City of Thieves

I went running today; obviously my shirt was popped off. Since I didn't have a rout or plan I decided to still bring one with me in case something went down. At one point I stopped to tighten up the laces, and I still had my shirt. Two blocks later I noticed it was gone. I ran back and did not see it on the ground. I checked all the trash cans - no luck. Furthermore I would like to thank the citizens of this town for saying nothing when my shirt fell out. YOU KNOW WE'RE LIVING IN A SOCIETY... And now some bastard is walking around with my t-shirt on.

This whole city is filled with a bunch of thieving, twisted bastards. The same thing happened with my keys a while ago. I was working, dropped them and I knew within 50 yards where they should be, no luck. I checked the city lost and found 3 weeks after I lost them, no luck.

I just don't get it; Regarding the keys, it takes more effort to pick them up and do something ass hole-ish with them than to just leave them on the ground. How pathetic is your life that you get your kicks by doing something weird with someone else's keys. The shirt is just weird. I mean I was rocking it all day in the sun and had it down my pants during a run. Who would want to wear that. BCN is a fun city but what the fuck is wrong with the people who live here? I don't know.

*No related pictures to the post, images are from the best week ever, bro.

Ibiza

As many of you know Greg, Kelsi, Kyle and myself had quite the time last week. Greg and Kelsi to a greater extent. Either way I am not going to try to do the trip justice on here. If you would like some details I will do my best to sift through the blackout to give you some specifics.

The Biggest Party in the World

Well guys and gals, Spain won the World Cup and I can safely say Kyle and I were at the biggest party in the world last night. But lets back track an extra day to let you know whats been going on.


I have no idea why but my short term memory is totally fucked. As a result I will give you a few highlights. On Saturday kyle was hosting a pub crawl with one of our buddies Alex. I tagged along to get drunk and meet some random people. I had heard stories that if you go on those as a host/just take tourists out with you then they buy you drinks. This proved to be very true. I was sitting in the bar and within 10 minutes people were coming up to me to talk. For some reason people are very impressed/envious if you tell them you are just living in BCN. This envy resulted in me being bought about 4 tequila shots at the first bar. Ill sum up the night by saying I had a good time and got wasted. It was our buddy Ben's birthday and we all went out after the pub crawl was done around 2. I went into survival mode around 4. Saturday night done and done.


I woke up Sunday morning in my flatmate Silje's (pronounced Celia) room. She is dating this dude and spends most nights there so Kyle and I have been alternating sleeping in her room since its nicer than both of ours and has a breeze which is incredible when you have no AC. Anyway, it was about 4PM and I woke up pretty hung over to an icing. My other flatmate Armanda decided it would be a good way for me to start the day.


Kyle and I both felt like shit from the night before but we had to get it together for the World Cup Finals. We finished a bottle of Loch Ness whiskey. Its bottom shelf - 5 euro whiskey. After that we headed down to Plaza Espana to watch the World Cup on a screen outside. Again we met up with our buddy Alex and a few of his flatmates. It was at this point that we joined the biggest party in the world. After 90 minutes of regulation play and 30 of OT Spain finally won the World Cup. I really cant even explain how loud and crazy it was. I jumped in a fountain fully clothed with a ton of other people and we just generally celebrated in Pl. Espana for a while. After about an hour the crowd started to descend on the rest of the city. We hit a few bars on the way to the beach and kept our drunk up. One of the bars was a gay bar so there was an interesting crew in there. Meanwhile I'm popped off since my clothes are soaking wet, and frankly I take every opportunity I get to pop my shirt off in public.


Long story short I jumped in another fountain in Pl. Catalunya, I was the only one who did that and frankly it was gross and I'm surprised I did not get arrested. Slowly buy surly we made our way to the beach hung out there for a bit and embraced the last few hours of the celebration. It was an epic night. I can't believe we were here for it.

4th of July celebrations....and icing

Dave and I decided to enjoy our 4th of July like any normal American, by waking up and eating red meat (we think it was ground beef). I made sure to purchase Heinz ketchup, French's mustard (which is American), Ruffles, and Dave used Oscar Meyer bacon on his burger and had a Sprite. We continued our day of Americanism by heading to the beach and picking up some Budweiser along the way. Of course we felt the need to shotgun the majority of our beers in the name of our country.


