Well, I've made it. I'm back home in the good 'ole USA. Kind of hard to believe it actually.
Unfortunately, my very last weekend in Spain I got pretty sick. I got a real bad cold and was coughing and congested and everything, but I refused to let that bring me down any. I was determined to enjoy my very last weekend in Madrid. And I did enjoy it bygolly. It's been interesting dealing with the Jetlag and the sickness at the same time, but I think I'm getting pretty over the jetlag pretty well (as I type this at 4 pm in the afternoon, I realize how tired I feel).
On my very last night in Madrid, we got our favorite bartender to open up the bar for us and our friends. That was nice. It was a good way to spend our last night there - at our favorite spot with our favorite madrilenos.
I thought for the very last post, it might be nice to list some of my highlights, that is to say some of the things I'm really gonna miss about Spain, and perhaps some of the things I won't miss so much.
Under my NOT MISS category:
Having to make a 45 minute commute to school and back home twice a day. While I definitely saw some interesting characters on the metro, and it usually ran pretty well, I won't miss the overwhelming odd smells and bumping and grinding with random people. Not to mention the overwhelming guilt I feel when I finally find a seat in the car, and then feel bad when I see an older person and have to give it up. By the end, I just decided to keep my head down so that way as long as I didn't see there was an old person who wanted to sit, I couldn't feel bad about not giving up my seat.
Riding in cars is another thing I won't miss about Madrid. Whether I was riding with a taxista or with my host mom or what have you, I never felt quite so sure I was going to die as in those instances. It's not that they're bad drivers necessarily, it's just that they don't find it necessary to keep more than a couple centimeters between their cars and others when on the road.
Eating at odd hours. I think I'll get pretty accustomed to eating between 5-7 o'clock again as opposed to 8-10 o'clock. Not to mention lunch at 2 on an early day. I usually broke that rule and got lunch around 1ish or so usually, so that wasn't too bad.
Breakfast cereals. I have the same type of cereal, chocolate cup type stuff, just about everyday I was there. It wasn't always the same brand, but it was always the same shape, and always chocolate. Won't be missing those.
Have I mentioned my commute???
Milk...It absolutely floors me that they can not only STORE their milk in warm places, but then drink it warm as well. So gross. Thank goodness for nice, cold milk once again.
Brandy trying to steal my food at dinner time and then when I didn't relent, biting my slippers. Come on Brandy, Grow up.
Things I WILL miss:
Speaking Spanish all the time. My host mom and host brother didn't speak any English, so in order to communicate, I had to speak Spanish. It was either sink or swim, and I doggy paddled pretty well. Although it still isn't perfect, I got good enough that I could hold political debates with my host mom. While I can still speak Spanish, I wont have people around for the next little while at least, to speak it with.s
My host mom. She took such good care of me from the laundry to my room to my food. She would always sit with me at dinner (as long as I got home on time) and ask me about my day and talk to me about what was happening on the news. She was a really sweet woman and I'm gonna miss her a lot.
Pasapalabra. My new favorite gameshow. Not only was it a good way to practice Spanish, but it was pretty funny most of the time too. My host mom and I would watch that most nights together as well.
The food. I'm not gonna miss ALL Spanish food, but I'm gonna miss the really, really good stuff like Paella, Spanish tortilla and Bocadillos. Bocadillos are like subs, but there isn't anything in America quite like them. From the bread to Jamon Serrano, Bocadillos are different and Ill miss them quite a bit.
Brandy - whenever I got bored or lonely, there was always Brandy roaming around the house. Towards the end of the semester, Brandy and I would take to the streets and I would play fetch with him. If only Maggie would take a page from Brandy's book and learn to like playing fetch.
My other host brother and his family. They were so sweet and nice and I'm going to especially miss Marta. She was such a sweet little girl and funny too. We would sit and practice saying our colors together, or spelling our names. I'll miss her quite a bit.
Above all, I'm really gonna miss all my good friends I made there. They really took me and the rest of our group from HWS under their wings. They were always sure to invite us to whatever they were doing that weekend and would always make sure we had someone to talk to. They were just genuinely good people who enjoyed our company and we enjoyed their company as well. From talking about the NFL or the NBA to playing Rugby with a couple of them, there was always something interesting to do. I'll miss them all: Victor, Luque, Ben, Luis, Guilli, Jorge, Jesus, David, Patricia, Aida, Bustillo, Gumi, Cesar and the countless others that we had hung out with. It was tough saying goodbye to those guys our last night, but hopefully it wasn't a goodbye, only an hasta luego.
So with this final blog entry, I can oficially say that my Spanish travels, for the moment at least, are over. I want to thank everyone who made it possible, mainly my family, and all of you back home while I was in Spain who were thinking about me and supporting me. I learned a whole lot this semester and spent a truly unforgettable time in my life in Spain.
So with that, unless there are any other final questions or concerns that come up that I need to address, TuginSpain has officially come to an end.
Hasta luego...
Friday, December 18, 2009
Friday, December 4, 2009
Sigue Derecho
Ok, so I know it has been awhile since my last update, but I have a couple of good things to talk about that I don´t think anyone back home knows about really.
1. I played in a rugby game!!! It was interesting to say the least. The game started at 4 and I got there at three. Then there was the big identity crisis about how I was gonna get to play because I don´t have a national Id card nor an ID card for Autonoma Madrid. So being the real men of genious this Spanish Rugby team I played for are, decided that they just wouldn´t have me go into the team meeting where they meet the referees and show their ID. So I hid in the lockerroom and ended up being allowed to play. I´m not sure how it all worked out because I kind of stick out when I´m there, but for some reason I got in there.
So I was still a little confused about what exactly the rules are and the strategery of the game, so I just kind of ran around and when I saw a big pile of people ran and dived into the middle of it to make the pile go our way. That was good. But as for the rucks or the racks or whatever they call them, I´m not to fond of. I got absolutely dominated in them, but I think it´s because my support was the most unathletic kid they could´ve possible found in Spain. At least that´s the reason I´m going to tell myself that I didn´t do well in them.
But I played with my buddies I had met who are part of the school of information at Autonoma and we played against the med school team or whatever. We lost pretty handily but it was pretty fun. Although I couldn´t move my neck for the next few days. That was kind of rough.
2. For Thanksgiving our prof. had planned a trip down to Andalucia (Sevilla and Cordoba were the two places we went) and oh man, I love it there. I´m not sure if it´s because I made up my mind before even going there that I was gonna love it or if it was actually love at first visit. You can a lot of similiarities between Sevilla and Morocco. Better said, Sevilla is kind of like a civilized Morocco, although there is still a hefty language barrier because the accent there is roughhh.
