Detail of the mosaic at the terrace in Park Güell.

These two artists made huge soap bubbles and little kids kept trying to burst them.

The dragon at the main entrance of Park Güell.

Plaza España - the picture was not supposed to look like this but it is pretty cool that it turned out this way accidentally.

Patatas bravas y calabacines. More tapas at the same bar as two weeks earlier with Anna and Deniz.

A close-up of the Sagrada Familia. I took this one with Julia’s camera, a Canon Powershot SX100 IS. It really made me want to get a new camera, something a little bigger and heavier but with good zoom. My small camera is very good, has excellent macro and I am generally very happy with it, except for the zoom. Let’s see whether I will be able to afford a new camera (as an addition to the old one, not to replace it) when I get back to Germany. [The fact that I will be working in Munich will not help unfortunately, as I will not be paid a single cent.]

Coffee beans at Starbucks.

The patio of the old university building. [Yes, that really appears to be an orange tree. I am living in a Mediterranean country after all.]

Me and Julia at the Sagrada Familia.

All in all a good weekend, even though the weather wasn’t the best and the lighting was crappy for picture-taking purposes. Julia and I had a great time, but the two days went by way too fast!

Rest of the pictures.

Fact #1: Monday afternoon I was talking to Julia about how it is weird I haven’t heard from my cousin yet: she was pregnant and I thought her due date was in January, and I mentioned how it was about time she had that baby. That same evening my other cousin [the pregnant cousin's sister] told me she had the baby that day, and that she was eight days over her due date. So weird and funny that I would talk to my friend about it and then my cousin had the baby on the same day. It’s a girl and they named her Sophie! I haven’t seen any pictures yet but I hope I will soon. Both my cousin and her daughter are doing well, though, and that is the most important thing. I hope I will get to see Sophie as soon as I get back to Munich. My cousin does live in Munich so it doesn’t seem that unlikely.

Fact #2: All of the babies born in the past few years in my families, namely my cousin’s son and daughter [Linus & Sophie] and my other cousin’s daughter [Charlotte], were born while I was living abroad. October 27th, 2004, when Linus was born, I was living in Oklahoma. And both Charlotte [* September 11th, 2007] and Sophie [* February 25th, 2008] were born after I moved to Barcelona. Great timing, cousins!

Fact #3 [unrelated to facts #1 and #2]: I will be moving back to Germany in exactly four months. My flight back to Munich is scheduled for June 27th. Okay, so technically it is already February 28th [half an hour past midnight], but let’s just assume it is still the 27th, for the sake of the argument. Four months seems so short. The 29th will also mark six months since I arrived in Barcelona. Wow! Hard to believe I have been here so long, and I have still not touched my Spanish grammar books that I bought in September, or the vocab book I brought with me from Germany. Leaves the question if that is still going to happen while I am here. My Spanish has gotten loads better - that awkwardness and insecurity to speak it is gone for the most part, but my grammar could use some work.

Anyway, I doubt that anyone is still reading this, my post kind of got a bit longer than expected - yes, it really was supposed to be a picture post originally - so I’ll end this here. One more day of classes and then two more weeks until spring break. Yeah!

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