This week has been miles, miles better than last week. Why? I don't know really. The only difference has been that I've got rid of that one course, and somehow the workload has seemed more copeable-with. This was the last week of Catalan Intensive Basic 1, we had the exam on Friday. It went pretty well I think, it was all multiple choice except for at the end where we had to write a paragraph or so. The thing about multiple choice exams is that you never really know how you got on, because every answer is made to look like the right answer! Catalan Basic 2 starts on Wednesday, which should be good because it focuses much more on being able to speak conversationally.
Anyway after the exam most of the class went to the pub for a wee celebration, it's a really nice international group, with people from every corner of the globe. I'm the only real English-speaker, and there's even one German guy who doesn't speak Castillian Spanish already, he's just learning Catalan and that's that. So we all speak a mixture of Spanish and Catalan, and then the German guy speaks to me in English when he doesn't know the Catalan words!
Later on Friday I went to a birthday party in Gràcia with one of my Erasmus buds, we walked round in circles, lost... and then realised we were in the right place all along. It was a good party, although most of his birthday presents were ladies' underwear and plants! Very random! Then even later that night I went down to Ciutat Vella to meet up with other people. After the bar, we went to a very odd nightclub where we were like in a very dim room upstairs... there was nobody else there and no music (?!?!) so we promptly trotted off to another club, and then another one a while after that. It was an eventful Friday night... my liver was probably a bit busier than it had been the rest of the week, but that's what it's there for!
Saturday was, as you'd expect, a bit of a write-off. Didn't really get that much work done. Thankfully I didn't stay in all day, at night I went round to a friend's flat for a while and then we headed off to L'Eixample to go to a bar called El Gato Negro (the Black Cat).
This pub had the largest menu of chupitos (shots) I've ever seen in my life. Think A1 sized posters... like outside a cinema. And then write the names of shots in columns. There were 4 of these things on the wall, all with funny names. One example (which I'm not going to translate!) was Mi Polla En Tu Boca. I'm sure you can figure it out! So when you get asked “what would you like?”, you have to tell them! In the end we settled for Harry Potters on a recommendation. Then they were set on fire, drenched in sugar and oranges and whatever, yum yum yum.
After zat, we went to a small discoteca, it was certainly not a touristy place. They played Toxic and Hung Up though, so I wasn't totally lost! All the rest of the time I was like “what's this song called?” So on Sunday I was downloading lots of music which I'm used to hearing in the clubs so I can try to understand the lyrics and stuff. It's better to be able to sing along! ;-)
The rest of Sunday was spent working. I manged to write my program in Miranda for LP, and my bash script for SO... and spent even more time pondering the mysteries of threads in Java.
The weather is still good, by the way. It's like shorts weather most of the time (although not for lectures), but there was rain one afternoon.
I don't know why but I think I'm looking less like a tourist, people automatically speak to me in Spanish now! Actually the other day I was approached by some annoying charity people in Plaça de Catalunya (you know, like the kind you get on Princes Street... please give £20 a month so that we can give free bibles to private school children, etc etc). Anyway they started asking me for money so I just put on my tourist face and said “sorry, I don't speak Spanish”. Hehe, yes I know I'm going to hell, but it worked...
