adiosabientot

2009-12-14T10:00:00.005-08:00

jardinabuelito.3
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

2009-12-14T10:00:00.003-08:00

jardinabuelito.2
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

El jardíncito // The little garden

2009-12-14T10:00:00.001-08:00

jardinabuelito.1
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

So I wanted to post these pictures. I just took them. It's a beautiful day in Buenos Aires and the plants are super happy. I call this "El jardíncito del abuelito" which basically means "Grandpa's little garden." I planted these seeds the day my grandfather got in his car accident, and since it has become a nice way to remember him. The plants started as little seeds a couple of months ago, and now they're bearing fruit (Tomatoes and Basil!)!

Thanks!

2009-12-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,

I wanted to say THANK YOU to everyone who has written me with encouraging thoughts. I know that what I'm doing is weird, somewhat crazy, bordering on stupid (the people here think so too), studying in another country in another language when we have great universities that teach in English in the USA. I was seduced by adventure and also economics coming here. After all, the education IS free here. But obviously the price I will pay (especially being from a non-conventional country) is time and bureaucracy. Having to do a high school equivalency and then a first year program and then a million years of studying after that is a lot. But what else am I going to do with my life? Put myself in massive debt studying in the USA, missing the intense cultural experience that I'm getting here? Well, maybe I'll have to do that, but I'm not giving up yet, I just started!

It has been somewhat challenging studying here, living here, in a totally different culture, a moderately dangerous city, without many allies (here. obviously my friends and family have my back, but they're really far away). But I've learned a lot and continue to learn, and I'm more capable of standing up for myself now than I've ever been. Those of you who know me know that in my life I either take peoples' shit or just wiggle around it.

I've learned to look myself in the mirror, breathe, and do what I need to do. And just that is so much. I've learned to set goals and to reach them, as small as they may be, and I've learned to appreciate the people who want to help me, and to try to help them in return. Though I'd like to think I've been doing that for a little while...

I've also been given a concrete understanding of something I've known for a long time. That is the lesson of privilege. Living in Argentina is hard for the majority of the population. And while I will NEVER say that living in the USA is easy for everyone, the adversity here and the diversity of those adversities, the abundance of adversity proves to me day by day that the first world really has no idea. The development of my ideas about the third world-first world relationship has been very intense, and unfortunately I find myself with a great amount of resentment. Though I do think that my acknowledgment of this resentment is a good step in overcoming it, it is very intense. I could (and will, later) go into a huge tirade about the incredible stupidity of European snobbery towards the USA (seeing as they benefit largely from the third world that the USA keeps in line, but seem to think that their wonderfully safe and clean countries are a product of their advanced cultural and political development), and I could (and will, later) go into a huge tirade about the lamentable lack of consideration that the average Yankee has about the resources that he/she so blatantly discards, or the safety that they so easily take for granted. I could also write about the intense trade-off of security and freedom that is hard to see living in the first world.

The revelations are amazing and quotidian. Obvious and obscure. Painful and ecstatic.

And yes, I have had a drink today and this is something of a rant. HA.

Anyway, thank you to everyone again. I hope you're enjoying (though I don't know how) the arrival of winter, and I'll see some of you in a few weeks as I board a plane in sunny, beautiful Buenos Aires to arrive in cold, grey Baltimore...at least my amazing family will make it a little (a lot) warmer.

Awesome!

2009-12-03T16:49:00.000-08:00

OK folks,

The results of my first exam are in: 6 out of 10! Not bad, I must say! All I need to do is get at least one question correct in the second exam, and I'll go on to the final! Excellent! I think I may actually pass this class! That would really, really make me happy. I mean, it would prove that I'm not being ridiculously cavalier about taking university level classes in Spanish, it would prove that maybe, just maybe, I have a chance at pulling this off! YES!

Ok, so, I took the second exam today, and I don't think I did that well. But I do think that I got at least one right!

Keep your fingers crossed!

Is banning divorce the solution...?

2009-12-01T12:35:00.001-08:00

Check out this article. Awesome!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120969156

Short updates...

2009-12-01T12:30:00.000-08:00

Just a short update as I take a break from running around!

The past few weeks have flown by. In fact, every week flies by here. It's amazing how fast time passes. I'm not sure what it is. I suppose the fact that there are so many things going on at once, I don't have many moments to breathe, look around, relax, savor things. I have Sundays, those are the best days, I have nothing to do but relax.

I've found out more about what I have to do to officially start studying in the official UBA *not the distance program*. And it's a pain, a lot of work to be honest with you. I'll have to take an exam which includes a lot of subjects: Literature and language (1st, 2nd, 3rd years), Argentinian and American literature (5th year), Geography, Civic Education (1st, 2nd, 3rd years), Argentinian History (3rd, 4th, and 5th years), Civic Instruction (5th year). It's a ton. But I'll learn a LOT and I'll speak Spanish de puta madre when I'm done! So I guess I can't complain. I think I'll take the test in February or March and I'll have to have read three novels by then just for the literature part!!! In Spanish!! I don't even SPEAK Spanish!!!

I hope everyone's well, just three more weeks and I'll have a little change of scenery as I'll be visiting the states for a few days. Cool huh? Check out the photos below.

Más ensalada // More salad

2009-12-01T12:23:00.001-08:00

Más ensalada // More salad
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

A close-up.

Ensalada // Salad

2009-12-01T12:22:00.001-08:00

Ensalada // Salad
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

This is what I eat every night during the week. So good. SOOO goood. I haven't been sick in months and I think it's because of the power of this salad: onion, spinach, grated beets, homemade black beans, tomato, lemon juice, olive oil, soy sauce. The BEST SALAD EVER!

Shakira en la cocina

2009-12-01T12:20:00.003-08:00

Shakira en la cocina
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

La cocina // Kitchen

2009-12-01T12:20:00.001-08:00

La cocina // Kitchen
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

The kitchen with roommate Shakira (a.k.a. Teresita). Everyone calls her Shakira because apparently she looks like Shakira (the old Shakira, not the putita white one).

Salon // Living room

2009-12-01T12:18:00.003-08:00

Salon // Living room
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

The living room...

El balcón // Balcony

2009-12-01T12:18:00.001-08:00

El balcón // Balcony
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

El balcón // Balcony

2009-12-01T12:17:00.003-08:00

El balcón // Balcony
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Desde el balcón // From the balcony

2009-12-01T12:17:00.001-08:00

Desde el balcón // From the balcony
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

A view from the balcony on a beautiful spring night...

Sooooo Hi!

2009-11-06T06:08:00.000-08:00

Ok Ok Ok,

I know you guys are used to these huge gaps in my posts, but maybe you've noticed a pattern. I'll make a few posts all in a row, then wait a couple months and post again. Maybe I should just stick with that format and go from there. That way I won't be constantly apologizing (or, constantly, no...apologizing every few months haha).

But I will say that the past month has been something of an anomaly, which isn't to say that I've ever had a 'normal' month, but it was crazy for sure. As you know (or I think you know) I returned to the USA for two days, yes, two days to be with my family for a bit and attend my grandfather's funeral. It was an intense little trip that left me somewhat emotionally drained afterwards. Due to this and other distractions in my life, I missed a 'Parcial' in one of my classes, which means I failed the class, which kind of sucks, and I haven't really had to time to post anything because I've been working a TON.

BUT that's ok, because everything has been pushed back a bit as it is. I'm not sure if I've already written about this or not. But APPARENTLY I can't get into the UBA officially (now I'm in a distance program) until I take a little test. The thing is, Argentina does not recognize the validity of the USA High School Diploma. There is no convention between the USA and Argentina in this regard, and therefore, in order to get my diploma "Convalidated" which I must do in order to have it "Legalized" which I must do in order to get into the UBA, I have to take a test in a High School, about Argentinian history, literature, and geography! Fine, that's cool, another test in the long and winding road of tests that I am heading down as it is. The annoying part is that I wasn't able to apply for the CBC (Basic Common Cycle, first year program of the UBA) for the coming semester. I'll have to wait until the second semester, which begins in June I believe. This also means another semester of studying by distance, and there is something depressingly symbolic about not being registered and a student, officially.

The other annoying thing is that when a foreigner applies to the UBA, they are given a DNI number (DNI: Documento Nacional de Identidad), which I won't have for a while apparently. This is a really great thing to have, it basically makes a person legal in Argentina. The UBA gives the new foreign students a temporary DNI that they can then use to get a more permanent one. This is probably the most ridiculously easy system I've ever heard of. Or, better to say, I'd ever heard of...until I realized it was going to be such a pain in the ass getting myself into the school. I suppose I could have researched this a little better. As I stand legally at the moment, I have to leave the country every three months OR pay the government $300AR to extend my visa every three months. Either one. In fact, taking a trip to Uruguay on the ferry costs half as much as paying the government for an extension, so that's what I'll do next time I think.

The thing is, I thought I had researched all of this mumbojumbo pretty intensely in Spain, but the thing about that is that I didn't really...well...speak Spanish then!! Ha! Maybe I was a little too prideful to ask someone to help me too...hmmm...lessons learned...but I wonder how many times I have to learn the lesson about asking people for help before I actually learn it!

Anyway, like they say in Spanish: "se me complicó...todo!" Everything got more complicated in this process of studying, but that's ok. It's quite difficult studying in Spanish, so having a little bit more to study (the stuff for the high school exam) is good, because I will keep learning more of the words and structures necessary to survive in the university environment, writing at a university level, which I'm not really that good at. It's all part of the adventure!

On another topic, I'm SO happy that summer is coming. The weather here has been somewhat strange, hot and cold, wet and dry...well...never dry, humid and wet I guess. But summer keeps poking it's head out, complete with signs on the buses, trains, and walls warning the population of Buenos Aires about Dengue fever and how to avoid it!

I'm sitting here on a quiet Friday morning, waiting for the sun to break through the fog and everything is good.

About my grandfather

2009-10-08T19:28:00.000-07:00

I wrote this last week, before I went to the states to my grandfather's funeral. It will give you all an idea of how I was feeling then. Now, after the funeral, still there is more. I will continue to write:

As some of you may know, my grandfather recently passed away. He had a car accident on Sunday, and he died a day later. He was 89 years old, survived the great depression, fought in World War Two, raised my mother and my aunt, and in his later years was always happy. Sudden deaths are always a special case. An unexpected accident, an immediate emptiness bursts into our lives, without the strange and morbid ease that comes with a death delivered by disease, by age. The 'easier' deaths, the comfortable deaths, as if a death can be comfortable. There are deaths that we swallow easier, and deaths that punch. The all of the sudden leaves us with lingering questions that will never be answered.

As I think about my grandfather, as I step over the emptiness that I feel by his absence - better to say his imagined absence; imagined because I'm in a foreign country, not in a comfortable context that allows me to relate to him - certain regrets present themselves. These regrets may be cliché, may be the simple regrets that anyone would have when a loved one has passed away. Regrets nagging me, asking me why I didn't ask him more about his life. Why I didn't beg him to tell me how he survived. Survived the war, survived his childhood, survived raising children. This isn't to say that all of these contexts are ones of struggle, but to say that we all have our struggles - I know I have mine - and to listen to someone, to have the privilege to be so close that you can really hear them, is something that is a disgrace to take for granted.

My grandfather fought in World War Two, as I mentioned before. I am not one to glorify war, nor to glorify the soldier. Nor am I one to praise the acts of war, whether the cause seems to be just or not, and just it never seems to me. I am one to wonder, to be enraptured by awe and disbelief, that a person can survive such a thing as war, can shoulder the intensities of fear, of danger, of death and if lucky, return to a life so strangely disconnected from that experience that I cannot comprehend the transition. When I look someone in the face who has seen war, when it is revealed to me that a person that I am standing next to has had this experience, they are immediately displaced, they are immediately thousands of miles away from me, and my experience is dwarfed by theirs. Because they have seen something that I can scarcely imagine, and through chance we have met. It is amazing to me to think about how chance can bring two people together in any context. People meet by chance all the time. That is how we meet. But there are some experiences that are so far from my own, that I am absolutely astonished by the simple fact that we are together.

