From KK: I can finally decorate for Christmas!

I always get really excited about putting up Christmas decorations. The city put up the lights on the streets weeks ago, apparently to encourage Christmas shopping to begin earlier to help the tumbling economy. Doug, on the other hand, made me promise I wouldn't decorate while he was out of town or at practice until after Thanksgiving. Well, that's today. I went to look for decorations at the Chino by our house and there are some very questionable decorations in there, so we will see what we can come up with. I just want a little Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

We had our Thanksgiving feast of KFC last night with our British friends, Jay and Zoe. We had chicken in a bucket and cartons of wine in coffee cups. We were so excited about getting to have some good "home-cooked" food, but when we got to KFC, the only choices were chicken, white rice, mashed potatoes, french fries and jalapeño poppers. No green beans, nothing in casserole form, no mac-n-cheese.

Doug had decided if we couldn't get KFC, he'd just find an all-you-can-eat buffet, not in the spirit of Thanksgiving food, but in the spirit of stuffing his chipmunk cheeks and being so full he'd have to unbutton his pants. This sounds miserable to most people, but is just about his favorite feeling in the world.

It was pretty different from the last 23 Thanksgivings we have been to, but it was fun just the same.

We have started loosely planning our train trip in April. We will be trying to see as much as we can squeeze into 21 days. It's going to be exhausting, but probably a once in a lifetime thing. Here is a picture of our proposed route. Yes, I am bored enough to get on Paint and draw out our route. 

We came down to the bar after supper to skype our parents, since fixing our internet has been postposed another 10 days. Unfortunately, the bar was the only place open with WiFi and they were having a birthday party for one of the girls that works here and it was so loud. It was fun to see everyone, but made it hard to be away.

Kara, Doug's sister, had her baby right after we left and we hadn't seen him until last night. He's absolutely precious and wanted no part of being held up in front of a webcam.

My middle sister, Hunter, is pregnant and wasn't really showing when I last saw her and now she has a belly. And a bum. It's weird how quickly things change. We've been gone less than six weeks, and already so much has happened.

Oh yeah, so I had my first two lessons this week! Both have asked me to come back every week, so that's great. I've picked up three more for next week also.

The first one was an 8-year-old and I was supposed to help her with a project. She didn't have a project and if she did she wanted no part in doing homework. It was pretty awkward for a while. I was there to tutor her in science for two hours, which is a really really long time for an 8-year-old. I had to teach her the reproductive and digestive track. I can't think of anything I'd rather not teach an 8-year-old than that. She kept walking out and turning on the TV. By the end of the two hours, she had learned everything for her test and begged her mom to let me stay and play, so it turned out well, but it was pretty tough for a while there.

The second lesson I had was a conversation lesson with a 30ish-year-old architect and her husband, an interior designer, that just moved back from Italy, so we had lots to talk about. My new lessons are grammar lessons which is my favorite thing, as pathetic as that sounds, so I hope they will be OK. I hope they will start adding up because it's nice to have something to do finally!

This weekend is going to be lazy since Doug has a meet tomorrow and Sunday and we leave Thursday for Paris!

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and is full of tryptophan from massive amounts of turkey! 

From Doug: Gobble Gobble

First let me apologize for keeping all you readers on the edge of your seats. It has been far too long since I posted an update. I know you all have been slaves to the refresh button, just itching to hear about the mishappen adventures that are our lives. I'm not big on excuses, but our internet is still out. We have finally convinced our landlord to switch providers, which somehow is going to take 10 days to do.

As KK told you, I had a swim meet in Pisa last week. Just getting to the meet was an adventure in itself. Ryanair offers really cheap flights around Europe. They have a hub near Barcelona, in a city called Girona. I knew it would take about and hour and a half to get there by train, so I showed up to the train station about four hours before my flight figuring there must be at least one train every hour. I waited two hours before a train finally came that was going to Girona. By the time I got to the Girona train station, my flight had already left. I weighed my options, including a late flight to Rome and a 3 hour train to Pisa arriving at 4am, but eventually was persuaded that it would be best to wait until the following day.

I have experienced this a few times but it never ceases to make me feel like a rock star: I arrived at the Pisa airport and was met by a woman holding a sign with my name on it. Not just a quickly scribled magic marker sign, but a real computer print out! And this is the same woman who only a night earlier had waited four hours at the airport for me to arrive. Nevertheless, she greeted me with a warm smile and firm handshake, one that lasted a half second too long for my liking. It was then that I learned that the swim meet wasn't actually in Pisa, but in a nearby coastal resort town of Viareggio.

