We finished out orientation week with more 9am cultural sessions and Spanish classes and some afternoon activities with the program!

On Wednesday we went on a “hike” (more of a leisurely stroll) around Montjuïc; one of my favorite areas of Barcelona so far. It was much calmer and more relaxing than other parts of the city, and a great way to meet other people on the program. The first thing you see when you walk up is a beautiful fountain framing this quaint castle on a hill in the background (I’ll post a picture). Once you walk up to the castle and turn around, you can see the entire city laid out in front of you with another fountain/waterfall thing- breathtaking (I have a picture of that, too). Past the castle is the site where Spain hosted the 1992 Olympics which, as we learned, had a huge effect on the city. Pictures taken of the diving pool that looks out on the city and mountains behind catapulted the city into the public eye. We ended our walk at the base of Montjuïc (Jewish mountain, named for its history as a medieval Jewish cemetery), and I mentally bookmarked it as somewhere to return. Natalie, Luke, Patrick, and I took on the nearly 90min walk back to the Sarría Sant-Gervasi district afterwords.

Thursday was Park Güell day. Commissioned by Catalan industrialist Eusebi Güell and designed by Antoní Gaudí, the original intent was to be a private city and gardens for rich people. The failure of this idea led the space to be turned into the iconic park it is today. It was another hour walk to get to the park from the lunch place we had gone to, and it was pretty mush a straight shot up the mountain. Once we finally arrived, we didn’t see anyone from our program and quickly realized we had gone to the wrong entrance. After much confusion and Google Maps manipulation, we had to hike several flights of stairs and crazy steep roads back down the mountain (no exaggeration at all..), over to the other side of the park, and up again to where everyone else was waiting. I was glad we went to the effort to find the right entrance, because it was truly breathtaking. Surrounded by beautiful forest in front of me, the grand park gates to the right, and brown and blue tiled houses giving off very strong gingerbread house vibes to my left, it felt like a scene out of a fairy tale. We spent over two hours walking around inside the park- there was so much to admire! Views of the city (you could see all the way out to the ocean), wildly cool architecture poking out of the vegetation, and tiled everything everywhere you looked. The sun showed up big time and I was starting to feel more connected to my study abroad mates; it was a fun afternoon!

It seems every day has a theme, for Friday was Tarragona day! This is where my pictures of quieter streets, Roman ruins, and the ocean come in. I slept the entire bus ride there and back, and it took willpower to stand up from my seat when we got there. This day trip was mandatory: everyone in the program chose to visit either Tarragona, the land of the Roman ruins and ocean, or Girona, famous for its Jewish legacy and being the place where Game of Thrones was filmed. I was happy with Tarragona because I was able to touch the ocean (with one finger!) and there were less U Miami kids there. We got a guided tour of some of the ruins and if I remembered any of what our guide told us, I would’ve describe it here. It was cool, though, because I got to take the tour in Spanish with some of my friends (even though our guide kept accidentally switching to English) and we went inside ancient Roman walls and tunnels. Our last stop was the Colosseum, which you can view below, and was stunning. Afterwords we went with a group of almost 15 to a small cafe for lunch (the St. Olaf group plus some new additions from the tour). We had a leisurely Spanish lunch, with the people at my end of the table struggling to hear anything from the other end of the table. Afterwords we walked over to a fish/meat/vegetables market where I got to see more guts than I ever needed to see, countless decapitated fish of every kind, including crabs, jellyfish, and everything in-between, and the most gigantic hunks of meat casually hanging from the ceiling. It was all very Spanish and very fresh. We had just enough time to see the beach before we left. A few other people and I climbed down the rocks to the shore, a process in which I almost lost my phone (it fell out of my pocket into a hole in the rocks, but thankfully it only spent a few terrifying moments there before Luke was able to reach far enough in and grab it).

After finally being done with jet lag, I think the weekend just undid all my progress. But it was worth it because I got to experience what everyone is so hyped about, especially here in Barcelona: Going out. Friday night was a fail turned fun, and Saturday night was the classic clubbing experience to make up for Friday. I knew I would feel really lame if I didn’t go, and I stand by that because it was an overall fun experience both nights.

