(un)Important Notes

Hola!

I learned a lot about Barcelona the past few days. Including the following:

-Lungs harden incredibly fast.

-Runners wear dark sweats, long sleeve shirts and are usually male. Bright shorts, blond hair, and breasts are atypical, and elicit concerned/confused stares and comments.

-It is not abnormal to see a 5 year old dressed in flowers and patterned tights walking the streets with a parent at 2 a.m.

-Skype is the best thing ever.

-In Spanish, cucumber is pepino. In Catalan, it is cogombre. And yet I still cannot understand Catalan to save my life.

-If America seems too far away, the 4 square block Starbucks is a great place to drown in English. So too are the clubs near the sea, where any Castellano phrase is greeted with, "Dude, you speak English, right?" But if you really have a craving to speak Spanish at one of these clubs, the 40 year old creepers with poorly disguised male pattern baldness are happy to help you--as long as you are a young female clearly struggling with the language, and with her sobriety.

-Cabs will take you for a ride, always, and not necessarily to where you want to go.

-But the cheap night bus will NEVER take you where you want to go.

-A pay per minute cell phone is extremely liberating.