Erika Problems

Today was the first day of classes, so naturally, it was a disaster. We left our house at 9:05 and we needed to be there at 9:30. It doesn’t take super long to get to the university from our house, but we went down the wrong street at the beginning of our walk into the Old City. Although beautiful, the way we took was a lot longer than the way we would normally take. Our class was meeting at the entrance to the university, but by 9:32, they weren’t there. TWO MINUTES LATE ON OUR FIRST DAY.

So, then, Melanie, Elizabeth, and I went searching the campus for our class. It’s pretty much just one building, but we couldn’t find it. We found one of the program directors who was in another classroom and he told us to check with the concierge to see where the class was. Eventually, about a half hour later, we finally got to our class. Sigh.

After an hour in class, we went onto La Rambla. There was a market-type thing where people were selling all types of clothes and blankets, etc. I noticed that some of the clothes that had words in English didn’t make sense. There were also a lot of knock-offs, like a Hello Kitty one and a Spongebob one (except for Squarepants, he had Roundpants). We went into a little café and had some things to drink.

After eating in the school cafeteria (they have Pepsi and I love it!), we went back to the house to change into clothes for our activity today. Unfortunately, once again, it took a little longer to get back to our house than we thought so we changed super fast and practically ran to the meeting point. Luckily we were on time … then the bus took us to a house to do some team building activity.

We divided up into teams … I was on the black team. Our name was Las Panteras Negras … the Black Panthers (haha! I came up with it! :)) We got second place in every single activity; second place is haunting me this year. Of course, being Erika, there was mayhem.

In one of the games, we had four people in a sack (like potato sack racing) and we had to jump to the finish line. When we tried to jump, I fell and ate it in the grass. Typical me. Then, there was a game when one person had to be on top of a giant orange ball. I mean GIANT. Of course, the smallest girl doesn’t want to go on it, so I had to do it. It was exhausting, and at the end, the girls who were pushing it went too far and I flew off the ball and onto the grass. Ugh … At least I can laugh about it.

I’m super tired now. My roommate, Melanie, is about to leave to go salsa dancing at a bar here. I’m just way too tired and tomorrow is going to be a long day. Tomorrow we’re going to see the Roman ruins, permitting it doesn’t rain like it did this evening. Today was a little harder to get through than the previous few days, but I still love it here and things will get better.

EDIT: I just remembered! Another strange food thing. At dinner tonight Cruzma brought out Pringles and Pau eats his with ketchup in the middle of two chips, like a sandwich. He offered it to me, but I prefer mine plain!