US vs Brazil soccer game

So last night I thought it would be a great idea to participate in a cross cultural activity by supporting my country play Europe's favorite past time! Margo and I went to an Irish pub that is near where I work downtown. Overall it was probably my favorite night here yet! (although I am of course not including the turnout of the game as part of my fabulous night) The bar was called George Payne and it was an enormous, beautifully decorated Irish pub that served great bar food (like real bar food....I'm talking burgers and fries) and it actually had more than like two beers on tap. The bar was packed with Americans and those who were not American at least spoke English. It was great....just like being back in the states! When we scored the first goal and everyone started chanting "U.S.A. U.S.A" and I was eating my fries and drinking my pitcher of beer....I damn near cried! It was a beautiful thing.

Now don't get me wrong, I am loving it here and the culture is so different and so wonderful in its own way but I miss home! So in honor of last night I am going to name the top six things that I miss about the states. (of course the first things I miss are the things that really matter....friends, family, boyfriend, puppy, Madison) The following is all just random American culture things.

1. Everyone speaking the same language as me (I miss the random conversations with strangers, bartenders, the guy next to you on the bus, etc. I just miss being able to understand everyone)

2. CUSTOMER SERVICE. It doesn't exist here. i miss it. a lot. It makes me proud that my country does such a nice job of treating its customers well. And if you disagree with me because you've had a bad experience with your cable provider (Charter) or a bar tab.....believe me you have no idea.

3. Fast food. I'm not talking about BK or McD's or Taco Bell or anything. I am talking about eating your lunch in under 2 hours. When I'm eating lunch by myself during a work day I do not need to be staring into my coffee cup for 30 minutes while 'I relax and enjoy the day.' I just want to be in and out in 25 minutes. yeah right.

4. Normal hairstyles. The hip youth here have the most insane hair styles. Their favorite is the dreaded mullet. It is a mullet with short hair up top and like 4-6 nasty long dreadlocks in the back. This is everywhere!! On girls it's maybe some weird short bangs or a mullet with like two or three longs braids or dreads that are hanging about 6 inches longer than the rest of their hair. I cannot explain. I will have to post pictures.

5. Microbrews and variety of beers. Not a beer drinking culture...most Spanish places serve 2-3 different kinds....that's it.

6. Seafood that doesn't stare back at you from your plate with its still intact eyeballs. I am so afraid of most of the seafood here because it looks the EXACT same on your plate as it did when it was alive swimming in the ocean. Yikes!

I'll probably come up with more but that's a fairly good list I think for now.

Pictures from the bar on Tibadabo

I stole one of my friends pictures just to give you an idea of how amazing that bar was and how beautiful the view was....

Sant Joan

So this past Wednesday was the national Spanish holiday Sant Joan. Yes, on a Wednesday so Spaniards have the excuse to take at least Tuesday and Thursday off as well as Wednesday.....hell why not take off the entire week?? That's how I feel it operates around here in terms of their liberal business practices. Sant Joan is a celebration of the summer solstice and the 'official' kickoff to the summer party season! Tuesday night, Sant Joan eve, is the REAL celebration where as Wednesday it really just a relaxing/recovery day (like New Years Day). So Tuesday night all of us went down to the beach around 10 pm to watch all the fireworks and party and drink on the beach. We got a huge speech from our program advisor and had to sign a waiver prior to going down there (they were just trying to scare us and talk us out of participating).

Every year on Sant Joan someone isn't paying attention to the fireworks or the fires and ends up losing a digit or burning their face or something moronic like that....hence the waivers. But not to worry I played it safe and still have all 10 fingers and toes. It was basically just a lot of fireworks...a lot of them set off by the locals....and a lot of trash fires, burning of furniture, children throwing firecrackers....and partying on the beach! It was a really great night!

The next day I took full advantage of having a random Wednesday off from work and I slept in, watched a movie and chilled at Bellaterra all day. That was the first day in the 22 days that I had been here that I did not do a single thing or have anything planned. It was beautiful.

