La Vida España

I put up some new picutres in my Spain 2005 album.

Last night there was a huge party all over Barcelona to celebrate San Juan! Thousands and thousands of people went down to the beach to party and watch fireworks going off all night long! Lots of students from my school went and we had a great time talking and dancing from around 10pm to 4am. The temperature was perfect at the beach. I took a bunch of cute pictures of kids playing with sparklers like the one above. Since today is a holiday we have the day off from school.

I've been having a great time in school and living at my apartment close to the beach and I've decided to sign up for one more Spanish class and stay two weeks longer in the school's apartment. I will be taking classes through mid-July. After that I will have to find another apartment for the remainder of my time here. I also will need to find a job!

If you want to find swear words in any language, checkout Swearasaurus!

Last weekend I went on a tour with other students to the Salvador Dali Museum in Figueres, which is about an hour and a half bus ride from Barcelona. Afterwards we went to the beach at Torre Del Mar, which is a cute little costal town near to Figueres. The Dali museum was great! There were so many works of his that I've never seen that I loved. People thought he was a bit crazy. However there were also many paintings and drawings such as this one that show how much he loved his wife. The caption says, "Gala already walks like victory. My victory." He always presented her as being larger and much more beautiful than himself. It's very sweet. His art hides a lot of comlpex meaning and you see something different each time you look at it. For example in the painting in the background of this picture, you can see a rough image of Lincoln's head. However you don't see this at all when looking the paiting closeup. Actually, I didn't even notice it until I looked at the painting through the camera.

Í'm used to being the one who takes a lot of pictures, but this time I will be the model! The Spanish school I am attending has picked a handful of students to be models for a new brochure and website they are creating. So there will be a professional photographer next week taking lots of photos of us indivudually, in classroom settings, at a cafe, etc.

I find the social life here really fun. It's been a long time since I've been around so many students. Since everyone is away from home they are so nice and eager to meet other people. It's all quite temporary since people go home after a week, two weeks, or a couple of months. But that's fine since there are always new people to meet and have fun with. And if anything bad happens, it doesn't matter either since the situation will change soon enough. As a result I have found myself being much more patient and accepting of things that may normally bother me about how some people act. Also, I am hanging out with people of various ages and backgrounds that I wouldn't normally be seeing. Hopefully these new habits will stay with me when I go back home! Also, having some distance from my normal life is good for me now. Not that there's anything bad I needed to get away from, but there are a few things that I need to figure out how to deal better with.

All My Spain Pics

I've created an album here to where I'll keep uploading fun pics I've taken while in Spain. Please ignore the fact that my face is quite red in many of them :) Enjoy!

A Beachful Weekend

I've gone to three different beaches for the last three days. Yesterday I went with a couple of roommates and their friends to Sitges, a little town which is a half an hour train ride from Barcelona. The sand and water are nicer there than at the beaches in Barcelona and the town is pretty cute. It actually reminds me of small Nice a little bit. However, the beach in Barcelona is also great because it's just a fifteen minute walk from where I live.

Aaargh... I've been indulging too much with food and drink, like when I went to New York a couple of months ago. It's time to start a healthy routine to exercise and eat better.

A few roommates went home this past weekend to Holland and Sweden. One new person moved in but only for four days. It's interesting how temporary everything is. I meet new people and have a good time with them. But that may be only for the moment, a few days, or a few weeks until the situation changes again. Of course, people here also meet folks with whom they will keep in touch their whole lifetime.

Last week I met an American gal who lived and grew up the next street over from where I lived and grew up. It's so random to meet her in Barcelona since it was a very small town. She went to the same elementary school, high school, and had many of the same teachers. Because of that connection we both felt like we knew each other well.

I didn't finish all of my job work before I left. Even though it seems a bit silly to finish it up from Spain and my coworkers would understand if I didn't, I still feel the need to do it. It will bother me if I don't. I really like my job and the company where I work. Over the years my job there has given me the opportunity to do so many things I want to do, like travel and take this leave of absence. Yes, I definitely need to finish my work.

After only a week I've learned...

- how to have four hours of class after only three to four hours of sleep the night before
- how to drink more without looking silly (my darkening tan helps with that too)
- how to get to know new people quicker
- lots of facts, trivia, and mannerisms of various European countries
- that I definitely won't pick up smoking when I am here
- that the French use the phrase "fat like Americans"

My life has been so simple: school, going to the beach, eating, drinking, clubbing, and occasionally sleeping. During college I was very focused on two things: my girlfriend and schoolwork. Since most people I hang out with here are college age and think that I am around the same age, I'm getting another chance at the college experience that I didn't really have when I went to Berkeley. Spanish and those who visit Spain really know how to have fun. This is totally the mental break that I needed! For some reason I make my normal life so hectic but I think this trip will help me figure out how to simplify things.

