This morning everyone woke up in time for breakfast at nine and we moved all of our luggage out of the rooms so that the hotel could start cleaning them. The hotel we have been staying in is owned by a family and there are three generations that work there. The couple who owns it are always watching tv in the lobby and their daughter who looks around 50 is usually at the front desk during the day. Their grandson who looks about my age helps out the two other waiters for dinner and breakfast. Class went by quickly today. We reviewed commands and the subjunctive. In discussion group, we discussed an article about the droughts in that occurred in Spain a few years ago. After class a group of us decided to do one last walk down la playa and walked along the boardwalk one way and on the way back along the water. It is interesting how many women actually go topless. I didn’t think it could be that popular, but it is especially well-liked by the older women, which isn’t so pleasant. No me gusta. After lunch at the hotel, we loaded all of our luggage into the bus, which was like a giant game of Tetris. The bus took us to a hotel in Barcelona where we had a few hours to wait for our host parents to pick us up. Morgan, Emily, Alex, Miriam and I went for a walk through Barcelona and we walked alongside the road that cuts directly across the city. Se llama el diagonal. There was also a mall along this road which was worth checking out. Many of the stores were like H&M and it was fairly busy. We walked around a bit more and then returned to the hotel where we waited in the lobby for our hosts to show up. Every host had a specific time to come and mine arrived at 19:20 or 7:20 pm. Pepito and her grandson Juan Carlos came to pick me up and I talked to them for a little while at the hotel before we went to her apartment.
Juan Carlos was much easier to understand than Pepito. He is 20 and is studying law and has studied English. Pepito talks muy muy rapido and it is kind of hard to understand half the stuff she is saying. It is really frustrating not being able to understand half of what she is saying because I am afraid I am going to ask her questions that she has already explained to me. She gave me a tour of the apartment and my room is so big. The directors told me I had one of the biggest rooms of anyone in the program, and this room is about double the size of my room at home with my own balcony that is the same size. We are on the tenth and highest floor of the building, so the view is spectacular. I unpacked all my clothes and organized some of my things. We sat down for dinner a little after nine thirty and Pepito made potatoes and some sort of green vegetable. It was very plain, but you put olive oil on it. In Spain, they use olive oil for everything, which makes sense because it is so delicious. I learned at the hotel that there is usually two plates, the first being vegetables or a salad of some sort and the second being a meat dish. For our second plate we had chicken that was flattened with mushrooms on the side. Normally I don’t eat mushrooms, but this particular kind was really good! She was telling me about her family at dinner (but I only understood about half of it). After dinner I tried to get internet, but they don’t have any here. In order to get internet, you have to pay sixty euros each month and you can use a flash drive that acts as a hot spot for wireless. The student that Pepito had in the spring left me this flash drive, but I’m not sure if I am going to use it. My conversation with Pepito about the internet was especially hard because she doesn’t know a thing about computers. We called Juan Carlos and he is planning on coming in the morning to help me, but I don’t think he can be much help if I don’t plan on paying 60 euros per month. It appears as though Pepito spends a lot of time on the phone talking to her family and watching TV, much of which is in Catalan. She asked me if I was planning on going out tonight, which makes me think that the student she had last year was a huge partier. Anyways, that is it for now…
No comments:
Post a Comment