BUM BUM BUM!

SO
This past week or so has been…interesting. Not the good type of interesting. After the last time I wrote, whatever I had got worse with a little bit of a fever and I lost my voice completely, so most of my time not in class was spent sleeping. We’ve got this really strict attendance policy here where you can’t miss more than 3 classes without your grade being automatically lowered 10%, so I couldn’t really take a full day off to recover.

Even before I got my voice back, something else happened. Michelle, one of my floormates, noticed that she was getting this weird rash, and thought that it was a bad reaction to some antibiotics. Well, so she thought until she noticed some tiny insect crawling on her pillow. Uh oh. Upon further discovery, she found more, and realized they were bedbugs. BUM BUM BUM

Anyways she threw the ones she found into a water bottle and brought them to the program center, where they set up an appointment with an exterminator the next day. Although the rest of us hadn’t noticed any bites- even the girl’s roommate- the program put us up in a hotel for the night. A hotel sans internet, I may add, which did not make catching up on all of this stuff that I have been putting off since I’ve been sick for a week and a half at all possible.

The exterminator came the next day on Wednesday and checked all of our beds, couches and everything, and it turns out that the bugs really were just in Michelle’s room. It was really weird though, because none of us had even traveled anywhere or stayed in a hostel yet, so there was no possible way that we brought them with us. Also the mattress and pillow were brand new, so we think they must have gotten in through the walls or something.

The exterminator could not come to actually take care of the problem until Friday morning, but I was actually really happy with the timing, this being Spain and all, and at least it was before the weekend. Of course just as a precaution we are in the hotel through Friday night, so that they could fumigate the Michelle and Maggie’s room and leave time for the chemicals to disperse. On Saturday morning we get to got back and clean everything. Yay.

Also the program had us bag up all of our clothes to be taken to get washed and dried in super hot water to kill any bugs or eggs that might be in there. Urrg. So at the present moment I am without kitchen, apartment, clothes, and internet. Awesome. If you guys see pictures of me wearing too small clothes in strange colors, it’s probably because my clothes got shrunk and bled into one another this weekend.

I know I shouldn’t really complain, since I didn’t get bitten and didn’t run into any problems, but it’s all be annoying to have to live like a gypsy and get behind on thing even more and all this whatnot. Also, since they only fumigated that one room, the other flatmate and I are worried about the bugs being pushed into our rooms to run away. I guess we’ll just have to keep an eye out. Blah.

Other than that, not a lot is going on. Today, since I wasn’t allowed in the apartment, and I didn’t want to sit in a depressing hotel room all day, I wandered around outside a lot. I still hadn’t come to see my Spanish and Catalan professor from last semester, so I went over to where he was teaching class in the early afternoon.

I guess I showed up on the right day, because his class had a field study scavenger hunt thing, and the two of us went to a café to chat while the class figured it out. I need to remember where this café was- it was really cute, and the front was a book store. You walk down la Rambla and take the first right, and when the street starts being called Elisabet, turn right again to the back entrance of the café on the left. I remember it had an elephant as part of its logo…. Also there was a good Filipino place down there to (sigue my professor).

Later I met up with Jenn and Michelle and we grabbed lunch at another small café that I want to remember. It was to the right on a side street off of Passeig de Gracia in between Ronda St Pere and Gran Via. It was a really authentic little place with pretty good prices and nice people, which is unusual for so close to Plaza Catalunya. I need to start writing down the names of places, since there was this other neighborhood bar I went to on Sepulveda that I would like to go to again.
Anyways, the rest of the afternoon I took the roommates up Passeig de Gracia to see Gaudi’s Casa Mila and Casa Batlló, which I’ve walked past multiple times, but just never taken pictures of. I’ve been trying to take more pictures of Barcelona because for some reason I don’t have a lot of the city I actually live in. Remember, for pictures check: http://picasaweb.google.com/ToriKSpain

UPF, Microbio Lab and Girona

HEADS UP: My Flickr Pro account officially expired today, so I am now putting all of my pictures up on Picasa, through Google. They are public, so here is the address that you need to go to in order to view the pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/ToriKSpain

This past week my classes at Universitat Pompeu Fabra started, as did my internship at the Microbiology Clinic of Dr. Echevarne labs.

