Hey peeps,

Sorry for the delay in updating. Time always seems to get away from me. Speaking of time, can you believe I´ve been in Spain for almost 2 months?The thought seems so weird to me. Anyway, last weekend was my first swim meet and it was actually a lot of fun! I woke up on Saturday morning at around 8 a.m. because Coach Marcelo told me to be at the pool at 8:45. I assumed that the meet would be started by about 10 and that I´d be done around lunch time. Of course, life couldn´t be that easy. We had a normal 2 hour practice before the start of our session! I had no clue! I got in the water around 9ish, assuming I´d be out in half an hour…then 11:15 rolled around and I was still swimming! It was definitely a smack in the face.

After practice there was about an hour of down time so I ate a bocadillo and listened to some pump up music. When the meet finally started, I was feeling pretty good. All I had to swim was 75 meters of backstroke, which is slightly weird because I´ve never done that in a meet before but I went along with it. Right before my heat came up, some of the HC girls came to cheer me on which I was pumped about. Gracias chicas. As I went in front of my lane, I had a minor panic attack because I realized that I had no clue what the starter was gonna say for ¨Take you mark¨….apparently he just says ¨preparados¨ like Marcelo had been saying for the past month in practice. Whatever, don´t judge. I wanted to be sure I didn´t make a fool of myself. The race went fine, minus the fact that my speedo started falling down a little. I came in third. Fun was had. I´m officially an international swimmer.

Anyway, I´ll update again soon. Next week is Switzerland!!! Yeah! Can´t wait for traveling.

Hasta pronto.

Monday the 28th of September was my first day of classes. This consisted of me grumpily getting up at 7:30 in the morning for my 8:30 am Global Ecology class. I easily found my way to the classroom, where I was greeted with smiles, handshakes, and besos (kisses) from all of the students in the class. The professor entered and began to speak in perfect Spanish, nice and slowly so I could understand everything she said. Minimal notes were taken and no homework was assigned.

Actually, I just lied about all of that. After getting off of the metro, I realized that I had no clue where the science building was and I had to ask two people to point me to the right place. Upon entering the classroom, I was greeted to blatant stares from all of the students. To top things off, the professor spoke completely in Catalán, the native language of Mallorca. Long story short, I lasted about 3 minutes before I left. I was prepared to face this problem, though. The university website, where all of the class information is posted, doesn´t always designate whether the class will be taught in Castellano (Spanish) or Catalán. Lucky for me, the HC students don´t have to enroll in classes for another week or two, so if bumps like this come up, we have time to play around with our schedule.

This class aside, my other classes seem pretty good! I´m taking Estética Literaria, which studies Modern spanish literature, for the whole year. Many HC students have done well in this class before and it counts for my Spanish major, so I figured it would be a good fit. Another class that I´m taking is Literatura del Barroco taught by the director of the HC study abroad program in Palma, Jaume Garau. This also counts for my major. I have the specially designed Holy Cross language and culture class which is also year round. And today, I actually sat in on a different science class, History of the Earth and Life, to fulfill my Environmental Studies concentration. The content seemed pretty challenging but the professor was really nice and helpful so hopefully that class will work out. In all, I´m pretty content with my course load for the semester.

Let´s see, over the course of last week I saw two movies in the theater which were both great: Inglorious Bastards (Malditos Bastardos en Español) and Taking Woodstock. What was nice was that I was able to see the movies in English, so I got a little break from everything being in Spanish for a couple hours. Definitely worth seeing both of those movies, though.

Lastly, the good part. On Saturday, the whole HC Palma group took a ferry to the island of Ibiza. Some may know this island to be the ¨party capital of the world¨. I really don´t know why, though. Just kidding…it was crazy! The day started with a morning ferry ride to the island. Of course, the novelty of being on a ferry with cool decks to explore was enough to elate all of us. Upon arriving, we figured out the bus situation, which was a little more confusing than the public transportation in Palma, and then headed to our hostel which was in a town called Es Canar. It was probably half an hour away from the main city, but we didn´t mind because the hostel, which included bathroom, waterview balcony and breakfast, cost us €16 for one night,  the town had its own beach and there were shops and amusements. Great deal in my book.

This particular weekend in Ibiza was when the last big clubs closed down for the winter season, so there were a lot of people heading to the island. We went to a club called Pacha, which was definitely an experience! Crazy techno music, tons of people, and a lot of fun. Though, the fun definitely came with a price. Try €36 just to enter! And that was a reduced price-you could drop over €70 if you didn´t buy your ticket beforehand from the tourist shops. And did I mention that I bought a drink there for a mere €15! Ridiculous! This aside, the group had a great time. The next day, we hit up the beach for a couple hours, wandered around the city and finally took our second ferry ride back to Palma in the evening. Definitely an easy and worthwhile trip!

