Less than a month left...

I know that most of you read my blog during your work week but I decided I'd post one more time before I go to Rome for the weekend.  Yup, no big deal.  Just gonna spend my weekend in Roma, Italia.

The Adventures of Harold and Harold and Their Tribe of 17

Last week went by in sort of a blur.  I'm not even sure what I did Monday to Thursday afternoon and I feel like that's a glimpse of what my life is to become with a 9-5 job.  Realistically, I will probably have a 9-5 job in my first years of full-time employment but let's hope it doesn't last.

Sorry Stepfather, that wasn't Spanish...

I've been M.I.A. all weekend because my parents were in town which meant that my Mom got me a roll-away cot 10 times more comfortable than my own bed at the Hotel Arts, one of the defining features of the Barcelona shoreline.  So no surprise that I willingly let her kidnap me and feed me some of the most delicious food I've had while in Barcelona.

First stop then was Arola, one of the hotel's many high-end restaurants.  I insisted we go out and find a nice tapas bar but my mother, having just gotten off a plane, needed to eat and needed to eat NOW.

Another week in food...

And yet what week do I not measure in food?  The answer is none.  If I had to write a Rent spoof (although I would never desecrate the memory of Jonathan Larson's life and life work like that), it would have to be Seasons of Food and not of Love..in cheesecakes and waffles, in prime ribs and bites of toffee...


Anyway, this week was a short one.  It was a día de fiesta or holiday on Monday so I had a chance to recuperate from the weekend shenanigans in Sevilla.  More beach and then, to bring the day to a close, one of the most delicious sandwiches I've ever had from Bo de B.  I didn't have my Iphone with me so I have no pictures so I'll just have to return and take some photos.  It's that good.

Sevilla--¡Olé!

I woke up from 2.5 hours of sleep at 3 AM Friday morning to get ready and catch our 5 AM Ryanair flight from Barcelona to Sevilla.  There was 11 of us kids on this trip, seven of us girls from my apartment buildings and four other boys, all of us on the internship program with IES.

For those of you who don't know Ryanair, it's known as "the low-cost airline".  There are a number of ways they obviously cut costs:

1.  They don't assign you seats.  The seating is first come first serve so all passengers line up at the gate up to an hour before boarding so they don't have to choose from slim pickings.

2.  They don't serve beverages or snacks and don't even have tray tables on which to place such comestibles.

3.  They definitely don't have any entertainment systems

I just hope that they pay their employees fair wages because it would be just a little too ghetto if they didn't.  I wasn't convinced that they were even fully license pilots considering that our landing on our return flight felt like the plane was crashing.  They obviously didn't go to the same flying school as Korean pilots who land their planes so smoothly it's like the plane-tarmac equivalent to slathering margarine on toast.

It comes as no surprise that after just 2.5 hours of sleep, I along with the others on the plane passed out for the 1.5 hour flight from the northeastern coast to the arid south of Spain.  When we got to Sevilla, we took one bus to a train station and then wandered around lost for a bit before catching a second bus to the city center.  Upon first look, there was nothing impressive.  It seemed like a smaller, dusty Middle American city.  Little did I know...

A Week in Food

Monday:

The final project for my advanced Spanish writing seminar is a magazine featuring articles written by us students.  There were four categories of articles to choose from that were supposed to have between 2-3 students per category.  The magazine is all about Barcelona so one of the sections is dedicated to food and restaurant critiques and I naturally jumped for it but so did three other girls.  This perplexed our dear professor with so many on just one category and I was so afraid I was going to have to move to a different topic...like festivals and holidays (hell no).  I wanted to grill the other girls into submission with my piercing black holes for eyes.  That girl with the fake blonde hair..what did she know?  I am a baby gastronome; I worship Platt and Bittman enough to want a double-t in my last name too; among the things on my Christmas wish-list are a mini blow torch and a whipped cream canister; I started making cocktails when I was fourteen for God's sake!

La Costa Brava

Riding in an obnoxiously large tour bus, listening to my iPod, drowning out the din of sorority girls chippering about nothing in the background = recipe for a blissful catatonic state of sleep.

All 100-something of us IES students rolled out of bed on Friday morning, cursing the 7:30 AM departure outside the Hard Rock Cafe in La Plaça Catalunya and the fact that we had to tote our bags on the metro to get there.  But was it worth it?  Yes, especially after konking out on the bus, definitely yes.

It's a Kind of Magic

I haven't updated in a while because it's been a busy first week of work and classes and my schedule's been turned inside out throughout the last few days.  More than anything though, I got five mosquito bites to swell up my feet earlier this week and it put a major damper on my mood.  My shoe choices had much to be desired because everything I own would agitate the bites which were strategically located right between the spaces my sandals didn't cover.  Those sneaky bastards...


Thanks be to God, I will not be returning to the studio where I got those mosquito bites but will be doing that work independently and updating my boss via e-mail.  Kind of a bummer only because I love my boss.  But more on her later when I have photos and more substantial things to say about my work.