The one day of the meet that I did make it to I swam subpar. I swam the 50 and 200 back. I felt a bit like Goldilocks. The 50 was a little bit too short and the 200 was a little bit too long. I am swimming the 100 this weekend and hopefully it will be just right. The meet was fun even if I didn't swim as well as I wanted. There was a good group of American swimmers and Europeans that I had swam with before there. I didn't fly out until later on Sunday so I had the opportunity to wander around Viareggio. The beach is beautiful and I stumbled on a charming antique market.


Ever since we moved here, there have been more incredible concerts than I can remember. However, since we can't go to a show every night we have to be picky. At last we went to our first show Tuesday night. We saw Damien Jurado who I hadn't heard of previously. I noticed a poster for his show posted on a bulletin board somewhere and decided it would look way better on the wall of our apartment than on this dingy board. When KK saw the poster she had heard his music and turned me on to him immediately. She bought me his CD along with the tickets so we were familiar with his music when we saw him. The venue, a place called Sidecar, was intimate and the perfect setting for his stripped down heartfelt music. My eyes were burning from the dense cloud of smoke that filled the room, but that didn't stop me from enjoying the show.

Perhaps our biggest news of the week, aside from KK finding a job, was our decision to purchase Eurail passes. There was a limited time special on Spring travel which allowed us to get a 21 day unlimited pass for about half the normal price. We will begin our European oddyssey on April 6th and in all our excitement have already started to plan a tentative route. I'm thrilled by this once in a lifetime opportunity to get to see Europe. We are planning on making stops in some of the less touristy parts of Eastern Europe, including Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic. I hear from my well-traveled friend George Bovell that that area is some of the most beautiful he has seen.

Sorry to be long winded, but there was so much catching up to do. I'm sure I've forgotten something. I have another swim meet this weekend, the first of the Catalan Circuit in the neighboring town of L'Hospitalet. I will do my best to keep you better informed in the future.

From KK: A Kentucky Fried Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is in two days and we have no turkey. There are some turkeys at the mercat...head and feathers included. They are just sitting there in the glass case, like they are sleeping. I'm not woman enough to deal with that and I have the excuse that we don't have an oven, so looks like it's going to be a turkey-less day. The good news is there is a KFC on Las Ramblas so maybe we can scrape up some mac-n-cheese and green beans or it's going to be a sad sad day. Feel free to send us your leftover cranberry sauce and turkey and Hinkie green beans...mmm. That's just too depressing to think about.

Good news! Today I found a job teaching English. For the time being, I'll just be doing private lessons, but once I get comfortable, maybe I'll be able to teach at the World Trade Center and other big corporate companies around town. Most of the people who work with my company get into that after a while. I don't yet have the certificate to teach at the big corporations, but hopefully the private lessons will fill up enough time for now. I have my first one tonight. I'm helping an 8-year-old little girl with her school project about God knows what, so we will see how that goes! I have two lessons tomorrow and three more on Thursday. I'm looking forward to it and enjoyed teaching English when I was in Auburn for the Literacy Coalition, so maybe this will be as fun.

This weekend we had our third weekend in a row of visitors. Kelly McCallum is an au pair outside of Barcelona and her friend, Kara Lynn Joyce, came to visit her, so I had them to hang out with all weekend for my first weekend all alone without Doug.

He left Thursday night for Pisa, but didn't make it out of Barcelona. To give him credit, he left with four hours to make his flight, but in Spain, you just never know how long it will take. He got to the train station and the next train didn't leave for over and hour. It dropped him off at some bus station and he had to wait over an hour again for the next bus to the airport. Of course, his phone died and even if you charge it, you can't turn it on without the passcode, which he didn't know...so that's how Thursday night went.

He told me he was just going to sleep in the train station and eat cookies all night. I assured him that was a bad bad idea and to just come home, then he cut off. So about 10 that night I still hadn't heard from him and was waiting at home when he showed up with a pizza and a 40 oz. San Miguel. We had to find a way to buy him a new flight and our internet is still out, so we walked around our neighborhood trying to steal internet off anyone who didn't have password protected internet. Thanks to Antonio of Atlantida Street, we got him a new ticket, standing on the street with his laptop.

Friday we gave him 5 hours to make it, and thank heavens he did.

Kara and Kelly came Friday and we went to meet up with some girls we met visiting from Chicago and had fun uptown. Saturday they toured all day and I hung out at home and watched movies all day like a lazy bum. When they came back we got ready for a great dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, La Fianna, where the seats are all couches and they bring your drinks on trays and set them on your big sofa bed-ish thing. It's a really neat place. We tried to go out, but the clubs were packed, we just headed home. It was a lot of fun regardless.