On Friday a group of 8 of us spent $20 each on tickets to a club that was 23+. Somehow no one saw that when buying their ticket, so we showed up and immediately showed out. Just to make the situation even better, it started raining pretty hard after we got turned away. We ran down the block to a McDonald’s that was still open, where we regrouped and waited out the rain. We decided to walk around and see if we happened to run into a different club or bar. We didn’t, but we did run into a supermarket where everyone except me bought a bottle of some type of drink and drank it (illegally, it turns out) as we continued wandering around. Eventually we caught wind of an Irish bar called George Payless (George Pains, its an inside joke) and made it our goal to get there. 30 minutes on the Nit Bus (Night Bus) later, and we had accomplished that goal only to run into another roadblock: The bouncers didn’t believe that me and this other girl Peyton were 18 and they wanted us to show them our IDs. It seemed like the only thing they were going to accept was our physical passports which neither of us was carrying around (smartly), so we had traveled all that way for nothing. Until… the people we were trying to meet up with came running out of the bar! Our two groups merged for a short while and convened at the second fast food restaurant of the night, Popeyes (at this point it was around 2am). However, we realized this new group of mainly U Miami kids kinda sucked and were very full of themselves and rude (we all agreed), so we split off again in search of a nearby speakeasy. We were so so tired but we needed one success before the night was over! And it really was a success.

I kinda thought speakeasies were a relic of the 1920s. I also kinda thought they were dirty and gross. And I surely thought I would never go into one. But I was wrong on all counts! This place was disguised as a barbershop, so the guy let us in only after we requested haircuts. He sat Luke down and actually began shaving his hair before asking us for the secret passcode. We needed a few hints, but eventually he pushed open the mirror behind the barber’s chair to reveal the actual bar: Clean, aestetic, and slightly quirky. There were many upsides to my experience at the speakeasy, and only two downsides: (1) Everyone had to order something (the cheapest drinks they had were 13 Euros, and I really didn’t feel like ingesting anything more), and (2) They closed a half hour after we got there so we didn’t get to soak up the vibe for too long. Nevertheless I ordered a passion fruit Moscow Mule which was tastier than it could have been and we enjoyed a happy ending to a rainy night.

So, although I was incredibly tired the entire night, you can see why I ended up having a good time on Friday night. It was all the community and adventure of clubbing without actually going to the club! As far as my twenty dollars… tragic. Saturday was the real clubbing experience - pregaming at a cheap shots place (we shared a pitcher of some drink that was surprisingly good… until we mixed the alcohol in) and hitting the Twenties club afterwords around 12:45. The group tonight was me, Natalie, Gracie, Araba, Luke, Patrick, Miguel, and Max, and it was raining and cold again because that is just what Spain has become. Natalie worked some instagram magic that allowed us to get in for free, and we circled up directly in front of the DJs on the dance floor. Instead of trying to describe my experience, I am just going to include some of my thoughts on clubbing below:

1. It’s not terrible but its not that fun either
2. Can be very expensive
3. I’m surprised regular clubbers aren’t deaf already
4. The floor was disgusting and covered in spilled drinks and broken glass.
5. It would be so greatly improved if I knew like any of the songs at all.

Going clubbing in Spain is also incredibly time-consuming. Because dinner can be at 10 or 11pm, people don’t start getting to the clubs until after midnight. This also means that if you eat dinner at 8 like us, you have time to get cozy reading a book or writing a blog post before leaving for the bar, which will make you tired and make the idea of going out into the cold, wet, dark night very unappealing. Clubs start to get busy around 1 or 1:30am, and the party continues until 4, 5, or 6am. All this to say, you probably won’t be going to sleep before 6am which makes doing anything before noon the next day hard. And you feel really weird sneaking back into the apartment and going to bed when your host mom is less than an hour away from waking up.