Everywhere you went there you saw orange trees hanging around to. But first things first and that´s thanksgiving. We had that Thursday off for Thanksgiving and took the AVE, which is like a bullet train, to get there (it was like 3 hours). We got there and had a dinner planned with students from other various schools that were studying in Sevilla. I think there was like 4o or 50 of them. We ate at an Irish pub and the food was really quite good (although of course there wasn´t enough of it to be actually considered a thanksgiving meal for me) and I never realized how good sweet potatoe is. Oh man. It was fantastic! (keep that in mind mom)
After that we kind of had the afternoon free to walk around and explore and do stuff. I think I napped a lot. But anyways fast forward to the next day..............
I AM A STAR OF ANDALUCIAN TV! We took a tour with this guy who is also a TV host for some station based out of Sevilla and he asked our prof. if it would be ok if he could film us. So there was a camera guy with us all day following us around and they would stop randomly and ask us questions about what we thought about the city. And I was wearing my Hobart football shirt so he asked me about football and then about Soccer and who my favorite team was. Well, to be honest, I don´t care all that much about soccer still but if I had to pick a team it would be Sevilla, so I thought that would be a good answer. But he wasn´t pleased with that and made me say his favorite team, the other team based out of Sevilla, Real Betis. So I´m on Andalucian news saying, BETIS, MUCHO BETIS! (he told me to say that) and who knows what else. So that´s kind of cool.
Other than that, we saw a lot of cathedrals and mezquitas and what have you. I´m really over giant cathedrals. Going to 1 or maybe 2 is nice, but after 6 things get kind of repetitive. Although we did see Christopher Columbus´s tomb I think? So that´s cool?
But anyway, on to the other exciting news.....I met up with Miriam there! (foreign exchange student from Sevilla when I was in high school) So she took me and my buddy Harry out to a Discoteca there for one night and that was really cool. It was interesting to see the differences between discos there and the ones in Madrid. For one, the music they played in Sevilla was so much cooler. Flamenco is huge there, so in the clubs they played a lot of pop/techno/flamenco and that was really cool. Plus, all the girls there can dance flamenco. And dance in general. Like whoa.
Speaking of dancing, we were all going out to see a flamenco show the next night (flamenco is totally awesome by the way). So before leaving Miriam and her friends we told her that and her and all her friends just busted out dancing flamenco in the street it was so cool. They were dancing really good flamenco as well.
The show itself the next night was really awesome. It was in like a hotel lobby.....hard to explain I´ll have to steal some pictures and post them. But it was a really nice atmosphere and the dancing, singing, and guitar playing was absolutely fantastic.
So sorry that this post took so long to get posted, but I´ve had a crazy amount of work to do recently. There might be some things I´m missing so don´t be surprised if I post another update soon.
Crazy to think I´ll be leaving here in about 12 days. Seems like just yesterday I was walking into my host familys house and getting mauled by Brandy. I´m gonna miss a lot of stuff, and I´m gonna try to plan a Super Sunday Spanish fun day where I do as many typical things that one Madrileñan has to do, such as go to the Rastro one more time (if its open), go to Retiro, go to the Prado, eat some Spanish Tortilla or Paella, walk to the end of Metro Line 1, and then hop on the only metro line I haven´t been on yet.....the 11. The 11 is so going down.
Ok, hope all is well and Í´ll be seeing everyone soon!
1. I played in a rugby game!!! It was interesting to say the least. The game started at 4 and I got there at three. Then there was the big identity crisis about how I was gonna get to play because I don´t have a national Id card nor an ID card for Autonoma Madrid. So being the real men of genious this Spanish Rugby team I played for are, decided that they just wouldn´t have me go into the team meeting where they meet the referees and show their ID. So I hid in the lockerroom and ended up being allowed to play. I´m not sure how it all worked out because I kind of stick out when I´m there, but for some reason I got in there.
So I was still a little confused about what exactly the rules are and the strategery of the game, so I just kind of ran around and when I saw a big pile of people ran and dived into the middle of it to make the pile go our way. That was good. But as for the rucks or the racks or whatever they call them, I´m not to fond of. I got absolutely dominated in them, but I think it´s because my support was the most unathletic kid they could´ve possible found in Spain. At least that´s the reason I´m going to tell myself that I didn´t do well in them.
But I played with my buddies I had met who are part of the school of information at Autonoma and we played against the med school team or whatever. We lost pretty handily but it was pretty fun. Although I couldn´t move my neck for the next few days. That was kind of rough.
2. For Thanksgiving our prof. had planned a trip down to Andalucia (Sevilla and Cordoba were the two places we went) and oh man, I love it there. I´m not sure if it´s because I made up my mind before even going there that I was gonna love it or if it was actually love at first visit. You can a lot of similiarities between Sevilla and Morocco. Better said, Sevilla is kind of like a civilized Morocco, although there is still a hefty language barrier because the accent there is roughhh.
Everywhere you went there you saw orange trees hanging around to. But first things first and that´s thanksgiving. We had that Thursday off for Thanksgiving and took the AVE, which is like a bullet train, to get there (it was like 3 hours). We got there and had a dinner planned with students from other various schools that were studying in Sevilla. I think there was like 4o or 50 of them. We ate at an Irish pub and the food was really quite good (although of course there wasn´t enough of it to be actually considered a thanksgiving meal for me) and I never realized how good sweet potatoe is. Oh man. It was fantastic! (keep that in mind mom)
After that we kind of had the afternoon free to walk around and explore and do stuff. I think I napped a lot. But anyways fast forward to the next day..............
I AM A STAR OF ANDALUCIAN TV! We took a tour with this guy who is also a TV host for some station based out of Sevilla and he asked our prof. if it would be ok if he could film us. So there was a camera guy with us all day following us around and they would stop randomly and ask us questions about what we thought about the city. And I was wearing my Hobart football shirt so he asked me about football and then about Soccer and who my favorite team was. Well, to be honest, I don´t care all that much about soccer still but if I had to pick a team it would be Sevilla, so I thought that would be a good answer. But he wasn´t pleased with that and made me say his favorite team, the other team based out of Sevilla, Real Betis. So I´m on Andalucian news saying, BETIS, MUCHO BETIS! (he told me to say that) and who knows what else. So that´s kind of cool.
