and they looked at me like I had 2 heads. Through the crowds I heard a "yeaaa. Whatever." Hooray. Americans! I went over to them, a group of 3 girls my age dressed very stylishly. After describing my inability to navigate, the invited me to join them since they also were headed to Mass. Since I was from Maryland they flagged down one of their guy friends that I didn't notice as park of the group, since he was a fellow "we love crabcakes and football" kid. I quickly found out that Alex was from Luthium (I think that's what he said) and was studying business in Barcelona. Most of the people in their group, the 3 girls (Ryhan, Danielle, and Erin) plus Alex and his housemate Andrew and their host "Mama," where going as an educational experience.

At the Cathedral I was surprised to see the immense interior stuffed with people. I looked up to the altar and was also surprised to see 70 or more priests flanking the altar. As the Mass began we soon realized we were to witness the ordaining of 3 priests. Andrew and the host mother were practicing Catholics so they enjoyed the experience. I felt like everyone else would've appreciated an abbreviated version. The ordination and mass lasted almost 3 hours. The music was amazing and most of the prays were sung as well. One thing that caught me off guard was when they began playing Free Bird and sung a hymnal by its tune. I don't know how I feel about that hybrid. By the time I left, I was more than a little late to meet everyone at Hard Rock, but I was okay with it. I also have some new friends :)



I arrived at Hard Rock to tell them I was alive and well. Since they were almost done, I joined the table until we went home to finish some studio work. I ended up finishing right before studio on Monday. Our final pin-up is on Thursday for our first project. And then we leave for our touring of Spain!!!

Tuesday we met at Placa de Jaume for our weekly sketching class. We sketched some of the urban environment around the back of the Cathedral la Seu that connected to Placas together near Jaume. The second plaza we came to was Placa de Sant Felip Neri, which contained a civic building from the Catalonian government. It had huge pock marks in it from its battle with Franco's (oppressive ruler of Spain until the 70's) army. The whole area felt quiet and revere, it was very peaceful. I sat down to sketch on the edge of the fountain.

Suddenly, there was an eruption of noise and laughter. A school had let out for recess and a few dozen children poured into the placa to play. Most of the children decided to engaged in a feisty pseudo soccer game. They laughed and played and seemed so unconcerned with the war scarred building that towered protectively over them. The happiness that had exploded in the previously serene square, seemed so right. I found myself laughing at the children's antics. A few curios ones would approach me, glanced at my sketching and then run away giggling. One of the braver ones came up to me a stood watching intently. I looked up and said "Hola." He asked me who I was drawing, since I had started to sketch one of his classmates. I responded that I didn't know, since I don't like pressure, even from a 10 year-old, to cast a reliable portrait. I told him my name and he told me his was Franches. Exhausting our conversation options considering the age difference, he ran away to join his classmates. After a while, one of them tried to get me to play, but when I kicked the ball I launched my shoe as well. Laughing, I pick up my shoe and motioned that I should just continue drawing. All too soon their recess was over. I realized how much I missed Loretta (Hey baby sis!) and my family....so I continued my sketching assignment until I back in the grander plaza by the History Museum.


After comparing our perception of the spaces, we went to go into the museum. The museum actually takes you below street level to the excavated Roman ruins of the city. It's pretty awesome since some of it predates the birth of Christ. We were able to see ruminates of laundry services, wineries, seafood houses, and palaces, as well as art and pottery from various ages of Spanish development.

I'm standing over part of a winery from 12 BC!

Kristin Clancey and I came out of the exhibit enthused, but very hungry. Since class was over we headed down the street in search of something to set our appetite. There was a line out the door of a little sandwich store, so we decided to join the locals. I got a bratwurst sandwich with mustard, grilled panini style and split a small bottle of red wine with Kristin. We stood crowded with the locals and obviously not blending, eh, still delicious. Walking homeward we were distracted by a tasty looking display of gelato and gave in to temptation. We had to pool in all our change to buy the cones, but it was absolutely delicious. It was turning into a perfect day.

We stopped into the Boccario market and now too broke to buy anything, we just wandered. We popped out the back and while wandering down the street passed a store that looked kinda like a dollar store. Alleluia. Cheap, Chinese produced stuff. It was a perfect day. I picked up some necessities (i.e. a whisk, clothespins) that would have cost an arm and a leg at the stores we had been going to. By the time we got back we had to head out to Spanish.

