Preparing for 4 Months Abroad!

Hola todos!  (for all of you non-spanish speakers out there, that means hello all...)

As I was slowly completing packing all my most prized possessions into two 50 pound suitcases, I began to think about all my friends, both here in the U.S. and those studying abroad in various places. I thought about keeping in touch with each one of them separately and realized that there will be a lot of retelling certain experiences, recapping weeks of what I hope to be incredibly eye-opening events, and sharing my slightly embarrassing but probably far too often happenings. So finally giving into the social networking bandwagon, I decided that a blog was probably a good start. I figure, this way, when some of you are sad and missing me (or incredibly bored and feel like procrastinating as much as possible) you have somewhere to look and always find me. 

So here's my blog. I'm sure you all are going to be expecting some incredibly well-written, ridiculously interesting stories about living in a foreign land, with foreign people, foreign food, foreign transportation...foreign foreign foreign...but I can't promise perfection. I'll do my best to keep up with this blog, hopefully at least once a week, and I'll try to sort out all the garbage BEFORE I post it on here. Get prepared for some pictures, some highlights, some history. 

Before I end this post, I thought it would be interesting to throw some interesting facts at you about Barcelona:

Barcelona is located on the Mediterranean Sea and is the capital of Cataluña. The city is the second largest city in Spain, with roughly 1, 615, 908 people. It's a major player in European finance and international trade, and it is well known for hosting the 1992 Olympic games. If you're interested in its history, economy or culture, hit up wikipedia for some information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona). In addition to all of this, Cataluña is currently in the process of becoming its own state and has a very prominent separatist movement. While they do speak Spanish, Catalan is preferred in the region because of backlash against the cultural suppression that took place during the Franco Regime (1939-1975). 

While I was reading about Spain, and Barcelona I got to thinking about my name...Aleena. So I started some research. While none of the prominent name-meaning websites could find my name the way I spelled it, I decided to change it up a bit. Elena, its a popular spanish name that means "shining light, or bright one". While I'm not sure if this is what my parents had in mind while naming me, it is interesting that my name has spanish roots and now here I am heading off to spain for four lovely months. 

Excited to see what ensues? So am I.