Barcelona Study Abroad

Oct 27 - Nov 2 - Week 10

2008-11-25T12:45:00.000-08:00

Well not too eventful this week. The main thing was we jumped on board with the Clemson students for a trip to Madrid. Madrid was nice, we stayed in a really nice part of town. Everything seem really clean for such a big city. We started out by going to the Caixia forum, the building was really cool but they didn't have much on the interior. The coolest exhibit was a chariot that they had uncovered from Egypt. I am reading Exodus at the time so it was neat to think of Rameses in the chariot, chasing moses. They are much smaller than I anticipated. I really want to ride in one. After that we went to the big museum there, I dont know the name but we looked at all these masterpieces of art. To be honest I didn't know any of them and I was a little jaded from the Louvre in Paris. Some of the people in our group tried to take pictures when we first got in, which is usually allowed here as long as you take the flash off. However there was a crazy guard lady in the first room that we went in to that had made it her life goal that not a single person would take pictures in her room. Sal got in trouble and then we were able to see her sprint across the room and slide across the floor just in time to put her hand in front of David's camera. After we were done we met outside, in the process Matt was taking a picture and Kelsie came over and knocked it out of his hand with her scarf. Sal got the whole thing on camera and she felt so bad. In the picture before she kills Matt camera she has this evil look of deviance on her face. We met up again that night and Kathrin made fun of Sal and Kelsie because they showed up looking like bums. She said "You look like you will sleep on a bench." The highlight of my trip was after we ate dinner that night, and had a heated debate about truth in which I argued against most of my classmates that there was definate truth and just because people believe different things doesn't mean that there isn't an overall universal truth (that wasn't the highlight) we ended up playing soccer with a group of kids in the street. They asked us a bunch of questions like if we had an iphone or guns, if we had crazy students at our schools who would shoot students. It was amazing to see how limited their view of America was. I ended up being the only one playing from our hostel and almost got lost in the city, I thought I knew how to get to our hostel by myself, but soon realized I didn't. I ran back to the hostel that the Clemson students were staying out and by God's grace happened to run into two of them walking in and was able to call Tierney and get a map from them that got me home safely. If I wouldn't have caught them walking in the door I probably would have been robbed or beat up or something. The next day we ate lunch at an amazing rotisary chicken place that was famous for their apple cider. Clemson picked up the bill for the meal which was really nice of them. At the resturant Kathrin discovered that someone had cut her bag on the metro and tried to rob her but luckily didn't get anything, which was really good because she had all the money for the trip with her. After that we went to a chapel that had the most amazing painted ceiling, 'san antonio de la florida'. I am sure that I will change my mind when I go to Italy. That night for dinner we went to this industrial site that was being transformed, which are some of the coolest places that I have been, and may be what I end up doing as a career. Gosh, my career I have thought a lot about that while I have been here but that is a whole other story! At dinner Kyung Sung (he is not asian just so you know) and I had a conversation about his religion, unification, in which he believes that all religions are esscentially the same, based on love of course and told me that he had become one at heart with God. Blows my mind the error in his theology, but after our conversation where I had a dropped jaw for most of it, he got up and did a monologue from Monte Python and the Holy Grail. He is an interesting character. I think I have a video of it somewhere, if not Kelsie has it and I will definatly get one. I asked her why he didn't do the monologue from the "None Shall Pass" scene with the Knight that is guarding the pathways but that was a kind of mean joke for reasons that I am ashamed to say. Anyways, that was Madrid and it was fun!

Oct 20 - Oct 27 - Week 9

2008-10-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

This week was the end of group work in studio and we began our final models. I think it should be pretty fun. Our project is a design museum, and it doesn't get much more hip than that. We had a little review with Miguel on Friday, he talked a lot but after we are done I just feel confused.

After class we had to come striaght home and eat real quick and grab our bags, we had to pack them the night before. We got in London around 8 that night. We had to figure out how to get a metro pass which was kinda confusing, on a whole the whole process was more confusing than I expected especially since everyone spoke english. Hearing people speak english was like getting a big hug. I found myself listening to everyones conversations. I called Mr. Niebes and he made it pretty clear how to get to their house. They lived 30 min from London in Walton. Mr. Niebes came to pick me up at the trian station and then got me all setteled in at the house. The first night it was just me and him because Mrs. Niebes was visiting family in the U.S.A. and Ryan (who was in my first cabin at Pine Cove) was traveling with his school in Italy. So that night I got all settled in, looked at a bunch of stuff for the next day and got to bed by 10. Well kinda. I couldn't really sleep, probably because I have gotten into the bad habit of not going to bed until 2. So I started writing down the things that I was thinking about, well I was thinking about a lot because I filled up a whole page of stuff in my spiral, everything from what I want to do with my life, to our project.

On Saturday morning I got up pretty early, ate breakfast and packed a lunch for the day, which was so far above and beyond what the Niebes family needed to do, even when the rest of our group, 5 girls, got there they still let us pack lunches and eat breakfast. After I ate, I was able to call the Goodards and make plans to meet up on sunday. Mr. Niebes went into London with me that day and even bought my train ticket for the day. He then walked me to the Design Museum because he wanted to meet the girls, they were late so he went on to the Tate Modern Museum. I went ahead and went inside of the Design Museum, it wasn't very good, they only had room for 3 exhibitions. The one that I design is going to be much more interesting. Once I was done with the museum the girls showed up. We headed across Tower Bridge and over to the Tower of London. We went and got a good old English lunch of fish and chips. After that we went to the ticket booth. We wanted to get tickets to a musical, because it was saturday there werent many tickets left, we kept asking the guy about different shows, Wicked was sold out for that night but luckily there were 3 seats for the matinee. I wasn't even sure if we would have time to get there because it was already 1:45 and the matinee started at 2:30 and we had no idea where the theatre was. The guy said we could make it so we got our tickets at 1:50 and headed to the directions that the ticket man, who was quite rude (as was all of the other brits that we came into contact with who were working), gave us. Of course when we got to the metro, something had gone wrong and we sat there for a long time, then everyone started changing platforms to another metro that was going to the same place and when we did that the other one finally left. I was so scared that we weren't going to be able to get there. We did however get there with plenty of time, despite my freaking out on the metro. We got there with plenty of time. Lianne and Lori sat together and my seat was a little ways off. I wish now that I would have asked for the best single seat but hind sight is 20/20 right. We did have good seats though. It was an amazing show. The sets were unbelievable, and in the whole show I don't think they had it black out for a single scene change. There were trap doors and the back of the sets went in and out and they had balconies and a bridge that dropped down at one point. It was amazing. It really made me want to go into musical theatre. I really want to take a year or two off after college and try to pursue that. I think I am going to focus on the theatre company when I get back. Maybe get Victoria to teach me some dance, and if I get a job maybe I will take voice lessons. Anyways the show blew me away. Elphaba seemed really young and did a great job. It was funny hearing the british accents. I tried not to let myself compair the singers to Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel. I want to see it agian though, with Americans...who speak real english you know. After the show we went and looked at Buckingham Palace and Big Ben at night. After that we met back at the girls hostel and then headed to the Niebes house. Mr. Niebes was so nice, he came and picked us up in shifts because they have a small car. When we got there, Ryan was home so I was able to hangout with him and chat about what had been going on since pine cove. It was really good to be able to reconnect like that.

The next day I got up early and split up from the girls to meet the Goodards. We met on the steps of St. Paul Cathedral. It was raining so they were standing right in the middle at the top of the steps. We hit it off right away. I gave them a Texas hat that I had brought and they gave me the videos they had taken from the first time we had met in Mesa Verde. We chatted for a little bit on the steps, and then we set out for our walk. We walked along the Thames River where you can see quite a few cool buildings. We stopped at a little coffee shop and some coffee, and patries and just sat and talked. We talked about everything! They told me all about there second trip around the world that they are about to take. They are headed from London to Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and then they are going to finish the trip by driving from LA to Boston over the course of 5 weeks, going back to Mesa Verde and hitting up part of Route 66 on the way. We talked about their son, the news, the election and how skewed the news is in London, and even how Mr. Goodard (Ken) had gone to art school as a kid and wanted to be a graphic artist for advertisements back in the days when it was all drawings and no television and how Mrs. Goodard had worked making dresses for the royal family. The sweetest thing, was when Mrs. Goodard seemed to fall on to the subject of her son. It was one of those times when she was just chatting away and it led to the subject but it kind of took her by surprise. She told me that they used to have 3 sons but at age 19 one was killed in a motorcycle accident. "He came home and said I'll be back in a minute mum, and we never saw him agian." She got a little choked up and teary eyed as did I. I told her I was so sorry. She said they had used sailing and traveling to get over the inncodent. Looking back the only thing that I regret is that I didn't bring up Christ in any of our conversation, really it isn't that, I want to get to a place where all of my conversations lead to Christ because that is all I want to talk about. After seeing regents square, the National Gallery, the London Eye, the former Texas Embassy from when England recognized Texas as a country, Millenium Bridge, the New City Hall, Royal National Theatre, Hamley's toy store, and a bunch of other places we finally called it a day. After I split from them I ran to Lindley hall because it just happen to be Wicked Day and I was going to be able to meet the cast and see some cool stuff but I got there right as they were tearing down, in fact I could still see the wicked witch costume on display right inside, I was a little upset but I would much rather have spent that time with the Goodards. After that I headed to the London Eye and ate some sandwiches by myself and just had some very rare alone time. When I got to the house, me and Ryan talked for a while and then we went to bed. I told the girls that we were I was going to wake them up at 7 because they take SO long to get ready in the morning, and they said heck no, they would not get up at 7. I told them that we had to be up ready to leave at 8:30 sharp and book it to the train station if we wanted to get to Windsor Castle when it opened. They said they could get up at 8 because they were already packed. Well I woke them up at 7:10, and then again at 7:30. I had to play really load music to get them to get up. Before they were up Mr. Niebes had to head off to work, so I thanked him and gave him some Texas stuff I brought and a cake the girls had picked up. Ryan's bus for school came not too long after that, I made sure to embarass him. When he opened the door to get in I yelled "I love you Ryan!" He just rolled his eyes and said, "Oh Booster." Well the girls weren't ready at 8:30 and we left at 8:35 and they didn't have time to pack lunches, eat breakfast and not all of them were done packing. So we missed the train and ended up getting there 40 min later than we would have if we would have caught the first train, which we could have if girls weren't such pokey walkers. But we got to Windsor and it was beautiful, we made it inside the grounds just in time to see the changing of the guard. The queen was there, we didn't see her but her flag was out. We got to go through St. George's cathedral and see the room that is based on the knights of the round table. The building was cool but the best part was they had all of these metal plates about the seats where the knights sat. They never remove a plate so they covered the back of the seat and went back 1000 years. We got to stand right in front of the Queen's seat and where Prince Charles and the rest of the royal family attends church services even today. It is where all of the royal family gets married. The next thing we went to were the State Apartments, it was neat because it is still functioning, so we got to see where special visitors come to have dinners and balls and banquets. They explained how the huge table is laid out with rulers because if anything is the slightest bit off on a table that huge it looks sloppy. We even got to go into the Semi-private apartments that are only open at some parts of the year and serve as living areas the rest of the year. I bought a guide book so I am going to have to read more on it later because we didn't get to spend near enough time there. Like I said we got a little bit of a late start. The girls were all really crabby the rest of the trip. That is definatly the last trip I take with 5 girls. WOW! That's all I have to say about that. Other than that it was good to get home. We had to sweet talk the ticket people into letting us on the bus because we had bought the wrong passes and the ticket gate had ate our tickets but they were really nice, especailly when they found out we were from Texas. Like always it was great to travel but great to get back...home? to barcelona!

