New Beginnings

We'll its been a few days now and there is so much to say. each of these is a little vignette of what I have been up to and should give you a pleasent taste (moreover, these are written in this manner because I have been composing them for some time now and am only now getting around to writing them down....)

**************

Well two days ago I was in class and I made a friend. It started off as bad luck but, with enough control of my frame of reference, all things turned out for the best. The first day of class, bad luck. I was getting to class when EVERYTHING in the world was conspiring to attract my attention. A flock of pigeons in perfect formation soared over my head and I had(!) to stop and watch them fly into the bay, the sun rising through the church on my way to class caught perfectly in the steeple glass and it would have been high nigh sacrelidge to let it pass, the sun rising over the mountains across the bay was perfect and I would have been bereft to leave it unseen and unloved. Any way, needless to say, I was late which landed me in the very front, by my self, with a large, screaming professor. Day two, worse luck. I didn't go. Didn't really feel like it, nuf said. Day three, GREAT luck. Apparently, day two had added a student to the class that, also left with no seat, was forced to the front. So day three I made friends with Oliver.

Oliver is English. Very english. He was born a block from Cambridge and goes to Edinborough where he studies geography (Yeah, I didn't know it was a major either but its basically GIS). Any way- both of those schools sound better when spoken in a harsh english accent. Any way, day three was comming to a close when i was talking to the one other american in the class, Rachel, another english kid, Rob, Oliver, and some germans (Germans dominate the Erasmus program) we decided to play a pick up game latter that day of Rugby. While we were talking, I realized that Oliver has gone silent and he had a distant look in his eyes. I asked what was up and then, as if to typify american romanticization of the English life, he replied "I was thinking of Rugby..." Being the brash american I am I said "I've never played but I've always wanted to it seems like os much fun..." and cut off more by his silence then by his look, he continued "Rugby always reminds me of cold english mornings." Now, I ask you, seriously, imagine an Oliver, with a harsh english accent, eyes soft with memory and hard with experience, saying that. It's kinda self explanatory.

**************

Um, I love rugby. We played Germans and Italians versus England and US (Yes, the WWII reference was not lost of any of us...except perhaps the Germans who were eagerly planning aloud in German which was kind of unfair but such is life). Any way, I scored the first goal and the third (the first was rather unnecessary beacuse we made a lucky break and despite the fact that it was a clear point in for us, I still dove into the sand and made a mess of my self. Totally worth it). The third point was an exciting tackle INTO the goal which makes for a nice story. The game ended 5-6, germany/italy winning in the last of it.

**************

Um, I Love rugby. We played again yesterday and I was sore from the first. So naturally we played tackle this time. It ended with a friend in blood and everyone else pretty much happy since we got to tackle each other. Any way, Rugby is fun.

**************

Nothing much else has happened. Had my first 5 am dancing nights, which were exciting, and am gearing up for some fun tonight (Rugby game at the celtic tavern) and then tomorrow for sangria.

Well...here's looking at you ^_^

Ch 1. The Illustrated Version

Doing it right...all night. That right folks, apparently my dad is in the admirals club and the admiral's club is kinda fucking awesome. We got free drinks and food, nice music, relaxing lounges, and, best of all, 20 or so very waspy rich looking old men who gave us odd looks. Maybe it was just that I was taking pictures...
This awesomeness is to say nothing of the fact that I had access to every top newspaper and a staff of like 4 girls who basically just sat around, waiting to be asked to do things like bring you stuff, or chagne the channel, or chagen the music, or get flight information. It was kind of amazing...and then kind of perfect. The best part of it all was that you could live in the admirals club. It had a gym, showers, beds, wake up services, phones, work areas...everything you could ever want (except free wireless internet access....x.x, but whatcha gonna do?)!

ps i love america and i love my camera and thus i took a picture of the huge american flag...hanging inconspicuously over the international section of the Boston Logan international airport (which, btw, has a shitty admiral's club with a very angry looking woman who stairs and people when they move [to be fair, she reminded me of my self in a libraries...rather intimidating but it got the job done]).
After that, we had a pleasant transatlantic flight with a good time watching spiderman three and this cool movie about a lady who makes pies...like dead-baby pie, i-dont-want-to-sleep-with-you-earl pie, and sinful-flights pie (my personal favorite). It was good and a pleasent way to make our way to London.

