Dec 15th - Dec 29th

Ok, so here goes noting the TWO WEEK CHRISTMAS BLOG!!! Hopefully I can recollect all of the extraordinary events that have gone on over the past two weeks...BRACE YOURSELVES!

Where did we leave off, class I am guessing, The last week of classes was extremely slow, I only had two classes that met and for the most part we just reviewed and the teachers answered questions. The only class were we really did anything was in my Macro Economics class, as always we were behind on material, and the teacher raced through as much as he could in the last two days. Apparently, we will have another review before the test if we want to schedule one with him, so my friend Miguel from Portugal that is in the class is going to do that for the two of us. That was about all that happened at school the last week, once again not too interesting.

On Friday, which would have been about the 18th, Ryan Lathrum, a coordinator at the Business school back at ASU came to Madrid with his friend Stephen. We were put in touch by some by mutual contacts, and I offered to show the two of them around the city a little bit. We ended up having a great time together, Ryan lived in Madrid once upon a time but it was just very briefly and he was studying so he had forgotten some of the places but it was all coming back to him very quickly. We wandered around the city in the evening Friday night when they arrived, took in the night life during Christmas, enjoyed the beautiful lights all over the city, and then found are way into one of my favorite Tapa's bars for dinner. Needless to say, we had a superb meal of great Tapa's and some nice wine, and on top of the that they spoiled me and treated me to dinner.

The next day I had a slow morning, it was my second to last day in Madrid, and I was supposed to be packing to take one of my bags to Marc's house to store while I was in Portugal. I got absolutely nothing done in the morning, and left the house at about 1 in the afternoon to meet up with Ryan and Stephen again. We went to a few more places around the city, and again ended up at a different one of my favorite places for lunch, we all shared a few different sandwiches: Calamari, Chorizo, and Tortilla to be exact, and then continued on our trek. We finished the day off at the Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art where Pablo Picasso's famous piece Guernica is kept. I had already visited the museum before, but it had been a few years, and it was cool to get a second look at some of the pieces, and enjoy the new ones also. That evening, I packed my whole life into two suitcases, and cleaned my room so I would be ready to move out, and go straight to the airport on Sunday. After packing, I lugged a huge duffel bag down to the train station and jumped on a train to get to Marc's house. I almost made it there, until we passed the station and I realized that I had caught the wrong train, ha ha ha; I felt like a complete and utter idiot, it was the first time that this had happened to me, and on top of that, I was meeting his whole family for dinner and kept them waiting for 45 minutes while I had to switch trains, wait for another one and then finally arrived! Thank goodness that they are really nice and dd not tear into me! We all went out for Chinese food a a restaurant near their house. No, not the same one that I tried the Tripe at thank goodness. After the meal I was planning on heading back to Madrid and calling it a night, but Ismael and Javier called and wanted to go out to a bar for a few drinks before I left town and it would have been rude of me to tell my best friends no so we went out on the town. It was a real lo key night, we stayed in Pozuelo which is a suburb of Madrid and went to a bar and ended up meeting up with a bunch of different friends that I had met since arriving. I ended up staying the night at Marc's and then waking up early in the morning and catching the bus back to Madrid. When I left his house at 10:30 in the morning, the thermometer read -10C, which is way too cold, damn was I glad to be leaving!

Sunday I arrived home, packed up the rest of my stuff into a backpack and was off to the Airport after saying good bye to the old guys I lived with for the last three months, Jose and Charles. I arrived at the airport just to find humongous lines of people traveling for Christmas, which I was not expecting but should have been. Luckily, I arrived with plenty of time and on top of that my flight was delayed an hour and a half. If Flight from Hell was a movie, I was on the set! A trip that is usually 4 hours from the time I leave my door to the time I arrive at my grandmas took me over 7. Once we all boarded the airplane the mayhem started. First off one of the ground crew members came one and said that there was one too many people on the plane so they started calling out names to see if they could figure it out, after about 20 minutes of flight attendants walking up and down the Isles, the figured out that it was a baby that had two boarding passes or some malarky of the such. To add insult to injury, without skipping a beat after the first messed had settled the captain made the dreaded move you never want to see, he came out of the cockpit to address all of the passengers. let me see if I can do tis justice (Insert thick British Accent HERE) "Well Ladies and Gentlemen I regret to inform you that it looks like we will be here on the tarmac waiting to take off for a little bit. Apparently the runway that we usually depart from has a whole in it; I am not quite sure what happened, but I know that they are trying to repair this whole as quickly as possible. In the mean time, we have been put in a cue with all the other flight leaving Madrid tonight and we are going to have to wait our turn, we had to get you all on to the plane in case they move us up in the order and we are able to take off sooner than expected. At this point it looks like we should be set t take off in about an hour or and hour and fifteen minutes or so. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for flying with EasyJet." That was about 99% accurate, damn I am good. To cap it all off when we arrived in Lisbon it was pouring down rain and my bags came off the carousel complete drenched with water, but man did it feel good to be in Lisbon.

I will need to pick this up in a while, off to more family functions.

Phil

Dec 9th - Dec 14th

SNOW DAY, yes you heard me right, SNOW DAY...Unfortunately, school was not canceled, but it was fun waking up to a white Madrid. The city looks much different when covered with a light dusting of snow.

So it has been a short week since I last wrote on Wednesday. The end of the hectic week at school wrapped up well. I finished with a presentation in my first year class, had an exam in the same class, and then worked on preparing a presentation for Marketing class, today, Monday. Apart from that, Thursday night I went out for Tapas with some of my colleagues in my marketing class. It was a nice little end of the semester get together.

Well, before getting into the dinner, lets take a step back and touch on something I forgot about last week. So, mom has been riding me to tell more about the culinary experiences I have had here in Madrid, what kind of different things have I eaten. After writing last weeks post something hit me like a 2"x4" across the head, how could I have left it out. If you recall, last weekend at Marc's house we ordered Chinese food, and one of the plates that we got was Kung Pao Chicken; well, much to my surprise when I opened the container, the Kung Pao Chicken had Tripe mixed in with it. Needless to say this would never happen back home and I was at a loss for words when I turned to Marc and said something along the lines of "Pero que es eso, ponen Tripas en el Pollo?, No puedo comer eso, que hasco." (simply translating to "what the heck is going on, they put tripe in the Chicken here, I can't eat that, Nasty!) and he laughed and replied "Con dos Huevos, vamos" (Come on man, grow a pair)...Sorry for being blunt, but that's just about how it went!...What could I do, he was challenging my masculinity because I could not eat tripe, so I buckled down, overcame my fears, and ate a piece while trying to keep a straight face! Ok, so it was not as bad as I thought it was going to be; I was truly surprised by my courage, never would I have thought I could stomach eating Tripe. So there you go mom, culinary experiences.

Where were we...ah, yes the Tapas on Thursday night, that is how I got onto this subject in the first place. So we sat down at this Tapas bar where you pay a flat rate and they just keep bringing different tapas out until everyone is done eating, perfect for college students right! But what is the first thing that comes out of the waiters mouth, "Todos le gustan Oreja?" (Everyone likes Ear?) and without skipping a beat everyone said " si traigalo" (Yea bring it out)...[GULP]...The first thing that came to my mind was Marc the week before saying "Vamos, con dos Huevos!", another thing that I was not too sure about eating, but I had to try it! Sure enough as before it was not half bad, as a matter of fact the pigs ear was actually pretty good, I am not sure that I would order it, but if it were in front of me I would eat it again. I actually ate two or three pieces. Other than the pigs ear, the tapas were pretty standard: Tortilla Espanola (potato and egg), Chorizo (not like the Mexican one we are accustomed to at home, I think this one is much better), Patatas Bravas (potatoes with Brava suace, red sauce), Pimentos de Patron (little roasted, salted peppers, not spicy), and of course Sangria. I am pretty sure a great time was had by all. After dinner, we all went out to a few different places, and then I made the long trek home. From the part of town where we went out it took me about 30 minutes to walk home, unfortunately the Metro does not work at 4 a.m.

Friday morning I woke up with a cold. If I had to guess, I would like to say that it was not from the walk home with just a sweater and low 30's temperatures, but I probably would be lying. I spent most of the day sleeping and trying to get better. That evening, there was a get together for one of my best friends here Ismael. His birthday was on Saturday so Friday night we were all going to meet up to go out to dinner and then to the clubs after to celebrate, there was no way I could miss it. We all met up at a German restaurant, and had a big group dinner with about 18 people from his university and other friends of his such as Marc, Javier,Joaquin and the rest of the usual suspects. I tried to go home right after dinner, but for some reason I was talked into going out for a little to celebrate, stuck to sprite, and was able to duck out before to long and make it home for some more R&R.

Saturday was another day of laying in bed sleeping as much as possible, watching some movies, and drinking a ton of green tea. Yet again, another one of my friends had a birthday party and I could not miss it. I met up with Marc in the evening around 9 and we went to a Indian restaurant that we are now regulars at I would say; we walk in and the owner comes over to give us a hug, welcome us, and asks how we are! I had a nice Lentil soup, and some spicy chicken Vindaloo to try to kick the cold, it did not fix it a 100% but I woke up feeling better on Sunday! After dinner, Marc and I stopped by my friends Ries' apartment for his birthday party. I tell you what all of there people from the Netherlands stick together, there were about 20 or 25 people there having a few drinks before going out and maybe 5 or so were not Dutch. It was nice chatting and wishing Ries a happy birthday, and as I did the night before after a short while I was able to get out of there without being sucked into going to the club all night, success. Another long night of sleep, and more R&R, not a bad day to end the weekend. I was able to speak with my parents, and Rick since he took my spot at home for the weekend, and heard about an awesome ugly sweater party that all my friends back home went to, the pictures look great by the way guys!