What we all experience are things like happiness, fear, love, anger, the essential, the emotional. We experience these things in different ways. I suppose what is really amazing to me, what is really astounding to me, is that when I think about how many of these emotions I feel every day, every week, and to think about every year I'm close to falling apart here. Taking this incredible bulk of emotion, of experience, and multiplying it by nine decades, I am left reeling in the immensity of what amounts to thousands of days. One day in my life is intense, and as I haven't reached the (what seems like ease) of old age, I have no idea how someone makes it there. And if I get there, will I finally be able to breathe? Or do I have to learn how to do that now?

But how did he do it? How did he live for 89 years? How did he end his life happy? Was he happy? Did he know happiness? Was he simple or complex? What was really going on in his mind? I ask all of these questions, and that I ask these questions is a testament to his goodness. Who are the people that we want to probe like this? Who are the people we want to know so intimately? That we can see into them and understand how they think? What they are feeling? The people who we think are the best are the ones we yearn to understand.

Estos momentos inexplicables

2009-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

En los cuales que estamos medio durmiendo en un mundo nuevo, olvidandonos que vivimos y nos cambiamos cada vez más, y lo importante es dejarnos a nosotros mismos a vivir. A vivir, a amar, a olvidarnos los miedos tan oprimidos y saltar o ojos cerrados o ojos abiertos en lo desconocido.

Lo estoy haciendo pero no siempre me doy cuenta, y quiero que cuando muera yo que me haya dejado de temer a cualquiera, que haya superado a todos esos miedos que me hayan agarrado.

La belleza de la vida es la liberación de temor.

Venganse conmigo.

El tiempooooo // The weather

2009-09-30T06:36:00.001-07:00

Imagen 1
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Yesss my friends it's freaking cold.

The sun is out though, so that's a plus. But for the past few days it's been in the 50s here in Buenos Aires, a strange Polar cold front. Yes, Polar. As in the South Pole. You guys have heard of that right? Well, I'm closer to it than you are! Weird huh?

And actually, I recently read about the two expeditions that competed to reach the South Pole first, back in the days when people were actually still exploring like that. There was a Norwegian team, and an English team (The Terra Nova Expedition, I don't know what they called the Norwegian team, probably something really hard to pronounce...). The Norwegian team arrived 33 days before the English, left a note and a letter for the leader of the English team Robert Falcon Scott, asking Scott to deliver the letter to the king of Norway! HAHAHA! Then, returning from the South Pole, going back to their base camp, all of Scott's party died. INTENSE! Even more intense is the story of one of the men, Lawrence Oates. He knew they were in a really bad spot. Malnourished and freezing. One day, as they were camped and waiting for a bad storm to pass...:

"...On or about 17 March Oates, while apparently lucid, stepped outside the tent, saying, by Scott's account, "I am just going outside and I may be some time."

He never came back. He sacrificed himself to save the others! That is intense.

Anyway, my point is, it's cold here in Buenos Aires. Otherwise everything is good here. I keep getting more and more students, and my perceived poverty is somewhat slipping away. I am amazed at how expensive it is to live in Argentina if you are earning pesos. Since I arrived I've been thinking in pesos, because I'm trying to live here rather than travel here, so I don't have plans or means to earn US dollars in any capacity. If you think in pesos, many things are prohibitive unless you have a really great job.

I'll give you an example, from now on I'm going to refer to pesos as dollars, just to make the comparison that much easier for you all to understand:

a beer in a bar: 9 dollars
a bag of lentils: 6 dollars
a small bottle of dish detergent: 10 dollars
renting a little tiny room: 750 dollars
a novel from the bookstore: 40 dollars
a small bulb of garlic: 2 dollars
a bag of potato chips: 7 dollars (11 if you want pringles, which we do have here)

Ok I could go on, but I won't. It's expensive. But I like it here, it's true, and now that I have so much work, it's actually somewhat comfortable. Though it is a quilombo (read clusterf***, or more politely 'a mess?' in Argentinian Spanish) having so many students to organize and teach.

Anyway, I just wanted to make a little post to update. I'll write more later about my feelings and emotions, so stay tuned! JA!

Don't worry don't worry!!

2009-09-27T13:59:00.000-07:00

Ok non-Spanish-speakers.

I wanted to make a post today to tell you not to worry. I know at one point in Barcelona I made some posts in Spanish, and then I never posted again! And that annoyed some of my family members at least. But don't worry! I'm going to write posts in Spanish and in English.

I really need to practice writing in Spanish though. I have exams soon, and I'm going to have to write little essays for my history exam, so it's really important that I practice writing in Spanish so I know how to form clear statements. It's tricky! To be honest with you, the post below isn't clear at all. It's more of a prose-based diary entry or something like that. About my day in yesterday going to the park. It was really nice.

Anyway, today it's gray and rainy, cold and ugly. I'm downloading the Motorcycle Diaries and writing. Studying a little bit. Last night was Saturday night, which happens to be my Friday as I work on Saturday mornings. I didn't do anything! I stayed home and read! I've become a serious home-body, and sometimes I feel bad about that. I'm in a new country! Shouldn't I be going out and living it up? Buuuut I don't really have the money or the time these days, so I just have to live with that. It's actually kind of nice to stay home and read, study a little bit, wake up early on Sunday and be quiet for a while. Barcelona was so insane, it's time to breathe a little and get something done.

At least, I think so...

Quedarte ciego

2009-09-26T18:20:00.000-07:00

Hoy, después de dar la clase a Daniel en congreso, fui al Parque Sarmiento a conocerlo. Tomé el Bondi, el 37, verde y lleno de gente en la plaza del congreso y bajé en Plaza Italia y caminé desde allá. Fue un día muy lindo y hubo un montón de gente, un montón. Hice andando el circuito y busqué una pieza del sol para que me tumbara un ratito a tomar el sol respirar un rato, pensar. Y la encontré al lado de una estatua. Escuché a la gente rodeándome, nenes.

Una chica vendiendo perfumes me intentó a convencer a comprar uno, salpicándome tres veces. Tres perfumes distintos y no me gustaron. Me preguntó si tenía novia y le dije a ella que no y me dijo “sos raro.” Que era raro porque no me gustaban los perfumes y que no tenía novia y tampoco plata, que la había explicado.
“Sos raro,” me dijo. Y no había comido y la falta de ella y el sol tan fuerte detrás de esa chica, la contraluz provocó que me quedé ciego, y sí que me quedé ciego y mi estomago nos habló pero la boca me falló y apenas le respondí.

“Ya sé.”

Y verdad que te esta cambiando el país Steve.

Darse cuenta de la soledad y como existir con ella, amar a la soledad y amar a ti mismo es un regalo que…

En el parque me cerré los ojos y el sol, el sol me quemó el piel, me quemó la cara, y ella me salpicó con perfumes y me callé. No me pude poner a hablar y me olvidé como comunicarme.

La rodilla lastimada me dolió como siempre me duele y me comió ella. Los pensamientos me mataron pero para tanto pensé me llegaron a aclararse. Capaz que hay de estar solito. De amar a la soledad. Aclararme de quien que soy y andar así, nuevo. Un ser humano en este mundo tan jodido tan bello.

Quedarse ciego hecho por el sol.

Los colores y la búsqueda en la tardecita de Buenos Aires, yendo en colectivo al nuevo sitio. A la nueva paz. Tumbado en un césped verdaderamente verde y mirando fijo por los ojos cerrados y solo ver al blanco grueso. Rodeado por los nenes de un mundo escondido, mi amor se extende y los raíces de la hierba se me comen y me voy por las ramas. Los rasgos de la gente y las palabras de sus bocas se cambian en el blanco grueso. Me levanto a caminar y mi raíz de la izquierda me ataca gritando que no te cambies más que te plantees en un lugar para que yo me pueda plantear en la tierra tan fértil.

Que te pares a pensar porque la guerra nos esta matando.

Me tomé el colectivo hacia Primera Junta.
Un sonido de fatalidad, His Hero Is Gone.
Guitarra de aire.
Un viento fresquito.
Un autobús temblándose.
Una gente respirándose.
Una fundación rompiéndose para que otra se pueda crear.

Subhumans on the balcony

2009-09-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

Sitting on my balcony, there's a slight cool wind and I know it's spring.
Spring for me always means punk music. No matter where I am. Baltimore, Chicago, Florida, Spain, Argentina. It's always punk. It's always high energy, it's always that burning away of the frustration cold. There's a certain anger that winter brings with it. That winter instills in me. The frantic chords and chanted oaths of punk, the fire in the belly, the disregard for the frivilous, the material, those things that truly don't matter is the perfection of punk.

Sitting on my balcony in Buenos Aires, I put on the Subhumans and light a cigarette (yes, I still smoke) and I'm comforted by the fact that no matter where I go, cigarettes and the Subhumans will always be the same. There are always moments in which we need something to strike the same chord, to taste the same, smell the same, make us feel the same way that we felt when we were 15. Or when we were 19 or 21 or 25 or 30. I can't attest to anything above 26, but I imagine everyone always has an undeniable need to connect to their past. I've seen my grandfather in an easy chair, eyes closed, listening to Frank Sinatra, and I swear he always cries a little bit. Dancing in his mind in a USO hall in the 1930s or 40s. I'm sure he also has some weird ideas about how 'those were the days,' a step I still haven't taken, and one that I don't think I will take, seeing as since I can remember the world has been a roiling, chaotic mess of wars, violence, advertisements, alienation, rich white suburbs,...I don't have any nostalgia about the security of the past. I think only our grandparents can relate to that idea, seeing as my parents grew up with Vietnam, 1968, and a whole host of other groundbreaking, life-changing insecurities.

The times of our grandparents were "perfectly" planned, post-war abundance. Segregation. Order. Reproduction. Slightly before planned obsolescence, the blenders still worked after ten years and you used the alarm clock your grandfather gave you or bought one from Sears and kept it until your kids went away to college. No, longer.

Where am I going with this?

You know, it's interesting to think about these things. What I'm writing about, good or bad, wrong or right, well written or terrible, it's really obvious what I'm talking about if you're from the USA. Americana is in our blood. It's incredibly powerful how absolutely installed culture is. How pervasively identifying it is. How we can say a few words that mean can be so powerful, that are immediately understood, that are immediately recognized for what they mean, nuanced, idiosyncratic, inescapable. Learning another language really throws this fact in your face. It is somehow incredible to me, still, that people speak other languages. I mean, when I'm sitting on the bus or in a bar or anywhere, and I listen to people speaking Spanish. When I'm talking to my friends or listening to them talk amongst themselves, and realize that they never studied this, they never studied Spanish, that it just comes out and goes in and it's totally, utterly natural to them, I'm somehow amazed.

Because it's all structures to me. Well, now it's becoming more natural. But it was taught to me structurally. Grammatically, syntactically, like formulas. But some people just learned it. Soaked it up when they were little kids, and it just has meaning to them. Nothing more. It has meaning. It has meaning like a Ford Mustang has meaning. It's implied. It's natural. It's symbolic, and the meaning is communicated almost instantaneously. Culture signification. Linguistic signification.

Of course we will always, here, pass over the questions about whether we as humans really understand each other. When we use the same words, do we use the same words, or are they words the meaning of which we vaguely agree on? That's another question.

I know that these writings are bad, because they never arrive at any point, and in my formal education I was certainly taught how to structure a piece of writing. But then, formal pieces of writing have their flaws as well. Take these writings as a reflection of my little head. It has tons of little ideas bouncing around, but they never really focus, they just kind of shoot around. I wonder if when I get old, they'll start to get together, to form something bigger, something cohesive, something important and useful. I don't know, I can only hope that they don't do me any harm! HA!

More musings on loneliness to come, right now, I should probably study. I have my first exam, in the Universidad, in Spanish(!), pretty soon.

Anyone have any good tips on studying? I'm not really that adept. It's hard to focus. How do you guys study? What are the tricks?

Solito

2009-09-13T16:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

Now I know that I normally only write about travels, and I suppose this note is about my travels as well. But it's more about the loneliness of it. Last night we had a party at our house, and I'm a little bit hungover, to be honest, which has left me a little depressed. The thing is, I don't really have anyone to talk to about it, which is part of the depression actually.