After depleting our stockpile I went to purchase more beer. Dave didn't see the need to come with, thus exposing himself. I returned with more Budweiser and a Smirnoff ice for Dave. I thought despite being in Barcelona I could keep up with current American trends on our country's independence day. Needless to say people around us looked puzzled when Dave got on one knee and took an ice to the face. By the way I'm anticipating some pics from our friends across the pond of some epic icing.


Hope you all had a happy and very American 4th of July. This one's for LeBron.

Mike is Back

I can only assume that this is the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson's death. I think in terms of honoring the man Greg, Pat & myself set the bar pretty high. However today I saw some people taking a shot at the title.

Right now its about 10:45 on Friday night and I am admittedly being lame and not going out. I was in Plaza Catalunya less that 20 minutes ago reading a book about the founding fathers (I'm a patriot) when i noticed a large gathering in the center of the plaza. Normally I just avoid these things because its either political demonstrations and I would probably not agree with whatever communist propaganda they are promoting or some tour group. Anyway, as I sat and read the group broke out into a rendition of "We are the world." They were not just singing but swaying and clapping as well. I ignored this at first then they started singing again so I got up and walked over.

In the middle of the plaza, probably 15x15 feet there were posters of Mike arranged on the ground with candles all over the place. This collage was being flanked on all sides by maybe 50-80 people, many of whom were dressed, in some way, like Mike. I saw lots of silver gloves, the hat he always more, etc. I watched on for a while while these people sang and got into in before finally leaving. I wish I had my camera, but no such luck.

Unique Barcelona laws

Ok here is a breakdown of some laws in Barcelona thanks to a tour guide from my bar.

*It is legal to carry up to 50 grams of weed on you as long as it is in a single bag (multiple makes you look like a dealer).
*You can carry 2 grams of speed or other forms of amphetamines.
*You can carry 2 pills of ecstasy.*It is legal to smoke weed on your way home or in the vicinity of your home. Obviously this one is pretty hard to enforce. People just smoke weed but do it discretely, i.e. not in front of cops or busy areas. Pretty much everybody smokes spliffs here.
*It is illegal to drink in public however this law is not enforced at all in the summer. Almost everybody is drinking on the street at night, even in front of cops, and they don't care at all. Also, Pakistanis sell it in the street for 1 euro/can. I can't emphasize how many times I get asked "cerveza/beer" when walking around, there are tons of them all over the city. If you go to the beach or Las Ramblas you will get asked dozens of times, but the beer is always cold.
*It is legal to be naked in Barcelona as long as you have shoes on haha. Strange but true, there is a naked beach as well. I have heard stories about a guy called the elephant man. Apparently he has elephant ears tattooed on both sides of his torso and obviously he is well hung, which is the trunk. Thankfully I haven't encountered him yet.
*The legal age of consent in all of Spain is 13. Surprisingly there aren't that many teen pregnancies. The tour guide told me the theory was since they're allowed to do it at a young age it isn't that big of a deal to them. Not sure about this but something about it is working.
*In reference to a previous post a thief can't be charged unless he steals over 500 euros. Often thieves will take just the money and leave your bag/purse/wallet and just keep the cash. This prevents them from taking ipods, cameras, etc that would push them over that limit. It also provides incentive to repeatedly steal because there is basically no punishment, which results in them getting even better with more practice. Also, the Spanish police do basically nothing so that helps.

(No relevant pics so here is a shot of Gaudi's Casa Batlló. It was designed as a house for a wealthy aristocrat and is now a museum.)

kms

Smartest Guys in the Room

Thats right, we're the smartest guys in the room. Last night we went to our first quiz night. It was supposed to start "between 21:30 & 22:00. Per usual it did not start till closer to 23:00. Anyway you could have as many as 8 people on your team, which most people did, we went with a solid foursome tho. 1 American (Me) 1 American/Brit hybrid (Kyle) & 2 Brits (Adam & Pete - bros we play futbol with).

While we were waiting for this game to get underway they MC walked around and passed out the paper you answer the questions on. Our piece of paper was some girls resume who had applied for a job at their bar. Naturally our team name was "Give Anais a Job". Apparently this was good karma for us because after the 4 round quiz we were in first place. But it was not over yet. Another team somehow managed to get on our level. At this point we went to sudden death. We had to nominate one member of our team to go up to the front of the bar and face off against someone from the other team. You always gotta play your hybrid out of the rough so we sent young sully in there.