Oct 16 - Oct 19 - 1/2 of Week 8

2008-10-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

Well after Germany we headed straight to Amsterdam, by train. This train ride was by far one of my favorite parts of Europe so far and one of the best stories, there are so many great quotes that I will not be able to get them all, which is sad, because they are all really good. Luckily we have some video. The train ride started out normal, it was dark and we were tired, ready to rest before Amsterdam. At the first stop on our way the man in front of me got up and exited the train. That is when I met Jason Dillion! a meeting I will NEVER forget. Jason started off by introducing himself, I thought he was really friendly and outgoing, I can respect that. After he introduced himself, he started telling me about himself, and that didn't really stop until is exit, that was also awkward. He started telling me that he was a rapper. Then he offered to sing one of the songs he had written. I said "Ok" eagerly waiting to see if he was as good as he said he was. He had told me that he was on the train because he was headed to the airport to go to New York City to meet with famous rapper P-Diddy. When he started it took everything in me not to bust out laughing. "Baby...Baby...Baby...Baby...Baby...Baby...I just wanna tezsh you...Baby...Baby...Baby...I just wanna howd you...Baby...Baby...Baby...I just wanna pray to you, Oh I forgot the rest of the words, I wrote that myself." I thought, Oh really, you wrote that masterpiece all by yourself. He noticed Kelsie and Tierney laughing because they were sitting in the row behind me, facing him. He didn't stop there, he sang anther song "I'm Ja-son Dill-on, I'm the realest blankety blanker, I'm better than P-Diddy, I'm better than 50 cent, I'm better than Biggy, I'm the next Tupac." Then he started hitting on Paola, Lori, Lauren and Lianne who were sitting next to us. He told Paola that she was more hotter than Beyonce, and grabbed a picture that Lauren had drawn of her and asked to keep it. He also asked Lauren to take pictures of me and him, yes pictures plural. "Take this one" and then he would strike a pose, "And this one" and then another pose. He kept telling me how famous he was going to be. He also told me that he had a 50,000 euro car, his own body guards, that he got his hat from H&M for 10 euros, and that he was a big time soccer player, he even rolled up his pant leg and flexed his clafs. He kept singing and kept saying rediculous things, I was really having to work hard to keep a straight face. After two hours of this, it started to get old. When the police officers came to check our tickets, he asked them if they wanted to listen to him. So he sang for the police officers, I was looking at the police officer the whole time and while he was singing the officer looked at me, raised his eye brows, to say, This guy is NUTS! When we started getting to the end of the trip, he started to creep me out a little bit. Something was fishy. He showed me his passport, with his real name, which was not Jason Dillion. He was from Pakistain and I tried to remember his name in case something happened. Eventually I went and talked to the police officer and asked him to come to our cabin when we finally got to Amsterdam just in case. When I came back from talking to the police officer, which I had told Jason I was going to the bathroom, he left our car. That made me even more suspecious. The rest of the ride we just laughed about all the things he had said. We finally got to Amsterdam late in the afternoon.

When we were walking to our hostel I realized that I was in a place like none other I had ever been before. Amsterdam is the most wicked city in the whole world. As we were walking around town we soon found out that pretty much anything is okay in Amsterdam. Prostitution is legal hear and in the red light district, which is where we were staying, they rented little boxes and tried to coax the men to come behind the glass door. It was so sad, the set up was much like that at a zoo or museum. It had to be one of the most degrading things I have ever seen. Luckily there are some really cool things to see in Amsterdam and we didn't have to see very much of that. On the first day in Amsterdam we started out by heading to the Van Gogh museum, we ate breakfast and were hanging out in the park, just enjoying Amsterdam, when all of the sudden it thundered, three seconds later it was raining, no HAILING on us. We all freaked out and ran in circles, finally Graham took off in one direction and we all followed. We were all laughing really hard and I was trying to get my camera out to take a video. We were soaked. We ended up ducking behind the smallest trash truck in the world with two guys who looked latin, and definatly didn't speak english. Once it let up we headed to the museum soaked from head to toe, but with a good story to tell. The Van Gogh museum was really cool, although they didn't have stary night, they did have one of his sun flower paintings and some really pretty Monets, which he apparently drew inspiration from. After that we went to one of the housing developements that we had learned about in school. A street with a bunch of houses all designed by different architects. We played on this really cool red bridge, but mostly we spent the day resting, recovering from the go go go schedule that Katherin had made. The next day we were off to a near by university town that had a bunch of really cool architecture, that is where I dropped my camera in a rush to try and save the battery. dang! Anyways that took up the whole day and wasn't really very eventful, or good for story telling because we just looked at buildings, oh although Kelsie got caught trying to steal a bike seat cover and had to go put it back when she got in trouble from the guard. That was pretty funny. On our last day in Amsterdam we had to put our bags in lockers at the train station because they wouldn't let us leave them at the hostel, that is where we met Ethan. He helped us with the confusing locker payment system, afterwards he followed us out of the train station and asked if he could spend the day with us. We said yeah and told him we were headed to the Anne Frank house, he kept saying that we should walk there but we had train passes and Tierney was leading the way. When the train finally came he said, well I am too poor for the train, so we said bye but I felt really bad. Come to find out Sal had a bunch of extra train passes and could have given him one but he didnt know if we all wanted him to tag along or not. At the Anne Frank house, I got to walk all through the factory and into the rooms where Anne spent almost two years. It made me want to read the book agian. It was so strange to walk through the secret door, and realize that Anne walked through it once and then for two years never exited. I imagined the guards breaking through. It broke my heart to hear how someone turned them in and then there was a video of a friend of Anne's who was the last person who knew her to have contact with her. She got some bread for her and had to try twice to get it to her, the first time the women next to her stole it. That was the last time anyone saw Anne. She is the face of the victims of the Holocaust. It became clear to me that, as humans, we do not have the capacity to deal with the sorrow of this world. We are only able to handle such a small amount, what an amazing God who has taken on the sin and sorrow of this world, and has decided to be the Savior of it. As evil as the things that happened in WW2 Jesus bore all of that and more on the cross. Later that day Kelsie met up with her friends, we rode with them to a littl island to see some buildings, more architecture nerdy stuff. While we were there we found the coolest swing. It had two handles hanging from a pole and you could push eachother around, when you did there were toys and junk on the top that made noise. Afterwards, we were on a bus somewhere, at one stop I asked Sal a question, I turned looked out the window, we stopped again, I turned to look again, and everyone was gone, not just Sal and Tierney but everyone, it was like the rapture or something because the bus had been full. I freaked out and the doors closed before I could get up to jump off. At the next stop I jumped off and ran back to the other stop but they were nowhere to be seen. Come to find out it was because they hadn't realized that I was missing yet. That took a good 5 minutes. Don't ask me how. So I started wondering around the city and just planned on meeting them at 6 that night at the train station to leave. I bought some gifts and then went to a church and prayed for the city, and just started walking through the Lord's prayer and breaking it up into my own prayer. It wasn't too long until I got kicked out of the church, which was a little embarassing because I was really getting into my prayer and I may or may not have been crying a little. Anyways, it wasn't long after that when I was mopping down the street feeling sorry for myself, headed back to the hostel to just use the internet until it was time to leave that Tierney spotted me. Thank goodness. Pretty much all we did after that was go get the best fries in Holland, certainly the best fries I have ever had. They came in a cone and that was all the little store made, fries with a bunch of sauces. After that we went to the train station and got our bags. We saw our friend Ethan from Austraila there again, I felt really bad that we didn't hang out with him that day. I think he just wanted a friend because he was traveling alone. So I took that time to hangout with him and talk to him. He was a nice kid. He followed us all the way to the train station. It was so nice to get back to Barcelona after 10 full days of being away. Independent travel is going to be exhausting!

