MichaelOrr.net

I’m sure many of you have noticed my lack of posts to this site over the past 4 months. I still have lofty goals of updating this site from time to time but the reality of my schedule over this past semester has not allowed me that opportunity. Trying to graduate while working three part-time jobs and trying to find full-time employment has consumed quite a bit of my time.

All that to say this: If you know me well, you know that I have embraced micro-blogging. Specifically through Twitter. If you have never heard of twitter, I would recommend checking it out at http://twitter.com. You can view my twitter stream at http://twitter.com/michael0rr

As a result of twitter, I have been introduced to a service called tumblr. It is a sort of hybrid between micro-blogging and full-time blogging. I’m giving this a try at http://tumblr.michaelorr.net (you may have also noticed that this blog is now at blog.michaelorr.net) So check out my tumblr stream. My goal is to keep it a little more current so that I don’t spend 4 months without an update again.

If you have any comments or complaints, shoot them my way:

Well, the final days of the trip are closing in and I’ve been trying to spend my last hours carefully. I finished up my souvenir shopping and went on a few photographic expeditions over the past few days. Currently I am stalling on a few last papers that I need to write before i start packing. My plane leaves in exactly 36 hours from BCN airport. The flight is a little longer than 10 hours but we land about 4 hours after we take off (crazy time zones).

It will be very weird not being able to walk down the hall and round up a crew to cook dinner with, or be able to find people willing to go walking and sightseeing at any time of the day. I will really miss a lot of the people on this trip and we have been able to forge some very cool friendships. In a way, living in Residencia Onix with this group felt a lot like freshman year again. A hall full of people, everyone trying to get a little work done in between having a good time and making memories that will last a lifetime. We have already made plans to return to Barcelona in 18 years for the completion of the Sagrada Familia.

It is hard to believe this time has flown so quickly. We had a final barbecue on the roof of Onix to close out the summer today and I was reminiscing with someone, remembering the day I introduced myself to her 10 weeks ago in the Barcelona airport. It is crazy to think of all that we have seen, learned and experienced since that day even though it feels like it was just yesterday. Everyone on this trip has grown, learned a lot about themselves, and received an incredible perspective on the world through spending this amount of time overseas. It will be intersting to think how our perceptions of American culture will change when we go back. Maybe we won’t take the little things for granted, like free refills and ice in your drinks.

I miss my friends in Atlanta and I am very ready to relax with my family at my house out in West Texas. I am ready to enjoy a hot dog and a beer at Turner Field and grill out with my new roomies. I am ready to have some of my mom’s homemade food and stop in at Oscar’s Super Buritto. (anyone notice a pattern here?)

It still hasn’t sunk in that I am leaving in 36 hours. All of us have grown so used to being here that it will be strange to go home and be able to walk into a shop and describe exactly what you want. We will feel out of place being able to listen to and understand conversations around us. We won’t have to get by with a few short phrases, gestures, and hoping that if someone asks us a question, they don’t speak to quickly.

Even though I have enjoyed every single second of this trip, it is time to go home.

If you had 36 hours in Europe. How would you spend them?

I know that my updates are becoming less and less regular as my time in Spain draws to an end and for that I apologize. Things have gotten quite busy trying to squeeze every last drop of Spain out of our remaining days. I spent yesterday doing some shopping both for myself and for souvenirs for friends. I did my best with everyone’s requests. Today has been trying to catch up on work around Onix and prepping for my last week. We have a lot of projects to finish by Thursday and there is a lot of fun left to be had in this town. 

Last night a group of us decided to go on a Hemingway bar tour. I had researched several bars that Ernest Hemingway frequented and we walked between them after a great dinner. All of the places he liked to go to were small, out of the way bars which all have incredible personality to them. You could almost picture him hunched over in the corner sipping absinthe jotting notes in a moleskin penning famous lines in “The Old Man and The Sea” or “For Whom the Bell Tolls” For those of you not as familiar with Hemingway, I strongly recommend a little reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway. Why is it that all the best authors are really messed up people? In any case, his contribution to American literature should never be forgotten.

Randy comes to visit on Tuesday with some friends. Should be a lot of fun. I’m trying to wrap up work so that I will be able to spend more time hanging out with him.

I have had a lot of thoughts lately about Spain, the US, foreign travel, cultural perceptions… the only problem is that I have not been able to formulate any of them into thoughts concrete enough to write down. I’ll work on that and get back to you. Until then, it is Sunday night and I do not have class tomorrow. So I am going to utilize the fact that it is the weekend and enjoy myself. Expect a flood of pictures to flickr at some point tomorrow.

So my sister officially left Europe yesterday. My parents left Spain on Friday but they headed to London for a week (lucky!). It was really nice having them here. The only problem was that I felt like they didn’t have nearly enough time to experience Barcelona in the short week that they were here. Heck, I feel like I am just getting used to this place and I’ve been here over 2 months! Speaking of which, I have been here for quite a while, which means that I will be going home shortly (2 weeks to be exact). And I have been doing a lot of contemplating lately about things I will and will not miss about Spain when I go home.

