Week One in Barcelona

Hi everyone. Welcome to my little blog. I thought this might be the best way for everyone to keep up with my whereabouts as I embark on my Spanish adventure. Ole!

So far, it has been a pretty amazing week. Many thanks to Nicole, my suitcase mule, for not only dragging extra luggage along for me, but for helping me set up my Ikea bed, my bank account (well, this is still in the works), etc... She's also going to show me how to weigh my fruit at the grocery store so I don't get yelled at by the checkout ladies.

My apartment is beautiful, and I've already posted photos of it here: http://homepage.mac.com/noellesadler/Calatrava/PhotoAlbum4.html - so check it out!

My roomates are Marco from Germany, George from Italy, and Alexander from Switzerland, whom I've only seen for about 10 minutes. His girlfriend lives here in Barcelona so we have a feeling we won't be seeing much of him.

Marco is a great partier and convinced Nicole and me to go to a disco called Danzetoria last night even though we were tired because he said, "Once you go inside Danzatoria, you will never want to leave." I told him maybe he could make some money on the side by renting out his room and living at Danzatoria!

George's mom was here when we arrived and stayed until Wednesday. He was sad when she left, mostly because he will now have to figure out how the "magic tunnel" that connects his dirty laundry basket to his wardrobe works. He would always bring his clothes to his parents' house on the weekends, so he never knew how the magic tunnel operated, just that one day he would have dirty clothes and the next, they were clean and in his closet! Yesterday was his first encounter with the washing machine and the dryer. He seems to have survived so far.

Tomorrow a big group of us is running in a 9K race somewhere outside of town. A few people have already done 2 of these races, and I think some people have decided just to cheer tomorrow rather than actually run. It'll be nice to see a town outside of Barcelona... I'm not sure how nice the actual running will be!