metro

today i figured out the metro. well, kind of. i figured out how to get to my house to the center for my program and back. but this is a start. i must say that riding the metro makes me feel super cool because the only other times ive really ridden on "a metro" was in paris or new york city which i think we can all agree are pretty rad places. so today has been a good day. i made it to my orientation even though it started at 9 and realized that about half of the students on this program are form santa clara in california and then another 30% are from wake forest. awesome...not so much. its very strange to me because there are only a few people from IU and i didnt know any of those people until this evening and i had assumed before getting here that this was somewhat similar to the program i did in france, so that the students would be from all over. this is not the case. everyone is from america and since 70-80% knew each other beforehand from school it has made it a little difficult to get to know people. however, i hope that this will change once we start spending more times with our classes and groups. and piyal (that is my roommate's nickname) and i get along well so that has been fine wandering around town with her. after we were done with the center for the day, we went to try to find me a phone and came into the problem that i needed my passport to get a phone here so that they can register me. so, i shall go do that manana. so i then went to the cathedral which was pretty, but we didnt stay too long because this particular trip was just to fulfill some of the "cultural passport" we have been given. i want to be one of the first 20 students to get 100 points with this so that i can get a free art ticket which would allow me to go to different museums and such for free. plus, i did not have my camera yet and i want to go back when i will be able to enjoy myself and take pictures to share with all of you. after the cathedral we went to marque santa martina which was a very nice, large food market that had some cafes and stores in it as well. it is a landmark here because it has a very colorful roof that makes it easy to spot. after this we went searching for lunch which turned out to be quite difficult for me since we never got that far in my spanish class. i only know the basic foods but never learned how to order, so i did more of a "pointing at the picture grunt type thing". no, thats not completely true, i didnt grunt i said the name of the food, but i did have to point at the picture. after lunch we started heading back towards placa cataluyuna which is where our center is located to show what we had done so far and to see if my backpack arrived from stockholm (which it did thank goodness) and on our way we saw a sign for churros (which is also part of the passaporte cultural) so we stopped and split an order. they were pretty good, they tasted like an elephant ear/funnel cake in a different form with the chocolate that is normally put on crepes in france. however, they are definitely something that would be much better later in the fall when its chilly and not in the 80s. after retrieving my bag from the center we returned home (via metro) and dropped my bag off. i then went to a market down the street to buy some necessities and freshened up before heading back to the placa cataluyuna where we had the opening ceremony for our program at a hotel. the opening ceremony was decent; they had food and drinks (non-alcoholic) and i had a chance to meet some people, but not a whole lot. i actually met a girl from bloomington that goes to IU so that was nice . but for the most part, i felt it was more awkward because again, that whole 80% of the students already knowing each other thing comes into play. now i am getting ready to take a nap before dinner and afterwards we are going to this club called "carpe diem" for a party. i am quite excited to see what the nightlife is like here in barcelona since i have heard it is just fabulous. SO, that is all for now but i will def be reporting back on the nightlife