Weekend #2 Recap

Another highly successful weekend here in Barca. A simple recap....

Thursday night: Margaret met me downtown at my work and we went to Dow Jones to meet up with all the girls for some after dinner drinks. I love this bar so much. It reminds me of a bar that would be in Madison or something....a little slice of home. Also, the bartenders speak English so we can sit at the bar and actually have full out conversations with them and talk about what's going on the upcoming weekend. After a few drinks at Dow Jones, Margo and I headed back to Bellaterra for dinner and went to bed. I decided that going out on Thursdays is not appropriate here considering we never seem to make it back before 6 am and I get up for work at 7 am. So some happy hour drinks and home to bed worked out perfectly.

Friday night: Because my work is so awesome and the guys I work for are so great I ended up leaving work on Friday at 2 pm. I mean it's Barcelona and its beautiful out so who wants to work on a Friday? My bosses names are Mike and Jason so I am just going to refer to them as that from now on. So Mike talked me into going to this festival on Friday night called Sonar. It's the world's largest electronic music festival and it takes place in Barca each summer! About 70 - 80,000 people from ALL over Europe come to this festival. So obviously....I had to go. Let's be honest I need some festivals in my life. So Margaret and I went to Sonar around midnight on Friday night. What an experience that was! Very interesting. Quite unlike any other festival I have ever been too. But it was still really really amazing! I'm really glad that I went because it was so different to be in a place with so many different types of people and hearing so many different languages being spoken.

Saturday: After getting back from Sonar around 5 am, we had a 9 am wake-up call for our programs' weekly sponsored activity. This weekend it was a tour of Torres winery and a visit to Monseratt. Seeing everyone on that bus at 9 am in the morning after a Friday night out was quite a sight! It was just so much fun because everyone was in the exact same boat.....struggling. We made it to the winery around 11 am and took a really cool tram ride through the vineyards and through some of the processing warehouses. We also saw all the cellars where the wine is stored while it ages in huge oak barrels. We then went inside for a wine tasting and tried a house red wine and white wine. Absolutely delicious! It was a really cool experience and it was refreshing to get out of the city and see some of the Spanish countryside. It actually kind of reminded me of Wisco or somewhere in the midwest except that all the cornfields were vineyards. (which is a major upgrade)

After the winery tour we ate a traditional lunch of paella, which is a Spanish rice dish with vegetables and sea food. I stuck to the vegetarian paella though because the seafood dish had shrimp and crayfish that were staring at me. In Barca I have yet to see shrimp served without their eyes, legs and shell. No thank you. I do like how the Catalonians eat their lunch though. A traditional Spanish lunch is two courses and a dessert. It's a very long and slow meal that is always finished with a dessert and coffee. That's why most businesses have their lunch breaks from 2-4. It's really relaxing.

Finally, after lunch we traveled to Monseratt. Since I already had been there I knew what to expect but I had forgotten just how beautiful it actually is. It is definitely my favorite thing that I have seen here thus far. The girls I was with all fell in love with the mountain and the monastery immediately. We all have vowed to visit it at least one more time before we leave.

Saturday night we traveled up to Tibadabo, which is a high peak right outside the city, where we went to a hilltop bar. The bar was almost all glass and you could see the entire city below. It was a super classy place and had a courtyard with a koi fish pond in the middle. This bar was a really nice change from the crazy downtown bars that we had been going to. It was really nice to just sit in the courtyard, order a bottle of wine and look out over the city that we live in.

Sunday: Margo and I got up early and met all the other girls on the Port Olimpic beach. I think this is pretty much going to be our Sunday activity because its our only totally free day of the week. We layed out all day and people watched.....there are SO MANY INTERESTING SIGHTS TO SEE ON THE BEACH! You have to see it to believe it. Perfect after a long, exhausting weekend. We then all went out to dinner at Rosa Negra because we were all craving Mexican food for some reason. It was super delicious and the perfect ending to a great weekend!

