Here is the link that you can view my pictures from.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2371785&l=1b992&id=10721236
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Super Homesick.
Homesick benchmark-
Just got out of class and on the way back from class I think I hit the first homesick benchmark at one week. Besides from the first day getting here, it has been fine. It’s fun here, lots to explore, and lots of places to go out. But it’s just not the same. I can’t just call up the homies (its about to go down) and go kick it. To be truthful, I don’t really have homies here. Just friends and acquaintances. Nobody that I would really hang out with on a nightly basis. I guess it’ll just take some time.
I miss calling the 7th Ave homies, the Burien homies, the beacon homies and the eastside homies to go chill, talk, and laugh with. No doors that are just push to open and no greetings with “Heyyyy” or “*%$@&” hahaha.
I miss ordering pizza at unknown hours of the night (no ragazzi here). I miss coming home to a warm house (still super cold here).
I miss going home to my parents whenever I wanted, just a 20 minute drive down I-5 and not a $1,500 flight to the other side of the world.
I miss the food at home, rice with soy sauce and some chicken never sounded so good. Or congee with Chinese doughnut, or Mike’s Noodle house (Peter Phung), or pho from the Ave, or just a huge Caesar salad from Costco.
I miss unlimited texting, internet and phone. I miss ESPN, no college basketball, didn’t even get to watch the football national championship game, no NBA (!!), and I really hope I get to watch the Australian Open (Federer and Murray!).
I miss a nice bed, a big bed and a nice pillow.
I actually miss reading books in English.
I miss my house, my parents, my sister, and the rest of my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc). I miss hearing Chinese and talking to my grandma.
I miss taking long showers, long hot showers (5-8 minutes here).
I miss my xbox and 2k9 (Eric Liang, Tony Duong).
I miss the IMA and basketball. No hyperdunks here, I only brought runners, I’ll show them how it’s done.
I actually miss working at Best Buy. The discount, the coworkers, the BS sales.
I miss everything about home.
Hopefully it’ll get better from here. It’s Friday while I’m typing this and I don’t even have the inkling to go out tonight. I can’t just text some people and be like “what’s good tonight?” or reply with “I don’t know, you know of anything?” Maybe going out will remedy my homesickness, maybe not. I’ve made some friends apart from the ones I already had coming over but we’ll see who, if anybody, will become a homie.
Have fun at home, and as Dave Chapelle would say, “keep it real”. Hope to talk to you all soon.
Just got out of class and on the way back from class I think I hit the first homesick benchmark at one week. Besides from the first day getting here, it has been fine. It’s fun here, lots to explore, and lots of places to go out. But it’s just not the same. I can’t just call up the homies (its about to go down) and go kick it. To be truthful, I don’t really have homies here. Just friends and acquaintances. Nobody that I would really hang out with on a nightly basis. I guess it’ll just take some time.
I miss calling the 7th Ave homies, the Burien homies, the beacon homies and the eastside homies to go chill, talk, and laugh with. No doors that are just push to open and no greetings with “Heyyyy” or “*%$@&” hahaha.
I miss ordering pizza at unknown hours of the night (no ragazzi here). I miss coming home to a warm house (still super cold here).
I miss going home to my parents whenever I wanted, just a 20 minute drive down I-5 and not a $1,500 flight to the other side of the world.
I miss the food at home, rice with soy sauce and some chicken never sounded so good. Or congee with Chinese doughnut, or Mike’s Noodle house (Peter Phung), or pho from the Ave, or just a huge Caesar salad from Costco.
I miss unlimited texting, internet and phone. I miss ESPN, no college basketball, didn’t even get to watch the football national championship game, no NBA (!!), and I really hope I get to watch the Australian Open (Federer and Murray!).
I miss a nice bed, a big bed and a nice pillow.
I actually miss reading books in English.
I miss my house, my parents, my sister, and the rest of my family (aunts, uncles, cousins, etc). I miss hearing Chinese and talking to my grandma.
I miss taking long showers, long hot showers (5-8 minutes here).
I miss my xbox and 2k9 (Eric Liang, Tony Duong).
I miss the IMA and basketball. No hyperdunks here, I only brought runners, I’ll show them how it’s done.
I actually miss working at Best Buy. The discount, the coworkers, the BS sales.
