I feel like it’s almost necessary to preface this post by telling you about food. Out of all the three cities, Barcelona had the best food options, hands down. I mean, sure, we marvelled at the splendor that is Antoni Gaudi and we probably had our most relaxing time just lazing about on the beaches of Barceloneta, but YOU GUYS. THE FOOD. If anything, you simply must get Iberian ham in Spain. I don’t even like ham back in the States, and I was already missing jamón ibérico by the time I packed up my bags. And patatas bravas. More on that later in this post.

DAY 7 (03/17):

Anyway. Barcelona. By the time our plane landed, we were already craving dinner. Lugging our suitcases across town from the airport didn’t exactly put us in the highest of spirits, and by the time we finally finished unloading our suitcases at the hostel, I just wanted a bloody sandwich. Or something to make my stomach shut up. This is the part where a cute little vegan restaurant named Juicy Jones enters the picture.

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I think I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I tend to be a seasonal blogger. Here’s what I’ve been up to this summer:

• In May, I went home for two weeks and managed to get myself sick with a fever.
• I worked for most of the summer doing webdesign for my school’s IT department.
• I went absolutely crazy over the World Cup. We installed a huge projector at work so we could watch all the games live, and during the weekends, my friends and I would go out to different bars/pubs in NY to cheer for our favorite teams (DEUTSCHLAND ♥!). Fun and merriment (and beer) were had by all!

Overall, my summer (June and July) was pretty low-key — pretty much just chilling out in New York. And studying for LSATs, but let’s think happy thoughts here! August was pretty exciting though, because I went to Kenya with my family! Out of all the places I’ve been, Kenya ranks pretty high up there on my All Time Favorite Places list. The people are genuinely welcoming, the weather is nice and breezy, the landscape is too gorgeous for words, and the animals, oh my god. I’m talking lions, zebras, gazelles, elephants, buffalo, giraffes, flamingos, hippos, monkeys, etc etc. It’s one thing to see them on the Discovery Channel or in a zoo, but it’s a whole different experience to stand right in front of a herd of zebras or walk balk to your tent only to find a monkey sitting right outside the door.

During the late summer, all the animals in the Serengeti of Tanzania migrate northwards to Kenya, so we came at a good time. We went on a safari through the major parks in Kenya: Aberdare for elephants, Lake Nakuru for flamingos and monkeys, Hell’s Gate for hippos and giraffes, and Masai Mara for everything else and then some. I posted all my photos in my Flickr set, if you’d like to take a look! Or you could just scroll down (click to view larger!).

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It’s been ages since my last update, so I’ll give you a superquick runthrough of what I’ve been up to. In the past month, I:

• crammed for my final projects and exams.
• got featured on Smashing Magazine’s May wallpaper showcase.
• finished my junior year of university.
• got an apartment in NY with two friends for the summer.
• flew back home to Shanghai.
• went to the Shanghai 2010 World Expo.
• went to Taiwan last weekend.

The last few weeks of school are always horrendous, because there’s one thing piling on top of another, and if you’re absolute pants at time management like I am, you end up pulling all-nighters and putting off tasks such as … um, updating this blog. But no matter! I mean, I rant about academia enough in real life to the point of annoyance, so let’s talk about something fun. Like the my Taiwan trip last weekend!

My mom and I were in Taipei for three days, where we visited a couple museums and temples, like the Chiang Kai-Shek and the Sun Yat-sen memorials. In a way, it was like revisiting my China Civ history class again. I mean, come on — in the gift shop, they were selling plastic dolls of a baby Chiang Kai-Shek in a diaper.

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