It can be pretty lonely living in another country, speaking another language, trying to make friends and bridge gaps between cultures. When I first arrived in Barcelona, it wasn't so bad. I made friends relatively fast in the program I was in, learning Spanish with other people who like me had no idea how to even ask for a coffee. The settling in period wasn't too rough, and before I knew it I had a life there. I definitely have a life here in Buenos Aires, but it's much different, much more solo.
So I'm studying here but with Argentinians, most of them high school students, and in a distance program. So I only see my fellow students once a week, and nobody talks. I work a lot, and I've found that with the few friends (or people that I know anyway) that I have, when I talk about my other friends, I'm actually talking about my students...I'll start a sentence with: "Yeah, a friend of mine told me...actually, one of my students told me..."

And I really like my students, and they have become friends in a way. But they're not friends. It's my job, there is a small amount of professional distance, though not much. I'm a pretty casual teacher, as you all might imagine. The thing is, I really don't have any friends. My roommates and I are quickly becoming friends, but I don't know. It's actually difficult and I find myself trapped in my own mind, wanting to let out some of my ideas, to ask people for advice, at least to hear about someone's day!

When I was in Barcelona I started seeing a girl from here, Buenos Aires, and we had a really intense relationship there in the last month I was there, and kept in touch on a daily basis until she returned, about three weeks ago. But it seems like the change for her is intense, and we haven't seen each other much since she's been here. I can't rely on her to help me through anything because she's going through a lot herself. But it has effected me a lot, because I was really happy to have someone I care about in Buenos Aires, and its starting to look like she's going to need some time to adjust, and who knows if we will continue what we had.

So I'm working and studying and everyone told me it would be difficult...but it's not just because of the language, that's turned out to be the easy part. The emotional toll is difficult.

The fact of the matter is, I'm fine. I have food, I have money and work, I have things to do and I'm doing them. My legs work well enough to get me from one place to another. So what do I have to complain about? It's true though, having people around you really changes things. But then maybe my task is to learn to be comfortable alone, which is advice that I recently gave my sister.

I suppose the real question is, what is being alone? I was talking to a guy last night at the party, and in the end we ended up talking about the human condition. That we are all alone, that is what self-consciousness is. There is this psychological theory that I think about a lot. That there is a moment in every human's life when they realize they are an individual person. They are not the people around them, they are not the things they touch, they are a body and a mind separate from other things. I think a lot of modern psychology is built upon this idea. From that moment of realization, they say, the rest of your life is coming to terms with that shock. Coming to terms with being alone in the world.

I've thought about this idea a lot since I learned about it (in art school. yup.). Last year I realized a lot of things about life, about relationships, about friendships, and it's true that we're all alone. You can't be someone else, you can't experience anything from anyone's point of view other than your own. But what you can do is build relationships with others, to get as close as you can. A lot of anxiety comes from this idea. It's scary to think about developing bonds with people BECAUSE we're not them. Because we can't really know what we're getting into, we can't really know what the other is thinking. But it's such a wonderful thing when we do build those relationships, ... it's even more wonderful to appreciate how important other people are.

Anyway, I need some of that building, but then maybe I just need to take a few breaths, calm down, and let things be. Eventually it will be fine...as if it isn't already.

Any advice?

La parrilla

2009-09-11T11:13:00.001-07:00

La parrilla otra vez!
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

La parrilla is the grill, that's where they do the famous Argentinian Asado. It's pronounced PA-RREE-SHA. That's with a rolled R, which I still need a couple of drinks to pull off! jaja!

Haedo

2009-09-11T11:11:00.001-07:00

Haedo
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Close to the house in Haedo.

La calle

2009-09-11T11:10:00.001-07:00

La calle
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

The street that I lived on when I first came to Argentina. En la concha de la lora!!

Empanadas!!!

2009-09-11T11:09:00.001-07:00

Empanadas!!!
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

A local delicacy.

La carne

2009-09-11T06:08:00.001-07:00

La carne
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Yes, that dark poop-looking thing is a sausage, and yes I tried it, and yes it is made out of blood. Not pretty.

But the do eat every part of the animal, which I greatly respect. I've even seen brain for sale in the Supermarket.

Buenos Aires

2009-09-11T06:07:00.001-07:00

Buenos Aires
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Buenos Aires

2009-09-11T06:06:00.003-07:00

Buenos Aires
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Buenos Aires

2009-09-11T06:06:00.001-07:00

Buenos Aires
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Buenos Aires

2009-09-11T06:05:00.003-07:00

Buenos Aires
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Buenos Aires

2009-09-11T06:05:00.001-07:00

Buenos Aires
Cargado originalmente por adios.abientot

Here is a photo from one of my first trips to the city a couple of months ago. Buenos Aires is huge.

El viaje // The journey

2009-09-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned before that I travel a lot in Buenos Aires, no?

Well it's true, I do. Voy por todos lados. I go everywhere. At least that's what I say. But when it comes down to it, if I look at a map, I barely scratch the surface. Every week I travel from my place in Caballito to Congreso to Barracas, back to Caballito and then in the other direction to Ramos Mejía and Haedo. Haedo being my former place of residence. You can read a little about these neighborhoods here if you want.

It seems like I traverse the entire city, but the fact of the matter is it's gigantic. When I locate myself on the map, and figure the distances between each area...well, let's just take today. I probably traveled 60 kilometers, give or take. Ok, I just looked that up and it's 37.2 miles. Not that much. Nevermind, it seemed like a lot more. ANYWAY, Buenos Aires is really big.

That said, I think I'll sign off because obviously I'm not too sharp right now or I would have researched that little fact before beginning to write about how I travel so freakin much. I'm tired! HA!

Los miercoles // Wednesdays

2009-09-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what form this blog is going to take, if it will take any, if I will suddenly stop writing as my erratic mind shifts gears as it always does. Right now I'm ready to leave the house, to go tutor a student in Ciudadela, which is about 45 minutes on the bus.

In Argentina, they call buses Colectivos or Bondis. The story behind this is kind of interesting. During the development of South America in the 1800's, Great Britain invested a lot of money in building the infrastructure of Brazil and Argentina (at least these two countries, I'm sure more...), and it was with English Bonds that Brazil developed their transportation system, so the Brazilians called the buses "Bondis," which somehow made it's way to Argentina.

So I'm going to take the Bondi to Ciudadela, teach a student for two(!) hours, and then head to Haedo to do a conversation workshop. These are really fun. Every Wednesday I meet with four or five teenagers from Haedo to talk for an hour and a half. We can talk about anything we want, play games, whatever we want. It's really nice because I don't have to plan a lesson, I just have to show up. On top of that, their English is excellent. Each of them have been studying English for almost ten years, and I think they understand the structure better than I. We've actually taken to speaking Spanish for the last five or ten minutes. The first time because they wanted to see if I really spoke Spanish, and then after that because I had questions for them about some Spanish structures, and they suggested we speak Spanish at the end of each class. It's pretty fun, but they speak really fast. Understanding "kids" is a lot harder than understanding adults. It's like listening to my little sister talk to her friends, with all of their inside jokes, weirdly specific slang, the things that make you think about how quickly language and self-expression changes with just a few years difference in age. Megan is seven years younger than I, and it's true that her "generation" has a much different way of speaking, relating, and also using technology.

But imagine that weirdness in a foreign language.

This is nice though, writing a little bit instead of doing something less productive with these 15 minutes that I have 'free.'

I'll arrive home tonight at ten o'clock, work a little bit, go to sleep, and start again tomorrow. It's weird to have things to do after such a long time 'al pedo.'

Al pedo = to the fart = doing nothing; yeah, that's more Argentinian.
For example: "Estuve al pedo todo el día." = "I did nothing all day." or "I was sitting on my ass all day."

You can also say: "Hice huevo hoy." Which directly translated means "I made egg today." But it's just another way of saying "I did nothing."

I'll try to give you guys a little lesson in Argentinian each post. Next time: "Chamuyero."

Starting anew...

2009-09-08T21:57:00.000-07:00

The shock has worn off...or it's at least fading away.

It's been a really long time since I've posted anything here, for this I apologize. I know that my friends and family really enjoyed reading my posts, and my feelings that it was too self-absorbed, though justified, are not reason enough to stop writing. In fact, what ended up happening was I replaced writing in my blog regularly, with changing my facebook status...so what's better, one sentence that changes every couple of days, or a blog...? I think the answer is clear.

Right now I'm sitting in my bed in Buenos Aires, in the neighborhood of Caballito. If you speak English, you just read that as Caballito with two English Ls, if you speak a little bit of Spanish, it's more like Cabayeeto. But if you want to say it right, it's a little bit different: more like Cabasheeto. In Argentina the Spanish is a little bit different. The LL construction and the letter Y (when not the last letter in a word) are pronounced like the English SH. To be honest, the Spanish of Argentina is really beautiful, and as I'm a 'Spanish-as-a-second-language' speaker, I've taken up the accent a little bit more than someone who has their own, natural accent would.

How did I end up in Argentina? I know some of you are out of the loop, so I'll fill you in a bit. After spending a little while in Spain, my aspirations to study remained and I started to research what it would take to study in Spain. I didn't want to return to the USA, and it seemed like it would be really amazing to actually study in another country, moreso in another language. Although, to be honest it's really hard. After a lengthy investigation into the different programs available to study medicine in Spain (yes, medicine, that's the plan), I found that the best program happened to be in Barcelona. Perfect, because that's where I was. There were a couple of problems though. Barcelona is really expensive and you have to work a lot there to survive, secondly the education there is NOT that good, in fact, the medical education here in Argentina is reportedly a lot better. This being an 'underdeveloped' (read: third world) country, that's saying something. Another fact about the Universitat de Barcelona is that the classes (80% I read) are in Catalan. It didn't really appeal to me to learn another language to study, particularly one that is only spoken by one or two million people.

So through some friends of mine, one of whom studied medicine in Argentina, I found out a lot about the education here. It's good, really good, famous in fact and it's free. Seriously.

So in November of 2008 I set my sight on Argentina, planning to arrive here shortly after I finished my Spanish course in Barcelona. Seven months later I arrived. Clothes, bicycle, body. It was really a shame because I left Barcelona just as summer was beginning to arrive here in "pleno invierno," the middle of winter. OK, the beginning of winter. Cold, grey, and cold again. So I spent a wonderful winter in Barcelona, had two months of warming up, then got dumped back into the cold again. But I'm actually not complaining, because having these opportunities to see the world in such an intimate way is really, absolutely, gut-wrenchingly amazing.

My first two months here I lived in Haedo, a town in the Province of Buenos Aires. The Province of Buenos Aires being a huge part of Argentina, the biggest province (which as you can imagine are similar to states). Haedo is just outside of Buenos Aires and the girl that I lived with, before I arrived, told me it would take a little while to get to the city center. So did my Argentinian friends in Barcelona. But I didn't really realize how long it would actually take. After living there for two months, I had to go...it was 20 minutes walking to the train, then 40 minutes to the city, then another god-knows-how-long on the bus or subway to wherever I was going. An hour an twenty minutes to get to the Facultad de Medicina is a long time.

The minute I arrived...well...the first week I arrived, I started sending my CV to English schools and putting ads on the internet to teach classes, and within a month I had a job teaching at a school in Haedo and a student to tutor. Since then, the school in Haedo has given me two more classes (four in total) and I've also taken on three more individual students. In Spain, I barely worked, and applied myself just as much, if not more. It's interesting because my friends told me that many many more people in Argentina speak English, so I imagined it may be more difficult to find work. But the fact that we're in the Americas I think accounts for the increased motivation.

My job in Haedo is good. The people who run the school are really friendly, supportive, and keep giving me more work...which really appeals to me. My schedule is pretty full, and I'm learning more and more HOW to teach, and WHAT to teach. I'm really starting to get the hang of explaining English, things that obvious to me, that aren't obvious to my students. I think spending a year learning Spanish has given me some good insight into how people learn a language, and that helps when I'm sitting with my students, or standing in front of a class.

So, when I arrived here, I thought I would have to wait a while before I could start studying because the inscription for the Ciclo Basico Comun (first year program, basically) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires doesn't happen until October. About three weeks after I arrived, my 'host', Paula, from whom I rented a room, had an Asado at her house with her brothers and father. Her brother's girlfriend Ana was there, who happens to be studying at the UBA, biochemistry. We were talking about how I wanted to study, and she told me "why don't you enroll in the UBA XXI." This is a program for people who work or for people who are in High School, who want to start studying and get some of the classes out of the way before they start the CBC. It's a distance program. You buy the books (officially or photocopies, which are readily and illegally available), download the homework, and each week there is a tutorial that you can attend, which is basically a class. In fact, there are about seven or eight different schedules each week to attend the same tutorial. So it's really quite accessible. All I had to do was sign on to the webpage, put in my passport number, and choose the classes I wanted. Free. Buy the books, and start studying. Free.

