Surpising events in the alps

Switzerland has been a fantastic blur so far, and tonight I finally have some time to recap events. Before coming here it seemed that the pictures of sweeping mountains and cute cabins told the entire story, but the reality of the place has still struck me like a semi truck.

After the first evening in Geneva, I woke up early to see the city. My hostel sat close to the headquarters of the International Red Cross and the UN, and so I walked about forty minutes to reach them. The UN had surprisingly few visitors, and so I was able to get a few pictures of the big UN sign, modern art in the square outside of it, and rows of national flags leading up to the main structure. Surprisingly, even after the killing of Osama Bin Laden, security seemed to have no issues with any number of pictures. Across the street from the UN, a small but very vocal demonstration of Iranians called for a permanent UN monitoring force to be deployed to Iran. After checking out the Ghandi statue, and discovering that a UN tour wasn't happening with my trusty traveling companion, my bulky Osprey pack, I called it a day for that part of Geneva.

Another famous feature of the city is its enormous water jet at the base of Lake Geneva. I went to check it out, and was impressed, then continued to the rail station. Now would be an appropriate time to describe in brief the rail system, since railcars may see the most of me during this vacation. The entire country is latticed with railways between all the major towns, and in many regions it appears that inter-town traffic occurs more often by train than car, bus, and boat combined. The fleet is modern, and the soft felt textured chairs of second class cabins nestle against huge windows overlooking Switzerland's scenery. I have yet to encounter a wait longer than 15 minutes for any individual connection, and I have yet to see a train substantially late.


I headed out of town along the breath taking Northern side of Lake Geneva next. The train ride cruises through grassy hills and wineries above the lake, and offers a magnificent view of the water and terrain rolling away from the shore.

After parting vision with the glassy waters of the lake, I continued on towards Bern and stopped to find lodging in Fribourg, a smaller town. The last night had been a nearly sleepless one due to roudy French youngsters, so I opted for the solace of a bed and breakfast. This turned out to be a night in someone's suburban house. My host was an engaging Czech woman who spoke six languages and promised one hell of a tasty breakfast. To finish the day, I strolled through the suburbs attracting strange looks from the residents (imagine an unshaven stranger with a large bag wandering through your peaceful, infrequently visited neighborhood). It tickled me a bit to respond to the quizzical gawks with a big wave and smile.

At one point I came across a mysterious looking trail heading off into the woods, and of course took it. It ended above a reservoir where I read my excellent fantasy novel "The Name of the Wind". After a few hundred pages I packed it in, went to sleep in the perfectly supine comfort of a freshly made bed and absence of other house guests, and awoke well rested the next day. The breakfast was as fantastic as promised, and I left the neighborhood in Fribourg quite pleased with my selection.

The only problem was that I had yet to see any mountains, and was in Switzerland!

With this in mind, the next destination was meant to be the Berner Oberland area, but mild confusion with trains and an overly fascinating book saw me continuing past my mark slightly before Bern, and onto Lucerne. There I spoke with the enormously helpful staff at a Swiss information desk who clued me into the concept that there are huts, as they called them, scattered throughout the high country in the alps.

With the image of a rugged night spent with the four planked walls, the howling wind, and my manly fortitude in mind, I headed zealously to the nearest open one in Englesburg. The hike up to the hut was surprisingly rigorous (my flat-lander lungs are wimpy on flat land, much less in thin alpine air and with a fat pack tagging along). It may have been my loopy head from mild elevation sickness, but the moment I got higher up into the hike and saw the huge mountains and snowy caps spread before me, I started laughing to myself. It was a perfect day with clear, cold air, and flowers swaying in the sun and wind, and I had tasty orange juice, my camera, and all the time I cared to take.

After passing a childrens' slide of several hundred meters in length, the grass around which was mowed by goats, I came to a cabin which would have completely satisfied my desire to be in nature. It was situated high up on the sleep, had a commanding view, and sat in a sweeping field of wild flowers and vivid green grass. This cabin was however boarded up, and after checking my map I continued.

What I found thirty minutes later defied and surpassed my expectations. Evidently growing tourism in Switzerland has made many of the originally spartan alpine cabins into more of bed and breakfast type joints than cabins. Mine lay on top of a stone foundation set into the slope, and could house as many as forty people for the night. At the door I was greeted by a triplet of giggling Swiss girls who informed me that I should swap my climbing shoes for gators. Gators! How comfortable they were, and how great of an idea that is. Guests get more comfortable footwear, the hut never needs to clean the floors. It's all about the little things right?

For dinner (The huts, high in the Alps, serve dinner, what?) I had a large beer, appetizers of salad and soup, and chicken curry, all of which were well prepared and delicious. After dinner I went outside and worked on the book some more, then passed out in one of five bedrolls, arranged like sardines, and empty except for me. This time of year evidently is a low point for tourism. I see this as a huge win. The climate is warm, the snow is melting, the flowers are blooming, and all of this is for the sparse few who come.

The next morning I got up relatively early for a breakfast of lower end specialty cheeses and bread, and then headed out to hike for the day. I took one path for about two hours until I came to a snowy impasse (Deep snow with no footprints over it, signifying that no one had come this way yet, over meltoff rivers. This seemed like a bad idea.) There I stopped to finish my book and eat a lunch of a breadloaf I had brought with my from Engleburg. My perch was above a massive cliff falling off several hundred feet, and I could see the caps of three mountains from where I sat. Up from the valley below the wind slapped across my face, and that day was equally as sunny and clear as the others.

After reading for a few hours, having gained a new appreciation for the fiction work of Patrick Rothfuss and suddenly desiring his sequel books, I started back to the hut. Two hours later I made it in, ate another fantastic dinner while talking to a pair of Austrian tourists about Switzerland, television, food, and their life in general. A new employee of the hut had showed up as well. He was a short, stocky man with one of the most savage beards I have seen in a long time. He spoke little to no English, and his demeanor towards the two Austrian women and myself at lest appeared to be practically bristling.

Another more jovial worker explained quietly that the huts being made accessible by lifts, and then commercialized was a subject of much debate in Switzerland. The had been initially intended only for real mountaineers. I took this to be an apologetic explanation for his friends seeming stance.

After the Austrian women finished eating and left to sleep, I kept talking to the other employee for a while. His English was not fantastic, but it functioned, and with the help of my trusty laptop and Google Translator (Yes, the mountain hut also had fast wireless internet...) we are able to talk a bit, and I was able to learn a smattering of German.

The next day I ate another great breakfast and headed by train to Interlaken, situated near several of the most noted and Rick Steve'd (Praise be to his flawless word in all manners travel related) mountain ranges in the nation. I found a hostel for relatively cheap, booked it for the next, and started in on my next book "The Death Instinct" about intrigue surrounding a 1920 terrorist attack on the New York Stock Exchange.

The next morning (today) I got up and headed for the train station with a map of the areas mountains in hand. I wanted to take a lift if possible. It was a cloudy day, so not ideal for going high, and in this light I picked a route that my already purchased Swiss Pass would render free. The train ride up to the mountain town of Lautbrennder threaded through verdant dales and past sweeping waterfalls, and on arrival I hopped out already amazed by the views to be had.

I may have been too amazed, because suddenly I was very dizzy and my head hurt, or in other words I had myself some nice elevation sickness. I stopped the skipping and running around I had been doing, and set to a slow walk. A nearby cafe/supermarket was open, and I stopped in to grab some tasty chocolate and water, just in case the dizziness was dehydration. The next leg of the journey up was by bus, and so I sat outside waiting with mingled other tourists.

