Ohhhh, Now I Understand!

Just a quick entry tonight, because I'm getting up early tomorrow to run in an road race!

On my first day in Barcelona, my host mom made me sign up for something at a little booth on the side of a busy pedestrian plaza. Keep in mind that this was my very first day -- I couldn't understand anything in Spanish. I had no idea what was going on or what I was signing up for, and it was frightening. Upon completing the registration from the man behind the counter gave me a packet of papers with a bib number inside. Ok, I get it, it's a race!

Since then, I've determined that it's a road race starting and finishing at the Plaza de Catalunya. The 10.776K course goes along the streets near the University and then up in the mountains of Montjuïc. It's the most popular road race in Spain, and there are 54,000 people registered already! A bunch of the Dartmouth kids on my program have signed up to run as well. I'm looking forward to it! You can find some more information by clicking around this website: http://www.cursaelcorteingles.cat/

Today was very relaxing. I woke up late and had breakfast with Amparo then relaxed and finished my book, Catching Fire, the 2nd book in the Hunger Games series. The Hunger Games movie comes out in Spain this week, and I'm planning to go see it! I'm excited to see how much I'll understand in Spanish.

Then we had lunch, today it was hamburgers on a plate. I've talked to other Dartmouth kids about this, and they've had hamburgers on a plate too. I guess that's how it is in Spain. After that, I walked around a bit, exploring Plaza de Espana and the surrounding streets. I met up with some friends and we walked around the enormous mall. You can take the escalators up to the top floor where there's an observation deck that goes all the way around the circular mall. Very cool.