Doug said he had fun in Italy and got to see some old swimmer friends, but we were glad to have him back in Spain. This weekend he has a Catalan Circuit meet outside of the city and it getting ready for that all week, but are still keeping pretty busy. I say that loosely, as in, by busy I mean going to see James Bond last night and to a Damien Jurrado concert in a really cool venue off Las Ramblas tonight.

Next Thursday we leave for PARIS!! Can't wait!

I've got to run get ready for my first class! Maybe I'll wear my glasses and look extra professional. Just a thought.

We'll post pictures soon...

From KK: I love this place

Spain is still great. The weather hasn't changed much. It's definitely warm enough to still be at the beach, though maybe a jacket is necessary if you are like me. Doug is leaving tomorrow for a meet in Pisa.  The flight was only about 60 euros, so I thought about going, but we don't really have that to spare at the moment, so I'll be braving it here alone. 

It has been a busy two weeks(ends)! Doug wrote about Adrienne and Avery's trip some last week. It was such a fun weekend with them. Friday night we had a great dinner at a place called Limbo. The great thing about Spain is that the nice restaurants (save the touristy places) are no more than 20 euros an entree, so it's affordable to go out every so often. We left Limbo to go see the Sardana dances in front of the Catedral when Avery heard talking in a building. He knocked on the door. Someone answered. The man checked us out. He wondered how we heard about his secret bar. And let us in...

 We have read about underground bars in our travel books and how they don't have signs or anything because they don't want tourists. Too bad! It was so random and we were a little wary, but went in anyway and had a great time at some little underground bar in Born. There were many things like that throughout the weekend that we've decided we need to keep Avery around for our impromptu moments.

Avery and Adrienne left Monday and Steve Segerlin, Bryan Lundquist, and Bryan's sister, Haley, came on Thursday. This weekend was equally fun. We did the necessary tourist stuff again, but went up Montjüic to see the Olympic stadium and of course, pool and diving pool. Anytime you see a picture of the 1992 Olympics, you see a picture of the diving pool that overlooks the entire city. It's a shame that the pool is now used only as a birdbath for the seagulls. 

We walked around Montjüic, Las Ramblas, and our other favorite spots, only to wind up back in Barceloneta.

We have communal ping pong tables in the Mercat square that are never used and Doug has been talking about playing beer pong since we got here, so we went to the Chino and got ping pong balls. Thank goodness in Spanish it's "pelota de ping pong" or I never would have been able to figure that one out. They don't have Solo cups here, so we opted for paper party cups with clowns on them and 40s of San Miguel. We played flip cup and beer pong for a while before going out to Born. 

We met up with Kelly, who swam at UGA and is an au pair outside of the city. We had many similar au pair stories, so that was fun. It was a fun stint having visitors and it has made the time fly. 

We've been here over a month now. It's one of those things where it feels like we've been here forever and, at the same time, like we've just arrived. We are staying safe and feeding Doug more than lentils, so don't worry. Now he's just eating tubes of digestive chocolate cookies and knock-off Magnum ice cream bars. Sounds about right, doesn't it?

From Doug: Thank goodness for Rick

Ever Since I first met KK, she has been espousing the genius of Rick Steves. For those of you not in the know, he is a author of travel guides and the host of a travel show on pbs. The first thing we did after discovering we were moving to Spain was to purchase the 2009 edition of his book on Spain, and it has come in handy numerous times.

This weekend marked the first in a long stretch of busy weeks for us. Our friends Adrienne and Avery came to visit us from Italy where they are finishing up a semester abroad in the Auburn MBA program. Obviously It was great getting to see some familiar faces and having the opportunity to show of our town to guests, but I personally enjoyed the chance to do some touristy activities we wouldn't do on our own.

Saturday afternoon as we walked along the harbor Avery asked if there were any sightseeing boats you could take out in to the Mediterranean. I remembered reading something about that, so I consulted our trusty Rick Steves' book and good 'ol Rick pointed us in the right direction. We got there just in time to get on the boat as it disembarked, and we had great fun on the hour and a half journey. We got to see the city and our neighborhood from a new perspective which highlighted its beauty and the beauty of the surrounding landscape.

Later that evening, Rick came to the rescue again as Ade and I were craving some sweets. Sure enough Rick Steves had a section in his eating guide entitled "A Short, Sweet Walk." He did not disappoint. The walk led us through the Barri Gotic, a maze of narrow, windy streets packed with people and shops of all description. Among these stores were hidden a few gems known as xocoleterias. We sampled chocolates of all varieties and even stumbled onto a night market selling gourmet cheeses and preserves during our paseo. Sunday after a day of laziness recovering from the previous two nights we found an English language movie theater and went to see "Burn after Reading." Curiously, movies are released much later here than in the States.




