¡Força Barça!

I never realized it before, even though I'd heard about it, but people in Spain eat a BIG lunch at like 2 or 3 and then they eat a small dinner anytime from 8 till 10:30. It's kinda the opposite from the U.S. where dinner is the main meal.

Today, Margarita's daughter, Yolanda, came over for lunch. She's super nice and super pretty and she speaks a bit slower than Margarita does, which was a nice change (:
We started off with whole artichokes. I don't think I’ve ever really eaten artichokes, and if I did, then I probably didn't know it. They'd been cooked in the oven and you just peel off each... leaf? I guess? And eat the soft part at the bottom of the leaf until you get to the heart, which you then eat. They were so good! Margarita and Yolanda taught us to pour vinegar into it to give it some flavor. Really delicious.

I was already kind of full after eating two of those, but I knew the meal wasn't over yet. Margarita had roasted almonds with olive oil and salt, so we were munching on those until the lamb chops were ready. The lamb reminded me of my grandma in Iceland, which was nice (: We ate them with some kind of garlic-y condiment, andddd of course it was delicious (:
THEN for "dessert" we ate clementines and turrón, which is basically chocolate. 3 hours later and I still feel like I JUST ate, so stuffed.

I wanted to send a couple of postcards so I wandered around our neighborhood a bit. I found a mall, Gloriés, which we had heard about. I didn't realize it was that close. It took maybe 10 minutes to walk there... I walked through it because it's actually all outdoors. Then I walked back towards our apartment and walked up this street right next to ours, which has all kinds of little stores. Very cute. I love our neighborhood; it's really nice and kinda reminds me a little bit of Soho in NYC. Except much older, of course.

Barça played against Seville tonight and won 4-0 so Brittany and I took the metro to Las Ramblas to celebrate with the natives. There were tons of people out, lots of creeps too… One guy called me “culito” which, if translated directly, is “little ass” and though I know it’s not big, I was kinda offended. Apparently is legit to drink in public here so we went to this little store and bought a 1.5 l. PLASTIC bottle of Sangria and drank that while walking around.
I LOVE BARCELONA!!