Other than that, we saw a lot of cathedrals and mezquitas and what have you. I´m really over giant cathedrals. Going to 1 or maybe 2 is nice, but after 6 things get kind of repetitive. Although we did see Christopher Columbus´s tomb I think? So that´s cool?
But anyway, on to the other exciting news.....I met up with Miriam there! (foreign exchange student from Sevilla when I was in high school) So she took me and my buddy Harry out to a Discoteca there for one night and that was really cool. It was interesting to see the differences between discos there and the ones in Madrid. For one, the music they played in Sevilla was so much cooler. Flamenco is huge there, so in the clubs they played a lot of pop/techno/flamenco and that was really cool. Plus, all the girls there can dance flamenco. And dance in general. Like whoa.
Speaking of dancing, we were all going out to see a flamenco show the next night (flamenco is totally awesome by the way). So before leaving Miriam and her friends we told her that and her and all her friends just busted out dancing flamenco in the street it was so cool. They were dancing really good flamenco as well.
The show itself the next night was really awesome. It was in like a hotel lobby.....hard to explain I´ll have to steal some pictures and post them. But it was a really nice atmosphere and the dancing, singing, and guitar playing was absolutely fantastic.
So sorry that this post took so long to get posted, but I´ve had a crazy amount of work to do recently. There might be some things I´m missing so don´t be surprised if I post another update soon.
Crazy to think I´ll be leaving here in about 12 days. Seems like just yesterday I was walking into my host familys house and getting mauled by Brandy. I´m gonna miss a lot of stuff, and I´m gonna try to plan a Super Sunday Spanish fun day where I do as many typical things that one Madrileñan has to do, such as go to the Rastro one more time (if its open), go to Retiro, go to the Prado, eat some Spanish Tortilla or Paella, walk to the end of Metro Line 1, and then hop on the only metro line I haven´t been on yet.....the 11. The 11 is so going down.
Ok, hope all is well and Í´ll be seeing everyone soon!
Friday, November 20, 2009
Meow goes the kitty....
Saturday.
We got ourselves up and ready to go by 10 the next morning. We found a place that was supposed to be awesome to go and visit for awhile called the Cave of Hercules, or the G´rotte d´Hercule. Something like that. Anyway, we got old frenchy to give us a ride out there and to come back and pick us up that night at the same spot around 5. We got there around 11 a.m. so that means for all you math majors out there we had 6 hours to kill.
Anyways, take a look at the pictures if you haven´t by now. The cave of Hercules is a cave that has the shape of Africa, more or less, carved out naturally in it. It´s really pretty down there and I think there is a nice picture of Heather Jade and I that we had some nice Spanish ladies take for us.
We went down into the cave and spent a lot of time looking at some of the little souveniers they had for sale. We then just kind of cruised around that area looking at random stuff.
That whole area, right on the coast of the Pacific was absolutely beautiful. They had a bunch of cafes/restaurants built into the sides of the caverns with a view of the ocean and it was just amazing. Around this time we decided to try and find some lunch.
We figured seeing as that between the three of us we're all very capable of speaking Spanish and more or less able to speak English, that we could find someway to get some food. But alas, all of the restaurants looking out over the ocean had waiters that only spoke french or arabic. And of course, no menus.
Eventually we found some place that had a guy that spoke a little spanish and we ordered a little bit of food. They tried to get us to buy some seafoody looking stuff but.....I wasn't sold that I wouldn't end up dead after eating it. So I got some french fries that were fantastic and the girls got a salady thing of tuna corn onion something or another. It was interesting.
After that we decided we would try to go see the lighthouse, although we didn't want to pay for a taxi. We weren't exactly sure how far away it was but we figured we'd walk it out. Oh were we mistaken.
We walked down the road in the general direction that we thought it was (we were right) for awhile. (By the way, the whole time I was just thinking, "Wow, I'm walking down a road in Africa. Neat.") We then stopped and asked a policeman for directions and he told us to cut down through a ditch more or less and walk along the ocean, it'd be faster. So that we did. It was kind of neat because it really reminded me of stuff Doug and I would do when we were younger out back at his house. We had to cut down through a slopey hill with a bunch of mud and a tiny stream at the bottom. Wasn't too bad - Jade only lost one sandal.
So we walked down the beach for awhile, played in the sand and found some seashells. Pretty nice. After about 45 minutes of this, we decided to give up on the lighthouse. We found a path back up the hill more or less. It was more like a sandy mountain that we had to hike. Thank goodness my football coaches never saw this because we would definitely be running that in the Springtime. That was a tough trek back up. But I digress....
Anyway after that we just went back to the Cave and then went up and sat at a cafe and watched the waves come into the shore. Pretty nice. Our taxista arrived right on time for us and we headed back to the hotel.
At the hotel we did some reading that our prof. had assigned (I think there are some pictures of us reading haha) and got ready to go out for dinner. We went to a cafe where yet again, no Spanish was spoken. But by this point we had learned just enough French to know what some foods were. So I ended up ordering some type of pizza...it was pretty good. The pizza is flatbread and without any tomato sauce. I had some type of sausage type beef on it and a little chicken. It was pretty good....but they gave a hot sauce as a side condiment and it was FANTASTIC. Not too hot and a nice flavor to it. The ketchup, however, leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, none of the Ketchup here is any good. I miss that.
Anyway, I think I have neglected to mention the population of cats in Morocco. I think if I had to guess I would say there are 20572509275 cats to ever 1 person. Absolutely unreal. They are everywhere. I was eating dinner at the restaurant that night and a cat came in through the window unnoticed by anyone. Sat right next to me for God knows how long. It wasn't until it's tail touched me and I nearly had a heart attack that I noticed.
Also, if you'll notice in a lot of the pictures of me, especially the ones in the museum, my hand doesn't leave my pocket. It's gripping that wallet the whole time. I wasn't trusting anybody. Even in the taxis that wallet was in my hand.
Also, in the airport, I met a bunch of kids from Syracuse. One of them is good friends with a kid I met back in Young Scholars Program in seventh grade. Crazy. What a small world it is...
Well, sorry to be so anti-climactic but there really wasn't much action after that first day. However, I am alive and that is what matters. I'm glad I went to Morocco.....but I'll manage if my live travels don't bring me back there again for a long, long, long, long time.
Next update....Rugby game???
That whole area, right on the coast of the Pacific was absolutely beautiful. They had a bunch of cafes/restaurants built into the sides of the caverns with a view of the ocean and it was just amazing. Around this time we decided to try and find some lunch.
