Here for your reading “enjoyment” (and I use that word in the loosest sense possible) is another excerpt from my journal of the past few days.

I don't know what else to write. I've got ideas that I'd love to get onto my blog, but it seems that all I really want to write about is Tarragona, the city that has captured my heart.

Hope you all can deal with a blog full of this crap for the next five months.

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Finally. I was able to attend classes. I made it to History of Spanish in America (which is less linguistic that I expected – it's basically just a course on the history of Latin America, which I basically already know – fluff class) and 20^th century British Lit. Neither will be a problem, really.

Especially British Lit. I finally understand what it's like to be the native Spanish speaker in a Spanish Lit class in the States. It was weird to be the one that didn't have any vocab issues and wanted to get to the meat of the poem, while we focused on word usage and syntax. Interesting . . .

Went for a walk down to the old plaça. It's all torn up, in the midst of being remodeled. It's kinda underwhelming to see all these amazing structures covered with scaffolds and the like.

It's almost as though the city of Tarragona finally up and decided to clean up and respect their past. It's as if, for all these years, they haven't cared, but now they finally do.

Good. They should care. It's too historic (and just too damn pretty) to continue to neglect as they obviously have in the past.

My first real, full meal in a week.

For Cam's (my roommate) birthday we went to Pizza Hut. (Tacky, I know, but he wanted pizza on his birthday. What was I going to say? No?) I had a ham pizza with fries and a coke.

It's not like I'm going to make a habit of this whole “eat a full meal” thing . . . it's more fun to not eat.

Mmm . . . carrots. The first real vegetables I've had since arrival. Crunchy.

On Thursday I was finally able to escape my “shadow” and go exploring on my own. Cameron is a great guy, and I couldn't ask for a better roommate – he is, in a lot of ways, quite a bit like me. But because his Spanish is not as proficient, he relies on me – perhaps too much. Ofttimes he doesn't want to go somewhere or do something without me – he's scared he won't understand, or that he'll say something wrong and get himself in trouble. I completely get where he's coming from, and it's a boat I've been in before. But that doesn't mean it's always easy to have company, everywhere I go.

But I went out while he had his Catalan course and took pictures throughout the old district. (These would be the pictures I posted last excerpt.) As I strolled down one of the smaller streets, I found a skinny lane where each of the parking posts has been painted with a different scheme – some, carefully and meticulously designed, with intricately crafted motifs. Others looked like the work of a five-year-old channeling the ghost of Jackson Pollock and splashing paint around like a madman. It was a beautiful scene, with the mish-mash of unmatched building fronts adding to the allure.

After having pounded the pavement for a week, I'm starting to come to terms with the idea that the Residencia Sant Jordi is going to be home for the next few months. Thankfully, the neighbors haven't been as loud as that first night and I think it'll be okay to live here.

But my room needs . . . something. I sit here, staring at the dull, white walls (and the annoying blue one as well)wanting something, anything to break through the monotony. A picture. A design. A rug on the floor. (Actually, a rug on the floor . . . good idea.)

The emptiness of the place makes it feel cold, uninviting.

I'm-a have to change that.

Salad.

The crisp lettuce mixes with the shoestring carrots in a symphony of scurvy-banishing flavor that rings with depth, clarity, and all-out enjoyment. Fresh, sweet tomatoes, dripping juice like little bleeding hearts, gobble up the newly-mixed vinaigrette, bursting into arpeggios of taste, playing a tympani beat on my heavily-salivating tongue before sliding down the welcoming throat to a waiting belly.

Just what I needed.

Wait – look at me, waxing poetic about eating my salad last night. There is something wrong with me.

After a week full of going to classes I'm starting to feel like I'm getting into a routine, hitting a rhythm. It's good to finally have a routine. As much as I like to pretend to be (and can actually be sometimes) a spontaneous creature, I like to have a set schedule that I'm eschewing in order to be spontaneous. When everything is spontaneous, it takes all the fun and adventure out of it.

I'm sitting here at my desk, listening to Cloud Cult over the horribly-fast eurobeat next door. It's soothing. The musty, rainy air drifts through the open window, cooling the unbearable heat which my roommate seems to masochistically enjoy.

I met a painfully beautiful girl the other day. She, too, is an Erasmus student, from Naples, Italy.

And when I mean painfully beautiful, I'm not kidding around. Her eyes sparkle like twin sapphires when she smiles, framed by her perfectly olived skin. Her hair is dark like the wings of a raven, full of ominous portent.

Today she told me her name. Hillary.

The blatant American-ness of her name makes it no less sexy as it rolls off her tongue before she takes a long drag off her thin cigarette.

She offers me one. I decline, politely. She responds with a throaty, sensual laugh, and says I should be glad. Expensive habit, she calls it.

I concur. I reply saying it's probably an expensive habit like taking gorgeous girls out to dinner – my vice of choice.

She laughs again, doubtless at my audacity, but she accepts my off-handed invitation.

As we part, she gives me the customary Mediterranean parting – a kiss on both cheeks. I reciprocate, and hope she doesn't notice the quickening of my heartbeat, the racing pulse pounding through my body at ninety miles an hour.

I know nothing will come of this. We'll probably have dinner a couple of times, and we'll probably be friends while we're here.

Heck, I don't really want anything to come of this.

But it doesn't hurt to imagine . . .

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So there you go, friends. Another long and boring chunk of my journal. Hope you at least enjoyed something.

Stay tuned for more from the cuidad hermosa Tarragona.