We stayed out until 3:45 on Saturday night which means we spent about 4 hours “dancing”. Dancing comes naturally to me when its a song I know and like and have plenty of space to jump around and make large, sweeping movements. It’s a different story when I have people shoving and bumping into me every three seconds as I’m trying to maintain a circle formation with seven other people. Dancing in this case is extremely awkward and difficult. Your options, or at least what I could think of, were to: step side to side with the beat, move your shoulders to the beat, nod your head to the beat, or jump (more like bop up and down) with your hands in the air. By the end of the night I was so tired that my definition of dancing had become: Stand there and at least try to smile.

You know something else that is time-consuming? Blogging! I intend for my blog posts to be short summaries as I think that’s better both for me and for my loyal readers, kudos to you, but I just don’t have it in me to write concisely sometimes. Who knows, hopefully the next blog post you see is a fun little tidbit I wrote over a 15 minute coffee break, but don’t be surprised if its a full-blown book.

Photos!!

1. Everyone has a purse. I have a hiking backpack. Everyone’s purses are black, brown, or maybe maroon. My backpack is blue, green, red, orange, purple, yellow… I do in fact like my backpack better than a purse but it is quite heavy and annoying to carry around all day. Then again, a purse probably would be too.
2. I struck gold today with the Spanish version of Crisp and Green: Honest Greens. The Spicy Feta bowl was really good and there are at least 10 more bowls/dishes I must try. It’s avocado everything here! This place might even be going beyond the fit bit moms and instagram walls so beloved to Crisp and Green- they offer like five different types of water (I went with still room temperature splashed with a bit of the still cold and it didn’t disappoint). The question- and the answer is no- is if this posh salad lunch is worth $60-70 a week.
3. The U Miami kids can be difficult… very difficult… sigh. And they’re practically 2/3 of the students here so I find myself highly disappointed with the chance to meet new people.
4. Never have I ever put so much thought into cellular data, data roaming, and WiFi. The existence of WiFi is becoming a pretty salient reason for going somewhere.
5. I was 1 minute late to my first “Sustainable Development in the Mediterranean” class because I got lost. When you were just rushing to buy shampoo and conditioner in this very odd-smelling corner store and trying to decide if you wanted the “Multi-vitamin” or “Volume” kind and then realize you have exactly 10 minutes until class starts and you’re not sure where you are and your phone doesn’t work cuz now the only place it works is at Cristina’s house, the buildings all start to look the same. But I used my invincible powers of memory, logical deduction (kinda), and quick steps to make it there almost on time.
6. Then I proceeded to flight off sleep for the entire hour and 45 minutes of class. And by fight off sleep, I really mean fight. I physically couldn’t get my eyes to open all the way and about every 4 seconds my body would automatically shut down and I’d start falling to my left side until the shock would wake me up and I’d snap back into position. It was a trying time, and of course now I feel wide awake.
7. I keep wondering if Seville might’ve been a better place to go. Maybe people there would be slightly less obsessed with partying until 5am and getting drunk every night and slightly more nice. I really can’t decide if I want to rebel against the system and go off and have adventures on my own or prioritize actually having friends and succumb myself to four months of dreading the weekends and a wacky messed up sleep schedule, aka no sleep.
8. That was a sad one to end on so I added one more!

Living in a homestay was a great choice. Just finished a delightful homemade dinner of salad, lentil soup, spring rolls and these fried ham and cheese things with some vanilla pudding afterwords (a Catalan specialty that tastes exactly like the inside of creme brûlée). Great conversation with my host mom Cristina and dear friend and roommate-except-we-don’t-share-rooms Natalie. We talked about everything from recent rail accidents (yikes) to rainfall patterns in Spain to the proportion of cheese in different types of cheesecakes, and now Natalie and I are on a call planning a trip to Switzerland with Gracie and Mya!

Kevin and I were running on the trail, chugging along, talking about why people write. Because if you ask a writer, they’ll tell you it’s often essentially a form of self-torture. Yet, we—writers—are compelled to keep doing it. But why?

We were on the fire road that cuts across the face of Mt. Sentinel about 800 feet above town, a double-track of dirt that goes for almost two miles of wide-open views and is a fantastic place to go if you enjoy talking while you run, because you’re right next to each other the whole time, minus one or two spots where you might have to step aside for another runner/hiker/dog walker.