I miss everything about home.
Hopefully it’ll get better from here. It’s Friday while I’m typing this and I don’t even have the inkling to go out tonight. I can’t just text some people and be like “what’s good tonight?” or reply with “I don’t know, you know of anything?” Maybe going out will remedy my homesickness, maybe not. I’ve made some friends apart from the ones I already had coming over but we’ll see who, if anybody, will become a homie.
Have fun at home, and as Dave Chapelle would say, “keep it real”. Hope to talk to you all soon.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
new spain update
Quick notes:
The mom in the house does EVERYTHING. It’s like this at all the other student’s houses too. She cooks, she cleans, she does the laundry… even my laundry! Just like home!
Naptime is for real. My host dad was telling me that he’s the naptime champion. The whole city closes at around 2PM and doesn’t open again until 5 or 6. This time is for lunch and nap.
The coffee here is good but small. No size venti here.
Shopping here is crazy cheap, even though I haven’t found anything to my liking, the girls have found clothes and shoes and boots for fewer than 50 euros. There was a lacoste store but that was REALLY EXPENSIVE, something like 120 euros for a polo.
Smoking is permitted inside here, sucks and makes you stink like shit. There are also cigarette vending machines.
Beer is cheap at the bars at least. I got a beer the other night for 1.50 euros.
I am the only one awake before I leave for class so I watch tv while I eat breakfast and found CNN in English! I was really happy. I generally watch tv with the family but that’s all in Spanish and a little hard to understand.
The mom in the house does EVERYTHING. It’s like this at all the other student’s houses too. She cooks, she cleans, she does the laundry… even my laundry! Just like home!
Naptime is for real. My host dad was telling me that he’s the naptime champion. The whole city closes at around 2PM and doesn’t open again until 5 or 6. This time is for lunch and nap.
The coffee here is good but small. No size venti here.
Shopping here is crazy cheap, even though I haven’t found anything to my liking, the girls have found clothes and shoes and boots for fewer than 50 euros. There was a lacoste store but that was REALLY EXPENSIVE, something like 120 euros for a polo.
Smoking is permitted inside here, sucks and makes you stink like shit. There are also cigarette vending machines.
Beer is cheap at the bars at least. I got a beer the other night for 1.50 euros.
I am the only one awake before I leave for class so I watch tv while I eat breakfast and found CNN in English! I was really happy. I generally watch tv with the family but that’s all in Spanish and a little hard to understand.
Spain Update
Thursday, January 8, 2009—
Day one-
4:00PM- I was dropped off at Sea-Tac Airport and checked in and went to my gate, S10. It was Mara, Marisa, David and I at first, when we got to the gate, where we met up with Rachael who flew in from Portland. From there, some more people started coming, like Nick, Nicole, Sarah, Samantha, and Maral. We took off at around 6:30PM.
Flight to London-
The flight to London was about 10 hours. I didn’t sleep a wink. I tried to drink some alcohol to put me to sleep but it wasn’t working. I drank 3 little bottles of wine and it didn’t work. It also didn’t help that there were two kids (not babies, like three or four years old) screaming almost the whole flight, fuck those kids. I ended up reading about half my book, No Limits by Michael Phelps. I also listened to some music and watched the in-flight TV.