Oct 6 - Oct 15 - Week 7 1/2

2008-10-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

So the next day after the castella festival, Sal and I had a blow up about the whole thing that eventually came down to both of us appologizing and getting over it. It did make for an awkward working condition that last day though. After staying up til 3 am we got up early the next morning and did our presentation. Kelsie and Tierney's group stayed up all night working on thiers, they were so dead and out of it. Our presentation rocked and we got the best review in the class. We have been dressing up for every presentation so far, first in all white t-shirts, then in blazers but we were too tired to plan anything for this presentation but we accidentally all dressed in different hues of purple. We had white, lavendar, purple, and a plum color, so we stood in that order, it was pretty funny, what are the chances that three out of four guys wear a shade of purple on the same day. I don't really know how the other presentations went because I was either asleep or on facebook for the rest of them. I know we did the best because we got the best grade! WHOOP!

After the presentations we went back to Resa and spent the whole day packing, we had to be downstairs at 8 am and Katherine was ready to boogy. We took a train to the airport, and even though it is only about a 30 min train, almost everyone fell asleep. We flew in to Berlin and barely had time to put our bags down before we headed to the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall. When we got there we met Prof. Hannes Böhringer (philosopher) and Eva Maria Schön (artist). They were a married and the sweetest couple I have ever seen. He walked with a cane which caused his hand to rub against his side, there was a black worn spot on his thick maroon wool coat from this. She was dressed in all kinds of colors and had girlish clips to pull back her hair. They showed us the new memorial chapel that had built. They explained that the architects had wanted to make it out of cement, but the people did not want that connection with the wall so it was made of an adobe/clay material. There were a few old relics from the church that the communist government had torn down. There was a wood carving of the last supper from the old church, the face of Jesus had been broken off during the destruction of the old church. They told us stories about the wall, how it went up over night, first with barbed wire, then with the concrete wall. They told us stories of being near the wall and seeing West-Germany soldiers stick thier heads out from the other side, look around and go back in. Eva told us, with a sort of flippant attitude of how her family had escaped from West Berlin by obtaining fake passports and pretending to go to the beach. They had to leave everything they owned because if they had any belongings at the check point the guards would know they were escaping. Later in the trip, Katrine's husband Tom, told about his visit to Berlin during his teenage years. He told me how he had followed a sign of how to walk through construction in West Berlin, however a guard stopped them, asked if they could read and said they had broke the law, that they were supposed to cross to the other side of the street. He made the group of boys bribe him because he knew they were from East Germany. Tom said he had some postcards for his family from checkpoint charlie and a few other places and they got rid of them because they didn't want to get caught with those sort of anti-West Germany pictures. They both got really excited when they told us about the confusion of how people finally were able to get through the wall, the television broadcast someone saying that you could now go across the wall but this was not really the case, the people flocked to the wall to get through and soldiers who didn't know what to do just let the masses through. We talked with them for an hour or so, asking them questions. I tried to soak up every moment that we had with them. When we finally had to leave them Eva sort of leapt and skipped away. Next we headed to Alexander Platz and Karl-Marx-Allee where some of the main structures from socialist Berlin had been located.

The next day we headed to the Jewish Museum, unfortuantly it was a Jewish Holiday so the museum wasn't open. Jason Butz was supossed to present the background of the building and he was so excited to go in that he almost cried when he found out it was closed. Luckily we got to come back later. Instead we went to museum island, we didn't get to go in any museums but I almost lost my hat in the church near the altes, Neues, and Pergemon Museum, luckily Kelsey had found it for me. Felix was really attrackted to the female lion hunter statues in front of one of the museums. Next we went to a revolutionsary housing development that had a bunch of famous architects design a lot of different types of housing in a neighborhood that has a lot of green space, it's called the Hansaviertel/Interbau Exhibition. Next was one of the highlights of the trip, meeting architect Axel Schultes at the entrance of the Federal Chancellery. When we got there the guards refused to let us in until 5, when Katherine mentioned meeting the architect the guard told her, "He's only the architect, he has no say in when we let you in." We finally got in, after going through some major security. We had to be escorted through the building be two, LARGE german security guards because they were expecting the Ambassador of Poland soon. When we first got in, they were being really restrictive about the rooms that we were able to go to. We were headed to one room that required us to use the elevators. The elevators were really big but they couldn't fit all of us so we had to split up. They were these really modern, cone shaped elevators. Jason got in the other elevator along with the architect, one of our escorts and half of our class. We were only going up one floor, when we got there we kept waiting and waiting for the other elevator to open. Finally it did and the whole elevator was giggling. Jason came out completely red, come to find out he had accidentally leaned on the bottons for the floors and pushed way to many and they had to go a few floors down before they could come up and they had to stop at every floor. The guard and the architect were not amused. After that we went into a room and the architect explained to us the whole context of the project, the history, the competition and how his proposal fit into that. He got a little upset when he started talking about how what was built is only a small part of what the entire building was supposed to be. It upset him because they had designed this huge axis that would be monumental and focused on public access and entries but all of that was messed up when they only built part of the project. He talked about the architect who built the building across the street and how dumb he was because he didn't think about the entrance of his building and caused them to build a road in the middle of what was supposed to be part of his axis. There was a dinky fence around the entire chanselory which took away from his design. After he was done explaining we walked to another area, they reluctantly let us walk on a balcony where we could see all of the people who were awaiting the press conference. We were supposed to walk fast and be really descrete, but of course Tierney pulled out her camera and tried to get a picture. Katherine said "No no, keep walking, no pictures." So what does Keyoung Sung do? He busts out his camera, when he did I said "Katherine asked us not to take pictures." And he said "Uh what?" and took one anyway. Pretty obnoxious. Next we headed up to some of the meeting rooms where they had already set up things for the next day where the chancelor of Germany would meet with the most important government officials of Germany. We had to go out on a patio that was really neat and had these vine covered columns. It was kind of a holding area, while the actual press conference was going on. Felix and I sat down at a little wooden table and chair set that had elephants on it, come to find out it was a gift from the ambassador of India! Once the ambassador of Poland left, the security loosened up and we got to see some really cool stuff. After we were done I went back to the housing facility that we had eaten lunch at with Felix because he had forgotten his Aggie Ring in the bathroom, we picked it up and then went to meet up with everyone, but our group has split up so it turned out to be Felix, Elyse (a really shy older asian girl in our class) Katherine and Ivan (our professors). Katherine took us to a really local resturant/ball room. They played really old music and it looked like something from a movie. I wish that I would have had one of the girls there who would have danced with me. I tried to get Katherine to go out there but she is way too refined. We had some really German food, in fact the food in general in Germany was by far the best we have had yet in Europe. I had meatballs with some sauerkraut, which I now really like, even though I always thought it smelled really funny when mom eats it back home. I tried a little bit of their dark beer from the barrel, apparently you can't leave Germany without doing that, but I really don't have a taste for beer. We had a really packed day, as you can tell, so we were more than ready to go to bed.

Friday we took a day trip to Potsdam. Me and Kelsie couldn't help but sing "Oh Potsdam, this is my jam, we gonna party until the A.M." Which is part of a new rap song that Kelsie sings all the time. In Potsdam we started out by seeing Nikolai that was completly covered by scaffolding on the outside. The inside was pretty cool. We had been in a lot of cathedrals by this point and I had heard from everyone who has been to Europe that you see so many cathedrals you start to get bored with them, this was kinda becoming true so I took the oppurtunity to just sit down, look around for a little bit and pray. Next we headed to Schloss Sanssouci which means "No Worries" in French. This was the getaway palace of Fredrick the Great who was a really cool leader. I think we would have been friends. He was very phiolosophical, and humble for being a ruler of a huge empire. He did many things to help out his people. He is buried in Schloss Sanssouci with a tiny little headstone. He wanted a very small humble burial, but it wasn't until recently that he got that wish because his nephew wanted everyone to know that he was the new king so he put him in a huge tomb in the middle of potsdam and had a big funeral/party for him becoming the new King. The lady who gave us the guided tour of the site, which is huge, told us some really sweet stories of different scenes that were illustrated on the walls like the love story of cupid falling in love with a mortal. We were able to see some really cool gardens and pavillions. Next stop was the Einstien Observatory. This was a really cool building and we got to go inside and one of the scientist who works there took us to the top and opened the top and turned the roof for us. After we looked around we took a few pictures where we tried, pretty unsuccessfully, to recreate the famous enstien picture with the crazy hair and him sticking out his tounge. That night a few of us went and looked at Potsdam Plaz. It's this huge, happenin plaza that looks like it has a giant umbrella over it. Kelsie and I found ourselves there with a kind of strange group, they all started arguing and it was getting stressful so we bailed back to meet up with the rest of the group. When we met them we decided to try and go back to the place that Katherine had showed me and Felix, when we got there it was packed and we couldn't get in so we ended up going to this mexican food resturant that wasn't great mexican food, but I had been craving Mexican food, so chicken fajitas really hit the spot. It was funny because we ordered in spanish and the waitress didn't know what we were ordering. It had the German translation and then the name of the food in spanish, fajita enchillada burrito ect. I guess most people just order the translation. Well that dinner wasn't much fun except for the food because everyone was getting drunk, so as soon as we paid I left. Come to find out the rest of the group ended up going to a hooka bar and not paying the full amount when they left. The funny thing is that Sal ended up leaving his coat there and had to go back the next day and they made him pay the rest of what they had owed.

