Jan 22

Hard to imagine that today is really only my, what?, 8th day here.

I walk everywhere. I only take the metro when my feet just can’t handle it anymore. Which is usually on my way home from dropping Molly off at home, but that’s just from Universitat-Urquinaona-Barceloneta really just saves me ten minutes and having to walk through the pick-pocket friendly Ramblas at night. Not to say that I don’t enjoy it…

That is the weird thing. I’ve been here slightly more than a week, but I already feel above the common tourist. I guess that it’s the fact that I have an address here. At night I walk down La Rambla just like the rest of them, but I walk with my eyes forward and my mp3 player in my ears. That is the way you know. I know that I still look American, but when I’ve got a destination and a key in my pocket I feel like just a little bit less of an outsider.

At home we speak English.
Here they speak.

It’s strange to think of my language as the foreign one. I’m the one that they look at on the Metro and in the street. And I’m the one singled out.

Molly and I were heading back from Corte Ingles tonight waiting to get the go-ahead to cross Diputació when an American businessman standing behind us started to talk to some people that he was traveling with trying to make plans to meet later on in the night.

He, an American, was just like me; but I refused to accept it. I decided right then and there that if I really am going to stick with this whole International Business thing… that that is not going to be me. I’ll stick out, that’s for sure.

But I refuse to be the one on the corner that makes heads turn,
That’s what Prostitutes are for..

I’m studying. I don’t study. I don’t have a test, a quiz, or even homework.
I’m studying Spanish.
I’m putting forth an extra effort.
If this is what I get out of all this: I’ll stay a year.

I NEED to be better than what I was.
I eek.

I don’t do well in class, I did better this semester, but I had help. It helps when I know others in the class that keep me on my toes. But I’ve got to do my work for me, not with them so they get it done too. If I don’t enjoy doing it on my own now, why in 5, 10 or 15 years??

I like where I am.

I can keep this up. I can be an International Business major. I enjoy it and I will enjoy it if I let myself. I have resigned myself to working my way up.

Let’s start working then.

New Word of the Day: uña encarnada- ingrown nail