One guy had a Barcelona FC shirt, so I chatted with him a bit. He was with a group of Americans from the Midwest, who appeared equally as excited to be in Switzerland as I was. The bus pulled up and I reached for my pocket to get my pass anndd.... realized my Swiss pass was missing and probably left on the train. This was bad. I had been in town for nearly an hour, and the Swiss pass would cost several hundred Francs to replace. Without it every minor train or bus trip would cost 5-10 dollars at the least.

Said train on which the pass may or may not have been left had been scheduled to leave in two minutes, so I hopped on and frantically tried to search it, not finishing my task before it left my mountain town.

I asked the conductor about possibly having seen anything, and he had seen nothing. I decided to just search the sucker myself, despite the fact that it would retrace my entire earlier journey if I didn't get off. My search yielded nothing, as did the lost and found in the starting town, and the next train out. I chatted to an employee on the next train who informed me that there were four trains on the route I was on that ran during the day. Since I had been in town an hour, I realized it could be on almost any of them depending on how rotations worked. I decided to wait in the mountain end town to check each.

Fortunately I had the presence of mind to retrace my steps and realize that the pass may have fallen out of my passport where I kept it in the town, and not on the train. It had in fact, and with joy I picked it up out of a dubiously brown, and slightly smelly mud puddle. If not for the filth I would have kissed it. I celebrated with some inexpensive cheese and a small Swiss beer while waiting for my bus.

The bus came, I hopped on and talked to the German/English speaking driver for a bit before we left. The passengers all got off fifteen minutes later by the operating center for the lift to take us up higher into the mountains. Five minutes later we boarded the cubicle glass structure, and it floated away on huge steel pulleys. WE gained about 500 meters of height and went maybe a mile in the thing as it swayed back in forth in the wind. Some of the passengers looked like the might be getting sick. I myself was fascinated with the huge cliffs sprouting up all around us, and the mountains looming in the distance.

We transferred again onto another lift, this one taking us higher and over a ravine straddled only by a thin steel bridge. The bridge had a walking ramp of about two feet width, and two steel cable handholds. It was maybe 150 feet long, and stretched across a chasm that stopped at least 300 feet below the bridge. I resolved to come back the next day and cross that sucker to see what it was like. (There might/ almost definitely is a harness mandate; I shall see tomorrow.)

The second lift took us up to a tourist town with many hotels and restaurants. I eyed the plates of a few patrons, which looked ok but not fantastic. Humorously the prices per entree were around 35 Francs, or $43. The summit of the next cable car trip was entirely foggy on the summit came, so I opted instead to hike high above the tourist town. I considered making the eight mile hike up to the summit out of sheer youthful brashness, but as it was late, cloudy, and getting rainy, I thought better of it, headed back to my hostel, read my action thriller a bit, wrote this, and am now going to sleep.

This country is a unique and breathtaking place,
Tim

Now letters from Switzerland

Dear readers,

I regret to inform you that I no longer write to you from Spain. Fortunately I now write to you from Switzerland.

The trip out this morning went off well despite my alarm waking me an hour late resulting in a briefly tense moment in the airport.

On arriving in Geneva, I set to finding a hostel for the night to set some visa card shenanigans straight, the location I found was about 40 dollars, quite a high price for a dark room shared with five smelly (by empiricism) dudes, but beggars can't be choosers in a city where most of the lodging is entirely booked.

I walked through the clean streets, hearing French, German, Spanish and more at every block, and am now in a gorgeous public library. Almost everyone else has left the laptop room because 20 minutes ago, a modern interpretative dance performance began in the lobby.

There is a shirtless French guy screaming profanities and literary references at the top of his lungs at an auctioneers cadence (in French of course), and a guy hitting a bunch of drums and metal sheets with a big spoon behind him. As far as I can tell it is about the pain of modern culture.

Soon I will have an initial travel itinerary set and go to read my lovely new books on the shore of Lake Geneva.

Obnoxiously self satisfied,
Tim

Ira Glass is a gamechanger

Dear Readers,

I write to you from my blearied state tonight to share something I found surprising, excellent, and definitely relevant to anyone's life. You will find out what soon enough, but first an explanatory tangent.

Lately I've taken an interest in the art of storytelling. This act/hobby is so important because almost literally everything in our lives revolves around interacting with and engaging other people, and the majority of those interactions are stories in one form or another.

As with all important things, I turned to the vague entity that is the internet for my guidance. The internet has a few things to say to me, and you for that matter on the subject.

Some quick bullets:

Share focus with the listener.

Ask questions and regularly provide answers. Always have listeners wondering.

Provide vivid details of whatever you are describing rather than phrases like "And then this happened."

Even better than the conventional wisdom was Ira Glass's analysis, which more or less blew me away. The man is just a raging dynamo of witticism, fun and wisdom. Earlier tonight, I sat there in my bed watching him spout knowledge while trying to go to sleep, and decided that I had found at least one new hero. I have only left my pleasantly supine repose to speak with you on account of his piece, and the sheer casual force of the sucker.

Here is a link to the first video in the series of four, others can be found in the sidebar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loxJ3FtCJJA

If you are interested in writing, radio, any creative act in general, or even at the most basic level, talking to people, I highly recommend checking it out.

Until later,
Tim

Beyond expectations

Dear reader,

Early this week a friend asked me if I would like to go on a Saturday boating trip. I try hard to accept invitations to things like this, so of course I agreed. He described the voyage as a few hours out to a small island, some snorkeling, and then a return by sunset. Free wine was also mentioned. This description conjured in me, as I'm sure it does in you, an image of a lazy trawl accompanied by the romantic luminescence of the day's end.

I arrived at the dock slightly late, still panting from my jog to get there in the hot sun and fresh air of Alicante in Spring. In front of me sat a speed boat. My initial thought was something to the effect of "Woooooooo". As we boarded the driver smiled and shook our hands, then told us to tie our stuff in. We were informed that sitting down would not work, because it would harm our backs.

We drifted slowly out of the sheltered port, and the captain opened up the engine. The craft, a long slender rubber raft with two rows for passengers immediately planed out, then picked up to skipping over the huge sea waves. We gained speed and each wave became a small jump. Standing up and hanging tightly to handrails designed to keep passengers intact, our mouths were plastered open by the wind. I have no idea how fast we were going, but it felt like sticking my head out of a car window at the least.

After careening for about a few minutes, with the whole group laughing hysterically at how much fun the trip was, we stopped to admire the city of Alicante from a new perspective, far out in the water. Everyone's hair was plastered far back on their heads, like some grotesque 50s prom group, and no where could an unsmiling face be found.

We were then informed that the boat had only been traveling at half capacity.

We picked up again, this time going much faster and jumping even higher, and continued to stop at several more scenic locations along the coast including the nearby town, a pool where there are evidently sunset swims on Sundays, a nude beach (!? Did not know there was a nude beach 15 minutes from my city, Spain is interesting), and finally another long sandy beach.

We stopped there about 900 feet off of shore. The water was roughly fifteen feet deep, and a clear turquoise. We could see the details of the sand below us, and nearby a group of Spaniards were scuba diving and spearfishing. The captain handed out snorkels and we jumped into the water, which was shockingly cold but refreshing.

