Group Dinner and New Apartment

1-9-08
        On Tuesday night we had our first group dinner where we got to meet everyone from our group and had dinner at a real spanish restaurant called 'The Tavern'. It was so much fun and while i legitimately did not eat any of the food (because it either had eyes or i could not decipher what it was) it was a really fun dinner. There was a bunch of different courses with the first course being the 'pika pika' course cause you literally pick at everything. They also had wine in these wierd looking bottles that you could pour into your glass on one side and pour straight into your mouth on the other side. After dinner, like 12 of us went walking around the city and it was really cool to see. There were TONS of little alleyways and side streets with bars and a lot of people everywhere.
We came home kind of early that night because we had orientation the next morning for our program. We had that all morning and had breakfast at the hotel. We then went as a group to this sandwich shop around the hotel (i feel like every restaurant is a sandwich shop in bcn... and p.s they had soo much meat at breakfast, like a whole thing of cold cuts for breakfast) and i ordered a turkey sandwich at the shop thinking i could finally eat something and it came out looking like ham so i freaked out and ate a lettuce and tomato sandwich.... yum.
        So after that we all got on buses to take us to our apartments. We were the last ones on the bus to be dropped off and were sooo anxious. We pulled up to kind of a busy street (and as i was just about to be disappointed because i really wanted to live in a little alley way with a little cafe where we could get our morning coffee and a bar we could go to frequently.... thats just what I was hoping for) we were shown our apartment which is on the CUTEST little street RIGHT next to a cute little pastry and coffee cafe and a little bar that is literally called 'bar'... right next door. The apartamento is called 'Nacion' and is just four apartments piled on top of one another in four stories. We are on the second story with four other people from our program above us, a family on the top floor and we were told there would be other study abroad students on the first floor but we didn't know who they would be yet.
       Once we got here we immediately ran through the whole apartment and checked it out. Noelle and I were supposed to get our own rooms but one of the rooms is really small with no windows, so that room is now the 'closet/study/whatever room'. Noelle and I are sharing a room that we love as well as a bed. we have the greatest little living/dining room, two full bathrooms and a balcony on the front and the back. Its incredible. The people living upstairs that are part of our program and the only other ones going to our school are Sarah, Lauren, Alex & 'Goose'. Two girls and two boys.  We moved in two days ago and since then the 7 of us have gotten unbelievably close. We are also getting to know everyone else better and are realizing that we got really lucky because everyone gets along and is sooo much fun.
       So anyways... we just moved in all day and then the seven of us went to find dinner. We also found out that the people living below us (we were praying they were boys) were 4 frat boys from Chicago. Needless to say, we wanted to meet them asap. So that night Noelle, Ashley and I bought some sangria, cut up fruit and brought it down in a pitcher for them to say 'hola.' They invited us in and we chatted it up and it wasn't long before we decided to all go out to a club called 'Shoko' that night. We played drinking games for quite a while in the boys apartment and went out.  We got home around three (which is like way early for Barcelona) and just went to bed because we had orientation for school the next day... early!!!