We figured seeing as that between the three of us we're all very capable of speaking Spanish and more or less able to speak English, that we could find someway to get some food. But alas, all of the restaurants looking out over the ocean had waiters that only spoke french or arabic. And of course, no menus.
Eventually we found some place that had a guy that spoke a little spanish and we ordered a little bit of food. They tried to get us to buy some seafoody looking stuff but.....I wasn't sold that I wouldn't end up dead after eating it. So I got some french fries that were fantastic and the girls got a salady thing of tuna corn onion something or another. It was interesting.
After that we decided we would try to go see the lighthouse, although we didn't want to pay for a taxi. We weren't exactly sure how far away it was but we figured we'd walk it out. Oh were we mistaken.
We walked down the road in the general direction that we thought it was (we were right) for awhile. (By the way, the whole time I was just thinking, "Wow, I'm walking down a road in Africa. Neat.") We then stopped and asked a policeman for directions and he told us to cut down through a ditch more or less and walk along the ocean, it'd be faster. So that we did. It was kind of neat because it really reminded me of stuff Doug and I would do when we were younger out back at his house. We had to cut down through a slopey hill with a bunch of mud and a tiny stream at the bottom. Wasn't too bad - Jade only lost one sandal.
So we walked down the beach for awhile, played in the sand and found some seashells. Pretty nice. After about 45 minutes of this, we decided to give up on the lighthouse. We found a path back up the hill more or less. It was more like a sandy mountain that we had to hike. Thank goodness my football coaches never saw this because we would definitely be running that in the Springtime. That was a tough trek back up. But I digress....
Anyway after that we just went back to the Cave and then went up and sat at a cafe and watched the waves come into the shore. Pretty nice. Our taxista arrived right on time for us and we headed back to the hotel.
At the hotel we did some reading that our prof. had assigned (I think there are some pictures of us reading haha) and got ready to go out for dinner. We went to a cafe where yet again, no Spanish was spoken. But by this point we had learned just enough French to know what some foods were. So I ended up ordering some type of pizza...it was pretty good. The pizza is flatbread and without any tomato sauce. I had some type of sausage type beef on it and a little chicken. It was pretty good....but they gave a hot sauce as a side condiment and it was FANTASTIC. Not too hot and a nice flavor to it. The ketchup, however, leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, none of the Ketchup here is any good. I miss that.
Anyway, I think I have neglected to mention the population of cats in Morocco. I think if I had to guess I would say there are 20572509275 cats to ever 1 person. Absolutely unreal. They are everywhere. I was eating dinner at the restaurant that night and a cat came in through the window unnoticed by anyone. Sat right next to me for God knows how long. It wasn't until it's tail touched me and I nearly had a heart attack that I noticed.
Also, if you'll notice in a lot of the pictures of me, especially the ones in the museum, my hand doesn't leave my pocket. It's gripping that wallet the whole time. I wasn't trusting anybody. Even in the taxis that wallet was in my hand.
Also, in the airport, I met a bunch of kids from Syracuse. One of them is good friends with a kid I met back in Young Scholars Program in seventh grade. Crazy. What a small world it is...
Well, sorry to be so anti-climactic but there really wasn't much action after that first day. However, I am alive and that is what matters. I'm glad I went to Morocco.....but I'll manage if my live travels don't bring me back there again for a long, long, long, long time.
Next update....Rugby game???
Hola Coca Cola
Ok so to make up for not making the second part of my Moroccan adventures quick enough, I stole a bunch of pictures from Heather.
http://community.webshots.com/user/tugboat424?vhost=community
http://community.webshots.com/user/tugboat424?vhost=community
Sunday, November 15, 2009
My hand is finally out of my pocket....
Holy cow. So where to begin?
Well, as I think I have stated before, I spent Most of Friday, all Saturday, and half of Sunday in Morocco. I knew it was gonna be different from Madrid, not only because it's a different country, but because it 's a different continent as well. Morocco is an African/Arab country. Very, very different.
I went to Morocco with two friends from my school, Jade and Heather, and we met up with a couple of other kids from the Suffolk program that we knew as well along the trip, however we stayed in different hotels. We got to Morocco at like, 1ish or 12ish on friday, and had to hail down a taxi to go to our hotel.
First off I guess it is important to mention that we had to exchange our money to their currency, which is durkham (sp?). 10 dh is roughly equivalent to 1 euro. So that was all fine and dandy, I exchanged 5o euro to start with and went from there.
Anyways, we hailed down a taxi driver, who spoke english/spanish for the most part and had him take us to our hotel (we had no idea how lucky we were at that point to have found an english/spanish speaking driver). He charged us 100 dh (10 euro) for the ride. We figured that sounded fine, plopped over the money, and then let him take us allllll the way to our hotel, all of about 3km to our hotel. That was when we realized that we had been had. We had no idea how close the hotel was to the airport...that sly taxista!! Taking advantage of us poor Americans like that. But don't worry...there were plenty more opportunities still for the Moroccans to have their way with us.
Speaking of taxi's....first off, none of the seatbelts worked. Second off, every front seat that I sat in throughout the time was broken. Third off...what the heck are the rules of the road there?????? Our initial taxi driver thought it seemed like a good idea to travel at about 10000 kilometers per hovering over the median about 2 feet behind a truck that was loaded down with logs, without it's back end up and none of the logs strapped in. Remember, please, that seatbelts were not an option. I thought people were kind of crazy driving in Madrid but Moroccans put them to shame...I really didn't see much rhyme or reason as to how the roads wee put together or what the rules of the road were there. Pretty much every car for themselves. I saw everything on the roads in Morocco as well...all types of vehicles/animals. You were about as likely to find someone staying in there lane and driving like a sane person as you were to see a truck with it's back loaded with logs 2 feet in front of your face, another car hurtling at you in the same lane, a pack of camels hogging up the shoulder of the road, taxi drivers stopping in the middle of the road to yell at each other (all taxistas know each other in morocco too...kind of bizarre), a backhoe speeding down the freeway, and a tricked out beige colored car that looked like it belongs in the fast and the furious. I saw all sorts of things on those roads. In fact, I think I saw some transformers as well.
But anyway, we got to the hotel (really nice) and found some nice, english speaking ladies at the front desk. Got checked in and everything, and decided to go check out an arabic museum there, rock the casbah, and check out the market. So we had the hotel call a taxi for us to bring us to the museum area.