Wednesday- Trying to be done for our first Jury!!! Hooray!

Friday's Grand Adventure

So I awoke Friday morning and resembled the living dead. I had showered the night before, but somehow my hair decided to take on some fro-like shape. Although it resisted, I beat it down to a manageable coif and ate some left-over pasta with my roomies as we planned the day's adventure.

We were definitely going up the Mountain of the Jews, a mountain on the edge of the city that Jews used to hide-out in to avoid persecution. A really cool fort/castle had been built for military reasons not related to Antisemitism, complete with a moat. The moat has since been refashioned into extensive, geometric gardens. To get to the top of the mountain you can walk, drive, or take a cable car. Of course we wanted to take a cable car.

We also really wanted to see Mies van der Rohe's Pavilion, especially since its Lindsey's all time favorite piece of architecture and world-famous....

After deciding a gameplan we set out on our "Great Adventure!" We had to take a metro car partway up the mountain. Then we bought our tickets to the cable car and loaded up.

Lindsey's telling me to get in the cable car before it leaves me

A view of the city from the car! love it here!

We were all taking pictures and trying to squeeze to one side. Sometimes the car would sway and it was slightly unsettling, but the views were amazing! At the top of the mountain we arrived at the castle and it was awesome. We learned that Montjuïc castle is a fortress built in the 17–18th centuries to control the city as a replacement for the Ciutadella. Today, the fortress is a museum and Montjuic is home to several sporting and cultural venues, as well as Barcelona's biggest park and gardens. From the castle you could see the whole city laid out. We even were able to figure out where our apartment was.

The Castle entrance

We walked around the fort taking fun group photos. I saw a couple taking pictures and heard them speaking English. I asked if they wanted me to take a picture of them. After doing some fun pictures, I learned they were from Seattle vacationing. I then got them to take some photos of all of us in front of the city panorama. They were presented with a half dozen cameras and they laughed at my ingenuity to get them to take our photo by helping them first.

After exhausting our exploration of the castle we started to head down the mountain in search of Mies van der Rohe's Pavilion. As we walked we had great views of Calatrava's Telecommunication Tower, the Olympic Village, and the Museu National d' Art Catalunya (MNAC).

Calatrava's Telecommunication Tower suspended over the Olympic Village


The Olympic Torch from the 1992 Summer Olympics


Inside the Main Olympic Stadium


Glimpsing the Back of the MNAC


Approaching the MNAC with Stacey


A view from the steps of the MNAC once we got the front. There was a really good guitarist playing and people just hanging out on the steps.


Funny picture I took once we walked down some of the first stairs.


Skipping on the edge of the fountain. If I fell in I'd be in trouble because its no swimming :)

Finally we reached the bottom of the mountain and our final destination : the Pavilion! I like the design, but I'm not obsessed like some of my classmates. Approaching the building was interesting because its this iconic structure and the grass is dead from the winter and a dog and its owner were playing in front of it. We paid a guy sitting in a chair at the front steps 2 euro to enter. We explored the building and looked at the furniture. Someone would probably have leaped out of nowhere to round-house kick you in the face if you tried to sit on the furniture. I loved the reflections in the courtyard pool and I captured some beautiful images.

The Pavilion is in the background across the grassy mall.


The Pavilion, as well as some of my classmates. It's built up like its sitting on a pedestal.


The private pool in the back.


My favorite picture of the day :) i love the reflections


I wanted a reflection pic too!

After all the walking we did, we were tired and hungry. We hopped on the metro back to Plaza de Universitat and stopped for a delicious snack at Dunkin' Coffee. Yes- in Spain its called Dunkin' Coffee, not Dunkin' Donuts. Still delicious. The stores in the metro (they have restaurants, bars and shops underground within their metro) were running a promotion that if you spent 2 euro or more....you got a cool, reversible hat for free. The salesman handed me some and I was sooo confused, until I saw the promo poster outside of the store.

Stacey and I rocking the cool hats.

We went back to the apartment and while some of the ladies went shopping, I caught up on some studio work. All of us met back up later in the evening for a night out at the bars. When the bars closed around 3 am we were exhausted and happy to get some sleep.

Stacey (aka J.Lo) and I at Temple Bar

Fast Forward

I'm going to quicken the pace so I can catch y'all up!

