Yo he llegado! I have arrived.

After one 8-hour flight to Frankfurt, a 2-hour layover, a 2-hour flight to Barcelona and waiting 3 hours to be picked up at the airport, I finally made it to my new home.

View from the bathroom/laundry room window. 

For the next 6 weeks, I'll be living in an apartment in downtown Barcelona with a real Spanish family. My mom for the next week is the sweet Elisabet, who has already warmly welcomed me into her home and made me feel like one of her own hijos. (She also insisted I eat some ice cream after dinner - why would I say no?)

View of the street, Paseo San Joan, from the living/dining room. This is what I got to look at while we ate dinner. 

Elisabet is a teacher during the year, so she loves the extra company during the summer from students studying abroad. Her son, Ricard, is 21 and still lives with her, while her 26-year-old daughter works out of a spare bedroom doing freelance graphic design work during the week. 

I'm surprising myself how much Spanish I actually know and am thankful to have Elisabet to teach me. We speak a sort of spanglish to each other, which actually ends up being really helpful. And, I usually wrap up the conversation by saying "Como se dice.... *insert word or phrase here*." It's day one and I can already see an improvement in my Spanish. 

Tonight's dinner felt like a feast. Some sort of fried egg dish with herbs & meat in it, cheesy spiced rice, salad with crab, fruit, cheese, red wine and ice cream. I don't think I'm going to go hungry with her delicious cooking.

Elisabet uses a dry erase marker and the tiles on her wall to teach me about different seafood used in traditional Spanish dishes. 

After dinner, I told her I wanted her to teach me how to cook so I could make these dishes for my friends and family in the states. We agreed that next weekend we would go to the 'mercado' together, purchase the ingredients and make paella for dinner. (!)

Unlike most students, my roommate and I were lucky enough to get our own separate rooms. Here are some pictures. 

My bed. Mi cama. 

No AC, so we leave the windows open :)

Right now, I'm laying in bed with heavy eyelids and listening to the screams and noise on the streets. Tomorrow is Barcelona's festival de Sant Joan. It's the shortest night of the year and celebrates the summer solstice and beginning to summertime. If you didn't know better, you'd think there was a war going on outside, but fireworks are already going off all over the city. Tomorrow night is the big celebration and people fill the streets to celebrate this holiday.

Tomorrow's a long day and officially starts the fun of the trip. Don't worry, there will be pictures of food soon enough.

'sta luego!

You can find more pictures of my European adventure on my Flickr account.