Bienvenidos a la Universidad! Classes begin at Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Ayer fue un dia muy larga...........

It felt like I was back at the University of South Carolina running from activity to activity for hours on end. I walked, metro-ed, tram-ed and toured for 12 hours. (Hey Zack, whenever you're ready to fly over with that foot rub...). I'm exhausted and my legs are sore, but glad I got to see the University where I'll be studying the next 6 weeks.

Indoor courtyard/atrium, with entrances to the bookstore and a cafe.

Universitat Pompeu Fabra is a couple blocks from the Barcelona beaches, steps away from the Barcelona Zoo (sometimes evident by the smell in the air) and a short metro ride from my apartment.

Courtyard where students rest between classes, and eat lunch.

It's a modern campus, built in 1990, dedicated to a great contributor to the Catalan language, Pompeu Fabra. Natives of Barcelona and Catalonia take great pride in their Catalan heritage and language - as Franco outlawed any use of Catalan until the 1980's. Catalan is like a mix between spanish and french, and is especially influenced by french since Catalonia is just a couple of hours away from the France/Spain border.

Library.

A typical school day for me will be getting to campus (by metro) at 9:30am for my spanish language course, taking the tram at 11:30am to the Communications Campus (it's not just USC that makes the J-School kids walk to the edge of campus!) for my Documentary Workshop and wrapping the day up around 3pm.

My spanish has already improved significantly in just the few days I've been here and can only go up with class and homework. I'm also excited to really get started with my documentary course and see what we can produce.

After my tours and orientation, I metro-ed to La Sagrada Familia.

The rest of my program got to take a tour of the inside, but since I'm the only one who is enrolled in the documentary course and had to tour the communications campus, I wasn't able to make it. I only got to look at it briefly from the outside, but it's beautiful basilica with lots of history (that I don't fully know about yet but this website will tell you more). I'm going to make sure it will happen before I leave.

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Classes began today and so far so great! It's going to be a fun 6 weeks - that, I can tell.

Con amor,

Meredith