Life in Spain

It's so nice! I've only been here for five days but it feels like so much longer since life here is so different from my life back home. Since I'm a student here and don't have a regular job, there's time to just sit in the park and talk and do nothing. In San Francisco I always made myself so busy that I could never really relax unless I took a trip outside of the city. I haven't done anything really touristy yet in Barcelona since I've done that stuff on previous trips to Europe in 2002 and 2003. Therefore I can really just relax and not think about seeing everything like on regular trips.

I'm slowing picking up a European English accent. In response I need to teach folks Californian English!

I've been learning how to pay attention in four hours of class after only four hours of sleep. The nightlife here is great, with tons of bars, restaurants, and clubs open late. I want to find places that play life music since the club music is all stuff I've heard before in clubs in the United States.

Some students here are staying with host families. While it is a great way to get to know more what regular life is like here, I'm really happy that I'm in an apartment with other students since I want to experience the young life. Most of the students here are in their early 20s and think that I am the same age. The students who stay with host families don't get as much exposure to the student social scene.

First Day of Class

Ahhh... to have the student life again. My written and oral Spanish test placed me into the Intermediate 1 Spanish class. There are four levels of classes at this school: Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, and Advanced. So, my four years of high school Spanish without much practice afterwards landed me smack dab in the middle of the program here. There is a lot of grammar and vocabulary that I've forgotten over time. When I've used Spanish while traveling, it's been just with simple vocabulary in the present tense. So now I have to relearn past and future tense, the subjunctive, etc.

The school has social and tour programs almost every day, which are great ways to meet new folks. It's really cool to meet people of such diverse backgrounds. And it's easy to converse with them since Europeans generally have to learn English well as a second language.

One funny thing I've learned from my flatmates is that Oreos don't exist in Sweden, so all of the Swedes here are addicted to them! Oh, and that students in Sweden all shop at Ikea just like students in California do.

My New Apartment!

This is where I'll be living for the next month. It's quite large with seven rooms, 2 1/2 baths, and a bunch of shared kitchen and living room space. Somehow I got the smallest room in the apartment, but it's a central location so that it will be easier to socialize with the roomates. Everyone is really nice and are from Sweden, Holland, and Korea. I've already gone to the beach with couple of my flatmates which is only about 15 minute walk southeast of the apartment. The school is about a 15 minute walk north of my place. Tomorrow I will be taking a written and oral placement test to see which class I will join. I haven't dealt with the technical details of Spanish in a long time so who knows how well I will do. I actually really don't care about which class I get into.

As expected, life here as a student seems like it will be really laid back. Well, other than the classes. My flatmate Minka says that they are four hours long with only one 20-minute break. And you have to pay attention all of the time or else you will miss what's going on and fall behind. Hopefully I can keep up. So perhaps I don't want to be in too hard of a class.

I've Arrived

The flights from LAX to Zurich and then on to Barcelona were totally uneventful. Every seat had it's own entertainment center with lots of movies on demand to choose from and Nintendo games to play. Now on to my new life in Barcelona, with an apartment, Spanish cell phone number, etc.

Going Away Party!

For the second time I managed to stuff a lot of people into my apartment for a party. My group of friends is getting to be more diverse and it was a lot of fun! Since I still had the borrowed studio lighting I setup a single light with a white backdrop to take pics of people. And I supplied everyone with Sharpies so that they could write cool going away messages for me. Checkout the pics here. We watched the KFOG Kaboom fireworks from the rooftop of my apartment building. I'm going to miss that little, pricey studio. But it's time to move on. When I eventually return to the Bay Area I'll probably get a shared flat somewhere, like the one I had in Portrero Hill.

I'm glad that my friends of various backgrounds and interests get along well. I've always hung out with different groups of people in high school, college, and afterwards. And at some parties in the past they haven't all mixed very well. But my last couple of parties have been great in that respect. After folks left the party a small group of us went to Club Q in the Tenderloin. While a little ghetto, I really like the club. People were actually having a lot of fun dancing and break dancing. I guess I've gone to too many pretentious clubs where people look really good but don't seem to be having a good time. And then we went back to my place and had part of the 7 pound chocolate cake afterwards.

Am I really leaving?

So a friend of mine made a silly suggestion that perhaps I'm not really going to Spain for many months and that I'm either not really going or only going for a short time! While I have enjoyed the attention and not having to pay for any meals or drinks in the last couple of weeks, all the work it took to finish work and move out of was almost too much. I'm not faking it :)