A jarty, slide boats, and potluck dinners

The end of the summer has a bittersweet feel to it. While I am excited to get back home to see my family and friends, I cannot believe how fast my time here has flown by. Our group of interns has become very close, through living in such close quarters and going through such an incredible experience together, and I am going to miss everyone so much.

Some of the group at the beach, before a night out.

Last week, we were sitting at lunch at work, and we started commenting on the European love of everything jean. This conversation soon turned into us making a list of anything that could be made into jean: joveralls, jress, you get the idea. Before we knew it, our "jarty" (i.e. jean party) was in the works. We made a facebook event and invited everyone we live with, as well as a few other friends we have made here. The only requirement was that invitees had to come up with some kind of a joutfit (jean outfit).

 Jartying hard.

  In our matching joutfits.

Other than jartying, we spend most of our days (when we don't have work) at the beach, or exploring the city. I have gone to Sitges, a smaller beach town about 30 minutes by train outside of the city, a few times as well. Last weekend while in Sitges, we rented a slide boat (which is a slide attached to a paddle boat, exactly how it sounds), and had a lot of fun sliding in the Mediterranean. The weekend before that, Jenna from Intrax organized a weekend excursion to Tossa del Mar in Costa Brava. We had a couple of boating excursions, enjoyed a good barbecue dinner, and went snorkeling. Definitely a very relaxing and fun time!

Tossa del Mar, Costa Brava

Costa Brava is a popular destination for Spaniards to celebrate Bachelor/ Bachelorette parties. We were one of the only groups not celebrating somebody's upcoming wedding that weekend. Even though we were on a different level of partying, we still had just as much fun!

No Spanish town would be complete without its very own castle. 

Doesn't even begin to compare to the beaches at home. I'll always love Bethany Beach, DE, but it's certainly no Mediterranean.

 Pretty self explanatory

Because we all live together, we often cook dinner and eat together too. Jenna lives right next door to us, and she thought it would be a good idea if we all got together for a potluck dinner during our last week living together. She made awesome pan de tortilla, which is a traditional Spanish dish that is kind of like an egg and potato casserole. After dinner we put on Una casa de los locos, a movie about a group of students from all over the world that live together in Barcelona as part of a European exchange program. It's crazy how much this movie so accurately depicts our lives together this past summer. Although we are all from the United States, all of us interns are from different parts of America, and we have an interesting mesh of personalities. We all get along really well though, so it works perfectly. While I know I will stay in touch with many of the people I have met here, I am going to miss living together and sharing our daily experiences.

    Originally created in French, this movie exists in pretty much every language.

For some reason, we all seem to have this weird obsession with gummies here. I'm not entirely positive what kind of addictive substance they have in them, but it's definitely there. Candy shops are all over the place, too, so they're hard to resist. My only word of advice to anyone who chooses to travel abroad: DO NOT TRY THEM. It only takes one, and then it will be too late.