Tuesday

I blogged until Spanish class. Without my siesta, Spanish seemed really long. We got a break half-way through and I splurged on some Cheetos and Nestea. Hooray for Americana. I also had been appointed by our coordinator to get the information necessary for Catholic to credit our Spanish class on our transcript. This made for an interesting encounter with English to Spanish translations of what a syllabus was and why I would need an agenda. After that was all resolved we just wanted to eat and sleep because of the late night before.

Before Spanish, Jessie had put chili on to simmer so it'd be ready when we got home so we could make Frito pie (yummm). It's a southern thing. You put Chili over Frito's and sprinkle with cheese. Its also delicious. All of Grande Via joined us for dinner and it was fun...even if it was a little cramped :) We're having over 20 people over for my birthday (less than a month!!!) so we have to figure it all out anyway.

Wednesday

Stacey and I worked on our studio work in the kitchen. The repairman came by to replace some dead bulbs, fix the shower, tighten the chair legs, and some other miscellaneous things that had come up since our arrival. He was very friendly and our brief Spanish conversation consisted of hello and goodbye. My Spanish is really improving....

We went sketching in studio and wandered around the city a bit. We went to this cool graveyard that has been built around with aerial pathways. It's an interesting approach to the plaza design.
We also did some dumpster diving from a store that had gone out of business. We salvaged some shelves for studio and some clothes hangers for our closets. Successful. After returning to studio we pinned up our first and second attempts at urban planning. Its going pretty good I suppose.

They made a cool pattern when they were all hung up.

Dinner was stirfry. Food is very important to us :)

Thursday

We went shopping because some of the girls wanted cute new outfits to wear out to the club in the evening. I got a ridiculous long shirt that I thought had a cool Spanish phrase on it. After trying it on again at home we discovered that it was English words broken for graphic presentation. Its still a fun shirt....I'm just a little slow sometimes. We also went to H&M, which is 4 stories tall and magnificent. I bought a fun scarf, a new wallet, and an electric blue purse. Right now everything is on super sale, so for all the ladies out there who'd appreciate it, the shopping is pretty damn good.

I got to studio 15 minutes before it begins and quick whipped together my materials for the day. We had desk crits about our work and I spent most of that time fiddling with my blog settings and uploading photos. We also cleaned the studio because we had guest teachers coming to socialize. A few other architecture programs from the states are also studying abroad, so interaction is cool. Plus we got to eat some food and drink Sangria. Can't complain about that. We all left pretty early because we had Stacey's friend Brendan, along with 3 of his friends, coming for dinner.

My classmate and some of the professors mingling.

Josh and I took over the kitchen and diced, simmered and garnished to our hearts content. We made a lemon facile, but with broccoli, asparagus, chicken, and tomatoes. I also made these little h'orderves of toasted baguette topped with spicy ham, sliced tomato, mozzarella, and oregano.

The cooks after a good meal!

After prepping most of the food, I took a break to dye Lindsey's hair. She wanted a very natural black. All the girls were getting ready and we had too many things going on at once. I had gone back to cooking the chicken, when all the lights went out. A few screams and then "My hairs going to burn off my scalp," from Lindsey because she had yet to rinse out the dye. A few days before, Grande Via was without electricity due to construction. While everyone fished out their cellphones to use as lighting, I stuck my head out the window to report that we were the only ones without electricity. We found the circuit breaker and got the power back on. We shut off unnecessary lights and stopped the dishwasher. Luckily this was all resolved quickly, so no major harm was inflicted.

The guys came over and everything was wonderful, except for our selection in wine. And we didn't convert Fahrenheit to Celsius correctly, resulting in a sunken in banana bread that was still the hit of the dinner. After dinner, the girls finished getting ready, Grande Via came over, and we piled into some taxi's to go down to the Port to do some clubbing. I love to dance so I had a fabulous night. I also befriended some Russian's who shared a love for vodka and 90's music. Again I was taken from the dance floor prematurely by my classmates and returned home.Our large "family"

Friday

Was an amazing adventure and I will update shortly!

Mas fiestas, No siestas!

That's our studio's new slogan. Translated it means "More parties, no napping!" I think its appropriate :)

When I last left you....it was friday night and Hawra and I had just left our new multicultural friends after a fabulous dinner. We walked back home and gave a Spaniard directions (hooray! we know the city :). Shortly after we arrived home to nos apartmento, the rest of the ladies came home from dinner out with Jessie's dad, who was in town. After our long night out on Thursday, and the good food we had eaten, we just crashed.

