New Happenins

Well..the beer trials kind of faded....study week kind of killed the rhythm we were in and it's hard to get back into now that we are pinching pennies...so there's another thing we have failed at. But we are always creating new things to keep ourselves entertained.

I went to Marrekech, Morocco last weekend and it was incredible...completely different but completely awesome. It was almost like I wasn't in Africa because everything was green, and I was in a Muslim country so it seemed more Middle Eastern really..which was fine with me...even more cultural exposure. We flew up early Friday morning and met up with a guy that some girls recommended we contact and he took us out to the Atlas Mountains where we hiked around and saw some water falls and ate lunch by a river. Pretty cool dude...smooth talker but he seemed pretty genuine.

Our hostel was awesome...we stayed in a 13 bed room and met some awesome people from Greece, Italy, and Argentina. It had a rooftop terrace that you could see basically the whole city from so we spent alot of time up there just relaxing and talking to people. It was about 85 degrees and sunny as hell so my paleness fried rather quickly...always good to get the first one over with early because its inevitable.

Saturday we walked around the city and there wasn't a whole lot to see...very non photographic town unless you are taking pictures of people. As we were walking through the Medina, some dudes under an umbrella suddenly jumped up and came over and shook our hand so we played along and when we got back to their umbrella, they flipped over a thing that had a damn Cobra under it. Needless to say it was a pissed off and stuff...so the dudes tossed some snakes around our necks and took our cameras to take pictures of all this. So now we have some randos with our cameras, snakes around our necks and a PMSing cobra (Ladies, I'm not suggesting that you are like some ruthless snake...just ruthless in general sometimes) whipping around on us. So, after we changed our pants....

It was a great weekend overall...everyone was extremely nice..even if they were trying to con you for money or sell you weed. I would definitely like to go back for about 10 days so I would have time to make it out to the Sahara and the Atlantic Coast.

Skydiving Video

Beer Trials Day 3 - February 12, 2009

Beer of the Day: Bischofshof

Cost: 1.05 Euro

Bottled In: No City Given

Country: Germany

Alcohol: 5.1%

Size: .5 L

Ian's Rating: 6.4

Brown's Rating: 6.987

Overall Drinkability: 6.6935

This was yet another wheat beer but it definitely left much to desire after yesterdays. It wasn't that this one was terrible today, just that it didn't stand out. However, +10 cool points for the company for putting this on the label: "Made from the best raw materials according to the Bavarian Purity Law of 1516". I'm glad the 5 ingredients involved have been approved by the food and drug administration that's still following something written 500 years ago.... they knew all about sanitation then I'm sure. Where's your medieval purification law Adolphus Busch...you ninny.

Beer Trials Day 2 - February 11, 2009

Beer of the Day: Schofferhofer

Cost: 1.21 Euro

Country: Germany

Alcohol: 5%

Size: .5 L

Ian's Rating: 7.7

Brown's Rating: 7.681

Overall Drinkability: 7.6905

Bottled In: Frankfurt

This was a German wheat beer (Weizenbier) that started off strong in the ratings. Towards the middle of the bottle it faded just a little bit like any wheat beer does but came back towards the bottom with a sweet finish. Definitely would have been better cold but we haven't discovered a way to do this yet figuring we can't have alcohol in our homestay so we can't use the fridge.

I suck at this... BUT BEER TRIALS BEGIN TODAY!!

Ok...so this whole updating, telling my adventures isn't going very well...I am keeping a journal of my own and its hard to do it twice...so.... Brown and I decided that everyday, we are going to the Corte Ingles (huge shopping mall) across from our school, heading to the beer aisle where there are easily over 70 different kinds, buy one, split it over our turkey sandwiches in Placa de Catalunya, and document everyday we do this. Our goal is to go down the aisle, 1 beer at a time, until they have all been tasted. This will force me to get on here everyday, and i can add anything interesting that may happen on here as a sidenote.

Here is Day 1:

Beer of the Day: Alt-Bamberg Dunkel

This is a German beer that wasn't terrible. It reminded me of something else but I still can't put my finger on it. It came in a big 16 ounce bottle which was a plus. Remember, college kids will go for quantity over quality at every opportunity. In time I will come up with more interesting ways to evaluate but it's only my first day.

Day 25 - January 31, 2009

I have found the recipe for the ultimate manwich.

Imagine: (top to bottom)
Bread
Mayo
Fried Egg
Bread
Mayo
Tomato
Lettuce
Bread
Hamburger
Bread

Oh yes.... the new meal of choice.

Day 24 - January 30, 12009

We were supposed to sky dive today and we got all the way up to Empuriabrava to the little airport and it was cloudy and foggy....so...we didn't. But have to reschedule I guess. Sucks but oh well.

Day 19 - January 25, 2009

We got back this morning from a couple days in Girona. It is located about a 2 hours train ride north of Barcelona. It was a neat town. It was pretty small and had an amazing medieval part of down that dates back to the 15th or 16th century I think. They had a kick ass cathedral there that was massive as well as an old fortress wall that at one time, stretched around the whole original part of the city.

We walked around for a bit once we arrived Saturday and ended up walking to our hotel...which was about a mile further than we thought it was going to be so that took an hour, but was one of the funnest parts of the weekend. Running across highways and roundabouts and such.

The hotel was nice. The Garmin professional cycling team was staying there as well. I guess Girona is the prime spot where all of the big Tour de France teams live and train in the off season.

Saturday night we ate a crepe place called El Brettone and it was awesome. It was basically any combination of eggs, bacon, cheese, veggies, meat, fish, whatever...all cooked up on a big crepe. Definitely a recommended dinner spot if you ever make it to Girona. We actually met some guys at lunch on Saturday, one from Ireland and one from Scotland, who suggested El Brettone so they picked well. The Irish guy actually told me that my spring break plans were about as good as I could have made them so that was promising at least.

We got up today and hit the last couple parts of the Old City and then headed by to Barcelona on the train. It was a fun weekend and I think we were smart in doing a smaller trip like this first and moving up to a bigger trip later.

Working on homework right now... until next time.

Day 15 - January 21, 2009

So here is how dinner went Sunday night... Montse (our senora) had a friend over. She has been here before and she is pretty fun. They both talk a million miles an hour together and just get louder and louder and louder every sentences.

So....who knows how this started but they told us that this area of Spain was pretty rich because of all the people who had been successful in the textile business and had settled here with their business. Then it went to how rum was actually from here, not from Cuba. From there, we headed in the Cuban Trade Embargo which then led to US Foreign and Trade policies which led to US government in general...then there was about 5 minutes I stopped listening...THEN out of nowhere they ask us what we thought about September 11.

We were sitting there for over an hour while they talked about this...completely in older lady crazy Spanish. I think I managed to understand roughly....7% of the conversation. So me being the spokesperson for our trio of roommates, they both stared at me when asking about our thoughts on September 11....fantastic. At the moment in time I'm pretty sure I secured my spot in the complete moron category as I frantically tried to figure out how to eloquently express my feelings about Sept 11 to 2 very fired up Spanish women.

It went something like this: uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..... no se?

Awesome Ian....awesome.

So that was great.... in other news.... classes started this week. I think they will be decent for the most part. Kyle and I are going to be switching psych classes because we were told very awkwardly in class that we should be in both cultural and cross cultural psychology. Apparently, they don't tell you these things until you get here. But we will figure it all out. Kyle and I are good at improvising and working the system for the most part.

I am hoping to start looking at and nailing down a couple of trips soon.... Dad, we may want to alert David Schooling that the European union is poised and ready to rain hell on Lawson, Missouri's banking system. Actually, it shouldn't be too bad...on top of all the skimping techniques I had before we left...I have developed about 15 more in the 2 weeks I have been here.

Big birthday tomorrow....Klose has taken on responsibility as party planner....god help me.

Day 9 - January 15, 2009

Running here blows...

Day 7 - January 13, 2009

So i decided that after the last 5 nights of going to the bars...some not getting home until 4 or 5am.... I'm taking the night off. I'll probably still go to the bar to hang out with everyone tonight but no drinking for me... my liver is quite pissed I think.

Not much knew has happened in the last few days. We started our spanish classes everyday this week to get through the review stuff and move on to the real lessons as soon as school starts. Thats exciting.

That's about all I got...slow day in Barcelona land. I should have substituted some of those pints or shots for hours of sleep.... I'll be doing that starting tonight

Day 5 - January 11, 2009

So.....last night. We found a new bar called El Gato Negro. It's a shot bar so you walk in and on the wall there is about 5 4 ft x 3 ft boards with about 80 different shot names listed on each....so roughly between 400 and 450 shots. So you pick one, they all have a little unique twist to them whether it be fire or pop rocks or whatever else. 2 Euros a piece...cheaper than home. I think I had a Harry Potter (lots of fire), a Luigi, a Pena Ceta i think, a Georgia (light your thumb on fire, put it out, take a shot)....maybe one more...I can't remember. We had some English dudes offer us cocaine because we were looking at them briefly, then were really apologetic when we told them we were just wondering where they were from. When we left there, at 3, we were going to go to a club we heard had a free cover...but it didn't so.....I ended up getting home at 6:15. But we met some more IES students that we dominated the city with. So needless to say, it was a fun night.

But back to the important part of this 4 month endeavour. We took a trip to Besalu and Vic yesterday. They are both small medieval towns that allowed us to grasp some history behind the region and what not. It was raining all morning so it kind of sucked while we were at Vic but Besalu was really cool. Still have alot of the original stonework and architecture from way back when. So overall, it was a decent trip. Vic would have been more fun if the weather hadn't have been miserable.

That's all for now

Day 3 - January 9, 2009

Just got back from a bar......gotta be up early for a bus.....whoops

A few pictures

Day 2 - January 8, 2009

After a nice long coma last night, we decided to do some adventuring today. We headed out for about 7 hours on a Tour de Barcelona which included Placa de Catalunya (the square our school is on) as well as the IES center where we will be taking classes. We saw Casa Mila, one of Antonio Gaudi's buildings he designed. It was kinda neat. Then we went straight to Sagrada Familia which is the huge church that Gaudi designed but never got to see finished as he died in 1926 and they are still building it. It takes up an entire city block itself. Google images has both of those places if you care to endulge. From there we just walked wherever we felt like. Made it down to the beach then headed on home. That was pretty much the day.

Day 1 - January 7, 2009

We made it to Barcelona today....and we only had to run through 1 airport but it all turned out to be ok. We made it to our homestay in one piece. We are leaving with Montserrat Roig, a 60-65 year old lady who is about 5'3" and speaks Spanish like a mad women. Needless to say, I'll be learning very quickly. Brown and I are sharing a room about the size of mine at home if not a little smaller....we will know each other very well by May 6th. She made us an awesome dinner so I think as long as we can tell her that food is awesome in Spanish she will put up with us for right now.

Tomorrow we have nothing to do so I think we are going to explore that city and make sure we know where we are going once all the important stuff starts.

Until next time...