I don't know what I'm supposed to blog about because sometimes I'm too lazy to recount all of the facts I've learned here and sometimes I worry it's too boring to read just about myself and my feelings or whatever, so I end up not writing anything at all, which I don't actually feel too bad about because I've noticed that no one's made a Kansas City blog, or a Galesburg blog, or whatever else, that I can follow when I miss people or want to see familiar things. Anyway, Sam's travel blog is more dismal than mine, so I feel okay.

My abuelos are in town this week. The abuela cooks so much ridiculously good food that I just eat and eat and get sick off of Spanish tortillas, white bean and bacon salads, fried fish, and ribs, or costillas, that reminded me of the kind my mom makes. And the abuelo loves wine and cheese, so I'm privvy to these things after dinner; and the abuela loves fresh fruit, so that's my second, sweet dessert. It's really extravagant and I'm glad that they're staying for just one week, because I'd gain an absurd amount of weight. But then my padres here just eat frozen food, lots of fried food, and I think to myself, I fought so hard to get away from this diet in the States! So maybe I'll end up gaining an absurd amount of weight, anyway.

Yesterday I looked through pictures set in US cities and felt really sorry for all of the 2-story buildings. I think that's going to be one of the things I miss about Barcelona, the sensation of being swallowed up and lost in a maze, which is counterintuitive right? I almost slept through my history class last night, and was glad that I didn't, because Prof. Bertran (though usually we just call him by his first name, Prim, which is a common first name for firstborns, you know, like primero or whatever) took us on an excursion to see the Monasterio de San Pablo del Campo, which is the oldest church in Barcelona. Then he bought us Arabian cookies and showed us the Antic Hospital de la Santa Creu, which was built in the 15th century maybe and functioned until the early 20th, and is where Gaudi died after being hit by that tram.

Booked a ticket to Lisbon for the first weekend of November. I was planning to just go to Portugal and then to Paris for my birthday, but Prim is thinking about organizing a trip to Rome where we can stay in cheap hostels and eat pizza all day, he said, oh and to learn everything there is to know about Rome, because he knows everything, and I don't think I'll ever be able to make the trip with such a knowledgable and free tour guide that I guess I should go. So, yeah, money woes and it's just the beginning of October. The exchange rate's rough.

Prim explained some really cool things about the Spanish flag but I'm too lazy and much of a bad listener that I'd rather not recount, just encourage everyone to read about its history, especially the myth about Hercules and why there are columns. One fact I can recount is that the Mediterranean means "mid-land" because map-makers only knew about the surrounding countries of Southern Europe and Northern Africa, so they thought the earth was a big connected circle of land with the Mediterranean in the middle of it, and boarding the outside of the circle of land was the Atlantic Ocean, and where the Mediterranean and the Atlantic meet is integral in the history of the flag that I'm not going to explain. I presented an article yesterday in Grammar class about how Parisian designers are using geometric patterns found in Islamic and Roman architecture to create collections for women that don't involve bows and lace and don't make them look like dolls; with all the Islamic and Roman architecture I've been imagining the same thing, so I guess it's kind of cool that I'm just as clever as they are, kind of weird how everyone gets inspired by the same things at the same time, like the invention of calculus or whatever.