London Airport (Heathrow)-
We landed in London at about 12PM local time (1/9/2009) in London (about 4AM in Seattle). We all had a connecting flight to Madrid and so we went to our gate. We sat, talked, drank some water, and slept. As more time passed, we were informed that the airport in Madrid was closed due to snow! Mind you, this isn’t Sea-Tac, people told me that Madrid hasn’t seen snow in a LONG time. This is probably comparable to the snow in Vegas this winter. Anyways, we went around the airport in London (biggest airport I’ve ever been to, took 15 minutes to ride a bus to another terminal) trying to find a British Airways ticket office to change our flights and our flight to Jerez (City where we would take a taxi to Cadiz). Once we finally had our flights changed to the next day when the Madrid Airport would reopen, we ate then contemplated the idea of either sleeping at the airport or going to a hotel. This discussion started with eight of us. Then two decided to find a place in the airport to sleep since they didn’t want to spend money. Then another two left for the same reasons. So that left four of us, Marisa, Mara, Samantha, and I. We decided to get a hotel since nobody really wanted to take the chance of having their stuff stolen while sleeping at the airport, plus we all REALLY wanted to shower. So we went to this hotel called Ibis and got two rooms, showered, slept and back to the airport. (1/10/2009) We checked in and went to our gate. Thank God the flight wasn’t delayed because we had all been tired of Heathrow. We flew to Madrid (two hours) landed and went to our next gate…
Madrid Airport-
Once we got to the airport in Madrid, we were looking for our next gate. We had about a four-hour layover and you would assume they would know what gate you would be at…. NOPE. We should have known this to be a bad omen as we posted up near the departures board waiting for our flight to be listed with its gate. We waited, waited, slept, and waited. Our flight was supposed to take off at 4PM and it was nearing 3PM and still no gate. The flight was listed at gate HJK and in Madrid, the gates are something like J10, H33, K34. So what was gate HJK? That’s just a way of saying that our flight was delayed until 7PM. Finally a gate number appeared, we went to our gate and waited there… We were flying with Iberia and the day after this flight, the pilots went on strike. So we finally boarded and flew to Jerez.
Jerez-to-Cadiz
Landed, got our luggage, a lot of people had lost their luggage. We went and took a taxi to Cadiz. The taxi driver was very entertaining but once we got to Cadiz, he didn’t know his way around or anything, he had to stop a few times to ask for directions. BUT we finally arrived at our host family’s house and here, all the homes are apartments. I went into the foyer of the building that my family lived in and they greeted me there. Both are retired and love to watch TV. Their names are Pepe and Charo. We went up stairs and they fed me, I showered, and went to bed around 12 midnight. I woke up around 6AM and thought to myself, “There’s no way I can go back to bed”. I ended up sleeping until 4PM (1/11/2009). Woke up, ate and went to explore a little of the town.
Cadiz- 1/12/2009
Monday, we had a little review class at the University here from 9AM-1PM. After that, I went out with a group of people and we found some free WiFi (I don’t have any at the place I’m staying.) then found some shops and went shopping. I didn’t buy anything besides a Spanish cell phone number. Then back home for “lunch” at like 3PM. Then we went back out and walked around some more then back home around 9PM for “dinner”. I’ve heard that they usually eat a little later around 10 or 11PM but I think they changed it to accommodate us Americans. The mom here feeds me HELLA food, even for me. Last night we had some pasta and some type of pork and I had to tell here that I was full.
Some quick hits that I forgot and am too lazy to find where they go:
The house is all marble flooring so good thing I brought my house slippers.
The house doesn’t have heat and it’s usually not this cold but this year is extremely cold for Cadiz so now its FREEZING in the house and I always just wear lots of layers.
This town is super small, to put it in a Seattle perspective, the old part of town (where I live) is if Niketown was the center, it would go to about the other side of Pike Place Market and think of that distance 360 degrees around. No hills either. There is a new part of town but I haven’t been there yet. On the map it looks like a strip comparable to Alki.
Day one-
4:00PM- I was dropped off at Sea-Tac Airport and checked in and went to my gate, S10. It was Mara, Marisa, David and I at first, when we got to the gate, where we met up with Rachael who flew in from Portland. From there, some more people started coming, like Nick, Nicole, Sarah, Samantha, and Maral. We took off at around 6:30PM.
Flight to London-
The flight to London was about 10 hours. I didn’t sleep a wink. I tried to drink some alcohol to put me to sleep but it wasn’t working. I drank 3 little bottles of wine and it didn’t work. It also didn’t help that there were two kids (not babies, like three or four years old) screaming almost the whole flight, fuck those kids. I ended up reading about half my book, No Limits by Michael Phelps. I also listened to some music and watched the in-flight TV.
