Finally

It is finally beach weather here. That's where I'm going after I write this, straight to the beach to sleep off last night. I can multitask: tan and get rid of my slight hangover.

So last time I was off to Spanish lunch. My policy on Spanish food (and really food in general) is to try everything they put in front of me, and order things that I have no idea what they are. So far, this has worked. Me, Holly, and Analise took the bus back to my neighborhood to find some place to eat. Here they have something called the menu del día which you get several courses and a drink for really cheap. This time we paid 11€ for 3 plates which included dessert. And you get to choose, this time between 3 choices for the first plate and 2 for the second and dessert. For the first plate, we had a salad with greens, pineapple, and prociutto with balsamic vinegar. It was so simple and so delicious. There was also arroz cubano which is rice with tomato sauce and a fried egg on top. You mix it up to the egg yolk makes this deliciously rich sauce, loved it. And then the third was this strange thing of sqaures in sauce that had the consistency of oatmeal. I don't make it sound very appetizing, but I swear it was incredible. The second courses, when he described them, we had no idea what they were, so we ordered them. One we knew was fish and the other was some sort of either beef or pork cheek. The fish was really fresh with a tomato sauce, it was a little salty but better than stuff in Chambana for sure. The beef cheek became one of my new favorites. It was served on the bone and cooked to the point that it was so tender it fell off and was served with potatos, peppers, and onions. It was like beef stew, but somehow better. For dessert we had a brownie sundae, which I liked, and some sort of whipped yogurt, which was okay. The yogurt was high acid and mostly unsweetened except for a tiny bit of raspberry sauce, it was good, but not my favorite so far. And I had a glass of red wine. All for 11€. I can assure you I'll be doing this again soon.

After that we did some more shopping in Chinatown and I finally found a bag that I can carry my school stuff in so I don't have to pawn it off on other people. After shopping we went home to chill for the evening (we were still recovering from both jet lag and our good decisions the previous weekend). We ate dinner with our señora, who I adore. She is so fun and so cute. She things we are hilarious, especially our Spanish, and that I make stuff up. At dinnertime we teach her English, like she now knows the days of the week and the word rocks. Only she says rrrrrrrocks! Yes, with the exclamation point. Oh, and shut up. We taught her to say that to her ancient dog who barks at her for food during dinner. If Yulie (the dog) was Bart, she would not have made it to her ancient age of 14 at home. After over feeding us and telling us not to leave anything, we took our food comas to bed.

Tuesday we woke up and went to class, which was fine. We has another trip to look at old stuff and rocks so we walked around a little bit and I got some McDonald's. All this pork makes me want to worship beef. Don't worry, I'll still worship pork too, at a later date when I don't eat it for every meal. McDonald's was a welcome addition to my day. It isn't as greasy here, and Coke Light, aka Diet Coke, tastes more like Coke here than in the US. After pigging out (and enjoying every minute of it), Me, Holly, and Analise ended up by ourselves and somehow managed to find the museum in the very confusing Medieval Barcelona by ourselves. With lots of stops in shops and to drool over the gelato in the gelatarías. After a lovely tour of more old history stuff and churches, we went to the Mercat. Which I want to live in. Its this huge open market in the middle of the city. Everything is super fresh. There are stalls for candy, fruit, mean, fish, eggs, everything food. We bought some chocolates and Holly and I got a kilo of cherries, which was pretty close to buying a kilo of cocaine in my mind because now that I'm talking about them, I feel like I need them, and sat on Las Ramblas eating cherries and people watching. We eventually made it home after some more shopping and had a typical dinner of noodles, hamburgers, hot dogs, salad, bread, french fries, and tortilla española. And flan, of course. The tortilla española was especially good last night, as were the french fries. For some reason Tuesdays seems to be American food night. We ate American food last Tuesday too.

After dinner we decided that since we're in Barcelona and its Tuesday, this warrants a trip to Oveja Negra, the only nightlife we can manage to experience. Analise and I planned the excursion but she fell asleep and ditched us. Lame. After Holly, Sylvia and I cleared one bottle of cava, we headed on the bus to Oveja Negra. We weren't planning on going crazy (it is only Tuesday), but managed to get pretty drunk. I met some Swedes who weren't as creepy as the Brazilians we always seem to find. They've been travelling for 6 weeks in a Volkswagon Bus around Europe and apparently don't get to shower often, their English was not so good. We eventually left, and deposited a very drunk Holly on her bus and headed over to ours. We decided to try a new stop that was closed to Las Ramblas. Being drunk, we didn't think to ask if it went where we needed to go. And that's how we ended up going the wrong way for an hour and a half. Sylvia passed out on the bus and didn't really notice, but I was secretly and drunkenly panicking. When I started seeing huge hills (its mostly flat) I went and asked the bus drive and he said we were going the wrong way. Cool. So we got off in the strangely quiet place and caught the bus the other way. Now we know and will not do that again since it delayed sleeping by an hour and a half (I went to bed at 5A again. Me and 5A have got to stop meeting like this) and woke up at 8:30 this morning for class, annoyed naturally. We got it together and went to class and now I'm in a better mood because we're going to the beach! So, I'm off to multitask! Hopefully not so many adventures for next time...