Saturday, during the day, Hawra and I worked on out derive project for Christy's sketching class. Oh- and my voice was almost back to normal! Nothing exciting happened until that night when we all went out to the Black Sheep, a large bar that is set underground. It was really interesting. We split a couple of pitchers and mingled. We made friend's with a group of teens from Paraguay, one of which was celebrating his 19th birthday. Sebastian, the birthday boy, and his friends joined our group and we talked and laughed until the bar closed at 3. I went with Grand Via back to their apartment and hung out until sleep overcame me and I crashed in one of their extra beds.

Sunday was low-key. Kristin Clancey and I went to a cafe around the corner and ordered delish hamburgers. The owner of the restaurant was very sweet to us because we were having obvious language problems with the waiter seating us. I'm now a big fan of the sweet older gentleman.

I went back to my apartment and then met up with Hawra to finish some more of our project, as well as finish my studio work and Spanish. Real exciting night of homework.

Monday continued our classes, which I adore in comparison with the States. All our classes work with each other and relate to one another. It's nice because what we learn in History enhances our understanding of our studio project.

I arrived in studio in the early afternoon to discover an "early birthday present," as my classmates called it. My laptop!!!!! Hooray! The short side of the story (do I ever tell a short story?) is:

I dropped off my laptop to Firedog in Circuit City before Christmas for repairs. I worked with a very nice, but slightly confused employee named Juan. I told him it was probably my powerboard since the battery and the powercord refused to play nice together. 45 minutes later he confirmed what I had already told him. He also said they'd be able to do the repairs in-house and I could pick it up in 3 days.

It was Christmastime so it wasn't until the day after New Years that I realized I hadn't gotten my computer. I gave them a call and they told me they had to ship it out and I'd be able to pick it up at the end of the week. Slightly peeved that they hadn't called me, but understanding of the holidays, I waited until Saturday to go collect my baby.

Poor Kevin. He had to relay the news that whoever had told me that my computer had been shipped out....was lying! They didn't have the boxes to ship out so my computer was still chilling in the store, waiting for a box. I was furious. I had been uninformed, then misinformed, and now I wanted to deform something. I was leaving in less than a week and a computer is a must for our work. Plus shipping is an arm-and-a-leg. I apologized to Kevin because I wasn't mad at HIM just his incompetent co-workers.

I went back everyday between Monday and Thursday (the day my plane left) to make sure...in person...that they had shipped my package, received my package, would ship my package back. They knew my face well, but no matter what helpful Joe tried, I wasn't getting my laptop back until after I had left the country. Luckily I work for Fedex, so my shipping is largely discounted, but still! Idiots.

To summarize- I was sooo excited that my computer came in. Plus my mom had shipped some spices, guidebooks I had forgotten, and kool-aid (oh YEa!). After embracing my box for a beautiful moment I regained reality and did some work.

We had a short studio, 3-5 in comparison with Wednesdays and Thursday when it goes 3-7, and then our history/theory lecture with Cece. In studio we talked about the urban cities we had created and critiqued each other so that our next iteration would improve. Cece hates giving lectures and was surprised to find us taking notes and "not snoring." The topic was interesting as we discussed the boom of cities and the problems with urban planning. The day went quickly enough and then Hawra and I went grocery shopping for our meal for the evening.

It's interesting to shop everyday for the fresh ingredients for the meal, but the results are wonderful. We've been eating fresh baked bread and olive oil, bruschetta, lemon facile, vodka penne, sausage and peppers....its all soooo goood. And of course gelato for dessert on occasion.

After dinner, all my classmates headed over to studio to finish up their derive projects for Christy's class. There was some sketchy guy outside of our studio. He meant no harm, but we still went back home in a group.

Tuesday we woke a little earlier than usual, so we could finish gluing our pieces on our project. Everybody's projects looked very different. We all pinned up and explained our graphic presentation in relationship to our drifting journey.

Hawra's and mine is the 3rd from the left on the bottom

The review actually went really well for Hawra and I because we understood the idea of passing through zones as we drifting through the city. Plus our graphic representation read well. Made us happy :)

I worked on my computer non-stop until spanish....


And now i'm going to cook dinner xoxo

Que pasa?