Well, that takes us full circle back to today...sitting here in the library after my successful final marketing presentation, in Spanish no less, feeling liberated with only a few more lectures between me and a winter break in Lisbon. Hopefully it will not snow too much more this week and the weekend comes quickly.

As always I hope you are all well back home, finals went well for everyone that has finished, go well for everyone that is finishing, and more importantly that everyone has a wonderful Holiday season. Happy Hanukkah to those of you you celebrate.

Much Love,

Phil

P.S. A Huge Congrats to Amanda Fraser for Graduating this semester also, I am sorry I forgot to add you in the post last week, but I am real proud of you too, CONGRATS!!!!

Dec 1st - Dec 8th

So, I was sitting here at home this evening trying to do problem sets for my Game Theory class and wasn’t getting anywhere with them so instead I decided to write this blog entry for everyone to enjoy. I mean who understands these darn economists and their Game Theory anyways! If you were wondering why this post did not go up until Wednesday, yes, the latest I have put one up I do believe since I began, there is good reason. This past weekend in Madrid was fin de semana de Constitucion, or something along those lines. It is the weekend they celebrate the new constitution being made, I am assuming after Franco lost power. The weekend could not have come at a better time. Things are crazy at school, well I guess not as crazy as back home, with everyone having finals, but here we have everything due before school goes for winter break, then we come back in January and sit our exams. I spent the weekend mostly relaxing, well, and having some fun also!

Apart from that, not much else happened at the end of last week, we are jamming through class material in my Macro Econ class, because in typical Spanish fashion we took way too much time on the first part of the material and now we are trying to play catch up at the very end. The goal is to finish some 8 class meetings in 3 and last class we did not even make it through one of the presentations…I am just making a wild guess, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN! Luckily the second half of the material has been much easier for me as my Spanish is improving, and if we had spent less time on the original material I might not have understood it so well. Once again, darn economists and their Theories!

Well Friday was the first day of the long weekend. I got some studying done in the afternoon and was planning on having a quiet night at home because Saturday night Marc, Ismael, Javier and friends were all planning to go out;  but as usual one of my friends called, twisted my arm ever so slightly and BAM going out it was! We went to a Disco right around the corner from my house called Kapital. It is one of the most famous and well known ones here in Madrid, and I had been meaning to go to it but I usually go out on the other end of town because my friends from here live on the other side. Needless to say it is well known for a reason; the place is huge and Jams! It is a 7 story club that has different themes on each level. The first level when you go in is the main dance floor and plays heavy house / techno type music, takes some getting used to but fun to dance to and keeps things lively at all times. The second floor if I remember correctly was karaoke. The third was a Spanish dance floor, playing regaetone and other types of Spanish music, probably should have gone there more. But I guess it gives me a reason to go back! The fourth I think was some sort of oldies floor, the fifth was a hip/ R&B dance floor, the sixth was a Mojito lounge, and the sixth was an Arab style chill out type terrace. I hope that describes it all briefly. Well it was a blast and a good time was had by all.

On Saturday, I had a relaxing morning, worked on a little more homework, watched a soccer match, and read my book some. Later that night I met up with the guys and some of their friends from high school and went out again to go dancing. Tough Life, I know! We went to one of the places that we usually go to called Orange Café. It was a lot of fun as usual, and I got to meet some of their other friends who are always really nice. We called it a relatively early night, and I began my walk home, about 35 minutes or so from that edge of town, but nice and do-able. On the way home, I ended up running into some of my Dutch friends from school who had lost one of the people in their group, it was pretty funny running into them, and we ended up finding the other guy just up the street a few hundred yards. I hung with them for a little while, and then the group broke into smaller sections and I cruised on home with some of the guys from Germany and Holland. Such a big city, but I always seem to be running into other exchange students from my school which is funny.

On Sunday, I knocked out a bit more homework, and then headed over to Marc’s house to hangout. Another friend of ours Joaquin came over and we all had Chinese for dinner. I believe that was the only time I had eaten Chinese since I have been here, but that’s completely off topic! We did not do much but relax, and watch a movie, nice to have some down time and just hang out and not do anything. I stayed the night, and the next day was more of the same. It was a rainy and cold weekend here in Madrid, so it was only logical to stay in and catch up on rest and relaxation. I probably should have done some more for this business plan that I have been working on with the first year students, but just hanging out seemed like the better idea. Our buddy Javier, ended up coming over night to hang out, and apparently he needed to make one more model of a mouth because he is in dental school and it the models are due on Wednesday, so guess what, yours truly sat in the kitchen at Marc’s house and had to deal with those nasty molds. Not one of the things I really enjoy, but what are friends for. I was going head back to Madrid Monday night but we ended up going to see a movie, Spanish Movie, as in a spinoff of the Scary Movie series in the U.S. but based on Spanish movies, and it ended around 1:30a.m. and by that time the buses do not run from Marc’s house to Madrid. This morning, Tuesday, I got up relatively early, well around 11:30 or so and headed home. I knocked out the rest of the Business Plan this afternoon, and headed over to a little coffee shop near my house to have a café con leche, send a few emails, and watch Andrew Live on CHSTV. Unfortunately, there was some sort of problem with the Live feed so I was not able to catch it, but do not think I am not going to watch that replay first thing tomorrow when I get to school and my teacher is blabbering in the front of the class room! I was able to speak with Dad for a bit, it was nice to catch up, as usual, went fishing this weekend with the guys; Mom seems to be crazy busy with school, and John is getting through his finals. Sounds like everyone is doing well back home which is really good.

Well I guess I have put enough down for one sitting, I know some of you out there whine cause I can go on for pages! I hope you all enjoyed reading, and I did not bore you. I wanted to just say Good Luck to everyone that has Finals coming up, and a HUGE CONGRATULATIONS to my dear friend Lizzy who will be graduating.

Much Love Always,

Phil

Nov 24th - Nov 30th

Where to start, that is the question? Well, I guess I am on some sort of good luck streak here lately. I thought I was going to get credit for taking Management here, but the class that I was in was not the right one. Apparently I had dropped the correct one at the beginning of the year. Or so I thought! After talking to my adviser at ASU she told me that I needed the class that I had had so I was bummed out, but I kept seeing it appear on my school web-page as if I were still enrolled. On Thursday I went to the international students office and asked if I was stilled enrolled, and they reassured me that I was and that I would have to take the final exam for the class in January, Bummer NOT!!! The first good thing that has come from the crazy procrastination and lack of organization in the international students office, they did not process the paperwork to drop me from the class! I spoke with the teacher and explained the confusion to him, so he is letting me do the practical work that I missed and told me that should I have any trouble catching up to just ask him questions an turn the work in anytime before January...AWESOME. Apart from that school is still picking up steam. I have agroup project with the first year students in my Essentials of Business class, and it is like pulling teeth trying them to do anything. Too add insult to injury, I had to go to that class and meet with my class mates on Thanksgiving, I am mean come on, make me come to class on Thanksgiving, Ridiculous.

Aside from school on Thanksgiving last week was great. I had my dutch friend's Ries and Charlotte over for dinner on Wednesday night. It was nice to have some younger people over to the apartment and chat and hang out. They were really surprised when I told them that I was not going to do anything for Thanksgiving, so they invited me to their house for Thanksgiving dinner, even though they had never celebrated. I was totally thrilled. I got back from school late Thursday night and went over for the mystery dinner, I was not sure what they were going to prepare, or if they even knew how to cook! I was relieved to be treated to a wonderful dinner. There was some festive music playing, and a laptop on the living room table with a movie of a fireplace burning, damn did they out do themselves. They had made an appetizer of baguettes with sliced turkey lunch meat, cheese and pesto on it so we could have some turkey on Thanksgiving, and Ries made chicken enchiladas and a green salad for dinner. To top it all off, that night we all went out to the nightclub, JOY, that all international students go out to on Thursday nights. Turkey, chicken enchiladas, good company and dancing, for having Thanksgiving away from the family, it could not have been much better.

Friday was a relaxing day, I was supposed to have a group meeting at campus, which is about 45 min from home but it was canceled so I slept in. That afternoon Marc called me and told me that we were going to meet up to go out to dinner and a club with some friends that night. It is always fun to hang with this group, usually Marc, Ismael, Javier and I. Marc was not able to duck out of work early so Javier, Ismael and I met up in Plaza de Espana first had a drink and then went to meet up with the rest of the group. Earlier in the day, I saw on the news that they had just lit up all the Christmas lights throughout the city, so instead of taking the metro to meet up with the guy, I had a nice walk through Sol and took in the sites (pictures are up on my picasa web album, you can find a link to the right hand side of the post on my blog). We were all supposed to go to a favorite tapas bar called La Llama, but apparently Joaquin, another friend of Marc and Javier's didn't make the reservation in time, so we ended up going to an Italian restaurant chain similar to an Olive Garden, wasn't great but again, good company made it a good time. Apparently the disco that we went to was putting on some sort of fundraiser for a college that Joaquin's friend goes too, it wasn't the greatest but we enjoyed ourselves the same.

Saturday was another relaxing day. Ries and Charlotte were going to a mall that is outside of Madrid and invited me to go with them. Not usually on my top 20 things to do, hanging out at malls shopping, but it was cool because it was in a different area of the city and on the bus ride there I got to see some sights I hadn't seen before such as the leaning towers at Plaza Castilla. We got home late from this shopping adventure and instead of going out again I decided to call it a night so I would be able to wake up and study some on Sunday. Good news, I was successful in getting some reading and studying done on Sunday. I read a few chapters of my Macro Economics text and look over PowerPoint presentations for a few of my other classes as refreshers. Sunday Night I went back over to Ries' house to watch the Real-Madird vs Barcleona match. Unfortunately it was kind of boring and did not live up to the competition that it usually brings out. Madrillenos were especially not happy with the 1-0 Barcleona victory!

