From KK: Peter Peter Lentil Eater

Well the weather sure has made a sudden change. Today, like yesterday and tomorrow, is rainy and about 45 degrees. I hear it is even colder at home. No ma'am. No can handle the cold. I think I need to live in the Caribbean where I can be warm all year round. As a matter of fact, I heard a rumor about myself! Apparently I live there. Doesn't sound all that bad right now.

We have found the way to stay warm in our cold little house is to eat Lentil soup, with little chorizo pieces in it which sounds really gross and definitely not like something I would eat, but the off brand kind is 0,55 euro cents so that's what we'll eat. It's pretty cheap to survive here. Most of our meals are about a euro worth of food for the both of us if we eat at home. Not too bad. But lentil soup, half the price!

This weekend we were tourists. We carry around a little black notebook wherever we go and take notes about where we eat, what we see, etc. so we will have a good idea of where to take people when they come visit us. 

Friday night we went to the city centre and got tapas and had a wonderful dinner and wine. We wandered through the streets for a couple of hours, watching the Sardana dances like Doug talked about. If you know anything about me, you know these big scary dancing heads would scare me to death-

-Or in my opinion, it would scare anyone in their right mind to death, except for Doug and the entire population of Barcelona who just seemed to love it. No thanks.

Anyway, after I cried and hid in the corner until the scary people were gone, we continued botellón-ing around la Catedral, El Barrí Gotic (the gothic quarter), and through L'Eixample district until we stumbled upon a bookshelf.

Doug decided it was very necessary that we have this bookshelf, so we hauled it for what would have been a grueling hour-long walk. That is until Doug decided he wouldn't listen to me and knew a shortcut home. Our long walk turned longer when I finally stopped to ask someone which way our neighborhood was and they pointed the way from which we were coming. 

At this Doug decided we should throw it over the wall to the Zoo where "the Giraffes could play with it or eat it," and that we would "always laugh at it later." I overruled this idea, so we continued home with the bookshelf, up 5 flights of stairs and into our apartment.

So here it is, our lovely bookshelf. I'm pretty certain the landlord isn't going to be happy with this and I might be out of town when the move out process commences.

Saturday we sat on the beach all day on this block statue where I like to sit and read if it isn't warm enough to lay out in the sand. We got Chinese for dinner and had a really lazy day to rest up for Sunday.

Sunday we did Barcelona. We started at our house, in Barceloneta and walked to all biggest sights like Plaça Reíal, La Catedral, La Rambla and all the way up the Passeig de Gràcia up to Gaudi's Casa Mila. 

Casa Mila had a neat gift shop full of coffee table and design books. We picked up a book of some of the world's best graphic designers and thought the cover looked a lot like Miguel Ripoll's (the designer Doug went to meet with) work and sure enough he had designed the cover and was featured a few times throughout. It was really cool.

We walked up to the Sagrada Familia which is the drip castle church. It is so beautiful although it is still unfinished and will be for the 25 years or so. We decided to wait to go in it for when we have visitors we will have to take to see it.  It is my mom's worst reoccurring nightmare from having a panic attack at the top and still have to climb down the hundreds of teeny tiny stairs, but it is beautiful nonetheless. 

Doug started back to two-a-day practices today. My biggest objection to this is that we have four towels, three which are wet from the pool and not drying because of the weather. There could be worse things in life...

Everything is still great here and we promise if you come visit you won't have to eat lentil soup.

From Doug: Life is Beautiful

The biggest news of the week is the new addition to our family. Kara and Bart welcomed Barton Hayes Ward in to the world on Wednesday at 8:47. He weighed in at 6 lbs 14oz. KK and I wish we could be there to meet the little buddy, but we send our love from Spain. We really thought we might get to see him before we left, as Kara looked like she was about to pop and the doctors moved up her due date, but no such luck. Hayes, we'll be home to see you soon.

I was reminded several other times this weekend how beautiful life is. After an incredible evening of tapas hopping and dinner at a great cozy restaurant, we were content to stroll the streets of our wonderful new city, slowly starting to learn our way around. As we enjoyed our "paseo" through the winding streets of the gothic quarter, we heard the sound of singing and accordion. We followed the music and it led us to a small square next to the ancient cathedral. There, around 12:00 at night about 1,000 people had gathered for an impromptu botello´n. This is a traditional celebration of Spanish life. People from all generations get together and sing familiar songs and dance familiar dances, everyone smiling and obviously happy to be alive. KK and I tried to join in, but for anyone who has witnessed my dancing abilities you probably know how well we did.