Underdeveloped. Yeah.

Since I begun, it's been something of a struggle. I haven't been speaking Spanish a year yet, and I'm already trying to study. But the fact of the matter is, it's a really great way to study Spanish, and if I don't pass these classes, I'll have the option to take them again when I start the CBC. But surprisingly, in the tutoring sessions, I understand almost everything, though some of the questions the students ask are difficult because they speak faster and less clearly. The professors always speak slower and more deliberately. So if I follow along, I get a ton out of it.

Argentina is a really amazing country. It's WAY different than Europe and the USA. As one might expect, it's kind of falling apart, neglected, dirty, crazy. They say there's a lot of crime, and everyone I've met has had some run-in with a thief or a knife or a gun. But I don't know if that's much different than someone who's lived in Baltimore their whole life. Paula's older brother has been shot twice, and he's a pretty normal guy. Once in a carjacking, once in a robbery on the street. Both times the bullet entered, exited, and only left a scar. When I first arrived I was a little paranoid, I think some of my friends exaggerated a little bit, but maybe it's better to be a little paranoid at first.

Now that I've been here for a couple of months I've become a lot more comfortable. I live in Caballito with some really great roommates, it's perfectly located in the center of the city, a little bit more expensive, but my traveling time is a lot shorter. It took me a little while to start to understand Argentinian Spanish, but now I've grown pretty accustomed to it, and it's fairly easy for me to understand people when they speak to me. My life here is much more organized, working and studying a lot, I really have to keep myself focused. Everyone says that Argentina is great because it's so cheap, but it's only cheap if you have Dollars or Euros in your pocket. If you're working for pesos, living in Buenos Aires might be like living in New York. Everything's expensive, it's hard to go out for drinks or to eat without pricing everything, and to be honest I've probably only been out about three or four times since I've been here.

It's a big change, but I'm excited to see where this part of my life takes me. Living and studying in Argentina, speaking Spanish all the time, it's really amazing.

So that's a quick update. I'm going to try to write a lot more. I've realized in this whole process of organizing myself that it's really important for me to have a solid routine to keep myself focused. This routine is slowly developing, but as I don't go out very much, I need to find something to relax me now and then, but something that also keeps my mind working a little bit so I don't go brain dead or cool down too much, and I think writing would really be great.

So keep yourselves plugged in, and hopefully there will be more to come.

Los paises arabes

2009-04-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

This is my first 'diary' entry from my Spanish diary from my first trip to the Arab world!

Sábado 21 de marzo

Hoy es el primer día que he querido escribir el diario, después de cuatro días con la gripe. ¡Vaya manera para pasar un viaje! Bueno, empezamos en Dubai. Allí entendí que el desarrollo del capitalismo, dirigido por riqueza – riqueza occidental o oriental – puede ser totalmente igual en ambos lados. Planificación para los coches, por los coches o bien por el petróleo. Es que fui en taxi desde el aeropuerto al hotel, y cada vez giramos, en cada calle, yo notaba que Dubai es una ciudad que no se puede pasar a pie, en bici,… Solo en los taxis, coches, y autobuses. Me parecía que la ciudad estuvo intentando dejarse de mi, o por lo menos esconderse. Luego, desde el barco, una distancia de dos kilómetros del centro, los detalles, las formas de los edificios, las calles, estaban oscuro, escondido por una neblina de polvo. Más bien por un deseo quedarse oculta, como que la vida de la ciudad quiere quedar desconocida. Desde allí no podía ver a las calles, solo a de arriba de los edificios. Me parecía que la ciudad no quiso dejarme una vista ni una idea de su existencia, un extrañamiento que me dejó solo la oportunidad comprar, sacar fotos, y nada más.

Nos alojamos en un hotel la primer noche. El hotel estuvo rodeado de otros hoteles, edificios grandes, algunos en construcción, algunos residencial. Cada uno tuvo un caos de las parabólicas, una cascada de los cables negros, grises, blancos. Un interrupción de platos en el paisaje, una corriente del occidente a través del cielo. Encendí la televisión y los programas cursis de los Estados Unidos, las películas de los ochenta, vinieron gritando. Una programación mezclada de noticias inglesas, árabes, los partidos de futbol. Hubieron noticias de tragedias en un mundo que no lo conocemos en el occidente, que no nos importa, pero que existe aún.

Cuando llegue al hotel estuve agotado. No pude hacer nada más que dormir. Me cajé en la cama y dormí hasta sonó el teléfono. Lo contesté y oí la voz de mi Mamá. Ellos habían llegado, estaban mis padres y mis hermanas, mi abuela, y luego llegaron mi tío y mis primos. Pasamos juntos la noche en un restaurante Libanés, y cuando estaba comiendo mi cena, un filete de pescado frito, eché de menos el alcohol que es prohibido en los países musulmanes.

Por favor!

2009-02-13T08:41:00.000-08:00

A vosotros que podéis hablar español, POR FAVOR si tenéis el tiempo corregir los textos españoles. Si algo suena raro o puede ser mas claro o sabéis de una otra forma explicar algo, dimelo! Sed despiadados! Sisplau! Ja.

Los hilos de vida...

2009-02-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Es increíble como nos encontramos, como nos conocemos, y como perdimos los oportunidades. Desde llegue en Barcelona no he encontrado el amor y tampoco no he estado buscándolo. Pero a veces pienso que puede ser lindo, bello, y también divertido tener una novia, alguien para compartir un poco mas de mí y las cosas que disfruto en España. Y vosotros ya sabéis que a veces tenemos oportunidades que no vemos viniendo. Anoche tuve esta experiencia.

Cada semana hay un reunión en un Bar que está en el centro de Barcelona, es un reunión de Couchsurfing.com (Os recomiendo ver esta página web!) donde podemos encontrar amigos nuevos de muchos países para compartir nuestras culturas y lenguas. Normalmente no voy allí porque estoy liado, no tengo el tiempo. Pues anoche fui porque debía estar unos chicos de Chicago y quería encontrarlos. No los encontré, pero vi unos amigos y era súper divertido. Había un montón de couchsurfers allí y conocí unos amigos nuevos. Unas chicas de Grecia que era súper simpáticas, un españole (quién podía entender totalmente! awesome!) y unos amigos de Finlandia también. Es que en Barcelona durante la semana el metro no funciona después de las 24h, y a las 2350h estamos corriendo al metro porque nuestras casas están un rato del centro.

El metro estaba lleno. Todo el mundo estaba yendo a sus propias casas, a sus propias camas, en sus propias vidas a través el ultimo viaje del tren y yo tenía trasbordar a Verdaguer desde la línea amarillo a la línea azul para ir a Hospital Clinic, mi estación. Todo el mundo estaba corriendo a la otro línea y empecé corriendo también. Yo seguía la gente bajo, bajo, bajo y cuando llegamos en la planta donde llegar los trenes, la pantalla que muestra cuando tiene que esperar para el próximo era apagado!
Estábamos confundidos: "¿Otra está viniendo? ¿Tenemos que caminar a nuestras propias casas o...?" Estábamos hablando y había una chica, quizá un poco mas joven que yo, castaña con piel blanco y una cara de confusión como yo. Un chico nos dijo que uno más está viniendo y sonreímos, la chica y yo, a la misma vez.

"Está viviendo aún." Ella me dijo.
"Con suerte." Yo contesté.

Otra vez sonreímos y empezamos esperar. El silencio era embarazada, como un vacío que quería palabras hacerlo lleno, nadie hablaba y estamos al lado del uno al otro separado del resto. No le miré pero a veces yo sentía que ella me miró una o dos veces y quería decirla algo, cualquier cosa porque yo sentía que podía. El tiempo sentía como mas que era, y después de un rato podíamos oír el tren. Cuando estábamos en dentro, estábamos de pie en lados opuestos, nos apoyamos en las paredes uno enfrente al otro. Unas veces a la miré y unas veces a mi miró. Pero cuando miré el mapa para saber cuando viene mi estación me di que ¡estaba yendo en la dirección opuesta! ¡No estaba yendo a mi casa, pero alejé de mi casa!

El próximo estación era Sagrada Familia y tenía que salir allí e ir caminando a mi casa. Estaba confundido y olvidé la chica y nuestra conexión. La parada vine y era su parada también. A mi miró y dijo "hasta luego" con una sonrisa apenas perceptible pero en mi estado de confusión solo podía sonreír y girar en la dirección de mi salida, la dirección opuesta de ella. Cuando miré la salida, estaba cerrada y cuando me dí vuelto ella había desaparecido y sentí tontito por no había dichole mas.

Cuando salí la parada estaba llovioso, el aire estaba pesado y hacía frío. Había personas en la calle pero mi sentido era como ellos eran granos de arena y me sentí muy pequeño pensando de casualidad, de como nos encontramos y como perdemos las oportunidades conocer otros. ¿Porque yo quería hablar con ella y sentía que ella quería hablar conmigo pero no nos hablamos nada mas? Claro, hay un montón de razones, pero no hay un razón que me parece suficiente y siento que la vida es hablando a los otros que no conozco, subiendo arriba de preocupaciones para conocer otro que está vivo conmigo en nuestro mundo. Es una cosa de amor, de siendo humano, perder nuestros miedos y hacer un puente, romper los espejos y trascender. Puedo decirme “próxima vez.” Pero no quiero decirmelo siempre.

Desayuno Español

2009-02-10T00:09:00.000-08:00

¡Hola a tod@s!

Tengo que ir a escuela en un rato, pero quería escribir un poco. Creo que es un buen ejercicio si aprende una lengua nueva escribir, hablar, leer, escuchar esta lengua antes la lengua nativa cada día. ¿Sabes? Cada vez español es la primer del día, mi español es mejor todo el día. Mas fácil hablar y entender cuando escucho.

Entonces, estoy aquí en el blog.

Que lástima porque no tengo mucho deciros. Todo va bien aquí en España. Mis clases han empezado y son buenas. Durante el ultimo cuatrimestre tenía ganas de subir mi nivel en mi programa, porque las clases eran lentos y me aburrieron. Tenía que estudiar mucho y hacer un buen examen al fin del cuatrimestre. Estudié cada día muchisimo. He subidolo! Mi nivel ahora está ELEMENTAL! JAJAJA! Antes yo estaba en PRINCIPIANTE!! Todavía las clases son lentos, entonces proxima semana voy a "crash" una clase que es mas avanzada. Mi amiga Anastasya está en el grupo intermedio, y voy a compañerla en su clase en lunes para ver si Intermedio es demasiado avanzada para mi o si puede ir bien, ¿sabes? Quiero aprender español mas rapido!!! Quiero mas conversación!! Esa ONDA!

Bueno, tengo que ducharme y ir a la UB.

Chauito Chicos! Os quiero muchisimo!

Please...

2009-01-28T06:43:00.000-08:00

I have one more thing to say:

To those of you, my readers, who are not practicing Yoga. Please, try it. It really does have a profound effect on the whole day, the whole life. I'm so much more centered, so much more controlled and calm. It's really wonderful. It's especially great if you want to clean yourself up a bit. To stop smoking so much or eating poorly, because your body feels so great. After practicing, all I want to put in my body is vegetables and fruit and water, because I know anything else will bring the energy that I've generated down.

So please, try it!

Also another note. Today or tomorrow I'm going to start writing in Spanish. Not every post, but maybe once or twice a week. Mostly for me, to practice, but also for you! I know some of my friends who speak Spanish read this blog, so it will give them a chance to correct me (hint hint). Those of you who don't speak Spanish or are learning it right now...well, we can learn together!

Chauito guachitos!!

Yoga Life

2009-01-28T05:24:00.001-08:00

DAY 2 of YOGA!

Awesome. Yesterday's class was great. A little tricky because I know very little anatomical words in spanish, but I knew all of the asanas, so I just had to look around a little bit. The teacher's name was Claudio, also a Chileno. I'm surrounded by people from Chile! It's great!