I had a couple things to say about why it’s hard for people to write, because I am technically a writer, which just means I have figured out ways to publish enough words and make enough money for the IRS to not contest it when I put “writer” in the appropriate box on my tax forms.

On the day that Kevin and I went on this trail run, I was about 60 percent finished building a set of shelves in my garage, mostly out of materials I’d salvaged from the old shelves someone had built in our garage a few decades ago and didn’t work for us anymore.

Kevin had recently finished building something very similar and had sent me a photo of it, so here we were, two runners, who were also amateur carpenters and people who want to write, talking about all that stuff as we jogged along.

I note all this because I said to Kevin something like,

Well, it can be hard to justify spending several hours trying to write something, because at the end of all those hours, you might not think what you wrote is any good. If you spent that same amount of time and a bit of money buying some wood and trying to build a table or a set of shelves, and you didn’t quite get it right and the table or the shelves wasn’t the greatest thing ever, it would probably still be usable in some way.

Maybe you mess it up somehow and have to start over once or twice. And if you cut a piece of wood an inch or two too short, you might have to go buy some more wood so you could try it again. Sure, you fuck up some wood, but you end up making something, in your hours as a novice woodworker.

And that’s considered a normal hobby—compared to writing—because at least you’re making something that has a purpose, if only for the people who live in your house. Very different from, say, writing poetry, or short fiction, which may never get published or even get read by anyone else.

But look: We both know that you can go to a home improvement store and buy a set of those wire rack shelves, or a set of plastic ones, and they’ll work just fine to hold your stuff.

But you didn’t do that. You took three or five or eight hours or whatever and penciled out a sketch and went and bought some wood and some screws or nails, and you measured the wood and cut it and clamped it together and tried to get all the angles right and cut more wood and drove in screws or nails and got some sawdust all over yourself and maybe a couple splinters in one or more fingers, and you made something yourself, and it maybe didn’t turn out exactly like you thought it would, and maybe you didn’t end up saving any money after all, but it works, and it fits in the space better than something from the store, and now you can say, Sure it’s not perfect, and sure, plenty of other people could do better, but I made this one.

I guess I think that’s why we write.

—

The early-registration discount for my Running To Stand Still writing + trail running workshop this June in Montana ends January 31. More information and an application link can be found here.

—

Here’s a video version of the above essay:

I didn’t know that much about Tara Dower before watching this film, but I particularly like how she would rather introduce herself as “trail folk” instead of “ultrarunner,” and that one of her biggest talents seems to be inspiring an entire squad of friends to help her achieve her insane goals (and they all seem to be having so much fun doing it)(video)

Apparently a huge swath of the northern United States could see the northern lights this past week. I missed them, and maybe you did too, but this commercial airline pilot sure saw them from the cockpit of a Boeing 787 flying from Calgary to London and WOW did he get some wild photos of them.

I got really excited when I saw this video pop up on YouTube, listened to it like ten times, and announced to Hilary, “Hey, new José González album dropping soon,” and then realized that the album is not coming until March 27th. So, “Hey, new José González song available now” if you’re into that sort of thing, and if you’re not, let me just say that I have asked my music industry friend if José González is indeed the very nice guy he seems to be, and have received confirmation. He’s just one of those musicians who could keep writing music that’s 70-90% the same as his old stuff for the next 20 years and I’d keep eating it up.

I have feelings of great validation whenever I hear that someone smarter/more successful/faster than me espouses some sort of trick I’ve been doing for a long time without knowing that it’s actually a thing. Like when I read that author David Epstein sleeps in his workout clothes to eliminate that small bit of friction when he needs to get out and exercise the next morning. Or when sports scientist and CEO of newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration Andy Blow says to spend two minutes the night before thinking about what training you’re going to do the next day as one of his tips of How to motivate yourself to train this winter. (<—This link will give you 15% off your first 2026 order on the PFH website, but you might also have to enter the code SEMIRAD26 when you check out)

This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve shared a link from the r/FoundPaper subreddit but I particularly enjoy this definition of art, and the photo of the room in the school basement where it was found.

