9/27/10 Lunes...

This morning I went for a run, but it has been getting colder outside.  I ran up towards the Diagonal (the road that cuts diagonally through all of Barcelona).  On the Diagonal near where I live, there is a Corte Ingles and a mall.  I also ran by a Decathalon Sports store that looked like it might have some good clothes for running.  An issue that I’m having while both running and walking in the city is how slow people move or that they always seem to stop right in my way.  It seems as though they don’t care that it is a city and will stop in the center of the sidewalk as opposed to the side of the sidewalk.  This happens as I walk to the metro too.  It is really hard because a lot of the elderly people have these bags on wheels to transport their groceries and they don’t realize that they are slowing down foot traffic in both directions on the sidewalk.  Maybe it is a city thing or maybe it is a Spanish thing, either way it seems as though the cities I’ve been to in the U.S. people walk with more of a purpose and are a bit more cognizant of their surroundings and if they are in the way.

I had 3 classes today.  We watched another movie in History of Spain about the Conquistadores who came to the Americas and fought the Incans and Aztecs.  I’m pretty sure I learned the same stuff in middle school, so I could understand the movie without knowing all the words in Spanish.  Then I had my European Union class which is quickly becoming my favorite.  The professor talked about how people in the U.S. don’t understand the idea of the Estado del Bienestar (Welfare State), because in the U.S. the perception of welfare is something for people who lack basic necessities, whereas in Europe it is basic support that every one in the nation gets rights to.  Overall, it was an interesting class.  Daven and I then took the metro to our Game Theory class.  There are a few other American students in the class from Brown and Northwestern.  The class moves slowly and we only did two problems during the whole class.  One of the problems we did was the famous prisoners’ dilemma, which we had also learned in Microeconomics at Bowdoin.  We also got a problem set assigned.

I decided to walk home from the University today.  It would probably take a half hour, but it took me a little longer because I stopped at Decathlon Sports to check out some cold weather running gear—that I didn’t pack.  Everything in the store was really cheap (barato).  If my memory serves me correctly, Decathlon went bankrupt in the U.S. or maybe it was just the one in Salem.  Either way with the prices they had, I can understand why.  They had all sorts of sections ranging from Tennis, Futbol and Running to Camping and Scuba Diving.  I found some nice long sleeve non-cotton running shirts for only 6 euro.  I didn’t have money on me, but I’ll go back sometime soon.  All the clothes for cycling were really inexpensive compared to what I’ve seen in the U.S. at places like L.L. Bean, EMS and Sports Authority.  The quality isn’t top notch, but it definitely would serve its purpose.  I walked back excited that I won’t have to spend an arm and a leg to get warm running clothes.

Pepita got home about the same time that I did.  She had spent the afternoon at the Corte Ingles near Catalunya with her sister getting clothes for their Mediterranean cruise.  She is going in early November.  I am excited that she gets to go, because one of the stops is Rome and she was telling me earlier that was the one place in Europe she wanted to see that she hadn’t.  The cruise makes tons of stops—leaving from Barcelona.  It would have been cool to do at the end of the semester with people to see a bunch of places at once, since we wouldn’t need to fly to get to the port, but I didn’t think that much ahead.  For only 380 euro and a week of traveling in the Mediterranean, it is a pretty good deal for people already in Barcelona.  After dinner, I did my game theory problem set, which was actually really fun.  As nerdy as this sounds, I stayed up late to finish it, because I was having such a good time doing it.  Not to mention I haven’t had to do any homework up until now, so I was excited to have an assignment.