so i tend to keep my post titles pretty obvious. this one is no exception. i bought this yesterday:

that’s my new guitar! i’m going to be taking flamenco lessons so i will know how to play for all the flamenco clubs back in lincoln. man, it’s going to be awesome! but seriously, i am taking lessons and i’m super happy to be playing again cause it’s been a month since i’ve held my beloved larivée, and even though this can’t take it’s place, it makes a nice mistress while i’m away.

i’ve been hanging out with José Luís, a friend i met in class. he’s super cool. i’m really excited to start meeting all his spanish friends and getting involved in the local life. …and meet some ladies… can’t deny it. ok, that’s all for this time! peace.

so this is the rest of the córdoba trip. the royal alcázar and it’s extremely royal gardens:

below you will see two pictures of the same bell tower with a lot of stuff inbetween. like foutains, giant walls, and other stuff.

and these would be photos of the garden, um, shrubs? tree-shrubs? shrub-cones?

and these next two are of these statues that i really liked. the second one here is one of my favorite pics of the trip so far. the sky is so blue behind them it looks like they’re coming to life. it’s also my current desktop background. fun fact!

so that was córdoba. today i went and signed up for spanish guitar lessons, which i’m very juiced about. just gotta go buy a guitar now… tonight fabrício and i are hosting a valentine’s dinner with the mexican girls next door and bobby. that should be fun. i gotta start cleaning! here’s one for the road. this fountain was really pissing me off.

that’s where i went yesterday. it’s a decent sized town, a little bigger than lincoln. there was a motley cr(üe)(ew) of eight of us going. my roommate Fabrício, the two Ecuadorians, Cláudia, their classmate Paco, and our neighbors Melissa and Jade from Mexico. the first 5 took Paco’s car there, while Jade, Melissa, and i rode the bus. we left Sevilla at 9 am and got to Córdoba at 10:30. unfortunately, the others weren’t sure when they were going to leave, so we ended up waiting at the bus station until 12 before we left to go find some food and see sites.

i ate some flamenquín. it’s this long log of meat that they deep fry. it was really good. then we went to the famed mezquita. it was rather expensive at €8, but as soon as we walked inside we forgot about that:

those four photos are from the mosque section, constructed by islamic kings during the 8th-12th centuries C.E.

and these photos are from the cathedral part of the mezquita that the conquerings christians “christianized” with their art work and holy relics. well, i would’ve converted. after that we went to córdoba’s alcázar which has a really great section of gardens as well. i think i will hold off on those photos for a couple days. let you soak in the mezquita for a little bit. much love.

that’s where i went today when i headed to the city to buy a book for class. it was perfect because the book stores were closed when i got there are four. so i walked up to the alcázar, which is free for students, and went in to check it out. about 1/5 of the area within the walls is the “palace” portion of the alcázar. the other 4/5 is the giant royal garden. it’s all right smack dab in the center of sevilla. but there were no cars to be heard. it was as peaceful as if it were an island. first i’ll show you some of the inside, which doesn’t look much different from other alcázares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not awesome. sometimes it’s hard to remember to be awed when you so many awe-inspiring things that are similar. but here goes the picture overload:

this is a ceiling, obviously.

ok, those are all from the inside. now, let’s move out to the garden. (is this mtv cribs?)

i’z gots all kindz of oweenge tweez up heyuhz in da back yawd.

yes, i set the camera down and set it on timer and walked away and then walked back so it would look candid. i admit my pretensions.

this was a hedge maze that was really fun to get lost in.

so there was a ton more that i saw. but it takes a little while to upload pictures so i’m going to leave it at that. tomorrow morning i’m going to córdoba, about 70 miles east of here. it’s got one of the greatest buildings of the western world: built in 784, La Mezquita. look it up on google. i’ll post pictures by monday. peace!

so we went to the FC Sevilla game on sunday and it was really fun!

it was Cristian, Andrés, Fabrício and me.

there were lots of crazy fans that were throwing bottles and other objects all over the field after Sevilla ended up losing. all those people with all the flags were chanting and singing the entire game. they had chants for different players and even one for the ref – who wasn’t very well like by the end after he handed out 14 cards during the game. conspiracy! but you’ll never have to tell European soccer fans to cry foul. they were born crying foul at refferees.

quite an eventful one this time around. we (Fabrício, myself, the ecuadorians, Victor the cuban, Marcello the mexican) went out on friday to the clubs. it was a much better time than the last time we went out. mostly because Kool was a much better club for watching people dance than Azúcar de Cuba. not knowing merengue, samba, salsa, or any other dance, i take my place by the bar and watch. luckily, fabricio is the same way so we just hang out together. Kool has two levels: the lower level is more american music, techno beats, and popular songs mixed from all the decades. but the upper level is the place to see the dance. here’s what it looked like:


that’s Cristian dancing next to the bar.

and this is the dance floor.

this guy in the middle wearing the hat was amazing. here he is teaching some people a special dance. i could have watched him for hours. he had a very unique mix of sevilla’s classic and michael jackson’s snap-legged style. loved it.

after Kool closed around 6 am we marched on to another place and had some beers. we crossed a bridge near the CruzCampo building. Cruzcampo is like budweiser in the US. it’s your standard beer. here, you can see the group on the bridge with the building behind us.

it’s (from left to right) Fabrício, Andrés, Marcello, and Cristian.

