Report

My First Day of Class:

• went pretty well.
• was very hot as the building has no air conditioning and the classrooms were chock full of people.
• was exciting because of the very cool people I am taking the class with. We went for drinks after and I cannot remember the last time I had so much fun with people I didn´t know. I think they may be the best part of the deal.
• was frustrating because we had to teach and I had beginner students that had a hard time following my instructions. I don´t consider myself especially verbose, but I definitely talked too much and used words that were too big. It was harder than my first day teaching college kids.
• was scary because of how much work the rest of the course is going to be.
  

My apartment:

• has a great view. I look out a market, a beautiful street, trees, and lots of other great things. I will post some photos later.
• is really high up. It is supposedly on the 4th floor but I hike up 8 flights. The 25 minute walk (through Old Town and the Gothic Quarter) to and from school and these stairs I should keep the weight from all the wine I am drinking off.
• is owned by a really nice lady.
• is shared with another student from my course. She´s from Sweden originally but has lived in London for the past 15 years (where she used to own a bookstore focusing on literary criticism and poetry). She is fantastic and we hit it off immediately.
• is really, really hot. I need to invest in a fan. (But where does one go to buy a cheap fan, especially when one doesn´t know the Spanish - or more importantly Catalan - word for fan?)
• has a shower head that is in the tub and no shower curtain which means I take a shower by sitting in the tub and moving the shower head around.
  

A few other points:

• I am typing on a Spanish keyboard and the keys are just a little off of what I am used to, so every once is a while I am surprised when something like ñ or ç pops up on the screen instead of what I am used to being on that key.
• My feet are swollen because of the heat.
• My mom is still here and that is nice.
• Wine really is cheaper than water - €1.50 for a glass! And it´s good! I´ve been drinking way more.
• I heart tapas.
• I double-heart paseos.
• Nothing is written in Spanish. Everything is in Catalonian, the local language that is as different from Spanish as Italian.