Our Taxi driver seemed like a nice guy...except I have no idea what he was saying or who he was because he only spoke Arabic and French.French is the dominant second language there behind Arabic. Not a whole lot of Spanish going on there or English for that matter. So we had the hotel receptionist tell him where to take us. And the price we paid was 150 dh to get to the museum We figured everything would be alright....but oh, we were mistaken.
First off, this was when we realized how hard we had been had on our initial taxi ride. The ride that ole no Spanglish gave us was about 30 minutes. So from our two taxi rides, we had no idea where to begin haggling at. 150 for 30 minutes, and 100 for about 5 minutes. We had no idea WHERE They were coming from now.
But anyways, we get to the area we are supposed to, and our taxista stops someone and asks for specific directions. This is when we met our best buddy Abdul, and this is also the point where my hand didn't let go of my wallet or leave my pocket for that matter (more on that laterish)
Anyway, Abdul told the taxista not to worry and that he'd take us there (this is what I'm guessing they were saying since I'm only partially fluent in Arabic now). We thought when we got out of the taxi that the museum was right there, but we were sadly mistaken. We found out Abdul wanted to be our tour guide, and by that point, our taxista was gone, and we had no idea where we were. So basically, we were in Abduls grimy hands from that point on. He gave us a nice tour of the casbah I guess, although I couldn't enjoy any of it because I just kept thinking, "sweet, we're lost in Morocco with this Abdul who is missing most of his teeth, yet seems to be chewing something because food keeps flying out of his mouth...at least I hope it's food and not tooth decay...I wonder how much he is gonna try to charge us". Anyway, we eventually got to the museum and told us his magical student price for us....only 10 euro per person! Oh Abdul, you SWEETHEART! 10 euoro only!? FANTASTIC! Heather, Jade and I had a little powow, and seeing as we wouldn't have made it to the museum without him (although later we did realize that he made the taxi driver stop, and then forced us to use him to get to the museum) we decided to give him 5 euro altogether. He wasn't too happy about that. I should've told him he can go and complain to the "tourism office" that he told us he worked for...but that probably wouldn't have been a great idea so I'm glad I didn't.
Anywho, we were all kind of shaken up after that. My hand was clenching my wallet from then on out because I officially didn't trust a soul in the country after that point. I was about to throw a right hook at an old lady who was looking at me funny in the museum cause I thought she was gonna try and pickpocket me. Needless to say, I was a tad paranoid.
Anywho, we had a new gameplan. We knew that we were gonna run into people who were gonna try to be our "guides" like Abdul, so we were gonna either say nothing, so they couldn't figure out where we were from or anything and just ignore them, or else we were gonna say we spoke German, because we were fairly confident none of them would speak German. So we went to these cliffs to take pictures and there were some really young, cute boys who kept saying hello in all these different languages to try and get us to speak to them. I mean these kids had to be like 5 years old. It was tough not to talk to them. At one point they thought it might work if they started calling Jade and Heather beautiful "Hello madame, you are very beautifulll". So funny. Then on the way back the girls got heckled in Spanish, but we kept to our guns and just kept walking.
We went down to the marketplace next and looked around. We were pretty dejected at this point and wanted to just leave, but then an early Christmas miracle happened. We haggled with some street vendors and got some really good deals on things. For example, Jade saw a really pretty necklace, but it was marked up to 650 dh (65 euro). Now, we already knew that things were marked up crazy and you had to haggle in the market, but this was an epic job done by Jade. She got that 650 dh necklace for 10o dh (1o euro). I got some things, Heather got some things (all bargained down) and we left the market and took a taxi ride home. Our taxi driver on the way home was interesting I guess....although I'm not sure he spoke any language. We gesticulated a lot like cavemen trying to come to a price for the ride back, lots of grunts took place. But eventually it worked out, and he brought us back to our hotel.
We didn't really eat anything out the first day there, we all had brought plenty of little snack things that we didn't need to at least the first night. So we went to bed that night feeling ok about ourselves...we knew now how to haggle and were determined not to be taken advantage of again.
However...we still had a day and a half left in Morocco? Would everything work out ok, or would we be had again?
(this has been a long post, I'll update tomorrow about the rest)
TO BE CONTINUED
Cave of Hercules, pictures, food, sneaky kitties, beach.
Well, as I think I have stated before, I spent Most of Friday, all Saturday, and half of Sunday in Morocco. I knew it was gonna be different from Madrid, not only because it's a different country, but because it 's a different continent as well. Morocco is an African/Arab country. Very, very different.
I went to Morocco with two friends from my school, Jade and Heather, and we met up with a couple of other kids from the Suffolk program that we knew as well along the trip, however we stayed in different hotels. We got to Morocco at like, 1ish or 12ish on friday, and had to hail down a taxi to go to our hotel.
First off I guess it is important to mention that we had to exchange our money to their currency, which is durkham (sp?). 10 dh is roughly equivalent to 1 euro. So that was all fine and dandy, I exchanged 5o euro to start with and went from there.
Anyways, we hailed down a taxi driver, who spoke english/spanish for the most part and had him take us to our hotel (we had no idea how lucky we were at that point to have found an english/spanish speaking driver). He charged us 100 dh (10 euro) for the ride. We figured that sounded fine, plopped over the money, and then let him take us allllll the way to our hotel, all of about 3km to our hotel. That was when we realized that we had been had. We had no idea how close the hotel was to the airport...that sly taxista!! Taking advantage of us poor Americans like that. But don't worry...there were plenty more opportunities still for the Moroccans to have their way with us.
Speaking of taxi's....first off, none of the seatbelts worked. Second off, every front seat that I sat in throughout the time was broken. Third off...what the heck are the rules of the road there?????? Our initial taxi driver thought it seemed like a good idea to travel at about 10000 kilometers per hovering over the median about 2 feet behind a truck that was loaded down with logs, without it's back end up and none of the logs strapped in. Remember, please, that seatbelts were not an option. I thought people were kind of crazy driving in Madrid but Moroccans put them to shame...I really didn't see much rhyme or reason as to how the roads wee put together or what the rules of the road were there. Pretty much every car for themselves. I saw everything on the roads in Morocco as well...all types of vehicles/animals. You were about as likely to find someone staying in there lane and driving like a sane person as you were to see a truck with it's back loaded with logs 2 feet in front of your face, another car hurtling at you in the same lane, a pack of camels hogging up the shoulder of the road, taxi drivers stopping in the middle of the road to yell at each other (all taxistas know each other in morocco too...kind of bizarre), a backhoe speeding down the freeway, and a tricked out beige colored car that looked like it belongs in the fast and the furious. I saw all sorts of things on those roads. In fact, I think I saw some transformers as well.
