I went to a University library today and let myself get lost amoung the books. It was quite nice. Rooms and rooms, on several floors, with tall shelves to make it seem more mazelike. They had glass display cases in one area with ornately illustrated bibles from as early as the 6th century! Two were Gutenbergs. There was also a section with books in numerous foreign languages. And one section with these absolutely HUGE (like, 6 inches wide. really.) books from a hundred years ago. And they had the awesomely aged pages. Of course, I ended up just sitting down in a corner and reading for a while. I found an interesting book (in English) which had a series of papers written by a coalition of Germans and South Africans analysing the Pentatuch with respect to Africa's current condition.

And I also saw a really clever billboard for cigarettes today! On the front of German packs of cigarettes it always says "Rauchen kann todlich sein" which means that smoking can kill you. This company's ad features a huge blowup picture of a pack of their cigarettes, with one of the cigarettes placed at a jaunty angle on top so as to cover up the warning almost completely. I know it won't sound that impressive just reading about it. It was sort of one of those times when you realize that something was perfectly done. People often see this in famous sculptures or works of music, but it was cool to see it just on the street like that.

I feel as though I should mention that there are other women around work. Not because it's that important or because I have a point to make. I just know I mentioned in an early entry that I had only seen two at that point. So, consider the initial impression revised.

Alrighty, a few pictures. The Barcelona trip was one of those fill-your-whole-memory-card-in-one-day deals. But I'll try to just pull out a few important ones. Even if that means excluding the picture of me with a pretty flower in my hair.

Devin and I went to the Olympic Gardens to get this first view of the city from some height. This is only a small chunk of the huge city. I love the proximity of mountains and sea (I know, you can't see the sea in this picture. But it's nearby, I promise.)

See, told you so! It was absolutely packed. There were constantly men and women coming up to us and asking if we would like to buy a beer, or a skirt, or have a backrub or some henna! This is a picture after we had gone swimming and were about to go look for ice cream.

Here's Devin on a long, steep hill. It was such a daunting hill that the city had *installed escalators* up much of its length. So we rode the escalators up the hill. It was fun.

At the top of this hill, and past the fan-vendor and guitar player, we found a bunch of UW-Madison students who are studying in Toulouse, France this summer. They were a great (if a little crazy -- for instance, note the 'ninja' in the back row) group.

Me and a really nice statue! He traded me his sword for my fan :)

This is an inside view of La Sagrada Familia. I like the effect of all the wooden scaffolding in the background. The cathedral is absolutely amazing, I definitely recommend it if you visit Barcelona.

The pictures of La Sagrada Familia can't really capture how impressive it is. That is even more true for the fountain show that we saw, so I'm not going to put up any pictures of that. Instead, I will move on to Monday.

Me, getting a cooking lesson from Captain Jack Sparrow. Well, sortof. In that I was learning to cook. Anyways, moving on to one from today!

Bible of Borso d'Este 1451-1461

And that's all for now folks! Hmm... I guess I haven't written about work much. I'll try to do that next time. But right now I need sleep. Goodnight!