Finally in Spain! :)

Hola!

So, I'm finally in Spain. It is currently 10:14 pm... or 22:14, which means that it is just after two in Seattle. I arrived in the Barcelona airport a little more than 24 hours ago and met the entire family at the arrivals gate. I didn't have any hangups with the traveling except going to the wrong baggage claim area and needing to go back through security and find the other one. That was quite the hassle, but luckily the only one.

I'm living in a town a little northeast of Barcelona and so far have only explored the immediate area with the family. The first night, we ate pizza and then went to bed... we were all quite tired. Today, we woke up around 8:30, ate breakfast (cereal), and then the five of us walked to the market. That was a lot of fun and an interesting place. The seafood wasn't too abnormal since I've seen some of it at Pike Place, but the things that were quite abnormal to me were the cooked and cured pigs hanging by their feet and the dead, shaved rabbits. The rabbits were really disturbing because they didn't have eyelids and their eyes were popping out. Yuck. I had a very uniqe and tasty dish for lunch today with the family. It is a family recipe that is called "black rice." Basically, they cook rice, red and green peppers (not the hot kind), and chopped up squid together. The thing that makes the whole dish black though is the fact that everything is cooked in the ink of the squid. It was very messy and you could probably imagine what our mouthes looked like, but it was very tasty. :)

In terms of the language, I am extremely lucky that the entire family (mother, father, son, daughter) knows English. If they didn't, I would be so lost since mostly everyone here speaks Catalan. Granted, mostly all young adults and adults know both Spanish and Catalan, but the children do not start learning Spanish until maybe around first grade. Catalan is very confusing. Today, there was a special community event going on that focused on children and had a couple story telling events. From those two stories, I only recognized maybe four words total. All the rest was gibberish to me. I figure that I'll start to pick it up sometime, but for now, it doesn't make any sense to me.

You know, one awesome thing about living in Seattle is the fact that if you know what direction Puget Sound is, you automatically know which direction is which (north, south...). I've found that without the water as a compass, I'm quite lost here. It is very easy to get turned around, especially since all of the buildings are quite similar and the street names are hard to remember. Speaking of buildings, the ones that I've seen so far are beautiful! I love the architecture of everything in the area. The one church I've seen is beautiful, as well as the old library. I can't wait to see Barcelona and the amazing architecture there. Apparently, they are the architecture capital of Spain. One church I really would like to see is Sagrada Familia. It is so unique and amazing that no one can really describe it well enough. If you image search it on google, you'll be able to see why. It is so intricate and humungous that even though it has been under construction for so long, it still isn't expected to be finished until the year 2020. Luckily, people can still tour the church and walk up the stairs to the top.

I find it quite strange how incredibly narrow all of the streets are. I can definitely tell by walking around that this is Europe... definitely nothing like Seattle. Everything here is much closer, much more compact, and portions are smaller. I like that everything is so close that I can easily walk there. Something that is a little annoying though is the fact that they don't have all-inclusive, cheap stores like Target or Fred Meyer. If you want bread, you go to the bakery, if you want prescription drugs, you go to the pharmacy, if you want shampoo or conditioner, you go to a store that has only basic things like that. I really haven't had to buy anything just yet, but it will be quite the adventure when I do because hardly anyone in this town speaks English. I'll have to try out my very poor Spanish on them. :)

Something that really caught my attention today was an article in the newspaper. So, from what I've heard, both France and Spain are very pro-Obama. This article that I found said that Barcelona is so in love with Obama that they want to paint a bunch of rocks (gravel - small rocks) on a Barcelona beach in the shape of his head. The crazy thing is the intended size of the head. You'll have to check it out on the website. They want it big enough so that Google Earth can capture it from a satellite. There were also some cartoons/characatures about Obama and McCain as well as a couple more articles regarding US politics. I had no idea how invoved other countries were in US politics. When I talked about this with my host parents, the father said it very well: the US is such a huge world player that this election really matters to the rest of the world.

Article: http://www.lavanguardia.es/lv24h/20081025/53566282392.html

Another interesting thing is that now when I search things on Google or even sign onto this blog site, everything is in Spanish. Haha, guess I better get started learning the language. Tomorrow (Sunday), we're going on a train ride to Barcelona. The family is going to show me how to get to the language school. I'm very excited to see the big city.

Other than that, the weather here is nice. It was about 18 to 20 degrees C, which is about 68 to 70 degrees Farenheit. It shouldn't get too much colder in the winter. I think the lowest will be around 50 degrees F. An interesting thing I learned was that to get an approximate conversion from C to F, you double C and add 30 to get Farenheit.

Anyways, I've written enough for now. I'm here safe and sound and would love to talk with any of you via Skype sometime. The kids go to bed around 21:00, so I'm usually free to talk around 22:00 or so... which is about 1 pm, Seattle time. If you can't do that, then I can always wake up very early so that it is around midnight Seattle time, but I would prefer not to. :)

I hope all is well in Seattle! Miss you guys!

Love Linnell