Back to Reality

Oh there goes gravity...okay, so I wasn't Eminem for Halloween but I still channel my inner rapper every now and then, because look, if I had one shot, or one opportunity - to seize everything I ever wanted...mmkay.

After enjoying my 10-day pass in la-la-land aka our eurotrip, the first real dose of work hit me hard. 2000 words for my 'Inventing the Modern' class. In Dartmouth terms, that is a piece of cake, 4-5 pages...but it was a rough 36 hours pounding out this paper. Hello senioritis, IN SCOTLAND!

Due dates here are pretty unclear, and I think that was part of the problem. On the sheet it says 'due the week beginning Nov 1st' but everyone heard different stories: Monday, the day you had your seminar, Friday at 3 pm, Friday at noon...'Up to you, but preferably before 1 pm on Friday on Friday so as to not disturb the department's schedule' says my prof. They do it way differently here. You attach a official cover sheet with name, course, prof, and assignment on it, along with a signed plagiarism/originality declaration - into the English Dept, not to your professor. Strange, no? And a bunch of people read it to make sure the marking standards were followed, it's about a 3 week ordeal. Anyway, I think I handed in my paper on Friday at 12:51. Yep, like that Strokes song.

My zombie self passed out right after. For 36 hours my diet consisted of Coke Zero and bananas. I still have 3 left. Brought one to the theatre last night - Nora, Katie, Joie and I went to see 'Easy A.' They made fun of me and my fruit-bringing haha! The movie was so hilarious. Witty and so many literary references (it's loosely based on 'The Scarlet Letter'). Haha oh English people...

Today is cold and rainy. I wonder how the weather is in Hanover - WHERE REBECCA IS - so jealous!! I miss Dartmouth so much. So far my day has comprised of 1) catching up on Gossip Girl 2) buying a ton of groceries with Kels and 3) cooking myself a superb lunch. Productive, I know. We walked into Starbucks and everything was all Christmasy! I love holiday cheer. And being all warm and fuzzy. And cuddling up to hot chocolate. With the fam. Ok must leave before this gets any more mushy.

XOXO

P.S. Saw the most handsome Scotsman in all of Glasgow. At Starbucks. He...took my money. Yeah boi.

BACK IN GLASGOW!

yes, eurotrip is over!!!

i wasn't able to update in venice because there is no such thing as wifi in venice....also no such thing as credit card machines....saddddddd i had to use cash for thingsss

i would update now, but since coming back to reality i realized that i have a mountain of work and have to write an essay by tomorrow!

so i will try to update after classes so that you are not left hanging (ik my life is so riveting lolol)

For now, here's a funny video.

And a pic of us in barcelona

Micky, Katie, Joie, me and Nora

Tapas are Overrated

Greetings loved ones, (haha I sound like Snoop Dogg from 'California Girls')

Today was less sunny which we were a little sad about but still, can't complain about the Barca temps! 66 degrees and cloudy, we'll take it. Tomorrow is supposed to rain, NO ME GUSTA LLUVIA, and yes, I am the weatherwoman. (My macbook widget has been surprisingly on its game in Spain - it is NEVER right in Scotland for some reason)

Rebecca and I woke up pretty late again today....it's okay, we're just moving up our siesta to the AM and not having one later in the day. So first meal of the day was lunch, the largest meal for the Spanish, and we had seafood paella again (we can't get enough!) We went to Park Guell, which is this garden/architectural complex designed by Antonio Guadi. We had to trek up this hill which reminded me a little of Glasgow, since I always feel like I'm climbing up a mountain, but it was really funny because along the way we saw all these little children! With painted faces! Red circled cheeks - like pikachu - and some little boys had mustaches drawn on them - like this guy:

So when we finally got there, I was so amazed! It was like an artsy, romantic, exotic version of Candyland. Check it out.

Here's a close up for this lil cutie:

Does this NOT look like candyland/the gingerbread house???

Then, I desperately tried to look for the mango gelato I had yesterday which was SO GOOD (there were chunks of mango in it!) but we couldn't find the same shop....it was sad so instead, Rebecca and I got a kiwi-melon-banana smoothie, a pine nut cookie thing and chocolate-covered churros!

I finally had tapas!! They were a pretty big let-down to be honest, I was expecting more after loving paellas so much. We had some fried fish - like little baby fishies, they were super spiky in my mouth!! :(, green peppers, garlic shrimp, mushrooms that tasted a lot like the escargot we had in Paris, chips. I think I'd like tapas, but the tapas we had at this restaurant weren't superb. But it was a nice second romantic dinner date with Rebecca - the place was outside, right on the street and all romantically lit!

Here we are now, back at our room in the hotel. The receptionist ordered us a pizza, because at midnight, every Dartmouth girl gets hungryface! Half a pizza later, I should be sleeping...but again my Spanish scheduled body isn't tired...

All packed up though! Tomorrow we hit Venezia! Eggplant parmigiana, here I come!!!

[addendum: omg so we still got ni haos...but today someone got creative and said "konichiwa" damn barca, you're so international!]

hi

micky and i just woke up...it's 2 pm hahahah
Barcelonans work on such a different time schedule than we are used to!
This is literally just a city of partiers. As Joe says, "It's a city on a college kid's schedule"

So this is what happens...things don't usually open til around 10, people take a siesta from 3-6, and then restaurants don't open until 8 at the earliest for dinner! so usually people don't even eat til 10!

We didn't get with dinner until pretty late and we were catching up with our FSPpl. I love them!!

Yesterday, we all went to the Pablo Picasso museum. Micky and I found our favorite part of Barcelona, La Rambla! Katie, Nora, Joie, Henry, Joe, and Jon are all staying here, but we didn't know that. We went to the area to go to the museum, and as we were looking at a street map because we were kind of lost, Joe comes up behind us!

