Colónial Güell and Keeping in Touch

I haven’t written all week, but there hasn’t been anything to really write about. It has just been class and working on my group research project poster. Actually, I take that back. On Monday, we had a field trip with our professor Suzanne Strum to Colónial Güell which is located about 20 minutes outside of the heart of Barcelona. We took the FGC train to it and it wasn’t too bad.

It was a nice place that was made of masonry buildings. It was basically a small town. One piece of architecture that we spent time looking at was a church designed by Antonio Gaudí. The church was never finished (and never will be), but what exists is the crypt. It was very pretty inside with butterfly-like stained glass cross windows. Very colorful. I, of course, took pictures. It was a nice field trip, but it made us late to our next class. The funny thing was that our prof was late too, so we didn’t miss anything at all.

But like I said before, nothing (outside of the small field trip) really has happened this week except working on the research poster. The group I’m in has done an awesome professional job and our professor likes it a lot. I’ve gotten to learn and use the program Adobe Illustrator, so that’s a plus for me. I’ve always attempted to work with the program, but I usually just ended up using Photoshop or something else. But, Illustrator is a good program and I know that from now on, I am going to be using it for a lot of things…especially since I now know how to.

This afternoon, I spent some time trying to catch up with people through email, etc. I’ve really gotten behind and I’ve “neglected” a lot of friends from back home. There are some emails that I haven’t replied to since I’ve been here. The bad part is that there really isn’t a lot of time for me to sit down and write to everyone. That’s one of the main reasons why I put this journal online is so that it saves time (even though writing this takes time). The bad thing is that I always feel guilty for saying that I don’t have any time when I’m writing about going out and doing things, but I didn’t come all the way over here to sit and write emails all day to people back home (as bad as that sounds). If I didn’t go do stuff, I’d have nothing to write about, so it’s a Catch 22. Anyway, I’m trying hard to make time to do personal emails when I can. I just didn’t realize how hard it was going to be to keep in touch while I am here. You would think that email, etc would make it so easy, but it’s not the case. It costs a lot to call overseas and it takes a lot of time to write…

I’m getting redundant. Anyway, the point is that I’m realizing another part of being so far away from home. There are days here when I think “you know what? I could live and work in another country for a while after I graduate or something” but when I really think about it, I don’t think that I have the ability to leave my awesome friends and family for that long. If I could bring everyone with me, sure. But I am too attached to everyone in my life to just relocate. And if it’s hard to keep up with my friends and family after only a little over a month…my goodness.

I feel like I’m going in circles and that might be due to the little amount of sleep I’ve had this week and the fact that it’s late, so I’m going to hit the sack. Tomorrow is the beginning of the weekend, so I’m sure working on the project will take a much needed break.