Well that is all for now. It was hard to crank this post out,burning out...NOPE, won't let it happen. Hope you all enjoyed the holiday weekend as much as I did and are doing well

Much Love,

Phil

Nov 17th - Nov 23rd

Almost to 100, days away from home that is! Today the 23rd marks the 97th day gone by since leaving in August. I am glad to report that things are still good. Last week went by and things are about the same. Things are still picking up at school, with the end of the semester approaching the projects and practical assignments are starting to pile up. So far I have stayed ahead of the curve and have been stressed or kept up working too late on anything. This week I have another Marketing presentation, luckily I don't have to stand up and speak in front of the class, but my group met for a couple of hours today to put it together and get it all sorted out before tomorrow's deadline. In my Macro-Econ class I have another practical to do by Wednesday, and a project to start for my Fundamentals of Business class. Not really looking forward to the Fundamentals of Business project because it is with all first year students and they are just getting into the swing of things, but luckily i have too really good group members that are motivated, and one who is a complete bum but I guess I will find a way to deal with him somehow or other.

The weekend was pretty good and mellow. My friends Marc, who I studied at ASU with, and I went to dinner on Thursday night at an Indian restaurant near my house; and then Friday I met up with Marc, Javier (one of the guys we went to Oktoberfest with), Enrique (a friend of Marc and Javier's from High-school who happens to be one of my classmates), and Joaquin (another friend of Marc, and Javier's from High-school) to go out to dinner and then out to a discotecha. Joaquin and Enrique did not end up going to the Disco with us, but we met up with Ismael (another one of the Hooligans from Oktoberfest) and went to a club called, Lemon, because one of Ismael's was celebrating her birthday there. We stayed at the disco till about 7 am, and I was promptly woken up at 11am by some protesting Farmers near my house who had their loudspeakers out in full force; and the news helicopters seemed like they were circling right over my building! Saturday was relatively mellow, read my book around the house cooked some lunch up for me and my roommate and watched a soccer match. I was going to stay in and relax on Saturday night but Marc and Javier said they were gonna hang out and watch a series called How I Met You Mother and wanted to know if I wanted to join, so I ended up going to Marc's house to hang with them. It takes me about an hour to get out to Marc's folks house, I have to change Metro lines, go to the end of the line I change too, and then catch a bus that takes about 35 minutes to make it to Las Rozas. Marc and his parents had invited me to go watch the movie 2012 with them on Sunday, so Saturday night instead of making the late long journey back home I stayed the night and spent the day with Marc and his parents on Sunday. Marc's dad, also Javier, made a great homemade Lasagna and Caesar salad for lunch and then we went to the movies. I was not crazy about the movie but it was fun to go to it with them, and a good way to practice my Spanish because the whole movie was dubbed over into Spanish.

Well, kind of a scatter brained Post, but there ya go, my week in a nut shell unedited!...I hope that this finds everyone doing well, and that everyone has a great Thanksgiving.

Much Love Always,

Phil

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Nov 10th - Nov 16th

So the post is a day late, and I already have received email telling me to get on my horse and start writing this post(cough, cough, Elizabeth)!!! Here goes nothing.

Last week, was another short week at school, the only thing that I really had going on was a midterm in my Game Theory class...I have to admit some of these economic concepts don't really make sense to me, they don't seem to practical in real world applications, maybe its just me though. I think that I did pretty well on the midterm, it was somewhat difficult, but not unbearable. There was also a problem set that was due, but I had already knocked that out for the most part with one of my buddies, Miguel. The midterm was on Wednesday and Thursday morning before the Crack of Dawn I was on my way to Lisbon to spend the weekend with the family.

I left the house at 6:00a.m. which felt way too early, I don't think I have been up that early yet since I have been in Spain, unless I was still out dancing at the Disco! Luckily I woke up with my alarm and was out the door on time. The flight went smoothly and we arrived to Lisbon just ahead of schedule. Thursday morning was relatively slow, went to the market with grandma and then had an early lunch with her, Tia Nicha, and Tio Joao. After lunch Tia Nicha and I went running around trying to get an EU Health card that I need, weren't successful on the first attempt but started the process. Later in the afternoon my Grandma took me to get the Flu Vaccine, that Tia Nicha arranged for me at the pharmacy, and everyone in the Pharmacy was making fun of me because I told them I was not gonna take it without my Grandma back in the office with me! Sad, yes I know, but it is not my fault my dad passed this fear of needles onto me! hahaha thanks dad! That evening Avo(grandma), Tio Joao, and I all had dinner at home, and that night Domingos and Miguel Castello Branco picked me up to go out for a beer in Baro Alto.

Friday morning Avo and I went out again to the Market to buy stuff for lunch, we had a mess of the cousins over for a get together (Miguel, Pedro, Domingos, Francisco, Teresa). Felicia Made the soup for lunch, and Avo made one of my favorite Portuguese dishes, Grao. After a magnificent lunch we cleaned up a bit, and then went shopping. I needed to buy a warmer coat for the winter time here in Madrid, it hasn't been too bad yet but we have already been in the low thirties in the mornings a few times. We went to a shopping center called Colombo, that is just like any other mall back home. I found an awesome PeaCoat and also a nice pair of long pajamas. After shopping it was back home to drop things off, check on Felicia (our nanny) and then off again to Tia Nicha's house for a Family dinner. It was great too see nearly everyone: Tia Nicha, David, Maria, Teresa, Tio Ze, Tia Paula, Pedro, Miguel, Tio Ita, Tia Po, Domingos, Francisco, Tio Joao, Marta, and of course Avo and I! Unfortunately Tio Quin (wow, don't know if that is spelled correctly, I hope so!) and Mariana could not be there because Tio Quin was out of town, and Mariana was sick (Swine flu, Not, just the regular Flu). Pedro and Miguel invited the other cousins out to a festival at their college after dinner, and Francisco and I joined them for a while. It was a great campus and a fun little party with live music. Unfortunately it started to rain so we called it a night earlier than we otherwise would have.

Saturday was another day full of activities! In the morning Avo and I went out for a coffee and it was on the road again! Avo went to a lunch at Tia Biba's house with Tia Cheeka, and I was off to Tia Nicha's again. Tio Quin had gotten home late the night before and we all got together at the Leftover's Restaurant(I am sure Tia Nicha will get this, not sure about the rest!!!!) for a lovely meal and chat. After lunch Tia Nicha, David, Teresa, Maria and I went for a walk all the way to Pont 25 de Abril, which coincidentally looks just like the Golden Gate! It was great to get out and go for a leisurely walk. The weather was not the best, but we did not get rain drops till we were just about home, and I think that maybe only around three or four might have got me. As always it seems like there is more food in the equation, on the way home we stopped at Careca, a local Bakery - Coffee shop, and bought Croissants fresh out of the oven which were to die for for and afternoon snack. Domingos and Francisco came over for a bit to hang out, and before long it was time for Portugal to play against Bosnia in the World Cup Qualifiers. I stayed at Tia Nicha's house and watched the game with Tio Quin and David, mostly. After the game I met up with Domingos and Francisco again at their house and then we met up with some of their other Cousins, Sebastian, Martin, and Miguel Bruschy, to go out for a night on the town. We went down to the Doca's for a few drinks at an Irish Bar, and then met up with Miguel Castello Branco and a few other of his friends and went out dancing at a Discotecha called Urban Beach. I must say that we all had a blast together, but the quality of the Discotecha was not on the same level as the Disco's here in Madrid.

Well, home around 6:00a.m. on Sunday Morning and up again at 11:00. Not Ideal but had to take advantage of the little time that I had left in Portugal and spend time with Avo, and Felicia before headed back to Madrid at 3:30. We had yet another relaxing morning to end the weekend, a nice lunch together, and like a flash I was back to the airport on my way Back to Madrid. I arrived home around 6:00 completely wiped out and slept from around 8:00 straight through the night to make up for the lack of sleep the night before! It was a great weekend and now its time to get back into the grind of school.

I was finally able to fix my computer and get a bunch more pictures that are far overdue up onto the internet for all of you not on Facebook. Please look at the Picasa Albums I added too see Pictures from Oktoberfest, Dachau, and Lisbon this past weekend.

As always I hope that everyone is doing well back at home, and I wanted to give a big time shout out to my good friend Gerrit who will be competing in IronMan Arizona this weekend...may speed and warmth be with you Young Grasshopper...Have a great race and finish Strong. Also, a shout out to Matt Kipper, you are bad to the bone for rocking out another Aide Station at IronMan this year!

And, a last thought and remembrance for a good friend of our family Carol Hymes who left us a couple of weeks ago, all the memories I have with you are fond ones.

Love too Everyone!

Phil

Nov 3rd - Nov 9th

Well, the weeks keeping going by quicker and quicker! Next thing you know three months will have passed by and it feels as though I left a week or two ago. This last week was also relatively slow and relaxing. School was really mellow with only one test last week and once assignment due. The test was based on relatively easy material, but the test questions were written with an extremely poor level of English, makes sense considering the teacher has enough trouble speaking the language. To do the assignment for my macroeconomics class I teamed up with a Portuguese friend of mine and we powered right through it, the assignments aren’t graded per say but you get credit if you attempt and turn in 5 of the 6 throughout the semester. We actually did really well on it; we always go over it after we turn them in in class.

