Oh street signs, where art thou?

Greetings from España!! The last couple of days have been pretty eventful and uneventful at the same time. It didn't take me that long to adjust to the time zone, although I did sleep until 11 am this morning by accident. I've been walking around A LOT since I got here, and my feet hurt soooo bad but ni importa!

Everything has worked out great with my apartment, although actually arriving here was an interesting experience. We're in a good location about 4 blocks from the metro. I'm also within walking distance to where I have to go for work everyday so that is a major plus. I have 3 roommates, all of whom are studying here. Two of them are from Spain, and the other is from Japan. I haven't really spoken too much to the one from Japan because she mainly keeps to herself, but I have gotten to know the other two pretty well and they are super nice! One is from outside of Madrid and the other from Zaragoza. I enjoy having them around, and it's been great practice for my Spanish!

Yesterday was the first day that I actually went out exploring my surroundings. I live about 6 blocks away from La Sagrada Familia, which is a major tourist spot here.
I'm not really an expert on the entire history of it, but the basic summary is that it is a huge monumental Church in Barcelona that was first designed by Antoni Gaudí. His architecture is all over the city. They have been building it for about 130 years now, and it still is not finished. I didn't get a chance to go inside on a tour or anything mainly because the line was wrapped around 3/4 of the building to get in. However, it is on the list of things to do before I leave! It's pretty incredible.

During the hours that I've spent exploring the city the past two days, I've found that Barcelona is really this centric hub for people from all over the world. Seriously, I've heard so many different languages that it just blows my mind. I've heard Spanish (obviously), Catalá (I'll get to this in a second), English, Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian, German, Chinese/Japanese (haven't learned to tell the difference between these yet haha), Hindi,  and a few other Eastern European languages that I couldn't even recognize. It's wild the amount of people that come here for vacation. Barcelona has a very eclectic mix of people, as any city does, but I think it's especially noticeable here.

While we're on the topic of languages, let's delve into Catalá. I obviously knew that Cataluña speaks Catalán, but I definitely didn't think it would be so prevalent once I got here. From an outsider's standpoint it truly seems that Catalan is more common than Spanish here. Granted, everyone speaks Spanish as well, but most people when I'm out and about just nonchalantly switch between the two whenever they feel like it. All of the signs and advertisements are in Catalan, and every street name (I will also get to this topic in a second) is in Catalan. Furthermore, the entire metro system (meaning every stop and every sign) is in Catalan and Catalan only. Example: most exit signs in the US say "Exit/Salida" to accommodate English and Spanish speakers. The word "Sortida" marks every exit sign here, which doesn't really help me at all. I obviously made the connection because I guess it's kind of similar to the Spanish word, but to be honest the first time I was in the metro I just followed the crowd because I didn't know where to go.

Now onto my favorite topic - street names. OH MY LANTA. I feel like half the roads here don't have street signs. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but MANY of the streets either don't have a name or they have a name and don't have a sign. And if they do have a sign, it's hidden somewhere you can't see it. OR, and this is my favorite, the signs are only located on one side of the street and are so small that if you're on the other side of the street you must cross the street to see the sign. This first bit me in the butt yesterday when I walked six blocks past my street when I was walking back to my apartment. Learned that lesson the hard way. That'll teach me to walk on the right side of the road. It's also so tricky to navigate your way around here. I was so frustrated today that I couldn't figure out how to get to where I wanted to go from where I was. It's funny that you know exactly where you are, but you don't have a clue which road to go down. I'll chalk this one up to the fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a good map here. Going back to the road names, every map I've found only has selective road names labeled. So even when I do have a map it's almost useless because either the map is missing a road name or the road is missing the name. Most times, it's both. Anyway, that's my rant about street signs.

I went to La Rambla today, i.e. tourist central. You can't go to Barcelona and not visit La Rambla así que me fui. Personally, I don't think it nearly stacks up to La Feria de San Telmo in Buenos Aires, but nonetheless it was still cool! La Boquería is also located along La Rambla. La Boquería is this HUGE food market with everything you can think of. The candy station blew me away, so much that I caved and bought some.

How do you like your gummy bears? Sunny side up? The pepper on the top right looks so innocent and yummy right? Wrong. I just bit into one and had to run to the kitchen to grab some water. How the heck do you make a gummy bear that spicy????! Wait a second, how do you make a gummy bear spicy in the first place? ¿Qué? I for sure won't be buying that again. Madre mía. 

Y bueno, here are some other photos from the day. Hasta pronto!