Yesterday I left Barcelona, to return home after 12 lovely weeks of studying Spanish and lot’s of fun! Before I left, I didn’t really know what to expect, but it has been a truely wonderful time and great experience!

Last day in class was a strange one. First class I skipped to say goodbye and have breakfast with Magnus and Marta, who have been very sweet for me during my whole time in Barcelona! The second class we planned to surprise the teacher with a present and I didn’t bring any books or other school stuff to class, just champagne! It was not just me leaving yesterday, Florent (French) and Sandra (Icelandic) were also leaving, causing our “old” class to be split up to other classes next Monday. So yesterday was really the last day of our fine group being together. I think I have wrote this before, but I praise myself so lucky to have been in such a fun class, with such great teachers! Class was always a lot of fun. Ok, we might not have been the best class in school, but we were for sure the most fun class! :-)

Which also proved itself on the last day. The present we bought our teacher was Vicky. Vicky the blow up doll. Our teacher Pepe always love to talk about sex and sex related subjects, so it seemed the perfect goodbye present for him! We used Vicky as a card, with everybody writing a little goodbye text to our teacher on her. Halfway during our last class we talked the teacher into leaving for a moment and when he was gone we put Vicky on an empty chair and all waited smiling for Pepe to return! :-)

And yes, he loved it! :-) How could he not!! Afterwards we made some pictures with the class, this is my favourite! The smiles on the picture are typical for all the great times we had in class, and the way I will remember everybody!

My wonderful class		A classic moment

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The challenge to learn Spanish has from today entered a different level. In our classes there is not much room for repetition of just common words, so to force myself to learn some basic Spanish words, I started to put little Post-it® notes all through my room, explaining what the basic things are: wall, postcard, book, computer, movie, vitamins, agenda, mobile phone, map, lamp, curtain, central heating, bed, closet, door, etc. etc. So far it’s working great! Ok, I do admit the room looks quite silly at the moment, with these Post-it® notes everywhere, but hey, anything to learn the language! :-)

And yes, truely anything goes now, because today I also bought a children’s book! “Bambi, el principe del bosque.” Yes, very childish, but that is exactly the level of Spanish which I am at. I did the same when I was in Sweden, and that proved to be great fun! With lovely books as “Jag vil gräve”. Maybe not very useful in daily conversations, but easy to read and good fun to learn some extra words. The first book I got in Spanish was actually a present from Sally, El patito feo (The ugly duckling, a story she told in Spanish in her class) and now I got a second with Bambi. Plus I am still looking for a second-hand bookstore, to buy some more cheap children’s books!

Another great help will be the Friends episodes from season one I got on DVD now. I traded them, temporarily, with Magnus for my Seinfeld season 6. So now I can watch Friends in English with Spanish subtitles, or, if I am feeling lucky, watch it in Spanish with Spanish subtitles! All for good practise and because I am very curious how Joey will say “How you doin’?” in Spanish! ;-)

Post-it® my room

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It’s funny that if you are having a good time, that same time seems to fly by so quickly. Can’t believe I have been in Barcelona now for more then 2 weeks already! I guess being busy with study and getting to know new people fills up the time in the day quite rapidly.

In just 2 weeks I already met lovely people from Sweden, Australia, France and Spain. In just 2 weeks I ate so much tapas that yesterday I already had to eat something else because I couldn’t see more tapas again! And that even though I am a great fan!! :-)

In just 2 weeks almost the complete staff of my favourite Starbucks cafe where I do my homework each day knows my name. And the best thing about that is that it gives me the opportunity to practise my Spanish on the local people every day! Ok, it’s still quite basic conversations, but bit by bit it’s growing! It started with just the basic “How are you?”, but now I can already add the weather to the conversation! We are learning about family (parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, uncles, etc.) and giving directions at the moment, so I bet you can guess tomorrows topics besides the weather! ;-)

Haven’t been much of a tourist so far. Last weekend it was raining quite heavily, so that wasn’t very appealing to go out and see lovely buildings or parks. But let’s wrap up what I have seen so far:

Las Ramblas: Well… just watch your wallet… It’s ok to walk over and take a look, but just very touristy and actually not that much to see… Or maybe if you are in need of buying a pigeon or chicken at one of the little kiosks…

Montjuïc: The Olympic “mountain”. Just been up a little bit, and that was already rewarded with a great look over the city. Should be even better with nicer weather.