I was trying to lay low for the first part of the weekend, but how could I say no to my friends who wanted to go out! Thursday night all the exchange students meet at a bar and then go out dancing afterwards...there was a DJ set being played at the Heineken Lounge by the lead singer of a group called Bloc Party and everyone wanted to check it out so we made our way over there. Upon arriving, there was a huge line but two other guys and I snuck into a small break in between two groups and slowly funneled the rest of the group, probably about 10 or 12, in with us! The show wasn’t great but hey we all had a great time together.

My buddy Ries tried to convince me to go out again Friday night but I was feeling a bit under the weather, so I decided to stay in. It has been really cold here over the weekend, and Friday I spent most of the day reading and drinking Tea trying to stay warm and just relaxing. Saturday I woke up and finished the book I started on Friday, Hornet Flight, by Ken Follett. Saturday night there was a Soccer match with Real Madrid and Atletico de Madrid playing each other, an inner city rivalry. I watched the first part at home, and the second half with friends of mine at a pub in the Center. After that we went to another club for a friend’s birthday, it was a lot of fun because once again, a bunch of the exchange students from of our University were all together.

Sunday, was another low key day, spent the day at home mostly and then went out to dinner with Marc. Although Monday was a Holiday in Madrid, school was still in session, and I had to show up! I am really looking forward to this weekend, heading to Lisbon on Thursday to spend time with the family which is always awesome.

Well, this post has been a bit scatter brained...hope it made sense!

Much Love as always from Madrid,

Phil

Oct 27th - Nov 2nd

Well as usual you turn around and another week has snuck on by. This past week was action packed. School was good for the most part...a bit boring but I guess that is expected at times. Have a test or two coming up this week so studying and preparing is in the future! Can’t really think of anything at school that stood out last week to tell you all about.

On Wednesday night I went with my friend Alberto to a Salsa dancing class, it was really cool there were a bunch of people and the teacher was pretty intense and pushed the class. The class has been going for a few weeks so I am a bit behind but I felt ok out there and should be able to catch up soon! I’ll have to train hard!

On Thursday night I went out with a couple of my friends Javier and Ismael to go out dancing again, had to make sure not to stay out to late because I was leaving in the morning to spend the weekend in Alicante. Well that plan did not work out to well, but the good news is I woke up on time and did not miss my flight! I even had time to stop and pick up some flowers for my Aunt!

In Alicante I was visiting Tía Nana (My mom’s first cousin), Tío Mana (husband), Bernardo and Carolina (kids 16 and 14 respectively). It was one of the best weekends I have had since arriving in Europe. The last time I had seen them was about hmmmm, 13 years ago, so it was almost like meeting them for the first time again. Tío Mana picked me up from the airport and dropped me off at home because he and Tía Nana both had things to finish up at the office Friday afternoon. Bernardo and I shot some hoops for a while (he is an awesome basketball player) and he beat up on me during a few little games. He and Carolina had to finish some homework so I went for an aimless jog around the neighborhood. Later that evening Bernardo had basketball practice so we all dropped him off at the high school and the rest of us went to the beach with Duna, their dog to go for a walk. We played around in the sand for a while and then went to have a tapa before going back to pick up Bernardo. After a light dinner we all chatted and had a relaxing evening before calling it a night and heading to bed relatively early. By the end of the evening I felt as if I had known them all of my life and felt like I was at home almost.

The next day we had a lazy morning, before going to Alicante to tour the old part of the city. It is much smaller than Madrid and quite different. I guess I was not too impressed with the whole downtown area, but it is also under construction and there were parts that were nice but lots of new construction that didn’t really fit in. The nicest part was that the Mediterranean is right there. We had a nice lunch of tapas at a Basque restaurant before taking Bernardo to his Basketball game. It was really cool to watch him play basketball, but much different than back home I must admit. The high school team played on an outdoor court that was not maintained in the best shape, and the kids were slipping and sliding all over the place. It opened my eyes to the sports infrastructure that we have for our students in the states. Gerardo’s team dominated the game and I think he dropped around 20 - 25 points! After the game we were invited to a friends place to have a drink and check out this piece of land that they had just made into a horse back riding complex. Pierre and Iris were the couple that had us to their new facility and we enjoyed a beer over some nice conversation. We finished the day with a nice dinner of seared Tuna steaks at home and chatted away for hours.

Sunday was absolutely awesome. We woke up Sunday morning, had a quick breakfast, and headed down to the harbor because Pierre and Iris invited us to go out on their sailboat for the day. I never knew how awesome that sailing was until this year, this being my second time on a big sailboat! Pierre is an extremely advanced sailor, last year he did a Trans - Atlantic race in his boat SOLO! He had some great stories about how he was able to make it to the finish safely but not without some serious difficulties. Well anyways there were 9 of us on the boat total: Pierre, Iris, Stephen (their son), Alisette (their daughter), I forget their nephews name, Tío Mana, Tía Nana, Carolina, and I. We used the motor to go to the island because the wind was at our heads and we did not have time to fight the head winds to get their, have time for lunch, and return. Upon arrival we anchored about a hundred yards off shore and took a dingy to the island. I on the other hand decided to go for a swim because the water was not too cold, and it was crystal clear. After jumping in and swimming for a while Tía Nana decided to join me and we swam to shore. We had lunch at a nice little restaurant up on a bluff. We all enjoyed a great lunch of Paella, salad and fresh bread. After lunch we took a short walk around the small little island (800x 50 meters more or less) and then went back to the boat. On the way home we raised the main sail and a spinnaker and let the wind take us back. It was a picture perfect sunset over the Mediterranean and couldn’t have finished the weekend any better. After coming into port just after dark Tía Nana took me straight to the airport and it was back to Madrid.

Well, another week gone by, Again I hope everyone is well at home and I hope that you were all able to get through this post, as in it wasn´t too long! Unitl Next time, and hopefully I will put some pictures up soon.

Best Always,

Phil

Oct 20th - Oct 26th

Well yet another relatively quiet week. Class went by as usual and the weekend was relatively uneventful. On Thursday I went out with some of my classmates from my Marketing class and Friday spent most of the day catching up on sleep. I went early Friday to the Police station with my roommate so he could register as a Foreigner (thanks to my MOMMA I don’t have to now that I am a EU citizen), but I went along because he does not speak Spanish. On only two hours of sleep getting up was not the easiest thing but I committed to going, so I followed through. I think I got home and slept till 5 in the afternoon!!! Not your normal schedule. Friday night was relatively uneventful stayed home watching some soccer and studying a little bit (had some catching u to do). Saturday during the day I watched some more soccer, studied some more and then met with some friends that night to go to the disco. We didn’t end up going but spent the night out on the town at a couple of local bars. Sunday was another day of relaxation and soccer! In the evening I went out for a walk, ended up walking about half way across the city just aimlessly...taking whatever streets I felt looked nice or were of interest in one way or another.

Whoops, almost forgot to mention that I was actually able to speak to my family for quite some time this weekend. We all chatted on Skype which was great. Nice to see familiar faces and catch up. Unfortunately, John was racing in Tempe with all my friends from school so I didn’t get to talk to him; and on top of that, I have only heard stories about how awesome the weekend was in Tempe!!! (Except for Gerrit´s short landing on a back flip on his motorcycle!!!!) Hope you get better quick Gerrit

Today, Monday, I had class and then I met with a guy from my Marketing class to do a language exchange. He asked me last week if there was anywhere that the exchange students met to trade little mini language courses, so I asked him what language he was trying to learn. He said English and I thought to myself, perfect, I did not get into a Spanish class because it did not fit into my schedule (probably cause it was on a Friday or something...haha, class on Friday, I think not!). So today after class I met with Jesús, yes you heard me right, I practiced my Spanish with THE MAN! It went well, and he is a cool guy so I am sure that it will help me a lot.

This Friday I am off to Alicante to see some family (Tía Nana, Tío Mana, Bernardo, and Carolina) should be a lot of fun, and I am sure there will be a big post coming your way next week.

As always I hope this finds everyone doing well, and oops I almost forgot to say a BIG WELCOME HOME, to my good friend Rick LaFave who just came back from a deployment aboard the USS Ronald Regan. Thanks for your service!

Much Love,

Phil

Oct 13th - Oct 19th

Another week gone by and more memories made. Another relatively slow week for me, there was only class on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday and then a fun weekend. On Thursday night after class I met up Marc, Ismael, and Javier for dinner; we also invited a couple of Domingo's friends from Portugal that are here working. We ate at a great tapas bar called La Llama and then went out for a few drinks before once again going to the discotecha and dancing the night away! It is definitely starting to get cold here, walking home at 6:00 a.m. in a long sleeve shirt was VERY COLD. We have been having overnight lows around 39 F. Friday was a relatively lazy day, went to buy groceries, read my book a lot of the day and just hung out (I feel like I did something else but I am guessing that was really it!)

Saturday I woke up late, read for a few more hours and then met up with Javier and a bunch of his friends to go play soccer. Apparently one of the kids dad's is the Mayor of a town outside of Madrid so we all drove out to the little town and there turf soccer fields were opened for us to use privately! It was real nice there were 14 of us and we played for about 2 hours. Saturday also marked the first time that I have been to a Spanish Hospital! Take a deep breathe Mom, It wasn't cause I hurt myself, one of our friends blew out his knee while playing and we had to take him for some medical attention. It was a bummer for the game to end that way, and then we weren't able to go out because we were with him in the Urgecias until about 12:30 and I was exhausted by the time I got home.

Sunday was more of the same, relaxing. I finished the book I was reading, (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larson) and would recommend it, although a bit graphic at parts it was a great read. Later I studied a bit for a presentation I had today in my Marketing class. In the Evening Marc and I went to another Bull Fight, just like the rest of the old men there we are regulars now!

