something new.

finally something worth writing about. the last like two weeks, really nothing out of the ordinary has happened except carnival in oviedo and that went down almost the same as it did in aviles, so it really wasn't worth writing about. other than that, i guess you could say i've hit my stride here in spain. which, to be honest, is sort of a disappointment. i don't really know what i was expecting, but not exactly this. i almost feel like i'm wasting my time, i can get into a daily routine in the states just fine; that's not what i want here. nowadays, i wake up about 10/11, get to the gym in the morning with my two buds, after that get back, shower, eat lunch, head to class usually by 2, stay at school most days until 8 when i'm done with class, head back home, grab dinner, then usually either head to the nearby internet cafe for a mac date or head to the central park for ping pong. usually i'm in bed and asleep by 2. certain days offer different options, but for the most part that is my daily routine. i don't want to say boring, but at times...almost.

the last few days have been great though. thursday was all sorts of great things. i woke up and went to the gym, the start of a normal day, headed home quick and met blake at the cafe at 1. we've had this idea knocking around since we got to spain to go visit paris (blake's got a friend from high school that lives in paris), and we finally worked out a perfect schedule for our weekend getaway. we worked all the details out right before our class, so we waited on actually buying airplane tickets until later and headed to class. my teacher didn't show up, holler, so i went to the nearby mall and checked out carrefour, this huge wal-mart-esque (is it gramatically acceptable to double-hyphenate a word?) store that had tons of stuff, including orange, two-star ping pong balls (ping pong balls come in quality of one, two, or three stars. i'm pretty psyched to play with my two-star pong balls.) they also had, and this was great, REAL mountain dew. this is literally the only place i've seen real mountain dew. i didn't buy any, but i will soon.

so i bought the pong balls and headed back to the cafe to meet blake. we finalized our plans and bought some airplane tickets. here is our tentative plan. different than what we had originally wanted (spend a full three days in paris and get back on monday in time for classes), but i'm really happy with this. thursday night at 1 we are catching a bus to bilbao, we'll get to bilbao around 5ish, chill for two hours, get on a plane at 7:30, arrive in paris about two hours later. meet up with blake's friend and explore the city of love. so great. even greater, blake and i basically had the same idea of what we want to do in paris: see the louvre, see the eiffel tower. whatever else happens is icing baby. so friday night maybe we'll go out, see the night life in paris, saturday do whatever else we have left to do, head back early sunday morning for bilbao. once we get to bilbao around lunch time, we have no pressing obligation to get back to oviedo so blake suggested we just spend the afternoon/evening at the guggenheim. ok i literally just went to the wikipedia site for the guggenheim for the first time, i didn't know anything about it other than it was a museum. seriously, go to that link. it looks incredible. i just got crazy excited about seeing that thing. so that will be an awesome sunday. then we hop on the bus back to oviedo around 6, get back around 11, be in bed at a modest 12 midnight. nice little weekend we have planned.

ok recap of the day so far, i worked out, found mt. dew and orange, two-star ping pong balls, and planned a trip to paris and bought airplane tickets. all by 4 pm. productivity sizzler. so after that, i went back to my house, got some food, read a bit, and headed back to class at 6. it's one of my two favorite classes, english-spanish translation. the teacher is great, he's a native spanish speaker but he learned english in the UK, so he speaks really fluent english like a brit. so awesome. i think i feel better about speaking spanish in that class because i know i've got a bit of a fall-back, he'll understand me better than a teacher that only speaks spanish. and he's just a fun guy. so class was fine. headed back to my house, had some dinner with my parents, and then something great happened. i forgot about this earlier, when i woke up i talked to my mom for a bit about something that had happened, their landlady had talked to them about her son-in-law wanting help learning english. guess what, i speak english really well so the son-in-law was wondering if i would be willing to help him learn english. for money. how killer is that? so of course i said yes and so she told me i would go over to his apartment later in the evening and meet him. so a little after 9 pm, me and jose, my host dad, headed to his apartment, literally one building away. this guy's name is, actually i just tried to remember but i can't. i met his wife though, and he's got two kids, this 12 year old boy i didn't meet and this super cute 7 year old daughter that i saw watching the jungle book. the guy, jose, and i went into his living room and just talked for awhile. and man the living room was nice. this guy is like fifty-three, works in aviles, and has a great apartment with super nice decorations and furniture. so i'm pretty psyched about it. and he speaks super basic english so it is gonna be eazy peazy lemon squeezy. and he's paying me! when we talked about that all i said was that obviously i'm not a real teacher or anything so whatever he wants to pay me is fine. cause i mean come on, i'm going to be speaking a lot of spanish with him, so i'm gonna be getting a lot of good out of this whole arrangement. so that is super super great. and i know he said some euro amount, but he said it super fast and i'm bad with spanish numbers so i just said sure. he's taking english classes right now which are finished at the end of this month so i don't start my "job" until march. but i was super psyched for that. and then i finished my evening back at the cafe having a special valentine's mac date with my gf. good good day.

and today i climbed a mountain. and then hiked along the sides of a bunch of others. and don't feel like writing about it too much. pictures will be on facebook. check it out.

-jon