El Quinto día

Good (insert correct time of day)!!

Pretty uneventful day today, I stayed up all night with Miss Jenna in order to find a place to stay after our rental ended at the Hostal Ribagorza. We ended up finding one that was about 2km away (still too far to walk with Jenna’s 70 lb. bag and my 3 bags). Before we left, we made sure to give our keys back and unfortunately our favorite person wasn’t working there. I noticed before we were leaving that Jenna had a few more bites and so I gave her some Campho (itch reliever) for them. So we decided to take a taxi (after much deliberation) to our new hostel. We waved a taxi down and he got out and helped us put our bags in the car. Jenna was laughing when he tried to grab her bag first. He grunted and almost couldn’t lift it; I had to help him get it in the car. He finished getting the rest of the bags in the car and we all go in.

As we all get in, he asks where to, and Jenna gives him the address. Jenna got the feeling that he might try to drive the bill up a little bit before he got us to our hostel  so she started off with “That right about 2 km away right?” because we knew exactly where it was. He grudgingly said yes it was. So at that point is the awkward moment where you can either ignore the driver for the extent of the ride, or you can try to engage in conversation. We decided to go with the latter. So we started talking to him, asking him his name (remember I didn’t specify what language ; ] ) and started talking about what he was doing here, where he was from (Pakistan), and how long he had been here. The basics. It was really cool to talk to a person who judged you from the start and to watch the disbelief well up in his eyes as we started talking to him in Spanish. We both understood (well I did at least) most of what he was saying and I was actually able to reply! This means… wait no… yes… yes! I have been progressing! How awesome! It’s working! WOO! That means I am learning Spanish even before school is started! Immersion really does work, folks.

Anyway, we finally made it to our destination and then we were faced with one of those boards with the names and a button on the outside of the door that was supposed to be our new hostel. We were looking at the different names next to the buttons and they were all just labeled with a or b and the floor number. Jenna first tried the first floor and the person sounded really angry and just hung up. Obviously not it. Then she told me I needed to try, I asked her what that little piece of paper was next to the ‘P’ and it said “Barcelona Rooms”. Instantly I remembered that was the name of our hostel was just that. I pushed the button and the door buzzes with the sound that it needed to be opened. So we make our way inside and the person was obviously not from Spain; we couldn’t place it though. She asked us for our reservation and we told her that we didn’t have one. She didn’t seem to get it, so she asked us for a piece of paper that says what we reserved. We told her again that we didn’t have one, this time in English, and she finally got it. She asked us with a smile if we were just going places to test our luck. We agreed with that and she went into the room to mark that we are here to rent the rooms. When she came back, we explained our situation and paid 240 for 4 days. Then we went up to our new room and unpacked after seeing our awesome balcony with a great view! The pictures can’t quite capture the experience of the situation but I will put them in here anyway.

After we set up our space, I checked my email to see that Reisa wanted to meet up with us! She is one of the students who came over to the US for the exchange; we set it up for 6:30.After that, we fell asleep for a while, remember we both had been up all night. At about 6:25, I woke up by accident and remembered that we were supposed to meet them. I got dressed quickly, woke Jenna up and ran down stairs. I waited outside for probably 30 min with Jenna still not out and the Cata’s still not here. After about another few minutes Riesa and Edith both came around the corner. It was so good to see a familiar face, you don’t really quite understand until you are alone in a city for a week. So we went over to a little café to get some drinks and we ended up talking until about 8:15 when Edith had to go catch her bus home. We made our way home and turned in for the night.

That’s all I have for today! Not terribly interesting, but fun to hear about I imagine =]

Hasta Luego!

Fuego