Comemos, bebemos, y nos divertimos

Mi Segunda Semana.
(My second week)

My second week in Barcelona was definitely not as eventful as my first week. I had work in the mornings until 1PM and then had Spanish language intensive class from 2-6PM everyday. By the time I got out of class I was usually exhausted and just went home, rested, and sometimes went out at night. Spanish class was interesting. It was at an international school called Enforex, where people from around the world and of all ages came to take different classes. I loved that there, you would meet people from other countries who don’t know English, so both parties were forced to practice their Spanish in order to communicate. In my class, there were a couple people from the US including my friend Andrew from the program, an 18 year old guy, and a 49 year old mother of 3 from New Jersey. But there were others who were from Brazil, Germany, Poland, and Italy. And basically all of them know English! It just made me want to become multilingual even more.

Thursday was my last day of class because on Friday, there was a program-planned day trip to Tarragona. After Andrew and I left class, the German student (a 31 year old midwife/tango dancer) asked if we wanted to go to this seafood restaurant in El Borne district that evening. We did and it was amazing. The line was out the door just to get in. There was a counter full of fresh seafood, you tell them what you want and they cook it for you right there!

The fresh seafood. Crab, prawns, shrimp, scallops, tuna. Soooo delicious.

Robert and me!

Viernes: Tarragona
Friday was our day trip to Tarragona. It was a lot of fun because we got to spend time with others in our program who we don’t see very often. We also got a tour of the city, which is small and built on top of Roman ruins! Later we went to the beach where the water was WARM and played volleyball and a game called 3 Flies Up. So much fun, and by the end of the day we knocked out on the train ride home.

MP and me at the old Roman stadium.

MP and me with our friend Donny. Haha! I had to post this picture because of his face. Silly boy.

That night we went to a bar called Espit Chupitos! In Spanish “chupitos” means shots. I’m not sure what “espit” means… but anyway, there they had about 300 chupitos to choose from in a blacklight list on the wall with names from “harry potter” and “boy scout” (which involved roasting a marshmellow on the bar) to “Titty twister” and “Que ha pasao” which means “what has happened?” Haha! I would love to be a bartender there. If you want to play it safe, you can ask what the shot is. If you’re risky, you just choose one. We mixed it up. A LOT of them involved fire, and some of them we drank while it was on fire (with a straw of course). I think I should start a bar like this in SF… I think it would do well :)

Our first shot. I can't remember the exact name but I remember it was something Diablo. Cool huh??

Sábado: Costa Brava.
Saturday Mu-Ping and I went to a small city called Parlava in Costa Brava where her family-friends Montse and Toni have a house that they’ve been renting for about 20 years. It was such a relaxing weekend. Toni and Montse are such kind and generous people and took such good care of us. We went to the beach with them on Saturday and they gave us a small tour of Costa Brava, driving and then stopping so that we can get out and walk around. Costa Brava has the most gorgeous beaches with the bluest water I have ever seen. We also didn’t have to worry about getting our things stolen on the beach for once. What a relief. Oh and we also saw a nude beach, but from the top of a cliff thing so I couldn’t see toooo much. Still had to take a picture though. Haven’t zoomed in and don’t really want to… haha.

I have seen my fair share of topless women though at every single beach I’ve been to. At first it was a bit strange but I quickly got used to it. I love that in Spain, everyone is so open and there are less pretenses than in the US. So women are topless on the beach. No pasa nada. People don’t stare or judge because everyone here acknowledges that the body is a natural thing. Anyway, the rest of the weekend we rested, finally got a chance to sleep in the next day and went to the beach on Sunday. Again. How could we not?