My wonderful cousin Sarah was kind enough to write a few words on her first experiences of living abroad in Barcelona Spain. She will be a junior at Oklahoma University in the fall and is spending the summer studying in Spain. (jealous!) Anywho, since I am still away on my fabulous vacay, she is filling in for me until I get home and get organized enough to write about my travels. So here it is, enjoy!
Our short time in Barcelona has been great but one of the things that has made it so wonderful is that we have a friend studying here with us that knows some locals and they have been showing us around the city. Earlier this semester someone introduced a friend of theirs, who is a student studying in Dallas but from Barcelona, to a friend of mine from OU. So it has been great to know someone before we came out here. We were all very excited for them to be able to show us around the city from a local's standpoint. The first time we met the local Spaniard he brought along several friends and they took us to a "local eatery" that looked like a hole in the wall for authentic Spanish tapas. Well, some of you know (or now you will), that I am a very picky eater and a lot of my friends are too but I figured that I am in Spain this one time, I really should try everything. Once I got to dinner I realized, that although I had decided to try everything, I really didn't have a choice. The guys made us at least try a bite of everything but were nice and if we didn't like it we didn't have to eat anymore of it. One of the foods we tried was goat liver (they didn't tell us what it was until after we ate it), but other than that the food was pretty good, even being a picky eater. It was also helpful that our local friend speaks almost perfect English so we had someone to help order and we also had good conversation. Most had been to the US and they are all very smart and very interesting to talk to.
Another thing that is interesting about our new friends is that they all are very wealthy and each have cars, which is uncommon for a lot of people in Barcelona. Our local friend's family owns one of the finest vineyards in Spain (according to him) and they also have multiple vineyards spread all over the world. The vineyard's name is Codorniu. We were supposed to go to the vineyard on Friday and tour it but we didn't have a chance so hopefully we will be able to do that before I leave Spain. Instead of the vineyard we ended up going to our friend's house to have lunch. He lives in the hills of Barcelona in a very nice house. We arrived at the house and met his parents, then had appetizers and lunch. We also tried lots of new Spanish foods that were tasty and I tried all of it (and was very proud of myself!). Their family has a nanny/ maid that brought us each course of our meal. To me and my friends it felt like a five-star lunch but I am pretty sure this was a normal meal at his house. After lunch (which in Spain is around 3:30) our friends drove us to his golf club called Real Club de Golf El Prat to take a siesta. We thought it was funny to drive all the way to the golf club to take a siesta (a Spanish nap) but they had large rooms with many couches and the club itself was beautiful. Our friend left for the States a few days later but he said his friends and family are going to take care of us. It was so nice to have a local to hang out with because we are learning so much more and experiencing more of the culture. I am loving Spain so far!
A few photos of our new friends and our time with them:
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| At lunch with our new friends. |
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| KKG in Spain! |
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| The girls. |
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| The boys. |
Adios for now, more to come!
Sarah
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