I’ve been in Barcelona for three days now. I’m three days into the best vacation ever.

There’s a pool on the roof of my building. I’ve taken to wearing sunglasses and sandals every day; I’ve quit eating and started dining. My skin is already bronze with that sun-soaked Mediterranean expat glow (like Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” — if slightly less chiseled). I’ve retired two of my usual three alarm clocks, and I save the remaining one for only the darkest hours of need.

What’s gotten into me? My friend Steve said it best. Yesterday, I asked Steve when he wanted to go food shopping. “What? Food shopping?” he replied. “No. Don’t even bother me with real-life things right now. I’m on vacation.” He shook his head disapprovingly, then we both dozed off again in our lounge chairs by the pool.

Class hasn’t started yet, of course, so we’re enjoying a little more free time now than we will in the coming weeks. But before anyone gets up in arms about how studying abroad isn’t a four-month vacation (hi, Mom), I should explain why, in Barcelona, it kind of is.

I knew something was up when I found out about siesta. Basically, businesses in Barcelona close for a few hours every afternoon to facilitate chilling out, recharging, and having a cortado (a shot of coffee with milk) or a quick nap. There was always something spooky about legitimate working grown-ups endorsing a two-hour city-wide coffee break — but these first three days here brought the shocking truth out at last.

Yes, the people of Barcelona have mastered the art of living on vacation. I couldn’t believe it either. But this city and its social norms, it seems, are built around a lifestyle that Americans only adopt on holiday. Except that no one in America says “on holiday,” ever.

It seems like being fashionable, satisfied and unhurried are just the natural expectations of Catalonian life. Our first night in Barcelona was a Friday night; dinner was served at 8:30 p.m. Waiters came by frequently to make sure our wine glasses were never empty, and we scarcely even thought about leaving the table until nearly eleven. It was after midnight when eight of us hopped into cabs for what we thought would be a furtive late-night excursion to the beach. Not the case — the coastal restaurants and clubs were just starting to fill up, and the beach was full of lovers and groups of friends laughing and wading into the waves. The eight of us enjoyed our first glass of cava by candlelight on the patio of a seaside bar, where in every direction there were beautiful people enjoying dinners even later than ours. Then we went home exhausted, feeling like the uncoolest people in Barcelona for having retired when the night was apparently still so young.

Since then, you could say we’ve all taken the vacation mentality a bit further than the Catalonians do. Over-compensation, I guess. We students have been gallivanting around from charming Gothic plaza to charming Gothic plaza, going out dancing at clubs like the super-trendy Sala Razzmatazz, and occasionally lamenting the fact that Deadmau5 only plays in Ibiza on Wednesdays. (Yes, the middle-class, public-school kid in me is gagging a little.) But just around the corner, life will get a whole lot more difficult when university classes start and I suddenly have a major to work toward. Which is precisely why I’m taking advantage of all this, right here and right now, before it’s time to buckle down and take a lesson from the good people of Barcelona who manage to make a vacation of every free moment and an opportunity out of every working one.

Does it matter yet that I still haven’t bothered to purchase power converters, or a decent cell phone plan? Or groceries, for that matter? Not yet, no. I’ve decided those all those real-person things will become necessary exactly four days from now. One week in. That’s when my real life in Europe will start.

But until then, there’s sunshine to be basked in, sand to be squished between the toes, wine and feasts to be enjoyed, and more glorious Barcelona to be explored. In the meantime, I’m on vacation.