Question: "At its deepest point, how deep is the Pacific Ocean in feet?" (closest answer wins)

Our boy Kyle wrote in his answer 33,000 feet. The other bro we think put something below 15,000 feet. Anyway the answer was thirty five thousand feet and change. As soon as the quiz master read the answer Kyles hands went up in the air like a champ, not even knowing what the other dude had written yet. Naturally our team went nuts and started screaming. Luckily for us it was not even close because that could have been embarrassing. Nevertheless we won a 125 eruo bar tab.

With this sudden windfall of cash (the only money we have made thus far) we started buying rounds. For some reason we were chugging them and drinking pints through straws. I cant really make sense of it now but it was happening. Anyway, we were on a huge high from winning our first tango with quiz night that we decided to keep the party going. We left the quiz bar and went to an absinthe bar in El Ravel (mentioned in an earlier post - sketchy as hell). Not the smartest move since it was now around 1:30. Anyway we got there alive and started drinking Absinthe. I had never had it before and we all ended up getting pretty fucked up. Kyle was asking the bartender if he knew what a flaming Dr. pepper was, he didn't so Kyle explained. Then the bartender called him a pussy and said you burn away all the alcohol that way....


Anyway we left the bar and went home at this point. Around 3:00. Of course at some time between 21:30 & 3:00 our landlord changed the locks on our door. GREAT! I cant even begin to understand that move. Anyway we pounded on our door until someone woke up to let us in. Not only did one of our flatmates wake up, but the crazy bitch across the hall did too. She is some senile old woman who literally just spends hours a day Screaming. I will record it sometime because its horrifying and it wakes me up at like 7:00 many a morning. Anyway Kyle and I started screaming at her while we were locked in the hall way to "SHUT THE FUCK UP". Finally we got let it and passed out. about 5 hours later the old bitch started up again. I was on minimal sleep and at that point had to get up for work. I decided to start today the same way I ended yesterday, by screaming out my window at this woman to shut up. All in all an excellent night.


*No pictures from last night, just some random ones*

Pray for me

Ok this story is just so weird I had to share it with all of you.

I was checking my email this morning while nursing the hangover detailed below. As I'm catching up on emails and chatting with some people I was asked an interesting question. Below is a transcript from a conversation I had with Jenna Shission this morning.


Jenna: also, is there some ailment you are experiencing that i should know about?
me: I had food poisoning
why do you ask?
Jenna: oh i heard from my sources that people were praying for you at church
me: wtf
Jenna: so i thought id get right to the source
lol
me: what people are praying for me?
i mean i guess thats cool but im pretty healthy
Jenna: lol maybe not...
me: who told you that
Jenna: maybe god knows before you..
lol my sources
me: ok...
not sure why this would be a secret
Jenna: haha
bridget
me: at what church
Jenna: not sure actually
me: hmm, well dont say anything to her. i like the idea of having the church on my side
Jenna: lool
scamming the church i see?
me: well im not scamming anyone, I did not start the rumor.
I'm just asking you to keep insider info to yourself.
Jenna: lol alrighttt

So don't worry team, I'm A-okay.

It's a Tuesday

This morning is bringing back memories of a certain Dinks waitress who had so much unmasked disdain for me that it hurt. Just to bring everyone up to speed; a few years ago - I believe it was - Chaney, Greg, Kyle & I got wasted on a mixture of Brandy, natty and probably something else. This was on a Monday night. Tuesday morning we went to Dinks for breakfast and when the waitress asked how we were doing i replied "A little hungover" to which she said "It's a Tuesday" and walked away.



Today marked another Tuesday morning hangover after a Monday night binge. It is now 3:42PM and I have essentially not gotten out of bed yet today. Last night the plan was to go to La Champagneria with two of our flat-mates for some dinner and drinks. La Champagneria is a hole-in-the-wall bar where they serve really cheap, but good, cava (champagne from Catalonia) and you have to buy tapas for every few glasses you get. The sandwiches and Cava are excellent. It's standing room only and you have to yell your order at the bartender. It's pretty cool but we didn't go there at the best time as it was way too crowded. That was supposed to be the plan for the night, go there and come home.



Well one glass lead to another and when the bar closed at 10:30PM (its more of a restaurant) we decided to go to Chupitos and rip shots. They have hundreds of shots you can choose from most of them involve fire, you being dressed in some costume etc.etc. etc. One of the shots we took involved drinking some kind of green alcohol that sat in a pool of more alcohol through a straw, then the bartender would shove a glass in your face and you would basically huff vaporized alcohol. It was an intense experience. After 3 shots, and a lot of fun, we decided to keep things going.

