Since I´ve been here:

Okay... so I know that I´ve talked to or written most of you so far about my time here in Spain. However, I know there are others that I haven´t talked to at all. So, I am going to give you all a quick update on everything I´ve done here in Spain over the last month.

My plane flew out of Detroit on the evening of September 2nd. I spent the night before and the whole day with my aunt, cousin, her husband, their three kids, and her dad, stepmom, and half sister on a lake in Michigan. Since I usually only get to see all of my family twice a year, it was fun to see them to make up for not seeing them this coming Christmas. We went tubing and swimming and stayed up late playing cards and it was really fun. My mom and sisters were with me, and my dad drove up in the morning to meet us so he could go to the airport too. At the airport, it was really hard to say goodbye for 8 or 9 months to my family. I managed, though, and only cried a bit on the flight to Paris.

Once in Paris, I met up with a lot of the other BCA students and after a 4 hour layover, we flew to Spain. Our first week here in Spain was actually spent in Castelldefels, which is on the outskirts of Barcelona. We were in a hotel and had a language class and a conversation class every day. It was an interesting and long week. At the end of the week, we loaded up all our luggage and headed into the center of Barcelona where we waited at a hotel for a few hours to meet our host families. Let me tell you, that was one of the scariest moments of my life!!! All I kept thinking was "I want to go home... I can´t communicate with them... What if they don´t like me?" Finally, after about a 3 hour wait, my host mom came to pick me up. We chatted for a few minutes there at the hotel and then left to head to my new home. My host family is actually just a couple who have three grown children. All three of their kids are married and have children of their own. My third day at the house (which is actually an apartment) all of the kids and grandchildren came over... which was more scary than fun. But I survived the meal and retreated to my room quickly afterwards.

We moved in with our host families on a Friday. The next week, we continued our conversation and grammar classes at the university in the city while also beginning a History of Art class. We had 3 days of class the following week and then took a trip to Santiago de Compestela in Galicia to finish up our Art History course. The trip was fun, but also somewhat boring because I had already learned so much in ETA about the art and whatnot that I felt it was very repetitious. The day after we got back from Galicia, we started our real classes for the semester. We had a final that Friday over the Art History Pre-semester course and another final the next Friday over the Grammar part of the Pre-semester course. Unfortunately (I know some of you know this), I received a phone call from my mom on the first day of classes to let me know that my grandpa (my dad´s dad) had died the previous day. This wasn´t really the greatest way to start out my semester, and it distracted me quite a bit from studying for the two finals, but I had a lot of support from my host parents, friends that I´ve made here, and Maika (the director of BCA).

Since then, I´ve talked to my mom a few times and feel like I am doing pretty well with my grandpa´s death. I still don´t think it will be real to me until I go back to Michigan and he isn´t there. Meanwhile, I´m trying to do the best I can here. I feel like my language skills have gotten better and hope that they really continue to do so. My host mom keeps telling me that I speak very well, so that is encouraging.

Besides classes, I´ve kept busy with all of the fiestas here in Barcelona! In our first month here, we have already had 2 holidays (meaning there were no classes on those days and lots of fiestas), one of which was the Dia de la Merced (one of the biggest celebrations in Barcelona). I went out with a few of the girls studying here from Elizabethtown who live down the street from me and we had a good time with all of the concerts and parades. There is another holiday this coming Friday, but I already have no classes on Fridays, so it isn´t too exciting. The exciting thing about this weekend is that my host parents are taking a trip, so I have the apartment to myself for 2 whole days!

Okay... so I think that about sums up my life since I´ve been here. Besides London, which I will be posting pictures from in a bit. I´ll write more about that trip in the next entry since this has already turned into a novel... Meanwhile, I hope you are all doing well and can´t wait to hear from you!