Over the next few weeks, we have Steve Segerlin and Bryan Lundquist visiting, I am going to Pisa for a swim meet, there is the first of the Catalan circuit of competitions, and we go to Paris the first week of December. It will be a busy few weeks, but better to be busy than bored and homesick during the holidays. Also, this hectic schedule should give us good material for the blog to keep all you dedicated readers interested.

On an unrelated tangent, our internet has been down the last week and it had got me to thinking. Information truly is a commodity. We have grown so accustomed to having unlimited information at our fingertips in an instant. This has been especially true for me over the last year with my iPhone. Whenever a trivial question arises at dinner or out on the town, I could find the answer within a few seconds. Now without that constant access I am forced to make economic decisions regarding my information intake. Is it worth it to sit in a smoky bar and buy a drink just to be able to get my information fix? Or is it worth it to jockey for position to the one electrical outlet with ten stressed out students in the library? As far as information goes, this has been an important week, what with the election and Auburn's only guaranteed win for the rest of the season, but I have sacrificed that information this week for the sake of maitaining my Spanish life. It's hard to see the beauty of the city through the smoke of a bar or fluorescent lights of a library.

From KK: Too bad I have the sink tap

I tried to convince our landlord yesterday that I had the "grife," which means sink tap...yeah, I was trying to say "gripe," which is a cold. SAMSONITE, I was way off. So I haven't been out and about much this week.

In the mean time I have been reading C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity. Well, I should say I'm attempting to read his seven "Signature Classics," but have only begun to make it through the first. I guess I do have some of my dad in me because for some reason I've been reading it as I would a text book, underlining, taking notes in the margins, etc. and really trying to studying it. Doug laughs at me because about every five minutes I utter a "hmm" under my breath at a point I have always thought impossible to prove, and C.S. Lewis was just able to prove it in a page. It's maddening really in some ways, but I guess some people are given that talent of reasoning and simplifying things so that people like me can understand them. It also makes me look over my shoulder, thinking, weird, I was just thinking that or trying to escape that point and there you go putting it in my face again and writing in second person so I can't even pretend to ignore it. This started out as a journal entry and not one to put on my blog so everyone could read it, but oh well. 

Last night I read the chapter on relationships and marriage. It talks of the progression in a relationship from being in love to simply loving one another. Not that these things have to be separate, but how they change over time. 

And, of course, the promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things I can do, about action: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way...What we call 'being in love' is a glorious state, and in several ways, good for us. It hleps to make us generous and courageous, it opens our eyes not only to the beauty of the beloved but to all beauty...Feelings come and go...Who could bear tot live in that excitement for even five years?...But, of course, ceasing to be 'in love' nead not mean ceasing to love. Love in this sense is not merely a feeling...This quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

I think it's a beautiful image actually, but then I think of certain people in my life, my parents and grandparents as perfect examples, who seem to defy this 'fading away' thing, so who knows.

 

Lewis goes on to talk about the initial thrill and its fading away. This applies to everything in my life, as I tend to get restless easy. I like change, new places, new experiences, but he says that those who accept the loss of the thrill and settle down will then discover new thrills in a different way. "This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies," he says. He uses the analogy of a man moving to a new beautiful city (hmm) and that of course the thrill of this new city will fade, but it is in letting that thrill fade that the man will discover gardening. I think my mom would tell me maybe I need to discover gardening and stay put. 

I have really enjoyed reading it and have been kept entertained by his writing as well. A topic I found very interesting is about things that have gone bad. He says,

One is the Christian view that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but still retains the memory of what it ought to have been. The other view is called Dualism. This means the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which the fight out an endless war.

He said that the catch with the latter is the bad and good are to be independent: equal and neither with greater power than the other, but independent. This would be impossible because those who are truly evil are cruel and do bad things for their own pleasure or joy. Pleasure and joy themselves are good things, so the bad cannot exist without a relation to the good, so it is the idea of a fallen angel who knows good, pleasure and joy and uses evil to gain it in which we believe. Of course, his has an eloquent way of saying it, but that's it in short. 

The thing that made me look over my shoulder was the controversial topic of the man being the head of the household. Lewis believes that God deemed man the head of household because the relation the family has to the outer world, or as he calls it "its foreign policies," must be governed by the man because the woman will fight vigorously for her family, no matter what, against the whole world as "the special trustee of their interests," whereas the man tends to be more removed and therefore just. 