Work was great again today. It's just so relaxed and I feel so comfortable in the office and in the area where I work. I am going to take some pictures of the surrounding area to post because it's such an interesting part of the city and the architecture is gorgeous. I am so happy with my work situation..... I am starting to feel really lucky to be here!

Some quality group shots.

We do a lot of waiting for mass transit so we end up with a lot of pictures like these!

Work Week Number 1

Almost the end of my first work week and so far, so, so good. I am really enjoying my time at work thus far. The two founders of the company are both young and American. They actually were in a situation similar to mine four years ago when they both decided that after college they would work for a while in Barcelona.....and long story short, they still haven't left. So it's been really cool to be working with two Americans who know so much about this city after living and working here for the past 4 years. I think they also appreciate having someone new to talk to about the things from American culture that they miss like baseball, football, Thanksgiving and tailgating. I have already learned so much from these two locals. They have given me important local information, such as where the best tapas are, the best chill bar, the best champagne bar, the best pizza-by-the-slice (had it today....ridiculously good and delicious), the best museums and the one place in the city where they serve food late! (obviously very important). I guess in the end all the hoops I jumped through, the challenges that I faced trying to find the right internship and the struggling through being homesick and questioning why I am here has all been worth it. Because I am starting to really fall in love with this city and it's relaxed way of life. Tomorrow brings an end to my first work week and the beginning to weekend number two! Things are really falling into place.

Some pictures of the people I'm with and the things were doing!

The bottom two pictures are my roommate Margaret and I. She's going to be a senior at Kent State and she's absolutely great! I could not have asked for anything better! I have really been enjoying getting to know her and going out with her. The best thing is she has the size feet as me so now we can share shoes! She's really chill but loves going out and getting crazy, not unlike myself.

The top picture is from Friday night....well actually about 7 am on Saturday morning. We went out until we saw the sun rise on the beach. And this picture is all of us walking back to the metro so we can get some breakfast and.....pass out!

The other two pictures are us girls and a two of the guys that we've been hanging out with. The girls are all really great. The big group picture was taken while we were waiting for the metro to take us into the city. All of these girls in this picture are from the east coast - Philly, NYC, DC - and two of them are from L.A. So its just Margo and I who are representing the midwest! (obviously we're holding it down and are the only two girls who drink beer) So it's been nice to be getting some flavor from the coasts. That's the greatest thing about the people on this journey with me....I probably would not be friends with very many of these girls and especially the guys had I met them under different circumstances. But here since we're all going through this together, we allow ourselves to open up a little more and to go out of our comfort zone.

So as for our weekend plans, here's the breakdown.

Thursday night: Chupitos. It's a pre-club bar that serves over 600 different shots. We took Harry Potter shots which included lighting the bar on fire with marshmellow 'wands'. Very cool. We then went to Catwalk Club. Which is a huge dancing club right off the beach. This club was pretty ridiculous.....LOTS and LOTS of dancing! My feet were incredibly sore the next day from not only the dancing but the long journey we made to get home from the club. We're really trying to figure out all the transportation still.

Friday night: Dow Jones. We got to this bar at around midnight and everyone settled into some beers before heading down to the clubs. This bar operates like the stock market (or like stock night at Brat's) so it's really fun drinking at the mercy of the supply and demand of the drinks. And every once in a while....you never know when....there's a "crash" and if you happen to be at the bar at that moment you get you're drink for like a euro. Its really fun! This bar closed pretty early (and by early I mean like 2) so we went in search for our next watering hole. We tried a few clubs but the cover charge was pretty ridiculous so we ended up sitting outside a random bar right next to the port. I don't know the name of the bar. After the sun came up we all headed back to Bellaterra for a bite to eat and some sleep.

Saturday: Slept until 5 p.m. and just couldn't do another night of watching the sun rise so a bunch of us girls stayed in and watched The Hangover! Which was so funny and a much better idea of trying to push through another night!

Sunday: Went to lunch in the city and then spent 5 hours on the beach bronzing.

So here's to a successful first weekend and things can only get better as we get more familiar and comfortable in the city! Cannot wait for next weekend!