On Saturday we started by going to the Jewish Museum since it was closed on friday. It was really neat. The architect did some really cool stuff. I thought the visade was a little bit of a stretch but the inside had some really cool spaces. There was one room that was three stories tall, made of cement, and had a little opening at the very top that let all the cold air in. It was a really cool room that made you think. The other really cool room had iron faces covering the floor, you could walk on them which made you feel short of uncomfortable, they clangged together and made a lot of noise. After the museum we went to meet and saw some revolutionary housing developements, Quartier Schützenstraße, I got some cool pictures but it was much less interesting than our next stop. Checkpoint Charlie is where we ate lunch. We were able to get out passports stamped, and learn a little bit of the history about this checkpoint. There were guys on the side of the road selling army surplus stuff from the communist German rulers of West Berlin. They had a recreation of the old check point there, a little dinky portable building, built that way because the Americans wanted it to be a symbol of their temporary occupation of Berlin. Tom told me at one point during the trip that the Germans loved the Americans, they actually ran to get captured by them at the end of the war, civilians and nazi soldiers. He said that His grandmother had been given her first orange by an American soldier. There was a huge picture of the last soldiers to occupy the checkpoint. Next we went to the Brandenburg Gate. There were a few intresting buildings around that area, some really famous hotel, a design school, and the American embassy by Frank Gehry, apparently the roof looks like a spider web, but we didn't get to see it. After that we went to the Holocaust Memorial. Along the way we saw Phiharmonic Hall and the State Library by Hans Scharoun. We had a guide tell us all about the design of the Holocaust Memorial and the reasons behind the hundreds of concrete rectangle piles. It was a really odd experience, while the area was the holocaust memorial and did envoke a solem sort of feeling, it also made you want to play when you got in the center. It is all single pathways, you must walk through it by yourself. As you turn corners you are constantly running into other people. At one point we ran into a man dressed as a rabbitt, there were many children running and playing. When we got toward the edges it was just too tempting to climb on top of the columbs. After we looked at the area for a while, we went underground to the museum. I we only had an hour to go through the museum. The most effecting part for me was a single picture of two nazi soldiers gunning down a group of 2o-3o naked jewish women. The image is seared in my brain. After we left the museum Jason, Adam and I talked about the danger of regarding any race, religion or group as less than another. This brought up a somewhat heated discussion of the Rebel flag. That night we had an amazing dinner at a little german resturaunt that was under the train station. Kelsie and I split two plates so that we could try them both, we got schnitzel, which I only knew from Willy Wonka in the "I want it Now" song, and also in the Sound of Music, "My Favorite things" and a typical german sausage plate. It was quite possibly one of the best meals I have ever had. We had a really great time, the servers were very funny and very nice and it was good to get and talk and chat with everyone.

On Sunday it was off to Bochum with a short stop in Wolfsburg to see Zaha Hadids, Science Museum, it is considered one of the top 12 buildings in the world, at least that is what one of the guys who worked there said. It was a really cool building but when we got inside it was kind of funny, there was really no integration between the exhibits and the building, in fact you didn't really notice the building when you were inside. We had a lot of fun playing with the interactive science things inside. One of the highlights was when Sal mooned the heat detecting cameras and we got a picture. We played with lights, a shadow saving wall, a brain wave reading game where the more relaxed you the ball rolls to your side of a circular table. There was a video camera that was set up and would video tape 5 second clips and play them back and forth, and speed them up and slow them down, it was really funny to watch and we spent about 10 min making fools of ourselves. After a few hours there we got back on the train. When we got to Bochum. The only thing we did there was eat dinner. I had a really good cheese pasta dish that some of the kids got at the other resturant. Our hotel was pretty cool, it was a big German building that kinda looked like a castle. We were such a big group that we filled up all the rooms. It was pretty scary because there was no one there at night, they gave us door keys and told us that the women at the front desk would be back in the morning. The next morning we got up and went straight to the train station toward Essen. We left our bags in the train station and started walking, we had no idea that we were about to go mountain climbling. Katherine led us up a huge hill, over the meadow and through the woods. We ended up at the top of an old coal dump and had a great view of the industrial area that we were about to explore. There was a huge slabe of steal at the center of the hill a "statue" by Richard Serra. Kelsie found a bottle, she descided to give it to Tierney and get another so they could both throw them, however the one she gave Tierney was full off...some sort of unknown liquid that she had to pour out. They both counted it off and threw the bottles as far as they could, and...they didn't brake. We hiked back down, at one point there was a steep muddy hill so I thought I would be a gentleman and give Kels a piggy back ride down. Maybe not the brightest idea. Right at the bottom, when we thought we had made it, I slipped and fell on Kels and she got mud all over her pants and I got nothing, because I landed on her. What a gentleman right!? Next we stopped at a grocery store before we headed to an old coal mining factory. Tom bought as all Dickmans treats, basically it is a waffer with a huge marshmallow covered in chocolate. We all ate them and there was one left over so of course I took it, I can never turn down free food. The nasty part is that someone bet me I couldn't eat it in one bite...and I couldn't...but I tired, it was pretty sick, a little childish I must admit. After that we made it to the factory, called Zeche Zollverein, it was really neat. The reused factory buildings were some of my favorite on the trip. I am really interested in these kinds of projects. They used these huge industrial buildings for all kinds of things, a theatre, resturants, housing, a book store, a pool. You can put anything there really because everywhere you go is amazing. There is something of childish wonder and the excitement you get from being somewhere you aren't supposed to be. They are sort of industrial ruins, giving them a similar effect of other ruins, I couldn't help but think of Mesa Verde or the Mayan ruins, people had been there, built these massive structures and then had to leave. It was here that we ran into some peculiar men, one of them was drawing of picture of an old industrial building that looked to have been some sort of entry checkpoint or small watchtower, I am sure that if I do ever become and architect I will design a house like it some day. One of the men who wasn't drawing was just standing there in a pink speedo with hawaiian designs on it. Don't worry I got a great picture of him and my very modest, and easily embarassed professor. We asked Tom about them and he just said, "I am quite sure those men were homosexual." I really loved talking to Tom on the trip, we discussed the religious state of Germany a little bit. Katherine and him are both catholic, so it was interesting to get their perspective on Europe. We ate lunch in a little resturant there and then went to a modern building that was on the site, I am not sure what the name of the building is but it was built by Sanaa I think. It is a giant cube with giant square fixed windows all over it. This really european guy gave us a tour of the building, he had glasses that were one single piece of wire bent in 3 sides of a square and the lenses attached to the front part, so artsy and minimalist, like the building we were in. There were some cool features but I didn't like the building much. By this point we were all so tired that any time we had the oppurtunity to sit down, we did, and some of us even fell asleep. Katherine however was bright eyed and bushy tailed ready to go all the time. The metro station next to these buildings was also really neat, it had walls of stacked glass and the lights faded colors so it was always changing, definatly the coolest metro station we have been in since we have been here. That is one of the things that I am really going to miss, good public transportation, I am a metro pro, I used to be afraid of subways but now I fear no terminal, it is usually the easiest way to get around. That night we took a train to Koln, or Cologne in english.

When we got off the train I got a glimpse of the building that I was supposed to introduce, the Kolner Dom, or Cologne Cathedral, just a glimpse got me so excited for the next day. Our hotel in Koln was not very nice, not bad, but definatly not good. The funniest part was Kelsie and Tierney had a 3D picture/painting/sculpture thing of a very scantaly clad girl above their bed, but we were tired so we slept fine. The next morning we met at the cathedral, I went a little early so I could check it out. It is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. I just stood there, breaking my neck trying to see the top. When the rest of the class got there I gave my presentation. Now this was towards the end of the trip and every building we visited had a presentation, they were usually really boring and nobody really paid attention. So I decided to ham mine up a little bit...of course. I decided to do it Fightin' Texas Aggie Yell Leader style. So I got out in front of everyone and started walking, back and forth back and forth. Everyone started laughing...well almost everyone. As I told them about how it was officially called the Hone Domkirche St.Peter und Maria, a Catholic Gothic style church, World Heritage Site, largest Gothic Cathedral in Northern Europe, 3rd largest in the world, the tallest building in the world from 1880 -1884 when it was beat by the Washington Monument and the Effiel Tower (I hissed those for beating the building), had the largest church facade a total of 22,965 square feet, largest choir height to width ratio of any Medevil Church, and took over 600 years to be completed, being started in 1248, housing the biggest bell in the world, and I gave a big hardy WHOOP in the middle of the crowded plaza in front of the cathedral at each of these facts. When I was done everyone clapped, but Katherine and Ivan were dumbfounded. They had these blank looks on thier face. They asked, "What was this you were doing?" I said, "Oh it's an old aggie tradition." Then Ivan asked if I would do that in a presentation for school? Katherine added that it was distracting, I said, well I thought it would help people pay attention actually, and Ivan and Katherine both said, no it was distracting, it got really awkward and Ivan said, I'm not mad...awkward silence...lets go see the building. It really took me back at first. I was kinda shocked. I thought about apologizing but then the more I thought about it, I kinda got a little bit upset. That is part of our culture and we don't snear at the strange things they do as part of their culture, like say "Exactly" all the time, or "Si, Si, Si" really fast when just one would to the trick. Later I figured out that they were just really confused and didn't understand what I was doing. Plus Katherin pointed out that the sign I was making with my arms, the beat the hell sign, meant something a little racey here. So it was no big deal. When we got inside the cathedreal I was blown away. There is nothing like it in the U.S. They have all of these really old windows that date date back hundreds of years. I heard a tour guide say that even thought the US tried not to bomb this building in WW2 it was hit directly 14 times, and still stood. Everything around it was distroyed. The cathedral is black on the outside, instead of its original white stone because of all the bombing. It was weird to realize that the buildings that were important in the town were almost entirly defined as those that were not totally distroyed in WW2. After the Cathedral we went to meet with Prof. Maria Schwarz (widow of the architect Rudolf Schwarz). He was one of the major architects who rebuilt the town after the war and reused what was left of the old buildings and the limited materials to create some pretty cool things. After the war the people wanted to first rebuild the meeting hall where community parties, mainly dances were held, it was more important to them than any other step in rebuilding. She was such a sweet old women, she spoke no english so Katherin had to translate, still when she was talking she always seemed to look at me as if I knew what she was saying, I realized that even though I had no clue what she was saying, there was still some sort of connection, because when I would smile, she would smile, there was something univerally human about the way that she looked at me. It almost made me uncomfortable and I can't really describe it accuratly. To finish out the day we saw a few other churches; St. Gertrude, and St. Mechtern Church. That night we had a little bit of free time and then went for our final dinner, which was paid for! Well really we just paid for it earlier but it was still nice. We ate at the Antoniter Church extension called Stanton, near a really cool Renzo Piano building. When we were about to go in, Tom snuck me and Felix into the church, their happened to be a choir practicing and it was really pretty. There was a famous statue in the front of the church that he wanted to show us. When we sat down there were definatly two distinct groups, one half of the long table of 30 that was civilized and one part that was drunk and obnoxious, aparently some of them had been drinking in their room before dinner. Oh and in the resturant their were these really cool chandaleers made of metal beams with a bunch of plastic junk tied to them and lights on the inside, I want to make one. Anyways after we ate the drunk crew was ready to go party, they even tried to get Ivan and Tom to go with them. Some went home but Felix and I were loving every moment that we got to spend hanging out with Tom and Ivan, so we stayed. We ended up talking at the table for another 2 hours about all sorts of things, the funny thing is that we ended up staying out later than the people who went out looking for a party. The next morning we were free to do whatever, so I got up really early and headed to the cathedral. Felix ended up being there too so for one euro we were able to climb the 509 steps to the top of the towers. The stair case was so small, we had to stop all the time and move to the side because there is only one staircase for people going up and down and it is circular and only has a diameter of about 4 feet. On the way we got to see the worlds largest bell and then the amazing view from the top. I met up with Sal later that day, we did some shopping and we both got the same sweater because it was really cheap, unfortunatly Sal left his in the next store, after shopping all day Sal decided that he wanted to go up in the towers too, so I said I would climb it agian, so I climbed all the way up the stairs...again. I found it makes it a lot easier if you try and count the stairs, takes your mind off it I guess. That was the end of Germany, next it was off to Amsterdam!