Well as I mentioned earlier, I had a Marketing Presentation to give today in front of my class. I was a bit nervous because it was all in Spanish and although I speak relatively well, I had never given a 7 minute presentation in Spanish. Ok so I was not alone there was one other guy from my marketing group presenting with me, but I must tell you having a classroom full of Spaniards staring at you while you are up there speaking in your best semi ok Spanish was brutal! I am glad to say that I made it through without any huge issues, overall it went pretty well. We were the second group of 13 to go and I think that our presentation was one of the better ones.

Well that's all for now...one more mellow weekend here in Madrid coming up and then I am off to Alicante to visit some family! Get ready for longer posts to come (Lizzy!)

Much Love always, and I hope this finds everyone doing very well.

Phil

Oct 6th - Oct 12

Well it was a long weekend here in Spain for some national holiday, and not much is new. Last week in class I had two quizzes, one in Game Theory and one in Management. Both of them went well. The quiz in Management was written in very poor English so it was a little tough to understand but I managed to get through it. Friday morning I went for a jog about 45 min around Retiro park, right next to my house. it was nice to get out there and run. Tried to take a nap later in the day but a ton of jets were flying over practicing for the parade that took place on Monday so about half an hour into my nap I was rudely awaken!

Friday Night I went to pick up Domingo’s, my cousin, from the airport along with another friend of ours Miguel Castello Branco. Friday night we went out and met up with all my friends from Madrid, Marc, Javier, Ismael, Vicky, etc. It was a good night we danced the night away as usual at Orange Café.

Saturday was kind of Lazy we woke up late being that we went to bed after 6 a.m. and then met up with a friend of Domingo's and Miguel’s that is here in Spain. We went for a walk through Retiro Park and then went to look at the train station by my house. That night we watched Portugal beat up on Hungary in World Cup Qualifying and then went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday.

Sunday was even slower than Saturday! Another late night this time after 8a.m. and we woke up around 2:30 or so in the afternoon. We went to Real Madrid’s Stadium, Santiago Bernabéu, not very pretty from the outside but it is definitely one of the more important cites in this city for the fans! After the stadium we cruised around Plaza Mayor, The Royal Palace and a Market near Plaza Mayor. We did not go out partying again, but we did go to a very nice Tapas bar for dinner called Lateral (look over the Menú if you want to see the ridiculously good tapas they serve! http://www.cadenalateral.es/la_carta/la_carta.html)

After finishing dinner around 1:30 a.m. it was tome to call it a night, Domingo’s and Miguel had to leave the house at 5:15 to catch their flight back to Lisbon. All together it was a great weekend, nice to spend one in Madrid again!

Not much else to write so this may go down as the shortest blog to date!

More adventurous to come in the near future.

Miss you all back home in Carlsbad and the Dirty T (Tempe)

Love Always,

Phil

Spetmeber 30 - Oct 5th

WOW... WHAT A WEEK!

I don’t think this is going to be short, but let me reassure you that it was one Heck of a time with a ton that happened!

I guess we will start off with the school topic again. Well, I went to Class on Tuesday and Wednesday, and have a couple of tests next week.

Good thing we got the boring stuff out of the way! Now onto the good stuff, OKTOBERFEST!!!

As I am sure you are aware I spent last weekend travelling through Germany simply to enjoy one of the greatest, if not the greatest, festivals of all time! There were 5 of us that were Travelling together: Marc, Javier, Ismael, Daniel, and me. Instead of spending €300+ to fly directly to Munich, we flew to Frankfurt which is about 3.5 hours away by car and very near where our friend Daniel is doing an Exchange program (Wiesbaden). We arrived Thursday evening and Daniel met us at the airport. After about an hour and a half of trains and busses, we made it to his dorm, and old U.S. Military Barracks. We left our luggage there and went to the downtown area to find some authentic German cuisine! We went to a nice little restaurant and all enjoyed cold local beer and some schnitzel. After a lovely dinner, Daniel gave us the grand tour of the whole city at night...cathedrals, Palaces and the famous Casino in Wiesbaden. Apparently it is an area where many wealthy people live just outside of Frankfurt. Touring the city at night gave an interesting perspective, and let’s be realistic here, we wouldn’t have wanted to waste time on Friday when we could be at the Oktoberfest!

Saturday morning we picked up our rental van at about 10:00 a.m and began the drive through Bavaria to get to München (Munich). I was not quite sure what to expect of Germany, being that I had never been there, but the drive through the countryside to get to München was absolutely beautiful. The whole way the basically we had rolling hills covered with trees, pretty little towns along the way, oops and did I mention the Autobahn!!! It is something else driving at 140Km (about 85) and having people BLOWING BY YOU!!! Lots of German cars, BMW, AUDI, MERCEDES, PORSCHE, Etc that were nearly flying!

We arrived in München around 4:00 p.m. and battled through traffic to find the Oktoberfest. We had to ask directions a few times but surprisingly we made it there quite quickly. There was one trick once we got near the Festival, finding a place to park our rental van so that we could sleep in there (NOT PAY FOR A HOTEL, DON´T WASTE MONEY YOU CAN SPEND ON BEER!), without being bothered by traffic or hassled by the Police. We were lucky enough to find an older side street with mature tress and a few motor homes and vans where it looked like people were sleeping.

We had no trouble getting to Oktoberfest from where we parked, it was less than a Kilometer and you just walked to the main road and followed the mass! The first day we kind of walked around and took in all the sight s for a little bit, then tried to get into one of the tents (this being much more difficult than it sounds). We waited at a few of the bigger tents and then decided to go to one that was not as crowded, meaning it wouldn’t take more than an hour of waiting to get in! I can’t remember which tent it was, but we found a side entrance where there were only a few hundred people waiting to get in and waited. I was maybe a little more forceful than my colleagues in line and ended up inside without them. I then begged and pleaded with the bouncer, and talked him into letting them in, they still had to fight there way through the mass and the bouncer had to hold the others off that were ahead of them trying to get in instead! The first night was awesome; we sang and danced until closing enjoying a couple of fine liters of beer. We all had a good time and made it back to the van without any problems. I ended up sleeping in the front seat of the van, where it was a little snug and uncomfortable with the seatbelts and break in the seats, but I would guess better than Ismael who slept on the floor between the front seats and the first row of seats!

We woke up around 8:30a.m and wandered down the street to the Café before going to Oktoberfest, there was some talk about going to buy outfits to wear, but that was shot down and we decided to get to the tents early and get a seat at a table. We decided to go to the Schottenhamel tent which is a tent where many young locals go. We arrived just before 10:00a.m. and the inside of the tent was already full and there was a huge line at the front to try to get seating on the patio. Once again we found an entrance that was a little less crowded and got in after about 15 minutes. We were seated at one of the last empty tables, and luckily we were seated with a few local German guys. They were extremely nice, taught us a few different songs and toasts and we stood on the tables, sang and drank all morning long! We could not have had a better day to sit on the patio; it was sunny with a few scattered clouds and about 18 C. We stayed on the patio from about 10:00 till 3:30 and then decided to go out to ride some roller coasters and have a bite to eat. Whoops, almost forgot, we had the typical grilled chicken at the Schottenhamel tent and it was delicious, moist with a great herb seasoning!

I have to admit I didn’t take part in the Riding of the roller coaters, but the braver Marc, Ismael, and Daniel did. After fooling around for a while it was round two of trying to get inside the tent. We were let back into the beer garden because they had stamped our hands; we then went from entrance to entrance trying to see if there was one that we would be able to get into. Unfortunately we had no luck. To get into the ten you really need a reservation or to be there hours before waiting in line. I saw that the people getting in had little reservation cards and had an idea. At another one of the exits from the beer garden the bouncers were giving out cards instead of hand stamps, they didn’t look the same, reservation cards were white, and exit cards were blue, but hell it was worth a shot. We all took the exit cards, went back to our original entrance used our hand stamps and all made it back in without giving the bouncers the little cards. We then found a door that was only an exit where there was only one other person waiting to try an convince the bouncers to let them in, I would have guessed that she would have had the upper hand because she was female and all the bouncers were all guys, but apparently she was not as prepared as I was! We waited for the bouncer to open the door but nothing happened for a little while, I went up to knock on it and the girl standing there waiting told me not to, blah, blah, blah, but of course I did! The bouncer opened the door, she stepped up and started to talk to him in German, he pushed her back I pulled my card out, started walking in like I was supposed to be in there, waived all my friends in and before the bouncer could really question us we had all shoved our cards in his hands, smiled and walked on by while he held the girl out of the tent!!! Makes me laugh every time I think about it! It was apparent why it was closed to new people, the tent was shoulder to shoulder FULL of people, sitting at tables, standing in the aisle ways, and dancing where there was a little room. As we wandered around I saw some people getting down from a table, promptly went over there asked if we could join the people that remained, and got us a seat at a table right smack in the middle of the ten and close to the band!!! Again we danced, sang, and drank the night away!

