Today was a good day, but I think it's because I woke up singing this song to myself and because I drank some very warm Earl Grey in my autumnally-chilled room. The brisk air would've felt marvelous if I had remembered that my black cardigan is a summer sweater, and if it hadn't been gray and dreary all day, and so the day was exaggeratedly cold and downcast. I've been in a funky mood, but today I felt good and so aprovechaba del día ("I made the most of the day"- for some reason every time I go to say "to take advantage of" while speaking English it always wants to come out as the Spanish verbo "aprovechar") and I almost finished the play we're reading in Contemporary Theater (umm, or probably should've finished reading a few weeks ago, but who can tell what our basic class assignments are- language barrier, blahblah), Los intereses creados by Jacinto Benavente. Reading some English synopses online, the translation is Bonds of Interest, and I've heard of that! So it's kind of cool to read it in the original language, and while in its patria, homeland. Here's part of my translations for today, the song Silvia recites when Leandro, her desperate lover, uses the just-audible melody to describe his sadness at the thought of losing her:

Soul of silence, that I revere,
your silence belongs to the ineffable voice
of those who die loving in silence,
of those who become silent, dying of love,
of those who, loving us so in life,
perhaps did not know of their love to express!

Like, real profound translation, right? Anyway, the profesora, Maria Josefa, said that the lyrics were especially impactful because such romantic poems weren't typical of the period, so they really stood out. The history behind the play is very interesting, and Maria Josefa is very interesting, too, as well as animated, and last Thursday she took everyone out to a Japanese dinner (we were supposed to go to a play but there was a shooting in El Raval! which is out of place in this city but enough to make us choose another part of the city for art-enjoying).

Anyway, the University of Barcelona was founded in the 15th century, so there are some parts that are ridiculous! necessarily so, to keep up with a tradition of apperances or whatever, but still, here are some pictures:

lots of muslim-influenced arches- though i could be mixing that up, seeing as i don't actually learn anything in history of art like i'd hoped, because the teacher's older than death, i told my sister last night, and only makes vague references to art in general between deep breathes and long (and most probably made-up) reflections about his life or musings of life post-sex, you know, that activity that gets one really dirty and that he used to really enjoy but now just leaves him tired when he even thinks about it or about the five women he's ever seen naked in his life- ohmygodtoomuchinformationthisisaclassaboutart!

up the stairs to the dean's office!

umm, dean breitborde wishes, okay?

second floor corridor leading to the library, overlooking patios like this

where i sit and do my homework sometimes, or sometimes i sit in our secret garden-esque garden, like i did today

(notice the lavender peaking through)

although you can see the tops of tall buildings peeking from behind the trees and are still reminded of the dense city.

After Secret Garden sitting I went to the new building to buy machine-dispensed hot chocolate, because it's a few centavos cheaper than in other maquinas on campus. But as I sat sipping, I realized how angry I'd be if I were in America being charged American dollars for such a thimble-full:

I mean, everyone knows how small my hands are. But the cups are fashionista enough, so. So. So I just went to the bathroom and decided that people would probably be interested to see what Spanish (and other mostly European) students scrawl all over bathroom stalls on pretentious college campuses:

Nope, no difference really, your typical "anti-patriarcapitalismo" represented. Sat in the library for a bit afterwards; in lieu of pictures of the towers of old manuscripts and neoclassical paintings that surround me while I study, here's just a little close-up of the old books locked up alongside me

I'm trying to be better at living life. Making plans to do things. I'm also making plans, I'm pretty sure, to only stay here for one term instead of two. With the six months looming ahead I've had more leeway to push things off until tomorrow, until tomorrow, and, truth be told, Barcelona's not that great of a city to just sit around in while putting things off. It's really pretty, there are a lot of buildings to be admired, but it's hard to make the transition from tourist to resident in even six months, without knowing the unofficial official language and only having a decent grasp of the official official language. So I definitely need to start aprovechando everything here, muy pronto.