The Birds de Alfred Hitchcock 

It is 2:30 AM and I’ve just gotten home; please accept my apologies for any typos. 

 

Today was my last day at school.  It turned out to be a little more sentimental than I expected.  Each of the students in both of my classes waited after class to hug/kiss me goodbye, wish me good luck in my travels and studies, and of course – exchange facebook names and emails.  It took a month for me to realize that I needed to start taking pictures of things other than monuments and historical sights.  I brought my camera and we had a great time with that, as we hardly got any schoolwork done.  Luckily, professor Romero walked by at the right moment, and I quickly grabbed his attention to take a quick class photo of Jordi’s class.  The more I think about it, I’m really going to miss them, and at least a picture will help me have something to remember them by.  In conversation class with Romero, I said goodbye to the two German girls that were fun to be around (and listen to when they spoke English), although I hadn’t gotten to know them all that well.  Andreas would be in my next class, along with Johanna (Zahap and Rafael were not present), but since I was leaving early and so was Andreas, and Johanna didn’t want to stay by herself, we all played hooky a bit early and went to the café next-door in celebration of our one-month accomplishment.  Before I made my way home, I stopped by the reception and picked up my “Certificate of Completion”, and I was out the door. When I got home, Mommy and I watched Andy Rodick beat Andy Murray (much to England’s dismay) and after much jumping and screaming and general commotion, decided that this Wimbledon final is going to be the best America has seen in a while – with three Americans out of four players in the finals (men’s and women’s), I think the demographics will show a lot more than just tennis fans tuning in to the Tennis Channel this weekend.

 

At 8:30 I arrived at Plaza España, where I had planned to meet Clara and Caroline earlier today.  You see, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a big-screen movie is projected onto the side of the castle that sits atop the mountain called Montjuïc, and tonight’s showing was to be Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.  Along with the beautiful Canadian, Caroline, was her sister, Maddie (who is fluent in not only French, like Caroline, but Japanese as well!) The half-Asian sisters are constantly stopped by people who demand to know their ethnicity.  There were about five other friends of theirs with them, all girls from Maddie’s class that I wasn’t that familiar with.  Along with Clara were two hulking German guys, Edmund and Lukas, who are staying in the same residence as Clara, and apparently have served nicely as bodyguards and tour guides since Clara first arrived.  They were very polite, as well as trilingual and very knowledgeable in various subjects. The whole way up to the top of the small mountain was a lesson in Law and Economics from Edmund and lessons in Medicine and the works of Alfred Hitchcock from Lukas.  How wonderful!  They found me “interesting” (and I decided to take that as a compliment because I wasn’t sure what to make of it), and they admired my desire to study abroad while in high school – The U.SA. can thank me later for going around the world making a good name for our people.

 

When we reached the top as the movie was starting, we spread out our picnic blanket (yes, we had a picnic!) in the field and laid out our various dishes of bocadillas, Spanish ham, cherries, melon, grapes, Pringles, wine for the other women, and pineapple juice for us young folk.  Although everyone but I was old enough to drink, they were considerate of my being in their company and purchased an alternative drink, which I thought was very thoughtful.  It was one of those nights that you only see in movies, and I couldn’t believe that today was he start of my last weekend in Barcelona.  We laughed until I worked out my abs enough to burn all the calories of that Spanish ham, and I am almost certain that I won’t ever look at swooping birds the same again.  One of the most amusing sights I’ve seen so far in Barcelona had to be tonight when we got up to fold our blankets, and the macho, six-five Edmund jumped higher than the moon when a bird dove in to have a look at our crumbs. That made the hassle of getting up and down a mountain very worth it.  We all said our “one-last goodbye’s” and Clara, Edmund, Lukas, and I headed a towards to Green Metro Line and headed home.  I got off at the Diagonal, where my wonderful mommy was waiting up for me to make sure I made it home safely.  It is very late now; in fact, now that I have showered and gotten ready for bed, it is past 4 o’clock!  Thank goodness its Viernes!