Sept 29 - Oct 5 - Week 6

2008-10-20T05:59:00.000-07:00

Well there were only two major things that happened this week. We worked and worked and worked on our project for our first major presentation. We presented an elevated pedestrian walkway for the glories site that we are trying to create a creative hub with. Well since no one understands that I will go to the more exciting event of the week.

The National championships for the Castaellas, or human castel building completition was on Sunday Oct 5. This turned out to be a terrible time because our presentation was on the next tuesday morning, so that meant it was the day before our last working day. The night before my group agreed to let me go because it was such a cool oppurtunity. So Felix and I woke up early that morning, bought a train ticket to Tarragona and just went. We talked to a sweet old lady on the train ride. When we got there we had a little trouble finding the bull fighting ring but eventually a crowd began to grow and we just followed them. We didn't have tickets to get inside so we found some people in Villa Franka t-shirts and just followed them and told them that big Felix had invited us to be apart of the team that day. When we got inside it was packed. There were huge groups of different colored shirts filling up the thousand year old bull fighting ring. We looked out for the aqua teal shirts that Villa Franka had on and ended up finding big Felix just before the first tower was about to be built. We jumped right in and started helping with the base. This time we got a lot closer to the middle than we did when we helped in Barcelona at the Merce festival. Felix and I both actually had people climbing on our shoulders and pushing on our heads and even standing on our shoulders as the tower went up. That was pretty painful because we actually had more weight from the tower on us now. After the first two castels our team was in the lead. There is a point system that is based on the difficulty of the tower, if the kid makes it to the top and mounts, if the tower makes it down without falling after it has been mounted, all these different things play into the number of points. This is also when Sal, Kelsie and Tierney made it to the competition. That was really fun, they had a really shady guy open up a side door and sneak them into the arena because the tickets were all sold out. Sal got to help with a two of the towers and we made some friends with a lady named Amellia, she works for nike so we had a lot to talk about, like the fact that she met Michael Jordan once and he kissed her on the cheak, which is the costomary greating here. They stayed for a while and then decided to leave so they could work on our projects more but Felix and I decided to stay until the end. This became a huge issue later, it was a little selfish on my part to stay but I did. After they left the competition heated up. The other teams that were pretty far behind us in points were doing some really hard castels to try and catch up which led to a lot of really big falls, we show bodies falling and flailing and crashing from about 30 feet in the air. Luckily no one got hurt. We ended up doing a tower that the Villa Franka had never been able to do before to seal the win by over twice as many points as the second place team. The crowd went wild and we were cheering "CASTELLAS VI-A-FRANK-A...clap-clap-clap clap clap!" We were jumping and yelling and high fiving. Then another team started chanting something that made our team made so they started yelling something in spanish, which probably wasn't very nice but I yelled it anyways without any idea of what I was saying. We waited around for a little bit and finally they called our team captian up to the stage and gave him the big trophy. It wasn't long before I was invited to get on the charter bus with the whole team. We drove half way back to barcelona to Villa Franka and ended up at their practice facility. They had a dinner of lamb and music and they were spraying champaign, it was so much fun. Felix and I spent most of our time talking with Amellia about differences in culture and her brother explained castalle rules and tactics for us. After we had hung out for an hour or two, Amellia drove us to the train station and got us all squared away to get back to barcelona. The first thing I saw when I got back was this crazy women who lives across the street, she's homeless, bent over peeing from the side walk onto the street flashing the whole world. I almost barfed. It is the same women who we hear yelling in our room, she just screams, it sounds like a big "uuuggghhh!" over and over, really annoying. Poor thing needs some mental help. After that I went up to studio and worked on our project. Sal was there for a little while and he didn't speak to me because he was upset about me staying in Villa Franka all day. The big blow up wouldn't be until monday though.

Sept 22 - Sept 28 - Week 5

2008-10-03T14:44:00.000-07:00

Well not much happened this week...EXCEPT PARIS!

WOW I have never seen a place as beautiful as that, too bad they speak french or I would move there forever. Well to start our trip off, we got up at 4 am to get there, we got to the airport fine and flew on a vueling/MTV plane, I thought that was pretty funny. The best part of the whole flight was when the french guy was explaining everything in english. He had the stereotypical french accent where he sounded really upset about everything. We could barely understand what he was saying, it took us a little while to realize he was speaking english at all. Our flight was good, it only took about 1 hour. When we arrived in France we had to get on a train to go into the city, we couldn't figure out which train to take and there was a long line and people were getting a little upset with us, we finally got it though, we ended up buying a more expensive ticket than we needed, but it got us there. We arrived at the hostel where some of our classmates who had flown up the night before were. The hostel was really shaddy. We had to go up these stairs and we ended up coming in the back door, they only gave us 4 keys between the 16 of us and some of our friends who had to stay there the extra night had to sleep on the floor because they had over booked. So when we got there they were ready to leave. We sat our stuff down and headed out the door. We didn't get very far before we were standing around waiting on some of the girls in our group so 4 of us just decided to break off by ourselves and do our own thing. That was probably the best decision we made all day. We had our map and wondered around until we found a place to get coffee because we were all wiped out. We were wondering around the city and I was amazed at how all of the houses match and everything is SO perfect. There are these blue roofs everywhere that I love. After meandering through the city, we just happened to run into the Louvre. You can't even image the scale unless you go there. It is unbelievble huge. We overheard a tour guide talking about how there were orange dots on the windows so the fire fighters would know where the really valuable stuff was in case of a fire. We looked around and everyother window had an orange dot on it. We didn't go in that day but we walked through the outside and ended up in this amazing french garden with these fountains and stuff. As we walked we kept running into all these other cathedrals and government buildings, so as we would see something cool we would just go see if we could go in. We found four or five catherdrals that weren't famous at all, at least not compared to Notre Dame, but we went in and they were so cool. After seeing a few cool things that I don't even remember the names of, we headed over to Notre Dame. It was so cool. I kept singing the disney songs from Hunchback of Notre Dame. I could see the gargoils that they based the cartoon one off of. We spent a bunch of time in there, it was sad because the inside was so cool but we couldn't take very good pictures because it was so dark. We tried to go into the towers but the line was too long, I thought we would go back later but we never got the chance. We went to a little sandwich shop near by next and had a really long lunch on the side of the river, waving at all the tourist boats full of people as they went by. On our way back to the hostel we went by the Centre Pompedi, it was a little out of place in the old city but still really cool, everything is pulled to the outside of the building. We went back to the hostel and took a nap, after the nap we went and bought dinner on the street and headed to the Effiel Tower. We got there right as they were turning on these lights that flash all over the place, it happens at the first ten min of every hour. So we sat on the stairs, ate our dinner, took pictures, then walked down under the tower and ended up laying down in a park just talking for a while, looking up at the lit up Effiel Tower. At midnight it was one of the girls on our programs birthday so some people got her cotton candy and we sang her happy birthday as the lights went off. Aliesha, Aaron and I wanted to go see the Arc de Troup after that but everyone else wanted to go home, so we went and saw the arc, the problem was that the metro closed during that time so we had to walk home. Of course none of us had maps, so I had to navigate us home using the bus route maps. It took us an hour to walk home and we were SO tired, we had been up since 4 am remember. We finally went back to the hostel and some people took showers. You had to put in 2 euros to get the shower door to open.

The next day we started out by going to the Centre Pompedi. We started out by going to the top and taking some pictures, we got a cool view of the city. We went into an art exhibit on the top floor by Jacque Villegle. He made these really cool posters using only torn posters from places in the city. The next exhibit was the permenent exhibit which was cool because we could take pictures. There were all these cool artsy things, even some architectural. There was this one room that was all different levels, with bumps and things, like a cave, and it was painted white but all of the contour lines were outlined in black. It made for some really cool pictures. We finished up by going to the Architecture exhibit on the ground floor. It was really interesting, it made me want to go and design something. They showed the design process and it was neat to see how they started with something simple and boring and made it into something really really cool. We spent a grand total four hours in the museum and so we all got pretty tired and ready to eat. We went to this little sandwich/crepe shop on the side of the road. The crepes were really neat, they made them right in front of you and the guys were really good at making them. The guy who was working ours started hitting on Kelsie and he told her that he wanted to "Eat her mouth with Nutella!" That has got to be the best, corniest pick up line I have ever heard. I tell Kels that all the time now. After that we went to the Opera, the Madaline, some famous hotel and then ended up at the Effiel Tower. We got in line and went straight to the top. It was so cool, there are three different elevator stops, the first is two stories at a 45 degree angle. From the top we got to hangout and watch the sunset. Gustave Effiels office was at the top of the tower and he walked it in steps everyday which must have taken at least a hour, probably two. There was a wax statue of his meeting with Thomas Edison at the top.

