Fake meat and sore feet

So a lot has happened in the past week, let me try to reproduce the highlights.

1. I FOUND TOFU AND SEITAN! Although it was expensive, I got ridiculously excited and bought a ton of delicious fake meat at El Corte Ingles. Elena and I made a delicious stir-fry on thursday night and I've been eating extremely well ever since. I'm definitely starting to enjoy cooking for myself, which can range from a seitan, cheese and ketchup sandwich (delicious) to some excellent spicy tomato sauce with mushrooms over tortellini (thanks mom for showing me how to make this). The tomato sauce, which I made a few hours ago and has already completely disappeared, drew at least 5 people in from the hall due to the amazing smells it produced. And we also found a vegetarian restaurant in the Borne neighborhood which was great. In all, it's been a great past few days for food.

2. I went back to the record store that I mentioned in a previous post and had a fascinating conversation with the owner and a patron. I feel sure that this store is going to be the source of some great investigations. The owner seems like he knows a lot of bands and also mentioned something about having had worked for the Clash in New York at some point and meeting Grandmaster Flash? He also has copious amounts of music knowledge at his disposal (including knowing a lot about Ghostly International) and I cannot wait to talk to him again.

3. I sprained my ankle last Friday :( I was jogging by the beach-- for the first time in at least a month-- and I didn't see a dip in the sidewalk, resulting in a nasty ankle roll. I've been limping around for the past few days but I'm pretty sure I'll be better soon. I've relied on walking a lot so far in this city, so it really sucked to not be able to do that. I ended up still having to walk a bit, unfortunately probably delaying my healing process. And no, Dad, I didn't find arnica :( Also, I didn't really look for it...

4. More and more I've been becoming frustrated with my inability to speak coherent Spanish. I wish it could just come easy to me, but I feel like every time I'm in a situation where I need to talk, I just forget everything. It's even extended to my English-- I feel like I'm losing control of my ability to speak any language at all. A lot of my friends here are having the same issue, which is comforting I guess. Also, I can't get used to how stupid I feel and look alllll the time. It sucks having people stare at you like you're an idiot. I definitely feel like I don't fit in yet, but at least I'm working on the tan (to blend in, of course).

5. Until today, every day here has been beautiful, sunny and 80 degrees. I was beginning to think that the weather in Barcelona would stay perfect forever. Until today. We were in class talking about Romanic art and religion when all of a sudden the sky opened up and it began to pour/ hail/ thunderstorm. So now I know that I actually need to buy an umbrella or some type of raingear.

So yeah, I still really like it here. It's an incredible place to be. I really can't wait to start real classes, learn more about the language and culture and just explore.