Figueres, Classes, Barceloneta, Strange Things

My apologies for not having written in awhile. Please note that I've changed the link of my blog to laura-cui.blogspot.com.

Last Sunday, I got on a Renfe train with Shaelyn, Melissa, Kerry, and Nora to go to Figueres, Dali's town. It was a pretty comfortable ride and we got there in about an hour and a half. Figueres was quiet that day; most stores and restaurants were closed because it was Sunday. We went to the Dali Musem, which was really cool. I even got to see the famous room with the furniture that makes up a face. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a photo:

After the musuem, we walked around a bit and ate at a restaurant. The food was delicious although the service was a bit strange.

The rest of my classes started this week. I am taking two CIEE classes with people in my program and two classes at the Universitat de Barcelona with other Spanish students. I had to change my UB classes because I couldn't understand either of the professors. Not to mention that the Anthropology professor seemed totally insane to all of us. Anyway, the courses I am taking this semester are: Masterworks of Catalonian Art, Introduction to Catalan and Its Social Context, Geography of Catalan, and Spanish in the United States. Very Catalana, it seems. I really like the art history class, even though most of my classmates have expressed that they think it's boring. It's the best art history class I've taken (although I suppose I've only taken two before - Ancient to Medieval with Mierse and Renaissance to Modern with Thompson). My professor for Intro to Catalan is really awesome. She's totally cute and I'm pretty much crushin'.

When I first arrived in Barcelona, I thought it was a huge city. The Metro system is misleading in that way... it makes the city seem a lot larger. In reality, each Metro stop is only a short distance from the next one. It's completely possible to walk all of Barcelona in a day. I've yet to do this, but I plan on it. I don't have any classes on Wednesdays so I plan on using this day to explore this walkable city by foot. I discovered how easy it was to get around when I walked to Barceloneta (Barcelona's beach) from Plaza Catalunya (downtown Barcelona). It's a nice beach, but it seems like it will become very crowded as it gets warmer. There was a good amount of people while I was there last week and it's only February! I mean, it's by no means cold here (at least not to me, an almost life-long New Englander), but it's quite breezy by the ocean and definitely not warm enough to swim and sunbathe. Everyone at the beach was wearing pants and jackets. Barcelona is also really touristy, so the beach will probably be swarming in a month or two.
Barceloneta
So... I've encountered a few strange things since arriving. The two most recent ones were pretty excellent, although my roommate has informed me that I'm a bad storyteller. I was on the Ferrocarril (like the Metro, but not the same thing) earlier this week and I saw a person. Great story so far, I know. But she was wearing a costume! She had a huge "mask" on her head of some kind of brown animal with big eyes and little ears. It reminded me of Totoro. She was just sitting in one of the seats minding her own business... it was pretty hilarious. The strangest part of it was that no one else in the car seemed to find it strange. I tried to get a picture, but couldn't get a full-frontal shot. Here's the best I could do.

Oh! Also, I finally met up with Elizabeth, a good friend of Jessie's who is studying abroad here this semester too, but at the UPF (Pompeu Fabra). We got yummy juice from La Boqueria. She was present when this other weird thing happened to me. We were just walking and an old woman stuck out her arm and like... smacked/pushed me in the shoulder. I looked at her like "what?" but she wasn't even looking at me. It was like she was a football player running towards the end zone or something. So odd.