2/2/03 Domingo - Well, we've been in San Sebastian for almost a
month now, and it's been pretty good to us. We've found free spanish lessons
for 12 hours a week, we have a nice furnished apartment for the next month,
and through our gracious roommate we've each had a chance to instruct skiing/snowboarding
in the Pyrenees mountains for two days! So things are going amazingly well,
let's hope it keeps up. As usual I haven't taken as many photos as I would
have liked to since we've been here, the city is beautiful, the ocean and
mountains are very picturesque, there's a dolphin that swims in the bay,
and the nightlife is often very festive, however I haven't brought the camera
out many times to capture these moments. The weather has been less than
cooperative, normally cloudy and often rainy, but hopefully that will change
soon so that I get out more with the camera.
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| 1/8/03 Miercoles
- Hello 2003, goodbye 2002... wow 2002 was a fairly monumental year
for me, I know that this time last year I was not expecting to sell all
of my stuff and move to Europe, yet here I am. 2003 looks to be just as
exciting, if all goes well I'll be somewhere in Australia this time next
year. I'm looking forward to meeting up with several of my friends along
the way, and that means you Mark, Justin, Allison, Erin, and Max, along
with Danny and Jess (bro and sis-in-law) and my parents. Hopefully by next
year I'll have learned a ton of Spanish and probably have already forgotten
a fair amount of it. To sum up the last month, Jules and I finished language school in Madrid, then took a day trip by bus out to Toledo (Spain, not Ohio), and finally left Madrid and took a train up to Paris. After staying there for a few days we hopped on a plane and went back to NC to spend some quality time with my parents over the holidays. We weren't originally planning to go back to the US but we thought it would be better than hanging out wherever we would have been, and since I'm not likely to be home next year for Christmas (for the first time in recorded history), we splurged and took a trip back to the reality of the US. Thanks to mom and dad for helping me pay for the flight, one of the best presents I've ever had! It was great to be home, but a bit of culture shock to have everything be so easy; quite unlike living in a country where very few people speak English. I know Jules was spoiled by it, she hadn't been out of Europe since August, where as I had come home for Dre and Grace's wedding, so that it softened the culture blow for me. Christmas time with the fam was great, I'm still waiting to get pictures sent from my parents and Danny my brother <ahem....>, I'll post some of those up when (if) I get them. An additional blessing was that I was able to sell my truck while I was home, which had been on the market since I had left for Europe. Note to everyone else: it's much easier to sell a car when the previous owner can be there to answer all the questions of potential buyers. That was a huge relief for me, I had been stressing about it since I left, and I had to sell it very soon or else my trip was going to end much sooner than expected. After going back to Paris to celebrate New Year's with Nick, we're now back in San Sebastian, where things seem to be working out well. We made our first major purchase of buying a cell phone, which now allows us to easily communicate with other people we meet, something that was not possible up until now, I can say goodbye to our love/hate relationship with pay phones here. So now we are looking for jobs and apartments in San Sebastian, and we have some hot leads so we're pretty excited. Wish us luck, and I'll try to keep the pictures and news coming, perhaps a little more frequently. So here are some pictures from Toledo and Paris. |
12/3/02 Martes - Just when you thought I'd never update my web
site again, here I am with some new photos from Madrid right outta the oven.
Jules and I have been in Madrid since Nov. 3, studying at a spanish language
school and enjoying the break from nonstop travelling. I also took a break
from snapping as many photos, but I didn't break off totally, and managed
to take some decent ones from around the city and also our apartment. I
also have arranged a page to (hopefully) make it easier to browse through
all of the images. Kind of like a table of contents for the spain pictures.
I've added some color if you haven't noticed yet. I'm using as many as 4
different colors now, a big move for a colorblind person. Hopefully your
computer can handle this explosion of color.
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Trip Itinerary