I got a mouthful of water as I jumped in, and was surprised to see how salty it was. Puget Sound at least never seemed so strong. It was also very easy to float. I could stoop swimming and put on my snorkel mask, and just sit there with my eyes just at water level without any effort, the rest of my body entirely submerged.

We swam around for a bit, traveling in a wide circle from our boat. A nearby old Spanish man waved to us from his sailboat, and we swam over to say hi. The man was docked with a friend, both of them being in possession of very handsome craft, and when we came closer he invited us aboard and asked if we would like a drink. I sat there and drank a Spanish beer while he shared stories about his life and advice on good destinations, and then we said goodbyes to him and his party and went back to our boat.

The sun was still intense, but lowering in the sky, and we dried ourselves off and put the snorkels away while our guide offered everyone some Sangria. (Largely fruit based wine mixture.) I had a few small glasses, and then we made the return voyage, zooming along the water. I'm not sure that I have had too many more exhilarating experiences than feeling the light of a gorgeous sunset with strong, warm wind in my face.

On reaching the dock, we got off, thanked the captain, paid what was a very reasonable 20 euros for the trip, and went home skipping.

What an excellent way to spend an evening,
Tim

Granada

Little boys love castles. That's basically the whole of it. Somewhere, deeply ingrained in the male psyche is a calling to build, forts camps, bivouacs, walls, and most of all, castles. Understandably then, a guy such as myself who still has a fair bit of growing up to do, (here's to it never completely happening), goes nuts over the chance to see a good example of medieval, stone-layed, authentic, castle badassery in its real form. This weekend I went to Granada and visited perhaps one of the most epic castles in Europe.

Prior to arriving in the city, I was already bounding with excitement for our visit, which I displayed by passing out for four hours with my trusty travel blanket on the bus. Our first night there featured a walk around the historic city, and through some gorgeous old buildings, the highlight being a tour of a massive cathedral.

Later in the evening, we went to a live flamenco show. Unlike regular dance shows where the audience sits separated from the dancers in seats facing a stage, the room the some seventy present students sat in was small. Its edges were lined with chairs, and a seven foot by thirty foot dance floor stretched across the room. Before the dancers came out, a waiter took drink orders and presented assorted Spanish beers, wine, and water to the audience. Having the band playing ten feet away, and the furiously dancing performers so close that movements of their elbows and decorated canes often came close to grazing my face made the experience unique and memorable.



I finished the night by going out for tapas, a drink of choice served with whatever tasty snack the house happened to be cooking up at the moment. We had about four, each time getting a different entree with our beer. (The beers were cañas, which are effectively only two thirds of a drink, so over the course of two hours we effectively drank very little.) That night I went to sleep with sweet dreams of a castle in mind.

*** At this point I would like to insert a short rant, skip ahead past the stars if that is not your style.***

At about three, our faithful protagonist, me, was awoken by drunken cries and excessive laughs from the next hotel room over. They came from a group of girls who I generally like, and who are certainly great people, but that night were just horrendous. The sounds came and went through the thin doors of our hotel for about two hours keeping me, and probably some others awake. Normally I don't care about losing some sleep and am all for fun, but when the next day is going to involve a lot of walking, and a lot of walking through some of the most amazing views in Spain, I want to be awake. If you're going to get way too drunk on a vacation reader, go have your fun in a damn bar and keep it relaxed back at your hotel.

***End rant***

I got up still a little tired, but ready to go the next morning at seven. Breakfast was an amazing buffet of meats, egg, wheat bread, and all kinds of fresh fruit. Two cups of coffee made me quickly forget what tired even was. It was time to go!

We took a bus over to the Alhambra, (The name of the castle), where we met with our tour guide. She had one of the coolest things I had yet seen for tours, a bunch of earpieces for the tour members to wear so that they could hear her without being anywhere near. (Photo) The one downside was that if she walked more than thirty feet away, half the tour would have to grab their ears in pain and pull away the pieces from the loud static. I just kept mine off when wanting to wander.

The tour threaded through a morning forest coming to life with birds and the Spanish day, and up through a massive gate into the Alhambra. The enterior of the castle is an enourmous complex of gardens, stadiums, dance halls, and sleeping quarters, and we wound our way through all of these. Even the relatively non-touristy Spaniards at the monument held a fearsome array of digital cameras, lens bags, and video cameras to document the experience. The best terms I can offer to describe many of the gardens and steps are preposterously pretty. I have attached a few photos, but they do not do real justice to the scene, especially since my lovely but finicky camera prefers to shoot at low aperture settings, and so does portraits like a champ and landscapes like a loser.

After touring the castle area itself, we left to walk through a series of fascinating and well tended gardens. These were nestled in the hills above the Alhambra, and from then we were able to catch an even better view of the monument. We concluded our tour walking through a springtime grove of trees and hedges, and back to the original area where we had first received our earpieces. My camera died right as I reached the exit gate, having preformed its duty admirably.

I opted to stay in Granada that night. We walked up into a neighborhood across a great green valley from the castle, and looked at it in the night. Spanish towns do something pretty cool with their greatest monuments, which is to focus dozens of spotlights on them to illuminate their forms in orange light in the dark. This effect is augmented because of the energy conservation of the Spanish people, since almost all house-lights are extinguished past eleven.

The park we went to appeared to be a hot spot for the local youth. There were dozens of young people in its square, many drinking from various bottles of alcohol. (This is called botellon in Spain and is illegal, although only to only a mild extent in terms of actual enforcement.) The stars were gleaming all across the night sky, and we could see the city for miles from our perch. We sat there enjoying the moment for half an hour, and walked back home to sleep.

The next day we woke up, walked through the city for an hour, and caught an afternoon bus back to Alicante having immensely enjoyed the weekend.

It feels like traveling might turn out to be pretty addictive,
Tim

Edit: Photos forthcoming, something is wrong with google upload at the moment, so I will continue to try at occasional intervals.

The camera charger has arrived!!!

Dear reader,

You may have noticed that I have been posting relatively few photographs. Well good news! My battery charger for my Lumix camera arrived in the mail today! I can now take as many pictures as I see fit, and will happily be adding some to this blog. This is exciting, get excited, woooo! (For what it is worth, I have had work, even it was limited, in photography, which last time I checked would make me a pro. So there.)

That is all for now,
Tim

Shortness

Dear readers,

Two days a week a vibrant, crawling market opens in the streets around my apartment complex. The air smells of vegetables, pastries, and fresh fruit, and the happy tones of hundreds of conversations float around in the spring breeze. Walking through the market today I noticed something that, while having seen before, I had not really considered.

Nearly everyone in this part of Spain over the age of 40 is very, very short. I saw this because I was able to look from one end of the market to the other, over hundreds of people, without any real trouble. There are for the most part only old people in my market, and it appears that the average height is around 5`2`` or lower.

I briefly asked my host mother about this, and she agreed on the fact, mentioning that in many other parts of Spain the people are older, but did not seek to explain why. I have no idea either. More interestingly, the younger children in this part of Spain are substantially taller than their parents. Maybe the nutrition in the Spanish adolescent diet has substantially improved since the time of Franco?

At the least I get to feel like Tom Cruise probably did with his Japanese cast in the last Samurai for once,
Tim

Something disturbing from Madrid

Dear Reader,

And then I saw him eating the baby. (There's your teaser, and now for the less interesting lead-in.)

