Saturday, March 17

Today was the day we arrived in Barcelona! Besides the long, boring flights, we had quite a lot of excitement and stress over speaking to our families in Spanish! I am quite ashamed to say I mostly speak to my family in English...but ANYWAY, they met us at the airport with awesome balloons and kindness and everyone was gone pretty quickly. From here I can merely describe my own experience. My family took me to their small village called La Garriga, which is quite close to SEK. It's a tiny place but I love it already. The buildings are so old and grand and I feel like I've been transported to another time! My family's house is quite amazing and large, and they were kind enough to give me is room with an awesome massive window. They have a cool puppy, a boxer named Darma who is very excitable. They have a billion fish, a few birds, some rabbits...it's pretty cool, to say the least. They kept encouraging me to take a jacket before we walked to a ten o'clock dinner, but I insisted that the weather was like summer for me! The food was great, even though I have dietary restrictions there was still so much to eat and it was so good and I'm really stuffed. A few things that struck me: they were so cool about sharing food! They double dipped and didn't bother using spoons to take sauces, just dipped the food in and I loved it. They were also very slow eaters, something I'm not used to at all! They took their time with everything they ate, and the conversation was slow, tranquil and not the loud rush that I'm used to. I hope everyone had the same great experience I did! Aliya :)