This poem, “Occasional Poem,” by Jacqueline Woodson, simultaneously feels so effortless and so powerful, which is probably why she’s written more than 30 books and won a whole bunch of awards.

This photo gallery of the “snow monsters” that appear during winter conditions at Japan’s Mount Zao ski resort is so cool. I don’t know what else to say but it’s worth scrolling through on a screen, probably the bigger the better. [GIFT LINK]

I loved this short piece on Geographic Geoff’s substack, which answers a question that, like me, maybe you’ve asked before but maybe just in your own head, and maybe you, like me, were not in a place to google it, and then forgot about it, but now, please enjoy the answer to that question, “Lots of countries end with ’-stan’ but why?”

On our most recent Trailhead podcast episode, Zoë and I interviewed our mutual friend Doug Mayer, who started the tour company Run The Alps, and who has also run the 330-kilometer Tor des Geants not once, but three times, and wrote a graphic novel about the race. I probably say this a lot because I try to have fun in most things I do, but this episode was really fun to record, and I hope if you listen to it, you laugh as much as we did.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

The thing when you go out clubbing until 4am is that the possibilities for the next day become greatly limited if you want to get any sleep at all. Naturally, I missed the first sunny Barcelona morning in literally a week and woke up at 1pm. After breakfast (if you can even call it that), Natalie, Gracie, and I met at la Plaza Catalunya for some shopping time. Twas very fun, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad that we were spending the first sunny day indoors. We visited Bershka, Pull and Bear, and one big box store and the prices at every place were amazing. To add on, skirts, shirts and pants that already were only $20 or $30 often were on sale for 40, 50, 60, or 70 percent. I bought one sequin-ey skirt that I can wear clubbing (when its a lot warmer), but I absolutely hated all the clubbing-quality tops I tried on. Yuck.

Oh yeah, and then I had my first real experience in a McDonald’s. I didn’t eat anything, dare you assume, but I sat perched on the edge of my chair and watched Gracie and Natalie eat cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream.

More on the newfangled sunniness here: My host mom told us that unideal weather does not show up very frequently in Barcelona and one day later it started raining and didn’t stop until today. The first day was foreboding clouds warning what was to come, the second and third days were torrential downpours during which I got my new leather jacket very wet (whoops), and the fourth, fifth, and sixth days were general dreariness and cloudiness with some rain sprinkled in (sprinkled- thats a pun). I didn’t realize how much I was craving sun until I stepped outside today and instantly smiled. :)

Gotta go eat dinner- I’m late!

Back from dinner and now procrastinating doing homework. It’s funky because I swear I want to do my homework- it sounds fun and I want to learn about the stuff we’re learning about in my classes- but the very notion that I would be “doing homework” is what spoils the idea. Maybe I’ll post some photos on here and then start my readings :)

The last few days in Barcelona!

Hello again from Barcelona! Technically tomorrow morning will mark two weeks that I’ve been here. I’m amazed its been two weeks already but then I also feel like I’ve been here for forever; time is wacky. I was reading about the stages of adapting to a new culture for my Psychology class (totally should’ve majored in psych, its so interesting and I actually want to do the readings for this class compared to forcing myself to read the academic journals for my environmental studies class. I’m making a bold claim to say I would even read the readings, but we’re at the beginning of the semester and I have to reach for the stars), and it was talking about the honeymoon phase and then sinking into a deep depression and ultimately leveling out and finding satisfaction with your new situation. I’d heard about these stages many times before, but this particular article made the point that they have very little scientific backing. If I were to go along with it just for fun, I feel like I maybe experienced a small watered-down dose of each stage during my first weeks here. If we can think of my time in Barcelona as a cupcake: I was eating the same cake and frosting every day but the sprinkles would shift.