Tonight was planned as an early-to-bed night, but I started reading an article on one of my favorite games, Magic the Gathering, by a young writer by the name of Gavin Verhey. Gavin's writing style features a unique mix of obnoxiously trumpeted talent and seeming hubris with actual skill. I don't know whether to think “Burn the witch!”, or “Hey cool” when I read his stuff, but it engages readers at least. For reference the original article is online here: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/21506_Flow_Of_Ideas_21.html

Now I can't stop thinking, so I would look to tell you a short story while I try to make my unwilling body go to sleep.

About a month ago I went to see Madrid during the weekend with Skyler. We spent a worthy hunk of our time walking around and exploring like good tourists, and in during that quest went to one of the world's premiere art museums, El Prado. To me, art museums are normally like homework almost, but not quite approaching busy-work levels. You should probably at least take a look at them, and they will provide some redemptive value, but they are hardly the paragon of life's offerings. The Prado was different because many of their collection pieces are famous, famous paintings. I had never walked around a corner and seen a painting that I had already looked at hundreds of pictures of throughout various history textbooks until this:


(Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo - 1814)

The cool factor is extreme.

We continued through the museum amongst spaced crowds of tourists, and despite their many whispers the ambiance was nicely quiet and reflective. I enjoyed stopping at taking long looks at the many pieces by one famous artist or another that were displayed adjacently. Seeing how their style would change or how their choices of color and body characteristics varied made itself into a little game.

One of the more attractive layout features of the museum was their Goya displays. Goya, having been a brilliant painter and Spanish national to boot was one of the major attractions, and there were enough of his paintings present to have two galleries. They were sorted into early, and late paintings. The early paintings were during his financially successful career where he painted rich people. Most of the works are of Spanish royalty, and one particular Spanish king had some dozen of his portraits aloofly smiling back at visitors. The overall effect of the works was clean and crisp.

Downstairs, separate from the first exhibit were Goya's paintings from his later life, when things began to fall apart, when he probably suffered from depression, and where his work took a turn for the darker. The most startling moment of the entire visit, and the moment that may remain as my most memorable from my time here was walking across one particular painting. There I was in a museum filled with almost entirely realistically painted scenes of angels, cherubs, lovely women, the occasional romanticized battle or execution, and then out of nowhere, boom!

I saw him eating the baby:

(Saturn devouring his son)

Looking at those eyes was probably not a wise choice in terms of picking a sleep cultivating activity.

Sweet dreams,
Tim

Absolutely Attrocious

Dear Reader,

The sickness policy here strikes me as completely, unequivocally, Charlie Sheen-esque bad. The program offers students three sick days, which functionally can be taken as vacation days, and after that any further absences substantially lower student grades.

In theory, students would save these days for when they are actually sick. In practice, we're in Europe, and that aint happening, since admitting that your cold will eventually prevent you from going to Africa for that one weekend is a tough pill to swallow. Everyone just shows up.

We also have very tiny classrooms. I am talking five tables with chairs, hello person sitting right next to me, oh I see you are coughing, oh there is a fleck of spittle right on my check, the same check next to my eyes and mouth which are vulnerable orifices of disease reception, tiny. The kind of tiny that isn't ideal for germaphobes.

Why not save the neurotically opposed to unhealthiness among us and just let people stay in while they are under the weather?

College students are not inmates. They are in a class to learn, and while some will abuse a system that say, lets them stay home and not spread their scary, scary germs on friends and loved ones, most probably just go to class. For those who don't, it should be their problem and the results should be their consequences to deal with. If the program gets its money, people are healthy, viruses live shorter lives, who cares about a few missed classes?

Anyways everyone here is sick. Fight the system; stay home and watch TV!
Tim

I'm Mellllting

Dear well mannered readers of mine,

Growing up in Seattle I became adjusted to the rain. Hearing it sloshing into the ground outside and rolling harmlessly down my bedroom window is as about as relaxing as anything can be to me.

Evidently in Alicante they strongly dislike it. Yesterday the park/plaza by my house which usually finds itself packed with people on weekend afternoons was completely deserted. The cause? Light overcast and scattered showers. Today there were nearly a hundred people outside when I went for my walk. It is about ten to fifteen degrees warmer and sunny. This strikes me as so strange.

Am I alone here?
Tim

Directness in Spain, an example

Dear reader,

Spaniards differ from Americans perhaps the most in regards to levels of directness. In American society so many things cannot be said, and so many more are packaged in specific ways to be more buttery. You don't just walk up to a bar, and half shout at the bartender "Listen! Two beers!" in the states (at least I think not?), but here that exchange would be normal.

The other day I was on the receiving end of this cultural difference. The wife of one of my host family's sons was around the house, and asked to see my costume for Carnaval. (Two posts down there is a picture.) On spying it, she asked me if I was gay in a conversation translated roughly as follows:

Wife: Is your friend gay?
Me: No.
Wife: Are you sure?
Me: Yes, he has many pretty ladies in his life. (Positive trait)
Wife: Wait, so are you gay?
Me: No.
Wife: Are you sure?
Me: Yes.
Wife: You could tell me if you were.
Me: I'm not gay.
Wife: Alllright.

As you can see, when someone wants to know something, meandering and beating around bushes seems to be minimal. I'm trying to picture this in America unsuccessfully.

Just wait until I get back and take my newly acquired conversational habits with me,
Tim

Awkward

Dear reader,

I was talking to a professor today when he settled a question that has long been on my mind. The English phrase "awkward" evidently has no Spanish translation. There are terms to describe extreme discomfort, but not what we know as awkward.

You know a society is direct and unflappable when it lacks a term for mild social pain.

Best,
Tim

"Carnaval" or "What if they threw a cosplay convention and everyone came?"

Dear reader,

Firstly:


Secondly:

In a society that has only spent about 25 of the last 50 years in democracy, and the other half under fascist oversight, Carnaval celebrates everything free. It's crowning activity took place this week in Alicante and I placed myself in the middle of its craziness. Defining Carnaval's atmosphere were Masks, cross dressing, three simultaneous concerts in a small space, drinking, littering, sex, and many more forms of objects and acts belonging to the night.

My introduction to the festival came during a Spanish film class where we saw an older period film. A handsome, flirtatious, and good at cooking (an especially sexy trait round these here parts) protagonist went through brief romantic flings with each of an elderly painter's four daughters. One of these flings happened during the local village's Carnaval. The painter's gender-challenged second daughter dressed as a soldier while dressing the protagonist as a man, and aggressively seduced him, taking the role of a commandeering Spanish male during the exchange. Our professor informed us that this reversal was common during Carnaval, since Spanish women normally have to play “the reject, ignore, reject, say no, ok maybe just a little bit of talking” game. The men are pretty persistent. We also found out that Carnaval was to begin this past weekend. I was sold, assuming that the festival would at least be memorable.

My second introduction came when we picked out costumes “disfrases”. The host sister of my friend and crony Skyler happened to have an old fish costume hanging around from when she was six. Skyler put his on, and then the host sister revealed that tights would complement the outfit well. Tight would be an understatement here. What was more, downstairs was another fish costume, but this time pink instead of green. I was apprehensive, but thought it would be funny enough, and so I snapped up the opportunity. The costumes were intended for little girls, a group which as of my last checking neither Skyler nor I belonged to, and so the “pez” also barely went below waist level.

Equipped and excited for the evening, we headed to a downtown apartment where we met with several friends and continued towards “la Rambla” or the huge closed off main street hosting Carnaval. Even blocks away there were dozens of costumed Spaniards. I'd like to talk about the costumes I saw over the night before continuing since the atmosphere is impossible to grasp without picturing them.

