Its been a week...

So it's been a week and a day since I arrived in this astounding city and its the first time I've been able to conquer all distractions to set up this blog. It also might have something to do with the fact that this is the first day I've been able to sleep as long as I wanted. Man I feel amazing! Who knew what 9 hours of sleep could do for you? (especially because I was running on 4 from the night before...). Anyways, Barcelona is amazing... like, I can't really put into words how cool it is. Not even photos can do it justice. What strikes me most about the city so far is the juxtaposition of old and new. Not only can you find an ancient building sitting next to a super modern one, but I've seen really old ladies navigating the metro (which is like ten billion times faster than the el) and above all, tons of graffiti on almost every surface possible-- including an ancient Roman church that had some message scrawled on it that looked like it was in crayon. Some people might think that this graffiti was desecrating the church but I thought it was really interesting the way that people today are leaving their marks on the city just the way that architects inscribed messages on their buildings back in the day. Sure, the graffiti competes with the original pristine church, but if someone hadn't come along and tagged it, something else would have changed it in some way be it the weather, bombs (which is actually relevant... Barcelona was one of the most bombed cities during the Spanish Civil War) or whatever. So I think its fitting that graffiti shows up in the natural evolution of the city. And hey, it makes things much more interesting to look at. So I'm gonna end my rambling here and put up a few pictures, but welcome to my Barcelona blog!