Classes are free this week, until Friday so I'm going to go as much as I can. And then I think I'm going to pay for the membership, though I'm not sure which 'package' I'll buy.

Today was a class in English with a woman from Seattle who lives in Spain now. She was really nice. Her class was really rigorous, and being so out of practice it was definitely a challenge! I miss Katie Browne's class! Class today was good, definitely Charm City Yoga style. Though I do appreciate hearing from teacher how they think Yoga practice can exist in life outside of the Yoga studio. I think that's one of the most amazing things about the practice, and I love to hear what teachers say about it, because a lot of them are really living it. Actually it's kind of insane though, I was with a friend of mine from Holland last night and she told me that her Yoga teacher just had a heart attack! Of all the people, who would expect a Yoga teacher to have a heart attack?

Anyway, at the beginning of every class, most teachers give you a little pep talk, and also mention that if you want to dedicate your class to someone, to take the focus off of you and maybe send some healthy energy to someone else you should! So today I dedicated my class to my little sister Megs who now has Mononucleosis and was even in the HOSPITAL because her tonsils were so swollen! Poor Meggers! Get well soon!

Yoga! Awesome!

2009-01-27T04:35:00.000-08:00

Ok everyone,

FINALLY! For the first time since I've lived in Barcelona I'm going to a Yoga class! It will be free too! I hope it's gooood. It will certainly be better than practicing in my tiny room, that is for sure.

I'm really excited. I've decided to change my budgeting a little bit and pay for a month of yoga. Depending on where I go it could en up being about 65Euros. So instead of going out for drinks or to eat (which I don't do much...the latter anyway) I'll have a yoga practice! So much better. So much.

I'll let you know how it goes.

TED.com

2009-01-25T17:07:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Another short little post. I don't know how many times I've heard people criticizing webpages like myspace and facebook. They're trendy, yes. The internet has made society less personal, maybe. I am here to pass something on to you that I think is a really amazing resource. Where did I find out about it? On facebook. Someone's STATUS on facebook. For those of you who don't know, on facebook there is an option to post your status. It can be anything. What you're thinking, how you're feeling, what music you're listening to. Today my friend Beth posted her status as follows:

"Beth Feingold TOTALLY identifies with the NYT magazine article on obsessing over TED.com videos!"

So through this simple sentence I discovered TED.com: "Inspired talks by the world's leading thinkers and doers." The videos are free to watch, download, and share. The first one I watched was incredibly compelling. I think websites like these are incredible resources and must be spread far and wide. So please do so.

Ah, this is the link to my inaugural video on TED.com: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jamais_cascio_looks_ahead.html

It was a warm day here in Barcelona, but I barely left the house. No joke! Que mal!!!

Metal, Love, Late Nights

2009-01-23T14:51:00.000-08:00

Hello all!

It is 23:51. 11:51. This is when people LEAVE to go out on the weekends! No joke. Spain. What a place. Lately I've rediscovered my love for metal with one of the greatest bands, At the Gates. Don't be fooled by their new stuff, check out Terminal Spirit Disease. Greatest metal album ever!

Lately I've been having this feeling of total, absolute, unconditional wonder at the world. I walk everywhere, and as I'm walking and looking at the people around me, somehow I feel close to them. As if we weren't different people. As if we were all part of the same person. This is compassion. When you realize that people really aren't different from you. Lacan theorized the mirror stage: the phase of life after a human first sees their reflection in a mirror, when they realize they are a separate body, a separate thing from the other people around them. Ultimately when they realize they are separate from their mother. Love is about transcending the perception of this difference so that it does not cause anxiety, but wonder, that we can be separate but still love.

Yes, I've had a couple of drinks!

Cuantos años del dolor!

2009-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

Hoy, Today,

It was a beautiful day, so Denisse and I took a walk to Hospital de Sant Pau. I have been told by many people to go there, and finally, I can say I have. It is really an amazing place, and coming from the States I'm surprised (and impressed) with the conceptual thought put into the design of a Hospital. This hospital makes every other modern hospital I've ever seen pale to almost nothing. I'll post pictures soon.

Memorable quotes from today:

Denisse: "Como una ciudad de las cuentas..." (Like a city of fairy tales.)
Denisse again: "Cuantos años del dolor!" (So many years of pain, referring to the age of the hospital. Though actually it feels older than it is, as if it was constructed in the 1700s in a storybook...but it was built between 1900 and 1930.)

Ah, one last thing, Denisse also mentioned to me that during a surgery there, a piece of the ceiling fell into the patient! Que mal! Imagine the lawsuit in the USA. Whew!

¡Cuanto Tiempo!

2009-01-16T05:24:00.000-08:00

What a whirlwind, the holidays.
A brief excursion to the United States of America. Only two weeks and it went by so very fast, and how intense it was to be in an English speaking place! While I was there my mind never ceased making translations from English to Spanish. When I would go to the store or the gas station or anywhere, approaching a cashier or a bartender my instinct was to translate, prepare myself to speak Spanish, but then ultimately that wasn't necessary. A strange gap would be created and for a brief second I was awash in confusion...what do I say?

Now I'm back in Espanya, learning Spanish again and my fear that I would lose my Spanish while in the States was misguided. In fact, I think my Spanish is better now than it was before. I returned the day before New Years Eve, and for the first two days of the New Year I really only spoke Spanish. So it came back with full force, a great trial by fire.

So here are my New Year's Resolutions:

- To only speak, hear, or read English for one hour a day (if I can help it).
- To have more structure in my daily life to make my studying more effective.
- To stop eating like a Spaniard. (This one is tough, because the Spanish love of olive oil, bread, and cheese is one that I also share. But man, it makes you feel like crap if you eat like that all the time. I don't understand how Spain still exists with the average diet here!)
- To show my friends how much I love them everyday.

So far I'm doing pretty good. Though I must say, the one hour a day of English is difficult. Well, no, it has been difficult because after the New Years party extravaganza I was left with an intense cold and when I'm sick I just want to watch movies and all the movies I have are in English. So I had a pretty serious dose of English for a while there, but that's coming to an end.

******

Now, I have two weeks before my classes start and I'm loving life right now. My birthday was on Wednesday and though I know the internet has a capacity to be impersonal, the amount of Birthday wishes posted on my facebook was pretty amazing, and I felt a ton of love on my birthday for sure. I always feel weird about birthdays, about a day of attention for me. I don't really like it. So I didn't have a party or anything, though Denisse, Fernanda and I had a nice dinner, and afterwards I went and hung out with a couple of my friends from school, Tetsuya and Tomoyo from Japan. Tetsuya even gave me a couple of gifts and Tomoyo made a really cute card for me. So nice!!

So now I'm 26 years old. More than a quarter of a century!! Wrap your mind around that!

It has been a really long time since I've posted in my blog, I know I know, lame. But time gets away from me. Though the New Years resolution above, the one about structure in my daily life, I think should make time for writing in my Blog. I didn't think anyone was reading it, but a lot of people have mentioned to me how they miss reading this thing! Thanks!

So here are some plans for my future that I've been working on.
I want to be back in school! Well I am in school actually, and though it is only a Spanish course for Foreigners, I look at it as the beginning of a career, as the beginning of a course of study. That it is indeed, as I'm planning to continue my studies in a Spanish speaking university. This will be a challenge, to be sure, one that will take a lot of perseverance. I want to finally go back to school and study health care, medicine. For months and months I have been researching the best way to go about this.

Here in Barcelona I live next to the Facultat de Medicina de la Universitat de Barcelona, I walk by it everyday, I see all of the medical students coming in and out, I can see it from the balcony. Studying here in Barcelona is astronomically cheaper than studying in the United States. It would cost me 10,000 Euros to get my degree here. WOW! Cheap! But Barcelona is expensive in cost of living, and the other big problem: to study medicine here, I have to be able to understand and speak Catalan. Apparently about 80% of the classes in the UB medical program are in Catalan! For those of you who don't know, Catalan is NOT a dialect of Spanish. It is its own complex language with complex roots.

So studying here in Barcelona is hard to imagine, with the cost of living, the absence of financial aid for foreigners, and the Catalan hurdle. About two months ago I met a woman from Argentina through one of my ads for intercambios on loquo.com (one of my favorite methods to learn Spanish: conversation.). Jesshica is a doctor here who studied medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina (la UNC). After talking to her about my aspirations, she mentioned that studying in Argentina is a very real possibility for me. School there is basically free, even to foreigners. During your studies, the only thing you have to pay for is books and materials. At the end of your studies, you have to pay the school for your diploma. At the Univeridad de Buenos Aires (la UBA) Argentinians have to pay something like $300 (Argentinian) and Foreigners like me have to pay $3000, which works out to be about $900US. Pretty amazing! La UBA is also a world renowned institution for studying medicine. It is much much much cheaper to live in Argentina than it is to live here in Europe!

SO! Argentina here I come. I just have to figure out the logistics, but my US dollars go a lot farther there, and if I start earning more Euros I think I'll be pretty set going to Argentina.

Now, some people in my life are worried about how I will be treated there, being a Gringo and all. This could be a valid concern, but I don't have the same fear after talking to my Argentinian friends. I also found a website called Mancia.org, which is a Spanish language forum for medical students that focuses on South America, particularly Argentina because the medical education there is such a huge deal. I posted a few months ago asking questions about Argentina, explaining my situation, and a TON of Argentinians have written me with a lot of information, advice, encouraging words. Of course this is only a segment of the population, and you would think that medical students might be particularly interested in helping others interested in their field and country. Just this response on the internet has been super-encouraging. One person has even offered to help me look for apartments and to help with the logistics of my arrival if I make it there! Incredible!!

My classes continue until May, so I'm shooting for heading to Argentina by June. Bad timing because it will be winter there, which means...yes, basically a 9 month winter for me. I survived that in Chicago times ten, so I think I'll survive.

El Café

2008-10-15T05:27:00.000-07:00

Ok, quick post before I go back to school.

My lifestyle has changed. I eat more bread than I ever have in my life, because baguettes cost 90 cents and are so freaking good. I eat more cheese. I eat more tomatoes. I eat so so so much olive oil, it's ridiculous. I still haven't made a foray into the pastries of this country. I'm afraid I'll have to buy new clothes or cut the waists of the pants I have. I drink more coffee.

Tuesdays are "Dia de los trastos" in my barrio. That's the day that the city comes around and picks up big pieces of trash: furniture, cardboard, etc. So every tuesday the three of us go out and look for nice new furniture for ourselves. We found a few nice things, yes. After dropping off our first load, we went for another look. We didn't find anything, but we did stop into a local tapas place for a caña (draft beer, basically) and fernanda treated us to some pulpo. Prepared sauteed in olive oil with garlic and parsley. They were little baby octopi (plural, right? the spellcheck didn't underline it, so i'll press on), tentacles, heads and all. Somehow I was a little disturbed by this. I have seen so much footage and heard so much about how intelligent octopi are. That their intelligence equals our own. Somehow eating the little head of a baby octopus actually disturbed me.

But really, does its intelligence make it more worthy of a pardon than the simple fact that it's alive? Why an octopus and not a fish?

Hmmm. Yes. I'll just eat both.

Oh yeah, I'll nonchalantly drop this bomb too (if I haven't already...): I ate meat. Yes. Pork even. Yup. Wrapped around a piece of melon with two friends on a bed at 5am after drinking a fair amount of alcohol. It figures, too. I was planning on trying meat in Spain. I dreamed of a perfect dinner, a fancy restaurant, a gastronomical delight to claim my veritable meat-virginity. But no, I'm deflowered in a small, semi-lit bedroom, drunk, and with two people I barely know.

Yep.

Love ya!

Steve

¡Nueva Photo!

2008-10-09T16:29:00.000-07:00

I hope this isn't too hard to see you guys!!

Hola Hola Lo Siento!

2008-10-08T09:02:00.000-07:00

Hola Todos!

I'm so sorry I haven't updated in a while! With school and life I'm a little bit busy. But I also realized one small thing about my blogging. I won't write or update because I'm thinking "I don't have time to write...everything!" Reading my previous posts is kind of tedious you guys. You all don't have to know about every meeting, every event, every single thing. And if I feel like I have to write all of that and it keeps me from writing at all, what's the point?

Ok, so, that said. Here goes. I'm in school now. Yes, school. I have a full plate of classes, 21 hours of classes a week and it's actually really great so far.