The part that got me most, which is definitely Doug's and my biggest issue, if we even have any yet. He says,

If anyone doubts this, let me ask you a question...Much as you admire your husband, would you not say that his chief failing is his tendency not to stick up for his rights and yours (hmm) against the neighbors as vigorously as you would like? A bit of an Appeaser?

You win again. You always do. (sorry C.S. Lewis and SNL don't go too well together, but I couldn't help it)

Sorry for a book review instead of fun news from Barcelona. More of that to come. We've got our frist visitors this weekend!! Adrienne Binder and Avery are coming to stay with us for the weekend. Adrienne swam at Auburn with Doug and she and I have become great friends over the past year so we are really excited about their trip.They have been in Italy since September with Auburn's MBA program and far more adventurous than us by far, skydiving, canyoning and the like.  Their blog is linked below so you can read about what's going on in their European travels too! 

From KK: The rain in Spain falls mainly...in Barcelona.

They lied to us. It rains here. A lot. Our 5 euro umbrella from the Chino store that flips inside-out when you open it has become quite useful this week. 

The rain hasn't stopped us one bit.

Thursday night Doug really wanted to go see "I'm from Barcelona," a Swedish pop band that is not at all from Barcelona in El Paral-lel. We got off the metro and saw two strip clubs and a casino and knew we might be lost. The naked blinking lady in the window of Bar Bangladesh gave it away. Doug had researched this and decided we should get there about 11:30. We asked to buy tickets and they said the band was over at 9. We headed back past the naked ladies to the Metro stop at about 12:15. Funny, the Metro stops running at 12. Not wanting to spend any money we walked all the way back. These late-night-post-bar walks may be why Doug has lost 10 pounds. That and the lentils. 

Friday was Halloween and quite depressing. We had all intentions of dressing up and going out, but it was the coldest day we've had yet and it was pouring. We stayed in and watched scary movies and James Bond (Doug's vote) instead.

Saturday we were very productive. We got up bright and early (OK, noon) and headed out to tour Barcelona.  We went to Gaudi's Park Güell in the Northern most part of the city.  It's a beautiful place with a great view of the entire city and Mediterranean. We walked around this Alice in Wonderland type park, listening to street the artists scattered throughout the park playing violins, guitars and steel drums until dusk. 

We headed up to Passeig de Gracia for some shopping. Doug and I are good for each other when it comes to shopping. I assure him it's OK to buy a pair of one euro socks and he reminds me that I can only afford a pair of one euro socks.

After shopping we headed up to Gracia, the more upscale, business-y area to a Torilleria called "Flash Flash."  It was started by a famous 1970s fashion photographer and his wife, who is painted all over the walls with her camera in hand. We were unfashionably early to dinner at 9 p.m. at the most fashionable restaurant. 

We walked back to Barceloneta so Doug could get Gelato at our neighborhood Gelateria and a pint and the FC Barcelona fútbol game at the Irish Pub. 

Today we went to wait in line with the masses at the Picasso museum, which is free the first Sunday of every month. It's an incredible museum and seeing his art's progression from detailed realism to cubism is beautiful.

We headed to the Catedral de Barcelona and attended Mass. The stand-up-sit-down-stand-up-sit-down-stand-up routine is even harder in Spanish. On the way in to Mass there was an old man playing jazz on the trumpet with a young guy playing piano. On the way out, there were a group of teenagers who had amassed quite a crowd having a break dance-off. This is why I love Spain. Every time you turn around, it gives you something new, something real and something completely unpretentious.

I have decided to stay away from Spanish vitamins. Doug got some from his swim club. I looked at it and said "Geeez this is a big vitamin. I'll just take a big sip of water to swallow it." As soon as I swallowed it I looked and Doug in horror. This thing was not going down. Doug, of course, googled the Heimlich (that's the only way I know how to spell it) before he tried it. This might have just made the situation worse. We realized it was like an Airborne and you are supposed to let it dissolve in water THEN swallow it. Not my finest moment. The good news is I lived. 

The Europeans are insanely fascinated with the upcoming U.S. elections and we got a lecture from some French guys about saving the earth. They didn't speak English so this made for a long conversation. 

We also got to talk to Mamie Clementine this week! My mom got a webcam so we can skype and so we can see the little lady who is temporarily living with them. It was really just depressing because she could hear us and couldn't find us so she was sniffing in the camera and looking at Mama trying to find us, then she found her tennis ball and forgot about us. This is Mamie in her raincoat. I love her.

Well, we are off to dinner. Miss you all!