Anyway, I managed to sleep 10 hours last night (first really good night's sleep) and I walked to school feeling fairly good. It was only a 15 minute walk and it was an easy one at that. At some point after I explored the school, but before class, I tried to go back inside and it was locked. I still don't know why, but it was eventually opened, no thanks to me.
I've since discovered, and to my horror, that the teaching style here is pretty much "call on random people". There is no hand raising, and the professors simply call on random students, (no rhyme or reason here I swear). It's as if they teach EVERYONE, then they check on random students to get a sample size and see if everyone understands. The whole thing was pretty traumatizing at first, but I got used to it in roughly 30 minutes. Otherwise class is pretty much like the US, but you can't eat or drink (except for water and coffee which is only some classes, most are water only), you cannot leave for any reason, but they have a 10-15 minute break halfway through, and no phones whatsoever.
Also, the most important thing, water is free there. WATER IS FREE. I apologize, but water is not free anywhere here. It costs anywhere from 1.50 - 3 euros for water a restaurant, like a normal beverage. So I went out and bought a couple of glass bottles today so that I can hoard water from UAB (I'll elaborate farther down).
Back to classes, my spanish class is slightly horrifying, but at the same time the professor is ridiculously nice and funny. It's scary because everyone has to participate, everyone. There is no hiding, you can't escape his gaze, he will call on everyone at least once every 10 minutes (that's quite a few times during every two hour class). It seems that he's a firm believer in the "call on random people" strategy.
Back to water again, (I feel like an old spice commercial at this point, look here, now back at me, now there, me again). Water is expensive here and that's probably the only thing that I really dislike about Barcelona. To fix that problem, I went around the streets of the older section of the city (a tad sketchy) and shopped around for an hour or so until I found some glass water bottles. They simply do not use water bottles like we do. There are no plastic ones, or bottles with nozzles, or anything. Just glass. One of the ones I bought has a cork, just come on.Also, probably the most exciting part of my day was when ISA emailed me and told me that they had set me in the "intercambio" program, which is basically an exchange program where I help a local spanish student (my age) learn and speak english, and they help me learn and speak spanish. So now I'm waiting for a response from her, but I should be able to go and see the city with a local now, which is so, so exciting for me.
Some other random things that have happened to me in the past few days that I forgot to mention:
In Sitges, I walked into a "pub" to get a bottle of water before the drive back to Barcelona and the bartender was playing and humming along to an American Indie song that I really like. (Home by Edward Sharpie & The Magnetic Zeros)
There was a dude walking down the street with THE solar panel today. It was roughly 7 feet by 4 feet. Just huge. He was just strolling around with it like it was nothing and that it totally wasn't weird or anything like that.
My host mother had some musicians over last night to help her with her "storytelling", I'd try to explain, but I don't even know anymore. It's her job, as well as a translator, so they were planning and figuring out how to tell a story with music and words, but not a song. I think.
There's also another man over here to plan a different story with, but I'm still not even sure what telling a story at an event entails, or where one would tell one, or what about... Oh well.
Also, my Spotify ads are now in Spanish. That was startling.
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