Some of the male costumes I saw were: ninja, firefighter, professor, police officer, geisha, schoolboy, bavarian, bloody surgeon, hippy, various Beatles, and various drag queens.

Some of the female costumes I saw were: sexy ninja, sexy firefighter, sexy police officer, geisha, sexy schoolgirl, sexy bavarian (I think you get the idea at this point), and various males.

Special mention to: A group of fifteen or so people who dressed in a giant cardboard bus with windows for each party member to look out from, all the Spaniards who went as Waldo (You guys, I found him!), and some guy who made a full-body cardboard suit of Bender from Fut-o-rama.

On reaching the main street, we were greeted with a solid mass of costumed bodies stretching about a mile. Despite everyone's costumes being impressive, Skyler and I got a lot of looks. I'm guessing that much of this was owed to our status as fairly tall, gangly, pale males and the whole tights/neon effect we had going.

Three simultaneous concerts were going as well. On the main stage was a group playing some Spanish rock I recognized. What really surprised me was when they played English rock and it sounded spot on. Before my experience with Spanish English-spoken pop covers was from an American idol clone where people tried to emulate foreign language songs with horrible accents. The Bon Jovi song playing sounded like it could have been from a medium-quality Youtube rip of a CD. Not bad at all.

Everywhere in the street were discarded cups, random puddles of unidentifiable slop, and people's bags of drinks. I mention this because drinking in excess, or even explicitly outside of a bar is very rare here. I saw more people overtly holding a 40oz than I have since arriving in Spain during the first five minutes of walking towards Carnaval.

At various points I was offered drinks by complete strangers, grabbed by the throat by one of the women dressed as a police officer, asked to pose in photos by tourists clearly not from Spain, and in a position to officiate a brief mock-luchador fight between two similarly dressed people.

Eventually the crowds noise and energy were too much and I headed for home. I would have gone to bed, but my walking route ended up going through another crazy event, this time a dance party blocks away from the main street filling up a small square. I ran into two nice girls from South Africa and Barbados at the dance party and ended up talking until about 5AM, and which point I went home and got some excellent rest.

And Carnaval lasts a week!

American adults would be way too self conscious to have this many mainstreamers show up to an event like this.

Wishing you an interesting week,
Tim

Private Space

Dear Reader,

I write to you from a tidy garden outside of the central government building in Alicante. Narrow streets run all around, and from here I can still hear the cars, but they are muffled by a fountain and several flocks of small birds singing in the trees. This garden represents the only isolated space I have found in my Spanish city.

I don't know what the origins of Alicante's layout were, but for whatever reason public space is not just the norm but the almost unabridged rule. Stores are closely nestled without real alleyways, parks are open with no ground cover, entirely well lit, and even the surrounding beaches lack even an inch of unobserved ground. I seek a quiet space to think and relax, but were someone so inclined, it would be preposterously difficult to get up to any kind of unseen shenaniganery here. It's funny that one of the most unwatched spaces I have so far discovered surrounds the seat of government.

This whole business is quite unlike Seattle, where in the suburbs, and even many areas adjacent to downtown there are large parks, dark alleys, freeway overpasses, and all kinds of random hidey-holes abound. On the one hand Alicante's layout lends a feeling of safety probably lacking for those who might find themselves walking around South or East of Seattle late at night. On the other, never having even an snippet of solitude can get to you.

I thought that maybe Alicante was unique in this respect – maybe the city, being to considerable extent a tourist destination, chose to make itself condensed, open, and ever-watching. When we took trips to Madrid and Barcelona though, for the most part I saw more of the same. The one major exception was a gorgeous and massive park in Madrid. The more I see of Spain, the more I think of it as having a social and public culture.

Until next time,
Tim

Burger King out of Control

Dear Reader,

One of the more striking experiences of Spain so far was something that I expected to be bland. I was in Barcelona waiting around for an activity to start, when some friends proposed food. Their idea was that we would go eat at Burger King.

Being a glutton for new things, I had daydreamed of some tiny, tastefully arranged cafe with a kindly old woman who made sandwiches and other assorted tasties. Cutting into that daydream was the American conception of Burger King. Piercing bright lines, cold AC, extremely dissatisfied employees, fries that seem impervious to aging, meat of unidentified and unrecognizable origins, reasonable prices – essentially the whole fast food shtick in a bundle - nothing new.

I like to consider myself reasonable though, so I went along with the plan.

The interior was a surprise. Some things were normal, it had the same glaring lights and tiled ceiling that can be expected of your typical fast food joint. Everything else was more or less different. The interior decorating was polished dark wood. The building was multiple stories, with a balcony overlooking the main eating area. The menu had similar items, but at much, much higher prices. Some of the burgers were around nine Euros, and a meal for one could pretty easily run twelve to fifteen. (The exchange rate is around 1.35 dollars to the Euro right now.) Most differently, there were customers.

Now in a Seattle Burger King, you could reasonably expect to see clients. On a good day there might be fifteen or twenty. People come, get their food quickly, and then leave that forsaken place with due reverence to the delicious yet oh-so-bad-for-you pile of something digesting in their bellies. At the Burger king in Barcelona there were seventy or more people just hanging out. What?

I'll chalk it up to conversations being longer.

Signing out,
Tim

Vending machines

Dear reader,

Even if America is utterly failing many of the important tests of a good society, our vending machines and ATMs are still superb.

I went to the bank with my good friend Skyler the other day to withdraw some funds, and was prompted to take money out in euro amounts of 20, 40, 70, 90, and 110. On entering a number, I discovered that the machine only vends in 50 euro amounts. It worked out eventually, but you get the idea.

Later I was really, really thirsty and saw some deliciously cold looking bottles of Aquarus (read sugar-water)filling the bottom five slots of a vending machine. I put in 1.50 euros in the form of two coins and tried the first of the Aquarus slots, "E1". The response was "Producto agotado", or sold out. I could see the golden fleece of refreshment right there, but could not have it. "E2" yielded the same sad result, and so did all of the other combinations for beverages in the machine. Defeated and parched, I asked for my money back, and heard a procession of whirring and clinking.

Instead of two coins, I was paid back in 20 and 5 cent pieces, tending towards 5. I dejectedly put my fistful of coins into my wallet and went back to class.

Count yourselves lucky for your swiftly delivered vitamin water,
Tim W

Words that are slightly, awkwardly different

So reader,

Not unlike those silly, foppish, British words like boot, some Spanish words take on different connotations in different countries. It turns out that the Spanish taught in American schools is of the "Learn South American Spanish so that you'll be able to converse with South American Spanish speakers" variety. This is giving me some anxiety, because last time I checked there was not exactly a bevy of Spaniards hanging out in the nooks and crannies of Seattle, and there are some small yet important conversational fineries that I am busy learning the incorrect side of.

Take the verb "coger".

It is used to mean to get or to take here. Coger el autobus, coger su mochilla, coger... Very common, very normal. In Mexico it would get the bleep bloop treatment on TV. Now if you get super adjusted to just blurting it out, imagine what's going to happen when casually asking for someone's stapler back in Seattle.

As they say, !UF!,
Tim

FOILED AGAIN!!!

Dear readers,

I accidentally set my alarm to 7:35 Pm, got up from a nap in a bleary confusion thinking that I had slept nearly 14 hours, raced through all my morning rituals, and nearly sprinted a quarter mile towards my bus stop before realizing that while the sky and outside area had the right color and brightness level, there were too few people and it was getting darker. At least I made dinner quickly and got some exercise before bed!