Wednesday I wake up still sick. I roll out of bed, put on a hat, grab a granola bar...I'm ready for the day :) We all metroed over to the Barcelona waterside to meet Cece for a tour of Forum, a large series of public buildings within urban planned area of rejuvenation designed by a firm she worked for. Since it looked like it was going to rain we walked around the urban spaces. The area was built to revitalize the waterfront, create more beautiful public space, educate locals and be able to support the education of people from around the world. Across from the museum that showcased Barcelona's initiatives in public planning and green initiatives was the Barcelona Civic Center, the largest auditorium space in Europe. The site is over a water purification center as well as some roadways. Its very interesting. There's playgrounds for kids, paths with bungee "stepping stones" that launched you in the air, and playful polka dotted detailing in certain parts. I could ramble on about the interesting urban design, but I tend to be too long-winded as it is.

The museum was awesome because it has a model of the entire city of Barcelona. Its massive. Its beautiful. If I had to do something of that size I'd die. It was really impressive though.

Wednesday afternoon we had studio. We went out into the city to draw a figure-ground, white paint (represents the voids and negative space of the city) on black paper (becomes the buildings). We paced out a square within a plaza and from those proportions made our own scale. Then Mateusz and I worked together to map out our path North out of the plaza until we hit another plaza. Our end result was slightly abstract, but really interesting. It helped our visual understanding of spatial voids in urban environments.

We went home and I took a siesta (hooray for culturally acceptable napping!), until dinner. By this time I had regain some vocal ability, but I still wanted my bed ASAP. The evening was low-key and we celebrated yet another delicious family dinner.

Thursday I worked on some homework during the day and did some poking around the sidestreets in the area. We have some nice hole-in-the-wall stores.

In the afternoon we had studio again and this time we were in-house. We were working with the figure ground white-on-black relationships again. This time we started with a part of a city (a little hunk of Florence) that we transferred onto the black paper (I did mine backwords so with some finagling and marker I got it to work- oops). Then we started to define the primary, secondary, and tertiary arteries of the city that would, once extended, become the broadways, streets and alleys of void space. We also had to include some civic buildings to insert within the context of "our city." With some of the assignment done by the end of class, we hung them up to look at out progress. Each person attacked the project with a unique interpretation. I was curious to see the completed plans on Monday.

I worked in studio until I had a nice chunk of work done. Stacey had left to meet up with a friend from home that was coincidentally also studying in Barcelona. The game plan was for a group of us to meet up with them later on and go to a bar or club to experience some of the famous Barcelona nightlife.

Hawra, Jessie, and I were invited to Grande Via (the apartment of PJ, Emma, Nick and Kristin Clancey) for dinner. PJ impressed us all with lamb baked with mushrooms. The girls chipped in with potatoes and asparagus that completed a delicious meal. We all socialized and laughed our way through a few hours of conversation and a few bottles of wine. Since it was almost 11 we migrated to my apartment on Plaza Universitat, which is just a few blocks down the street, to meet up with the group of girls.

Walking back to the apartment we found the rest of my apartment, as well as Josh Humphries and Stacey's friend Brendan, waiting for their check at the tapas restaurant located right next to the entrance of our apartment. The raved about the food, which I know had to be good because several people had recommended it to me before my arrival....can't wait to try it!!

We headed upstairs and finished getting ready to meet up with Brendan's roommates and some of their friends (he lives in an international college dorm). We metroed over to his dorm, which is right next to the huge bus depot, and then met his friends. Our group then grabbed a caravan of taxi's to Sutton , a popular nightclub that they had a contact with. We arrived a little after 1 am and were some of the first people in the club! Barcelona nightlife is very different from DC. Drinks cost 11 euro ($16!), which was fine for me because I was enjoying myself meeting new people and exploring the club. It was fashion week in Barcelona, so a bunch of really attractive people, presumably models, were in attendance. The DJ was okay, but as the night got into full swing, the music got better. Models in angelic outfits also were dancing up on the stage. I dragged some of my friends out to dance, when more of our friends showed up at the club and we left to greet them. Finally, I was able to get on the dance floor and had a great time until 5 am....when the rest of my entourage decided to leave, so I reluctantly hailed a taxi back to my apartment.

I woke up on Friday afternoon. The Spanish have these lovely inventions of wooden, interlocking shades that make any room a tomb. Fabulous if you don't care what time it is. I worked that afternoon on studio work and laundry! It was really exciting.

