Ah, I am sitting on my balcony after a pretty great day. I like to people watch from up here. This morning we had some more orientation things and then I got a quick (aka American) lunch and headed out on my own to explore & shop. I went to the outskirts of the city all on my own to buy a hair dryer because I'm picky and everything near mi casa espanola is very expensive. I was proud of my excursion. The Metro here is really easy to use and it's clean and nice...much better than in NYC or even Boston. Also, on the Metro today I saw the most gorgeous spanish man ever. I'm not really into the whole Euro look but (and I mean this in a non creepy way) he was so beautiful with super dark, kinda long curly hair.

So maybe it's time to write a little about the past two weeks, when I was traveling all over Cataluña. My seminar was called Mare Nostrum ("Our Sea") so I was near the coast for two weeks which was great. We started in Tarragona which was amazing! They were having a festival in honor of one of their patron saints while we were there so there was a lot of partying. Everyone in Tarragona was so nice and friendly. The city is really relaxed, not too big and insanely gorgeous. Our hotel overlooked not only the ocean, but also ancient Roman ruins, because Tarragona was the first Roman settlement in Spain. The only bad part about Tarragona was that I broke my camera (ya we fiesta-ed a little too much), so that's where my photos end. I will put them up at some point. The festival was awesome. There were several nights of concerts out in the main square, a huge water festival, fire dragons, parties on the beach, castillos humanos (people who climb up each other and make towers), and lots of cerveza and sangria.

After Tarragona we went to Girona for two days, both of which were low key because it's a smaller town. The best part of Girona was taking a day trip to the Dali museum. It was amazing! He designed much of the building and made some works for specific parts of the museum. I can't even believe one person could produce so many pieces. The visit to the Dali museum was definitely one of my favorite parts of Mare Nostrum.

After Girona we went to Barcelona for about 3 days. Barcelona consisted of a lot of architecture, especially the work of Gaudi, all of which is incredible. We saw the Sagrada Familia, el Parque Güell and some other buildings he designed. I loveddd el Parque Güell. It's so gorgeous and despite all the tourists, a really peaceful place. Barcelona was my first experience at the discos of Espana, although the discos we went to at el Porto Olympico were nothing compared to what's here in Madrid. We (all 35 of us in Mare Nostrum) spent one night in Barcelona at the Port in a couple small discos having a great time. I wish we had had more time to explore Barcelona, but our time was almost completely filled with activities. And our hotel was on the outskirts of the city, so I didn't really feel like we were in Barcelona. I definitely want to go back sometime this semester and see more.

The last stop on Mare Nostrum was Palma de Mallorca. To get there we had to take a horrid 4 hour ferry ride from Barcelona. Anyway, Mallorca is the most gorgeous island! In Palma, the professors finally let us relax a little after keeping us really busy in Barcelona. We got a day at the beach there, which was really fun. We (with the help of the famous Ramon, the professor in charge of our seminar) built a two-level castillo humano on the beach. We also went to Bellver, a round castle with insanely amazing views of the island and ocean. It was the first castle built in Spain, and the only circular one in the country. The rest of the group also spent a day on a boat and beach, but I missed that because I had some problems in Palma...On the last full day, I woke up with pain & numbness and went to the emergency room to find out it was anxiety. So unfortunately I missed a fun day, but I rested up for the last night of Mare Nostrum. The professors took us to a restaurant where everyone got sufficiently drunk off house made red wine. Then they took us to a bar where everyone got more drunk and one of the professors played the bag pipes for us (it was an Irish bar). It was a good time even though I couldn't partake in the festivities due to my hospital visit.

Another big part of Palma was going to Tito's, which I think was my first real disco experience. Tito's was insane and literally everyone from my group went, including some professors (they were amazing amazing amazing by the way). Tito's is 3 floors, and was packeddd with people dancing to loud house music in clouds of cigarette smoke. There were go-go dancers on stage all night and people on stilts. It was definitely an experience.

So I think that was all of Mare Nostrum, or the major highlights because all of it was amazing.