Nearing the end of my semester, here I stand at the top of “Parque Güell,” in Barcelona, Spain. I had discovered that my friend from my hometown was living in Madrid. She is a very special friend to me. We have competed together for years running track. She would beat me, I would beat her, then we would go run a 4×400 at conference and state and beat everyone. She ran at Brown, I run at Willamette, and still to this day with work-out and compete with the help of one-another when we are back home…Apparently we do that regardless of where we are in the world. After three days of non-stop exploring the city by day and indulging in the night’s festivities we continued for a fourth day which consisted of getting churros and chocolate at 6 am, sleeping for three hours, climbing to the top of Montjuic, getting lost, encountering a band of jazz players playing for a massive group of people who asked us to sing with them, making it to the Picasso museum by 3p.m. on the dot so we could enter for free, to then hike up to Park Guell because we wanted to “challenge” each other and not take the bus, to then go shop for an hour, get our last meal together and part ways–her bus leaving at 11p.m. and my flight leaving at 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

Worth it.