What's new? Well, I've been sick as a parrot this week. What's old? England are out of the world cup and Spain are still in. En fin.
Aside from feeling awful for most of the week, I have still managed to get quite a bit in. I've been swimming in the sea a few times, and I've even found the strength to throw myself off one or two of the artificial concrete, yet razor sharp breakwater rocks at Barceloneta beach. On Wednesday I was driven up to Palafrugell, a small seaside town about an hour and a half north of Barcelona where I'll be spending the remaining nine weeks of the exchange program. I was looking forward to going, as I'd get to see where I'd be working, the sort of facilities they'd let me be in control of and the folk I'd be attempting to start conversations with. I should explain. I'll be working thirty-five hour weeks in this company, helping out and doing, well, whatever needs doing. Although I was feeling gosh-awful and the sun up to one of its old 'let's see how hot I can make it today' tricks, and the 'Catalan or English, but never Spanish' philosophy was unfortunately even more pronounced that I had expected, I really liked the whole set-up. I switched to Permanent Grin Mode when they showed me the recording studio they wanted me to be in charge of during August; imagine an evil genius in a room full of WMDs type situation...
On the drive back, things turned from Guatamala to Guatapeor (phrase of the week, meaning 'going from bad to worse'). I'd not eaten in two days, and I thought I could just about get one of those cereal-type smoothie yoghurts just to get some nutrients inside me. It wasn't staying down. I endured the rest of the journey without chundering but suffered a 'both-ends-at-once' (forgive the explicit detail) explosion as soon as I made it to the bathroom at home.
I made it out to the pub on Thursday, which was a great little spot as reccommended by my teacher from the language school. Despite the great surroundings I was still a bit on the haggard side, and the atmosphere was somewhat ruined by a drunk, jealous and rude French girl. Let's forget about though, just look at the nice picture.
By Friday, I'd made a full recovery, thanks to a few heavy doses of Sulfintestin Neomicina and Ibuprofen, and thanks to the people that were sick of me moaning, who told me to stop being so stubborn and actually sort myself out.
Saturday saw the second out-of-the-sity excursssion. Poblet:
And Tarragona.
So that's that. Oh, and I went to this last night too. The bands were good, the crew controlling the sound weren't as good, and the local people, as usual, were great... more than anything I wanted to start up conversations with all the umpteen-thousand of them. One step at a time I suppose.
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