We went to a few random pubs for a beer or a shot and finally we were going to go to a club but kyle and I were not meeting the dress code. At this point we tried to walk home which should have been a simple enough task. Somehow we did a massive loop around the city and ended up literally right back where we started and hour and a half earlier.



At this point we met back up with our flat-mates and decided to bus it home. The metro had closed around midnight but there was a bus system than ran all night. Anyway, only one of us made it on the bus, surprisingly enough it was not kyle or I.. At this point we wondered around the city for a few more hours met some random dudes from the US and somehow got into some heavy discussions about politics, religion etc. All the while we are buying individual beers off dudes on the street. Now its about 4:30ish and we part ways.



Finally we are on our way home again. We walked by a metro station and realized that they open at 5:00AM, so we waited the 5 minutes. En Route back to our place Kyle and our other flat mate Sebastian decide they are going to go get some McDonalds. I was not up for it so they got off the metro to find some food (unsuccessfully) and I came home to pass out. Kyle and Sebastian made it back at some point after me and I guess called it a night. Oddly enough when kyle woke up this morning he had 42 missed calls from Sebastian. 42. I tried to take a picture of his phone but it did not come out. The night started innocently enough but things definitely got out of hand.

***Update*** Apparently last night Sebastian realized he had lost his keys after him and kyle went to get food. He went back to be beach at sometime between 5AM and 6AM to look for them. He did not find them and was locked out hence the 42 calls to kyle.

Boiler Room

Around 4:30 Kyle and I were heading out the door for a meeting, thanks to my buddy J.Sully (not Kyle's dad) regarding a potential job, when I got a phone call. Earlier in the week I had applied to a financial sales job. I'm not exactly sure what I would be selling but I need work so it seemed like a smart play.

The number comes into my phone as restricted. I answer and the bro starts talking to me telling me he had read my resume and wanted to talk for a minute. It sounded promising at first so I asked Kyle to hold up when we hit a relatively quit part of the street.

First he asks me if I have any sales experience, so I lied and told him I had done some insurance sales and some bull shit telemarketing. After that I told him about some other experience I have and he seemed to think that would suffice.

To this point essentially all I had done was lie and reiterate stuff that he already knew. Now generally speaking in terms of finances and investments I feel much of the responsibility falls in the hands of the investor not the manager / salesman. My fiscal conservatism and pro capitalism mindset can be a flaw in the rarest of occasions, this happened to be one. The first real question the guy asked me, that could not be answered by my resume, was:

"Would you have trouble selling something to a client that benefits you financially while hurting them financially?" I told him thats an ethical question and then responded by saying: "So your asking me if I would be okay selling an asset to a client that I know will adversely effect them financially while befitting me financially at the same time?" The dude tells me that I am correct and have the gist of things. I told him I'm not sure I would be cool with that and that it's not even legal in the US. He then replied "Well this probably isn't for you then." At which point we exchanged pleasantries and ended the call.

Maybe I'm getting soft but I do not want to be barred from the financial services industry for life as a result of financially crippling some Spaniards.

Pre-Gaming Like Bastards

As you all know, drinks in any city are way over priced. Factor in the exchange rate, and the additional club surcharge on drinks, and you get the idea. With that in mind Kyle and I have been pre-gaming like bastards.


The liquor selection is pretty standard, and on a typical Friday & Saturday we go down that road. So far it has been what you would expect; either J&B, Johnny Red, Jägermeister (we live with Germans and they love it), and occasionally some sort of vodka. Kyle & I have gotten blacked out a few too many times already. These blackouts include mixing liquor, beer, & wine/champagne (sometimes) and I have yet to wake up hungover.

I cant really make sense of this. From what I have been told, the wine and beer does not have preservatives in them, but I didn't think liquor had any in it anyway. Whatever the reason, it's nice not being hungover.

Champagne is called Cava here, since, as all you world travelers know, it's technically only Champagne when its from Champagne, France. Anyway, we have not had too much of that but apparently a lot of people party with just Cava...

Beer. The beer selection is rather strange. Spain is not known for its beer which is probably why the selection is lacking and sub-par. Everywhere has Estrella, which from what I can gather is like miller lite. Other than that its anyones guess. Each supermarket has their own beer, some are ok, most are mediocre. Also, beer comes in 10.5oz cans but the alcohol is always 5+%. We have only found 12oz Amstel's and they are the cheapest in the store. Oddly enough you see people drinking all day every day, mainly beer too...


