Barcelona

Well we left for Barcelona last Thursday and return last night to find that our host mom had to go to the hospital for pain in her lower abdomen. According to her friend who is also a host mom for our program she is going to be fine and should be home today or tomorrow. She is receiving medicine through an IV for the inflammation. We were sad to hear this and we really missed her while we were gone this weekend. Prayers would be greatly appreciated. The other host mom will be taking care of us until she comes home.

Barcelona- Thursday afternoon
Due to the flight time we flew into Gerona, which is a city about an hour drive outside of Barcelona, from where you can take a bus into the city. Barcelona is very beautiful even on an overcast day. When we arrived it was a little nerve-racking because we had just gotten use to making our way around Sevilla and now we are in an even bigger city. Inside the bus station we immediately bought a map. With the map we decided we would try to walk to the hostel. After about 30 minutes or so with taking pictures along the way we found our hostel - hostel sun and moon-. First impressions, bright, it was on a nice street with more than enough shopping to keep me occupied for our time there. We settled in and dropped off our stuff. Now hostels that was an experience in itself. 1) they don't give you a sheet or a blanket the only "sheets" you are given is the one over your mattress and the one on your pillow. If you want a sheet or blanket or even a towel they will charge you. We then walked around a little bit considering that we had the rest of the afternoon. We ventured down back the way we had come because we had seen some cute looking shops on the way in.  Everything seemed to be pretty expensive and after trying a lot of stuff on none of it really seemed to be worth the price tag. We had time to kill so "shopping" served its purpose. Dinner was provided by a nearby travelbar, where if you bought a drink the dinner was free, if you stayed at our hostel. Come to find out our free meal was rice-mush (picture in fb album) slopped out of a container and nuked in the microwave but it was free. Between walking to the shops and then back to the hostel and to dinner we were given flyers to this restaurant called Sienatras, the second time we were approached it was by a man and we got to talking. We told him we were looking for a place for dessert and we asked if the desert there was any good.  If we did get desert there we got a free complimentary glass of champagne. We decided to at least go look at the menu and see the price and what they had. Our new friend escorted us right inside. We decided it was reasonable and looked like a nice place so we sat down. I literally had the best dessert I have ever had in my entire life! It was amazing. After we went to talk to our friend again and tell him how good it was. While chatting we saw one of the kids from our program who had booked a flight for 8 in the morning instead of 8 at night. We started to walk down La Rambla ( a major street in Barcelona) which also has a ridiculous amount of people on the streets trying to get you to com into their restaurant or bar. Depending of the personality of the person I would playoff of their enthusiasm, made some pretty good friends while doing that. My favorite was the Sienatra man who had the coolest accent- his parents were italian and spanish but he wen to a boarding school in the UK- can you say confused?! the other was a gentleman we had met walking down La Rambla- standing outside a hotel trying to get people into a bar upstairs. After joking around for 5 min and saying that I was offended he assumed I spoke english and was from the United States so I told him I was from Toronto Canada. We eventually went in, and turned out to be really fun.....I told his boss that he was by far the most fun person we had talked to and was my new best friend. The bartenders we fun as well. After an hour or two there we went back to the hostel to drop off some stuff and ended up running into everyone else in our group. They were all hunger so they went looking for food and I just tagged along. After some tapas because everything was on the verge of closing and entrees were no longer a choice we went to a bar that downstairs had crepes, I didn't eat one but some of my friends did and they looked really good! When you went up to the bar upstairs you were greeted by everyone there with cheers, applause and a bonk on the head with a plastic/rubber toy hammer. Everyone was tired and so then we called it a night and headed back to the hostel. The one other women there we had yet to see was asleep and SNORING- like the loudest snore you have ever heard in your entire life! That was just the beginning to a long night to come considering that a whole bunch of Irish/British - not really sure- had arrived and they were drinking, singing, and opening  and closing (slamming really) all the doors. This made it pretty much impossible to sleep.

