Settling down

I have officially been living in Palma for 14 days now. Life here is amazing. I mean, I´m still on summer break–classes don´t start here until Monday the 28th–so obviously life is amazing. Let´s see, where do I begin? In Palma, life consists of:

• Going to the beach when there´s really nice weather
• Finding a quaint cafe or low key bar during the evenings
• Shopping in the multitude of stores on overcast days
• Shopping even if it rains (which it does very frequently, and I mean pour/thunder)
• Going to the ¨Paseo Marítimo¨, a long boardwalk along the coast where the night scene happens, on Friday and Saturday nights (for botellón and discotecas)
• Getting gelato and pastries no matter what the weather
• Eating a lot in general
• Walking
• German and British people
• Internet Cafes
• Riding the bus
• And…really convincing statue street performers

After 2 weeks of living in Palma, these are what I´ve experienced in a nutshell. Put simply, I´m loving life. One of the days, the group of HC students went to a really great beach in the town of Sollér, which is about an hour outside of Palma via train. What was so unique about this trip was the trainride itself. We rode in a train that was in popular use probably during the 1920s or 30s. And the views of the towns from the traincar were breathtaking. Definitely a worthwhile trip.

Now, you might recall that one of my goals while living in Palma was to join a swim team and meet some Spanish swimmers. Well, the head coach of Club Natación Palma de Mallorca welcomed me with open arms and today was my fourth day of practice! I never thought that things would work out so easily! If only the practices could go that smoothly. I´ve been out of the pool for probably a month and a half since I swam in the New England Open and I´m definitely feeling out of shape. In a few weeks I´ll feel better, though. The start of the season always sucks. But the head coach, Marcelo, is a great guy and always cracks jokes with me and he calls me ¨Boston¨. The other day, he gave the team a relatively complicated set which took a little bit of explaining but for the most part the swimmers understood. Then there was me, listening to him with a blank stare and my tongue sticking out. Right before I left the wall to start the set, which consisted of I had no clue what, Marcelo asked me simply, ¨¿Sí o No?¨ And with a shake of my head I said flat out, ¨Nope¨. Then I started swimming as he bursted out laughing. I´m predicting that there will be many more stories like this one before I get completely used to the Spanish language but I´m excited for the challenge.

Anyway, that brings me up to present day. One more thing I should probably mention: October is gonna be a packed month for me. On the first weekend, the group of HC students are taking a ferry to Ibiza to celebrate Jenny´s birthday, which will obviously be wild. The weekend after that I have my first inter-squad swim meet, which I´m…thrilled about. Then, on the weekend of the 23rd, Jenny and I will be trekking to Interlaken, Switzerland, to meet up with some of her friends. I´m pumped. If you haven´t heard of the place just google it. It´s amazing. Then, for the weekend of Halloween, I´ll be heading to Barcelona to meet up with some HC peeps from La Coruña and León. I´m literally traveling 3 out of 5 weekends in October! Gotta love Europe. So that´s what´s coming up in the future for me so stay tuned! Ok, I guess I´ll leave you with some photos of Palma and my excursions from the past week. Hope you enjoy them.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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