We made it back safely Saturday night and again woke up relatively early Sunday morning. Sunday was our day to get back to Frankfurt for our 7:40p.m. flight. We toured downtown München for about an hour and a half then made our way up the road. We stopped on the way at Dachau, one of the main concentrations camps during the second world war. Parts of the camp have been preserved and made into a historical monument. It was a strange feeling being in a place that was truly a beautiful part of the country, with trees and small brooks running near the camp, with such a dark history. The dormitories were meant to hold 200 people and at times the held upward of 2,000 people each. There were rows upon rows of them. You read about people dying in the winters while standing at the role call area, infection, torture, experimental medicine, etc. It made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. After touring the grounds where the prisoners lived and were held, we went to the SS camp which was a mere 500 meters from one of the exits from the camp. It was there that I really started to feel sick. This is where there Gas chambers where built and where the Nazi’s had the crematoriums they used to dispose of the corpse. There was an old crematorium that only had two ovens and a newer one that was built later by to prisoners when the camp grew larger and the other one could no longer keep up with the death toll. It was sickening to see the thought that went into the operation; the whole facility was built like a production line. First, there were three chambers where the prisoners that were going to be gassed clothes were put to be burned. Next, there was a waiting room where all of the prisoners would be gathered before their supposed shower, After that you had the Gas Chamber itself where it looked like a huge shower stall, and then on other room for the bodies to be piled before they were taken to the final room which housed the four ovens they used to cremate the bodies. There are no words to describe the feelings of walking through there, and being in all of the chambers, looking up and seeing the fake shower heads seeing the crematoriums, walking through the gardens behind the building where there were firing lines to execute the campers and now headstones remembering thousands of unknown people that lost their lives at Dachau. After a wild weekend it was a sobering moment, but it was something that I wanted to see, and experience.

Well, on a lighter note we finished our long drive to Frankfurt in extremely heavy traffic, road construction, and poor weather. We had budgeted 5.5 hours for a 3 hour drive and when it came down to it, it was a race against the clock...THE CLOCK WON! We arrived at the Airport at 7:05 for our 7:40 flight and the gal at the counter would not print us boarding passes...we thought of renting a car and driving back, but ended up getting rebooked, thanks to the help of Javier’s Aunt who work for Iberia and her contact with the most senior representative in Frankfurt for Iberia that both pulled some strings and made it work out!

We spent the next day touring Frankfurt, which was not that impressive. It is the business capital of Europe, and is where the European Central Bank it, but apart from that, a few churches and some nice little plazas, I don’t think it is really a touristy vacation spot...I could be wrong didn’t do much reading up before we toured but I was far more impressed with the smaller towns in Bavaria and with München.

Well, I am back safely in Madrid again, I have to go study for a couple tests this week, and get the pictures ready to post...sorry the Italy ones aren’t up yet but they all will be by this weekend. Should be a good weekend, staying home but Domingo’s is coming to visit a friend here and will be staying at my place!

Well as always hope you all enjoyed, wish you could have been here to go on the trip also, and most importantly I hope this finds everyone doing well.

Much Love Always,

Philip

September 22nd-29th

Another week gone by, and more memories made. This last week was relatively uneventful at school. I wen to class as usual and made it through all of the lessons alive. It is a little rough at times with the two I have in classes in Spanish, but luckily those two teachers are the best ones I have. I find that I am really most excited to go to those because not only are the teachers good, but because the classes are in Spanish it forces me to really learn and interact with my classmates during group wok in Spanish! Next week I have a couple of exams, and this week I have to turn in some practical work...shouldn't´t be to hard but the work is starting to pick up.

Don´t let this fool you, I am definitely still having a blast! This last weekend I had an action packed trip to Italy. I went to Bergamo which is a city in the north about 45 minutes from Milano. Why Bergamo right? Well, while in Portugal I met some cousins of my direct cousins that live there, and they had invited me to come to their house and spend some time. Needless to say we had a ball. I arrived Saturday evening (I know what you are thinking...Saturday night, why the heck would you arrive Saturday night. Well maybe I screwed up the ticket purchase, off by one day in each direction, arrival one day after I wanted and departure the same...so be it, I knew it would be a blast either way, and the bonus was that they hadn´t started school yet.) Sebastian picked me up from the airport and we arrived home to his brother Martin working hard on some appetizers and cocktails! They had invited a few friends over and we all sat around chatting. I was surprised at how much Italian I actually picked up on...not as hard as I thought. After appetizers it was time to go out on the town to check out the night life! We went to a couple of local bars, and then to a party thrown by one of their friends. It was pretty cool, the party was out doors and up in the forested area above the city. We parked on some lonely road and hiked about 10 or 15 minutes up the side of the mountain until we finally arrived. It was really cool getting to spend the night as the locals do, and see how it was.

The next day we decided to go to Milano. Martin stayed home because he was studying for an exam so it was just Sebastian and I that went. While there, he showed me the more important sites of Milan. We went to a castle in the middle of the city which was the castle of the first wealthy family in Milan. It was quite spectacular. After touring around the grounds, we walked across part of the city to the main Cathedral. It was breathtaking. A beautiful piazza with a huge cathedral with extremely intricate architecture. I just imagine the people working the stone and the number of man hours it would take to build such a structure. We were there on Sunday so Mass was being held, we watched briefly but from a distant. I was surprised that the Church wasn´t very full, but I am sure it would be a nightmare trying to find a seat during the holidays. The last real touristy thing we did in Milano was go to a little place with a cup shaped whole n the ground. Apparently if you spin around three times with your heal in it it will bring you good luck. It was not clear to me which way I was supposed to turn, and people were turning all sorts of directions and times, so I just hope that I did it correctly!!!

After the action packed half day in Milano, Sebastian and I went to Città Alta. The old city above Bergamo. It is absolutely spectacular. An ancient city with four main doors in the outer walls, one to Milano, one to Venezia, one to Switzerland, and hmmm one to (I don´t recall). In Città Alta we walked around the exterior of the city, or most of it, and toured the two Churches in the central piazza. One of the Churches was where Papa Giovanni XXIII body was up until 2000. There was a nice sculpture and memorial display there. We also toured the fort at the highest point of Città Alta that protected it in early times. All in all, it was beautiful and wrapped up a great day.

That night we were wiped out, stayed in cooked and watched a movie. MMMM FOOD! Martin is quite the cook, I learned how to make a few different dishes this weekend that I didn´t know how to before. Sunday night, he made us an octopus risotto that was extremely good. It´s probably because John makes a mean Risotto that I never tried, simply because I was scared to not make it as well as he does! Lame right, not any more, Risotto cook off when I get home!!! Another thing in the food category now that I am thinking of it. I am not sure if it was mental or really that much better, but we ate a mean Parmesan cheese from the local market, mmm mmm Good.

On Monday Sebastian and I were off again as Martin studied, Exam was today Tuesday, so Monday was the last day for him to cram! Anyways, Sebastian and I went to Lago di Como. The lake is absolutely huge and sits in the pre Alps just due North of Milano. The drive to get there was beautiful, through the country side and through some small towns. We dropped down into the valley where the lake sits and were thinking of what to do. Sebastian had only been there once or twice before and not for years, and I had not done any homework so we were just flying by the seat of the pants...not quite sure if we missed anything really special there, but we had a great time. We walked along the shore of the lake for a while and took in the sights from a far. The only ting that really stood out to go see was the main church in the center. After looking at the lake and the surrounding cities on the hills from a distance we made our way to the cathedral. A very pretty Cathedral with what appeared to be a couple of cooper or brass domes, at least that is what I would guess due to the color of the oxidation? I am not expert though. After walking all around the labyrinth of small streets looking to the sky to try to find it without a map, we made it! Again, unbelievable architecture and detail...how did these people have so much time on their hands?

Kind of an aside, I think to my self, why is it that I am so blown away by the churches and buildings and old cities? It is such common place for everyone here, yet at every new sight I am peering through my camera taking pictures in awe. I feel as though I should be going through these cities in a carriage, or on a horse. It is as if I am living in the past. Old people sit and watch the world go by, time goes by slower, things are calmer...Very different from back home...

Back to Lago di Como, while we were about to leave, we saw some train tracks heading straight up the side of the mountain to a small little town probably a thousand feet or so above the city of Como. It looked pretty cool, and had to be an amazing view from the top so we went to check it out. the ride up was awesome, extremely steep, and the sights from the top were amazing, pictures can´t do it justice. There were a few hundred unbelievable houses at the top, most of them quite old and on large pieces of land, they must have been vacation homes. There was not much more than the homes, and a couple of little tourist bars. We wandered around, and looked over the lake at a few different vista points. We even saw a float plane take off from the lake (pretty cool, I had never seen that before!)After making our way back to Como, we made the trip back home to Bergamo. Once again, Martin cooked a wonderful dinner of Penne and red cabbage with a Gorgonzola cream sauce. I am not usually crazy about Gorgonzola, but didn´t have the guts to tell him so I gave it a good shot and really actually enjoyed it, even surprised myself!

Well that's all or now folks.

Pictures to come later this week, before Thursday that is, as in TOMORROW! Thursday another adventure will begin, 4 friends and I are off to Munich for Oktoberfest!

Hope everyone is well.

Much Love from the library in Getafe!

Phil

PHOTOS!!!!

Check out all my Photos on my Picasa...Please let me know what you think, and if there are any problems.

http://picasaweb.google.com/allanphil

Phil!

September 15th-21st

I promise this one will not be as long! Well, the first week of classes went really well. I found out that I will get more credits than I expected and my classes are all very interesting. What do you know I am already sick of talking about school, not much is new in this area!

