How many times can I use the title, "General Update?"

Things are still going pretty well here. Classes are starting to hit their stride, and the work load is definitely appreciable, even with only three classes. The amount of readings we are assigned is just a little bit excessive. Hard to actually get them all done and still go out and see the city and do "extra-curriculars" on the weekends. So that's a bit stressful, but whatever. The city is still really cool and we're having a good time.

Fever broke the night before last. I took some acetaminophyn (sp?), put on a zip-up fleece and some flannel pajama-pants, and buried myself in covers and passed out. I woke up about 2 hours later, sitting straight up out of my sleep and throwing off covers. I had broken my fever and was just plain burning up. Still have a little bit of a sore throat, but it's receding slowly.

So one of our arch projects has been to explore the use of the chamfered (pronounced: cham' ferd) corner. This is where, at a street intersection, instead of bringing the corners to a full square, like any normal human being would do, you chop a huge chunk out of the points of the corner. This allows you to put a full building front facing the middle of an intersection. And most of the new parts of the city follow this model. So our job is to document photographically all of the chamfered corners in our assigned sections. It's pretty cool. We focus on what the facades look like, as well as how the pedestrian space is utilized.

The other arch project is the use of public spaces: how they fit into a city, how they allow or encourage people to interact, and how they become a stage to see and be seen. Another cool project. Again split into groups and assigned one of the 10 voting districts of Barcelona. We did a preliminary walk of part of our district today; looks like we got a pretty poor district, at least from the parts we walked so far. Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out.

Other than that, life is pretty much just life. Saw some really cool graffiti during our walk. Need to do laundry again. Went grocery shopping again. Not having a car means having to walk your groceries home, but having a grocery store right underneath you makes it so worth it. Still enjoyin everythin.

Love you guys. Talk to you soon.

-Kenners