Zounds.
Tim

The sobering warning against procrastination provided by Goerge R.R. Martin

We all like to hold off on important things now and then, but I think that it sometimes takes one good example to get us to break our inactive lull.

A perfect such story revolves around the author Goerge R.R. Martin. He writes "A Song of Ice and Fire", an ongoing fantasy series winning multiple awards, topping multiple best seller lists, and now the subject of an upcoming HBO show.

His writing builds a world of real characters fighting for their own ends where tragic things come and go without any greater significance. So many things about it, the descriptions, the plot, the sense of excitement and suspense that Martin seems to have cultivated an instinct for breeding make it wonderful.

He is only on the 4th book of seven, each being close to 1,000 pages depending on the format, and the series has already taken him years. He is 61 and some fans fear that he may die before completing the stories.

That would be one of the greater tragedies for fantasy readers, and at the least, he may no longer be writing in his peak form when he concludes the story.

What does this mean to us? Martin had and has the talent to leave humanity with a unique contribution, and this is jeopardized by how late in his career he began the works.

Get something done right away : ).

As for me, I have time to finally see to some writing now that I am in Spain, and that is wonderful.

Best,
Tim

Bonus: Martin does all of his writing on a bare-bones DOS only computer with no internet connection. Talk about a good idea to remove the Facebook plague?

One of the coolest fifty rocks on planet earth

Dear readers,

This weekend I had the fortune to visit a medieval market, see Spanish Saturday nightlife, and try a healthy sampling of good food. I may talk about these things later if time permits, but not tonight. Other topics have lost their spots because today we explored what is definitely one of the coolest fifty rocks on the planet.

That's a pretty big claim Tim, you may think, but I intend to support it.

The rock to which I refer is the Peñon de Ifach in Calpe, Spain. The Peñon's form towers hundreds of feet above the Medeterain lapping against its base, and represents the most prominent object in its host town. What makes it remarkable is the hike to its summit. We took many pictures, which I will add as soon as possible, but for now to give you an idea, check it out on Google images.

Walking towards the rock, we realized how enormous it was, and how completely unhikable its rocky face appeared. It would have been cool enough to just look at the lovely beach beneath it, and marvel at the sheer face, but we soon discovered a visitor trail going up to the base of its spire.

At the top of the trail as it turned out, there was a tunnel going into the rock, and on the other side of the tunnel, a trail winding for miles up to its top. The ensuing hike was far more involved than we had expected, but featured views that made me feel almost guilty that most my friends were just waking up in their college dorms back in the states.

The non-sheer cliff side is a steep, steep hill with a rope guided path lazing along it, and foliage turning what would otherwise be a sometimes terrifying walk into a manageable undertaking. In late afternoon, when we scaled it, the foliaged side is entirely shaded by the summit's high ridge. The bleached white rocks are set against a background of scraggly trees lit by flaring sun through their branches, and hundreds of seagulls cruise on a sea breeze floating across perfectly blue water. It's really not fair that people actually live next to this.

When we got to the top, we suddenly looked over the maybe 1000 foot cliff we had earlier examined from below, and saw a group of climbers who had just completed the scale. We shared some oranges and took pictures, then continued on our way to avoid having to descend in darkness.

We were rushed at the end to reach or tram, and had to walk several miles in the dark, but when we reached the tram station, a pub was still open and we enjoyed warm pastries and chorizo sandwiches to some excellent Spanish music.

To be adequately effusive, I'm not sure that the day could have gone better.

Now why are other rocks not as sweet as this one? Well first of all, it is pretty big, so that of course means that it has better than the smaller rocks (I've gotta stick to my American roots somehow right?). Now that we've eliminated those scrawny underdogs, what remains are the really big rocks (Let's call mountains also rocks). They take too long to hike, and are only marginally more gorgeous at best. Therefore these rocks are also worse, and the Peñon wins.

The biggest lesson from this came while I reflected on the morning. I was moments away from rolling over and going to sleep. In general, don't go back to sleep.

Sleep is for the weak; who needs good rest and the sound reasoning that follows when we can walk on cool rocks instead?
Tim

Piropos: Or Hey Bay-B the acceptable version?

So I'm told that it is really sexist and inappropriate to yell at women in the street about their physical appearance in the states. This doesn't really apply in Spain were they have "piropos".

This is basically a form of accepted catcalling as far as I can observe. It hasn't been incredibly common since my arrival, but then again I am also not a woman, and the ones with whom I walk aren't alone. If a tree falls in a forest...?

Here's a basic dialogue that would happen:

Enter attractive blond Spanish woman
Attractive blond woman walks down street with chin held high and slight frown on face. Ignores passers by, staring ahead, and makes no eye contact with men.

Enter Spaniard male on other side of street. Smiling and looking at attractive blond woman.

Attractive blond woman:
Spaniard male: !Que rubia!
Attractive blond woman:

Attractive blond woman keeps walking past, Spaniard male turns and looks behind him, then grins and keeps walking.

Today in a gender/culture studies class that I am taking to get some distribution credits through Whitman, our teacher finally explained this oddity to me. Evidently during Franco's regime (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Franco), women were not permitted to meet men in public. Only when a couple were married could they travel together outside of the home. To accomplish some kind of flirting, the men, forced to walk on the opposite side of the street from the women, would yell out complements and such.

The tradition survived, and now it is common. In the right tone and context piropos can be taken as flattery. Now you know.

Informatively,
Tim

Conversation is like being punched in the stomach

Dear esteemed readers,

Conversation is like being punched in the stomach by a really small person who hasn't worked out in years, hasn't eaten for days, is being lightly restrained, and doesn't really want to punch you that badly(if he was punching you in the head and not the stomach). It makes you a tiny bit tired.

In the State's this has no real effect. Conversations last for 30 minutes to two hours on the long end. In Spain though, it seems like common practice to talk for a loooong time. My host family for example will hang out and watch TV, chatting on and off, from the time I get home (2:00) to the time I go to sleep (10:00) with 4-5 day-per-week consistency.

It isn't something that we're forced to consider too often, but after about four hours of unbroken conversation, we get really, really tired. Throw in a foreign language requirement, and then talk for six hours instead, and living in Spain suddenly becomes a drastically new experience.

The verdict is pending on whether or not this is a good thing. At the least I won't often be the one awkwardly twiddling my fingers and making some half-truth about homework after an hour of chatting when I get back to the states.

Wishing you an emotionally and mentally relaxed afternoon/ evening depending on location and time of reading,
Tim

P.S. Homework - Go talk to someone for five hours.

A money making project

Dear friend so distinguished as to stumble this way,

I'm facing a plight that an absurd number of liberal arts students share.

For most of my life I have wanted to see if writing could work as a professional activity. Unfortunately the economy is sub-par and I am hardly alone. People seem to love the concept of being a writer, it is borderline cool to say at cocktail parties, it indulges fantasies of leaving a lasting monument on the world, and it appeals to the inner voice in all of us, telling us that we ought to be doing something with ourselves. American culture (and probably others, I'll have to see) holds a thinker in high regard, and that kind of self esteem is a non-monetary wage that attracts tons of people, including me, to writing. It doesn't hurt that it is also more fun that most other work.

But how to make writing pay? There are millions of people who want to be paid to write, many in countries where wage rates are much lower, and there are thousands on thousands of Americans who have written more than us college students and aspiring writers. My strategy in the face of this is just try, and hope it works.