On the last day we went to the LOUVRE! I have never seen anything like it in my whole life. When we got in we went straight to the Mona Lisa which is really weird to see in real life. First of all there are all these paintings in the room that are huge and then at the very back of the room in these very un-ornate case, there is the little Mona Lisa. After that we saw tons of awesome stuff. Really we need two or three days to go through the museum, you could hav easily spent an entire day on one floor. The highlights for me where the winged victory statue, Hamarabis code, the Michael Angelo statues and the mesopetamia area that has the oldest artifacts, things from the beginning of time! Once we were done there it was a big mess getting back to the hostel because we had to check out by 2 but some people wanted to leave their bags, but the sleezy hostel owner was trying to get 100 euro from us as a group so I just ended up carrying my backpack with me the second half of the day. After we ate we were on a misson to make use of our last three hours in Paris even though we were really tired. We went to this temple on a hill (I don't know the name), then walked to Moulin Rouge which was done the most shady street ever, and I expected it to be a lot bigger, then we went to the arc de troup and walked down the famous shopping street, Avenue des Champs-Elysees. We were supposed to meet back at the hostel but me and Sal had our bags so we just sat on the floor in the metro and waited for everyone. Everyone was late, so it was a big rush to get to the airport. All in all it was the most amazing trip I have ever taken!

Sept 15 - Sept 21 -Week 4

2008-09-22T03:04:00.000-07:00

This week is had one of the most exciting weekends of my LIFE! However, lets not get ahead of ourselves, first things first.
We had our first Bible study this week. It went well, I didn't really plan much because I had just thought about making it discussion based but conversation was...forced, which is expected it being the first one and all but I am going to plan more for the one this week. We are going over Ephesians Ch2 if anyone has anything that might help me out or if you want to read along with us. We are looking at our depravity and the need to be United with Christ and United in Christ with other believers.
Well school was good this week, we have another presentation due this tuesday. It is graphical mapping of the glories area of barcelona. After this presentation we will get to start actually designing which will be nice since all we have done is map so far.
The Merce is still going on. It started on Friday, so a few of us enjoyed some free concerts. I am loving the Spanish Pop sound, we just pretend like we know what they are saying and sometimes sing the chorus. Also, there is a HUGE firework show everynight. It lasts about 15 min and is the biggest fireworks show I have ever seen. They have these ones that they usually do toward the end that make the sky look like lightning. They dont explode like the normal ones you see, it is this really consentrated burst of really really bright light, and they do a bunch of them at once so it looks like...lightnings...like I said. Also with Merce there was the running with fire. These people dress up like devils and wear thick hoodys and masks and cover their faces with bandanas and such and then they run through the streets and spray people with fireworks. People run through it and it was pretty crazy to watch. I didn't do it because the night it was going on was the night that we had bought tickets to go to the Flamanco y Opera at this famous theater. The only bummer was Sal bought tickets to the Petite Paula, which meant we didnt get to see the main hall but the show was awesome and we had the best seats in the house. I had never seen a flamanco show but it was really really cool. They have thick wooden heals and they stomp on the ground. Then these people would come out and sing opera and it was AWESOME. We were blown away.
The next morning we got up and went to the Castellas part of Merce. This is the human castle building. Basically they stack people really really high. The biggest one was 5 people on each layer and the base layer had 8 people standing on each of them. They just climb up one another and stand on eachothers shoulders. The coolest thing that has happened to me so far was when this huge man from one of the teams started pointing at me, at first I was really scared and kept looking behind me but finally he said, "YEAH YOU, THE TALL ONE!" Which it was clear then that he was talking to me because I am pretty much the tallest person everywhere we go. The people are a lot shorter here. So we went over to the group making our way through the crowd. Right before we reached the team there was this old couple standing there so I said excuse me and the old lady lowered her shoulder and just smacked into me. It startled me, I have never been hit by an old lady before, only hit on (joking joking) but some guy next to me said something in spainish and she backed off and let me through. Then they pushed us on to the base of the tower, told us to put our hands down. So we were packed in at the bottom, everyone just standing there like sardeens. Not long after that they started yelling commands in spanish and people started climbing on us. They were putting their feet, thier dirty bare feet, on out shoulders and using our heads to balance with. Then they started building, I was looking up at the tower and they told us to put our heads down if we didnt want to break our necks. The guy in front of Sal was praying and one of the guys in the tower was yelling and pointing at the other side of the tower. But they completed the tower, they were the first one to do that, the other teams had to come down before they got them complete because something wasnt right. After that the guy who called us out came over and talked to us, he thanked us for helping and explained what was going on in the other castellas. The tower that we were watching and he was telling us that they were going to bring it down because it wasnt symetircal, but they kept on building it, he started getting nervous and they built it to the top, there were two little 6 year olds on top and it was shaking like crazy. Then one of the kids up top calapsed and people went flying everywhere. They fell 30 to the base of people, so they landed on other people, smashing of heads, flailing, it was awesome. No one was hurt badly but the kids from the top were crying and pretty banged up. We got to be the base on 2 more castellas and our team captian friend, named Felix, who also looks just like Teddi Lindseys dad Tony, invited us to come be apart of the team during the World Championships on Oct 5th in Terragonia. I was so pumped after that, he told us he would get us a uniform and everything.
That night we went and watched fireworks on the beach, Adam and Leeann ended up jumping in the sea at night, fully clothed, then they somehow convienced David to do it with them and ended up walking 30 min back home, sopping wet.
Other than that I got to talk to Candice Lewis in Citadella Park which was great, we are going to try and hangout sometime soon. And I am getting ready for Paris next weekend! YEAH and we are meeting about booking tickets for the rest of our travel adventures tommorrow after our presentations are done.

Love and miss you all, can't wait to have a real hamburger again!

Sept 8 - Sept 14 - Week 3

2008-09-13T15:12:00.000-07:00

Well not a lot happened this week, that is probably good for my regular reader...haha.
Ok but for real some cool stuff did happen. We finally wondered our way into finding Casa Batilo, we found it by accident which was really cool, "Look there is an aquatic dream house! Wow." It is probably my favorite building, at least one of them. It is so cool, I have the calendari, which means calendar for those of you who were having trouble with the catalan translation. Speaking of Catalan, that is the region in which Barcelona exists, they speak Catalan here, not spanish. In fact, Sept 11th is La Diada which is the day that they were conquired by Spain, they have a Catalan celebration on this day, and a bunch of people who want to suceed from Spain come out. We were hanging out at Citadella Parc, which is beautiful and cool and has a zoo, because we had school out and it happened to be the place where all the festivities were going on. So I bought a shirt that says "Make no mistake about it, I am Catalan! Which means I am NOT Spanish." I also bought a flag key chain that means you want to suceed from Spain. I felt like such a rebel, get it with your revolution self!
This week we also visited the Picasso musuem, we got to see hundereds of original Picasso paintings, it was really cool. I was glad to see that he actually was an amazing painter and not just revolutionary in his form because let's get real, I could paint the stuff that he is famous for. It's abstract I know, but it's easy! He probably just got lazy in his old age, or more blind. There is a progression of him getting more and more abstract or you could also say his paintings looked more and more like finger paint (some hoity toity art lovers probably hate it when common folk like me say stuff like this, good thing none of my family and friends are too edjimakated or artsy fartsy but like I was saying) I can just see him saying, "I can't believe people really like this junk, if they like that then next time I will make it even more simple." "I can't believe people think I am a genious for this stuff." It's revolutionary I know, what I didn't know is that he was a little cradle robber with his little young hot stuff wife. We also saw the goaly for the England Soccer team, Adam (who is one of the Clemson students and also happens to be my partner for one of our projects) was freaking out but I didn't know who he was. He got in trouble for trying to take a picture with him in the museum, that's not ok in case you were wondering.
We had our first studio presentation this week, it went surprisingly well. I thought we were going to get ripped to be honest, but I guess my charisma just wowed the reviewers, like normal! We were given a sight that is near the Torre Agbar (look it up, it's cool, and I have a class were I have to go there all the time) and different groups were given differnt things to record. Ours was time recording, they told us they made it up that morning and it was the most abstract and hardest to present. "Es bery e-say do gat...umm how do ya say...lost." (That is "It is very easy to get...umm how do you say...lost" in our professors Belgium accent). And it was, we had a really hard time and talked about a lot of nothing. I think this is kinda interesting. I was taking notes during the other presentation and came to this conclusion. I decided to journal this in my notes:

I am sitting her in the middle of our first presentation and all I can think about is how these people make something out of nothing. Talkitecture is what I have called it in the past. They analyze and talk but it is all a load of [foolishness] (that is for you mom, I wrote an explination about using good words for good things and bad words for bad things, but I though "I am just going to make mom happy instead, so I erased a lot just for you mom). Presentations of projects are to trick the professors into thinking there is "meaning" (more than functional meaning) behind your design. Really it is a building, it is dead, it will fall, be torn down or just seen as ugly in a few years. The meaning or process doesnt't matter, all that matters to them is that there is a meaning. This matters more than the aesthetic of the building or even its functionality. In the end, if you talk to people who work in "Great Works of Architecture" they sometimes hate the building. It just doesn't work. But "they" whoever "they" are, think there is something noteable about this building because there is some "meaning" behind it's design that makes it "revolutionary" or "noteable." It just amazes me that these people don't know TRUE meaning of life so they are forced to pump meaning into things that are secondary. This professor talks and talks and TALKS about these theories of how people move and shapes and graphics and form and he has so much knowledge but we, not just me(my friend Kelsie had just written "BEACH! BEACH! BEACH!" on my notes as I was writting this), are all sitting here bored because what he is telling us matter, they DON"T. Jesus matters, people matter, love matters.
Now I have to figure out what that means for me. Am I in the wrong place? Is there a way to make architecture matter by linking it with the working of Christ? Does that just mean effecting the people in my firm? I don't really know but this is where I find myslef in my junior year of architecture!