Friday night, Hawra and I decided to take Olga up on her offer and meet her and her students for dinner and multilingual conversation. Hawra and I walked to Restaurant Pandarma, which on the map looked a lot closer than it really was. Entering the building we were slightly confused on the actual location of the restaurant. We then saw an arrow pointing to stairs that hugged the right wall and rose up the back of the lobby. After ascending the stairs we were greeted by the hostess, who after a quick game of cherades, led us to a back room to Olga and a large group of people.

When we thought ESL students, we thought 20-somethings at University. The people in the room ranged in age from 22-75, professional, student, wanderer. They were American, Spanish, Italian, French, and El Salvadorian (is that right?). We began introducing ourselves to this eclectic group of people. Some were very apt and confident in their English, why others knew less than I know of Spanish. The one rule of the night was you weren't allowed to sit next to someone of the same nationality and between our two large tables we did pretty good with the diversity. I was placed between Fatima, a 30-year old architect from El Salvador who practices in Barcelona, and Ramon, a middle-something unengaging man native of Barcelona. Hawra, who sat on the other side of Fatima, and I began testing our Spanish out, while Fatima patiently tried to interpret. Conversation lulled every now and again, we switched over to solid English sprinkled with Spanish, and began to talk about everything from favorite architects (hers was Kahn) to family. We tried to get Ramon to interact, but he just kinda sat there. He eventually rotated and Olga sat next to me.

Some other characters at the dinner table were Owen, an American student who was flamboyantly charismatic; a couple native from the city who I never caught their names; Valentino, an exuberant traveler from Italy; Jonathan, another American and his gorgeous Spanish girlfriend Sophie. There was two older ladies sitting farthest away that I didn't get to meet until desert.

Maria-louisa, one of the mysterious older women, was the funniest person I met all night. When Fatima got up to talk to some of her friends, Maria-louisa cam right over and sat with us. She was rapidly talking in Spanish about her life, her family, and her beloved sister. I caught most of it and was able to translate for Hawra, who sat with a puzzled look on her face for most of the conversation. Maria-Louisa would employ the whole table in a translation game when either I didn't understand her or she didn't understand me. Everyone would laugh at our staccatoed conversations and Maria's anecdotes. She also tried to persuade Hawra and I to go to Brazil, which is where he sister lives, because the men are "Muy, muy, guapo!!!!" (she says this as she does a little dance and closes he eyes). I was cracking up. She's 75, by the way. We laughed and talked though desert and coffee. Some people began to trickle on home. As we said our good-byes to our new friends, I asked Hawra what time it was.....1 am! We had just fallen victim to the Spanish 4 hour dinner :) It was fabulous.

(Gotta run to Spanish class! I'm going to catch up soooooon!)

Playing catch up

Some of the group wandered down to beach as we walked towards the glistening sculptural fish. I joined a few of my other classmates on the jetty. The sun was setting and the panoramic view of the city was amazing. The coastline, with its mountains in the distant and the newer beachfront developments, echoed years of change and growth layered on one another. It was beautiful. I've also mastered the art of panoramic pictures on my camera (thanks mom and dad!) and was able to capture not only the awesome sunset view, but my classmates in all three frames that are stitched together to create one seamless picture. The end result is a photo with the three of them in the picture three times. Its pretty awesome.







Finally, the two groups converge at the commercial center that is capped with the infamous fish. The center itself is really interesting, with its layered floors, fountains. stairs, and balconies. The whole combination is really something.


(Sweet pic of the Natural Gas Building on the way home)
Our group heads back out towards home after multiple hours of wandering through the city. We were all hungry and sore from the unintentional mileage we traversed. After making a quick dinner we wandered down to the plaza to see what the commotion was about. We could hear hip-hop music and we saw street performers. Hawra and I joined the small crowd around the people causing the ruckus. A woman got on the microphone and began speaking in a manner that was similar in gesture and tone to preaching. We were then approached by a woman who tried to talk to us about their demonstration. After conveying to her that we didn't understand because our Spanish was so bad, she grabbed one of her colleagues who did speak English. Maria then began to explain how much God loved me and wanted my heart. I understood her broken English and adamantly agreed with her message, explaining I was Catholic and also believed in God's love. She invited me to worship with them the following Sunday morning in their church in Barcelona. I may go eventually, but I want to exasperate the Cathedrals of Barcelona first. We then returned to our apartment and explained to our roommates that the people were Evangelical Christians who performed hip-hop dance routines and preached in the square on Sunday nights! After that we crashed so we'd be ready for our first day of classes.

