Well I guess it is time I catch up a little. Ha, more like a lot. Firstly, I would like to explain my absence. Life here has become more and more time consuming and routine as my involvement in school and work increases over the days. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I have school. Tuesdays , Thursdays, and Friday mornings, I have work. Going to school and work, as explained in a story below, requires travel time, long public commuting, at a degree I was not used to. I miss my car, oh yes I do. Riding the train isn’t that bad though, it is just tiring. I always try and sit facing the direction the train is moving. If I am faced the opposite way, I feel as if the g-force of the train’s momentum is sucking the energy right out of me. Sitting on a stinky train after a 10-hour day of work, that can leave me feeling pretty dead.
I usually get home, eat ( I have been cooking a lot more here because eating out is more expensive and the food just isn’t as good), check my e-mail, and/or go out. Another options is going to bed if I have to get up early.
My room is nice to come home to at times, but the apartment is starting to grow a little small, and dirty. For a while we had a small fruit fly problem. Our kitchen had become infested with little flies that flew around your head as you ate dinner, and who would congregate on the kitchen window as if they dreamed of a better world out there. And death to your wine if it wasn’t corked; many of those little flies drank to death. Jack detested these flies, as did I, and declared war on them. This war raged for 13 days. He constructed a weapon out of rolled up cardboard and a toilet paper roll for a handle. With countless swats against the wall and window, Jack sent hundreds of those little flies to their death. But that wasn’t enough. They multiplied quicker than he could kill, so he moved to chemical warfare, spraying Ajax (don’t ask me why Ajax) and later ant poison, wherever a fly landed. The flies didn’t really bother me. Yeah, there were a lot of them, but they didn’t hurt me, or bite me. They were only looking for fruit. One day, sick and tired of being woken to the sound of Jack swatting flies, and the smell of Ajax during dinner. They lost the war to our last weapon, the vacuum.
At the end of October (Has it been that long?) I went to Barcelona and met up with my friend Yuko who is studying in Aix en Province right now. I shared a room with her and her roommate Anni. It was quite a nice room too. They had found an apartment that rented out rooms for very short amounts of time. I slept on the floor, hardwood, which supposedly is good for your back but shit for your shoulders if you sleep on your side, which I tend to do. But Yuko would cure me with her professional like massages, her steel hands of relief.
And Spain, a country I had never visited, was beautiful. The people were so kind and loving. Our first night there, we meet a few French folks who happened to sitting at the table next to us at a bar. After a few drinks and nice conversation, we decided to eat together (ensemble) at a restaurant with a Spanish friend of the young French man. Tapas and sangria galore! It was delicious. The Spaniard, whose name was Dani, felt it customary and polite to pay for our meals despite the expense. I was quite shocked that a perfect stranger would buy us dinner, but it helps to travel with two lovely females. Dani works in video game production, developing games like Splinter Cell and more
We hit a couple bars after that and had a wonderful night.
The weekend consisted of wandering around the quite small but dynamic little city of Barcelona. I made it a point to get some foot distance around the town, particularly to the ocean, which I hadn’t seen in 2 months and the bad neighborhood. After living 10 blocks away from the beach for the past 4 years, not seeing it for 2 months is harsh.
I loved the Gaudi architecture as well. Antoni Gaudi was an Art Nouveau architect who lived and died in Barcelona. He used structures he found in nature and recreated them as rooftops or church pillars. His works range from apartments and public parks to magnificent cathedras, such as the Sagrada Familia. The Sagrada Familia is still under construction and may still be by the time I am an old man.
His work can be founds all over Barcelona and at the Musée d’Orsay here in Paris. Another one of great works is Park Gueil, a large park in the northern part of the city. It has a spectacular tile entrance and rock caverns built to look like the inside of a wave.
The other fascinating trip I had was my return to Mont St. Michel. The last time I was there, I was 11 years of age. That was 11 years ago.
I usually get home, eat ( I have been cooking a lot more here because eating out is more expensive and the food just isn’t as good), check my e-mail, and/or go out. Another options is going to bed if I have to get up early.
My room is nice to come home to at times, but the apartment is starting to grow a little small, and dirty. For a while we had a small fruit fly problem. Our kitchen had become infested with little flies that flew around your head as you ate dinner, and who would congregate on the kitchen window as if they dreamed of a better world out there. And death to your wine if it wasn’t corked; many of those little flies drank to death. Jack detested these flies, as did I, and declared war on them. This war raged for 13 days. He constructed a weapon out of rolled up cardboard and a toilet paper roll for a handle. With countless swats against the wall and window, Jack sent hundreds of those little flies to their death. But that wasn’t enough. They multiplied quicker than he could kill, so he moved to chemical warfare, spraying Ajax (don’t ask me why Ajax) and later ant poison, wherever a fly landed. The flies didn’t really bother me. Yeah, there were a lot of them, but they didn’t hurt me, or bite me. They were only looking for fruit. One day, sick and tired of being woken to the sound of Jack swatting flies, and the smell of Ajax during dinner. They lost the war to our last weapon, the vacuum.
At the end of October (Has it been that long?) I went to Barcelona and met up with my friend Yuko who is studying in Aix en Province right now. I shared a room with her and her roommate Anni. It was quite a nice room too. They had found an apartment that rented out rooms for very short amounts of time. I slept on the floor, hardwood, which supposedly is good for your back but shit for your shoulders if you sleep on your side, which I tend to do. But Yuko would cure me with her professional like massages, her steel hands of relief.
And Spain, a country I had never visited, was beautiful. The people were so kind and loving. Our first night there, we meet a few French folks who happened to sitting at the table next to us at a bar. After a few drinks and nice conversation, we decided to eat together (ensemble) at a restaurant with a Spanish friend of the young French man. Tapas and sangria galore! It was delicious. The Spaniard, whose name was Dani, felt it customary and polite to pay for our meals despite the expense. I was quite shocked that a perfect stranger would buy us dinner, but it helps to travel with two lovely females. Dani works in video game production, developing games like Splinter Cell and more
We hit a couple bars after that and had a wonderful night.
The weekend consisted of wandering around the quite small but dynamic little city of Barcelona. I made it a point to get some foot distance around the town, particularly to the ocean, which I hadn’t seen in 2 months and the bad neighborhood. After living 10 blocks away from the beach for the past 4 years, not seeing it for 2 months is harsh.
I loved the Gaudi architecture as well. Antoni Gaudi was an Art Nouveau architect who lived and died in Barcelona. He used structures he found in nature and recreated them as rooftops or church pillars. His works range from apartments and public parks to magnificent cathedras, such as the Sagrada Familia. The Sagrada Familia is still under construction and may still be by the time I am an old man.
His work can be founds all over Barcelona and at the Musée d’Orsay here in Paris. Another one of great works is Park Gueil, a large park in the northern part of the city. It has a spectacular tile entrance and rock caverns built to look like the inside of a wave.
The other fascinating trip I had was my return to Mont St. Michel. The last time I was there, I was 11 years of age. That was 11 years ago.
posted by Alexander at 2:38 PM
1 comments
