City Tour

So the past couple of days have been great just walking around, getting to know the city. The day after we arrived, we woke up early for a long day of sightseeing with our own personal tour guide, my cousin Ricky. We first walked and saw some buildings that Gaudí had designed, one of them called La Pedrera. The lines to get in were outrageous, so we just took pictures and admired them from the outside. We then had our first metro experience, and took it to go see Parc Guell. We climbed a steep hill to get to the top, but it was definitely worth it-- we had a gorgeous view of the entire city! Then we headed down to the lower part of the park, which is famous for Gaudí´s signature architectural style, complete with lots of wavy, mosaic benches. We also walked through La Ola, a rock cave that looks like you´re inside a wave. Otherwise (at least for my purposes) known as the place where they filmed the final runway for a season of America´s Next Top Model! From there, we caught the metro to see La Sagrada Familia, the enormous church designed by Gaudí that was never completed. Pictures do not do this place justice--it´s absolutely MASSIVE! That pretty much concluded our first day of sightseeing. The next day, we took it pretty easy. We walked around the city and found where my classes are going to be and where I´m living! We then headed over to the Olympic Village, and had lunch right on the beach. We have been fortunate to have gorgeous weather thus far, knock on wood...

I am now writing this from Palma de Mallorca, one of the Balearic islands off the coast of Spain. We are spending New Years with my aunt, uncle and cousins who live here, and had a nice tour of the city today. But it´s time to get ready for the celebration, I hope everyone has a wonderful New Years, FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!

What a day!

I´m writing my first post from beautiful Barcelona, and boy did we have a long day! It all started Sunday afternoon when we got dropped off at the Tulsa airport. We had all gotten a good nights rest, and were ready for the long flight ahead of us. Tulsa to Dallas was easy, as usual, but then we experienced a 2-hour delay for our flight to Madrid. We finally took off around 7:30pm, on an unfortunately cramped flight to Madrid. We all watched the on flight movie, read a little, and tried to catch some sleep later on in the evening. It was pretty uncomfortable, but we all managed to get at least some shuteye. Once we arrived in Madrid, they sent us through some serious hoops- first of all, we missed our connection to Barcelona since our flight was so delayed, so we were running all around the airport trying to find a later flight. They sent us to a regional airline counter, who told us that we needed to pick up our luggage before we could get new tickets. Then we couldn´t find our luggage, but luckily some other Americans who were in the same boat as us pointed us in the right direction. Anyway, after two extra times through security and a lot of walking, we got on the plane to Barcelona. As we were flying in, I got a great view of the ocean and felt the excitement growing. However, once in the airport, our luggage once again was nowhere to be found. We waited around for a long time with some other people who had missed the original flight too, and finally were told that the luggage had gone to another carousel--on the other side of the airport. So we went through security, AGAIN, and luckily found all of it. By that point, we were pretty tired out from the long day as well as the 7-hour time change, but got to the hotel and relaxed for a bit. Then we went to this great little tapas bar and grabbed some food, and then walked around the area. I was amazed by the number of people walking around! Anyway, after that we met up with my cousin Ricky and his friend Oscar, who are studying in Barcelona and Madrid respectively, and had some drinks. We made a game plan for sightseeing tomorrow, should be a fun day! Time for bed, I feel like I pulled an all-nighter...

Pre-Departure

I'm sitting here on my bed, legs propped up on my open suitcase, looking at my pile of stuff and feeling a little bit overwhelmed. In a little under four days, I'll be on a plane headed across the pond, where I'll be for almost five months. I can't believe it's so close, and I have a strange mix of emotions going on-- excited, sad, annoyed. Excited to finally have my housing assignment and looking forward to what this semester holds in store; sad to be leaving behind good friends and the comforts of home; annoyed because it's Christmas Eve and I still haven't finished my gift shopping... One emotion I have yet to experience is anxiety. I know that won't come until I'm sitting on the plane, but it's just around the corner.

My goal is to keep up with this blog and update it after weekend trips or any other exciting happenings. Hopefully I hold true to that goal!

Time for bed, I have some busy days ahead of me.

Sandy