The two UPF classes look relatively promising. The Barcelona History and City class will be useful I guess because I know where everything is in the city, so when the professor talks about the history of certain parts of Barcelona, I'll be able to piece it together in my head. So it looks like it'll be ok and not too hard. The teacher is younger and Catalan, so she's really easy to understand (she teaches in Spanish). The only downside with the class is that it's huuuuge- there's like 35 kids in it, and I don't know anyone there.

The other class I have there is Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, and it looks like it's going to be really interesting, but more on the challenging side. The professor is Gallego, which means that he speaks Spanish really really really fast. But the class has about 8 kids in it, so it'll be a lot of discussion and we'll hopefully all get to know each other.

Mondays and Wednesdays for four hours each afternoon I go to a microbiology lab up Passeig de Gracia- I actually have to walk right by Gaudi's La Pedrera to get there. I've only been there twice so I don't know what else they're going to have me do, but so far I've just been doing some bacterial cultures. Pretty much, doctors from all over Spain and Portugal send swabs of all sorts of disgusting things from people's bodies to the lab, where I grow bacteria on a bunch of different agar mediums.

The other day I had to grow E.Coli, Salmonella and a bunch of other ones that honestly make me sort of nervous to be working with. And contrary to popular belief, Salmonella is not Salmon colored, but black. At least on whatever the heck medium I was using. I also make slides of the bacteria once it's grown and add some different dyes that show whether or not it's gram negative or positive and whatnot under a microscope. So far it's been ok, and I have a lot of questions, but sometimes it's hard to get them answered since i don't really have spanish laboratory vocabulary. We'll see how it goes.

So yesterday (Saturday), I went to Girona with Jenn, Michelle and Amy. Girona is about an hour and half up the coast and inland from Barcelona. Unfortunately, it was raining all day so I came back with a really bad cold and no voice. I sound like a cross between a chain smoker and a 14 year old boy going through puberty. Awesome.

Anyways the town itself is worth an afternoon, it's got some pretty churches and monasteries from the 12th century, and also a really nice Jewish quarter. El Call, the Jewish Quarter, has some narrow winding streets and arches and is just pretty in general. There also some Arab style baths and a wall that encircles the city which you can walk on top of. It would be really fun to walk around when it's nice out, but Saturday was just not the day.

Recently I bought tickets to go to Morocco at the end of February with Jenn and her sister- I'm so excited! I'm still trying to figure out travel this semester, but I'm aiming for a weekend in Madrid, Granada with the family when they come, a weekend in London, and spring break as Istanbul-Budapest-Berlin. Also I'm hoping to do day trips to Sitges and Costa Brava which are near Barcelona.

My friends from high school actually want to do a trip the summer after we're supposed to graduate, going to Athens-Santorini-Prague-Vienna-Venice-Florence-Pompeii-Rome, so I'm going to save those cities to do with them (I might skip out on the last week or so, since I did those last semester though). So much saving up to do...

That's all for now...

Back in BCN

I got back to Barcelona yesterday! It's really strange to go from -23 and blizzarding to around 57 and sunny, but a nice change. My trip back was through Heathrow again which was easy, but I ran into problems when I got here. The cab ride to the apartment should have been under 20- when I took it last time I had more luggage, and lived even further away from the airport, and it was around 19. We get to the apartment quickly, and I know we went straight there because I know the way. The meter said 16, but extra fees are usually added for luggage and if it's night and everything (which it wasn't)... well somehow the extra fees turned out to be almost 10 euro! Ridiculous! And of course there's nothing I could do to dispute it.