View from Montjuïc

The old town: Great stuff! Really nice to just wonder through. Lovely buildings and very cute little streets.

La Sagrada Familia: Just a quick peak outside so far. Impressive. Although the stories from people who have been inside have not been very positive so far… It’s mainly commented as to be a pretty ruin.

La Sagrada Familia

Parc Güell: Nice park. But was there on a dark day with nice company. So have to go back on a sunny day with bad company to see if it was really as nice as I thought it was.

Parc Güell Entradas		Parc Güell View		Parc Güell Cross

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Oi… I know I am getting older, and aren’t the least bothered by it, but spending long days between “kids” makes you just feel so old… I can’t go out clubbing every single night and then expect to learn anything at school the next day! *hahahaha* that is indeed just for the kids! ;-)
I also seem to be bothered by small things. People leaving the kitchen messy, not cleaning up the tables, leaving trash in the classroom… Silly of course, but I guess it comes with being among a lot of 18 year olds.

But hey! I should not complain to much! As it ain’t all bad by far!! Still having a great time here. Learning more and more Spanish, and meeting more and more fun people. And have been tasting the local cuisine on a number of occasions already! Great stuff!!! Sure, tapas were good in Stockholm, but can’t really compete with the local stuff here! The less English is spoken and understood in a restaurant, the better the food seems to become! And, lovely side-effect, the lower the prices become! :-)

Met the last of the Haggren brothers last Friday, Magnus, who has been a local in Barcelona for almost one and a half year now, and is only to be recognised as a local as well. Not only does he finish every sentence with “…, no?”, but even with a lovely 16 degrees outside, blue sky and a warm sun, he walks around with a big scarf and complains it’s cold! What kind of Swede is this?!? :-) Well, a true Haggren! That’s for sure!! And I mean this in the most positive way possible! It’s hard to find a nicer and friendlier set of brothers! Mamma Haggren may be very proud! :-)

Have only done some sightseeing so far. I am here for a while, so I don’t have to see everything in the first weeks. Although there is A LOT to see… oh my… even just walking through the old town is amazing! It’s truely a beautiful place! Also bought the Lonely Planet from Barcelona. Mainly because I knew about the Ramblas and big cathedral before arriving here and wasn’t aware of all other nice things. So great thing to have the book, were it not that I bought the Spanish version… and that just proved to be far, far, FARRRR to ambitious for now… so maybe by the end of the course I will finally be able to read a bit in it…

The course class are often quite fun. Even though I do struggle a lot with all the new words. The pace is quite high, everything in Spanish from the start and English is more or less forbidden. But my creative mind keeps me on track. As, for example, even though I don’t know the Spanish word for meatball, I do know meat (carne) and ball (ballon), so therefore am able to create meatball: carneballon! :-) Yes, indeed, that was way off, but there is other ways to success! While talking I seem to crash in French and strangely even Swedish words whenever I don’t know the Spanish word. And if that doesn’t help the trick is to make it sound Spanish by just putting “os” on the end of words! And that even gets you a correct Spanish word from time to time! :-)

Oh, just one little sad thing… my neighbour doesn’t keep the internet line open 24/7… At random he seems to turn it off… So since last Thursday it has only been back twice for a short while… :-(

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It has begun. Yesterday afternoon I arrived in Barcelona and today I followed my first classes of the Spanish language course. The trip actually started with little disappointment… first the weather in Barcelona. I left Holland Sunday afternoon under a clear blue sky, and arrived in a rainy Barcelona. Actually only have seen the city in rain, as today it has been raining again. Gotta love the irony or going south and just seeing crap weather. But well, it’s just a matter of time before that will clear up.

The initial room they had put me in contributed to the disappointing feeling at arrival. My lord it was small! Oi… I didn’t expect that. Well, didn’t expect anything, but maybe I was only hoping for a room with a nice balcony! ;-) Well, a balcony it had not… just one window with a view to… yes… a dead wall… Lovely! :-) But that wasn’t the worst… there was some really weird dirty smell in the room… really strange, and quite disgusting I may add. Together with the constant running water noise coming from the loo, that was for sure not going to work. Complaining was not an instead success, as the Sunday evening watch didn’t seem to have the privileges to move me to another room. I just had to get through one night in that room.