To keep the unexciting parts short, we got to London (which has random packets for things like mayonise, brown sause, red sause and other things....), left london, got to madrid, which was beautiful. The roof was basically...um hard to describe accurately. Imagine a plane of waves in all directions and at the top of every other arc there is a sky light. Also, the whole place is lined with pillars which go from red to violet in accordance with the color spectrum. Also, everything is glass so it just fun to look at in general. Also, the people did to my dad what he does to them. They were like "take off your belt" in spanish and my dad was like "what." It was perfect- they just looked at him and very slowly and very loudly, they said again, in spanish "take of your belt." it was all i could do to hold back tears of laughter as they helplessly pantomimed removing a belt, which looks conspiculously like...well something that men should not do in public or in airports.





Just another picture of Madrid Airport.










Any way, we got to Santander and it was beautiful. We spent time on the beach, on the mountains, in the bay, with my family (where my abuela screamed at my dad in spanish and my dad screamed back in english [a personal favorite memory is lying in bed trying to sleep when my mom called the home phone and kept screaming "zaheer zaheer" into the reciever and my abuela screamed "sleeeeeeep sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep" back in crackling english. i almost just stayed in my room to hear how long it would go on...but I ended up running downstairs to get the phone.]).



This is the dog. Cute and rather hyper. the first day I bent down to pet her and she just started gnawing on my hand. It was adorable and strange. But I think I showed her too much affection because she seems to really enjoy jumping on me when I wake up which is a bit annoying but kinda cute. I cant help but sneak her food and let her back into the house when mi abuela locks her on the patio in the blistering 80 degree heat and the dog helplessly laps at the door.












Um...Spanish globe from pre fall of USSR. Just a fun little tidbit of history.















In the plaza for the Olympics, there is this thing called the Palacio de Desportes which is this HUGE stadium with an awesome structure. It is set inside one of the valleys and has a whole garden of awesomeness around it where people race remote controleld boats and play futbol.




Here we have one of the random chappels that lines the city skyline at night. It is amazing when the sun sets and from the bottom of the hill, laying on the beaches and looking back at the slightly abbandoned city- filled with its mindless tourists and jadded inhabitants, neither of which throws a second glance to the city- the sun reflects gold and pink through the stained glass windows of the city's religious structures and dances from the top of the crosses that top every street.













This is a little microcosm of my region taken from atop one of the mountains we frequented. You can make out the cute little homes, the pleasent life style, and the whit ebeaches in the back. That body of water is the bay of biscay and, if your eyes permit, the atlantic ocean.









On my first day there, in the building across the street (the state bank building), there was a concert going on which was fun. When I asked my host mom what was going on, she was like "oh, its just a bunch of mexicans playing music or something. Some of the older people like it so they just let it go when they want." I dont know why but it was a thoroughly ammusing comment and after I asked her why they were singing she was like "Its what mexicans do: sing and work." The random bit of spain eliticism tickeled me rather pink.

Um...this is just a cool picture.








My dad and I went to a random site and I saw some chalking which made me nostolgic for cornell. This one says "Un Mundo ideal es cuando mairiel y (other name) son juntos...te amo" (An ideal work is when mairiel and other peorson are together...i love you) I started to get teary and stupid and my dad got confused and I kept trying to explain why it was cool and failed miserably. Perhaps you all will understand...











Any way....so after an obviously hard day of travel with my dad, filled with rather strenuous, time pressing activity,
















We continued our adventure at the near by castle which was just at the end of a second peninsula comming off the first and closing off part of the bay of santander. It was a nice little time pass while we waited for the sun to set and our day to end.


Then the sun did set, and it was kind of amazing.

That night I went out by my self and looked around the city to find something exciting. Instead, infront of a rather desolate church I found the reminants of a wedding party.
After pondering the rather interesting nature of such, I slept, drempt, woke, ate, my father left for london and I for my next adventure. I was walking around when I saw this really beautiful cat wandering about the next city and folowed it to the top of a hill...




From the hill I could see all the way down to the other side of the peninsula it was amazing. The water was green, the children were laughing, the parents were bickering, the older kids were drinking and I was scaling the large, long forgotten corals that had fosilized over time into rather unforgiving, very sharp, structures.





















Day one of classes was fun, we covered alot of popular european topics...



















And then I made a sand castle.













And then to end this little fountain of information, I have a small dedication. I don't know how else to do this so Amy, I saw this picture and bend over laughing thinking of your mom and that game we played that one time that had john lennon and the song imagine...any way, John lennon and imagine are inevitably tied to your mother now in my mind and this was just funny. It was a double take since it was a really nice, random bar in the middle of houses, on a street corner and was being frequented by large groups of middle aged women and one 19 year old guy who was rather thugish. Any way, when life gives you lemons....