That brings me to my next point. They dont understand buying in bulk here. They package beer, water, pop, everything much like you would see in the U.S. The only difference is you can tear open packages and buy individual cans. This very act got myself and a few others banned from Giant Eagle for life cerca 8th grade. The point is, you can buy the whole package, 12 beers and they charge you as if you are buying 12 individual beers. There is zero price break. I could buy all the beer in the store and not see 1 cent of price relief. Its unreal. This picture represents the closest thing to functional capitalism and commerce in this country (and their pricing system is still totally fucked)

I could rant for hours about the inefficiencies in the Spanish economy, infrastructure, work ethic, and their lack of desire to engage in commerce. It really is no wonder they are pegged to be the next Greece. Spend one week here and you will have no doubt. But I digress, back to the point. All stores and markets are open strange hours and technically you cannot buy alcohol after 10pm - period. This rule of course means nothing if you find the right shops. The right shops are generally convenient store type places owned and operated by Pakistani guys.

Once the alcohol is secured We are generally partying at our flat till sometime between 1 & 2 then going to a club, bar or the beach. The beach is awesome and if any of you come to visit we will have a beach party.

Just a couple of bro's happy to be there...

TEFL 2010

post redacted

Food

If I had my camera on the ready at all times this post could consist of probably 100 pictures by now - Mexican Ketchup, massive pig legs, with some hair still on it etc. Unfortunately that has not been the case, here are a few of the highlights.


Frozen pepperoni pizza from the store - its not DiGiorno





Lemon Lime Gatorade - its not the right color, taste is close - just take my word for it.

Finally, a few hours ago Kyle and I were bored out of our minds, so we decided to head to the store. On our way back after buying chips, juice, and meatballs we found a store that was selling just fruits and vegetables. Realizing that out diets were lacking some essential components we popped in (not off) to pick up some apples and bananas. As I was checking out I noticed a big basket of cherries being sold next to the register. Up to that point I had never eaten a cherry so I figured it was time to cross something off my bucket list. I grabbed on cherry and placed it in front of the cashier who laughed at me and just handed it to me instead of weighing it (freebee). This is her.

Wednesday

Well the TEFL course Kyle and I have been taking has come to an end. We finished our grammar test (yes we're in 4th grade) and are now free. I can safely say I have never spent a month in "class" and learned less than I have this month. Anyway, we decided to get things going after the test - noon-ish.

First stop - Metro Bar. At the Espanya metro stop there are not one, but two bars to satisfy the needs of any alcoholic. Drinking at this bar has been a running joke since we first saw in 4 weeks ago. I dont know who would chose to drink at a bar in the Metro when there are other options, and when you dont have to wait more than 5 minutes for your train. Anyway, just before 12:30 Kyle and I started drinking. So far we had each eaten a chocolate croissant and had water. First drink of the day - Double shots of J&B. Those went down nicely. At this point we realized the benefit of the metro bar. 2 double shots of J&B cost us 5 euros. Since most of the people reading this have pretty solid math skills you can see that this is a good deal.

After taking down a few J&B shots we headed home to dump out backpacks and get some food. 40 minutes and one painfully long metro ride later and we're home. While we waited for the pizza to cook (clearly there is no preheating going on) we decided to shotgun some malt liquor. Volt Damm is 7.2% and tastes pretty bad. Unfortunately I don't have after-shots of us in pain but those did not go down well. It is now 2:00 and we are heading out to keep this party going.

Kyle - 1, Dirty thief - 0

Let me break it down for you. On Saturday night we went to a bar called L'Ovella Negra (The Black Sheep) which has mess hall style seating and an old gothic look to it. We got home at about 5am so we were pretty hungover/tired on Sunday. We decided to make the trip to downtown Barcelona to meet up with a couple friends from school and shoot the shit.

We're casually sitting in a Starbucks in a pretty touristy area, but the 'bucks isn't busy. We're perched in the back corner. I have my back facing the rest of the store. Dave and I both have our backpacks sitting right in front of our legs. We're casually talking amongst each other and have been for about a half an hour. I look down and realize my backpack is gone, a woman sitting next to me starts to say something to me in Spanish and I instantly start sprinting out of the store like a bolt of lighting, I kid you not. Dave can attest to my reaction time. It took me about half a second to figure out what happened and I started running, fully ready to spear whatever bastard took my bag (which has my camera, ipod, sunglasses, and 1 of my credit cards).

