Wednesday

I woke up from an odd dream at 3:30am thinking it was nearly time to get out of bed. Went back to sleep to another strange dream and woke up feeling quite out of it around 8:45. Things continued to seem surreal for awhile as Erin was telling me about the Saudi Arabians who were talking to her and Kelly Rae last night at Ben & Jerry's and then followed them halfway around town...

We ran out of both kinds of cereal and most of the remaining fruit had gone bad, so breakfast was cherry yogurt, a slice of bread with nutella, a madeleine and a cup of coffee. I unloaded the dishwasher and watched TV while Erin got ready for class... sadly, the only non-cartoon show I could find was Lizzie McGuire and then a British show called Girls' Secrets - both dubbed, but I understood them fairly well. After Erin left, I got ready and then ended up eating an early lunch (peanut butter and honey sandwich, small apple, Prince cookies and tea) while watching a game show called the Two Loves - sort of like the Newlyweds, but some of them aren't so newly wed.

Walked to school to find the cave completely full so I couldn't plug my computer in. I sat there until the battery was low and then went to find a plug in the library. Around 3:30, I finally ventured to the post office to mail my apartment application, an activity which had been delayed many times by failing printers, classes getting out late and confusing forms.

Going to the post office is a nightmare. You can never tell where the lines are - they constantly switch which windows are open and they always take a long time for each customer. The workers are constantly having to leave the window to go get something or call someone to find the answer to a question. They're horribly understaffed and, it appears, poorly trained. There were only three people ahead of me in my line and it still took 20 minutes (which is miraculously fast for them) but all is well - my application will be there in 8-10 days which is the French version of Express for those who don't want to pay 45 euro to get it there in two.

In French History (4-5:30), we discussed Iraq, Bush, Chirac's decision to keep the current prime minister, and WWII. (We always start with the news before moving to the actual topic of the day.) Someone else decided to do Rwanda for their presentation so now I'll either be researching Chechnya or Yugoslavia depending on what my partner wants to do. No, those aren't very French subjects, but we will be covering what role France did or didn't play in both of those regions as part of the presentation. Phonetics was (surprisingly) not stimulating tonight - we talked about French cinema which is a difficult discussion to have when most of us have only seen 5-10 French films.

After class, Blake and I tried calling all the hostels and hotels in Barcelona that were listed in two guidebooks for under 100 euro - nothing. We decided that tomorrow we'll look into staying in different hostels each night since the problem yesterday was that most weren't available for both nights - just one or the other... hopefully they're still available for one. Earlier today I had been feeling so frustrated that I was considering not going, but now we're determined... We finally had to give up for tonight though so we could each get home to dinner.

Joelle didn't seem to be in the best mood - apparently her new job is still presenting difficulties all the time since they don't use computers (?!) and people don't always know what all the paperwork is. Dinner was bread, tomato-basil salad, lettuce, more of yesterday's rice and onions and a plain omelet. She made the omelet with 7 eggs and, as usual, hardly took any for herself so Erin and I probably each had 3 - oh lala... my poor arteries. I think I'll be done with eggs for awhile after this trip since that's what Joelle fixes once or twice a week when she feels like we're not getting enough protein. Have I mentioned that she thought tofu was made of fish? So she doesn't cook with any soy. As we were clearing dinner, she thanked us for clearing the dishwasher this morning. The way she said it made me wonder if she thought we were trying to tell her she should've done it sooner instead of trying to be helpful. hmm...

Spent the rest of the evening working on pictures and listening to music. I've been listening to the same playlist for awhile now (John Mayer, Sheryl Crow, Matchbox 20, Jewel, Mraz, Maroon 5, Patty Griffin and Gavin DeGraw) so I decided to let the computer do the choosing... really random mix. Listened to a couple songs I'm trying to learn on guitar and remembered that I'll be without it for 7 weeks after break... such a sad thought. Oh well... time for bed at 11:15.