Things I miss about the States

• Ice in drinks
• Free refills
• Chick-fil-A
• My truck
• Eavesdropping in public places
• Mexican food
• Barbecue
• Buckhead Church
• Sweetwater Beer
• Going to work (seriously!)
• Not having to read subtitles at the movies
• Being in the same time zone as my friends (or only one away)
• The Bravos
• Getting some breathing room from GTechies. (Don’t get me wrong, I am among the worst of the Techies. But as much as I love you guys, it is great to have some time around liberal art majors for a change every once in a while)
• Mass media in my native language
• Having my own room

Happy Independence Day! We are planning on grilling and hanging out on the beach celebrating. What are you doing to celebrate the 4th?

At the end of this past spring semester, I was in a rush to get a lot of things done in preparation for this summer. One of the things on my list was to get this blog established and rolling. Part of that process was picking a theme and layout for this blog. I didn’t have a ton of time to debate the Look & Feel of the site so I grabbed a random theme and made a few small tweaks but essentially I am using a canned theme from some “Free Wordpress Themes” site. I want to keep a blog of sorts going after I get back from Barcelona which means I want to give this site a complete overhaul. Any creative ideas or suggestions for how it should look? I know there is enough of you out there to have a good idea or two. You just gotta get over your fear of that little “leave a comment” link at the bottom. Go on, click it. Now type something.

Today, I taught my Spanish teacher the usage and meaning of the word y’all. The question is: by teaching her American Southern slang, is that making her more or less cultured? Probably less, but I’m going to lie to myself. Next on the list: ain’t.

I am going to Sitges tomorrow with the fam to enjoy the beaches. For all of you reading this at work on Wednesday afternoon, just know that I am soaking in the Mediterranean sun right about now. Sucks to be you.

It has been a while since my last post and I apologize for that. I know that many of y’all were begging me for new material so here ya go…

This past week was a vacation week for all of us on the program. I elected to stay in Barcelona for the majority of the week (except for the impromptu trip to Andorra). I decided to stay for a few reasons. First of all, I felt like there was a lot going on in Barcelona that I hadn’t been able to experience because I had been so busy taking trips to Italy, France, etc. and I wanted a chance to experience BCN without the business of classes. Secondly, and most importantly, traveling is expensive. Enough said.

So this past week was full of a lot of downtime, relaxation and a few crazy highlights that I am about to catch you up on. First of all, there was the festival of Sant Joan on Monday night (which I have already told you about). Then a good friend turned 21 on Tuesday so we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent catching some rays and visiting the Joan Miro museum up on Montjuic. The Joan Miro museum had a temporary exhibit from Olafur Eliasson, an artist who specializes in light and they cool ways that it can refract. Pictures should be up on Flickr soon. 

Friday was a catch up on work day and then my parents came to town on Saturday! I spent all day Saturday and Sunday with my famliy. Saturday we just walked up and down Las Ramblas and did some people watching (Las Ramblas has some of the best people-watching I’ve ever encountered!) A group of people from my program came out to a nice dinner with my family and I in Placa Reial and we all got helado for dessert. Oh, and my dad, Stephanie and I bought Spain jerseys in anticipation of the next day’s game. 

On sunday, we woke up early and headed out to Montserrat. Montserrat is a mountain about an hour by train outside Barcelona and it sticks up like a giant serrated knife from the green countryside. It is also the home of a very old Benedictine monastery. It houses the oldest printing press in operation in the world and a statue of the Black Virgin Mary. According to legend, this statue was carved by St. Luke and brought to Montserrat by Peter in the year AD 50. Although other accounts which are fairly well documented claim the statue arrived at Montserrat around the year 700. Carbon dating suggests that the current statue in the basilica dates from the 12th or 13th centuries. No one knows the true story of the black madonna, or even exactly why she is black. All they know is that she has been in the mountains in northern Spain for a very long time. The monastery itself was very cool. It is even one of the most likely candidates for hiding places for the holy grail during the Middle Ages (Indy was wrong!) Anyways, we had a great time walking around the monastery and enjoying the incredible views of the countryside. For more info about Montserrat legends and the black virgin Mary, check out these links (you know you want to…) 

• http://www.amaranthpublishing.com/LlibreVermell.htm
• http://campus.udayton.edu/mary//meditations/olmont.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montserrat_%28mountain%29
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Maria_de_Montserrat

The festival of Sant Joan (or San Juan) on June 24th marks the summer solstice and 6 months before (or after) Christmas. Barcelona, however, likes to celebrate the day before a holiday, which meant this past Monday night was the night to celebrate. We had heard fireworks going off in the courtyard behind Onix every day for the past 3 weeks. Little did we realize that this was all leading up to an entire night of fireworks, the scale of which I had never before seen in my life. There were bonfires in every neighborhood, fireworks on every street corner and people everywhere. I’m pretty sure every home in Barcelona emptied itself onto the streets and beaches of Barcelona Monday night. 