Now to the good stuff, yet another week full of events. Thursday night is the night that all of the Erasmus students go out to kick off the weekend. I went out for a little bit but it was really cold and I was tired so I ended up coming home around 3:00, which is an extremely early night! Friday, I did not have classes so I did all the boring stuff that I needed to do around the house: laundry, unpack!, reorganize my room, etc. In the evening I met Marc at his house and then we met up with some his friends at a restaurant near by for dinner. After dinner we all went to a little town called Majadahonda to the town party Friday was the first night of the two week festival. I was only planning to stay for a few hours because I had to be at the train station at 10:00 a.m. to go to Toledo to watch the Vuelta de España, but one thing lead to another and we danced the night away until a mere 5:30! Once we all decided to leave, the adventure started. Majadahonda is in between Madrid and Las Rozas were Marc and his friends live. I didn’t want to be a burden so I decided to take the night bus home! I waited for about 30 minutes and finally one arrived. It was a mad dash to beat the other 60+ people that were waiting to get a ride back to Madrid! I made it on, and made it to Madrid safely, packed in the sweaty bus like sardines! Of course the bus dropped me off on the other side of Madrid, not the one that I live on! I started walking, and made it about half way before the Metro began running...I caught the first Metro of the morning, and ended up making it home right about 6:30a.m.

I’ll tell you what (Insert Hank Hill accent!) a 9:00a.m. alarm was not what I wanted to hear after only 2 hours or so of sleep! I barely made it to the train station on time to meet my German friend Timon, and we were on our way to Toledo...the high speed train only takes 30 minutes to get there. We toured all over the city taking many pictures (thanks for the new camera Mom & Dad!) until about 2:00 when the race began. We found a great spot to watch on top of an old wall where we could dangle our legs over and watch the riders sprint up the last hill and finish. It was a time trial, so all the riders came one by one, or occasionally you would have a rider that caught another and the crowd would erupt cheering them on to the finish. The atmosphere was electric when the final rider, Valverde, passed by. He is a Spaniard that ended up winning the overall classification. After the race, while walking back to the train station I ran into Carlos Sastre, the 2008 winner of the Tour de France...photos to come! All, in all the race was a great time and the city was absolutely breathe taking.

Saturday night on little to no sleep I went out again with a few friends. I would have loved to have just gone to sleep but once a year there is La Noche en Blanco, where Madrid is alive all night with art exhibitions, street performers and musicians entertaining the people. It was a lot of fun to walk all over the city and take in the sights and people. I lasted till about 2:30, and called it a night!

Sunday was relaxing, checked my email, went the bakery for some bread, showed my new roommate Charles around, he is from Cameroon...he just arrived on Thursday. In the evening we went again to the bull fight, this time armed with a camera. It was absolutely spectacular...if a fighter does an excellent job the president of the Plaza de Torros will waive one, two or three white flags signifying the reward he shall receive. If one flag is waived the fighter gets an Ear. If two flags are waived the fighter gets both ears, and if three are waived it is my understanding that the fighter gets both ears, the tail, and is carried out of the stadium to the cheers of the arena! It is extremely rare for a fighter two get two, much less, three white flags. On this night we witnessed a kid (must have been no older than 18) receive a white flag from the president... the ear was immediately cut off the bull and given to him. He then marched around the arena and was given tons of love from the crowd...WHAT A SIGHT!!!

Well that’s about it folks, I am off to class...I hope all is well with everyone back home, and once I download the pictures from my camera somewhere I will be sure to share them.

Much Love Always,

Phil

Bull fight with Marc and Friends. Picture from a friends phone, sorry for the quality!

Madrid September 7th - 14th (Kind of a long one!)

Well it has been just over a week since I last wrote, and there is a ton of new stuff to catch up on. This last week has absolutely flown by. I am sorry if it is a little bit scatter brained but as I was writing things kept coming to me and I didn’t want to leave them out so I tried to make it fit in kind of sort of where it would work! Enjoy!

The first few days of the week (September 7th – 10th or so) I spent the mornings at the university trying to get counseling on choosing my classes because I was having trouble navigating the web page that the school has so poorly built; well I guess it is actually more of a work in progress, they are updating it. Anyhow, I kept getting there earlier and earlier because they are only open for two hours and the lines were tremendous Monday and Tuesday by 11:30. Talk about sweet hours again, they are only open 12:00 – 14:00. On Wednesday I finally arrived early enough, I got there at 11:00 and was the third person in line, minus a few people that had gotten tickets the day before and told to come back on Wednesday. The Lady that helped me was quite nice she showed me how to choose classes, and told me which ones that I could choose. It appears that I will be a taking a few Economics classes, and one or two organizational, and business administration classes. I am also planning on taking a Spanish class because the three of the other classes are taught in English, and I only have one in Spanish. I will be taking, Organizational Principles, Game Theory, Macroeconomics of Monetary and Fiscal Policy (this one in Spanish), and also Business Administration of some sorts (I might drop this and take Commercial Distribution Economics instead, which is also taught in Spanish).

After being unsuccessful the first few times at getting a counselor I went to the library and spent my afternoons chasing down a flat somewhere in the city. I must have looked at 300+ ads, about 20 or so that I called on and about 6 or 7 that I went and saw. I was getting more and more nervous as the week went on. As I think I might have mentioned in earlier posts I was staying at Julein’s brother, Olivier’s apartment while I was searching for one of my own. The catch here is that Olivier was moving back to Paris on Friday early morning. As the days drew closer and closer to Thursday night I was becoming more and more stressed. Every place that I looked at was either small, had no windows, had no living room, or had strange folks living there! Finally on Wednesday night I found something that was interesting and set an appointment to go and look at the flat. Only in Spain would you set an appointment to look at apartment at 10p.m. but that’s what it was so that’s when I went! The first impression was the stair well. It is an older building, I am guessing late 1800’s early 1900’s, and it is in an older neighborhood. The stairs are all made of wood, and they are all grooved from being used so much over the years. As I walked into the apartment I met José Antonio; he is the gentleman that is renting the room and he seems to be in his late 50’s early 60’s but very nice. He showed me around and although the flat was small the room that he was renting was fair sized and had a nice veranda that looked out onto the street. I knew right away that it was the one! The apartment is a nice little place that is quite, right in the heart of the city, and close to the train station that I need to go to class. The next day I signed a lease and moved in. What a relief the day before I needed to be out of Olivier’s apartment, I found a place to live!

Today, September 14th, I had two classes. I went to Organizational Principles and Macro Econ. Both were tough, because the professor for Organizational Principles spoke very broken English, and the Macro class was taught in Spanish so it was challenging. I think I understood about 75% of what the professor said, and afterwards I went and introduced myself to him, he seemed very nice and happy to have an exchange student in class; and luckily for me, the text for the class is in English. Bueno, enough of this boring stuff, let’s get caught up on all the fun stuff that has happened over the last 8 days!

Alright, enough of this nonsense, let’s talk about all the fun things that went on this last week; there were a lot of them! Every night at Olivier’s we would all cook dinner and eat together which was real nice. On Monday we all just hung around the house and had a mellow evening. Tuesday night proved to be much more exciting. Olivier had a dinner with his co-workers before he left, so I cooked and had dinner with his roommate Alberto. After dinner there was an Erasmus (exchange student) event downtown. We all met up at a Karaoke bar and sang the night away. Well, actually the place really relatively small; there were 200+ of us and only one bar tender so the party ended up out on the street with all the students buying beer from the chinos, as they are called here, that were selling beers for 1 Euro on the street corners. It was nice to chat with a few new people and hang with some of the ones I already knew.

The next day, I met up with a few of the Dutch guys I met to play a pickup game of soccer at Parque Retiro, which is only about 10 minutes from my new place, although I wasn’t there then. It was really fun, I am not nearly as good as any of these kids that has been playing all their lives but I like to get out there, mix it up with them, and they are all just happy to play no matter what level you are at which is really cool. Wednesday night was really mellow, as I said earlier that is when I came to look at the apartment and then I just hung out trying to find classes to take.

Thursday however was extremely fun. I went to school in the morning because no one was home at Olivier’s. After returning, I gathered all my belongings which only consisted of one suitcase at the time (the other one was at a friend Marc’s house), and moved into my new apartment. After moving in, Olivier and I met up with Alberto to go out to eat for Olivier’s last night in Madrid. We went to an Indian restaurant right near my flat in a barrio called Lavapies. The food was good and we had a great time hanging out and chatting. After dinner, a few drink, and goodbyes, I was off to my next Erasmus event. Thursday night, we all met up at a club in town called Shanghai. Before going there, I met up with a few people that I met Tuesday night for a cocktail or two. The club was full of people that I had met and we all danced the night away till some ridiculous hour. I arrived home at a bit after 4:30, and the club was still full of people.

On Friday, I met up with an Erasmus student at Parque Retiro again for a picnic and to check out some of the sights. It was fun just hanging out people watching and then walking around this huge park in the downtown area. A bit later that afternoon, I went to my friend Marc’s house. Last time I as there (August 19th – 22nd) his parents were not there, but this time they were so I got to meet them. Both of his parents were extremely nice and made me feel as if I were at home with my family or any one of my closest friends family. We had a wonderful dinner out at an Argentine restaurant near their house. After dinner, his parents dropped us off at a friend’s house and it was time again for another long night of partying. We all met up at Daniel’s house around 11:30. Daniel is going to go study in Frankfurt on Wednesday, and while all sitting around before going out, we decided that it would be nice to go visit him while he is there; and what do you know Oktoberfest just happens to be coming up around the corner…Oktoberfest here we come!!! We are booking our tickets tomorrow and will spend October 1st – 4th enjoying authentic German beer, in hopefully authentic Bavarian attire!!! Enough talking about that, I am gitty every time I think about it! The night went on, we met up with some girls that Marc and Daniel know downtown for a drink before going to the club for the night, it was a nice little local place and I met some of their other friends that I hadn’t met before which is always nice because they are all locals. We went to a club called Orange Café, and again as usual danced our tails off until some ridiculous hours of the morning. This time we arrived home at just before 7 a.m. to Marc’s dad getting his day started!