That brings me up to today, Tuesday the 6th of October. This weekend I have my first swim meet at the pool where I practice. The meet is only for swimmers on Club Natación Palma, so it should be a fun meet to get to know the whole team. Hopefully I´ll be able to pull off some decent times. But for now, pics from Ibiza. Talk to you all soon.

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.

Hola,

So I finally made it to Palma! The train ride to Barcelona absolutely sucked. Imagine the same ride from Madrid to Pamplona only packed with 5x more people. I ended up sitting on a step in a compartment between cars where the lavatories are because I had to watch 2 bags because there was no room to put them in the overhead storage. For 4 hours. I lucked out at the airport though because none of my bags were overweight and I didn´t have to pay any charges for my extra bag because the girl checking me in was new and stupid and didn´t know that she was supposed to charge me. All the other girls paid between €60-€90 in fees. And 2 of the other girls´ ticket reservations were lost so they had to pay for another ticket on a later flight. Some one was looking out for me.

Anyway, Palma is incredible. It has a unique mix of new and old aspects and life here moves much slower than on main-land Spain. My ¨madre¨ Antonia is great, too. We´re all ready great friends. And her house is awesome. I get my own room and bathroom and I now have a cat named Blanc -my first legit pet…ever. We went to the beach yesterday and the weather was perfect: not too hot, a slight breeze and the water was so refreshing…and crystal clear. And I only used Factor 8 sun screen and I didn´t get burnt at all….somehow. Life is good.

One last story before I go. Today, some of the HC girls and I were sitting down in one of the many Plazas just taking in the scenery when all of a sudden, not 10 feet away from us, I saw a man reach into a girl´s bag as she was texting on her phone. I immediately yelled ¨Hey!!¨and got the girl´s attention and I proceeded to yell at the guy, who became completely flustered and didn´t know what to do. Luckily, the guy didn´t get anything from her and I guess I´m a hero now. No big deal.

Well, I´ll post again soon once I get a little more settled into my new home. Talk to you all soon!

Seeing as academics are most important, I’ll talk about them first and then get to the less interesting stuff afterwards. Basically all I wanted to tell you all is that we finished our 2 week intensive language course after taking a “final exam” on Thursday. One cannot say the word “exam” to HC students without them going into massive panic mode. That’s how traumatized we are. Needless to say, we all did fine. I can’t believe I’m saying this already but this coming week is our last week of Orientation in Pamplona and we’ll be focusing less on language and more on culture. It’s definitely gonna be weird not being with the whole group of HC students but I’m definitely ready to meet my new “madre” and finally stop living out of my bags.

Moving on, this week was yet again action-packed. On Thursday, the whole group went to Rumba lessons together and we got to show off how uncoordinated and talentless we are at dancing. Just kidding guys. We had a lot of fun though and after our lesson the teachers did a traditional Flamenco dance for us. Later that night was Joey C’s 21st birthday countdown so the group went out and helped him celebrate. Obviously we couldn’t pass on a chance to show off our newly-realized Rumba skills. We found the perfect place, a local disco pub called Boca Boca which  in english means “Mouth Mouth”. Why, you ask? Great question. I’ve learned to just not ask about certain things. One of our Australian friends from the hostel in San Sebastian, Torin, came to hang out with us in Pamplona for a couple nights, too so it was cool to see him again and show him around our digs.

Finally, the group went on an excursion to Bilbao for the day on Saturday and we got to visit the crazy Guggenheim Art Museum. There were definitely some trippy exhibits in that place. For the less-cultured readers, the Guggenheim muesum displays modern art in all of its forms–you could probably sneeze into a tissue and they’d hang it up somewhere in there. The architecture of the building is amazing, though; half of the experience is seeing the unique structures as you enter. The city of Bilbao was nice to see, too. There wasn’t much happening when we got there because we arrived during prime siesta hours but we got tapas in a few bars, took pics around the Old City and popped in and out of stores. In all, it was a pretty nice day.

That’s all for this week. The next time you hear from me I’ll finally be in Palma so I’ll have a lot of details and stories about my travels.

P.S. baby cheets, the vision, the dancer/the dreamer, la loba; so…is it back on with Walter?; Erica’s very own paparazzo; 309 takin a taxi to class, por que?; La Gran Muralla…not bad, right?

Hey all,

I’m just gonna give a little play by play of how the week has been up until yesterday, Saturday August 29th, 2009, and then put up some pics. During the weekdays, we had to go to our HC Intensive Language classes from 9:30am to 1:30pm. I’m not gonna censor myself here: they’re kinda boring. And by kinda I mean I’ve been writing down the lyrics to my favorite Juanes songs from memory to keep myself from passing out each day. There’s only so much imperfect subjunctive one can take before wanting to pull their own teeth out. After class everyone would go back to the apartments to enjoy the wonderful gift that is the daily siesta. The Spanish really know what they’re doing with these 3 hour naps in the middle of their workdays. Gotta hand it to them. Finally, everyone closed out the days with a huge meal and a trip to a local bar to meet some natives and speak a little Espanol (sorry, no tilde). One of the days, however, the group took a short  half-day journey to a magical place called San Sebastian. Upon stepping out of the bus we were immediately enthralled. The cathedrals, the stores, the mix of people, the tapas, the bars and not to mention the beautiful beaches all made us smile like 5 year olds in a candy store. We couldn’t get enough! Which is why many of us decided to return on Friday and have our first hostel stay of the year.