The first few days would’ve been my honeymoon, where just walking down the street got me excited (to be fair, walking down virtually any street anywhere in Europe would probably excite me because there’s just so much to see). I was so, so happy to have a cozy bedroom, clean bathroom, and a nice Host Mom who always welcomed me back home, and I was soaking up Catalan culture like a thirsty sponge (not true at all- I wanted to be, but I was battling my eyelids to stay awake so I could hear literally any of what we were being told during orientation). Anyways, it was new and novel and exciting and I felt like a real adult.

Then dawned the morning of the fourth day and… the storm clouds of an intense depression rolled in. I cried myself to sleep, I cried myself out of bed in the morning, and I used my own tears to brush my teeth (very salty)- what could be sadder than that? I hope you know I’m lying. In truth I don’t feel like I really ever got that sad about anything. I didn’t miss Talkis or my cat or the American version of McDonald’s like my friends did, and I didn’t find orientation insufferable like the Miami girls (just extremely sleep-provoking). Of course I missed my family (hi guys!!), but it honestly felt like it would feel at St. Olaf- somehow being 4,500 miles away is not hugely different from being 45 minutes away (I know others feel differently). This probably means I miss them more than most other college students, because there are times throughout the day where I really wish I could hug them even for just a second, but then again the same thing happens at St. Olaf. And as for my friends, 90% of them are off on their own adventures and are also halfway across the world!

The main cause of my dark and stormy depression stage and fitful nights tossing and turning and not being able to sleep (joking again) was being worried about making friends on the program. Actually, compared to how it could’ve gone, making friends was a seamless process and was not even that stressful at all. I was never left without a group, and I love most everyone I’ve met (which I guess makes sense because many of them are from St. Olaf. I self-selected the right school I guess). That being said, I will always find a way to worry, and I stressed myself out about the potential of our friend group dissolving and never seeing each other again after orientation ended. Very much first-week-of-freshman-year thoughts and concerns. What I didn’t realize is that we all genuinely like each other and want to hang out, and if we want to hang out we’ll find ways to hang out even if we don’t see each other every single day. The best part is I will see one of them every single day because we live together! Natalie and I (and Gracie) already have one weekend trip to Switzerland booked and have plans for Portugal and Andorra in the mix. I go back and forth between feeling super connected to all the new people I’ve met here and like a powerhouse of relationship building and, five minutes later, brainstorming ways I could survive as a hobbit in a remote forest where I would never have to talk to anyone again because I feel like I don’t really know anyone and how could I possibly be friends with people who have like 3,000 followers on Instagram. But I’m guessing someone with very sage wisdom would tell me that none of that is uncommon.

And onto the third stage where I can comfortably position myself now: the leveling out and finding satisfaction. I’ve (mainly) stopped gawking over my new friends and searching for their approval and started joking around, being myself, and having fun. Mainly. I’ve become accustomed to eating whatever I find on the dinner table, even if said thing is “cheese” but looks like whale blubber, or is a slice of ham that appears to have an equal ratio of fat to meat. I’ve stopped scanning the sidewalk for dog poop anytime I walk anywhere and checking the bottom of my shoes when I get back to the apartment. Okay, that’s a little bit of a lie- I definitely still do that. What I’m getting at is that now life in Barcelona feels like exactly that: Life, and not a trip. I’m not going to say I’m practically a local, but I’m developing routines and picking up on behaviors that initially confused me. I’ve developed a balanced work vs. play mindset where I’m still in discovery and awe mode but homework and sleep are catching more and more ground.

Well that whole thing was supposed to be like three sentences and then I was going to write about what I did this weekend, but alas… here we are. I’ll give a really quick tiny summary of the weekend events and maybe write more later!

Thursday:

• Day 2 of internship. It was the final day of intensives for the kids at Learnlife, so I got to admire amazing art pieces, help them set up their restaurants, and listen to a bunch of basically professionally recorded songs!
• Went out to Brunch and Cake with my fellow interns for lunch and got a basque cheesecake!
• Booked flights and hostels for our Switzerland trip
• Dinner, made possible by Cristina
• Went out- the college student meaning- with friends to the Sutton club, which was the most fun club I’ve been to yet. We stayed and danced until 3am.

