Grilled Cheese, Books, and Tea

So I started my classes here at the University of Barcelona yesterday (I say "here" because I am, once again, typing from the library). I am studying "letras" at the Facultad de Filología. When I first came here I had no idea what Filología was, even in English. After looking it up, I learned that it is the study of a language and its literature, to put it simply. "Letras" is the equivilent of "humanities," or to further distinguish it, anything that is not math or science related--the important stuff.

My classes are bomb. I am taking Historia social española contemporánea, Barcelona en su contexto cultural, Intro lingüística, Análisis y comentario de textos, and Catalán. I think I will most enjoy the Barcelona en su contexto cultural class. We have a list of books, all written by Catalán authors (but Catalán authors choose Spanish as their literary language, so the books are in Spanish nonetheless) and we pick three that we want to read from the list. Our teacher said that we wouldn't need the books for another few weeks but, being the empollón that I am, I went with my friend Adam to FNAC (Spain's version of Barnes & Noble) and bought the first one-- Nada by Carmen Laforet.

I've already read the first chapter and am enjoying it so far. It's about a girl who is 18 years old and goes to post-war Barcelona to study Letras (my study!). Of course, I think I am enjoying it because of the narrative space. As Andrea traverses the facultad that I'm studying in right now and the familiar streets of Barcelona I love picturing them in my mind, thinking "oh, I was just there yesterday!" Also, the novel has a moody, gothic tone, illuminating a derelict Barcelona that existed in 1945 after the civil war.

I do not know this derelict Barcelona. The Barcelona I know is crowded with people (and dogs, actually) and then there are even more people outside waiting to get in, trying to make the city their home too. I love the idea of constructing your own personal Barcelona through experiences. Maybe someone else's Barcelona is different than mine because they live in a different barrio, or take different classes, or know different people. It all depends... pero, yo vivo para el sueño de vivir, eso es quién soy.

On another note, I made this pretty amazing grilled cheese sandwich today. Okay, okay. I can't take all the credit for the sandwich because I knocked off the idea from Sunsinger, a foody-wine place in Champaign. Anywho, I made the sandwhich with whole-grain bread (well, I think it was whole grain, my food Spanish is kind of shaky sometimes), swiss cheese, fig jam, and a sliced apple. Of course, many of the markets here don't have butter so I just used extra-virgen olive oil to grill it. It tasted amazing.

The only bad part about the sandwich was that I slightly burned my middle, ring, and pinky fingers on my right hand when I touched the frying pan like an idiot. Since Europeans do not have much need for ice, there wasn't any in the freezer to relieve my sizzling fingers. So, I used the next best thing-- a frozen fish fillet that I bought three days ago at La Sirena. It was salmon, to be exact. I carried my frozen fish fillet out to the terrace where I would eat my grilled cheese and sip my mint tea one-handed. I had to leave Carmen Laforet for after lunch because I was running out of hands. Cuca (Monste's cat) decided to join me on the terrace. We enjoyed each other's company and the breeze was nice. Then Montse came home and it was time to go to class.

And now I'm here, writing this, and helping the Spanish girl next to me access her login screen on the computer. See, I'm even good with computers in Spain! Go figure. Except, I'm still getting used to the Spanish keyboard...

And I still need internet.