¡Hola Barcelona!

I landed this morning in sunny Barcelona after a not-too-painful-but-fairly-cramped flight. I knew I was flying over with two of my friends from Brown — Matt and Paige — but we found five other CASB students waiting to board the plane, and spotted at least four or five others we suspected to be CASBers during the flight. (Basically we looked for bewildered college-aged Americans with manilla envelopes of information and excessive amounts of checked baggage)

The descent into Barcelona is spectacular — the plane flies right over the city and its waterfront before swooping into the airport just beyond the port. Below is a picture of what it looks like:



After passing through immigration and squeezing our belongings into the one van-sized taxi that would take the three of us, we arrived at the hotel where we will be spending our first night. (None of us are entirely clear on why we are not directly checking into our residencia, but as the locals would probably say, que sera)

Along with the boy assigned to be Matt's roommate, who had already arrived, we trekked out to explore our surroundings. In Barcelona, the language of choice is not Spanish, but Catalan — a related romance language that looks like a combination of French and Spanish, with a hint of Italian. A region with intense nationalism and pride, Catalonia — of which Barcelona is the capital — has embraced Spanish with some reluctance. All signs in the airport had Spanish and English translations, but most city buildings and signs were adorned with just Catalan. Matt already has some experience in the language, so we deferred to him for pronunciation lessons and minor translating. The rest of us will begin learning it as part of our orientation program on Monday.

After a long walk and a late breakfast of bocadillos (sandwiches on mini baguettes) and café, we retired to our rooms for early siestas in an attempt to be like the Spaniards, and also to start overcoming jet lag. The city was pretty quiet anyway — the entire country effectively goes on vacation for the entire month of August.

In a few hours, we have a welcome dinner where we will meet the rest of the kids on the program, hear a little more about what the next few days entail, and kick off a fantastic semester!