An Average Class Day in Barcelona

Hello hello!

I know it seems like I've been gone for ages from blogging. Trust me I haven't forgotten! In fact, I'm 50% done with my post from Seville and Cordoba this past weekend (I loved it SO Much I wrote half of it last night in about an hour or so). Check the blog later tonight for that post. The Madrid/Toledo and Stone posts are about 30% done... but blogger was being really dumb and not letting me upload the photos. Will get to that this weekend (this upcoming weekend is my FIRST weekend in Barcelona in the past 5 weekends... I can't tell you how nice it's going to be to just sleep in!)

This morning I had my internship seminar class at 9 am (not my favorite class, but I just get through it). We don't even really talk about our internships.. we talk mostly about life actually. We have to read these articles before class, reflect, and discuss them in class. Today, the theme was how society is so obsessed with perfectionism that we can't just accept ourselves for who we are. I feel like I'm taking a philosophy class, but it's not as intense in terms of writing papers and what not.

Then, I had a break of which I used to prepare for a class presentation for my European Regional Economies class. This isn't my favorite class (not going to lie here) but it's do-able. I just find it hard to take the class seriously when the professor favors another group because one of the group members practically reads from an economics dictionary (e.g. credit losses, trade balance, balance of payments, collateral, contagion,etc). Not to mention, the kid is super arrogant, so I'm a bit biased. But it's hard motivating my group members to work really hard on this project because I believe they are all getting credit as either pass/fail, unlike me whose grades transfer directly to SCU (A, A-, B+,B, etc) My group is focusing on youth unemployment in Spain (super fascinating by the way!) and we're about half way done through the project. Every two weeks we have to do a presentation to the class on our progress and where we are in our research/findings. My class was at 12:25 and ended at 2 pm.

After my European Regional Economies class, I grabbed lunch at my go to place, Lactuca and had a hot, steaming bowl of vegetable and chicken stir fry (only 4.75 euros! best find so far!) It was POURING rain (I've never seen it rain so hard before) and a girl outside the IES building walked me to the restaurant since I forgot my umbrella (the ONE time I didn't bring it). Even though she was walking in the other direction, she insisted I didn't get wet (so that was very nice!).

I sat with my friend Jessica from Santa Clara, had lunch, talked about the recent Glee shows (yup, I'm a Glee fan !) and reminisced about  our weekend in Seville and Cordoba. I finished homework for my Mediterranean Oceanography class (which starts at 3:45) and responded to some e-mails.

My oceanography class is by far my favorite class ever. My professor is absolutely brilliant and so funny (half of the articles I'm using for a research paper are either written by HIM or cite HIS research...pretty incredible if you ask me). He was on a roll today in terms of making the class laugh. Today, we talked about various forms of pollution (eutrophication, organic pollution,etc) and how that impacts the Mediterranean environment and its creatures. Everyday after class, I leave in a really good mood because a)he's hilarious b) i'm always learning and c) his class keeps me awake. I'm so sad that I only half one more month of class with him. :(

It's funny but Barcelona is a completely different city when it rains. It's much more calm, less touristy, less hectic, and kind of relaxing almost. After coming back from class, I had a fabulous cup of thick hot chocolate as I checked my e-mails and was inspired enough to write a quick little post for you all. Most of my posts have been about my travels, but thought this might be a nice change :)

Hope you're well! Check back later for my Seville and Cordoba post.