So a brief list of my classes in order of interest:

- La Prosa Narrativa de España
- Conversar en Español
- Lengua: Grammatica y Vocabulario
- Hablado en Español
- Economía Actualidad
- Cultura i Lengua Catalanes
- Historia General

Conversar en Español is taught by Julia Miñano Lopez. She also teaches three of my "Lengua" classes each week, and "Hablado en Español," which essentially is her talking about Barcelona and trying to get a class of 40 foreigners to participate in the little ways they can. But "Conversar" is great because, as you may guess, we talk the whole time. With each other, with our profesora and I'm loving speech more and more each day. In fact, today we learned how to keep ourselves talking when we don't know the words. Of course, if you stop talking, you freeze up and get discouraged. So it was a whole class, working with a partner trying to describe objects with words that we DO know with the goal of our partner being able to guess what the object is (we had a sheet of little clip-art objects). But it was GREAT because we just talked the WHOLE CLASS. I really like Julia, she's a great teacher. You'd expect so as she wrote the text book we're using for the program.

The economics class is great. My teacher, Enrique, is this slightly nerdy guy who sits at the front of the class showing us powerpoints and talking about the current Crisis in world economics while explaining to us the most important parts of the Spanish economy. The newspapers, companies, unions, syndicates, everything you could possibly want to know. It's hard though, because I understand probably 60% of what he's talking about, but I want to ask questions because I have seriously never taken an economics class. Asking the questions I want to ask is really difficult.

And yes, the prose class is my favorite, which was unexpected. The texts that we're reading are short prose and excerpts from Spanish writers of the 15th century (the century in which our great country was founded, yes). To be honest, I've learned so much Spanish in this class. I love stories, I love to read, and this love motivates me. The texts we've read thus far are past-tense of course and past tense verbs are something that I've no clue about. At least I didn't before I came to Spain, of course. But sitting down with a two or three page piece of writing with my computer (www.wordreference.com) and stumbling through these texts, discovering words, sentences opening as I understand how words relate to each other. Subjects to objects and reflexive verbs and everything starts to make sense and I understand the story and I understand a NEW LANGUAGE more. Yes, I love it.

Seriously. So thanks to Blanca Ripoll (my teacher, who's from the Balearic Islands, yeah lucky her!) I'm learning some really great Spanish and I know how to learn more: read fiction! Yeah!

I've made some friends at school: Phillip, Sophie, Karin, and some outside of school. But I don't have any really good friends yet. Fernanda and Denisse are great, and are certainly my closest friends thus far. But sometimes it is a little lonely because I don't have a really tight group. No friends that I see all the time, that it is just assumed that we spend time together. It's hard to just find that, but I think this is also the kind of thing that just sort-of happens. It's difficult though because everyone I know has come here with someone else, or already lives here and they have their group.

But I've moved before and know how it works and I know how to be alone, but there is a certain heightened level of melancholy or loneliness that exists in a new country, where you don't speak the language. This solitude is not without its benefits though, to be sure. My thoughts are clearer. Thoughs about my country, about nationality, about identity are changing. My creativity is heightened. I think most of these have to do with the solitude and reflection and absolute need for a sharp mind that one has trying to learn a new language and country. I think everyone should do this!

Ok, so I promise more frequent updates! I love you all!

Days and nights and nights and days

2008-09-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

¡Vale!

Where have we been? Where are we going?

The latter I cannot answer. I can answer the former. After meeting Alba, she invited me to a bar with her roommate to watch some independent films. So the other night after hanging out with Elisabet I started on my way over. I was tempted to just go home, I was really tired and needed to sleep. But on my way I thought I should at least stop by and say hi and thank them for inviting me. Maybe have a drink and go home. So I sent her a text message that I was on my way. It was a beautiful night, balmy and cooling down. As I was riding through the center lightning started to flash. Huge streaks of lightning breaking and spreading across the sky above the beautiful architecture of Barcelona, above the Rambla, illuminating Barcelona for a split second. So great. But of course, my hopes that this was heat lightning and not rain lightning were misguided, and it started to rain. I tucked myself into a knook in one of the buildings on Colom and watched the rain fall hard for about ten minutes before it let up enough to head to the bar.

I finally found it, a small door off Paral•lel for a bar called MauMau. The first thing I saw when I walked in was a clean looking foyer with a reception desk, clean lines, glass and a very leaden, silver kind of atmosphere. The sharp and thoughtful feel of an art space. Past the foyer was a long ramp that led into the bar. A very large space, maybe 1500 square feet with tables and couches all facing the bar which had a projection screen behind it. There were also two projection screens perpendicular to this one in the middle of the room. All had the same film playing, the place was quiet save the film sound. The film that was playing (of which I only saw the last ten minutes) was about a family in Serbia, human drama, war, fortune, providence. All of the themes that can move me (almost) to tears when done right. This was one of those films, to be sure. In my fatigue I was of course more sensitive, and my Spanish compatriots didn't seem quite as moved as me, but the analytical distance I've had in the past has escaped me these past couple of years and I no longer by default revert to theory in my consumption of creative products. Thank god. Theory really can kill humanity...though it doesn't have to. No, I implore you, it doesn't have to!

After the film we walked to another bar closer to the center, I didn't say much because I was so tired and having a hard time getting into Spanish mode. Eventually Alba's friend Carmina asked me "¿Quieres hablar?" or "Do you want to talk?" I snapped out of my exhausted reverie and started to communicate again. At the bar we talked about America, American politics, Carmina's trip to California and her love affair with a Photographer from the Marines. I found it funny that she was criticizing America while she had loved someone so emblematic of her criticisms. Does this make sense? Of course, life is full of hypocrisy and confusion and love is an impossible thing to rationalize. Perhaps the most important aspect of love is that it could exist in such contention, no?

At the bar they invited me to have dinner at their house the next night with some of their friends. They told me "it will be you and five Spanish girls..." Ha! How could I say no? It was to be a potluck style meal, and I offered to make dessert.

I didn't realize until the next day that I had nothing with which to make dessert. Baking is an occupation that involves actual measurements, bakeware, specific ingredients. So I couldn't cover dessert, to my chagrin. Honestly I can make a tart tatin from scratch without measuring anything, but I needed a pan that I could bake in, and I don't have one and had no idea where to look for it.

So, instead I made Ceviche. It's basically Pico de Gallo salsa with raw white fish in it. Though, I will say my favorite Ceviche was made with huge chunks of Raw Tuna at Santiago's Bodega in Key west. But I wasn't prepared to spend the money for some Tuna, and I barely made it to the market by my house before it closed. Oh, that market is amazing by the way. It's called Mercat del Ninot and it has everything you could ever want, ever. Multiple fish stands, meat, cheese, wine, fruit, flowers. It is two blocks from my house. Yep. Jealous? It's ok when you come to visit, I'll take you there. I actually had a very nice conversation (in SPANISH! YEAH!) with the guy at the fruit stand because I've been trying to find "pimientos picantes" (hot peppers like Jalapeños or Habeñeros) everywhere here in Barcelona to no avail. But he was very gracious about my lack of Spanish, and complimented me on my ability for having so little training, so that was nice.

Before the potluck Fernanda and I went to a BBQ at her friends' house on the outskirts of town. The nice thing about Spanish people is that they don't eat until really late. So I was able to go to a BBQ (everyone there was from South America, so they didn't wait until 10 to start eating) and still come back and have enough time to make some food and head to the potluck. Of course I was late. I thought this would be ok because most of the people I know here are never on time. But somehow I befriended the only two punctual Españolas in the city and they had started eating without me! Oh well, they were hungry. They seemed to like the Ceviche though, which is good. Afterwards we had Mojitos and played some drinking games, then we went out to the city center. Yes, it was 1am when we LEFT the house. No joke. We went to the same bar that we did the other night and had a good time. I really like that bar, it's very cozy, dirty with red lighting and indie style American and British music playing all the time. It reminds me so much of Baltimore it's uncanny.

I ended up sleeping on their couch that night. I had a flat tire and I was really tired and I just crashed. It was so nice of them to let me sleep there!

The next day and a half I just chilled out at the house, taking some time to myself and some time to hang out with my roommates. They are so great and I felt like I hadn't spent any time with them at all.

In fact, last night I took the both of them out to dinner. It was a great time, actually. I wanted to thank them for being so great, so generous with their time, Spanish skills, knowledge of the city. We looked on the internet for a place to eat, and found a place that looked really cool. Right up my alley for sure, and Fernanda picked it out so I guess up her alley too! It's a place on the street that borders our block to the north, Carrer de Paris. Yes I'm surrounded by France, the street to the south is Carrer de Córsega (Corsica, Corse, the French Island in the Mediterranean). We went to the restaurant around 10pm, but it was closed! It ended up being perfect though. We walked around our neighborhood, which is basically the restaurant district of Barcelona, and looked at all of the menus. Each menu making us more hungry. But of course some were too expensive, some too cheap, some the wrong style of food. We stopped at a small place and had a "caña" or a beer and they gave us a little bowl of green olives to eat with our beers. So nice, so nice. Our appetites were piqued, and we ended up at a small Thai and Japanese place where we shared a few plates of food and had fun.

It was a great time, to be sure.

Today, I went to apply for my NIE (Numero de Identificacion Extranjeros). That was (and is) kind of a fiasco, but I'll tell you about that tomorrow! Let's just say I need to go to France to get my NIE...I'll leave you with that...

Continued....

2008-09-15T03:21:00.000-07:00

Ok Folks!

To continue, to continue...

I was talking before about the anxiety of facing the other in Spain. I take it back, I wouldn't say it's almost non-existent. That's an exaggeration, maybe in the face of US culture. I feel very seriously the anxiety of the other in US culture. A standoffish-ness, a protective instinct born from pioneers and wild west and wild capitalism and the great depression and McCarthyism and 9/11 and god knows what else. I have yet to know another culture so closely, so everything I experience is compared and contrasted to the culture of the USA.

...After eating falafel we went back to the bar and most everyone was leaving. Eventually it was my friends Nana, Alex, and I getting ready to part ways when Adriana called Alex. We went to join her and some friends on La Rambla Raval. I don't remember everyone's name, but I met some really cool guys and gals. I think a few of them were artists. One of them definitely was, and we've become friends as well. Her name is Alba, she's a young art student here in Barcelona. She's very nice and welcoming and interested in talking about art, and luckily her English is pretty basic. So we ended up talking for a long time both of us forced to speak the others language. So at the end of the night we exchanged numbers so we could do an intercambio (language exchange) and help each other learn.

Barcelona is a great place, with great people. It's fantastic.

Eyes on Haiti

2008-09-13T07:24:00.001-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Today a friend of mine sent an email out to all of his friends. He pointed us all to a blog he and a couple of people are doing:

http://haitiaid.wordpress.com/

He has been doing Humanitarian work in Haiti for most of his life and he told us that Haiti is suffering severely from this years hurricane season. Please check out his blog, donate if you can, and spread the word. Haiti is one of the most destroyed and impoverished countries in the world. Most of their natural resources are depleted, their forests are mostly clear-cut, their waters are totally over-fished. Haiti already depends on a lot of foreign aid, but after being hit with four storms in a row, they are really struggling.

Here's the email he sent out:

"I am sure you are all aware of the recent floods in Haiti. The fact is that things are actually worse than what is being reported in the news. The whole north of Haiti, has been cut off from the rest of the island, for example and is now experiencing severe fuel shortages. In Cap-Haitian fuel is now $120 Haitian a gallon ($15 dollars US). Flooding was wide spread all over Haiti, Gonaives got the worst of it, but other cities like Port Au Paix were at least 30% flooded out. So, in light of all this Tony Casseus, myself and some friends and family have started a blog to raise awareness of the situation, and help raise money for water purification tablets that can be sent to Haiti to help the flood victims. Fresh water is one of the biggest issues right now and tablets are fast and easy to ship.
You can check out our blog at:
http://haitiaid.wordpress.com/
All your comments and suggestions are welcome, and if you could please pass along this info to anyone who might be interested."

Beach Volleyball, Bars, Conversations, Europeans, New Friends!

2008-09-12T05:07:00.000-07:00

Hola a todos!

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've made an update. So much has been going on that I haven't had a chance to sit down and really take stock and make a good post.