I have the luxury to do this because I am still in the protective womb of collegiate academics. Studying in Spain I have slightly more free time than at Whitman, my home school, and so I will try this writing thing now, and if it fails, the fallout will at least be minimal.

Given my awe inspiring professional credentials(No paid work in writing), I am starting with freelance copy writing and content writing since both of those things are accessible. The basic idea is that everything on the internet has been written by someone, and most of the commercial site content was written by a professional writer. There is a big market for this, and a place for someone who is not particularly initiated in the industry already.

It does look like there are a few things that help out a prospective web writer a lot though. Basic knowledge of all the blogging tools, ability to write SEO (Search engine optimized, or google cheating) articles, and enough HTML familiarity to set up pages and layout all are huge pluses.

When I get time away from this fantastic country, I will be working on these things. Hopefully it works out! If you are in a similar place to me in terms of goals, I'd love to talk and share observations.

Enjoy the lovely weekend day,
Tim

Five quirks of the Spanish movie experience

Yesterday I went to see my first movie in a Spanish theater, and today I had the good fortune to see another. I'd like to share the experience as best I can. Most small things are the same as in the States, the theaters are similarly constructed and furnished for example, but other aspects of the theater are interestingly different. Here are the five I found most striking.

1.Snacks
You can bring food into the theater. This is a small thing, I know, but how great is it in terms of what it shows about customer perception. In the states, where we can't bring our own food, the message is loud and clear. The theater wishes to profit, and you are there as a vessel for that. You will go where you are supposed to, when you are supposed to, and if you happen to want food, you will pay through the teeth for it, and hopefully popcorn or candy is what you wanted at the end of your monetary root canal. Of course the theaters want to profit here as well, but I feel like a customer and not a meat-cow o be herded in one door and out another, lighter by a handful of dollars.

Sure you can bring your own food in, and very few theaters are going to affectively call you on it, but it's just not the same. If you wanted, you could bring dinner here. Who doesn't want to feast on a tasty burger, salad, or other goody of their own selection while they watch?

2. Voice acting.
For the most part, subtitles don't seem to be the vessel of choice despite as many as half of all titles being originally in English. The movies are dubbed over entirely in Spanish. I know this should be pretty intuitive, but I'm including it because of some of the situations it brings up. For some American actors, Spaniards have not heard their voice, and so go through life thinking that George Clooney sounds like a husky Spaniard. It's also fairly enjoyable when a voice is poorly cast. For big movies, like Mas Alla que La Vida, the casting is good, but in some the miss is just awesome. When we were in the hotel, bored and getting ready for another afternoon lecture, a kung-fu movie was on. Several of the short, Asian actors were voice acted by deep, gravely, baritone dopplegangers, and the result was jilting.

3.Touch culture
Cultural norms on body contact strongly effect understanding of a movie. One scene, seemingly meant to show romantic tension, was crowned by the female character shyly planting a quick smooch on the protagonists cheek. This would have a strongly romantic implication to an American audience, but here people say hello and goodbye with two kisses, one on each cheek. The greeting is very common and completely casual, so a big cheek snog has no real meaning here. There are hundreds of other small things like that, especially with regards to body language, so the meaning of many scenes changes with a Spanish audience.

4.Empty Theaters
You are essentially alone. The movie I saw first had three other groups in it, and the movie today had literally two customers aside from me and two friends. This seems a product of the recession Spain is currently in the grips of (which I am told is significantly worse than that in the states). Sitting alone in the dark and not even being able to wonder if people are bothered when you laugh is odd. There's almost a connection between you and the other four people there, and you have to wonder how much loss the cinema takes from electricity outrunning ticket revenue. Hopefully business picks up soon!

5.Gender Standards
Gender/dating culture is very different. For American films being watched in Spain this doesn't really come across, but I had the good fortune to watch a Spanish dating comedy (not in theaters) and oh boy was it different. Let's just say that for a culture that finds shorts to be exceptionally gaudy on women, there was a surprising amount of nudity (enough to put any American movie into a retirement home of relative pictorial conservatism).

Anyways, I have highly enjoyed the cinema going experience thus far and look forwards to trying it more when opportunity presents.

In the interests of disclosure I wrote this yesterday but couldn't post due to wireless constraints.

Best,
Tim

The little nemesis

The doom of my Spanish existence follows me nightly, plaguing my dreams, haunting the shadows, lurking somewhere below me, somewhere I can never quite see. When I turn my head, all I hear is his lingering laughter, and am left wondering, why, why, why has this dark scourge of shadows untold found me as its mark. It was an ill omen when I first caught the discordant melody of his presence during those gone-by hours, guided only by moonlight and protected only by a frail sheet of warmth. For not a night since has the demon left me unscathed. Perhaps my imagination has conjured it in whole, and nothing lurks beyond the edges of thought, perhaps I ought to close my eyes and gain sweet sleep, and yet, each time, again the banshee wail renews, and again my sleep is slain.

But lo, what is this? A sprout of an idea? An inkling of the truth? These cries be not like inhuman hunger, but those of a baby? A niño lives beneath my floor!

More specifically as my house-mother tells me, a niño of 14 months by the name of George. George, who I imagine is quite adorable but as of yet have not gotten the chance to meet has become something of a thorn. The last few nights, around 2-4 with dice-like consistency, his thunderous cries for food, warmth, or something else that his poor parents have to rush to discern burst forth with all the force of a pair of scissors cutting paper (which is to say just about enough force to get the job done).

I'd love to do something about it, but there really is not much to be said. It's not like you can go up to a child and ask him to stop crying, and the family is obviously doing what they can because his wails keep them up as well. I've tried using two pairs of nested earplugs to no effect (Yes it's possible), and for now I plan on just sleeping on the couch.

I'll take it as a good thing that the most immediately troubling thing in my life is a one-year-old.

A short life (lesson?)

Dear assembled computer sitters who may or may not be putting themselves in an ideal situation for long term success,

As you may have guessed I am looking forwards to being rambling and preachy in the following letter. Please do benefit from my blithe radiance; what is a young college male if not an arbiter of truth and worldliness?

Disclaimed: we may continue.

We all go through life with some set of rules that govern our direction, and by recently changing one of mine ended up in Spain. I would like to think that this could be useful to others.

The original rule was a fairly emphatic "do what you're good at". This led me to join the Whitman debate team, and experience success there. Partially through my efforts and skill, and to a larger extent due to the fantastic coaching staff at Whitman, I was able to compete at a high level, and with contributions from me Whitman won the national school title in parliamentary debate. (This is not actually the primary focus of the activity, but in my eyes and others quite an achievement nonetheless.)

When the last season ended we were a very young squad, obviously having done well and still returning all of our top teams. Instead of continuing in the activity I quit, and in hindsight did so to great profit.

Why? The activity took to much of my time, and the main redemptive draw was only victory. It distracted from academics, from developing writing skills, from maintaining healthily varied interpersonal relationships, from sleep, and many other things. That's not to say that it destroyed them, but it made normal function difficult to accomplish.

At the time the activity did seem worth it. Who doesn't like to win? A part of all of us is just a cookie-monster for that kind of external validation, and I was having me a decent omnomnom.

Here's the catch though, the trade is not between being successful at one thing and not being so at any other. Given enough time, energy, and confidence most people can do a fantastic job at many things. For me, I had replaced potential success in many other areas of life with debate success. Debate is fairly limited in scope, and there are many other things that I would enjoy more, and benefit more from. One of them for example, might be learning conversational Spanish.