Another moment that made me appreciate life, albeit not is such a positive way came thursday night, or should I say friday morning. We bought a Slingbox before we left, and with a little help from my day finally got it set up this week. This little device hooks in to any cable box or dvr and transmits the signal over the internet to any computer with access to it. I figured it would be a great way to keep up with football season while here in Spain and also get a dose of american tv whenever I was feeling homesick. It has worked really well, and we set our alarm to wake up at 1:30 in the morning thursday night to watch Auburn play West Virginia. Like most Auburn games this season, things were going well in the first half. Almost so well in fact that I was tempted to write a little taunt to Caroline Rose. However, inevitably our play turned sour in the second half and we were unable to score. The beautiful part about all this is Slingbox somehow knew the way things would end up and sensed I would be better off going to bed. It was 4 am at this point after all. Instead of staying up to watch the continuing deterioration in the 4th quarter, Slingbox mercifully lost its connection to the internet and after several failed attempts to reconnect I resigned myself and went to sleep. The next morning when I woke up and checked the score to see that West Virginia had scored 31 unanswered points and we had lost 34-17 I was glad Slingbox had a heart and spared me from watching such a travesty. Well at this point my only hope is that we can spoil Alabama's perfect season.

From Doug: Just another day at the beach

There we were, stretched out on our towels, enjoying the sun and the stretch of beautiful Mediterranean coastline. It was just like a dream summer vacation, except we live three blocks from here and it's the middle of October. When we looked outside and saw the sun shining and realized it was in the mid-70s, we had to drop what we were doing and head to the beach. A few other people had the same idea, but it wasn't nearly as crowded as it probably is in the summer. This was yesterday.

Today was rainy and cooler so we went for a jog along the beach. We didn't expect to see anyone, but the water was filled with surfers. Turns out that with some wind there are some pretty good waves here. This is something to keep in mind if I ever get the chance.

I think I finally settled on a team to represent. After visiting C. N. Barceloneta, C. N. Sabadell, and C. N. Sant Andreu, I decided to go with Sant Andreu. Barceloneta was too small and didn't have any swimmers older than 19. Sabadell had an incredible new facility and was building an outdoor pool, but was 45 minutes away by train. Sant Andreu was the perfect fit. They are 20 minutes away on the metro, and have several swimmers who swam in the Olympics this summer. They have also won the Spanish club championship the last four years. I practiced with them today, and when I told the coach I wasn't sure if I would make it to morning practice tomorrow he said I should just take it slow. Not only is the coach understanding and flexible, but one of the swimmers, Brenton, speaks English. I look forward to swimming with this club and getting to know the other swimmers.

Yesterday I also got the chance to meet an amazing designer. As I posted, his name is Miguel Ripoll and he has a long list of accomplishments and awards to his name. As well as being an internationally respected designer, he is also a painter who has had his work exhibited at various galleries throughout Europe and the US. For some reason he decided to take and hour out of his hectic day to meet with me. He talked about his philosophies regarding web design. He also let me look at some of the projects he is currently working on. I feel lucky to have met him. Unfortunately he said now is not the best time to be a designer. With the market plummeting, design and marketing tend to be the first things businesses cut. And with Barcelona being the one of the centers of design in Europe, all the best designers flock here. His advice was to get my swimming career going to create some income and he might be able to help me find an internship. Now that I have locked up a place at Sant Andreu and have scheduled some meets in Italy, we'll see what happens.

From KK: Can someone send us some toothbrushes?

I have lived in some small-bathroomed places before, but dear Heavens, this bathroom is small. I went in to brush my teeth after supper and reached for my toothbrush, knocked the handle and flipped it in the toilet. I tried to catch Doug's on the way down, but to no avail. But I have an extra new toothbrush in my suitcase. Here's hoping. I open the package, fumbled with it and in the span of about 28.5 seconds, dropped the extra toothbrush in the toilet to join its friends. Three toothbrushes in the toilet.

Take heed, you who are coming to visit. The staircase up to our door is narrower than the bathroom. We had to put our shoulders into the back of our bags and push with all our might to get them up the stairs. Other than that, it's a great place!

