La Despedida

And so the bittersweet farewell begins.  It's a long process and with my sister Cathy coming in this week, I started with the little things, like my favorite 1 euro snack at Picadero, patatas bombas, deep fried potato stuffed with meet served with garlic alioli and brava sauce.  

Patatas bombas

I also said goodbye to La Oveja Negra, a bar a lot of my fellow students frequented where they serve sangria and beer in "towers" with its own tap.  This farewell was not so sad.

La Oveja Negra

With my sister's arrival came the opportunity for me to experience a lot of Barcelona for the first and last time.  This was indeed bittersweet.

1 more week

My immune system decided to take some time off this past week and I've been sick since.  Really some great timing.  Nonetheless, I packed a little packet of tissues in my purse and was on my way.  The rest of my floor was off to Paris for the weekend come Thursday so I made other plans.  Like the Joan Miró Foundation.

Time is marching on without me

Without a big weekend trip to punctuate my weeks, the last two have just fused together without my noticing.  The lack of sleep certainly did not help.  I got back from the airport after my Rome trip at about 1 AM, did my presentation and slept by 3 AM, was in class and presenting by about 9:30 AM, and then had another 5 compositions/essays and a final exam to take care of.  Nevertheless, Monday was Independence Day and what is usually an extremely uneventful day for me became a day for me to sing "Americaaaaa, Fuck Yeah!"from Team America in my head for most of the day.  I felt proud to be an American for the first time in a long time and as momentary as it was, it was kind of nice.  To quote a friend on facebook (yeah, I'm going there), "hating America is so passé."  Is it wrong that I agree?  Am I getting old and jaded?  Can I no longer apply for membership to the great American counterculture?  Oh well, I never really wanted it anyway.

Roma, and not just the tomato!

And she's back from her week-long hiatus!  You'll have to forgive me but I've just had no time to update you all on my life and travels.  It was my last week of classes out here in Barcelona which meant handing in 4 compositions, 1 essay, 2 oral presentations, and 1 exam.  To be fair, I didn't study for anything so that didn't eat into my time but I wasn't getting any sleep and I still had to work for my internship.  But I'm complaining!  I'm finally done and I'm most grateful for my classes and my professor, Josep María, but more on that later.

Destinación: Roma, Italia.

First was the dilemma as to whether or not to go the weekend of July 1st when all the stores would go on sale.  I couldn't care less but the other Diana really did but we ultimately decided that the sales would still be there when we got back and the only other weekend we had left was the weekend of July 8th when we had only two days because of finals on that Friday.

Second was the plane tickets.  Tickets were supposed to be just 107 euro but prices jumped up 10 euro in just one day and then my debit card wasn't working on the site.  By the time I bought them with the help of the magical help of a certain Emily, the price had jumped up to 143 euro.  It gets worse.

Third was that there were no more decent hostels left.  It would be more worth it to just get a hotel.  So that's what we did.

Fourth, and this is the real zinger, I got to the airport only to discover that the ticket was under Diana V and not Diana Choi.  Excuse me but how many people do you know with one letter for a last name?  Not wanting to risk them not letting me on the plane, I had to change the name on my flight, price tag 353 euro.  The thing is that when I tried checking in online with my confirmation number, my name came up at Diana Choi and then it stopped working so I went to the counter when I got the airport at 4:30 am last Friday.  But then my debit card wasn't working so D.Lee had to lend me the money on her credit card.