ways to stay busy in spain.

1. study. i haven't really gotten too much homework, but it is a way to pass the time.
2. exercise. there is a gym about five minutes from my house, so that's great. not super big, but it's good enough. it's weird though, they use all sorts of different units here, so the weights are in kilograms instead of pounds, and the treadmills measure distance in kilometers instead of in miles. weird. so i don't ever really know what i'm lifting/running but whatever. it's better than nothing.
3. party. i don't know if this is the best way to stay busy, but it's what the kids do, that's for sure. they party hard. usually what this translates to for the american students is an hour or so of pre-gaming and ping pong at the local city park, and then going to "el paragua", a big courtyard area which has a giant umbrella in the middle of it, and then going around to different bars, dancing where there's a dance floor and hanging out. it's not my favorite past time, but as i'm without almost all of my favorite past times here in spain, i'll take what i can get.
4. well after i finished season 3 of the office, i was sort of without anything american and/or familiar to me, media-wise. so i downloaded season 1 of the ricky gervais show from itunes. oh my goodness. it's six and a half hours of ricky gervais, stephen merchant, and karl pilkington just talking. and it is so funny. ricky and steve are the creators of the original bbc series the office, on which the american show is based. they are also the writers of the great hbo show extras. two incredibly hilarious shows. anyway, the ricky gervais show was originally just a podcast featuring ricky and steve and their preposterous, free-thinking friend karl just talking about stuff. mostly it's karl spouting out the most ludicrous ideas and then ricky and steve laughing/maligning him. great stuff. it's kept me entertained for the last week or so.

obviously there are more than four ways to pass the time in oviedo, but these are the only ones i feel like writing about. this weekend is just kind of a bore. most everybody went to barcelona, and i didn't go with because of some extenuating circumstances, and now i'm stuck in oviedo with no one to go see. tomorrow i will probably take a nice long walk around the city with my buddy ipod and see what there is to see. but it's weird being in a city like this on your own. there's no one to go see that i know. i don't feel at home with the language yet, so basically every single thing i could see or do is foreign to me. i can't go anywhere and feel comfortable talking with a store clerk, or a museum guide, or even just juan schmo on the street. and that sucks. i got no beef with spanish, i just can't speak it very well yet so i'm in an uncomfortable predicament. but it's alright. i'm learning how to rock bittorrent on my mac, so that will provide a bit of home to me soon. and i don't have my guitar! it's killing me not having played for like over a month. ridiculous. at least during the week i have classes to occupy my mind and my time. hurry up and get here monday.

-jon