We have gone to visit three of the best Spanish clubs to see if Doug could swim. There is one in Barceloneta that would be very convenient, but I'm not sure how I feel about them anymore. The coach was all excited Doug was there, but spoke not a word of English. Doug doesn't speak Spanish. That's where I come in. The coach asked me to come on the pool deck to translate for them. Here's the catch: you can't wear "street clothes" on the pool deck, so yours truly had to put on a swimsuit, stand on the deck and translate for two hours. I am not OK with this. Although I am used to having to fight the 5th graders off of Doug, these girls were a whole new level of 10-year-old competition. And me. In a swimsuit.

We are finally getting settled in. It's nice to have somewhere quiet to be. We got to Erin's apartment on Wednesday. She lives with a Portuguese guy, Bernardo, and a Spanish girl, Candela. Thursday five more Portuguese guys came to see Bernardo. Friday Candela's boyfriend flew in from England. So there we were, eleven people in a little Spanish apartment with one toilet. It was a lot of fun staying there, and we thoroughly appreciated it, but nice to get some rest now.

Friday night we went to a bar, not a club, because bars are open until 3 a.m., then the clubs open. We are not quite that hard core yet, so 3 was late enough for the both of us. With 12 euro watered down drinks, it's hard to enjoy for too long.

Doug is going to meet with that graphic designer tomorrow and has been working on his portfolio all afternoon.

We did get our tickets to Paris today! We are going the first weekend in December. The tickets were 10 euros, all taxes included, each way. Can't beat it.

The weather has been so nice here. It's been mid 70s or warmer since we got here. We had breakfast of cafe con leche and oranges today on the beach. It was a little overcast, but so nice. I came prepared for Granada winter, which although it is farther south, is much colder that Barcelona will ever be, so it's been a nice surprise to have a few more days of unexpected warm weather.

So we told you we looked at some sketchy places. Look at this one: Price: 1200 euros. Cats included. This is almost as funny as Engrish! They were going for "gastos incluidos" which means expenses included...or were they. Mamie would be so sad if I got a cat.

From Doug: An Apartment Finally!

After visiting what seemed like 90 apartments, we finally found the perfect one. We saw some we really loved, but were a bit pricey. We saw some that were cheap but in a neighborhood I wouldn't visit after dark. Last night we decided to go with one of the first ones we saw that was a good balance of price, location, and size. We told the contractor that we would take it pending some paperwork.

However, in our mad rush to find a decent place we had scheduled an appointment to look at an apartment later that evening. In an effort to leave no stone unturned we decided to look at this last place, even though we had already agreed to another one. Of course the last place we look turns out to be the best by far. This place had no agency fee, an extra bedroom, and looked like it came out of an Ikea catalog. We didn't need to talk about, we just looked at each other and knew this was the place. I think we had karma on our side, as the previous place we really liked got snatched up by the stupid brit who saw it five minutes before us. In our case, someone had seen this place earlier in the day and wanted to come back the next day to finalize. The owner said since they hadn't given him a definite answer it was ours for the taking.


So here we are. I guess it is for real now. We have an apartment in Barcelona. I don't think in my whole life I could imagine saying that. It is a huge responsibility, but so exciting. It is now even more urgent that I find a job. I have made some decent progress on that front. I have talked to three different club teams about swimming for them, as well as lined up a meet in Pisa next month. Also during the apartment hunt I found this cool website for apartments in an adjacent neighborhood (we live in barceloneta by the way). The really liked the design of this site (http://www.bornliving.com/) so I looked up who designed it. He had a website in english (http://www.miguelripoll.com/) so I sent him an email saying I really liked his work and would like to meet with him. He emailed me back the next day saying he had looked at my portfolio online and even watched some youtube videos of my swimming and although they didn't have any openings here he would love to meet with me. This is really exciting because Barcelona is apparently the center for design in Spain and all of the Mediterranean and he is CEO of a big firm here. We'll see how it goes...

Hasta mañana,
Doug

From KK: First day in Spain

So here goes. We are not going to Lleida anymore. Nope. We are staying in Barcelona. We have been looking for apartments all day. We are staying in Barceloneta, which is the neighborhood where all the ports are so we are about 1.5 minutes from the beach. It's basically like staying at Sea Side and walking across the street to get to the sand.




