Admitted Weekend: Day 3/4

The school sponsored activities have come to an end, and so Kathy and I used our two remaining days in Barcelona to enjoy the city and try to get some stuff done!

We slept in luxuriously late on Sunday morning, and then had a nice, long, luxurious lunch at a Catalan restaurant somewhere in the heart of Eixample. We wandered around some more, came back to the hotel for another nap, didn't get much of anything done, except dropping off my suitcase at Desiree's apartment to store, and then headed out for drinks and dinner with two of our new classmates, James & Jonno. We met them for drinks first at the rooftop bar of James' hotel:

We then walked to dinner around 10:30 at a DELICIOUS restaurant, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was something like Bistro Catalunya...I'll have to ask Kathy. We had all kinds of delicious tapas, with my favorite being the deep fried bacon wrapped dates with goat cheese and the super garlicky patatas bravas. YUM. I'm gonna get fat here.

We ended up wandering the streets until almost two in the morning and having a great time. We called it an early night, as we had a busy agenda for Monday.

We got up early on Monday morning to try and make it to the banks before they close which, in this country, seems to be anywhere between 11 and 2. Jonno and I had breakfast at a sidewalk cafe in the business district while Kathy walked over to Citibank. After her lack of success there, we went over to 'La Caixa', one of the most commonly seen banks on the streets of Barcelona, to try our luck there.

The bank trip was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me, as I was pretty amazed with my ability to converse with the bank lady in Spanish and succesfully got myself and Jonno set up with Spanish bank accounts! 45 minutes of pure Spanish conversation. True, there was about 20% that was completley lost on me, but we understood each other more or less and the woman spoke absolutely no English. I was pretty proud of myself. Kathy didn't set up an account as they told her that being a EU citizen it made a lot more sense for her to wait until she had her NIE.

So, off we went to try and get the NIE. While we were unsuccessful overall, we did locate the Police station where we go to get the NIE, and we completed the first meeting of submitting her form and getting it stamped. The step where we failed was in going to a bank to pay the 10 euro tax. The bank we walked in to would only let us pay via the bancomat, and the 50 euro I had placed into my account had not yet gone through, so there was no way to physically pay the tax. But, we now know what we need to do, so when we come back to do it in August, everything should go much more smoothly.

After our NIE adventures, it was time for me to meet with the Born Living agent to look at the 4 bedroom apartment I had found online. I was actually quite impressed at the brightness and the size, and I took a video, which kinda sucks, but that I intend to show Alexa and potentially use to find future roommates:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QlM-WVN4jo

Then, once again, a nap, a snack (did I mention our schedule? 2-3 hours of sleep every 12 hours, interspersed with meals every 3-4 hours. yeah, healthy) We then walked over to Kathy's future apartment, which I have to say is also quite nice, and very close to our place. We sat and had coffee with the leasing agent and felt VERY European. We walked around Eixample to try and get to know the neighborhood, and had some more tapas and beers before settling down for dinner at a surprisingly good Thai restaurant.

All in all, a great, productive, and fun weekend. Yes, flying across the world for 4 days and constant jetlag sucks, but overall, it was worth it. Can't wait for the next 2 years of my life!

Admitted Weekend: Day 2

With sleeping every 12 hours for 2-3 hours, days feel 3 times as long as they actually are. Today has been such an action packed day, its hard to believe all of today happened TODAY!

We started off the day with breakfast at school that consisted of tons of tiny meat and cheese sandwiches. Once again, welcome to Spain. Pretty tasty but man, I'm not a fan of eating every meal standing up! More awkward mingling with a good third of the attendees mildly hung over or, in my case, still asleep. They then ushered us in to the auditorium for more lectures about how amazing and challenging the next two years of our lives would be. I thought most of it was generally a waste of time, until the Student panel. The current students put together a video of their favorite memories (to the tune of David Guetta's memories, which will now permanently in my head be associated with my first IESE experience), and then answered any and all questions anyone could possibly think to ask. We then had lunch (standing up, once again) and headed out for our bus tour of Barcelona.

This city is so beautiful!!! I don't remmeber what's what since I was basically comatose at this point, from lack of sleep and hot sun, but here are some not very good pictures of the amazing city:

We then, once again, went to eat, and then the girls went to get their hair done while I went back to the hotel to pass out. The view from our hotel:

That night Alex, the girl who I'd e-mailed to death with visa questions, and her friend Marisa and Floriane invited us out to dinner with them, and then to a party themed "Seven Daily Sins". We went out to a sushi restaurant that was surprisingly good, alleviating my fears that I'd be pitifully deprived of my sushi obsession during my two years in Barcelona. Our lovely escorts for the evening:

The party was great, met even more people. Turns out my recounting what I'm planning on doing with my summer makes for easy conversation, even though I do sometimes feel like I'm bragging, even though I really don't mean to be. I'm no good at making conversation with strangers and talking about traveling comes naturally to the group we're gonna be with for the next two years. We ended up getting kicked out of the party by cops at 3am for being too noisy (hey, at least it wasn't a midnight!), and so we took the party to the street outside instead:

Finally, they told us we HAD TO MOVE, so the girls took us to a club the name of which I don't remember. Not that it really mattered because they tried to make us pay to come in, so we left and ended up at the only place we could get food at 4am - some random 24hr a day convenience store. We bought bread, salami, and cheese...When in Rome (or, Barcelona in this case). Its odd, really, that in a city that parties until 6 in the morning there aren't more late night places to eat open. All for the best though - I'll be getting fat enough as is.
Stephanie then went home at 4:30 as she had a 6:30am flight to catch - what a trooper! Kathy and I headed back to our hotel, exhausted. Still not sure how we made it there...

As I was trying to fall asleep around 5am, some dude in the street below busted out in a lengthy rendition of "Sugar, Sugar, Honey Honey"...thank you, Barcelona, for the lullaby!

View from our hotel at night: