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,
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