Monday was the first day of class. Our studio is all of 1.5 blocks away so in the afternoon we walked over early to see if our Internet was up and running yet. It was not since we run on Barcelona time...which is a little slower than Americans are used to. We had a run down of the syllabi for our studio and history classes. We met Cece for the first time. She's really fun. A native of Hong Kong and educated in the states, Cece now lives in Barcelona permanently with her family (husband and daughter) and runs her own firm. She's worked for famous architects and firms in Barcelona, and is just generally and all around around smart and funny person. I have a great feeling about her class. We'll learn about architecture and urbanism with her.

For dinner we had another family style meal where everyone chipped in and ate together. It's homey feeling and I like hanging out with everyone.

Tuesday we met up with Christy Cole for our sketching class. She introduced the syllabus and then explained our first project. We were going to do a derive in which we are each drifters traveling on a path defined by our emotional response to urban spaces. It's kind of trippy sounding, but was very informative once we immersed ourselves into the activity. Christy dropped us off in an unknown location and then told us to pair off. One person would wander for an hour, while the other recorded their path and emotional reasoning for their chosen direction and then the partners would switch. I paired up with Hawra and got to start the activity first.

I chose to go towards the sunny part of the street because it look welcoming and I was cold. I then was distracted by construction on what look like a church, and was later discovered to be a museum of a palace. We wandered in and out of alleys, stores, museums, and quaint courtyards, until we switched. Hawra took a similar approach and we continued through quaint streets, uncovering beautiful plazas as we went. Along our journey we met Olga, an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher who invited us to dinner for Friday. She wanted us to mingle with some Spanish students. Hawra and I are always up for an adventure so we agreed and swapped contact info. She was very friendly and we're really excited to meet some fun new people.

An interesting art store we popped into led us to Ed, who at first was kind of a grouchy salesclerk. We talked to him about some art products and he began to warm up to us. His English was really good. We later found out he had lived in some small town in Michigan for 3 years on and exchange program for high school, which would explain the good English. He gave us his info in case we had any questions about the area. Hawra and I have extraordinary luck with people. We make such and odd couple too. She's not even 5 feet tall, from Kuwait, dark skin, and black hair. I'm 5'6" and super white with dyed red hair. It's actually quite comical to hear us both butcher Spanish when we try and talk to people.

After drifting through the city for a few hours we stumbled upon the familiar La Rambla and ended our derive. By then we were quite hungry and stopped in a Turkish style eatery to crab some falaffel. Exhausted from our travels we walked back to our apartment to join our other classmates and hear their tales of travel. We snuck in a quick nap before heading over to the metro to go to our first Spanish class.

Our Spanish classes are held in the International House, a few metro stops off the L1 from Plaza de Universitat. The Int'l house is a resource center that teaches many different language classes to people of all different native tongues. Our class is solely comprised of the people from Catholic here for architecture. Most of us are beginners, but some of the students definitely have a greater mastery of the language. Our teacher entered the room and we didn't know what to expect. He only talks in Spanish (its a rule of the class) and he dives into understanding how much we actually understand. We ask each other our names, what we do , and what we want to do in Barcelona. We finally get his name, Xavi (pronounced Cha-be). He begins to loosen up and he gets us laughing at different greetings and conversational Spanish points. Since our pronunciation was so bad we reviewed the alphabet to get a better grasp on phonetics. To practice we played a bit of hang-man as well. We killed a few people, but for the most part we were triumphant. When we began to mingle to practice more conversation skills, we all noticed how adorably small our teacher was. He wasn't any bigger than 5 feet and with his slightly graying hair, he looked so cute. All of us know love the 3 hour class that we thought we'd dread.
Tuesday night was another family dinner. Then the boys came over to hang out and Hawra and I went over to the 3rd apartment, which houses Emma, Kristin, PJ, and Nick. They each have their own bedroom and the apartment is a mix between old world and newer furnishes. Only one of the bedrooms has a window though, which wouldn't fly in America with fire safety codes, but in Europe, those laws are much different. We all socialized for a bit and then stopped into a local Internet cafe to update our friends and family on our whereabouts.

Wednesday...I'm still sick by the way. I have a frogman voice and when I get really excited and normally higher pitched- no voice at all since I lost an octave of my vocal range. It's fabulous. We finally have internet working in studio and keys to the apartments to get in...

(to be cont.)