I have met a lot of people, really great people. But let's see, the last really good post I made was on the fourth of September. This was before I met all of my new friends! So it turns out my OTHER savior in Barcelona (other than the glorious and wonderful Fernanda) is couchsurfing.com. This is an international website that connects people who love to travel, to experience cities and towns from a locals perspective, who don't mind sleeping on a couch or a floor to make a new adventure. The couchsurfing community in Barcelona is very active. I've been a member of the website since the Spring, but Baltimore wasn't very active so really my first experience was here.

So, last week I went to a couchsurfing picnic at Parc Ciutadella which I mentioned in a previous post. It was really great. I met Elisabet and Alex who are both from Barcelona. They are both really sweet, really great people. Alex is 24 and he works here in Barcelona, but he's saved up a ton of money and is going to travel for a couple of years in South America, Central America, and North America a little bit too. He's full of energy, has a really big heart, is very outgoing and loves to make sure everyone is having fun. A totally great guy!

Elisabet is younger, she's only 19 but she is wise beyond her years. We became friends pretty quickly. She is also very outgoing (organized the picnic, for one thing) and really smart. She is moving to Berlin near the end of the month to see a new place, learn German, and change her environment a little bit. She and I had a long, long talk yesterday about what she's doing and how she feels about her life, and I think it will be really great for her to get out of Barcelona and see a new place.

So since the picnic I have met even more couchsurfers. Every Tuesday there's a meeting on the beach to play beach volleyball. Apparently sometimes more than 70 people show up. This past Tuesday I had my first intercambio with a very cool lawyer named Judith. She practices criminal law here in Barcelona, and wanted to meet with someone regularly to improve her English. I obviously want to improve my Spanish. That didn't really happen though, because we basically spoke in English the whole meeting. I realized that if I want to have an intercambio and actually learn Spanish it will have to be with someone who basically speaks no English. We have to be on the same level, or we'll just speak in the strongest language the whole time. She and I met at the Starbucks by the university and then went to an Irish pub nearby. To the sounds of Irish rock (yes, mostly U2), we talked about practicing law in Barcelona, some of her cases, rehabilitating criminals,... you know, lawyer stuff. After about an hour we parted. I'm not sure what she thought of the meeting. It was OK. I was glad to be out of there so I could go meet my new friends at the beach.

I rode my bike to the beach from Placa de la Universitat (?) and started looking for the volleyball group. I couldn't remember which beach it was, so I rode slowly along the beach, stopping whenever I saw people playing volleyball to see if I recognized anyone. The beaches in Barcelona are great. There are always people on them, whether it's during the day with crowds of people sunbathing and relaxing or eating and drinking at one of the beachside restaurants called Chiringuitos OR at night with people sitting on the beach in smaller groups, smoking cigarettes, little glowing dots you can see from 1/4 mile away and drinking whatever they're drinking. The other night after the picnic we all went to the beach and I remember when we had our last beer I thought to myself "alright, no more beer...oh well." And not more than 30 seconds later an indian-looking guy walks up to us with a 6-pack of Estrella Damm (Beer from Barcelona) "¿Cervezas bien?" he says to us, one Euro each or six for five. On the beach, at night, beer delivered straight to you. This goes on all night. These guys will be on La Rambla at 6am selling beer. No joke. You will never go dry in Barcelona!

Anyway, after the beach volley everyone went to a bar in the city center called Oveja Negra or "Black Sheep." It's a pretty famous - and a bit touristy - bar that was PACKED on a tuesday night, my friend Sonia and I got there first and couldn't even find a place for two people to sit. We did, finally, and the others showed up and before long we were all sitting at a big table, maybe a total of 13 people. We squeezed into one table and half of another and I ended up talking with a really nice couchsurfer from Canada. While we were talking, the two other guys at the table who happened to be there first (not part of our group) kept looking at us while we were talking. So, yes, outgoing (or stupid) as I am I said to one of them "¿que paso?" Of course I said it with a smile, as you all know I'm not an aggressive or confrontational guy. He smiled and said his English was terrible and he couldn't understand anything we were saying. So I responded in Spanish and the three of us started talking. Their names were Luís and Sergie. Both Catalan guys. They were both super cool. We talked about America a lot, the politics there, the culture. Luís said he'd been to Arizona, California and New York, and that all of the people he'd met were really great. He said he thought all the annoying ones were the tourists. But he seemed to have agood impression of the states. Sergie didn't feel the same way, but he'd also never been to the states. They also taught me all about Catalonia and La Diada which happened to be in two days (9/11).

We ended up exchanging phone numbers, Luís told me we could get together and talk in spanish or catalan to help me learn! Cool huh? Spanish people are awesome!

After they left I got roped into a drinking game similar I think to ones played in the states. The object of the game was to bounce a coin into one of a few cups on the table, if the coin went in you chose someone to drink, if the coin bounced off the table you drink! The drink was half a cup of Sangria, which they sold by the pitcher or jarra. So, needless to say, I drank a lot that night. I am also terrible at this game! It was cool hanging out at the bar though, and everyone there was so nice! After the bar closed we went out into the street and sang and walked around, it was a pretty crazy night, to be sure. Eventually we all made our ways to our respective homes.

The next day was great. A lot of museums and cultural events were free to celebrate the anniversary of the Catalan TV station. The people of Catalonia are very proud of their heritage. Yesterday Elisabet and I were talking and she mentioned how proud she was to see all of the Catalonian flags hanging on every Terraza all over the city. The flag looks like this. It has a pretty interesting story associated with its origins. My friend Alejandro was telling me about it the other night as we were walking to a free concert at the Palau de la Musica. I am a little bit confused about what the legend really is. Alejandro told me a priest, who was a freedom fighter for Catalonia was murdered by an enemy, and as he fell dying he reached out with his bloody fingers and ran them across a yellow flag (apparently the flag of the Vatican or something). So this became the flag of Catalonia, representing the blood and the faith of the people. The submission to the Cathloic church and god. There are a few versions of this legend though, and some scholarly ideas about where the flag really came from. I like the legend.

This night we went to a free concert. Not Catalan music, weird free jazz, atonal kind of music. We got to the Palau, waited in line for about 20 minutes and were actually the last people allowed in. Most of our group went to the back of the hall and sat behind all of the seats. It was midnight by this time. Yes, midnight and there are families with kids no more than 6 years old waiting to watch this concert. This would NEVER happen in the States, right? There was another 20 minute wait before the musicians came out and we were laughing and joking and having fun. At one point one of our group started clapping, and the entire music hall, slowly, starting on our side and moving across the place, everyone started clapping thinking that the musicians were coming out. The applause died down but we kept clapping and the applause would rise again, fall again, rise again. A hilarious experiment in group-think! The musicians finally came out, spoke about the music briefly, then unleashed their atonal jazz onslaught on the audience. I actually found some moments of the music quite beautiful, but it was the kind of music that you have to really, totally give yourself to, and if you don't all you'll be able to do is laugh at yourself for listening to it.

After this we went to a bar and a couple of my new friends and I went to a falafel place and ate some food. It was a nice experience because I spoke Spanish to the girl behind the counter while my friends spoke English. She noticed the difference and helped me with some of my pronunciation. As we were eating she kept looking at me from another table in this flirty sort of way, but I've noticed that people in this part of the world are a little bit more flirty in general. I like this because it makes things so much more comfortable to recognize that people are attracted to each other, and that it really isn't a big deal, it doesn't have to become anything. It can just be a joyful or pleasant thing to look at someone and find them attractive and leave it or pursue it or whatever you please. The anxiety of facing another person in Spain is almost non-existent.

I'm about to head to a barbeque with Fernanda, but I have much more to write! I'm going to post this, sans-edits and review and conclusion for you all to read because I know it's been days! But rest assured, I will continue this!

I love you all!

BarcaNights!

2008-09-10T07:10:00.000-07:00

Click it to see the big version!

Where? --> Europe - Spain - Catalonia - Barcelona - Plaza Catalunya - La Diosa de Josep Clarà (Sculpture in the middle)

Hola a todos!

2008-09-08T06:24:00.000-07:00

Hello!

I don't have a lot of time to write a big huge post right now. I did want to make a little communication to say I'm OK! Everything is great here in Barcelona.

I was having some major pain in the tooth area since I had my wisdom tooth out, but then I stopped smoking completely and it seems all better now. Most of the people who smoke here are not Spanish. The French, Italians, ... so the Spaniards are a good influence.

Last night was my first night out that was really fun. The night before La Fer and I went to a dance party on the beach towards France, but there were only 15 people there! So we drank a beer and talked for a bit and rode back home. It was nice to ride around though.

Yesterday I went to a picnic in the Parc de la Ciutadella with the Barcelona Couchsurfing group. I met some really cool people, some from Barcelona, some from other places. We ate food and drank wine in the Parc, then after a few hours we went to the beach at Barceloneta. I will explain all of this in greater detail later when I have some more time. But right now I'm going to meet some of the same people: Elisabet, Rupert, Andy, Kamel, maybe some others for some Tapas and we may go dancing later! Bailar! Siiii!

I love you all!

Ciao!

Un video de mi habitación!

2008-09-05T05:31:00.000-07:00

This is a short video of my apartment. It's kind of crappy quality because I had to make it really small to fit on youtube, but you get the idea, no? It starts with the view of the window in my room...yes, laundry. As you can see, I hung the Puerto Rican flag from my laundry line for Karla and Osvaldo and all of my Puertoriqueños!

From there you will see Denisse's room and the laundry room from there, the storage area, the bathroom, kitchen, living room, a view of Fernanda's door. She was working on music at the time so I didn't want to bother her. Then the lovely amazing Terraza and view from there! Enjoy my loved ones!

Zee next day, si?

2008-09-04T16:58:00.000-07:00

Today was a day of discovery, and getting out of the house!

Pero primero, la noche pasada:

Fernanda, my savior in Barcelona, speaks English fluently. But Denisse my other roommate speaks very little English. They're both Chileñas, from Chile but different towns. Fernanda is from Santiago, the capital, and Denisse is from Concepción. Last night Fernanda was in her room working on her music, and Denisse and I were sitting in the living room. We were both on our laptops writing to friends and family, not really talking. So I decided I would show her some pictures of my people. So after an hour we had talked to each other both in broken languages about our lives, our friends and family, how we ended up in Barcelona. It was really nice. Denisse is really sweet. I was happy to have made a connection with her above our language differences. Now we are friends instead of roommates who can't really speak. She practices a little English with me, and speaks Spanish veeeeerrrrrry slowly so I can understand. It's really great!

I woke up on thursday feeling pretty shitty actually. Thus far I hadn't gone grocery shopping or really eaten any decent food. Fernanda and Denisse invited me to eat with them, which I did a couple of times. But I didn't feel comfortable eating with them at every meal until I had some of my own food to contribute.

So, driven by hunger and a desire to explore my new city I left the house with my messenger bag, some money, and a little notebook. Fernanda had made me a little map of the surrounding area, where to get groceries and produce, where the pharmacy and bank is. So I was planning on buying groceries right away, but instead I started walking. First I walked around my block, just to get an idea of what was in the immediate area. A produce store, a nice supermarket, a vodafone store where I can get my cell phone, a sunglasses boutique, a shoe store. Then I just walked, turning when I had a red light, going straight through when it was green. What the situationists would call a dérive. Letting the city guide me from location to location, without any agenda of my own. Letting the city be a living thing, pushing me in one direction, then another, then another. Eventually I ended up at Montjuïc. There I found the Museu Nacional D'Art Catalunya, an amazing structure. I couldn't tell you what style of architecture it is, but totally incredible. I walked up the many flights of stairs to the entrance, and turned around to take in the view.

It was a view of much of Barcelona. I could see the mountains that border the city to the west, Tibidabo, the mountain that towers over Carrer de Casanova, my street. I couldn't see La Sagrada Familia, though, which meant that there is much more city to see to the North ("towards France," as Fernanda would say). I sat on a bench looking at this cityscape and thought about what these views or vistas really are to us. It was immense, a display of human growth outward, a history of development that felt so out of control. In this vista I could see the total lack of control we humans have over our present moments, our times, our generations. It all seems to make perfect sense when we're building our environment, but then to be faced with it as a massive whole it looks like total chaos. A skyscraper here, a skyscraper there, a neighborhood here...satellite dishes, monuments, solar panels, hanging laundry, everything at once in harmony and contention. How do I feel looking at this? Humbled, small, insignificant. It becomes totally clear why people look at landscape paintings, why photography and painting still produces these vistas. The feeling of insignificance derived from these images is fundamental to the reigning in of the human ego. One might think to the contrary, that these images are a reigning in of nature, that a person can create that image and make it answer to our aesthetic inquiries. But the fact is, there is so much to humble inside that frame, and outside the frame so much more. Those images are merely a moment (if that) that only points to the absolute chaos that exists in the reality of that view.