London Airport (Heathrow)-
We landed in London at about 12PM local time (1/9/2009) in London (about 4AM in Seattle). We all had a connecting flight to Madrid and so we went to our gate. We sat, talked, drank some water, and slept. As more time passed, we were informed that the airport in Madrid was closed due to snow! Mind you, this isn’t Sea-Tac, people told me that Madrid hasn’t seen snow in a LONG time. This is probably comparable to the snow in Vegas this winter. Anyways, we went around the airport in London (biggest airport I’ve ever been to, took 15 minutes to ride a bus to another terminal) trying to find a British Airways ticket office to change our flights and our flight to Jerez (City where we would take a taxi to Cadiz). Once we finally had our flights changed to the next day when the Madrid Airport would reopen, we ate then contemplated the idea of either sleeping at the airport or going to a hotel. This discussion started with eight of us. Then two decided to find a place in the airport to sleep since they didn’t want to spend money. Then another two left for the same reasons. So that left four of us, Marisa, Mara, Samantha, and I. We decided to get a hotel since nobody really wanted to take the chance of having their stuff stolen while sleeping at the airport, plus we all REALLY wanted to shower. So we went to this hotel called Ibis and got two rooms, showered, slept and back to the airport. (1/10/2009) We checked in and went to our gate. Thank God the flight wasn’t delayed because we had all been tired of Heathrow. We flew to Madrid (two hours) landed and went to our next gate…
Madrid Airport-
Once we got to the airport in Madrid, we were looking for our next gate. We had about a four-hour layover and you would assume they would know what gate you would be at…. NOPE. We should have known this to be a bad omen as we posted up near the departures board waiting for our flight to be listed with its gate. We waited, waited, slept, and waited. Our flight was supposed to take off at 4PM and it was nearing 3PM and still no gate. The flight was listed at gate HJK and in Madrid, the gates are something like J10, H33, K34. So what was gate HJK? That’s just a way of saying that our flight was delayed until 7PM. Finally a gate number appeared, we went to our gate and waited there… We were flying with Iberia and the day after this flight, the pilots went on strike. So we finally boarded and flew to Jerez.
Jerez-to-Cadiz
Landed, got our luggage, a lot of people had lost their luggage. We went and took a taxi to Cadiz. The taxi driver was very entertaining but once we got to Cadiz, he didn’t know his way around or anything, he had to stop a few times to ask for directions. BUT we finally arrived at our host family’s house and here, all the homes are apartments. I went into the foyer of the building that my family lived in and they greeted me there. Both are retired and love to watch TV. Their names are Pepe and Charo. We went up stairs and they fed me, I showered, and went to bed around 12 midnight. I woke up around 6AM and thought to myself, “There’s no way I can go back to bed”. I ended up sleeping until 4PM (1/11/2009). Woke up, ate and went to explore a little of the town.
Cadiz- 1/12/2009
Monday, we had a little review class at the University here from 9AM-1PM. After that, I went out with a group of people and we found some free WiFi (I don’t have any at the place I’m staying.) then found some shops and went shopping. I didn’t buy anything besides a Spanish cell phone number. Then back home for “lunch” at like 3PM. Then we went back out and walked around some more then back home around 9PM for “dinner”. I’ve heard that they usually eat a little later around 10 or 11PM but I think they changed it to accommodate us Americans. The mom here feeds me HELLA food, even for me. Last night we had some pasta and some type of pork and I had to tell here that I was full.
Some quick hits that I forgot and am too lazy to find where they go:
The house is all marble flooring so good thing I brought my house slippers.
The house doesn’t have heat and it’s usually not this cold but this year is extremely cold for Cadiz so now its FREEZING in the house and I always just wear lots of layers.
This town is super small, to put it in a Seattle perspective, the old part of town (where I live) is if Niketown was the center, it would go to about the other side of Pike Place Market and think of that distance 360 degrees around. No hills either. There is a new part of town but I haven’t been there yet. On the map it looks like a strip comparable to Alki.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Spain.
So.... I'm leaving in like 2 days. wtf. It's not like i'm going on vacation or anything, I'm going for five months!!! I know I'm going to have fun, I know I'm going to live it up but I've never been away from seattle for more than a month and never away from my family for more than a week. No cell phones, no easy trips down I-5 home, no 7th Ave, no best friends going, and I'll be in a different time zone.
If you've been following this blog or just starting, I'll try to post as much as possible, pictures if I can.
So, I'll see you guys in June. Hope Seattle treats you well.
If you've been following this blog or just starting, I'll try to post as much as possible, pictures if I can.
So, I'll see you guys in June. Hope Seattle treats you well.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Soo much snow.
tire is...
Ben via iPhone
Sunday, December 21, 2008
My wife. through the good and the bad.
I've always loved Britney Spears. Since the "hit me baby one more time days".
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