Busy Busy Busy Busy Busy.....

You get the idea. I hope.
I have a huge paper due next week, as well as a presentation and two finals, so the posts may be a little less frequent.
We're also going to the south of France this weekend, so it's cram time for homework...

Anyway, yesterday I walked around the city with my French/Spanish neighbor, Raquel. I could not understand her French, and I could not understand her Catalan, but when she spoke in Spanish, I could actually understand 100% of it. And more so, I could usually respond fairly quickly and my speaking was definitely faster than normal (in Spanish that is). It was fairly exciting for me.

Not all fountains need names!
(Or purposes)

We basically just walked around for a while, and ended up finding this giant fountain thing. (See photo) I feel like it's important just because of its sheer size, but I have no idea as to what it is, or what it's called. Actually, she didn't know either so.... Eh. It was kind of cool though, I'll give it that.
Also, sometime earlier she had mentioned that her friends usually hang around the "Arc" (Arc of Triomf), but I didn't think anything of it. So, when we just stumbled upon the arc I just walked to it because.... Why not? I mean it's large (tourist sensors were going crazy).
But when we got to it, we actually ran into several of her friends. One of them I talked to a little bit and he spoke a decent amount of English (I always ask, only because I'm curious, I don't actually want to speak in English to them thank you).
So, that's that. We're going to hangout again tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes.

Also, my host mother made something that I had never seen before (that happens often), but it was actually really good. Don't know what it was (usually don't), but it was a fairly pleasant surprise  Not that it's usually bad or anything, but I usually don't love any new type of food the first time that I try it.
In addition to this, she purchased microwaveable popcorn when she was at the market, so I'm pretty content.
She finally understands me.

I even bought some shoes today. I figured it out. All you have to do, is find 2394082 pairs that you like on the shelf, and just hope that a few are in your size. Then try those on and
once again hope that one of them fits because asking for your size just isn't worth it. It also doesn't help that the sizes are wonky here. Apparently there are quarter sizes and there are two sets of sizes..... Why. Just why.

And last, but not least, I went to a new cafe today to buy coffee (der).
The problem was that the owner was.... definitely from a southern Spanish city, he did not have a Barcelonian (?) accent. He spoke like he was from southern Spain, meaning he "ate" his words. Bascially he would just not say the last syllable or just not use the last few letters of the word when he was talking, so communication was interesting at best. I asked my host mother about it and she said that he was probably from Granada or some of place down there.