I shove the glass door open and almost hit somebody in the face and head down a very populated street. I see a woman in an alleyway flagging me down. I sprint over and I see my bag sitting on the ground in the alley, unopened. This is where my mom comes in. She bought me 3 small, bright green TSA locks for my luggage before I left. I have been using one of them for my backpack religiously as we had been warned about the how crazy theft is in Barca, so my backpack was locked. For a reference point, there was an article about a guy who had been caught stealing 240 times but never punished. There is basically no consequence to getting caught so people never stop.

My adrenaline was pumping at this point and I really wanted to hunt down whoever took it and get a few shots in. Especially because it was during the day and everybody in the street would recognize what had happened and wouldn't care what I did to this guy. But when I saw my bag I stopped instantly because I saw the green lock. I knew for sure that nothing could have been taken and it wasn't worth my time. He could have kept the bag and cut the strings that the lock was attached to later, but thankfully he didn't. All this had occurred before Dave and our friends knew what had happened. They just saw me sprint out of the store without any idea what was going on and caught up with me by the time it was all over.

There was a big window in Starbucks where we were sitting, which also faced the alley where my bag was. I think the person saw me through the window sprinting after them which caused them to drop it and run. It was a combo of that and the lock, which prevented instant access to my stuff. I am lucky to have come away losing nothing and I'm very grateful to my Mom for buying me those locks and the two good samaritans. To summarize, if you do come visit us, don't bring anything important.

Survived Another Day

Our first month is coming to a close quicker than I could have imagined. We are still looking for jobs and need to find an apartment before we get kicked out in two weeks. This brings me to today's adventure.

As a preface: We have been emailing all over town trying to find places to live. On Saturday we spent an hour on the metro getting to one place that we did not even vist. It became apparent fairly quickly that we were way too far away from anything, and that we were in a wildly underdeveloped area. The landscape was a mesh of barren fields of dirt and trash & apartment buildings under construction. There were no restaurants, no supermarkets nor any other indication that commerce was alive in this area. Combine that with the fact that the lessor was a total louse. He completely misrepresented the area and could not give directions to save his life.

I walked away from that experience thinking I had learned something about apartment hunting in BCN - I was wrong.

Today neither Kyle or I had to teach so we went to check out two other places. The neighborhood seemed nice enough, at least until you walk 6 inches off the main strip. Once we ventured off the main street we wondered down an ally that just as easily could have been plucked out of Mogadishu, Beirut or Yerevan. There we sketchy dudes holding clipboards and clearly keeping stock of their peep of hoes working up and down the dark ally. All of the buildings were no longer using Spanish or Catalan in their store-fronts, but rather Arabic. Everyone we saw was of middle easterner or African descent. Also, the allies we were walking down were about 20 feet wide. It was dark and damp and there was a potpourri of BO, feces, death, weed and crime in the air. Although it was 3:00PM somehow they managed to create the feeling of dusk. However, had it been dusk I doubt we would have walked out of there. You could feel the contempt and confusion lingering. It was fairly apparent that people like us (Americans / non-terrorists / non-criminals) do not go to their neighborhood.

I wanted to take a picture but I value my life enough to keep this memory in mind only. Plus I'm pretty sure the protocol in those burrows is to cut your arm off to get your camera. Anyway I do not have any original art for this post. If you have seen Lord of War, think about the scene when he is in Africa and does brown brown for the first time and is wandering around the streets. It was like that but with large buildings all around rather than huts.

Food breakdown so far

Alright the food here is interesting to say the least. Here are the highlights so far.

There is ham and pork everywhere. People absolutely love it. They even having a saying that if you're a vegetarian you still eat pork because its that important. We have yet to seen any sign of turkey and even chicken is relatively rare. There is also ham hanging from every other store in the window. Ham = King, Greg I'm sure you're salivating.

Olive oil comes by the gallon and the largest juice container we could find has about 6 drinks worth it in. Need some damn juice people. Olive oil > Juice. People can't handle spice here, period. I used some red pepper spice tonight and Miriam said she couldn't eat it because it was so hot. I can't stress enough how mild it was.