But anyway, we got to the hotel (really nice) and found some nice, english speaking ladies at the front desk. Got checked in and everything, and decided to go check out an arabic museum there, rock the casbah, and check out the market. So we had the hotel call a taxi for us to bring us to the museum area.
Our Taxi driver seemed like a nice guy...except I have no idea what he was saying or who he was because he only spoke Arabic and French.French is the dominant second language there behind Arabic. Not a whole lot of Spanish going on there or English for that matter. So we had the hotel receptionist tell him where to take us. And the price we paid was 150 dh to get to the museum We figured everything would be alright....but oh, we were mistaken.
First off, this was when we realized how hard we had been had on our initial taxi ride. The ride that ole no Spanglish gave us was about 30 minutes. So from our two taxi rides, we had no idea where to begin haggling at. 150 for 30 minutes, and 100 for about 5 minutes. We had no idea WHERE They were coming from now.
But anyways, we get to the area we are supposed to, and our taxista stops someone and asks for specific directions. This is when we met our best buddy Abdul, and this is also the point where my hand didn't let go of my wallet or leave my pocket for that matter (more on that laterish)
Anyway, Abdul told the taxista not to worry and that he'd take us there (this is what I'm guessing they were saying since I'm only partially fluent in Arabic now). We thought when we got out of the taxi that the museum was right there, but we were sadly mistaken. We found out Abdul wanted to be our tour guide, and by that point, our taxista was gone, and we had no idea where we were. So basically, we were in Abduls grimy hands from that point on. He gave us a nice tour of the casbah I guess, although I couldn't enjoy any of it because I just kept thinking, "sweet, we're lost in Morocco with this Abdul who is missing most of his teeth, yet seems to be chewing something because food keeps flying out of his mouth...at least I hope it's food and not tooth decay...I wonder how much he is gonna try to charge us". Anyway, we eventually got to the museum and told us his magical student price for us....only 10 euro per person! Oh Abdul, you SWEETHEART! 10 euoro only!? FANTASTIC! Heather, Jade and I had a little powow, and seeing as we wouldn't have made it to the museum without him (although later we did realize that he made the taxi driver stop, and then forced us to use him to get to the museum) we decided to give him 5 euro altogether. He wasn't too happy about that. I should've told him he can go and complain to the "tourism office" that he told us he worked for...but that probably wouldn't have been a great idea so I'm glad I didn't.
Anywho, we were all kind of shaken up after that. My hand was clenching my wallet from then on out because I officially didn't trust a soul in the country after that point. I was about to throw a right hook at an old lady who was looking at me funny in the museum cause I thought she was gonna try and pickpocket me. Needless to say, I was a tad paranoid.
Anywho, we had a new gameplan. We knew that we were gonna run into people who were gonna try to be our "guides" like Abdul, so we were gonna either say nothing, so they couldn't figure out where we were from or anything and just ignore them, or else we were gonna say we spoke German, because we were fairly confident none of them would speak German. So we went to these cliffs to take pictures and there were some really young, cute boys who kept saying hello in all these different languages to try and get us to speak to them. I mean these kids had to be like 5 years old. It was tough not to talk to them. At one point they thought it might work if they started calling Jade and Heather beautiful "Hello madame, you are very beautifulll". So funny. Then on the way back the girls got heckled in Spanish, but we kept to our guns and just kept walking.
We went down to the marketplace next and looked around. We were pretty dejected at this point and wanted to just leave, but then an early Christmas miracle happened. We haggled with some street vendors and got some really good deals on things. For example, Jade saw a really pretty necklace, but it was marked up to 650 dh (65 euro). Now, we already knew that things were marked up crazy and you had to haggle in the market, but this was an epic job done by Jade. She got that 650 dh necklace for 10o dh (1o euro). I got some things, Heather got some things (all bargained down) and we left the market and took a taxi ride home. Our taxi driver on the way home was interesting I guess....although I'm not sure he spoke any language. We gesticulated a lot like cavemen trying to come to a price for the ride back, lots of grunts took place. But eventually it worked out, and he brought us back to our hotel.
We didn't really eat anything out the first day there, we all had brought plenty of little snack things that we didn't need to at least the first night. So we went to bed that night feeling ok about ourselves...we knew now how to haggle and were determined not to be taken advantage of again.
However...we still had a day and a half left in Morocco? Would everything work out ok, or would we be had again?
(this has been a long post, I'll update tomorrow about the rest)
TO BE CONTINUED
Cave of Hercules, pictures, food, sneaky kitties, beach.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
So hopefully next update, I can talk some more Rugby, maybe another thing or two about Barcelona, and then some things about Milk, Bathrooms, Cereal and Light switches.
Ok so let's see what we have here to talk about...
One of the things I miss the most in the US is the milk. My word. One of my first days here my host mom mentioned something about how her son likes to keep milk in the fridge, and said it in a way that made it sound abnormal. Plus the milk is super thick too, although not as bad as in Germany (sorry Julia haha). And I love milk. And I miss drinking a nice cold glass of it. Andy and I are of the same opinion that Skim milk is the best because it's also the coldest. Well my dear friends, the only way to drink your milk cold here would be to drink it while standing inside a freezer. But I usually pour some milk onto my cereal, but then I dump the milk out, because it just hurts my stomach after if I drink it all. So the only real complaint about the food I have here is without a question, la leche.
Next thing on the list is bathrooms. Here, if you go into a public bathroom, all the stalls are like little rooms. They are totally surrounded and closed in. Pretty nice.
However, while I'm all for saving the environment and everything, I'm kind of sick of the lights going out on me in the middle of doing my business. It's like a button you press and the lights stay on for like 2 minutes or so, and then shut off. Well let's just say that caught me by surprise the first couple of times. Plus, being that it is it's own little room it was absolutely pitch black dark. So it took me awhile to find the lightswitch needless to say.
I'll have to take a picture of the lightswitches here too. I have seen these types back in the states, but I haven't seen a single one that is like the ones I am usually used to seeing.
Can't remember what I had to say about cereal. It's pretty good I guess.
Went to another Rugby practice. Still trying to understand what it is I am supposed to do, although we did practice something similar to kickoffs so that I knew enough of. All I know is I push when they tell me too, and I tackle the guy in the other shirt. There is a game tomorrow (Thursday) at 230. However I have class till 330, but there is a chance Ill get out in time to make it. Let's hope so.