Even though the morale was a bit low because of the shitty room, talking to some friends at home (Mette, Judith and Bastiaan) made me feel quite ok again. Especially seeing the faces of Judith and Bastiaan while they were looking at the little video I made from the room was quite a treat! :-) But indeed. Not much to do about it at that point, so I just had to deal with it for one night.

And what a night it was… I almost didn’t sleep at all. Quite annoying. And strange. As usually I have never problems sleeping in new places. Eventually I started blaming the running water… What seemed like a sound that I could deal with early in the evening, turned out to be as loud as the Niagara waterfalls when the lights were out and there should just have been total silence…

So the first school day started a bit rough with the lack of sleep… Everything is in Spanish from the start, which is quite essential as well, as not many people in Barcelona seem to be familiar with the English language. At some times it proved to be a bit to much when having been awake all night, but I guess that’s quite normal.

The class is 8 people; 1 other Dutch, 1 French and 5 (!!) Swedish. And I must say, for one of the first times in my life, I feel old… :-) All Swedish seem to be just 18 or 19… Same with the Dutch guy. Just the French guy seems a bit older, about 25 or so. He actually seems to play squash as well and was already up for an “after school” game! That should be good fun. And not just because I am in bad need of the exercise! ;-)

After classes (that run from 0900 until 1300) I was able to move room, and now I am in a somewhat bigger room now, with a huge bathroom, silent toilet and to top it of the room is not smelly! Lovely! :-) Am even able to log in to the neighbours wireless network to use the internet! Yesterday I had to go down to the kitchen to use the internet, but in this room it works fine with the neighbours network! Well, if I ever bump into him, I can thank him now: ¡Muchos gracias! :-)

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No, not diarrhea! Diary!! A pronunciation mistake I often make when talking about my diary. My buffalo leather diary. It cost me a true fortune when I bought it 3 years ago… I think I paid almost 150 euros for it… but hey, it’s real buffalo leather!! :-)

Unfortunately I haven’t used it at all the last year, but now I found it again and as I am going back to school on Monday, it might be handy to start using it again! Finally it will start paying back the investment! ;-)

Well… actually that is still to see, as for some reason I have never been much of a diary person. Even through school I hardly used a diary. Mainly because I always figured that if an appointment was important, I wouldn’t forget it. So there was no real benefit in writing it down. Helped by the fact I hardly missed an appointment, I often just couldn’t be bothered.

But when I was just going through my diary from 2004, I must say it was quite fun reading little notes I did write down that year. Small things I had already forgotten about again, but when I read them they made me think of those almost forgotten fun times! So maybe that is actually a good reason for writing in my diary more often. Not because I don’t wanne forget things in the short run, but because I wanne remember them in the long run! At least this time I will try to make a serious effort again to actually keep using it! I already noted down my flight to Barcelona, and some birthdays. A good start. I just hope I will be able to write down a lot of fun things and not just notes about all the school homework! :-)

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I guess a holiday in Spain is the best way to describe it. The Counting Crows (great music by the way!) said it in the following words:

“I may take a holiday in Spain
Leave my wings behind me
Flush my worries down the drain
And fly away to somewhere new”

That probably sums it up for me as well. Next Sunday I will leave for Barcelona to study Spanish for 12 weeks. Exciting! Not sure about the holiday factor yet though… Just know that I will study Spanish for 20 hours a week (with some optional extra hours each week) and I will have to report for my first school day at crazy-o-clock 0800 on Monday morning. But I am quite sure it will leave time enough to enjoy it like a holiday! :-)

Don’t really know what to expect from the course yet, but I also don’t spend so much time worrying about it. I’ll just see what happens. The school (don Quijote) advertises the course as “Spanish for life”. Maybe a bit ambitious, but we will see. If they can teach me the ability to think in Spanish in 12 weeks, it must be a mission accomplished. But again, we will see what happens. I will just try to pick up as much as possible.

As the school was recommended to me by Martin (his brother went to this school as well to learn Spanish), I more or less went quite blindly with his recommendation and haven’t looked any further at all. So I know where you live Martin, if this school sucks! *hahaha* ;-) Just actually looked up where the school is located in Barcelona (see map), and it seems to be a nice location close to “Las Ramblas”. And even though I hardly know anything about the Barcelona city, I do know that the Ramblas is in the center of town! Yes, it’s probably about time I start to read up on that!! ;-)

The don Quijote school location

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