206!

hola! TGIF..but not tgif, because i don't feel like leaving Barcelona so soon :( last day here today...tomorrow morning we go back to cloudy belgium. yippee. but today was a great last day here! this morning we went to La Sagrada Familia, and if you know anything about Barcelona then you must know a little something about the building below...

it has to be the most popular or known thing about Barcelona.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia ..but go ahead and click on that if you want the full 411 like we had with our guided tour today! basically, the awesome Gaudi architect dude designed this giant church "for the people" but it still isn't finished and he died but they are still building and it will be done in 15-20 years. i had no idea that it wasn't finished, or anything else about it actually..i just knew it was a big church in spain, haha. but it turns out Gaudi took all of his design ideas from nature. check out the cool curved ceiling..the pillars supporting it are supposed to be like trees in a forrest. and also another picture of the stained glass and pretty shapes..

after our tour we took the lift to one of the towers, and i have to say it was SUPER SCARY. my fear of heights goes on and off, but being so high in a tower of that church was super freaky for some reason. but pretty nonetheless! anywho. afterwards we ate lunch at this little cafe which i think was ran and operated by only one spanish guy. we all shared these random combination platter things...such as: hamburger, eggs, fries, tomatoes, olives, and croquettes. interesting but good..then he told us all to come quickly come inside and see what was on tv. super sad about Japan!!! weird to think that there could be/probably are exchange students there in such a horrible situation and i'm here on vacation..odd. but with no time to lose, we were walking to see a pretty hospital after lunch and decided to stop in a shoe store. i love shoes. so i bought a pair to add to my collection. they're made in spain!

some point after that we went to Casa Batllo, which is another thing from Gaudi. at first it was someones house but now its a museum, although there were apartments on a couple floors still. you walk through with an audio tour and it explains all the different shapes and concepts he used to make it. lots of mosaics and curves and stuff. here's a link for people (such as my mom) to check out better pictures of it:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casa_Batlló because mine weren't very good.

after that we went to see my host sister's university. she's here on a sort of european study abroad program thing studying medicine, so we saw her school and the hospital where she studies/interns or something at too. it was weird being able to walk in a hospital without a visitors pass. i can't begin to list all the differences in health care here versus belgium, let alone here versus the US...or europe compared to the US..oh gosh. long story. but yeah..after that we came to the apartment for a while then went around the block to eat dinner. sad to be leaving here, but so happy and thankful that my host family was nice enough to take me!!! gosh thats cool. as my host mom says...we are "gelukkige vogels" or something cuter that that actually (somebody correct me? vogeltjes? i dont know)..but basically, "lucky birds". more blogging to come tomorrow when i'm back in belgium.....final adios to yall!