Week 1 Anniversary

So I’ve now officially been here for a week. My biggest challenge at this point has been the fact that I don’t speak Spanish, and everyone here speaks only Spanish, or more specifically a dialect of Spanish called Catalan, which is similar to French and Italian. I’m living in an apartment with 2 other guys who are here doing iaeste internships: a german named Holguer who works at the same company as me, and an Indian guy named Mustafa who works for a Spanish motorbike company. We get along pretty well, and Holguer, who’s been here for 7 months now, has been showing us the nightlife. A typical weekend evening seems to go dinner around 10pm, go to the bars at 11:30ish – 12, go the discotechs at around 2-3am; go home around 4-5am,…. Sleep a couple hours and then get up and go to work,… it’s insane! I now know why siesta’s are necessary.

I’ve worked 4 days now at a Danish paint and coatings company called Hempel, and everyone is so nice, and they all attempt to speak English to me, which I appreciate more than anything at this point. I’m in a research and development lab that specializes in antifouling paints. Those are the coatings that go on the bottom of those huge freight carrying ships, as they’re designed to prevent corrosion of the ships hull due to barnacles, algae, etc. While my salary isn’t the greatest, I get free transport to and from work, and a free lunch everyday; also they’re taking us sailing on the Mediterranean next weekend,… so really no complaints.

So far I’ve done a little sight seeing as I was the typical tourist and visited Sagrada Familia last weekend. This if you don’t know, is the very different Christian cathedral made by Antoni Gaudi, which has yet to be finished and is an example of very ‘modern’ architecture. Sunday I spent the entire day lying on Barcelona beach, and now I am trying to get rid of my sunburn. Other than that I’ve been getting myself settled in my apartment: grocery shopping and going to the market, opening bank accounts, joining the gym right beside my building, eating tapas (appetizers) and drinking lots of cervesa y cava (sparkling wine).


Here are some pictures that I took of Sagrada Familia last weekend.