I saw families taking pictures of each other in front of this landscape. Italians and Germans and English and French. It was great.

I decided not to go into the museum, I was hungry and wanted to find food. The first night here when Fernanda (we call her "La Fer") and I were riding to the club we passed a falafel stand. Everywhere I go, I always want to try the falafel. It was the first vegan "fast food" I've ever had and it has remained a passion of mine since. This little falafel stand remained in my mind as my goal for food that day!

I walked past the museum and took in the view of the north before moving on. Also on Montjuïc is the Olympic grounds from the 1992 Olympics here. It was pretty much deserted, with a few people walking around and another view of Barcelona. I kept walking. A map I looked at beside the museum as far as I could tell, directed me this way to get to the sea. That's where I wanted to head, because we had been near the sea the other night, and I hoped I could find my desired meal there!

I kept walking past the Olympic grounds, to a quiet street that ran down Montjuïc, but I decided to climb instead. This particular road seemed to be leading in the wrong direction, so I followed my instincts (though my tired legs weren't happy about climbing...I guess my derive was over, no?) At the top of Montjuïc I found some play grounds, and finally a little restaurant and vista. And there it was! The sea! Not as majestic as you might think. It overlooked the Mediterranean and a small harbor that held a few cruise ships. There was tons of smog everywhere you could see, which I think had to do with all of the big ships, and probably the humidity and stillness of the day. But it was the sea nonetheless, the ultimate vista of human insignificance, my favorite sight to behold. I love the sea in every way, and when faced with a seascape, I can stand still and contemplative for hours (well, maybe minutes, you get the idea). A kind of perfect pseudo-nirvana. There are people who love the desert or the mountains or the plains or the forest, but the sea is the element that excites me and calms me.

After taking in the view for a few minutes, I realized how thirsty and hungry I was. I had run out of water about an hour previous, so I was really running on empty. I decided to figure out my way off this hill (it is actually a hill rather than a mountain...seriously). It took me a few minutes to figure it out, but I finally made my way down to the streets below, and walked in the direction of La Rambla, Barceloneta, and the Ciutat Vella. I made my way to the Christopher Columbus monument and decided to rest my weary bones for a few minutes. I sat on the round base of the monument between a family with a cute little kid running around, and a couple taking in the sights. I watched a group of older Italians take pictures with the lion statue to my left. They were absolutely hilarious, talking to everyone around them whether they spoke Italian or not, and somehow I think I understood what they were saying. It was really great to see all of these people having so much fun.

After a few minutes they left and a girl plopped herself down next to me, then another one did and they started talking to each other in English with American accents! Now, I know you are all aware of my prejudices towards my own countrymen, but I'm serious. They were complaining to each other right away when they sat down. I decided to keep quiet for a few minutes to see where their conversation went. I know, I'm a jerk. But I was curious! What can I say? Finally I asked them if they were studying here in Barcelona and I think they were a little surprised to hear me speak English. Probably because they knew I was sitting there listening to them. I don't know. Either way, they were nice. College students from California studying business doing a semester abroad. They live in the same neighborhood as I and they're really upset that it took them all day to find a jar of peanut butter (La Fer says: "why are they looking for peanut butter, they're in Spain man!"). They also really hate the food here, "It all tastes fishy." Before I could tell them to buck up, they ran off to meet a friend of theirs. It was nice to speak a little American though, to be honest. It also made me think about the way people act in foreign countries...but I'm still formulating my ideas about that.

After sitting for more than a while (and running into the same Italian family I sat next to at MNAC), I decided to head up La Rambla to see what was going on. On La Rambla I bought a map of Barcelona, finally; and some water. I walked and walked, not much to see really. The same "¡Hola!" shops every 100 meters. Finally I passed La Boquería, a huge market on La Rambla and decided to check it out. It was great, if any of you have been to Lexington Market in Baltimore, it's a lot like that. Except only one floor, and a lot more stuff. Tons of fresh seafood, meat, cheese, produce, candy, nuts, juices. I saw eels, tunas, fish I've never seen before, sheeps heads, skinned with eyes still in sockets, seriously. I bought a juice from one of the stands: coconut and cactus flower, it was good, though the coconut flavor had the slightest rancid aftertaste. No important, it was fine. I walked around the market one more time just to see if I had missed anything, stared at the cheeses for a long time trying to translate Catalan into French at least, just to know which cheese was which. But I decided not to buy anything, La Boquería is in the most touristic part of Barcelona, so I decided it's got to be more expensive than everywhere else, no?

After leaving the market I finally found my falafel stand. I went in, ate and looked at my map to see where I was in relation to my home and the supermarkets that Fernanda mentioned. It was getting late and I knew I should get going if I would catch the markets before they closed. It turned out I wasn't more than 15 minutes from my corner! Amazing! Barcelona is huge and small at the same time. Riding my bike it would take me no time at all to get anywhere.

I started walking back towards my area, looking at all of the shops as I walked by, making a note of where some of the important things were.

I made it to the "Lidl" grocery store in a few minutes time. There I bought champu, acondicionado, café, arroz, frijoles, maquinas, crema de afeitar, pitas. That is: shampoo, conditioner, coffee, rice, beans, razors, shaving cream, and yes, pitas. The produce is better to buy at the stand on our block, so I went there later and got some great stuff.

Whew! That was my day yesterday. I was tiiiired, but actually had a hard time falling asleep. Why? No se. Excitement maybe!

I still need to open a bank account, get a phone, get an alarm clock and stuff like this. But I'll start all of that next week, no?

This is my first weekend in Barca! I should have fun!

Ciao!

Primero post...La Jetlag!

2008-09-03T09:05:00.000-07:00

Lucky for me I know the Spanish term for jetlag: jetlag, except it's pronounced like jetlach, but the j sounds like the 's' in measure. Yeah, anglicization! Word up.

It was definitely an interesting trip from Washington, D.C. to Barcelona. We left the house at 10:30 in the morning in order to avoid any possible traffic from Baltimore to D.C., it being Labor Day. D.C. being the capital of our great country. Maybe people want to see it on their day off? Si? No. It was an easy trip down which left with three hours to wait until my plane left at 3:15. Lady luck was definitely on my side as I checked in. Apparently that day, they changed their policies regarding the maximum weight a person can bring on a plane. I had a huge a backpack packed so tight with clothes, books, power adapters. AND a bike box with my bike, more clothes, bike tools, more clothes, etc. Todas las cosas de mi vida, si? They looked at these two monstrous packages, looked at their computer screen, looked at the packages. A perplexed look came across the man's face. He talked to his supervisor. I was starting to get a little sweaty thinking they were going to charge me a huge fee or even tell me I couldn't bring it. But he printed up the sticker, slapped it on the box, and said it was fine. Apparently I would have had to pay over $200 to check that stuff had I not bought my ticket so far in advance! Suerte, si?

The flight was easy, especially taking advantage of the free alcohol that blesses international flights. Three glasses of wine and a little bailey's and I was ready to crash. Though the woman next to me was talkitive and we had a nice conversation about her life as a violin maker. Learning to make violins in a small school in the alps of Germany, meeting a German man and getting married. Her father and grandfather made violins, her son does too and apparently has become quite famous in the world of violin making. A strange person to run into on a plane, no?

The layover in Munich was easy, so easy. I went through "customs," which in Europe seems to have become quite a joke. They looked at my passport, asked me what I was doing in Europe, stamped it and wished me a happy trip. No forms to fill out, no questions about belongings, nada. I slept most of the plane ride from Munich to Barcelona. Sweet sleep right before the big change. Little bits of anxiety and excitement creeping into me, but in general I don't think it had settled in yet. That I was about to land in a different country, one that I had never been to, whose language I barely spoke, I barely knew anyone. Everything went so smoothly. My baggage was some of the first to come out onto the belt, the handcarts were free, the taxis were obvious. I walked out of the airport, sat down on my bags and smoked two cigarettes, one after the other taking it all in. The sun, the life, the outfits! Ha! Seriously, as I sat smoking I saw this gorgeous woman walking down the sidewalk in a snappy green dress with matching high heels and great earings and immediately thought of Mabel. About how she complained that she couldn't wear skirts in France. That France is so conservative! Pero no aquí!

I finally made my way over to the taxis and the guys looked at my stuff and laughed. The first three taxi drivers they asked turned me down, they didn't want to deal with it. But finally, my savior, Oscar! He spoke virtually no English, had a small cab, but used to be a competitive cyclist. So he popped his trunk, broke down some of the seats and tossed the gigantic box into the cab with a little help from me. Piece of cake. Esta chupado. As we drove into Barcelona we talked as much as we could. He told me used to be a competitive cyclist and told me about the Velodrome here in Barcelona. Something I definitely want to check out! We made it to Carrer de Casanova 170 in about 20 minutes. I couldn't remember which apartment was Fernanda's, but I thought it was number 4, so I rang the bell of both of the flats on 4 and nothing. So I asked Oscar if I could use his cell phone, to which he graciously agreed, and called Fernanda. In ten minutes time I had all of my stuff upstairs in my room. Fernanda showed me the place, I met Denisse, my other roommate. Shortly I took a shower, laid down and passed out. I slept from probably 10:30 to 18:00 (note the use of the 24-hour clock...si si si...).

I woke up and Fernanda made a little Catalan snack: two pieces of bread, toasted. A piece of garlic cut in half, a half a tomato, a little olive oil. Rub the garlic on the bread, rub the tomato on the bread, pour on some oil and salt and voila! Garlic tomato bread. Delicious.

A few minutes later we went to meet some of her friends at a bar. Luckily Fernanda is a bike rider, so we got her bike out of the parking garage that she keeps it in and headed out. She is a very capable city rider, not only dodging cars and pedestrians like water, but fast too! It was fun but I actually had to keep up with her. I thought people in Spain were more laid back! We got to the bar and it was actually a club run by Lucky Strike. A tiny little place where you had to give your ID to be scanned, fill out a short application, and also answer two questions: your favorite director and your favorite band to get in. Inside they had a little internet area, a huge projection to play Wii on, a little upstairs lounge and a refrigerator full of sodas and juice. All that was free. The periodic delivery by waitress of small glasses of beer were also free. The cigarettes (all Lucky Strike) were not free. They got their wish too, because I had conveniently left my pack of Camel Filters at home!

I met some of Fernanda's friends: Francesco, an Italian guy from Switzerland who lived in the Dominican Republic for eleven years (super nice); Carmella, a very nice Catalana; and to be honest, the few other people I met I don't really remember their names. I was too busy trying to keep up with conversations and remember how to say things. Everyone I met was really nice, the couple of Catalan people I met were happy to hear me speak a little bit of their language. Denisse and I had an impromptu intercambio on the couch, talking about how hard it's been for her to find work.

After a few games of Wii Tennis (I sucked) and Bowling (which I beat everyone at, they said it's because I'm American, jajaja!) Fernanda and I left. We rode our bikes to the beach and back around to La Sagrada Familia. What a huge, huge, huge building. I can't even describe it. It looked like something that had erupted from the ground in some kind of holy cataclysm in primordial days of earth, as if it was by this structure that the catholic god was consecrated. Breathtaking, seriously.

Then we rode home and ate dinner (yes, it was like 23:00). After dinner I did the dishes and Fernanda and Denisse went to find beer, unfortunately everything was closed...no beer after 23:00! Que pena! But Denisse came back and told me they had found some furniture on the street. Every tuesday in Barcelona the trash service picks up large pieces of trash, so that's the day to go look for new furniture for your apartment! We got a new full-size mirror and a little chest of drawers. Pretty sweet. My room is coming together pretty quickly...

Today I slept until 13:00! The jetlag is serious! I'm tired again! I just did my first yoga session here in the flat, and I'm ready to crash again. I should go for a walk.