I've been to the movie theaters a couple of times recently. I went once with my buddy Harry one weekend night to see Malditos Bastardos. We showed up at like, 945 for a 1015 showing of it to buy our tickets cause we heard we had to get there early to buy them, but we figured that it's been out since the beginning of september so there wouldn't be a big line. Well there wasn't too big a line, but there also weren't any tickets available. Unbelievable. Talk about procrastinating to see a movie, Spain.
So we went back again the next night, even more determined. This time we got there around 9 to buy our tickets. Well in Spanish movie theaters, they give you assigned seats. Pretty good idea I guess. Doesn't make for that awkward 'there aren't many seats but i don't really wanna sit right next to that guy' moment. You sit where they tell you to sit bygolly!
It was in Version Original, so it wasn't dubbed and they talked in English, and it was subtitled in Spanish. However, I forgot how much of the movie was spoken in German and French. So Harry and I were reading a lot of subtitulos. Not really a big deal, but it doesn't do the movie justice the way it was translated into Spanish. Some of the things said in English that I read in Spanish just weren't the same, something was lost in translation there.
It's nice now I can watch a movie in Spanish, as long as there are subtitles, and I can understand just about all of it. However, the next challenge would be to watch a movie in Spanish without subtitles and see how I do.
GUESS WHAT? Got an e-mail from our prof. and said he was gonna take us to the cinema for his cine class to watch Celda 211. It was a prison/drama/action movie. Pretty good. Real hard to understand though, they used a lot of slang stuff and one of the main character's voices was impossible to understand. Smoked one too many cigarettes. I understood a lot of it....but not quite all of it. Still a bit confused about parts. But we'll figure that out tomorrow.
Anyway...Life is going well. Hope America is safe without me for awhile. Take good care of it, and go enjoy a nice glass of cold milk and a PB Sandwich for me (Jelly optional). I go have a nice Bocadillo de tortilla with some nice Madrid water for all of you tomorrow.
Hasta Luego!!!
p.s. any questions you have about Spain, send me an email and ill write about it in my next blog post.
p.p.s. I'm going to Morocco this weekend. Hope I survive.
Ok so let's see what we have here to talk about...
One of the things I miss the most in the US is the milk. My word. One of my first days here my host mom mentioned something about how her son likes to keep milk in the fridge, and said it in a way that made it sound abnormal. Plus the milk is super thick too, although not as bad as in Germany (sorry Julia haha). And I love milk. And I miss drinking a nice cold glass of it. Andy and I are of the same opinion that Skim milk is the best because it's also the coldest. Well my dear friends, the only way to drink your milk cold here would be to drink it while standing inside a freezer. But I usually pour some milk onto my cereal, but then I dump the milk out, because it just hurts my stomach after if I drink it all. So the only real complaint about the food I have here is without a question, la leche.
Next thing on the list is bathrooms. Here, if you go into a public bathroom, all the stalls are like little rooms. They are totally surrounded and closed in. Pretty nice.
However, while I'm all for saving the environment and everything, I'm kind of sick of the lights going out on me in the middle of doing my business. It's like a button you press and the lights stay on for like 2 minutes or so, and then shut off. Well let's just say that caught me by surprise the first couple of times. Plus, being that it is it's own little room it was absolutely pitch black dark. So it took me awhile to find the lightswitch needless to say.
I'll have to take a picture of the lightswitches here too. I have seen these types back in the states, but I haven't seen a single one that is like the ones I am usually used to seeing.
Can't remember what I had to say about cereal. It's pretty good I guess.
Went to another Rugby practice. Still trying to understand what it is I am supposed to do, although we did practice something similar to kickoffs so that I knew enough of. All I know is I push when they tell me too, and I tackle the guy in the other shirt. There is a game tomorrow (Thursday) at 230. However I have class till 330, but there is a chance Ill get out in time to make it. Let's hope so.
I've been to the movie theaters a couple of times recently. I went once with my buddy Harry one weekend night to see Malditos Bastardos. We showed up at like, 945 for a 1015 showing of it to buy our tickets cause we heard we had to get there early to buy them, but we figured that it's been out since the beginning of september so there wouldn't be a big line. Well there wasn't too big a line, but there also weren't any tickets available. Unbelievable. Talk about procrastinating to see a movie, Spain.
So we went back again the next night, even more determined. This time we got there around 9 to buy our tickets. Well in Spanish movie theaters, they give you assigned seats. Pretty good idea I guess. Doesn't make for that awkward 'there aren't many seats but i don't really wanna sit right next to that guy' moment. You sit where they tell you to sit bygolly!
It was in Version Original, so it wasn't dubbed and they talked in English, and it was subtitled in Spanish. However, I forgot how much of the movie was spoken in German and French. So Harry and I were reading a lot of subtitulos. Not really a big deal, but it doesn't do the movie justice the way it was translated into Spanish. Some of the things said in English that I read in Spanish just weren't the same, something was lost in translation there.
It's nice now I can watch a movie in Spanish, as long as there are subtitles, and I can understand just about all of it. However, the next challenge would be to watch a movie in Spanish without subtitles and see how I do.
GUESS WHAT? Got an e-mail from our prof. and said he was gonna take us to the cinema for his cine class to watch Celda 211. It was a prison/drama/action movie. Pretty good. Real hard to understand though, they used a lot of slang stuff and one of the main character's voices was impossible to understand. Smoked one too many cigarettes. I understood a lot of it....but not quite all of it. Still a bit confused about parts. But we'll figure that out tomorrow.
Anyway...Life is going well. Hope America is safe without me for awhile. Take good care of it, and go enjoy a nice glass of cold milk and a PB Sandwich for me (Jelly optional). I go have a nice Bocadillo de tortilla with some nice Madrid water for all of you tomorrow.
Hasta Luego!!!
p.s. any questions you have about Spain, send me an email and ill write about it in my next blog post.
p.p.s. I'm going to Morocco this weekend. Hope I survive.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
LIMPIAR EL RACK
In the words of Elton John...I'm still standing, yeah, yeah, yeah.
First things first: Midterms. They weren't too bad. Except for one. But hey, 3/4 ain't bad right? Hopefully I'll get back the Midterm I think I butchered tomorrow, so that class should be interesting. I should also get my longest paper ever written in Spanish back tomorrow as well I hope (6 pages!) I have to say though, I've never had a week like that back in Hobart. In fact, I think the only time I've ever had a midterm is with the prof. that is here with us now. Every other time I have had a "midterm" I think, it's just been like a normal chapter test, it was just in the middle of the semester kind of. But here, I had four tests all in the same week, and they were all cumulative, so that was a bit different. But I'm still standing.