A large group of us left Onix at midnight and just started walking towards the beach. With every block that we passed, the crowds got thicker and thicker. Once we hit the sand, there was hardly a place to sit down. Every piece of ground was either already occupied by people or resembled a battlefield strewn with used firework casings. I assumed everyone would have a few fireworks, shoot them off, hang with some friends, and then call it a night (similar to New Year’s in the states). Boy was I wrong. The kids shooting off fireworks started a little after sunset and didn’t stop or even slow down until around 3 or 4 in the morning. A group of us met some cool Catalans and we all hung out on the beach till the sun rose. The crowds had thinned some but there were still a significant amount of people on the beach. I was worried about something happening to my camera so I didn’t take it with me. Even if I had had it with me, there would be no way for pictures to really capture the scale of Sant Joan. Other people, however, have uploaded plenty of pictures to Flickr.

I suppose I have had my fun the past few days. It is time to take care of some homework while I have a chance. I want to make sure I have plenty of free time when my parents come to visit this weekend!

Disclaimer: I have been back in Barca since Sunday, I’m just slow in posting. This is a long one. I am very sorry.

Andorra is a tiny country with a total population of 70 thousand. It declared war on Germany during WW I but has no military and was officially at war with Germany until 1957 because it was left out of the Peace Treaty of Versailles (hey, I’ve been there). It is a tax haven and pretty much everything there is duty free (which basically equates to a lot of cheap electronics and cigarettes). Although 80% of the country’s GDP comes from tourism, it doesn’t know whether to be touristy or not. The capital is Andorra La Vella and is three hours from the nearest airport and doesn’t have a train station. The largest and most recognizable building is a spa in the middle of the town in the form of a giant glass spire. The main street was impeccably lit and kept spotless. I honestly felt like I was in a Disney town. There are no homeless people in Andorra. Andorra is not in the EU. We heard people speaking Catalan, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and another language that I assumed was some mixture of French and Catalan. I also heard a little Italian but never English. We only found two people who could speak passable English the entire time.

We enjoyed having some delicious tapas, found a really cool jazz bar and enjoyed some incredible hiking. At the jazz bar on Saturday, we heard this great band. One of them was speaking English so we started talking to him after the show. Turns out he is from New York. He randomly met some musicians in Amsterdam while promoting a CD and they decided to make some music together and are now touring to promote it. Of all places to run into random American musicians from New York but a tiny tiny jazz bar in Andorra. The rest of the musicians were from Barcelona and have two shows this weekend on top of Casa Mila. Maybe we can get in free… 

For dinner, we found a great tapas restaurant that was a hole-in-the-wall locals place. Delicious. We recognized some of the names but after a while we started to get adventurous. Everything we tried was great… tuna, calamari, potatoes, mussels, fried peppers. We were feeling pretty adventurous so we decided to jump out on a limb and try something we didn’t recognize. Callos. It showed up as chunks of wiggly slimy white gelatinous stuff with honeycomb veins in a red stewy sauce. We debated back and forth what it was. Possibilities included pork fat, starfish, and any number of other sea-urchin like creatures. Well, when we got back, I googled it. Callos is made from tripe. Okay. I’m thinking that sounds like any other fish, kinda like Carp. So then I google tripe. Well, as it turns out we were eating the stewed lining of a cow’s stomach. Well, I didn’t really eat it. I took one bite, politely spit it in my napkin and let Kevin finish the bowl. Oh well, one bad dish out of 12. At 3 euros, you can afford to be a little adventurous.

We also went hiking up in the Pyrenees. We took a bus out to a tiny village called Ordino and just started walking. The lady at our hotel exaggerated when she said that there were only 10 houses in this village, but not by much. The mountains were huge on a scale that shames the Rockies. Incredible panoramic views of the valley that Andorra sits in. No wonder it is forgotten by most of the world, it is completely closed off and unless you knew where you were going, you would never find it. We hiked for several hours and enjoyed the incredible waterfalls and snow-capped mountains in the distance. Looking at a map later, I realized that if we had been backpacking and continued in the same direction for another few hours, we would’ve hiked straight into France!

All in all, Andorra is a pretty cool place. Made for a great weekend trip, only 4 hours away by bus. Oh, and if you have the choice between the bus that goes direct and the bus that makes a few stops on the way. Take the direct bus. On the way home we saw every tiny village between Andorra La Vella and Barcelona.

Today is the celebration of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, but I’ll tell all about that tomorrow. I need to go shower, we are going out for Kevin’s birthday tonight.