Friday:

• 1st 3 day weekend! It felt like infinity!
• Slept until 1pm (cry) (cry) (cry)
• Went shopping with Natalie and Gracie. Stores visited: Bershka, Pull & Bear, McDonalds (referenced in my “Post About Nothing”). I bought a really short pink skirt and a gray sweater for just $25.00!
• Dinner, again made possible by Cristina
• Debated doing something but decided not to because we had to wake up early the next day to catch the bus

Saturday:

• 1.5 hour bus ride to Tossa de Mar
• We had from 10:00am-7:00pm to explore the town. However, it was mainly abandoned and empty for the winter (its more of a summery beach town) and it was torrential down pouring for the majority of the afternoon sooo we spent the last 2 hours huddled inside a supermarket counting down the minutes until we could get back on the bus :) The morning was fun though! We hiked up this hill to a castle and soaked in the most gorgeous views- I’ll post photos! And we had a good lunch at a piza place.
• Went out that night to George Payne (George Payless haha inside joke) Irish Bar. It was extremely hot, loud, and smokey and not the most enjoyable place to be. Gracie, Natalie, and I played cards: a few rounds of B.S. and a few rounds of Garbage, then headed back around 1:30am.

Sunday:

• Woke up and finished reading Hudson Bay Bound, finally!!
• Went on my first true run since I’ve been here! Explored 5 miles around Sarría Sant-Gervasi and it was sunny and not raining for the first time in forever. I saw a few markets, churches, and green rolling hills in the background.
• Natalie and I took the metro into central Barcelona and found an adorable coffee shop where we sat for 5 hours and did homework. I ordered a pistachio croissant and ended up getting banana bread instead because the lady accidentally sold my croissant to someone else (after I’d ordered and payed for it). The banana bread actually ended up being really good.
• Dinner made possible by… Cristina! We had canelons, which are like a Catalan lasagna/enchilada.
• Purchased flights to Portugal! Got scammed again and the flights ended up being $15 more than I thought
• Blogged and pretended to do homework

Now I really have to go to bed! Goodnight, good afternoon, good morning wherever you are on the planet!

• 8:10 - Alarm goes off
• 8:20 - Mazie gets out of bed
• 8:45 - Mazie manages to put her shoes on and leave the apartment
• 8:49 - Catch the L7 metro
• 9:00 - Mazie exits the metro station in Plaza Catalunya and starts speed walking to hopefully condense the 19 minute walk into a 13 minute one.
• 9:17 - Mazie gets to class two minutes late, but its fine because the professor is having technical issues which, as she is learning, happens nearly every day in this class.
• 9:17-11:00 - Class: Comida y Cultura en el Mediterráneo
• 11:00 -11:15 - Mazie walks up 7 flights of stairs twice because she is very cold and her next class is on the top floor
• 11:15 - 1:00 - Class: Cross-Cultural Psychology. Mazie engages in deep analytic thinking.
• 1:00: Mazie leaves the SIS building to find lunch (she still hasn’t got into the routine of packing a lunch because the seven million bakeries across the city are too appealing)
• 1:30 - Mazie lands on a lunch spot: a French bakery near La Sagrada Familia. She orders half of a chicken curry sandwich which tastes as good as it looks.
• 1:45-3:30 - Mazie wanders around Barcelona. She finds some really cool looking historic buildings, a hospital that also happens to be in a cool historic building, and a beautiful modern park that is her favorite park she’s encountered so far.
• 3:30 - Class: Sustainable Development in Spain: Challenges and Pathways. We had our first field trip during class today, where we stopped into little (claustrophobic) hidden parks around the Eixample barrio and learned about how Barcelona was supposed to be one of the greenest cities in Europe and ended up being the least green. These teeny parks are the remnants of that ambition. I will say, my shoulders hurt so bad by the end. Even after making my backpack as light as it can be, five hours of carrying it around is still a lot.
• 5:15 - 5:30 - Mazie’s second speed walk of the day, back to the SIS building
• 5:30 - 7:30 - Class: Global Internship Seminar. This only happens every few weeks.
• 7:30 - 8:00 - Mazie and Natalie hop on board the L1 and then the L7 back to El Puxtet and Sant-Gervasi.
• 8:05 - Mazie and Natalie are 5 minutes late for dinner. Cristina has graciously prepared us salad, soup, bread, beans, and some sort of meat for dinner with fruit for dessert. Mazie slices and inspects her meat carefully.
• 9:00 - Everyone cleans up dinner. Cristina watches the finale of her reality TV game show!
• 9:30 - Mazie cleans up her room a bit and does some texting and phone maintenance.
• 10:20 - Mazie calls her tech support guy Jamie and they chat for longer than you would expect your typical provider-client small talk to go on for.
• 11:21 - Mazie posts this blog post :)

