word post, long post

Yesterday I ran into my first thunderstorm while on a many mile traipse* from the Universitat to my neighborhood, La Sagrera. I had to buy a newspaper for an umbrella, because none of the small specialty shops sold them, or none that I could find anyway. Got REALLY lost for a while, but then found a "mouth of metro", caught the purple line to where it connects with the red line and rode the two stops to my neighborhood. So I can navigate the city by myself, but only when I actually mean let an automated tram take me on a specific path to and fro' destinations. But directional savvy and general orientation are coming.

Today I bought my first European outfit, which I'm wearing with the sandals I bought with the streets in Spain in mind. (Fashion only, of course; I rarely wear anything for functionality, unfortunately for my feet.) But when I say "European" outfit I really mean another cardigan and a pair of "Texans"- which is what they call jeans here, tejanos, or "cowboys", vaqueros- so it's not very European, except that it came from a Spanish store. Really most of the fashion here is terrible. The women are really fond of "pirate pants", which have great billowing legs that taper off at the end, and crotches that sag to around the knees. And most men have mullets. I think this one's because America exports really weird things, and so Spaniards are currently following serials from the '80s and '90s, like Baywatch, Cops, and Married... With Children. (There are always one or two men on the busy streets who play techno music while Bart and Homer Simpson, small and cardboard, dance and wobble on pipe-cleaner legs. Duff Beer is in every bar and cafe I've been to.) But I've never seen so many older women with hair dyed bright and primary colors. My first morning in Barcelona there was this sassy seventy year old woman standing outside of the hotel, hip cocked, smoking a cigarette, wearing a flannel shirt with hair as purple as her ballet flats. Because this goes along with my whole image of myself as a character from The Neverending Story, I find it cool and endearing.

I emailed three people about intercambios (language exchange meetings where an English native speaks with a Spanish native, spending half an hour in each language). Two girls and a boy who likes to direct and edit films. I'd rather do the intercambios with girls because I'm better at striking up conversations with random men, but the problem is that they're all really random. I bummed a cigarette from a guy smoking outside of my hotel and talked to him; he had some piercings and some tattoos, a mohawk and kind of reminded me of Gnarly D., but when I asked him what he liked to do in Barcelona he said "listening to reggatone, going to clubs and dancing 'muy sexy'. You know what that means? Muy sexy," with really exaggerated pantomiming. Ay dios. I could've talked to the guy standing next to me on the train home, because he took out his earbuds and everything to signal that he was okay with conversation, but when he smiled at me he flashed a mouthful of braces and I could just hear Andrew yelling, "Tween! Fucking tweens!" and so I couldn't take him seriously. But I really shouldn't have been so much of a jerk, because maybe he was listening to something good, and I'd like to hear some good Spanish music because all I've heard is shitty soft-rock.

Being good at meeting guys on my own is a plus since I'm half-convinced I'll meet my husband somewhere. With the track record of this program, someone in our class will end up falling in love: Ragan and Prado met when she was abroad in Barcelona, so did Stephanie and Robin, so did my host parents, Pilar and Johnathan. Speaking of my host family, it's a pretty nice set up. They're pretty young, and he's from the States, so it's a super unconventional situation, and I don't have to go through the things that others do who have the traditional families, like being scolded for not wearing my slippers while going to the bathroom in the middle of the night even if it's five feet from my room, or for drinking too much water when the knowledge that it's so expensive here doesn't keep me from being thirsty. After dinner my family likes to watch Glee, which is sometimes really funny but sometimes really uncomfortable. For example, last night there was a minute-long scene- way too long!- with a bunch of white glee club members singing Kanye's "Golddigger", and I felt awkward. But then I sat in my room and watched Los Olvidados by Luis Bunuel alone in the dark, which was also uncomfortable, but in an artsy and pretentious way, and in the way that I was listening to Spanish without subtitles instead of watching an American export in English. Anyway, there's also a dog and a six-month old baby, and that's also good and exciting.

I guess that's it. Here are some pictures:

Sophie/Sofia. Best friends, but she's kind of uptight.

You can see the mountains from the roof terrace. All the buildings here are so tall. I can't remember having seen a one- or two-story yet.

 Me, the European Wanderer, ultra-self-contented.

luego, ciao

*I had no idea traipse had such specific definitions for each part of speech. Interesting.