I'm not proud of it but we had McDonald's at the airport. At this point we just needed any kind of food. Their most popular meal is the CBO (Chicken Bacon Onion). Not sure how a vegetable makes it into the acronym. It comes on a square sesame seed bun. Also the menu is in order just like in the US except they don't have numbers for their combo meals so its pointless.

They love mayonnaise, they don't have single cold drinks in the grocery store, shopping carts are 50 cents, milk mainly comes in a box, and the grocery stores reek of nasty fish I can't begin to describe. Finally here is the biggest refrigerated vending machine I've ever seen. It was in the metro station.

First Weekend Done & Done

Yes this is human foosball and yes the little kid in the green just got blasted in the face by the ball.

I will highlight some of the finer points of the weekend. We went out for drinks pretty much right when we got out of class around 1:00. Friday was Diada de Sant Jordi here in Spain - celebrated by guys giving girls roses, and girls giving guys books. This added a interesting vibe to the streets. After lunch and a bit of a walk we met up with some other friends from class. This time at a gay bar.

I think I speak for both kyle and I when I say we were pretty taken aback at what the bathroom held for us. The urinal was comparable with one you would find at a football stadium - a long metal trough basically. This particular trough-urinal was modified with an angled mirror that was about chest high. What made this mirror different from other mirrors you may find in a bathroom, is that this mirror was a. chest high over a urinal and b. angled back down at your junk. Anyway as the night pressed on Kyle and I headed back to our house to drop off our bags and get changed (probably about 8:00pm).

The plan was to eat change and head out, we somehow ended up sleeping for two hours and then not actually heading back out till about 11. The night was fun but not too notable from then on out, we went to a few different bars with some friends, then ran to catch the metro which closed at 2:00am. Sadly we missed it and had to cab it home.

Saturday was solid, we walked for about 10 miles all over the city with some classmates - a beautiful day. Since the bars and metros are open all night, we did not go out till about 12:00. We started at a random bar where 3 of us split a huge liquor drink and chilled out. Then we floated around to a few different bars where some bro from Amsterdam kept trying to buy coke off of us - not sure why. Finally around 2 we wondered into a pretty cool looking bar and proceeded to black out.

One of the bartenders at this particular bar happened to be pretty interested in our friend Kyle. As a result our male bartender started to pour us free shots of Patrone. As the drinks kept flowing, and our bartender got more and more boned up over kyle (occasionally flashing him a wink - earning us free shots), the inevitable black out was fast approaching. At some point I found myself in a ¨conversation¨ with a young Spanish lady. Considering my Catalan (language spoken in Barcelona) is limited to numbers, and a select few breakfast items, I´m guessing I was just counting at this girl and maybe saying; egg, coffee, milk etc. Clearly this conversation did not progress.

At this point it was about 4:00AM and we were both fully blacked out. From what our classmates have told us, we took a cab to one of the girls places to drop her off, then we walked to the metro. We are both pretty certain that I was passing out on the metro and that I ran home from the metro. Either way we did not get home till about 5:30AM.

Sunday was spent in a borderline comatose state. I think each of us spent about an hour out of bed before 7:00pm (that hour was used for a food run).

Pics soon.

Key Required

I'm not sure why the ground floor is marked "0". I'm scared about what goes on down on floor -1. You need a key to get there. If I make it down and back you will be the first to know.
(This is from the elevator in our school)

I own a Dell

This is totally unrelated to anything, but if you're like me you stare at one of these two screens for about 30% of the time you have your computer on.

10 minute load screens:


Blue Screens of Death:


don't buy a dell.

As Promised: Sleeping Outfits

The mixture:
one part womens sweatpants
one part XL/Long white tee's
and for me, and extra part fleece v-neck, size - childs medium.

Trip Advisor

WARNING: for those of you who have not read this yet it is long and riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. I wrote it over the course of 3 days and threw it all together without editing. I am not going to take the time to make edits now. This is me appologizing.

Well it has been 4 days since we left the states and things have finally settled down. I have on different clothing and have been able to brush my teeth with a real toothbrush for the first time in nearly a week. Rest assured I had a toothbursh but it was like something you would find being handed out to children in a country where the average life span is equal to the percent of the population with AIDS (about 29, to paint a picture for you). Anyway, Our trip started at about noon on Saturday the 17th. I had just finished packing and was loading the car to head for the airport. I arrived a few minutes before kyle and got in line to check my bags. Apparently it's $50 for your second bag now, and an additional $125 if your bag exceeds 50lbs. Lovely - I have no spent $175 so my bags can fly along with my to Spain.

