Post for July 25th, 2012

This has been such a fun and stressful week! Tomorrow will be my last day of classes. It’s kind of a bitter sweet feeling because, although I’ve enjoyed them, I am exhausted (mostly from this week) because of my final essay in Spanish Culture and Civilization and the stress for tomorrow’s final exams. I turned in my essay today and I’m glad that’s done because I had trouble focusing on it. I wrote about the Spanish Conquistadors’ influence on what is now Mexico and how it contributed to it’s current culture. I thought it would an easy and interesting topic to cover but most of my better resources were so complex, in-depth, and boring I did not have the time to read through everything and then summarize what I learned. But alas that it is over, and I can focus on tomorrow’s exams. Even though I have been extremely tired from staying up late finishing my paper last night, I decided to make some adventurous stops on my way home after school today. I went to Plaza Catalunya with Shelby looking for the highest view from inside the “El Corte Ingles” mall. We went all the way to the top floor and took some pictures from there, but we didn’t buy anything from the fancy deli up there because everything was almost twice as expensive as anything I have seen so far. Before we almost decided to go back home, we stopped to feed the pigeons for the first time since we arrived to Barcelona. It was really fun because we learned how to get the pigeons to feed from our hands and the pigeons weren’t scared to stay on our arms as long as there was food there. No one showed us how to do it either. We just tried it without really knowing if it would work and it did! A few people even took pictures of us holding the pigeons as they passed by. It was quite amusing I guess.

On our way to the metro station Shelby and I managed to get a picture taken with the Catalan police whom I’ve heard tend to be quite merciless law enforcers. I was also told they weren’t allowed to have pictures taken of them while they were working or in uniform but I guess these guys didn’t know or follow that rule because they were not at all reluctant to take a picture with us. Shelby also dared me to drink water from the Fountains in the Plaza. It is said that who ever drinks from those fountains will be destined to return to Barcelona, that’s the only reason why I really drank some of its water because it didn’t seem all that clean.

Just before sunset Shelby, Chrystal, and I met up to finally go see the building that lights up at night. It was nothing too special it was just something we had been wanting to see in person because we always heard people joking about it because of it’s phallic shape. People referred to it as the penis or tampon building because of how it looks. Since we missed dinner at our homestays to go see that building we stopped by a little buffet with Italian-like food. It was a calm way to end the night, even though we should have been home studying.

Now I’m about to go to sleep because I plan to wake up at 7:30 to do some last minute studying for my International Marketing class.

Sincerely,

Jose