we spent about an hour at that bar and then it was about time for the first bus of the morning to pass by. so we walked back to the center of town and we all went home to our residences via the bus. i got to sleep for about 3.5 hours before i got up at 11 to go meet my friend bobby. she and i were going to this art exhibit that is free on saturdays from 11 to 3. turns out…it actually closed at 2 right when we got there, so the guy let us see it for a few minutes. it was SO cool. i can’t explain. the guy’s colors were incredible. so sharp and true. i was very impressed. i’m going to have to go back and take some photos next weekend for sure. i went to the fútbol match last night with fabrício and the ecuadorians. it was super fun, and i promise i’ll blog about it tomorrow. ok!

hope yours was just as exciting!

this is the first entry in my journal. justin millhouse bought this journal for me. i’ve used it quite a bit. thanks justin.

January 17, 2006 Tuesday 8:26 am Manchester, England

“I can now say that Hollywood casting directors must be very picky about who they cast with British accents. These people are terribly difficult to understand. I felt so dumb asking them to repeat themselves when we speak the same language. And they’re the mother country too! So there’s my inferiority complex to factor in, too. A guy who checked my boarding pass actually said “Cheers” to me. I can’t say I haven’t been trying out my own British accent with them, just to see if they say anything. I think it would be hilarious if one of them called me on it. What an awkward social exchange that would be! Maybe there would be an insult duel. USA v. England. There’s wireless here but it costs 6 Lira per hour and I don’t have that kind of money.”

my lack of upper-case use in cyber space in no way predicts that i actually do write in formal and gramatically-correct english although i may not type that way all the time sometimes it’s hard to know when you are typing too long of a sentence on the internet but when you have a nice lined moleskine journal it’s really easy to tell when you are doing that so you know when too long is too long so you won’t find any english errors in my journal.

so the school week is in full flux…actually tomorrow is my last day for the week. i’m still not wrapping my head around not having school on fridays. so this weekend i was thinking about going to morocco with some girls from class, but alas it’s too much money. so instead i’ll stay here this weekend and go to the football match on sunday night. it will surely be a blast!

i trekked around yesterday to some places of the city i hadn’t seen yet. mainly, the guadalquivir river that passes through the west half of sevilla. here are some photos i took:

in this one you can see the tower of the sevilla cathedral in the distance, as well as the “golden tower” on the far right. the rest are taken from the other bank.

so that was just a sculpture i walked by on my way to the bus stop. i was coming home from eating some pastries at a bakery with some girls from class. they’re from TCU and are pretty cool. today in my woman and literature class (myself being the only guy in said class) i was asked to describe what the ideal woman consists of. this after we disected how evil men have been, discussing the history of misogyny and abuse of power, all that kind of stuff. and then she turns to me, the only male, and asks me to resume for the class what the ideal woman is. does anyone else think that’s a little…um, too leading? i felt like i had to a.) defend the history of men (which i’ll admit isn’t pretty in this instance), b.) give an answer that didn’t some how lump me in with them, c.) still be honest, d.) be true to the topic at hand (misogyny and censorship). so that was a lot. and it was in spanish, so i was working with a smaller vocabulary. it was just uncomfortable.

whatever. it was still a good experience. suprise questions like that are always good to keep me on my toes. so long!

oh man. the weekend was really a complete failure. i tried to do things. i tried i really tried. ok, so it wasn’t a failure. it was just a let down for being in spain. i went out with my intercambio partner José on saturday night. he was super nice and helped me learn a lot of new words and frases that will help me not sound like such a formal spanish speaker. but then…he started talking about how he has so much sex all the time with all these girls…and about the american girls that he’s known in that way…over and over, almost every other comment was directed toward how many girls, yadda, yadda… i began to wonder what my obligation was:

do i just laugh along with him and pretend like that’s fine so as to not seem like an ignorant and offended american? i know the culture is much more open and active with such things. and i don’t want to disrespect the culture, that would be a mistake. but how do i tell him that i don’t think that’s the greatest thing ever without losing that friendship. i don’t know.

so that night i went over to bobby’s who was planning on partying with some of her spanish friends. we ended up sitting around in her appartment for almost 5 hours until about 2:30 AM when we finally got up and decided to go somewhere. bad thing is it was raining and really cold. probably 40 degrees. all i had was a t-shirt and my jacket. so we set off to find this guy’s house, but there were no taxis at all! there are usually dozens of them. so we walked…for about 45 minutes…across sevilla to find this guys place and eventually got there completely drenched just as everyone was heading home. sigh…so we took a cab back to her place and fell asleep on the couches. what a terrible attempt at being social! our inertia was so strong that it kept us on those couches watching “casino” in spanish until 2:30 and then we didn’t even get to the party we had planned to go to. oh well, at least that gave me somthing to post on here.

sorry i didn’t take any photos. peace.

today’s been pretty boring so far. no homework to do yet, so i’m just hanging out at the dorm. i’m hanging out with my intercambio partner in a few hours at 5. the university pairs every american student up with a student from spain and then we hang out with them and get integrated into the culture here that way. so josé is coming to pick me up today at 5 and we’re gonna go get some coffee or something. fabrício and the rest of my friends here have left for granada because they don’t have school on monday or tuesday. so i’m here all alone this weekend. it’s kinda nice, but kinda boring too. here’s what my dormroom looks like.



i don’t know what else to say.