barca beginning

Today we moved into our apartments. I'm living in the center of the city in El Barri Gótic which I'm very happy about. I'm living with three girls: Jaime, Jessica, and Laura who are all from the U.S. Me and Laura have the single rooms and Jaime and Jess have a double. I was really nervous about the apartments because I heard how small all the single rooms are; however, I must have been lucky because I have a big room with a queen size bed, desk, dresser, and balcony. The kitchen is a little small and instead of a dishwasher, there is the washer machine. In Spain, no one dries their laundry, they hang them on clotheslines over their balconies so we have a little balcony by our front door with a clothesline.

We are right by El Placa de Catalunya and Las Ramblas. We are also surrounded by clothes stores and restaurants so I will have to try and ignore them instead of shopping because everything here is sooooo expensive. I had to buy my own linens and the price of cheap linens here in Barcelona is nothing like the price of cheap linens in the U.S.

For the past few days we have been living in hotels because we have been going through orientation for the program as a whole and for the liberal arts classes we are taking. I still have my orientation for the business classes tomorrow and then all of our classes start on Monday. My schedule is pretty good, my earliest class is at 10:45 and the latest I have class until is 3:30 in the afternoon. Hopefully since I'm done so early with my classes I will be able to tour around Barcelona as much as possible. We have already gone on a bus tour of the city and got to see the Sagrada Familia by Gaudí as well as a few other buildings of his. Here they have great rates at museums for students so I will be able to see a lot around here and also when I travel around Europe. Once I'm settled in I will start planning trips around Europe because I want to be able to get everything in while I'm here and it's going to fly by.

I will update everyone soon!