My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard...

So one day my friends and I had an "intercambio party", and Sergio brought us to an amazing tetería (kind of like a cafe for tea and milkshakes).  It's all very arabic looking, complete with floor cushions and a hookah.  This is actually salient information, as my friends and I now reference "the Trinity" regularly.  See, I've referred to word reference as Jesus for a while now, and Sergio is God.  The tetería: the holy spirit.  I'm telling you, it's amazing.  The leche merengada milkshake is especially delightful; it tastes like citrus cinnamon happiness.  Hence the Trinity.  I now refer to editing my papers and asking questions on vocabulary, etc. as praying.  It's funny to me, anyways.  It speaks for Sergio's awesomeness that he isn't completely creeped out by now (Sergio, if you're reading this, note that I wrote it at least two weeks ago).  In other news, it appeared some bedouins pitched a tent in Zoco the other...week... (later that night they had belly dancers and a huge crowd of middle-aged men):

Anyways, Veronica and I decided to go to Barcelona to see the pope the weekend of fall break.  I'm not Catholic or anything, but come on, it's the pope.  Plus, I really wanted to go to Barcelona.  Good decision- I absolutely loved it!  It's a wonderful city just to walk around in.  We took the night bus on Fri- exhausting, as it's hard to sleep on the bus in the first place, let alone with four asian men around you eating fried rice and screaming for the ENTIRE 7 hour trip.  Once we arrived, though, it was fantastic.  I must say, thank you to Rob for suggesting things to do.  We went to Parc Guell first thing- I'm a fan of Gaudi, so I very much enjoyed it.

These kind of reminded me of gingerbread houses:

After the park, we wandered through Las Ramblas, a series of streets full of vendors and those living statue people in a very interesting array of costumes- demons, skeletons, mother nature, a baby, the more traditional all gold and all silver... for some reason I either didn't take pictures or they somehow got deleted.  Anyway, the vendors were selling everything from flowers to food to animals.  The cutest rodents ever:

We also went to the Boquería market- it was like a huge grocery store on steroids!  I had a coconut mango smoothie and had to buy some fruit, including one that was magenta and unfortunately rather flavorless:

Those are 'shrooms, by the way:

 And I very much envied this kid's balloon:

 I almost forgot; on the way there, we passed the candy shop below (no 50 cent in sight!) and it kind of reminded me of that scene in Party Monster with the hospital-themed party... or maybe desperate housewives or something.  You put the candy in pill bottles and had a "prescription" sticker:

We also hit Manzana de la discordia to see the house designed by Gaudi:

 And I actually saw a real albino!  I feel my life is complete now.  Also, a monk in full Friar Tuck regalia, complete with prayer beads, rode by on a motorcycle.  For some reason, it struck me as hilarious.
On the way back to our hostel, we passed by Sagrada Familia.  We couldn't go in all weekend on account of the pope, but the outside was pretty neat:

It kind of reminded me of when I used to build sandcastles as a kid and drip watery sand down to form towers like stalagmites.  The next day, we returned to Sagrada Familia to see the pope bless it and saw the popemobile go by.  Everyone had banners and flags and other "team pope" paraphernalia.  Veronica and I snagged some flags, too.

The pope's on the screen:

After, we decided to hit the Miró museum and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya.  I enjoyed MNAC.  Not so much Miró.  I wouldn't really recommend it unless you really like rather abstract surrealist art with a dadaist feel.  Not my thing.  We took the night bus back Sun. night, so to kill time between the museums and the bus, we decided to see Eat, Pray, Love, as Veronica hadn't seen it yet.  I didn't much like it in English; it was somewhat better in Spanish- maybe because I was focused more on understanding it than on my hatred of the main character.  Let's see... later in the week I went to Aranjuez for a few hours in the evening.  It's a lovely little town with a palace, but it got dark soon after I arrived, so I wasn't able to see the gardens or anything.  The sunset was beautiful, though.

What else... oh, in one of my classes, we had a "mock trial" for one of the characters in a play we read. The thing was, we had to wear costumes, and I ended up with a short black dress and hat that said "hottie police".  Yeah.  Why my professor in her late 40's or early 50's has a hottie police outfit is something I don't want to think about.  My response to the cross-examination?  "I'm the hottie police and I can do what I want".  Also, as I was loading pictures for this post, I accidentally took this one of myself:

Normally, I would wince and delete it, but it reminded my of the guy playing the guitar (?) in Goya's La romería de San Isidro:

Zoomed in:

Similar, no?