I found a cheap hostel (literally 25 euros/night) named Beti Anayak, which means something along the lines of “always brothers” in the local Basque language of Euskara. A group of nine of us decided to stay the night in an 8 person room at the hostel: myself, Dom, Joe and Andy made up the guys and Jenny, Maura, Kate, Bryana and Liz C the group of girls. We got the bus to S.S. and made our way to Beti Anayak which we found relatively easily. And then the fun began. We walked in the door and up the stairs and entered what seemed to be some lady’s apartment! There were probably 3-4 huge rooms full of beds, each of which shared a communal kitchen and 2 bathrooms. Maria, the orange-moomoo-wearing owner of the hostel, presented us with our bedroom: a skyblue room adorned with 4 well-used, metal bunk beds, a central sitting area complete with hookah and non-funtioning fireplace, a wall-sized painting of a nude mother and her suckling child, and a balcony with some beautiful common household plants. First impression? Exactly what we were looking for.

After checking in, we walked into the “Parte Vieja” of S.S. and engorged ourselves with tapas, Spanish finger foods sold at bars, until we all were in a food coma. We then returned to the hostel where we introduced ourselves to our fellow hostel mates: 3 australians, 3 germans, and an italian. Naturally, we all got along just fine and we decided to go out as one big group. Many bars, discotecas, and laughs later we all returned to Beti Anayak for some well-needed rest. Which brings me to yesterday, when we hit the beach for a well-deserved day of relaxation. Though my whole upper half got fried to a crisp and I unfortunately lost my wallet (minor detail. didn’t lose much money though…I know, I know, you told me so), it wasn’t enough to bring me down on this perfect trip. I’ve made new friends from all over the world and experienced things that I never have before. All I have to say is: bring on Palma! Of course, insiders:

kate’s rap/hi bryana’s dad/i’m not too experienced in this stuff but I’m pretty sure this is…/keith?/YOU PUT ZA BREAD IN ZE TOASTA!/maria, mariahhh/joe the pickpocket/Marengo is ridiculous!/Ugh, Andy’s lost

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I’m finally sitting down on the couch in my suite in Pamplona, Spain, thinking of how to recount the events of the last 24 hours before I collapse on my bed for a night of well-needed recuperation. I would have to say that the main theme of my day of non-stop travel was plain exhaustion. I met up with the group of HC students flying from Logan and we were all pretty anxious to get going. The flights ran smoothly: Boston to Dublin, Dublin to Madrid. I decided to start everything off on the right foot, so naturally I made sure that I didn’t get any sleep on either flight AND I had the beef instead of the chicken. Not sure if it’s an unwritten rule that one always goes for the chicken instead of the beef when offered on international flights but it was just the heat of the in-flight moment. Luckily, my iron stomach was able to brave the putrid meat ravioli and there were no problems. And, unlike the last time I traveled to Spain in my junior year of high school, both of my bags made it through safely. No annoying Lost Luggage reports or shouting matches between disgruntled foreigners. Actually, scratch that last one. The shouting match came later.

So we all picked up our bags safe and sound and we needed to decide on how we were gonna get to Pamplona from the airport: 6 hour bus or 3 hour train? Obviously, we went for the train. Two options were available to get us to the train station: pay a  35 euro cab to drop us off at the train station -OR- take the metro which, though cheap at a mere 3 euros, meant lugging our 100 lbs worth of bags across 3 metro connections and facing the death stares and blatant chuckles of the natives as we blocked the gates of the ticket stub machines, etc. Immediately, Aidan was a fan of the cab idea. I’m not gonna go so far as to say that I’m lazy but when a situation comes down to either an intelligent solution or a completely idiotic one, I never fail to make the smart choice. Not the case for the majority of the group who decided that the metro was the best course of action. Was it the weight of the bags and the oppressive heat that  convinced them of their mala idea? Maybe it was the elevators that always seemed to go up when we desperately wanted them to go down? How about the verbal tension between the Metro worker that just wouldn’t let us through the handicapped gate even though the regular gates wouldn’t magically open for us? This is just to say that, in the end, Aidan was right.

But you know what? We’re here now. Together. Alive. I can honestly say that I’ll never forget my trip to Pamplona during my Junior year of study abroad. That’s exactly what this is about. Making memories. Let’s keep ’em coming. But for now, here’s a few to remember:

• Final del tren or Pinar del Rey?
• NO CABEMOS!
• Why is Maura bleeding?
• Don’t forget Erica, you left her outside the elevator.
• The old lady that ruined our train-exiting plans.