With all the best,

Ch 1. Arrival

Um...how do you say, ^_^ because right now, you really would kill to be where I am. For my chocolate loving kin, I am in a chocolate cafe right now, a huge display of perfect chocolates of every flavor, nature, country, and origin, borders me on my left. To my right, families sit and chat. A little boy eyes me curiously over his Spiderman comic, an old couple looks close to the end but seem to have nothing in mind but each other and, rather conspicuously, a chocolate fountain sits unused on the other sideof the cafe. For the cofe lovers, I just had another cafe con leche, the ridiculously strong coffe drink that EVERYONE drinks here, no matter what (mind you, this is my third today). For my nature lovers, through the glass cafe of chocolate and past the people awkwardly looking in at me and wondering who is that strange american boy with the colored laptop and odd hat (NO ONE WEARS HATS HERE...), you can see the beaches of santander, with a glimpse of the harbor down the street and into the Bay Santanderino with the mountains outlining the backdrop that leads to the rest of spain. For you history/government people, just up the street one way is the government building of the capital, down the street the bank dedicated to a major war hero who defended spain from france, the cathedral of Cantabria, and in the last direction another curch. And for you math people, after my own heart, the decor is amaizng. Perfectly spaced, perfectly clean, round tables with triangulated legs which cross and waht happens to be the apex of hte beatifully curved chairs.

Seriously, die.

Any way- I got here a few days ago with my dad and have been having a blast. We traveled to some of the nicer areas in the area and beaches but its a story best told with pictures which I will upload tomorrow. I just found this chocolate cafe with wifi so I am too happy NOT to post.

My family here is wonderful. Mi mama, inmaculada, is a single lady who works at the hospital and talks to her stuffed animals and dog...more to her stuffed animal, I can't quite tell why. She is a bit anal and enjoys decorating my room in random pictures of...shit, that lady with the white dress that blew up, and that other lady who sings, with long black hair, and goes "uh huh." Regardless, when she is not talking to her stuffed animals, she paints recreations of Monet's work and puts them around the flat. Mi abuela, Maria, lives with Inmaculada and does the house work and cooks wonderfully, which is to say nothing of her sangria which is as sweet as honey and perfect as pepper (both of which they graciously bought for me when I let slip i love sweet deserts and spicy food...totally on accident but i guess stuff works out). We live right behind the bank of santander and from my room, which has this awesome terrace on the top floor of hte 7 story building with huge french doors that open to the night, where I can look out over the bay and drink my sangria. Its kinda amazing. My room started out in this little box of a room that had a view of...the other people in the building...like into their rooms and I was feeling a bit voyeristic till I realized that during siesta the women downstairs sings while she makes lunch and at night, the women across form us sings when she cleans up from dinner. Its kinda wonderful and I'm a bit sad I moved, but everyone and a while I hear their voice coming through the window and down the hall and I recuse my self to imagining the domestic lives that pain these women so that they sing of far away places and lost loves who once where, but never will be.

Any way- other than that, classes are going well and I hate learning spanish, STILL. Buy, as amy so wisely taught me in 11th grade, if I funnel my linguistic rage into the language my grammer becomes flawless. Today, I told my teacher that I feared her and thought she would hurt the class if we got out of hand....she was impressed that I could use random tenses and I was happy to vent. I got approving looks from the random german people in the class and the Norwegian looked a bit confused. But, meh.

Any way- that is all for now. I suppose every cloud has a silver lining...but luckily there are rarely clouds in Santander, making the rather frigid continuious 67 feel like a pleasent 80.

Thats all for now folks but Ill get my pictures up tomorrow and attemps to post with greater regularity in teh future so I dont have to load up two posts again.

Hoping everyone is doing well,

and still rather aggrivated that people here don't wear hats and thus I look like some broken tourist with a bag.


oh- and random story. So there are two things that the people here say to me. I have found one person, my host mom, who did not say this but had her own commens. With out fail, every person I have met in depth and my class mates as well, make one of two comments after we meet. response one- I get this...look followed by "Oh...like Antonio Banderes **swish noise making a z in the air**. Zeta, like Zorro. The Pakistani Zorro! How cool...you are cute (eres guapisimo...loosely translated)." Or, response two- "I love your bag. how wonderful. did you get it in france? It looks strange. And the print- I've always wanted a bag like that..." Unfortunately both are delivered rapidly so I respond tartly to the first and stupidly to the second. Any way- cafe con leche passes through me like water...but count your blessings, no?

May our days be illuminated and our nights be guided.