Next we go on to Barcelona. I went out on Thursday night and stayed up all night in order to catch the bus that was leaving at 6 am. It actually made a lot of sense, because otherwise I would've had to catch a taxi from my house all the way to the University ( I think I live the furthest away from there as anyone) so that would've cost a lot. So instead I went out and walked there with my buddy Harry.
I figured hey, I should be able to sleep most of all the bus ride right? WRONG. I slept casi 3 1/2 hours. That bus was the most uncomfortable bus I have ever been on. The bus to Salamanca, during our first week here, was horrendous as well. Would it kill them to make an at least semi comfortable bus? Not only was there no leg room or body room, but the engine heated up the bus to unbearable temperaturas. Absolutely miserable.
So by the time we got to Barcelona, after that 8 hour ride, I was not too happy. We really didn't do anything that great. Went and saw some interesting architecture by Gaudi - check him out, looks like the dude invented the house that Dr. Seuss would like to live in. Kinda interesting. I really just relaxed a lot in Barcelona. Also, the water there sucks. Madrid water is amazing, Barcelona water is poop.
Also for those of you who know of my bilingualness....I have become even more multi-bilingual! I am now fluent in Catalan, which is the official language of catalunya. It's a mix of Spanish and French and I'm super fluent at it. More so reading than anything else, my speaking of it is a little rusty, but with time, I'll get it.
What else about Barcelona.....hmmmmm.......well, it is not as cool as Madrid. I just wasn't feeling it there. I think the bus ride had a lot to do with it. But hey, I'm still standing.
NEXT, we go on to Rugby. Two of my friends I've met out in Madrid (Alberto or more commonly known as Luque and Victor) asked me to come play Rugby for their team. They play for their university I think, which is the next metro stop down from mine. So I don't wanna brag or anything, but we started out doing one on one tackling drills, and I destroyed a few kids lives. I think their team is pretty piss-poor though so that's not saying much. But I was pretty happy with my performance.
I still don't know any of the rules, and they were speaking to me at about 100 mph in Spanish, so I was a little bit hazy, but I know a lot of pushing of people was involved in my job description. Also, at one point we practiced lifting up a dude to catch the ball when they throw it in from the sidelines, and me and my buddy, Victor, absolutely dominated. The coach guy even said we did it perfect on our second try. The dude we lifted up intercepted the ball from the other team even! Which I think is a good thing?
But anyways, I'm learning the sport and it's pretty fun. I think I did a pretty good job, they were excited to have me there and asked me to come back. They usually practice on Tuesday's and Thursdays, but I have class during practice time on Thursday so I can't go. But my body only hurts a little bit so that's good.
So hopefully next update, I can talk some more Rugby, maybe another thing or two about Barcelona, and then some things about Milk, Bathrooms, Cereal and Light switches.
So after all that, I'm still standing! Until then people, keep it real.
First things first: Midterms. They weren't too bad. Except for one. But hey, 3/4 ain't bad right? Hopefully I'll get back the Midterm I think I butchered tomorrow, so that class should be interesting. I should also get my longest paper ever written in Spanish back tomorrow as well I hope (6 pages!) I have to say though, I've never had a week like that back in Hobart. In fact, I think the only time I've ever had a midterm is with the prof. that is here with us now. Every other time I have had a "midterm" I think, it's just been like a normal chapter test, it was just in the middle of the semester kind of. But here, I had four tests all in the same week, and they were all cumulative, so that was a bit different. But I'm still standing.
Next we go on to Barcelona. I went out on Thursday night and stayed up all night in order to catch the bus that was leaving at 6 am. It actually made a lot of sense, because otherwise I would've had to catch a taxi from my house all the way to the University ( I think I live the furthest away from there as anyone) so that would've cost a lot. So instead I went out and walked there with my buddy Harry.
I figured hey, I should be able to sleep most of all the bus ride right? WRONG. I slept casi 3 1/2 hours. That bus was the most uncomfortable bus I have ever been on. The bus to Salamanca, during our first week here, was horrendous as well. Would it kill them to make an at least semi comfortable bus? Not only was there no leg room or body room, but the engine heated up the bus to unbearable temperaturas. Absolutely miserable.
So by the time we got to Barcelona, after that 8 hour ride, I was not too happy. We really didn't do anything that great. Went and saw some interesting architecture by Gaudi - check him out, looks like the dude invented the house that Dr. Seuss would like to live in. Kinda interesting. I really just relaxed a lot in Barcelona. Also, the water there sucks. Madrid water is amazing, Barcelona water is poop.
Also for those of you who know of my bilingualness....I have become even more multi-bilingual! I am now fluent in Catalan, which is the official language of catalunya. It's a mix of Spanish and French and I'm super fluent at it. More so reading than anything else, my speaking of it is a little rusty, but with time, I'll get it.
What else about Barcelona.....hmmmmm.......well, it is not as cool as Madrid. I just wasn't feeling it there. I think the bus ride had a lot to do with it. But hey, I'm still standing.
NEXT, we go on to Rugby. Two of my friends I've met out in Madrid (Alberto or more commonly known as Luque and Victor) asked me to come play Rugby for their team. They play for their university I think, which is the next metro stop down from mine. So I don't wanna brag or anything, but we started out doing one on one tackling drills, and I destroyed a few kids lives. I think their team is pretty piss-poor though so that's not saying much. But I was pretty happy with my performance.
I still don't know any of the rules, and they were speaking to me at about 100 mph in Spanish, so I was a little bit hazy, but I know a lot of pushing of people was involved in my job description. Also, at one point we practiced lifting up a dude to catch the ball when they throw it in from the sidelines, and me and my buddy, Victor, absolutely dominated. The coach guy even said we did it perfect on our second try. The dude we lifted up intercepted the ball from the other team even! Which I think is a good thing?
But anyways, I'm learning the sport and it's pretty fun. I think I did a pretty good job, they were excited to have me there and asked me to come back. They usually practice on Tuesday's and Thursdays, but I have class during practice time on Thursday so I can't go. But my body only hurts a little bit so that's good.
So hopefully next update, I can talk some more Rugby, maybe another thing or two about Barcelona, and then some things about Milk, Bathrooms, Cereal and Light switches.
So after all that, I'm still standing! Until then people, keep it real.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)