From Doug: This is a story about chocolate

This is also a short story, as it is written on my iPhone. I am in France. To be more precise, I am in Font Romeu, a tiny ski village just across the border in the French Pyrenees. Snow is steadily falling outside, piling up on the two-door Puegot five of us just upacked ourselves from. Nearby tables inside this small creperia are filled with French couples reliving the excitement of a day on the slopes. At my table, my four closest Catalan friends, fellow swimmers from Sant Andreu, converse in rapid-fire Spanish (I think).

Then my plate comes. For five minutes everything else vanishes. There is no snow, no French haughtiness, no languages I can´t understand, no problems of how I´m going to survive in this foreign country. Only me and a warm, gooey, Nutella filled crepe. For anyone who knows my devtion to chocolate, I needn´t say more. But for everyone else, my feelings toward this sweet confection border on inappropriate. As I savored the last bite, which I always make sure is the best, I slowly drifted back to reality. The numbness returned to my toes and the confusion to my head. But for those five minutes, I was floating above the clouds in chocolate heaven.

The excuse for this whole adventure is a four day altitude training trip at the French national sports facility. It´s a beautiful venue, with a panorama of the Pyrenees visible from the pool deck. I also get to do some cross country skiing for conditioning. Ah, the tough life of a professional athlete.

From KK: Barcelona...

Other than getting bitten in the leg by a massive dog in one of my student's houses and kicked in the back of the head with a soccer ball by some unruly kids on the walk home from the dog attack, things are just dandy. We are hoping for warm weather so we can spend this weekend out shopping/not buying anything during the rebajas or (rebaixes in Catalán), where everything in the entire country is on sale like 70% during January and February. 

We bought this book called A Weird and Wonderful Guide to Barcelona and it has a passage in it that encompasses much of what Barcelona feels like. 

Do you hear that? It's the pumping bass of a week long fiesta. It's the rattle of a silver cocktail shaker. The chirrup of a bar filled with tiny caged birds, the heartbeat of a group playing bongos in the park, the yell of a seller of butane gas, the hush of the sea on the beach at midnight, the silence of midday in a hidden library.

Can you smell that? ...It's fireworks, incense waved by a dancing transexual, it's olive oil cracking as it hits the fresh lobster, it's sweat, it's perfume, it's freshly ground espresso, it's the aerosol tang of freshly sprayed graffiti.

Do you feel that? It rumbles underneath your feet. It's probably the Metro- or maybe it's the groan of the city itself, restless, throbbing. Moving.

I am sitting the in library, among the students who are actually being productive, staring out the window at the pigeons and seagulls warring for who gets to have the roof across the street and heard the man selling butane. He walks up and down the streets with his cart of butane tanks and bangs on them with a screwdriver to make a loud CLINKCLINKCLINK noise, that is sure to be during your nap, no matter what time of day that is. If you want a tank, you just yell out of your window and he brings it up to your piso. 

I was also thinking about how aggravating it is that after three month they still haven't fixed our internet and I am having to sit in here in the first place, but then I started thinking about Spain and this poem about it. It's definitely a give-and-take kind of place. It's annoying that every 15 days we wait all day for the internet technician, who is scheduled to come at 9 am, and calls at 4:30 to say he is busy and will come in 15 days. 

At the same time, everything works like this, so if you feel like not doing anything and just using the mañana mañana technique, it's perfectly acceptable. It takes a little getting used to, and will surely make you lazy, but it's at least nice to live by the beach if you get to be lazy.

As usual, Doug is the exception to all laziness rules. He doesn't get to use mañana mañana and skip practice, but he closer to it than ever before. 

We are keeping a running pros and cons list we will have to post soon.

We still don't know how long we will be here. If we don't win the lottery immediately, we will probably have to come home early this summer, but will at least be here until May. 

We are going to have a crazy Spring full of visitors. It's about time my Dothan friends start catching up, as everyone who has visited thus far has been an Auburn swimmer!  

P.S. The seagulls won.

From KK: Ello Ol' Chap!

Playing London Bridges Falling Down on London Bridge

and doing a pretty good job of embarrassing Doug

We are getting good practice for our whirl-wind trip in April where we will be hitting 18 cities in 21 days. Like Paris, we got to London late Friday afternoon and left early Sunday morning. My Christmas present from Doug was this trip and tickets to see Wicked!

Friday night we took the bus into London and were dropped off at Baker Street. We walked from there through Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, Leicester Square and made our way down to Waterloo Station, where we were to meet Matt Kidd. Matt swam with Doug at Auburn and we were able to stay with him in Kingston on the Tames in Surrey for the weekend. It was a great little town and we really enjoyed being out of the city and being able to walk through the market Saturday morning. 

We made it back to Matt's with just enough time to drop off our stuff and head to Wicked. We almost missed the show because Doug swore he knew where we were going. He lied. After we got directions and had to run back to the tube and find our way to another part of town, the theatre was hard to miss because it was bright green. The show was just as amazing as I had hoped. Doug has been subjected to listening the soundtrack since we met, so he was familiar with it, which made it even more fun.  