The only other thing we did this week is book tickets to Paris! Ahh that is weird. I am excited, but from now on I don't really care where we go, I am just going to buy the cheapest plane tickets, my friend who was here this summer found a ticket to switzerland from barcelona for 0 euros, she just had to pay the flight tax which was 10 euros or something ridiculous like that. Oh I almost forgot something really important, I did laundry for the first time tonight, that may not seem like a big deal but you probably don't know that I only brought about 10 t-shirts, you do the math. It's ok they don't wear deoderant here remember, I'm golden! That want really what was really important, I really did have something. We had our first meeting about the Bible Study this week, one of the girls here told me that one of her goals for this trip was to become a "better Christian" she baptised sometime this past year, so I am really excited about seeing that growth and hopefully be used by the Lord in that process. I tend to mess things up with that whole sinful nature thing I have going on, but good thing God is soveriegn right? If that's how you spell soveriegn, I guess if He is He knows not only how to spell that word but what I meant. I know what you're thinking, this is the first word that he thinks he spelled wrong, no I know I spelled lot's of words wrong, I just don't care, I am in Barcelona and you're not, so there! Judge that! I'm only kidding. I am really starting to miss everyone. The hurricane Ike parties in college station make me sad that I am missing all my friends there, and I missed Aunt Marci's Birthday dinner(I was sad about this for 2 reasons, because I was missing Aunt Marci's b-day dinner but also the fact that my parents would have bought my meal) and I have talked to Kayla and McKenzie a lot this week, so I think about the family a lot. I miss the food too, the food here is pretty good the only problem is that you have to eat out to taste it, and that is expensive. I pretty much cook every meal, maybe eat out once a week, although I did spend 3 euros on lunch at Maca's (another aussie word which means McDonald's) today, I felt like such a bad person, come to Barcelona and I choose to eat at Maca'a when there is one on every corner in America.

So I thought this was going to be shorter because I didn't do as much this week, but I did ramble a lot, sorry. Until next week, grace and peace to you!

P.S. If you talk to my parents, you should encourage them to let me take wind surfing lessons here as a Birthday present/because I am such a sweet son that they are blessed to have. You can embelish as much as you want, I don't mind.

Aug 31 - Sept 7 - Week 2

2008-09-09T09:51:00.000-07:00

Well this week we moved into Resa. We kicked off the week by going to the amazing fountain show that night, someday I want to bring my girlfriend or wife to those, like I said...it's magical! The next day we went to a chocolate museum with a bunch of chocolate statues and history of chocolate and blah blah blah, we got a free candy bar and the only thing I learned is that they spell chocolate "xocolata" which is pretty cool, they should start spelling it that way in the states so they dont have to put xylophone on those lame alphabet posters that teachers buy. That night we hung out at a place with pool and some other stuff, it is one of picasso's favorite hangouts, well...was one of his favorite places, he died.
The next day was the last day with our Aussie friends, we met them for dinner and they took us to this awesome chinese resturant, we ended up going to a discotecha, and stayed out til 4 am, sorry mom. We started school the next day at 8:50 am and Sal had gotten really sick during the night...well we were a little late. Marcel our professor was really mad, Sal came down looking like death and we headed off to class. I was so tired, and of course they turned out all the lights and did a boring slide show the first day. That lasted about an hour and then we walked the city, Sal jetted back to the room. While we were walking the city, our new professor, Susanne, showed us the oldest remains of the city. They are from the Roman temple built sometime in the 14 century. I kept imagining the romans walking by them, I go there and read the book of Romans sometimes, I just think it's cool, and most people dont know about them. That night Marcel bought us dinner, it was three courses and really really nice. I didnt really know what to order, so I asked what was the most local, which turned out to be ok except for the appitizer. I ordered Carpacio or something like that, it turned out to be raw...yes RAW BEEF sliced really really thin. It was not enjoyable. Everyone was talking about how their parents would be so jealous that they were eating this stuff, and I was thinking, my parents dont even know what this junk is! Gag me! The rest of the dinner was very nice though, and the Fightin Texas Aggie School of Architecture paid for the whole thing. WHOOP!
A few days later we went out one night and I discovered these outdoor urinals, not like a porter potty, it is four holes and these little side flaps and you just use it, your back being exposed to the whole world, it was kinda funny. This culture is a lot more...comfortable, I guess you could say, especially on the beaches, but it isn't a big deal here, it is just part of the culture... I think.
Anyways, we finally went shopping and I got these really cool fisherman pants, and a purple hoody, I walked around town wearing a scarf around my neck, not one to keep you warm, like a little old lady scarf, purely for fashion, I looked so Euro! Dont worry I have pictures.
On sunday I met up with Hernan who is a friend of a friend who studied abroad here this summer. He was so nice, the church service wasnt even in spanish, it was worse catalyan, so I really didnt understand anything. They sang a few of the same songs as we do and it was funny how the first 3 songs were organ and piano and the last songs after the sermon had drums and a guitar and all that contemporary jazz. Guess they are just like back home in a lot of ways. After the service was really great because we got to talk with some people, this little old lady told me I was handsome and that the spanish girls were very pretty. Dont worry mom I told her that you said I wasnt allowed to fall in love in spain and she laughed and then pinched my butt...just kidding the pinching part didnt happen. It is nice to know that I still got it with the old ladies though! After church we got coffee and then ate with Hernan, he is so so cool. It was nice to talk about the world from a Christian perspective and have more depthful conversation. It was really good because I think it really encouraged the three of us who went. I had already decided to start a Bible Study but I hadnt really gotten on the ball about it yet and two people asked me to start one, so I guess that was just God giving me a little push, a pinch in the butt you could say, haha, gosh I'm funny. Anyways talk has been very accepting of that idea.
That night Sal and I went to the site of our project and ended up wandering to Sagrada Familia. It is so amazing, I didnt really like Gaudi's work very much, the thing is, it isnt really beautiful until you experience it. I know that is usually true about things but photographs really make his work look, silly kinda. It's amazing to see upclose. There was a service about to start so Sal and I got to sneak in and see the inside for a few minutes. It was so huge, you cant even imagine the scale of the project. Hopefully it will be completed in my lifetime since they have already been working on it over 100 years, with modern techonology that is unheard of.

welp, see ya next week. paze (that's peace in catalyan)

Aug 28 - Aug 30 - Week 1

2008-09-03T09:18:00.000-07:00

These first 12 days have been so crazy, I really haven't had time to write until now. So where were we, day 4 (these are going to get progressivly shorter, I was so excited and everything was so new I got a little long winded). So on friday, day four we ended up heading out to Park Guell. We bought metro passes and I rode my first subway, it wasn't too bad but the language barrier for trying to figure out where to go made it a little bit more difficult. You could totally tell we were tourists, the girls take pictures everywhere, yes even in the subway. We made it to our stop and eventually out to Park Guell. There was an amazing view of the city and this mountain that had a cross on top, we took lots of pictures. I had seen pictures before and thought it was kinda weird and looked like a big gingerbread land but once you are there it is different, pictures don't do it justice. Kelsie and I got in trouble for climbing on one of the fountains, we just stepped on this little ledge and this guy came and said, "THIS IS NOT A MOUNTAIN!" That has become a kind of inside joke. After Park Guell we went back to the hostel for our all hostel meet and greet night. It was really neat because there were all the people staying in our hostel there and we got to meet them. We got to be really good friends with these aussies, dan, rachel, casey and danika. We also met a girl named Carrie from San Fransisco who was really cool. We ended up going to our first discotecha that night after our hostel owner showed us some of the local hot spots. It was pretty crazy inside, it was all techno music. The aussies were astonished at the way Americans dance, they had no rhythem. Casey told me that usually in Australia people just dance by themselves all crazy because most of the time they are high on extacy. Kelsie and Aliesha both got friendly dancing with some boys that definatly didn't speak any english. When we tried to leave we lost dan three times and had to go back and find him. One time while we were waiting a car ran over a pole that was on the sidewalk, he just blasted right over it, small car too. Finally we found Dan and he had some story about how these hookers grabbed him and wanted his money and he had to run away from them.
The next day was amazing, we spent the whole day on the beach with Carrie and the Austrailians, they taught us lots of cool words, like keen-do you want to, pluggers - flip flops, bludger- jerk, and some other ones, Kelsie has them all written down. Carrie, Dan and I swam out to these blocks that are in the ocean and saw a bunch of jellyfish, freaked out and swam back. We picked up sea glass for about two hours after that, much less dangerous than messing around with jellies. This man who balanced about 30 donuts on a pan on his head came by us, he was running around and dancing and singing some funny songs, all while balancing the donuts on his head. Once we were done with the beach we changed and headed to the famous fountain show in the middle of Plaza Catalunya. It was the most amazing thing I have seen since I have been here. The fountain was crazy, it could shoot water up 50 or 60 feet in the air, it had a stream effect and a mist effect and it could spin and do all kinds of cool stuff but what made it awesome was the music and lighting. At times it looked like the northern lights, there is no way to really describe it. We ended up watching it for over an hour until the show ended. It was like something out of fantasia, it was just...magical, ha. One the way to the fountains and back the Aussies and I got to talking about religion, it was amazing to me that they didnt have a single friend who went to church, they said no one did. We got to talk about what I believe a little bit and it was really really awesome. I didn't realize how unique the Bible Belt phenomenon is, we need to get out of Texas and start changing the world.

