creo que necesito escribir en español porque es bueno a praticarlo. PERO yo sé que mi español está muy mal y la mayor de gentes no van a poder entender mi escritura horrible.

all that to say, i´m going to write in english now.

it´s been fun and funny attempting to communicate with people here in spanish. for the most part, the only times i´m forced to use it is when i go into a store or maybe in a taxi. i´m around a lot of americans all the time. on wednesday, my program will start our "intercambio de conversación," which is when they´ll bring in spanish college students to do language exchange. they can practice their english with us, and we can practice our spanish with them. i´m glad that they´re arranging this for us because it´s very easy to speak english all the time and never challenge ourselves in the language.

i´ve been thinking about/working on my photography, although i haven´t printed/enlarged anything yet. i´ve been shooting both in color as well as black & white, so it´s all seeming new and experimental and exciting because i´m playing with color film. the other night i was even taking pictures in my dream...i had all these particularly great shots, and when i realized i was dreaming i was disappointed that they weren´t real. whenever i´m able to make some products, i´ll see if i can scan some images and post them on here.

tomorrow night i´m participating in a photography workshop (critique-night type thing) at Obra Vista, the Ágape art studio/gallery/café. it will all be in spanish, so i´m sure i´ll have trouble keeping up. however, i think it will be good for me to get thrown in the mix. in case you don´t know, Ágape is the european division of Campus Crusade for Christ, and Obra Vista is an amazing space in Barcelona where artists gather to dialogue and share their art and hold events. it´s sort of like transFORM in nyc, but i think it´s also a community that´s more integrated with students and professional artists and staff members and people who support the arts. i don´t know a whole lot about it yet, though, so i may not have that completely right. anyway, i´m looking forward to being involved there throughout the year.

All my classes are very interesting. My art history class is a survey of spanish art, but so far we are moving through the medieval period which covers a lot of architecture and arts having to do with the Church. we went to a museum on friday that has many frescos from romanesque churches in catalunya that are displayed in their original positions-- they built apses and walls and arches and stuff in the museum so that we see the paintings as they were once created. what is most interesting (and also a bit disheartening) is coming to understand the cultural/political/social/religious context from which the art was created. i won´t go on about it in full detail here.

today we were given choices of what to write our final paper on for art history, and mine is going to be about Gaudí´s Sagrada Familia, which i´m really excited about! i can´t wait to learn more in-depth about it.

i think i´ll end this entry here, but i´ll probably be back with another update in a few days or so. thanks for reading!