Day One!

Still loving Barcelona!  We spent the rest of yesterday playing Monopoly and Uno with the two kids and we didn't get a nap like we had planned so Amy and I passed out at around 10:30 last night and slept until around 1:00 this afternoon... I'd say we're pretty well rested.  Today we didn't have anything planned with the school so we had the day to ourselves!  Amy and I walked down the street to Burger King for lunch (we weren't feeling too brave today and loved the familiarity) and then walked a little further to Plaza Catalunya which is beautiful but swarmed with hundreds of pigeons and I get really grossed out by birds.  One woman was standing in the middle of them and let five or six crawl all over her arms and shoulders... EWWW...Getting past them was tough and they got so close to us but the rest of it was absolutely beautiful!  The architecture and sculptures and fountains were so pretty.  (if you click on the pictures they get bigger)

We went into Corte Ingles which is this huge department store... I think it's 9 floors and each floor is a different department.  Amy and I rode the escalator all the way up to the 9th floor then all the way back down to the first floor before we realized that the shampoo and other toiletries  (our reason for going) were in fact on the floor we came in on.  We did some more exploring in the plaza and then met up with Beth, McCauley, Ellen and two of her friends from her program to go buy tickets for tomorrow's FC Barcelona fútbol game!  We took the metro for the first time and it was a little stressful but thankfully Ellen's friends are from big cities and knew what they were doing. When we got to the stadium to buy our tickets they had just closed so we aren't going to be able to get them until tomorrow.  One man said that it wouldn't be a problem getting them, though, so we'll just wait.  We took the metro back, stopped at Starbucks on the way back to our apartment (yay America!) and we just ate supper with the family- fish sticks, salad, bread, and pasta.  I don't think I've had fish sticks since I was about 4 but they were homemade and delicious!  We're going to meet back up with the other girls later and head out to George Payne's Irish Pub tonight and then orientation starts at 10:45 tomorrow morning for me!  I guess it's about 4:00 across the pond so have fun in the snow today... so glad I'm not there freezing- I didn't even have to wear a jacket on this warm day in Barcelona! Adios!