i don't even know where to start

i can't believe my parents are gone!!! i had such a good time with them and now i am so homesick =( that was the fastest five days ever but we did so much. the weather was all over the place though. the first two days were great and then the third day when we went up to the tallest mountain in Barcelona it started raining and it was so windy and freezing. and then the next two days were kind of cold, but at least sunny.. i showed them mostly everything i know of. we saw these "magic fountains" at montjuic which i hadn't seen yet, and they are HUGE and they play music an put colors in the water and it's just awesome looking. so many people are out to see it. they do it every friday and saturday night when it gets dark. we also went to see all the Gaudi places i know about and they were blown away. i was glad because i still go to see them and am in disbelief. he is a genius.

we ate and drank our lives away! every time we got cold we'd just say okay let's go get a coffee. or sometimes some wine. i even met them for breakfast once and the waiter was pushing beer on us because we had only ordered coffee. he thought we were crazy. i got to try all the food i've been hearing about that was too expensive for me to get =) paella, different fish, lamb, croquettes, calamares, all so so good. we had a hard time paying though because the credit card didn't go through half the places we tried! and one restaurant said they didn't even take credit cards. luckily we noticed right before we ordered. it's crazy how much cash they use here.

the coolest thing was i noticed how much i've learned here!! my parents obviously don't know any Spanish, but i didn't realize how much i actually do know. i took them to their bed and breakfast their first day and the lady that rented it out had only been taking English for two months. so she started rambling in Spanish and my poor parents were probably so lost. but i understood everything! and i could translate everything. it was amazing. and every time we went out to eat, a lot of the waiters didn't speak English, or the menus would be in Spanish, and i could translate everything, it's unreal!

here is a good story for you.. this is where my Spanish really came in handy. so we were getting ready for dinner back in their room and my dad said he'd be right back because he was going to get a couple bottles of wine since they were out. so he leaves and five minutes later he's back jiggling the door. my mom goes to open it from inside and it's stuck. so we're sitting there for about an hour trying to get this thing open. the key doesn't work. we even pass the key through to the inside and it doesn't work. it looks really jammed and we're shoving forks and bobby pins through the holes with no success. i told my dad to just open the wine and start drinking. i called the number that was listed in case we "had any problems" or lost our keys. but the number was disconnected. it kept saying to try back later. so finally, we called the fire department! i explained we were in the room and stuck and they came in about three minutes flat, sirens and everything.

i peek outside only two see a fire truck, ambulance, and a few police men on scooters. there were probably like 13 people in all. insane! so my dad let's them in and they come up to our room and i see this ax thing flying through the crack of the door down onto the lock. it doesn't work of course. and the guys outside are like, "How many children are in there? are you okay? don't be scared!!" but i told them it was just me and my mom and we were not children. so they said, "Okay, in five minutes we will be in the room." five minutes later, there is the TINIEST ladder i've ever seen, hanging from up on the roof down to our balcony in our room. the fireman is climbing down and his foot barely fits on the rung.

there are groups of people outside by now, asking us what's going on and are we okay? the fireman is in the room and he can't get the lock either. so he just unscrews the entire lock and takes it off. he fixed it too so it worked better than before. but when he opened the door there were 5 people standing outside with my dad. two of them smoking. they were laughing about it and i guess it was better than a call for a fire. i just can't believe how fast they came.

yes i was sitting there taking pictures of everything, but it was hard and so they are all blurry..

and of course after we opened the door and saw the others, mom was saying how cute the one fireman was and wanted to get a picture of me with him. so she was trying to be sneaky and snag one, but she couldn't figure out how to work the camera. sigh...

i have so much more to say but i have things to do so i will write more later.