Our flight from Cleveland to Washington went off without a hitch. This one our flight was the only part of our travel plans that went as such. We were delayed leaving DC for unknown reasons. Since volcanic ash does not delay a flight for three hours any guess is as good as mine - I like to think the pilot forgot the keys. Eventually we got in the air. The plan was packed and within five minutes of sitting down I was reminded of the fact that my travels would in no way be pleasant or easy from this point forward. This reminder came in the form of a screaming baby. Why people bring babies anywhere is beyond me. I can say with confidence that when I have kids I will not take them on vacation until they are old enough to drive. As the flight pressed on over the Atlantic there was redeeming aspect - our flight attendant. Now let me stop you all right there. Unfortunately it was not a hot young girl, that would have been nice but sadly not the case. However the dude who was working our section did have one good trait - he gave us free liquor. Also, the airline we were flying was "Aer Lingus" thanks Ireland. As we pressed on and Murpheys law really had time to kick in. Our flight into Madrid landed as our flight to Barcelona was supposed to be departing. As a result we were not too worried we just figured we would grab the next flight. It was at this point that we realized the Barcelona airport had been shut down due to volcanic ash - thanks Iceland - and we could not get a flight at all that day.

We wondered around the Madrid airport in anguish over the 100 yard long lines to talk to someone. Things could not get any worse, or so we thought. With McDonalds being the only option for food, I felt my balls getting destroyed by another kick from God. We ate some food and tried to formulate a plan. Once we finished we went back to check out the lines. It appeared as tho there were two really long lines heading in opposite directions. Then we noticed that for some reason there were two counters open that no one was going to. We walked up to hopefully just get some answers and walked away with a bus ticket to Barcelona, estimated lenght of the bus ride: 7 hours. As we watched this young spanish girl try to control a crowd of raging spaniards, crying women, screaming children and disgruntled old people spirits sank lower. Frankly we wanted nothing to do with this bus nor the people on it. This girl had no idea what she was doing, and she was so small people were just yelling at her, plus she was a moron. Getting 40 people on the first bus took over an hour. It was like the BMV.

If it was not clear, we opted out of riding on the first bus. The second one that came was run by the same girl and she did not learn anything from the first go around. We ended up getting on the bus and luckily driven to the trainstation. The airline ended up buying us train tickets which shaved about 4 hours off our travel time. Unfortunately we had to deal with little kids fainting in the train station and little kids screaming on the train. Some dude was on there with his wife and son. I have never seen a kid that was such a sad excuse for a son. The kid would just wine and cry all the time. or he would run around and yell. I had some pretty graphic thoughts going needless to say.

We finally pulled into Barcelona around 9:00PM Sunday night, barcelona time. That wound up being about 24 hours of traveling and we got in about 12 hours later than we were supposed to. A girl picked us up from the train station and shuttled us, sans luggage to the place we will be staying for the next 3.5 weeks. I forgot to mention, since all fligths into Barcelona were cancled we went without luggage for 4 days, I had been waring the same thing for 5 - kill me. Luckily the woman hosting us had some really ghetto toothbrushes and sleeping outfits (think Charlie Kelley - picture soon). Anyway its Wednesday afternoon, I finally have my luggage and and just finished teaching for the first time. Things seemed to have calmed down a bit. Anyway I realize my misery may not be the most entertaining read, however most of you - people i call my friends - probably get some sort of sick satisfaction out of my pain, love you guys.

So with that I´m going to sign out. Our first weekend is fast approaching, hopefully that will yield some more entertaining stories. Stay tuned, its going to be a big year.

P.S. sorry for the typos im sure are littering this and any future post. Spell check on these computers only catch spanish errors.

Final Countdown

6 days till departure.

It's Sunday, April 11- Masters Sunday- Tiger just sunk a solid shot from I don't know how far out, not sure why people doubted him. I decided to take this opportunity to set this up while I nurse a lingering hangover from my night out in Columbus last night. I'm not sure what my internet situation is going to be for the duration of the trip so posts will most likely be infrequent. With that in mind hopefully the content will be top drawer.

For the first month Kyle and I will be shacking up with some woman out the outskirts of the city. This little inverse Threes Company set up will hopefully churn out some good stories. After the first month we will be directing a classroom full of impressionable minds and moving into our own bachelor pad. Rest assured we will promptly begin to put out a vibe. I will keep you all posted. Adios