So Vicky and I are finally here after months and months of turning in a bunch of applications, talking to advisors and all the not so fun stuff. I think I'm going to start from the beginning of this whole journey, starting at the airport because we had some epic fail moments that I think is worth mentioning. We're waiting to go through security check and of course one of us had to get stopped (that would be Vicky). The TSA guy, who was surprisingly nice and really funny, went through her carry-on and had told us before that we're probably going to laugh at what he's going to find, and he was right. He found a huge bottle of mayo at the bottom and I think it was probably the first time he ever had to confiscate a bottle of mayo. MAYO!!! God it was so embarrassing but oh so funny. Hey, we're going to be here for 5 months, so we each had a luggage filled with food from cereal, to pasta sauce, to seasonings, to instant noodles, to crackers, and a lot more that I can't think of. Our kitchen right now is stocked with food. We just can't cook anything yet because we don't have bowls or plates or utensils to eat out of -__- At least we're saving a lot of money by not eating out as much!
Ok, so we stop in Atlanta and we get on the plane to Barcelona. I forgot how much I hated their airport. It's just too big and our carry on bag and backpack probably weighed around 50+ pounds and we're just walking, walking, walking to get on the air-train thing to take us to another part of the airport where we have to walk, walk, walk again to get to our terminal. By this time, we're tired as hell. We get to our seats and the overhead bins are bigger, but it's also higher so we have a really hard time putting it up there. We made a little scene because we could not stop laughing and what sucks is that no one around us got up to help us push it up. What the hell?! I would've helped someone out if they were having trouble with their luggage, sheesh! During the flight, Vicky noticed that a lot of the girls were watching Water for Elephants, so I decided to give it a try. R. Patz doesn't look that good in the movie, but the movie itself was pretty damn good! So watch it if you haven't already!
It was one of the best feelings ever once we landed. Sitting for 8+ hours on a plane without my fluffy pillow and not going to the bathroom sucked! But heyyy, we were here!! We get our luggage, thank God nothing was missing, and we immediately search for an ATM machine. But of course, with the terrible luck me and Vicky always get when we're together, it doesn't work and it was a bad sign for us because we had to pay our deposit and 2 months of rent (about 1600 euros each) at the leasing office. We brought some cash with us, but it wasn't enough to cover it, so we figured we'd just withdraw some more money at an ATM machine. HORRIBLE DECISION. We were only able to withdraw 200 euros, so we had to go to the leasing office and tell them our dilemma. Together, we only had less than 1,000 euros in cash and we were suppose to pay them around 3,200 euro. But thank the powers that be, our landowner gave us a week to pay him the rest.
We get to our flat and I noticed the 2 person capacity elevator, which reminded me of a few years ago when I was in I think Florence on a tour with 30 other people (shout-out to the EF party if you're reading!) and it took FOREVER to bring up everyone's luggage. And here I was again, looking at the same elevator and dreading that I have to bring up 8 pieces of luggage, 2 at a time because it's literally just fit for 2 people, in the heat, with probably 100% humidity. I was dying while Vicky was standing at the bottom floor waiting for me while I brought up the luggage, fumbling with the keys, sweating like a pig trying to get the door open but it wouldn't even budge and then realizing that I was on the the wrong floor. FAIL. Finally got on the right floor and got into our flat. First impression: meh. Pros: AC (just in 1 room though), brand new t.v., comfortable leather couch, washer and dryer, good size for 2 people. Cons: dirty ass floors so I can't be Asian and walk through the house barefoot, no bidet (I wasn't planning on using it anyway, but it would've been cool to have one), toilet that flushes weird, fridge filled with stuff that the last people who lived here had, all of which had gone moldy, and our internet was't working!
First thing we did was clean a bit, unpack, rest up a little and then go look for all the ATM machines and try to withdraw money. I found out that my laundry detergent kinda exploded so it was leaking through my luggage and Vicky's Ajax also exploded. We know we can get that stuff here but we figured since we had it at home, why not bring it and save some money? But besides that, everything else in our luggage was fine. We walk around the neighborhood looking for ATMs and there's literally an ATM machine like on every block, or maybe every other block, but none of them would let us withdraw any money!! We just had maybe 20 euros each to buy some groceries and our sim cards. Even though we live like only 5 minutes from the grocery store, it's gonna be a bitch carrying everything back. We bought 8 liters of water because it was only 1 euro as well as a chicken, some ground beef, milk, bread and other small things. I was stuck with carrying the water and another bag of stuff alllll the way back, and again it's humid here so I was sweating balls and I could feel blisters forming.
Oh!! So I didn't think there would be a lot of Asians living in Barca but boy was I wrong. There's a good amount of Asians here and the crazyyy thing is that they all speak Spanish fluently and not a word of English. My mind was blown, I just found it so odd haha.
Once Vicky and I got home from exploring a little part of our neighborhood, we decide to try the internet again. Here comes another fail moment. When we first got there, one of the first things we tried was connecting to the internet so we could let our family know that we were ok, but it wasn't working. So we decided to try it again at night, and I look at the box thing and notice there's a sticker there with some kind of code that says "contrasena" next to it. I ask Vicky what it meant and she says omg that's the password!!! I enter the code in on my laptop for maybe 20 minutes and still could not get it to work. And then I realized I didn't connect the ethernet wire thing into my laptop -___- But we finally had internet and it's super fast and we were just so happy. It was a great ending to our 1st day in Barcelona.
We're going to try to go into a bank today and ask them if we can withdraw some money because I only have like 7 cents in my wallet and Vicky has 10 euros. We didn't know the banks here close at 2:30 so that's why we couldn't go yesterday. Hope we'll be able to withdraw our money to pay for our rent or else we're going to be homeless =( We're also going to try to get metro passes so we can explore the city some more since we have about a little over a week before the semester starts and of course try some Spanish food!!! Happy Friday, everyone!
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