First Impression of Spain

Arrive in Barcelona Spain on April 3rd, 2024 

When I arrived,  I had completed a few days of independent traveling in Italy. We had transportation set up for us to take us from the airport to our host families. When I driving down the street of Barcelona I noticed that there were not any houses, everyone lived in apartments. I meet my host mom first and she takes me up to their home. It is very beautiful. 3 children live in the houses all the time.  There is an 11-year-old boy, a 15-year-old girl, and 19-year-old boy. There is a 13-year-old boy who splits his time between his mom and dad's house. With 4 children I noticed that the home does not have the usual clutter that children can cause. The house is very minimalistic and very kept up. In the United States families usually have a lot of "stuff," I noticed that they do not.  I then met the rest of the family, they were very welcoming. the whole family can speak English, so it was easy to communicate with them. The host Mom and Dad took me on a walk throughout the neighborhood. It is very different than the United States. There is not much driving, walking is the main form of transportation. The roads are smaller, and there are very few crosswalks. The walkers get to cross first before the cars pass. They took me to the store because I am a picky eater and they wanted me to pick out food that I like. The store has no parking lot. So it is walking only. Supermarkets (grocery stores) make you pay for bags for your groceries, therefore a lot of people bring reuseable bags. Instead of doing one big grocery trip every 1-2 weeks. Since, it's walking only, a lot of people only buy what they need for the next couple of days.  A big difference between Spain to the U.S. is that normal dinner time is around 8:30 - 9:30 pm. So I was very hungry once it was time to eat dinner with my host family.