Barcelona, Spain – Estoy Aquí, I am Here! — The North Star Reports – by Katherine LaFleur. Sponsored by The College of St. Scholastica and The Middle Ground Journal

A special series. Barcelona, Spain – Estoy Aquí, I am Here! — The North Star Reports – by Katherine LaFleur. Sponsored by The College of St. Scholastica and The Middle Ground Journal

[Photo 1: Arc de Triomf, Barcelona’s own]

Saturday, the 3rd of January, I began my trip. Driving the 164 miles from my house to Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport’s first terminal, it still hadn’t sunk in that within hours I would be immersing myself in a culture quite different from the one I had grown up in. My first flight flew 8 hours overnight, crossing the North Atlantic, and numerous time zones. My second, from Amsterdam to Barcelona was only 2 hours- but it seemed somewhat longer than the much more familiar drive from Duluth to the Twin Cities that takes about the same time. Sunday, the 4th of January, I had arrived in Barcelona, Spain and had begun my…