In Bellaterra

I got to Bellaterra yesterday, which is pretty far outside of Barcelona it appears. We're going to Barcelona in about an hour, but I haven't been yet. A group went last night and said it took them an hour and a half to get there--they didn't get back until 4am and ended up paying for taxis, which are 70 euros from the city to where we're staying.  They gave us dinner last night (it wasn't that good, just pasta and plain chicken buffet-style), but usually don't give us food on weekends.  So three of us tried this morning to go get breakfast, but most things are closed on Sundays (including the grocery store, which we wanted to go to as well). We did find this Italian-style bakery that was really good and not that expensive.

The View From Our Room!

Then we went to the gym, and the walk alone is almost a complete workout. You have to walk down a giant hill and then its still even a while. It took more than twenty minutes.  We registered, and then Meri (who is our age but lives in Barcelona so she's on the "staff") showed us around the gym, which is really nice and WAY bigger than Tulane's. Then we walked back and stopped at the small grocery store on campus that was open and got some stuff to make sandwiches (my roommate, who is really nice btw, is Muslim and we had a hard time finding something that wasn't pork) because we didn't have time to find a place that was open to eat before we're supposed to leave at two.

There are two other people interning at the same place as me, so that should be good. One of them is from India/London and the other is from Wyoming. Very different haha. Neither knows what they're going to be doing for the internship either, so I guess we'll all just find out together.

The little town we live in looks like it'll have some good places to go to, but they were all closed on Sundays so I'll have to check it out later. We don't start the internships until Wednesday, so I'll have plenty of time.

Also, everything here is in Catalan, which is somewhat similar to Spanish, but also not. For example, Monday in Spanish is lunes and in Catalan it is dilluns. So there are similarities, but its not going to be easy to read signs around Bellaterra.  The director of the program says that in Barcelona everything is Spanish, and I hope she's right.

Another word that's different is goodbye. Adéu!