Oh whoops, I totally didn’t realize micro.blog was going to format my post like that! It was supposed to be organized by line and not an assault on the eyes hahahaaaaa

Tossa de Mar! Didn’t catch any pictures from the last three hours when we were stuck doing laps around a supermarket and waiting for the bus because it started pouring rain.

Oh yeah, also didn’t realize the snails I was holding for a solid 30 minutes were extremely poisonous 😬

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 8 is Chandra Brown, writer, educator, raft guide, and founder of the Freeflow Institute (where she has graciously allowed me to teach an annual writing workshop since 2019). Chandra’s favorite things are:

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon

2. My Morning Jacket, At Dawn (album)

Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

3. America Windows by Marc Chagall, Art Institute of Chicago

4. Sturgill Simpson concert at the Wilma in Missoula, November 8, 2016

5. Her dad’s Micromet weather data collection units, early 1990s to present

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If you get partway through watching this 9-minute video about “The Owl Man of Logan Airport” and you think, “OK, I get it,” please let me advise you to stick around to hear Norman Smith tell the Starling vs. Peregrine Falcon vs. Snowy Owl story (video)

This post has a handful of the captivating photos that Martin Roemers took of people around the world posing with (or in) their vehicles, and if you want to see a few dozen more, click through the links to his website (I wondered why the background was white in all the photos but one of the first photos on his website is a behind-the-scenes shot where you can see a vehicle parked on a huge white fabric backdrop). The book, Homo Mobilis, looks pretty great.

If you click on one thing in this week’s newsletter, let it be this wonderful story Anne Kadet wrote about The Trumpet Player in a Tux at Grand Central Station—and do yourself another favor and press play on the video so you can listen to the music while you read about this guy’s amazing life story and perspective.

Sometimes I think really good satire is just basically holding up a mirror to the things we do, without much exaggeration, and forcing the audience to admit that yeah, humans are pretty ridiculous. Like this McSweeney’s piece, Let Us Walk You Through Our Very Reasonable Baby Registry.

“The algorithm” gets a lot of well-deserved flak nowadays, and I think rightly so, but every once in a while it delivers me something like this 30-minute live set from this super-chill Ethiopian jazz duo Zena, from this Addis Ababa-based YouTube channel that has barely 1,000 followers, and it redeems itself a little bit. (I am aware that it’s not just one algorithm, of course).

Who among us has not at least once in their life been left hanging when trying to high-five/fist bump someone? This video of “left hanging moments” from NBA games was heartening for me, as I got to watch Very Cool NBA Legends like LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant get left hanging many, many times, and do the same thing we all do: self-clap. Like don’t feel bad, it happens to everyone, including the greatest shooter of all time.

I was going to try to write something original about this 17-second video of this guy getting served food, and by the fourth time I watched it, cackling every time at the end, I can do no better than the most upvoted comment, “Oh the look of betrayal on that man’s face”

AND: a quick favor to ask: I’m coming up on one year as co-host of UltraSignup’s The Trailhead podcast. If you’ve been listening, and could take 60 seconds and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, I’d be grateful. And if you write a review, send your mailing address to me at brendan@semi-rad.com, and I’ll drop one of my “Put in the miles so you can put in the miles” stickers in the mail to you. Thanks!

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