I slept till about 1 in the afternoon and then decided that I probably shouldn’t waste away the rest of the day. I ended up learning how to cook some homemade Gazpacho, and Albondigas. Gazpacho, for those of you who don’t know it, it a vegetable soup that is tomato based and also has onions, bell pepper, and hmmm maybe that’s it. Albondigas on the other hand are a sort of Spanish meatball in a red sauce that is similar to marinara but it just merely covers the meatballs, not much more. After lunch we went to a movie, and then they dropped me off at the train station with my other bag of luggage to make the trip home. It takes about 45 minutes to an hour for me to get to their house on public transportation; it is in an outskirt that is very nice called Las Rozas.

Well, Saturday night was finally relatively mellow, I had dinner out with a friend at a little tapas bar and called it a night. Sunday, on the other hand was a little more exciting. I woke up late after sleeping in and again went to Parque Retiro to have a picnic, this time all the Erasmus students were there and we all brought different things to share. It was quite a nice day until it started to drizzle on us. Once the rain started coming down I left with a few other students and we went to the other side of town to the world Famous Ventas Plaza de Torros. We went to watch the Sunday evening bull fight, and let me tell you, it was quite the experience. I was not sure how I was going to like it because the kill the bulls and I heard that it was terrible, but upon review I found it to be quite the experience. I started thinking about the hundreds of years of culture, and history, and events that had taken place here and it was breathe taking. We bought the cheapest seats we could, 2.20 Euro, or about equivalent to $3.50, nearly free! We sat at the top of the stands but had an unbelievable view of the city to the west as the sun was setting in the semi-stormy sky. It was quite the experience, it s hard to put into words. The crowd was hard to please, and applauded when the Torero made suave maneuvers, and heckled him when he was not performing to their liking. Although it was a little gruesome, I found it to be a spectacular experience and will have to go back to take some pictures when I have my camera.

Alright, well sorry if this post was a little long but there was a ton to catch up on and I just can’t stop once I start for some reason. I will try to post more often so they are shorter and easier to get through. I hope this post finds everyone doing well; I am excited to see that more people are following the Blog. Please feel free to share it with others and comment as you wish (criticism of my poor writing is welcome, I can’t help it, I am a Redneck!). I hate to admit it, but I am starting to really miss everyone back home, I was hoping it wouldn’t happen till a bit later but that’s reality. Hopefully I will talk to some of you all soon, you can find me on Gmail chat (allanphil@gmail.com), windows live messenger (Oneofdabuoys), or Skype (Oneofdabuoys).

Much Love from Madrid,

Chao,

Phil

Madrid...First few days

Well not much has happened since the last time I wrote. I am going to try to keep this short, we'll see if that happens. I arrived in Madrid and spent the first couple of nights in a Youth Hostel right downtown. On Friday the 4th, I had orientation for school. It was not that eventful...we were greeted by the president of the university (about 400 of us exchange students), and we were given some presentations by people in the international offices, and the international student network. After that, we split into about 5 groups and went on a campus tour. After the campus tours we all met up at the cafeteria for Tapas, beer, wine, and soft drinks...this sure wouldn't happen at a campus in the states! I met a lot of German exchange students, everyone was very friendly.

I ended up staying one more night at the Hostel, and then went to Julien's brother, Olivier's, house. It was extremely nice of him to welcome me in with such open arms. The folks that he live with are also very nice. I have been going out looking at apartments everyday now, and have yet to find one that I am fond of...they are always either extremely old and ratty, or strange folks, or tiny little places. THE SEARCH GOES ON! I decided that I will just sleep on park benches until I find a place that I am satisfied with, adventurous right!

The other night, Olivier had a little get together at his house because he is moving back to Paris on Friday of this week. I already inquired and his room has already been rented. Total bummer because it is an awesome third floor flat that overlooks a beautiful Plaza, Plaza Olavide. It was very nice to get to know some of his friends, they were all very nice, and wished me luck on finding a flat. After the get together a few of us went out for a beer or two at the local bar. The schedule here is ridiculous...we didn't end up getting home till like 4:45 or 5:00 a.m.

Well today I came to the university even though classes don't start till next week. I need to go talk with the international student services people to get some help building my schedule for the year.

Well it is getting to be that time, the office is only open from 12:00 - 2:00 and 4:30 - 6:30, sign me up for that work schedule please!

Until next time.

Philip
011-34-676-209-533 (Thanks mom for the correction!)

Last Days In Lisbon

I have arrived in Madrid...here is the posting I wrote in the Lisbon airport for everyone to enjoy!



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I do believe that the last time I wrote I was on my way to the family farm to pick the grapes on the vineyard. Well, it was a success… The drive from grandma’s house to the farm is about 2 hours more or less. About half of the driving is on the freeway and the last half is on rural country roads. The closest village to the farm is Villa de Frades, which is a cute little village full of white house’s with different colored trim painting around the windows (blue, Green and Yellow typically). All though it is cute, we have to do most of the shopping in the next village over, Vidiguiera which is only about 4km away and not a whole lot bigger.

When we arrived at the farm, we opened up the old ranch style house that must have been built in the late 1800’s. It has started to fall apart withing the last 5 years or so, but it looks about the same as it did last time I saw it (some braces holding up the ceiling in the living room that is no longer used (probably for the reason). After getting the house ready, Grandma and I went shopping. The first stop was the cheese lady in Villa de Frades, unfortunately she didn’t have any fresh cheese and wouldn’t be making any for the rest of the week. We stopped at a few other places with no luck until we finally stopped at one of the local markets that had some fresh cheese made by a different person. I am not a huge fan of fresh (I think it was goat cheese?) but I tried it and it was actually not too bad. I don’t think I would eat it everyday but I would have it again if I was a guest somewhere and felt it would be rude to decline!!!

Next, we went to the bread lady in Vidiguiera to pick up a couple of loaves of fresh bread. Not really anything else like it! It’s just a couple of little old ladies that have no sign above the door of their shop…when you pull up it is just an open door in the village, usually with cars illegally parked all around from people stopping in to get their bread for the day. We picked up two loaves fresh out of the oven, still warm, ordered a few more for the next day and went on our way.

After shopping and returning home, my Aunt Nicha arrived at the farm with her three kids (David, Teresa, and Maria) and Teresa’s boyfriend Francisco. After about a half an hour of chatting, having a snack of fresh bread, and changing clothes, we hit the vineyard to start picking the grapes that the picking machine could not get to. It was a slow start until we got a process going and figured out the most efficient way to pick. There were just 5 of us picking, three on one side of the vine and two on the other, three people (two on one side, one the other) would clip the grapes and let them fall to the ground. The other two people would trail behind, picking the grapes up, putting them in buckets, taking two full buckets at a time to the place where the truck would pick them up the next day. We only ended up picking grapes for about two the first evening because it started to get late, we had a nice homemade dinner, and called it a night.

The next day I was the first one up, 6:00 a.m. sharp. Sickening, maybe a little, but it was absolutely beautiful. The sun had not risen over the hills in the east, the rooster was just starting to do his thing, and the air was crisp and still. Not too long after, everyone else was up and moving around, I had already sliced a loaf of the fresh bread and started making toast for everyone. We had a few pieces of fresh toast with butter, and fresh honey, and were again off to go pick. By the time that we made it out there, the grape picking machine had beat us to the punch and was already harvesting. We picked as fast as we could until the very last moment that we could (we had to stop at the same time the grape machine did, to load the grapes that we had picked onto the same truck to take to the processing plant). Apparently, the processing facility that my aunt is using has a 8000kg limit for each day of harvesting so the machine only picks a certain number of rows. We ended up doing pretty well, and hit that limit right on the head after we loaded all of our grapes and the machines grapes into the truck.

After cleaning up, we all went down to the processing plant to fill out the paperwork on the delivery of our grapes. I’ll tell you what (Insert Hank Hill accent here!), things are much different here in Portugal than back home; we were allowed to go all over the processing plant and look at all the different processes of the wine making. We watched the grape be unloaded and put through a separator; taking the leaves and stems out, leaving just the grape. We got to see all of the huge fermentation barrels that the wine is made in; and we got to go into the packaging station with all of the automated conveyer belts, taking the bare bottles out the cases, cleaning them, labeling them, filling them, corking them, repackaging them, and finally stacking the cases of wine onto pallets for distribution. It was really quite something, we walked all around and touched whatever we wanted and saw everything!

Well, after having a nice lunch under the wisteria covered trellis of the house, it was off to pick up my nanny (Felicia) in her village a little ways down the road, and then take her back to Lisbon with us. It was about an hour drive to get to Entradas, the village that Felicia is from, but it was a beautiful road through the country side and several other small villages. When we arrived she was all ready to go. She spent the whole month of July and August with her niece in the village and missed being home in Lisbon. The drive back to Lisbon went relatively smoothly; whoops I forgot to mention that my Grandma’s car’s air-conditioning was not working and we were in the desert of Portugal this whole time! Well it was not the most comfortable thing, but not terrible, we had reasonable weather, 32’C, don’t know the conversion (+32 and times something?)! We arrived home without any problems and had a nice dinner together along with my Uncle Joao. After dinner, I again scoured the internet for Apartments to rent in Madrid, and came to the conclusion that I will wait till I arrive so I can see it and make sure it is what I want.

This morning I booked a hostel for two nights, so I have a place to stay for orientation, and then hopefully I will have either found a place, or will stay with some friends. Well, it is about time for my flight. I don’t have net right now so I will post this when I arrive in Madrid. I hope all is well with everyone.

Until Next time,

Philip

0034-676-209-533 (cell)

P.S. I thought this was going to be a real short and sweet post, I must just be rambling on and on… sorry if I bored anyone! (I DON’T FEEL BAD IF I DID!!!)