All settled in?

It´s been a few days, I know. I thought I would wait until I had something really stirring to rave about, but nothing outrageous enough happened. I think it´s because I´ve finally landed -- I´ve finally settled in. I see familiar faces on the morning bus. Occasionally, I see my history professor on the metro (he lives just down the block from me). Now, the cashiers at the grocery store under my apartment just smile when they see me walk up with my handful of chocolate. Its the only thing I´ve ever bought there. The staff at the public library show some recognition on their faces when I walk into their line of vision, and they seem ready for my quiet, halting attempts at Spanish. Dare I say Barcelona has accepted my presence?
I´ve noticed that at least looking the part helps. Sometimes, I´m not sure I recognize myself, but I like the changes. I invested in two scarfs, a light sweater and a pair of skinny jeans. I´m pretty sure my mom will think I´ve changed a lot.
Oh, I read a book yesterday. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It is the latest "best book I´ve ever read". The setting is in Barcelona, after the Spanish Civil War. It is really intense -- full of love, hate, betrayal, suspense, murder... it was 547 pages of raised eyebrows, shallow breaths and sheer wonder and admiration for the author´s power of description. Yes, I cried. Three times. And it showed me a side of Barcelona that I never thought about. My metro stop is where the main character, Daniel, got off the bus when he went home. And I have post-it notes full of places I need to search out. (Yes, the book is riddled with little purple and orange post-it notes, marking passages or ideas. And yes, the purples stand for one thing and the oranges, another.) I´m going to try to incorporate it into my final paper for one of my classes. Right now, my topic is censorship during the Franco regime, and I´m going to (try to) read La Colmena and use it as an example, since it was a banned book for some time. I think I can use Zafón in the paper too... but it only has to be 5 pages, so we´ll see how far I get.
For clarification, finals aren´t for another four weeks, but I´ve got little else to do, so I thought I might as well get started. There are a lot of things that Spaniards don´t really "do" here, from Halloween to cookies to daily homework assignments. I only really miss the cookies.

Barcelona, Spain