10Ks, Futbol, Fish Pedicures, and Presentations

I'm down to my last couple of days here in Barcelona, and I have to be honest, I have very mixed feelings. I am very, very sad that this experience is coming to an end, but I am also very excited to return home to the United States. It might also be the fact that today is the fourth of July and I am in a country that obviously does not celebrate this wonderful holiday. To be fair, I have celebrated most fourth of July's away from home, but this is the first time that I haven't been in the good ol' USA for the fourth. It's fine -- I just had to give a five-minute oral presentation today in my Spanish class, sin notes. I am not a fan of giving presentations in English, let alone in Spanish. I was pretty darn nervous as I went up to talk about one of my favorite moments during my time here in Barcelona (the Fat Tire Bike Tour), but I made it through with just a few mistakes and now it is O V E R. All that's left is one final exam on Friday and I will have earned 12 hours of Spanish credit. That is what I call being efficient!

Photo courtesy of Gayle -- all of the Facebook posts and Tweets about the fourth made me miss America!

I apologize for my absence these past few days, but with trying to cram everything that I still want to do into this last week while also preparing for a presentation and studying for exams, blogging has fallen off the wayside. But fear not my faithful followers, my blogging will become more regular (and more boring!) once I fall back into my American routine. Has a nice little ring to it, doesn't it?

Sunday morning started bright and early (I feel like I say that every week), as Sarah and I headed over to Vila Olimpica to run our second 10K during our time in Barcelona. As I have mentioned before, we are pretty faithful members of the IES Jogging Club and when our coach told us about this second 10K, we decided to give it a go! Five other members of the jogging club also participated and we had an absolute blast. 

The view was beautiful and I even had a pretty good time, despite the fact that all I wanted to do was crawl right back into bed. I did just that later that afternoon as I indulged in a two-hour nap before heading out in the rain to watch the Euro Cup Final. Spain was playing Italy in an attempt to clench a second consecutive championship! It was an exciting game, but Spain really put a beat down on Italy, winning four goals to none. Viva Espana! One might think that things would get crazy in Barcelona, and they did, but many people in Barcelona don't consider themselves to be from Spain, they consider themselves to be from Catalunya. To spare you guys a history lesson, it is kind of like how Texans tend to think of themselves as being from Texas before being from America. It is a bit more extreme here, and the Catalan people even have their own language. It is very different from Spanish, but luckily for us, they all know Spanish, they just prefer to use Catalan. The moral of the story is, the celebration in Barcelona was not as extreme as it probably was in other parts of Spain. Sarah and I were still very excited, as how many times are you going to be in Spain when they are playing for the Euro Cup finals? Pretty darn cool if I do say so myself!

(Source)

Now, some of you may follow me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram and you may have seen reference to something called a fish pedicure. Strangely enough, it is exactly what it sounds like, so Sarah and I got pedicures by way of actual fish. We went to a spa very close to our school where we stuck our feet in a tank full of fish. Yes, fish. Garra ruff fish to be exact. The fish basically attack your feet (don't worry, they are toothless!), lifting away all of the dead skin. It is maybe the weirdest feeling ever, but it did leave my feet very smooth! I can't say that I will ever do it again, but it is very popular here in Europe so I figured that I had to give it a try! You only live once, right?

What am I doing right now?! 

In a state of distress

I apologize for the lack of pictures on this post, but I have been slacking on my picture-taking lately. These past seven weeks of traveling and studying have finally caught up to me and I am just downright tired. I am hoping this means I will be able to sleep on my flight back home, but I seriously doubt that -- there is just something about sleeping on an airplane! I hope to update at least once or twice more while I am here, hasta luego!

Edit: I meant to post this yesterday, but lack of Internet at the dorm caused me to have to post today!