I can't believe I have five weeks left in Barcelona. Although I feel like I've been here a while, it also feels like I just got here. Soon, I'm gonna have to be packing my stuff up to leave my apartment! And then I'm going all over Europe for about three weeks, and then I'm coming back home. Which is honestly the craziest thing. This semester has seriously flown by faster than any of my semesters at Maryland.
For some reason, I still feel like school has just started and we're in that beginning period (I suppose the equivalent to syllabus week) where nothing matters and you don't have to take it seriously. There are WAY less assignments and studying. For example, the average amount of work I do on a school night is like two exercises in my Spanish book and that's it. Oh, and I also occasionally have quizzes in my Spanish art and cultural heritage class. The one trivial yet annoying thing I have to complain about; there are no regular notebooks here!! Like in the US, the norm is a nice, 150 page, college ruled spiral notebook. Here, the norm is like some freakishly huge (and by huge I mean the actual pages are huge) spiral that is only like 50 pages, and it's grid lined instead of regular lines. It makes taking notes a lot more frustrating, but I don't care anymore because it's not like I'm studying here like I do back at UMD. I think I stress more about the impending workload I have to inevitably go back to in a few months, rather than the actual workload I have here.
This weekend, I'm headed back to Rome after visiting almost three years ago and I'm also meeting Daniel there for my 21st birthday! Hurray! I should be way more excited about turning 21 than I actually am, but the truth is, I really don't care haha. I'm just excited to spend it with Daniel in one of my favorite cities in Europe. I am a little bummed that I won't be able to spend it with my family, but you win some, you lose some. I heard that the Trevi fountain (one of my favorite attractions) has been under renovation for 18 months but it just reopened to the public last week, and it looks spotless, so we got really lucky. Lots of Rome pictures coming next week!