I haven't read the book and our library has it, so I am trying to read it in Spanish. It is not easy and will take me about three years to finish it.  

On the way home, we stopped in a dive bar and got fish-and-chips to go and ate them on the train home. Our apologies to everyone else on the train. 

Saturday we woke up at the crack of 11 and had a lot to squeeze in to not a lot of time. We started out at Borough Market, which was definitely my favorite thing I have ever done in all my trips to London. There were about 50 stalls with all different kinds of prepared Greek, Indian, Chinese, German, Italian foods and cheeses and olives and pates and mulled wine and fresh market meats and veggies. The markets are my favorite thing about Europe that aren't as common or near as cheap in the U.S. Even though the food was cheap, we just bought a loaf of bread from the market and ate the chorizo and cheese we brought from home to save money. At least we got to sample all of the good stuff first.  

With Rick Steves' Tour of London podcats to lead the way, from there we did the London Bridge, the Tower of London, the Tower Bridge, the Tate Modern, the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben and Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Soho, China Town, the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone, and finally to a long-awaited pub for a pint.  

Chinatown

There we met a Canadian girl, Jill, and an Australian guy, Dan, who met traveling in Guyana. We had fun listening to them talk about all of their crazy travels, which made our Eurotrip seem so tamed.  

My only request for London was that we get some Indian food, which sure beats the heck out of mushy peas and some meaty pie, and the best Indian food I have ever eaten has always been in London. We ate with our new friends, then headed back to Surrey for a few hours of sleep. 

The most exhausting thing to me about traveling is the traveling part. Since we fly the budget airline, Ryanair, the airports and about an hour and a half outside of the cities. So we took a train from Kingston to Waterloo, the tube from Waterloo to Marlyebone, the bus to London-Stansted airport, flew from Stansted to Reus, the bus from Reus to Barcelona, and the metro from Estacio Sants to Barceloneta. Needless to say, I slept an 12 hours last night and still needed an espresso when I woke up.  

Good thing Zoe and I have been practicing my British English, because as Oscar Wilde said, "The English have everything in common with the Americans- except, of course, language."For example a courgette is a zucchini, mince is ground beef, serviette is a napkin, pants are...underpants not trousers, homely means lovely (not ugly), drunk is wellied or bevvied, an ironmonger's is a hardware store, a boot is the trunk of a car, and the list goes on. We are having to practice her American English too because she thinks I am a yankee, which is certainly not OK with me.  

The weather wasn't typical English weather for January, as it was sunny and pretty mild, which was an improvement from -9°C last week in London. 

We are back in Spain hoping it stays sunny so we can do laundry. I don't have any classes on Mondays or Fridays, so I still have it pretty easy. I am getting pretty busy with my classes though, and have much more respect for my teachers than ever before. The most difficult thing to me is that I have all different levels and ages to prepare for.  

My 40-year-old-ish student, Nuria, only likes practicing grammar and can conjugate any verb thrown her way, but doesn't speak well. So, I try to have conversation time with her too, but she just wants to do grammar worksheets. 

I have three 8-year-old girls I call the Irenes, because that's two of the three girls' names. We play memory or go fish with different vocabulary, or learn stuff like what sounds animals make in English. You'd be surprised how different they are. In Spanish a rooster says kikiriki. My biggest mistake with them was the first lesson we played bingo, I brought a chupachup, or sucker, for each of them whenever they won a round and now they just want candy.  

I have a new lesson with Pau, 11, and Mar, 8, which is my hardest class because they are on such different levels, but the parents want them to share the class. My other challenging class is Constantin, 14, because he hates school, reading, homework and, most of all, English. I usually just ask him questions about the latest Barça fúbol game, write down his mistakes in grammar or pronunciation and then practice them, but his mom wants me to give him dictation tests for 30 minutes a class. He is a typical 14-year-old and now has decided he hates me and his mom. Just when I thought the Irenes were catching on to converstational English I said "When. does. school. fi. nish. for. the. ho. li. day?" and Irene 2 said "Oh yes, you can keep it in plastic bag." No, I have no idea what she could have been thinking I said or what in the world that means, but it looks like we have a long way to go.

The Tower Bridge

From Doug: All the Reyes Magos brought us was bad weather

Happy Reyes Magos everyone. We are spending the last day of our holiday vacation couped up in our apartment as a hail storm rages outside and gives us an excuse to stay in our pjs and not go out. As I am typing the, they have gone from barely visible to dipping dots sitting on our windowsill.



Saturday night we had the pleasure of hosting Anne and her friend Nick. It was great catching up with Anne and finding a common bond with Nick. He was a college water polo player at Long Beach and moved over here after to play professionally. He gave me a glimpse of what life might have been like had we moved to Lleida as planned. He lives and plays for a club in Manresa, which is a small town about an hour away. He said there is not much to do there and no one speaks English. Even though things haven't exactly gone according to our plans, I am glad we ended up here in Barcelona.

