Pictures of the apartment!

This isn't all of it, but gives you a feel for how amazing this house is!

Welcome to our house! We live on the second flour, and there actually a surprising amount of stairs to get up here

The main room. My favorite part of this house is the long french windows/doors. The weather is so nice that we can keep the doors open for most of the day, and the windows bring in so much light that we hardly ever have to turn on the lights.

Kelly and Olivia's room. Paige and Gaby's looks pretty similar.

Me (Chelsea) and Kacie's room. We all have a patio outside of our rooms too :)

Our beautiful patio

Last night was our first night on the town and it lived up to our expectations. We took the metro with our fellow program friends down to las ramblas, which is an area that runs through the center of Barcelona, but ended up walking a few miles to a bar called Chupitos to meet up with Molly's (Kac and I's best friend from home) friends from school, Bryce and Joey. The bar was full of American students, and specialized in shots made with gummy bears and bubble gum, ones that were lit on fire, and named things like Harry Potter. After staying there for a few hours, we took a cab to a bar called Apollo. There was a line wrapped around the building at two in the morning. People weren't kidding when they said people get up from napping to go out at 2am. We ran into a club promoter and skipped the entire line, which landed us in a club with three levels. The first level played techno music, strobe lights, smoke.. the works. The second level was set up like a concert hall/auditorium, which a DJ, much like GirlTalk, playing on stage with dancers. After a long night of dancing and making new friends, we returned home at 5:45 am. Unfortunately, olivia and I got in a fight cause her closet broke and I chelsea and I thought it was funny and didn't help pick up her clothes. Funny thing is, once she hung her clothes all back up, the rod broke again a few minutes later.

The next morning, or i guess a few hours later, Olivia, Paige, Gabby and I went to our orientation lunch where we ate Paella, a famous rice dish in Spain (Yum!). Apparently Olivia has never felt hungover, so today she tried to convince us she was jetlagged and could not go to the museum following lunch, and that it was "optional". Nevertheless, we dragged ourselves to the museum where we learned all about Catalonia's history. Not sure how much we got out of it but at least we went. After it was over we returned home and are waiting out the rain and catching up on sleep. We'll see where tonight takes us, possibly the sagrada familia, a famous basicilia, but Olivia said shes not waking up til tomorrow so were not sure how thats going to turn out. WE LOVE IT HERE

Adios!

Friends

most importantly... Kacie and I found gatorade!!!!

... pretty much, everyone loves us. 3 boys among 20 or so girls-- Some from Honduras, Cali, Mexico, Richmond VA, Chicago, one fellow Philadelphian, etc. We learned some tips at orientation and took a tour around the center of the city, Catalunya, where we saw mucho personas protesting the government (used to be socialists, now conservatives, and it is not helping the 20% unemployment rate, with 45% being kids right out of college). The streets are very festive, with great shopping, restaurants, and clubs. On the down side, we're very cautious of the pick-pocketers, and we have come to learn that dog poop is unavoidable on the sidewalks, and most of the dogs are without leashes.

All for now...

Monday May 30th 1pm

We are finally here! We landed safely and got through customs in a breeze with only one slip up...Liv forgot her carry on (aka her shoes and batteries) on the plane. Apparently it was a huge safety hazard...opps! After we got through customs we met up with the CIS people at Jamaica Cafe, they were awesome! Then we got into two taxis and headed off to our apartment...

We got to our apartment and it looked exactly the same as google maps...what are the odds?! We were met by two men from CIS and they let us into the apartment. Olivia, Kelly, and I (paige) were the first to arrive. We carried our bags up and it was a longgggg wayyyy up! Let's just say we are going to have a great daily work out! We walked into the apartment and were pleasantly surprised! Other than the one small room (sorry chels and kacie) the rooms are great! We have a kitchen (with pots and pans), we have an amazing living room, and we have two beautiful porches! We also are lucky enough to have a washing machine and we are all very excited to hang up all of our clothes outside!

Chels, Kacie, and Gaby arrived shortly after. The two men from CIS went over the ground rules. Pretty much we have to try to be silent after 10pm because the lady up stairs gets very angry (or that's the expression we think the man was trying to describe with his limited English and hilarious hand gestures). He then informed us that clothing is optional...on a daily basis. Lol we were quite surprised by that and then he told us a story of how there was a man yesterday who was riding a bike down the street completely naked (again with the hand gestures) I think our faces must have shown pure horror because he then reassured us that yesterday was crazy because of the football (soccer) win!

We then got a brief tour of the area of town we are living in. It is absolutely adorable. The metro station is so close and we are surrounded by little markets. We walked around and ate lunch at a little hole in the wall. As true Americans we got two full pizzas and completely devoured them! We then stopped at the super market and got all of our groceries. We fully regret getting the huge bottles of water as we had a few blocks to walk back to our apartment and the three flights of stairs. Let's just say that's our workout for the day...Tash would be so proud!

We are all unpacking right now!!! Then it is off to orientation! Hopefully we make some new friends!!!

ADIOS!

paige

TODAY

eek.

3 days

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6 days woopwoop

Saturday, May 29, 2011, the six new amigas (forget the sicilians - AHPV) will embark on their journey to Espanya.  For six weeks Kelly, Paige, Olivia, and Gabby will be hittin' the books while Chelsea and Kacie figure things out as interns.  Details for what they will all actually be doing should be coming soon.. CIS..