FIRST WEEK IN BARCELONA

Well, that's a wrap on our first week in Barcelona!

Picking up where we left off, we've realized this week that Barcelona is full of more adventure than we ever could have imagined. Sunday morning (well…afternoon) we woke up ready to be tourists for the day. Katie even had her camera around her neck. We started off at La Rambla, which is the ultimate tourist street in Barcelona. Since it was Sunday, the market was closed, and there were not as many tourists as we expected. In other words, we stood out like sore thumbs. Slightly disappointed, we realized that we were extremely hungry. La Rambla offered Burger King, McDonald's, KFC, Subway and Dunkin Donuts, but we wanted to stick to cultural food this time. This led us to our favorite restaurant so far: The Organic Market. From natural juices to healthy salads to traditional tapas (snacks), we fell in love with the atmosphere and delicious food immediately.

After lunch, we hopped on the Metro and set off to Park Guell. We walked up quite the hill to reach this well-known park that overlooks the city of Barcelona. This park is home to some of Gaudi's (popular Barcelona architect/artist) most famous works of art and his home of 20 years. Not to mention, one of the most beautiful views of Barcelona you can find. After observing and taking our many pictures, we left the ticketed area of the park in search of more things to explore. About 20 minutes later, we realized the area we really wanted to see was inside the ticketed area (it was so confusing). So naturally, Brynne walked up to a worker and played the dumb blonde American asking if we could get back in…….it worked! We observed many asians taking pictures while sporting the peace sign and tried to document them, but we were too slow. Needless to say, Park Guell is a Barcelona must and gave us a great view of our new home!

When we got back to our apartment, we finally got our school schedules (yes, this was 12 hours before the first day of class……welcome to Spain). For those of you that know the three of us, scheduling last minute is NOT the way to our hearts. We had a couple issues that had to be fixed on Monday, so we woke up early and headed to our organization's main campus. The changes that needed to be made were not as easy as we thought. We headed to McDonald's to use their free wifi to contact OU.

Taking a break, we went to the market on La Rambla that we missed on Sunday. Brynne finally got her mixed mushrooms and we got our fill of fresh fruit! After hours and hours and emails and emails, we had finally done everything we could to fix our schedules and just had to wait to see what happened. Exhausted and ready to be home, we walked out of the campus to find it raining. We had no umbrellas. On the miserable walk back, we found our new coffee shop obsession...home of Suizo (the greatest hot chocolate known to man). We went inside, got on twitter and saw the Jesus Calling we had all read that morning. As we read it, we all began laughing at how cool Jesus is. He knew how to put our worrying minds to ease.

Between Tuesday, Wednesday and today, we've started to get in the groove of things. We conquered the ATM eating Katie's debit card (don't worry, she got it back) and the lack of lined paper in the office supply store (see video for proof). We're learning the streets (even Meagan!), and it's starting to feel like home. We're enjoying our apartment, and we finally found a way to watch The Bachelor! YAY!!

Here's the video!! http://youtu.be/buJOy5XRSig

We're looking forward to this weekend, and we can't wait to share more adventures with you!

Lots of love from Spain!
Brynne, Katie, and Meagan