We had a good time with Anne and Nick. They didn't arrive until later in the evening and after a few drinks at our apartment (note to self: the bottled martini blanco here is not the same as a martini cocktail) we met up with some friends for dinner. It was supposed to be Erin Mushaway's last night in town so we ate with some of her friends. I had an enlightening conversation with her friend Mireia who explained a lot of Catalan culture including the whole Three Kings vs. Father Christmas debate. The Catalan government ran a campaign urging residents to decorate their houses with the Three Kings because they are more traditional as opposed to the international consumer driven Santa Claus figure. A late night botellón kept us all in bed most of the morning, and when we finally woke up Anne and NIck had to leave and Erin had missed her flight.



Sunday afternoon we went to The Caixa Forum musuem where we saw several great exhibits. My favorite by far was the Alphonse Mucha exhibit. I had studied him in both my Art History and Graphic Design History classes at Auburn. He created the whole Art Noveau movement, or as it was originally called here estilo de Mucha. He was also very innovative in the field of design for advertising. He launched the career of actress Sarah Bernhardt through a series of poster and even created his own soap. My favorite of his works were his rough pencil sketches and loose oil paintings.



To get a taste of the Spanish culture, we went to the parade of the Reyes Magos last night. After jostling for position and waiting for 30 minutes, the floats finally came our way. Initially, I was dissappointed, as I saw three people sitting on top of a tourist bus decorated with streamers. This is what all the hype is all about? We waited a while longer and realized that was just a warm up. Each king (Kasper, Balthasar, and Melchoir) had their own float and entourage of dancers throwing candy to the crowds. The whole production ended up being pretty impressive. We felt like the only people there without young children and it seemed like everyone had at least one kid perched on their shoulder for a better view. Many experienced parents even brought step ladder for their kids to stand on.

Tomorrow its back to everyday life for us. I have to practice twice and hopefully meet with Miguel and the HR department to sort out a contract for my internship, and KK resumes her lessons on Thursday.

From KK: Happy New Year!

Ringing in 2009 in Plaça d'Espanya

2009! It's going to be a good year, I can already tell.

I know this might sound stupid to most of you, but for the first time in my life I feel OLD. We were talking about Y2K and what we did for the millenium. I was with all my girlfriends in downtown Dothan, watching Red Goat play and hearding cows (that turned out to be bulls) at Rachel's. Then it hit me that that was nine years ago. I can't be old enough to remember more than one decade! It doesn't help that I have the knees of a 200-year-old person that creak when it rains to make me feel even older.

Yes, I realize I am only 23, but I have always felt like a child and now, I guess, I have experienced my first reality check. Anyway, we have high hopes for this year.

Doug found my notebook today while I was making lunch. It is full of lists and scribbles of possible routes for our 21-day train trip in April. Apparently I need to work on my communication because he just picked it up, cocked his head sideways with a wrinkled forehead and said, "VIE yields BUD with three isotopes?" Which clearly read Vienna to Budapest is a 3-hour train ride. Needless to say, we have a long way to go.

New Years Eve Dinner

We had quite the untraditional Spanish New Years celebration. Doug, Kelley (from UGA) and I went to our Danish friend Iben's house for a traditional Danish meal. Her brother and his friend came along, as well as a Dutch guy and his German girlfriend. As international as that was, we did try to fit in with the españols a bit and ran down to Plaça d'Espanya before the countdown, with handfuls of grapes, plastic champagne glasses and cava for all.



Iben, KK and Kelley with Iben's watering can purse

Metro ride home Jan. 1, 1 pm

Tonight our friend, Anne Amardeilh, who also swam with Doug at Auburn and has just moved back home to Marseilles is coming to visit for the night. We are going out with Erin Mushaway for her last night in Spain before moving back home to Texas.

Thanks to Spain, we are still on Christmas vacation, and will continue to be until after Reyes Magos on January 6. The Reyes Magos, or Three Wisemen, apparently come in (of course) on a barge/ocean liner because camels aren't very prevelent in Spain. I guess...

Anyway, we are enjoying being here during the Crisismas season because the Ajuntament, or city government of Barcelona, realizes everyone is in a crunch and not able to spend as much on museum entries, etc. so they are having many more free exhibits than usual. We went to a Rodchenko exhibit last week in Gaudi's Casa Mila. Tomorrow we are going to an Alphonse Mucha exhibit at the Caixa Forum.

I was taking down our chino Christmas tree and reindeer window stickers when Doug walked in from practice and I thought he was going to cry. He wants to leave the tree up all year. We compromised and have the lights still up and paper chains on the ceiling, but that's as far as I'll go.

We will enjoy these last few days of holiday gluttony trying to find football streaming online and the paper chains can stay up only until that's over. And speaking of football, the season wasn't a complete loss, as Alabama didn't get a chance to go to the National Championship! Ha!

Can't wait to see all of our visitors this Spring!