Aug 28 - Day 3

2008-08-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

Today Kelsie and I decided to get up and go for an early run. It was really hard to get up because Kelsie was so hyper last night. She kept getting up out of bed and talking with Sal, they even wrestled at one point. I had my headphones on and I still couldn´t go to sleep. Finally I had to get up and seperate Kels and Sal and after about 45 min of telling Kels to calm down and be quite everyone finally got to sleep at about 4 in the morning. We went running all through the streets and eventually made it to the beach, it was so nice to run and then get in the cool water, we got a lot of strange looks on the street for running though. After that we went back and woke up Sal and Aleisha. We were supposed to met at Resa at noon to have an orientation, but they had just sent us the wrong email, it was actually only meant for the Clemson students who have been moved into Resa since the 22nd of August. Thank you Texas A&M for not letting us move in until 2 days before classes start, it probably saved them 10 bucks or something. It was nice that we got to meet the eight of them, we decided to go home and change and meet back with them for lunch. We went to a little resturant that is connected to Resa and then went to the Richard Meyer building which has Barcelona´s musem of modern art in it. We decided to go to the beach, we met up at Resa later, Tierney was waiting for us when we got back to the hostel. We got ready and then went to the beach. At the beach there are these people walking around everywhere saying "Cola, agua, cervesa" or "masje? massage?" or my favorite, the coconut guys who yell "DABEDABEDABEDABE" or the occastional creeper who whispers "hash?". After the beach we went back had dinner and got ready to go out for the night. We wanted to hang out in Resa, the place that we would be moving into in just two days but the gaurd is an old fat grouch and he wouldn't let us in. He made us stand in the street and kept yelling at us in Spanish. We ended up going around to some local pubs, we met this guy who was full of stories but he had actually gone to Texas State, so I talked to him about San Marcos and everything. Then we went to a different pub, things got interesting when four of the guys took not one, but two shots of absenth. At 4 or 5 in the morning, me and another girl who were sober finally got everyone to go back to their rooms.

Aug 27 - Day 2

2008-08-31T08:59:00.000-07:00

On our second day here we wondered around town, with a few aimless goals. We were taking pictures of everything, we looked like those asian people at disneyland. We found Resa, which is the place that we will be staying once we leave the hostel. In regard to the hostel, it is tiny and we are stepping all over eachother, it is really hard to move around and getting clothes is impossible because they are all still in the suitcases. We made our way to the beach, the water is beautiful. You can walk out sholder deep and see your shadow on the bottom. After a few hours on the beach we hit up an "American Resturant" at least that is what the sign said. We had hamburgers because they were the cheapest things on the menu, but Kelsie pointed out that it was very possible that it was dog meat. After lunch while we were wondering we also got our first taste of street performers, a man dressed in all white sitting on a toilet in the middle of the street reading a news paper, being perfectly still until people would pay him to take a picture or he would scare passers who werent paying attention. We walked by a place called Magic America with a big sign that says Sex Shows, nice to know that this is the impression that the world is getting of us. While wondering that night we ran into Phil and Dan again, we roamed around the city with them, Kelsie was pretty smitten with Phil. They were kinda boring though so we split ways with them after not every long. We stopped by the grocery store and then headed back to the hostel. We hung out in the common room, there was a french girl who asked to use the computer I was on, I said sure and then she started watching youtube videos. I was a little upset that she got in the way of me emailing family to watch some lame french music videos. Sal saved the moment and made it all worth it however when he started to play Kiss the Girl and I started singing it to the back of the french girl. The words fit perfect, "There you see her, sitting there across the way, she don´t got a lot to say..." pretty good second night, but it only got better in the next few days.

Arriving in BCN

2008-08-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

And so it began. I got some tears out of the old man as he dropped me off at Sal´s house. The next morning we were dropped off at the airport, and right away Sal and Kelsie were unloading some of their luggage into my under weight bags because theirs had exceeded the strict 50 pound limit. It was right after that when I learned about the 3.5 liquid rule that everyone I knew had failed to warn me about, I was freaking out because I had already checked my bags and was getting prepared to be embarrassed at the check point. Luckily I had forgotten all of my toiletries at Sal´s house in typical Clayton style. The plane to Newark was amazing, good meal, and sweet touch screen televisions in the headrest of every seat. You could choose from 20 different movies, and different games (Sal and Kelsie played a ridiculous game of battleship with a pillow as the divider and way too much giggling going on). When we arrived in Newark airport we could see an AMAZING view of New York City and I saw the Statue of Liberty for the first time. It was sad that we couldn´t leave the airport. We met up with Alisha and quickly noticed at our check-in that we were the only people boarding with American passports. We got our first taste of being the minority. The flight was fine, but this airplane, for our 7 hour and 30 min flight, was much less nice than the one for our 2 hour and 15 min flight. Upon take-off we saw the night lights of New York, it made me want to move there. At our best efforts to sleep, we failed for the most part. The meal was terrible, but the real adventure was about to begin, and it was nothing like we thought.
When we arrived in Barcelona, it was still pretty surreal. We didn´t really know where to go, the Spanish signs weren´t any help. We finally made it to luggage pickup and headed out of the airport. The people looked different, who knew, it was hard not to laugh at things like the guy in super tight purple jean shorts but we didn´t, ok I lied we still haven´t gotten pass the giggling at people after two days. We got in line for a taxi, and a nice security man asked us if we needed a car for all four of us and our 11 huge bags with his best broken English, which we know appreciate. We said "yes". He said "80 euro". We said "fine". He said "follow me". So we did, we crossed the street, went to the building next door, and that is when we started getting scared. We stopped and debated if we should keep following him into the building. He came back to get us once he realized we were no longer behind him. He assured us that he was security and it was ok. So we kept following him, into the building which was a parking garage, we wondered through until he yelled at what seemed to be a buddy of his (they were both middle-eastern) and they opened up the back of a van and started throwing our stuff into the back, and then we got in. This summer I learned that if you have a check in your system you should listen to it, well I had a check in my system and I didn´t listen to it. We got in the car and we didn´t say anything as we started driving off, I was terrified. We all just sat around and looked at each other, I was running through scenarios of being taken to a hide-away and robbed, or killed or who knows what. We were on the lookout, making sure he was headed to Las Ramblas. He had a hard time getting the address in his GPS system but we finally made it to the Hostel, after some James Bond style driving. We jumped out of the van, Sal almost got hit by on-coming traffic, and unloaded our stuff and paid the man. So the point is, we made it to the hostel!
We knew we had just been ripped off but happy to be alive and at our hostel. We managed to figure out the ringing in system on the doors here, we buzzed the front desk, they let us in and we began to hall the 11 bags into the 10 foot wide corridor that lead to a double staircase, only as wide as each of our suit cases. Being gentlemen, Sal and I carried all of the heavy luggage into the check in area. We met Angela, the first of our many front desk runners, who had a huge hicky on her neck, and she checked us in. She asked if we were going to pay for the hostel all at once, we said yes but we needed to get money first. She pointed us to two banks. After putting our luggage in the 15 foot but 5 foot room in the shape of a hallway we went out to get the famous euro. We headed out to the streets feeling so cool, walked 4 doors down to the bank and buzzed in again. Kelsie kept buzzing and the door was making weird sounds, and she kept buzzing and we couldn´t get in and finally Sal, over zealously, pushed the door, instead of pulling like Kelsie was doing, and just about fell on his face into the bank. We sat down and waited for the teller to help the man who was there and then sent Aliesha up to the desk to exchange first. However, "¿Habla ingles?" was met with laughter, she shamelessly laughed in our face and sent us on. We crossed the street and made it to the other bank, this time knowing the push instead of pull trick. Sal went in first and walked into a on person compartment at the door, a glass door closed behing him, trapping him momentarily in a 3 foot by 3 foot by 7 foot cell. You should of seen his face, a little worried to say the least, but it let him through. Kelsie was next and then Aliesha, however the machine didn´t like something that Aliesha was doing because it would not let her through. I jumped in front of her and got through and it still wouldn´t let her through for 3 more times. She tried 6 times before the machine would let her into the bank. Inside we exchanged our cash for Euro and then made some withdrawals from the ATM machine and we were off. We went back, paid for the hostel and then got ready to explore the city. Before we left we met our first major characters of the BCN saga, Phill and Dan from Canada. They were staying in the room right next to ours. After a quick hello, and chit chat we went out to see the city. We didn´t get far before we were being yelled at and run out of a shop by a middle aged women yelling "cinco! cinco!" I thought that meant there could only be 5 people in the store, but actually as we soon figured out, only after more yelling, that meant that it was closing for siesta and we could come back at 5pm. At that point, with EVERYTHING in the city closed we went back to the room and naturally...took a siesta. When we woke up we went back into town, I bought a toothbrush, because remember I left all of my toiletries as Sal´s (no mom that had nothing to do with me needing to go to the restroom a.k.a el baño). And a few other groceries. We ate dinner at a place that has a huge hunk of nasty looking meat, called a doner where they put lamb and chicken on bread with an awesome sauce that we have come to call "euro sauce" which is a kind of garlic-ish ranch flavor. After that we met up with Dan and Phill on the patio of our hostel, we talked about their europe adventures, had some local sangria and went out on the town. They took us to the crazy street of La Rambla that we had heard so much about however there wasn´t much going on there except expensive things and people in crowds walking to who knows where. When we were tired of that we ate at a little burger joint, yes burgers, which are terrible here, maybe made of dog meat, and then went back to sleep after being awake 45 of the last 48 hours. Oh what a first day in Barcelona!