We are looking for apartments in this area, but looking alllllllllllll around the city as well. This has led us to some of the most terrifying moments of my life since going to Tangier, Morocco. We walked down scary alley #1 to get to scarier alley numero dos where a lady actually stopped. looked at us for a solid 28 seconds. raised her eyebrows with a "hmm" to follow, which made us feel right at home. We tried to run away before the Realtor got there and she caught us rounding the corner. We were in the apartment for 3 minutes, smiled and said we'd call her.



Have you ever seen the Tom Hanks movie BIG? Of course you have. Well, remember that hotel Josh stays in right when he gets to New York? Yeah. We went there today.



Other than that Barcelona is just as great as I remembered. I'll let you know if the food is as good one we have an actual meal. Thus far it's been bread with ham to-go, cafe con leche, beer and of course, my favorite, a schwarma...mmm...



We are having a wonderful time and getting to catch up with my friend Erin Mushaway, a Aggie who wear U of Texas shorts, who agrees that Texas isn't the South. She and I studied together in Granada and haven't seen each other since we were there two and a half years ago. She's taking good care of us and getting us settled here.



Oh! We have Spanish phone numbers now!

Doug is 011-34-697-712-395

I am 011-34-661-109-587



We also have skype so go download it at http://www.skype.com/ for free an we can talk on the voice over internet program for free!

Doug is creatively: dougvanwie

and I am conveniently from last time I was here: kkinspain



We also went to meet with a club team here in Barcelona where Doug can train. They looked at Doug with big eyes and said of course he can train there. We will hope for big prize money meets to follow shortly.



Hopefully after tomorrow we can tell you we found an apartment! Whatever we find, it will have a sleeper sofa at least so GET YOUR TICKETS AND COME VISIT!! Miss you all!

From KK: Our Tour of the South

These past few weeks of reitrement have been great. I would say lazy, but Doug is still waking up at 7-and-change to go swim. In the past couple of weeks we went to Auburn for the Tennessee game, to Panama City Beach with my sister and brother-in-law, Hunter and Tom, and Tom's brother Ray.

Then we went to Dothan to have one last round of Mama Rosas and Dothan folk and then to Birmingham for my cousin Ashley's wedding. We went from Birmingham to Charleston to see Doug's mom.

We spent the remaining days in Charlotte getting Doug moved out and packed up. For our one last hoorah, was rallied and went to NASCAR in Charlotte. We took a bus with about 30 people, only knowing Doug's roommate and his girlfriend. We realized shortly after getting on the bus that nobody knew each other. Two hours later we were hanging out, playing flip cup, pasting fake tattoos of bald eagles and American flags on our bodies. It was the perfect Southern experience to tie up our final tour of the south. God Bless America.

From Doug: Buen Viaje

Hello, This is Doug speaking. I'm new here so I thought I would introduce myself. That's me on the left. I'm a gemini, 24, and like long walks on the beach. Currently I am sitting in the Charlotte airport preparing to go Boston, Dublin, and eventually Barcelona. We will be residing in or near Barcelona, which I've heard is a lovely place this time of year.

With any luck, I will starting my own blog in the near future. No phony blogspot for me, I'm a designer and I'll make my own blog. In the meantime, I figured this was a good place to practice. This way if I make a fool out of myself I can leave it in the past and start over with a clean slate.

As far as my plans for Spain, I will be swimming and hopefully doing some graphic design. I recently heard from a club outside Barcelona that wants me to swim for them. There is also a team in Barcelona that I look will try and contact. Big shout out to my boy Dave Cromwell who I recently discovered was also swimming in Spain. Of course we are going to inject a little red, white, and blue flavor in to the Spanish swimming scene.

I'm not the biggest fan of blogs. I'm not dying to know joe 6-pack's reoccurring dreams, but for those of you out there that are interested in my inner workings here you go:

I had a dream last night that I was bungee jumping. Well, not me personally, but someone else who I was

watching in 3rd person. Anyways, said person's cord broke mid-fall and they dropped into a free fall. At

the moment their feet were about to break through the treeline, a safety net pulled them out of harm's way

normally I don't remember my dreams, but I remember this one seemed especially prophetic given our

upcoming adventure.

I only recount this dream to illustrate how I'm feeling at the moment. I'm pretty darn scared, but have butterflies from the excitement. I'm trying to bear in mind the advice my coach David Marsh would tell us before every big swim meet. Plan for the unexpected.

Until next time,

Doug