I don't know if I've ever been happier to see someone in my whole life! Now I know what people mean when they talk about the Dartmouth family because seeing Joe was like seeing my long lost bro!

Ok, so we went to this restaurant where all of the rest of our FSP family was eating and we all happily went to the museum. I learned a lot about Picasso and have decided that I like his Rose period the best.

[Interjection by Micky: I like his Blue period! So moody.]

We all really liked this painting: La Salchichona. This pic really doesn't do it justice, it was STUNNING in real life.

Because it was beautiful yesterday, we decided we wanted to go to LA PLAYA!! We got a little lost while walking there but I don't even mind because the it was a gorgeous walk. Everything was sand-colored, it was sunny but slightly breezy, and streets were cobbled. It reminded me of a better version of Arizona.

After walking through a business district that kind of reminded me of inception, we came upon the ocean!!!

now that i've actually found a pic of it...it looks less like inception than I thought lol

Joie and I went to the shoreline, and put parts of our bodies in the Mediterranean Sea.

That awesome looking building is the Barcelonan World Trade Center

So according to World Atlas, the 7 Seas of the Discovery Age as:
Atlantic
Arctic
Indian
and Pacific Oceans
Mediterranean Sea,
the Caribbean Sea,
and the Gulf of Mexico
(I'm using the seas of the discovery age even though that time period was from 1450-1650 because it's MY discovery age right now!!)


Only have 4 more Seas to go to touch them all!

After frolic a little by the shore, I started to get VERY hungry because all I ate that day was coffee and ice cream (my fave things, but not really um nutritional per se)...but it was only 6 pm so there weren't any real restaurants open yet

We grabbed a cab back to the Christopher Columbus monument...it's of Christopher Columbus pointing towards the new world....but he's not pointing the right way hahah

Jon and Henry were VERY hungry...and since im a boy, i was VERY hungry too...they got food bc they had cash but i had to wait to go to Mcdonald's because not many places in Barcelona take plastic...OMG SO SAD FOR MY LIFEEEE

we wandered for a little bit and we saw a bunch of street performers. Barcelona is a city of artists! There was a guys with like a magic glass ball that he was being a baller (HAHA) with. He was making his limbs all like fluid and it looked like he was a wizard (I mean, he might have been!) Then there were all of these people who were like pretending to be statues and Jack Sparrow and stuff. And there were jugglers...this one juggler kept on messing up and then laughing at himself. And then he heckled people for money...he was so ridiculous that people actually gave him money for being bad at juggling lololol

Jen, Henry, Katie, Micky, Joie, and I all went to eat at Lez quinze nits. I had paella for the first time..OMG IT WAS SO GOOD....im just going to eat paella over and over again for the rest of my life.

love love love love

It was such cute FSP bonding time, everyone shared food and sangria and we just talked a lot...I LOVE MY FSP!!! We are cuties.

We all just hung out together for the rest of the night...it was nice, and we were a familia.

At one point we were all walking down the street holding hands in a line...it was adorbs!

omg

if one more person says ni hao to me im going to flip a lil bitch.

Im Korean.

And micky is only half chinese, half japanese....

between us, there is only one quarter of chinese....

i mean i love chinese people but really, stop saying ni hao to me

Review Time!

Micky and I went on a nice little date today!
We went to the Blau Resturant, a really nice place on Carrer del Tenor Masini, 61. That's only like a 10 min walk from the hotel we're staying at. Unfortunately, the walk was kind of scary because it was definitely NOT in a glam neighborhood.

Everything about the meal was delicious! It was a five course meal, and since we reserved on this nice website (www.restalo.com -- it lets you reserve and get discounts in Spain!) we got the meal for 60% off. Yeah we're saavy!

how cute!!

So when to reserve, you get a menu (we learned that in Spain, a "menu" is like a course meal that you choose)

We started out with Cannelloni with mushrooms in a creamy foie

(later we found out this was liver...Micky was NOT happy)

[Interjection by Micky: Literally, I was tricked into eating liver!!! When we relooked at the menu to remember the names of everything - it said, FOIE on our first appetizer. Vom. Never speaking about that again...also I called it when we were eating. R: "What's this inside?" M: "Ah, no idea, but it's a little weird. Probably some haggis-type stuff." R: "So good, though!" Foie...sigh.]

Followed by Andalusian-style fried calamari with salad

and Contrast salad, cubes of crusty bread, gorgonzola and apple

So those appetizers were shared between me and Micky.

For our main course, we could choose between Grilled Prawns, Beef burger with pepper, or Magret of duck with wild berry touch. Micky and i both got the grilled prawns.

We were very happy with these because they came with 5 and they were pretty big!

For dessert we had Profiteroles with chocolate fondant

(all of these pics I got from google because I was dumb and didn't takes pics, but these are pretty close to what the actual meal looked like)

All in all, the meal was absolutely amazing! The only downside was that we had to pay for the water...because they didn't have tap...idk.

For both of us, the meal was €32 which was a deal!

The best part was we made friends with the waiters. For some reason they thought we were really funny because we were american. They were so nice that they called us a cab afterwards because we were kind of scared to walk home.

overall, i definitely want to go back!

Chuck Norris = Chuck Bass

Micky: Blake Lively and Penn Badgley split up!!! After 3 years, what??

Rebecca: Which one is he on Gossip Girl?

Micky: Dan

Rebecca: Is that the one who says "I'm Chuck Norris?"

Micky: ?!?!?!??! You mean Chuck Bass, HAHAHHAHA