I only brought 23 euros and some change with, you can't pay with any sort of a card, there's no ATM in sight (to compound the embarrassment, later I find out that there was an ATM not 2 meters from the cab that I just didn't see), the RA I called was the wrong RA and I had not saved my real RA's number, and the one roomate whose number I had was not picking up her phone. After an awkward 5 minute conversation with the wrong RA, I spotted some American looking kids walking out of the building, ran out of the cab and yelled "Are you guys IES (the name of our program)?!" They were, so I quickly told them that I was a full year student that just got here, and short 2 euro. So they lent me the money and were on their way somewhere, so just left.

Keep in mind that I had been up for like 30 hours at this point, and the kids were on their way somewhere, so we didn't have time for a proper explanation/introductions, and my angry cab driver was grumbling in the background. Now I have to find said nameless kids to pay them back and (hopefully) befriend them. Though they probably have me labeled in their head as the weird girl from the taxi now. Great. And the trouble didn't stop there. I got to the 2nd floor, which was where I thought I lived (and I didn't write it down...stupid), but both doors had signs for companies so obviously it wasn't there. For some reason I hadn't saved my RA's number: before I left I checked to make sure I had it, and there was a contact saved as "Monica RA," but I completely forgot that the RA whom I barely saw last semester was a Monica too, so guess which Monica was the one I saved? Urg. I called my parents and had them log into facebook because I had both the useful Monica's and the number of one of my roomates in messages, so I got both the numbers and called. Of course, neither of them picked up. Woo.

I was just going to go up to the 3rd floor and just randomly knock on a door, because I know for sure that Monica lives there, but then Maggie (a roomate) called me back and let me into the apartment. It turns out I live on "Principal" which is really the 2nd floor: the second floor is actually the fourth floor, due to the presence of 2 unnumbered floor at the bottom. Monica picked up her phone and I went up to get the rest of my luggage, my keys and all of that. After that I just unpacked and got settled in, I was too tired to do anything.

So the apartment is nice and open. It's sort of plain, with nothing on the walls or anything, but it's also very clean and everything works (well, now it does). Except the shower head in our shower... I mean it works, but water of a certain water pressure will go over the shower curtain onto the floor. This flow rate translates to about a half inch layer of water on the entire bathroom floor over 10 minutes of showering. I know from experience.

I have a single, as does Jenn, who is across from me. Both of our rooms are about the same size as singles at a normal college campus, with a good closet and all that. We don't have windows that open outside, which is sad, but at least the rooms are well lit. There is a decent sized kitchen with everything a normal kitchen would have, sans dishwasher, and also a bigger common room with a dining table, a few couches and a tv. That room has a balcony that faces Gran Via, so it lets in a lot of light. Next to that room is a double where Maggie and Michelle live, that has another bathroom attached to it.

My roomates seem really nice, and I think I'll probably regularly hang out with a couple of them. By freak chance one of my roomates is Jenn Bert, who was in a few of my classes at LT and now goes to UOI. The other two girls, Maggie and Michelle, go to Penn State and Manhattenville, respectively, and are both from the Northeast.

So now it's in the middle of the first week of class, and I've been to a few of my classes. 2 of my classes which are at a different university and also the lab don't start until next week, so I only had the IES classes to deal with. The Gypsies and Church/State classes are thankfully taught by a really nice professor- I have her for both of them, so I was kind of nervous. They look promising. My research methodology class also looks pretty intense, and the professor has a bunch of psychology papers published in English journals (he's Canadian), so he knows what he's doing.

Other than that, nothing is really going on...the only weird thing I've noted about living in this section of the city is that people and shops actually do that whole siesta thing. Last semester I lived in a really high class neighborhood where everyone was a lawyer or in business, and I guess things were just more cosmopolitan; nowhere closed for siestas, and everywhere was open on Sundays. Here it is more middle class, so I guess that's why it's different.

I'll write at the beginning of next week once I have been to my Universitat de Pompeu Fabra classes and the lab.

Also a heads up that soon the majority of my Flickr pictures will disappear, as Flickr no longer allows free pro accounts to yahoo users. Lame. I'm going to look into something else that lets me put up a few thousand pictures without paying a membership fee. Ideas?