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Yesterday at the festival, I bought some honey from Montserrat, just outside the city and it is delicious! I am enjoying a nutella and honey sandwich right now. The soccer game was interesting, the first half was all Barca and ended 2-0 but Mallorca got 2 lucky goals in the second half and won 2-3. This was the last home game of the season and a lot of the fans were angry at the president of the club, so there was a lot of protesting going on outside the president’s entrance after the game. They were chanting death threats among other things. Also, one of the players announced that he would be leaving at the end of the season, so every time he touched the ball, they yelled obscenities at him. It made for a pretty interesting game. There is an Argentina v Catalunya game that I’m getting tickets for in two weeks, should be another awesome game. It’s just a shame that there are no more FC Barca games this season.

Today I walked the length of Las Ramblas, watched some street performers and breakdancers, and saw the statue of Columbus (right about the same time my camera batteries went dead). Then I went over to Sagrada Familia:

I sat on a park bench for almost 2 hours just staring at the facade. There was just so much to look at. They have been doing a lot of renovation and cleaning on the church. It used to be this dull brown/tan color which looks almost like sand. They are cleaning it to look very clean and almost white. To be honest, I kinda like it the old color. The facade almost looks like a giant sand castle anyways. There is almost no smooth surface on the front and everything has detail layered upon detail layered upon detail. It is incredible how on parts of the facade, they carved stone bricks to look as though they are flowing liquid frozen in time. The sheer amount of detail will stop anyone in their tracks and I know I plan on spending some more time people watching and staring at Sagrada Familia.

Expect more pictures soon

So after unpacking and taking care of the essentials, yesterday I ended up going to the local Bicing office (a bike rental service) to get a membership card but the offices were closed because it is a holiday weekend. Then we ventured out to the US embassy to register our trip. It also was closed for the weekend. Great. After more than 3 hours of walking in the rain, we discovered that our monthly metro pass works on the buses too. Good to know. Now I just need to get a bus map.

A huge group of us ended up going out to a bar called L’Ovella Negra (the black sheep) till about 2 and then we attempted to get into a club…. only one problem: clubs around here are pretty strict when it comes to shoes. Eight people got into the club just fine but 5 of us didn’t have the proper shoes on. Whoops. So the rest of us went to a bar around the corner and hung out till 3. Most of the bars around here are open from midnight till 3, the clubs from 1 till 5. Spaniards definitely don’t waste any extra hours on sleeping.

There is a festival going on today where they are selling homegrown herbs, homemade cheeses and all kinds of different farm goods up and down some of the streets. Should be pretty fun. And then tonight is the FC Barca futbol game!! The game starts at 9 tonight so it should be another late one. Expect some pictures tomorrow.

Oh, and don’t forget to wish your mother a Happy Mother’s Day!

Adios

Morr

Morning Everybody,

I attempted video-blogging this without a lot of success so you’ll have to practice your reading skizzils.

It is just past noon here and I am getting a little bit of a late start today. Yesterday we took a tour of Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya (UPC) and got a long tour of the campus, found out about our classes, and I got to take a placement test. I think all of us ended up in the beginner’s class. (sorry Mrs. Crockett!) The campus is about a half hour away by train but it isnt hard to get there. We headed back to this side of town (where Onix is) and checked out Placa de Catalunya. We found a little cafe named Qu Qu to have lunch and a Vodafone store where we bought prepaid phones. Now you can all call me when you come visit me. Just drop me a comment or email and I’ll give you my number.

Today, I plan on getting on the Spanish eating schedule (breakfast at 8, snack at 11, lunch at 2:30, dinner at 10) so lunch will be in about 2 hours. Other than that, I plan on doing a little exploring and unpacking. Pretty slow day.

I’ve got a pretty exciting day tomorrow though. Tomorrow, I have tickets for the last FC Barcelona game of the season. For those of you who are not in the soccer world, this is kinda a big deal. FC Barcelona is typically one of the best teams in all of Europe. I am going with 4 or 5 friends of mine and the game isn’t until late tomorrow night so it should be a fun day. Hopefully the rain will let up for a few hours during the game. Expect some pictures from the game.

Keep the new name suggestions coming! Don’t be shy, I know there are people out there reading and not commenting…

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Adios

Morr

I decided that I hate the name “Michael’s Musings.” Suggest a new name, I’ll pick the best one, and you win a prize of your choice. It’s that easy.

Just to make you jealous, this is where I am staying:

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Well, I made it. We arrived about 12 hours ago, made it to the dorms, and only lost one person in transit. (Don’t worry, he found his way to us about 6 hours later).  We got checked in and took a nap followed by a trip to the market. There is an incredible fresh market just around the corner with amazing fresh veggies, a bakery that smells heavenly and a butcher that makes my mouth water. I have a feeling we will be doing quite a bit of cooking in our little kitchenette. Oh, and they have ikea plates and cups in our room… made me laugh. My roomie, Gaby, and I took our first adventure on public transit tonight and tried to find our way to the beach. After only one wrong train, we walked the wrong way for about a half hour. Oh well, nothing like getting lost in Europe at night. At least Gaby is passably fluent in Spanish. I have a feeling I’m going to be looking to him for some help for the first few weeks while my Spanish comes back to me. 

Tomorrow we have an orientation at Universidad Polytechnica de Catalunya at 10. After that, we have 3 things on the agenda: we need to find some more power adapters (one of mine broke and Gaby’s cant push enough current to charge his laptop), then we are going to find a vonage store and get a local cell phone, and finally we are going to invest in some quality city and metro maps. In any case, that should allow us to do quite a bit of exploring. 

Expect some video blog posts soon and I’ll be putting pictures up on flickr as soon as I get around to taking them (that’s something I need to get into the habit of doing). Oh, and I am setting up a cool feature where you can actually leave video comments (provided you have your own webcam). Until then, you will all have to be happy leaving text comments.

Adios,

Morr

So, this is my first foray into the blogosphere and I hope that it proves to be a successful venture for both you and I. I am starting this blog for multiple reasons. 1) I am going to Europe this summer and I want a way to keep in touch with all my peeps back in the States 2) I want to remember it myself so I figured I would be more likely to blog than journal 3) It’s about time that I got sucked into the blogging world and this seemed as good a time as any. Hopefully I’ll keep this thing up to date with enough interesting and amusing posts to keep you coming back. Expect a lot of videos and pictures. You can keep an eye on my flickr photostream and my vimeo stream. (Vimeo is kinda like youtube). 

Also, you might notice some interesting things on the right hand column. They are (at the moment) Skribit and Twitter. Skribit is a way that you guys (yes, you) can ask me to write about what you want to hear about. Also, you can see what other people have requested and vote for requests. So you guys are kinda in control of this blog too! Now twitter is also pretty cool. It is basically a micro-blog of what I have been up to throughout the day. Hopefully I will be able to keep it up to date while I travel (depending on wi-fi availability). You can see my last 5 twitter postings on the right side. If you want to check out twitter for yourself, saunter on over to Twitter and be prepared to get hooked.

I am at the airport and I think I am going to save some battery for the flight.  I will check back in when I get on the ground in Spain.

Morr