I wanted to write a long update this weekend, and now I am really not in the mood to. I am not sure what I would write about anyway, though. I have been having a lot of things on my mind lately, and most I am really not comfortable sharing at this point, not publicly, as I know not everyone who reads this is a friend of mine. I think I will actually try keeping a paper journal again as there are so many things on my mind and writing does help, but not on here. I am sorry this is so vague, and yes, something is wrong, but not something totally horrible, so please don’t worry. I am just having a hard time adjusting to life here, or rather, people here, not knowing anyone here, etc, if you have ever moved to a foreign country where you don’t know anyone by yourself, you know what I am talking about, and then the issues with my housing situation… I try to be positive but it is a bit overwhelming at times and today is such a day.

Anyway, on to more positive things:

- I finally got my Zwischenprüfung. I am not sure which grade I got, as my friend who handled all this for me forgot to tell me which grade I got in that one class that was still missing for the ZP but I passed it and she applied for the ZP for me and everything went well, so she can pick it up for me next week and she will mail it to my house in Munich. This is a big relief, it took me way too long to write the termpaper for it, so I dragged that stress on forever, and now it is finally gone, which is good (especially considering I have plenty of other things to worry about here). I am so thankful my friend took care of all this for me, don’t know what I would have done without her! (Sheela, thanks again, sweetie!)

- Last weekend when Tina was here was great. I saw so much of Barcelona, most of the places I hadn’t actually seen before, and that was really nice. I also enjoyed spending some time with Tina as we hadn’t seen each other in almost half a year. We went to see the Gaudí houses, Park Güell, Parc de la Ciutadella, Gracía, Sagrada Familia, the Ramblas,Barri Gòtic, Montjuic, … It was the Feste de la Mercé that weekend, the city’s patron, which is the biggest fiesta of all year in Barcelona, and the city was so crowded. We missed out on most of the Mercé activities, but we did see the castellers, people who build “towers” by climbing on top of each other, which was really cool. I took loads of pictures which you can see here: click. The pictures aren’t labeled yet, but I will also try to make another post with some of my favorite pictures and more impressions from that weekend sometime.

Well, I will end this here, I feel a bit drained… sorry this is such a short-ish update, I hope I will get to write more again when I feel a bit better and more positive.

So my Catalan course ended on Friday. I had my test today and it went better / was easier than I expected, leaving me with the hope that I passed and did decently (as opposed to my fear of failing before I took it). It would be nice to pass it because I would get credit for it which would mean I would not have to take as many classes during the semester.

Speaking of which, classes are starting tomorrow. Until about mid-October we are free to attend any classes we like (or none, haha, though that would not be so smart) and then we have to enroll in the classes and cannot change the schedule any more. I have picked out seven classes that I am going to look at, though I will probably only attend four or five in the end. Tomorrow I have four of them, as my schedule is a bit badly timed, with four classes on Tue/Thu and two on Mon/Wed. One of the classes on Tue/Thu is during the same timeslot as another so I will probably go to one tomorrow and the other on Thursday (and I will try very hard not to pick the one that is in English simply for the language reason as I am mainly here to take Spanish Lit classes, even though the Spanish one is a theater class and theater is not my favorite topic either, while the other is about English novels and contemporary film adaptations which is much more my taste.

Well, other than school, I have been going out a lot. Last week on Tuesday, September 11th, was the Festa per la Llibertat in Catalunya, which is the Catalonian national holiday, and there was a huge fiesta with a concert at the Arc de Triomf which was pretty cool. I have been going out with the people from my Catalan class and we have really been having a good time. This past weekend I tried for a bit quieter, and only went out on Friday, as I wanted an evening to myself (and since my roommate always goes out on the weekends, I knew I would have the apartment to myself), and besides I had to study for my Catalan test.

At the Festa per la Llibertat, I took a bunch of pictures and also recorded a short video, so watch it if you are curious to see what it was like…

As always you can see many more pictures at my Flickr site.

Friday evening Tina will be coming here, and she will be staying here till Tuesday. It works out perfect that Monday is a holiday here (yep, another one), and I will not have any classes Fri-Mon (I never have classes on Friday here). I hope we will do a lot of touristy sightseeing in Barcelona and also make a day trip to Girona, but we will see how things work out.

I think I will cut this short as I am getting sick, I have a sore throat, and feel a bit weak and light-headed, and since I have classes from 1000 to 1630 tomorrow, I should be well-rested.

First off, this is important for you who read my blog regularly: my domain bevived.net is about to expire in 5 days, and I am not going to renew it. As I can only have it set to redirect, it is just not worth it for me right now. That will also mean that in five days, my blog will not be available any more via bevived.net, so please change your bookmarks and blogroll to http://viviane.loonar.net/. This is the actual URL where my blog is located, and some of you may already have it bookmarked under this URL, but some might not. Sorry about this confusion.

Now on to more fun topics. Life here is pretty good. I still have my Catalá class every day and that is a bit tiring. I find it very hard to get up early every morning, and then spend four hours learning Catalá, I have not gotten a lot of sleep in the past week, but other than that everything’s fine here.

On Thursday I met up with Carmen, another girl from Heidelberg who studies at UAB (another university in BCN), who found me through StudiVZ (the German Facebook). We met up at Pl. Catalunya, ate some dinner at McDonald’s (where I have gone way too often since I arrived here), and then went to the Parc de la Ciutadella,which is a beautiful park here in Barcelona, a little oasis of peace and quiet in this busy city. We walked around the park and then around to Villa Olimpica and along the beach. Carmen was pretty tired (she had been looking for an apartment all day), so she went home after a while, but I decided to walk home along the beach. In total the walk in the park and home was about 6km but it was so nice. After I got home I went for my run, but I really did notice the exhaustion then. I was so tired before the run and I kind of cheated on the last interval of the workout because my legs were so sore. But then I guess I walked / ran a total of 11km in the evening of that day so I don’t blame myself.

Last night I went out with a bunch of people from my class. We just walked around the streets, hung out at Pl. Reial for a while and at the port and Las Ramblas. We drank sangria and wine and I probably had a bit too much in the early night. I did not even drink anything anymore after like 1am so I would not be too tipsy when I had to go home (by myself). I went home at around 3am. Some others went to a bar after that but I was just really tired. Took the nitbus home and got home just fine which was good. I was a bit worried about getting lost in Barcelona in the middle of the night. I am glad we went out last night, I was missing having a social life a bit. I do see all of them every morning for class but it’s hardly the same thing as going out and having fun.

Today I have just been relaxing so far. I am considering going the beach for a while though just to hang out and maybe read my book and then tonight go for my run. The kids from my class are going out again tonight, but I am not yet sure if I am going to join them. I’ll probably make that dependent on whether my headache has gone away by then, haha.