Differences

One funny thing about going abroad is that many things that are so simple at home are an adventure here. For instance, Teegan and I wanted to marinade some meat with a marinade or an Italian dressing... however, they do not have either of those things here! We ended up improvising with oil and balsamic vinegar. Also, we met a girl from the states who told us that her friend had bought fabric softener instead of laundry detergent. Teegan laughed, but then it dawned on me, that I think I had done the same thing haha! I had wondered why the laundry detergent was so different here and how it wasn´t cleaning my clothes well. Sure enough, I translated the writing on the bottle and I did the same thing haha. One challenging thing about Barcelona is that their primary language is not Spanish or as they call it Castellano, but is Catalan. Catalan is a lot different than Spanish! So reading labels in the supermarket is hard if it is only in Catalan. Again, Teegan bought a green bottle that was right next to the ketchup and mustard so we assumed it was relish... NOPE... it was some sort of barbeque sauce called brava! Another example of the language and cultural barrier was this restaurant we went to near our apartment. It was called BBQ chicken. So we were expecting chicken with barbeque sauce. However, the bbq stood for ´´best believable quality´´ chicken haha. I think it was a tourist trap of some sort and even though there was no barbecue sauce... the chicken was what they had said... very good quality.

Even the birds here are different. Instead of seeing the normal chick-a-dees and robins there are green parrots everywhere. They do have pigeons though. One of which attacked the back of Teegan's shoe when she was sitting eating lunch.