At one point I would not have realized this potential. When you are in the glow of positive feedback, it is very easy to stay there and continue enjoying whatever kind of validation source is streaming its scrumptious goodness in your direction. What I was able to realize is that despite seeming to be a very positive experience, debate was far from the best, or even a respectably highly situated undertaking for me.

I quit and went to Spain. My rule changed from "Do what you are good at" to "Do what is best for you". Maybe this is an obvious one for you guys to see, but for me it definitely wasn't, since winning/being successful/seizing the heck out of one particular day does not necessarily equate to an ideal, or even good situation. I think that by being able to assess priorities and differentiate good from ideal, we can enjoy much more fulfilled lives.

That's my two cents at least.

Thanks for reading, and go consider breaking your routine mold if you think you're stuck. Considering it doesn't hurt, and the smallest changes can be surprisingly positive.

-Tim

Hello

Hello friends, family, fellow students and maybe random people on the internet,

I write to you from Spain. I would like for you to know what it is like here, and I would like for me to remember what it was like once I am gone. The format of this will be free style letters - they are easy and I am strapped for time. The main focus will be Spanish culture, and the ever self indulgent me, me and also me.

I've been here in Spain, more specifically Alicante, for nearly a week now and have almost honestly had no time to write. Today I will attempt to catch up on events in a more or less stream of consciousness fashion.

I first got on a plane to depart for Spain on the tired and slow morning of January 13th. I have what I am told is actually a somewhat common form of motion sickness in which I get about as sleepy as a mid-winter bear, and so I passed out after about 20 minutes and woke up in O'Hare. There I transferred to an Iberia flight (with some fear, the internets told me that the airline was deserving of a lofty 2.5/10 rating) and traveled Spainward. Something striking was that immediately on entering the Iberia plain, my prior veil of English culture immediately disintegrated. The crew spoke Spanish, the announcements were in Spanish, the passengers were mostly Spanish and spoke a language I'm sure you can guess. I did not speak Spanish. (Well at least)

I snoozed another nine-ish hours across the Atlantic, waking up for a mid-flight meal of cheese and unidentifiable vegetable stuff that was nonetheless good in a mushy-salty sort of way. Looking out the window was still one of the most breathtaking sights I have yet witnessed on the trip. It was a cloudy night and the moon was obscured over the ocean by wispy cloud layers, but it was so pure and bright that it cut through them and cast long lances of light across the water below. I didn't take a picture.

I arrived in Madrid the next morning and met up with a number of students going to the same city but a different program. We hung out in the Airport for a while, and eventually after a surprisingly light examination in security continued on to Alicante, my destination.

Alicante is an interesting place. If you google image search it, you will probably have an image in your head thereafter much like that of a Floridian resort town. It's colder than that but warmer than Seattle. I'll talk more about the city later, but for brevity I will omit an account now.

I planned on arriving two days before my scholastic program started in order to explore the city a bit and get over my deep fear of talking to Spaniards. It's scary to potentially express yourself incorrectly. To this end I booked a hostel with good ratings by the base of La Castilla de Santa Barbara (There's a fat castle in the middle of my city, how cool is that?) On arriving, I awkwardly conversed with the
attendant who spoke about as much English as I Spanish, and proceeded upstairs.

The place, Hostel de Sal, was only 26 euros a night and definitely too cool for me. They played music of a woman more or less musically screaming over the sound of violins, and their bare concrete walls were complemented by modern mesh and art. In the states it should have been about $80. The beds and accommodations were quite nice and there was a bar downstairs. The desk attendant informed me that the place was in the process of converting to a botique hotel, and that there would be celebrations. I took this in the sense that Americans take this, as in cheese and maybe a few cocktails, which was a humorously incorrect interpretation.

That night I went to bed after exploring Alicante by foot for many hours, and around 11 heard noises downstairs in the bar. By about 2 it was a raging party, and kept going until around 6. Evidently the Spanish like to stay out late, and their social environment is quite different than the American night scene. There is little to no music, and everyone talks, very, very loudly. I didn't actually mind that much since I was still excited to be in a new place, so I went downstairs and wandered around a bit and got a beer. (Drinking age is something like 18 here, so my 21st will be fairly anticlimactic)

The next night there was a similar party, but this time I donned my earplugs and popped some of my faithful traveling companion, Benadryl, since I would meet all the other Americans in my program the next day.

I packed up my luggage and slogged over to another hotel across the city, which was this time way too classy for me instead of way too cool. I felt super awkward in dirty jeans and a hoody as I walked past about seven Spaniards in suits and over a perfectly polished floor into a tasteful room of couches and checkered carpet to meet my program coordinator. Surprisingly I was able to understand her rapid Spanish... She spoke with illustrative hand gestures and a very clear tone. This would actually be something of a trend, I don't know when it happened, but some time since getting on the Iberia plain I suddenly started understanding Spanish. Lucksack right?

The program ran us through a bunch of orientation exercises, and put me up in a room with two interesting and all-considered pretty sweet dudes, Joe and Andrew. We spent a lot of time in a glisteningly clean meeting room with some candy and water in it listening to lectures that might have been considered obnoxiously persistent if there was not so much stupidly relevant information in them.

After two days of orientation, we grouped up in our great big hotel and were escorted nervously one by one to meet our host families. My host mother came to get me, and our initial conversation was uncomfortably halting. I adjusted to her Spanish and she to mine (which probably sounds something like the equivalent of a lawnmower's droning and an introductory ESL class for Chinese 5-year olds would to English speakers to her) after a seemingly long and jarring taxi ride. At my new home, which I will discuss later, but for now's purposes is freaking awesome, I met my host dad. They asked that I call them Mama and Papa, which I did and do going with the theme of accepting new things here.

We started classes not too long after, and as I write this I am still taking part in an intensive course intended to catch us all up to speaking speed. I still cannot write Spanish for my life, but it seems that I am doing well enough with the oral component which is a saving grace. Who needs to write good anyways?

A few days ago we hiked up to the Castilla after class. It is situated above a small mountain, and is about as cool as the male-embryo-transplant-stem-cell-baby (that's a thing right?) of Batman and Morgan Freeman would be. I hope to hike to its peak again and provide a more detailed account, but for now I will leave you with a few pictures of my time there.

Stay safe, stay healthy, and keeping reading my blog or I will know and be slightly insulted,

Tim


From (1)

From (2)

From (3)

Ghetto Photocredit:

(1)http://www.spain.info/es/conoce/monumentos/alicante/castillo_de_santa_barbara.html
(2)http://www.google.es/imgres?imgurl=http://sientealicante.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Castillo-de-Santa-B%C3%A1rbara.jpg&imgrefurl=http://sientealicante.com/castillo-de-santa-barbara/&usg=__hPLVP4xZV-NCD94qs0U1ocPr3DA=&h=466&w=700&sz=66&hl=es&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=6HV7nRyAThHAeM:&tbnh=145&tbnw=206&ei=td85TaX3EcG28QPbmqCvCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dla%2Bcastilla%2Bde%2Bsanta%2Bbarbara%26um%3D1%26hl%3Des%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26biw%3D1280%26bih%3D615%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=343&vpy=88&dur=46&hovh=183&hovw=275&tx=128&ty=67&oei=td85TaX3EcG28QPbmqCvCA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0
(3)Mary Beth Fernandez.