Day 6 -- May 27

Last night, a few of us went to an American bar called the Dow Jones bar. It was full of other Americans (yay!) and the drinks were like a stock market. They had TV screens with the drinks on them along with a price, and it told you if the market was up or down. Every so often, the drinks would all drop down, and people were buying like 4 at a time. It was very entertaining haha! It was my first day to sleep in today so I woke up at 11:30 – I was still so tired and sleep-deprived. When I woke up, I got in the shower and we went on our way to La Pedrera, one of Gaudi’s many works of art, for the Modernism Tour. We learned the way he formed the insides of the building, which was by hanging a chain and seeing how it arched. They also took us up to the top of the buildings to see the entire city, and then we went into his apartment. It was very nice! After that, a lot of us were really hungry, and I was packed the same cheese sandwich, so I stopped and got chicken nuggets from McDonalds. We sat down on a bench inside of McDonalds while looking at Gaudi’s other house (maybe Casa Batllo?) and we were talking about how cool it was that we could be sitting in McDonalds and looking at very famous art all at the same time. After lunch, Jane, Sara, and I went to the ISA office to use the internet and to figure out how to get ours fixed. We stayed for a good 2 or 3 hours just playing around on the internet (we didn’t have anything else to do and we were having withdrawals J), and then Myriam walked with us to Vodaphone to see about getting it up and working. We ended up having to pay 30 euros each L but at least we’ll be able to use it whenever needed and not have to go all the way to the middle of town! But when we brought it home, the pin didn’t work. When we put the USB straight into our computers it works, but we can only use it one at a time. We’re going to go to the store again on Monday and try to figure it out. We were supposed to have another tour called the Gothic Tour to see the old part of town, but there are huge demonstrations and protests going on right now. We had to walk by La Plaza Catalunya to get home from Vodaphone, and they were just starting a really big protest. Police were everywhere, and they were fully armed (they were scary). It was kind of cool since I’ve never seen anything like that, but we didn’t stay because we were worried it might get dangerous. We walked home (I’m getting way too tired of walking that whole way so I bought a metro pass) and then I went with Jane, Nichole, and Meg to the ports at the beach to just kind of sit around and hang out. It was really nice outside. Oh, side note, another really strange/uncomfortable thing about Spain is the PDA! They really aren’t ashamed of anything, and it makes me very uncomfortable to be sitting across from a couple making out while she rubs his you-know-what. Gross. We’re going to the beach tomorrow for the first time, so it should be fun!