Friday
After the loud night we eventually woke up and prepared for our day. Since we had missed the free breakfast due to being completely exhausted and the fact that it was actually quiet during breakfast time. We went just  a couple doors down to Starbucks, which are really all over Spain. There we met up with some people from our group and decided what to do while we were there. We wanted to go to the Picasso museum, the zoo, the aquarium, the olympic village, the museum of modern art, and if time allowed the Saralda familia. The Picasso museum was pretty interesting and hte amount of work they had from his life time. I also never realized that he hadn't died all that long ago. Zach, Alan, Sarah and I spent about an 1 1/2 to 2 hrs. walking around and we bumped into two more of our classmates. After the museum we headed to the zoo, I was so proud of myself I was the navigator the whole weekend and I didn't get us lost once! Anyway the zoo was HUGE and had SO many different animals I had a lot of fun! Unfortunately we didn't get to see the white gorilla snowflake. After the zoo is was way past lunch time so we went to this little greek place on the corner across from the park, which turned out to be the best pita I have ever had. Go figure I would have the best greek food of my life in Spain. About 20 years ago the olympics were in Barcelona and where it was held was marked on the map so after we ate we headed that direction. Considering it was close to 20 years late the area appeared to resemble nothing of an olympic village but some unique sculptures that seems to be something relevant. Regardless it was close to the beach which looked cold but still beautiful! After all that and realizing we had been gone for close to seven hours we headed back to the hostel. We rested for about 40 mins and I had run out of minutes on my phone so I googled a place to put more on in Barcelona, so we headed out again. The first time while walking down we ran into the plaza which was about 3 streets too far and I had completely missed it. It was okay though because we found my new favorite European clothing store! It had clothes that were "my style" and they had sales going on. I bought 3 really cute tops for 34 euros! So going too far wasn't a total bust! While heading back to the street we were suppose to be on it started to rain but we found were the store was and successfully loader more minutes! Back at the hostel we dropped off our new purchases and got our dinner voucher for round 2 at the travelbar. That nights special was pasta with marinara sauces with corn in it and they were our of water. For dessert we went to a little bakery right before the closed and got sweet croissants and the a startbucks coffee. In our room, all eight beds were filled now and it consisted of Argentina who had been there, Snory Mcsnorison, and 3 french people two of which came together, and a man originally from Mexico but currently lives in France. They were all very nice. They all left after some time and it was just Sarah, the man from Mexico and myself. We got to talking and he was saying how he noticed that people from the UK and the US don't know any other language apart from English, which is very true. So we had a thought provoking conversation as to why. He eventually made me only speak in Spanish and then I became a lot less more talkative. Eventually we all did our own thing and went to sleep. Another loud night later it was Saturday.

Saturday
We woke up on the early side and went down for breakfast and checked out. We had decided the night before to go to the aquarium first thing in the morning. Luckily it was sunny and beautiful the first sign of sun we had seen since we arrived in Barcelona. Since we got to the aquarium only 20 mins after it had opened there were a total of about 6 of us there. So going through took no time at all and we were able to enjoy a certain tank as along as we wanted without being crowded.  After the aquarium we headed to the museum of modern art. Unfortunately the collection we wanted to see was closed yesterday so we decided to not go in. Giving us even more time to go to the Sagrada Familia which turned out to be about an hour walk away from where we were. When we got there it was completely packed the line went on and on. I could not believe how busy it was, come to find out later from some friends it was free to get in yesterday, which explains why the line went on for 1.5 km and would be an 1 1/2 hr. wait. We decided not to go in because we didn't want to be pressed for time to get back to the airport. So we just took a lot of pictures from the outside (on facebook) and headed back in a taxi to the Placa de Cataluyna where we catch the bus to the airport for about 5 euros. It was lunch time so we looked around up for a place to eat lunch and found the hardrock cafe! It was a no brainer when it came to a decision to eat there or not so we went in and had an amazing very American lunch! Having only a couple of hours left before we needed to get on the bus to the airport so we just sat in the plaza on some steps around a fountain and soaked up some of the gorgeous and abundant sun. It was so peaceful for being such a busy place. There was this mom taking photos of her two young boys in front of the fountain and they started to shove each other and one fell it. It was kind of funny. We stayed there and then made some last minute post card purchases and got on the bus to the airport. Now airports in europe of course can never be the same.  We first ended up in the wrong terminal, then we couldn't find security because it was up stairs. Then they come ask you what language you speak and give you instructions and plastic slippers to walk through security. Flustered we finally made it to our gate and got on the plane and headed home. We waited for the bus back to the bus station that we had taken to the airport. Once on we saw a stop for the bus station but it was not where we were picked up so we thought it would go around to the front....WRONG! So we immediately got off at the next stop and treked back to a familiar street and 5 blocks back to the main street we live on and hopped on the bus. We arrived to a dark and empty house. We had told our house mom that we were coming back Saturday because Sunday was her choir concert but while on the bus between terminals back at the airport in Barcelona, JP, our brother called and said that she was sick and won't be sining tomorrow. So we when arrived home we didn't understand why she wasn't there. We didn't want to trouble her for dinner anyway and so we dumped our stuff and went to a telepizza just around the corner. Back at the house we walked into find Carmen the other host mom across the hall and she explained to us that Mama had abdominal pain and inflammation and was at the hospital and she would be feeding, washing our clothes, etc. until Mama' came home.

Well that all brings me to now, I have been working on this blog for about 2 hrs because I have been doing other things a long with it. I hope you enjoyed it! I know I have not updated in a week but this should be enough to make up for it! I love and miss you all!!!!! Thanks for reading!