Highlights pt. 3 (Final Post!)

As you may have inferred from the title this will be the last time I post in this blog.  It is a sad time but also a joyous time, as I know that my URL address will go on to a better place when I take it behind the interweb GUI interface, delicately put my hand over the delete key, tears in my eyes, and kill it in the face.  I am the creator and the destroyer in this virtual page, but perhaps I will leave the relics here just so others may know what a great rulers have come before them, my kingdom could be a museum.  I have earned the most blogosphere points out of any social networker in existence.  Note* there are no such thing as blogosphere points, I did that because now all the competitive hipsters are scrambling anxiously trying to figure out why they never earned any points for their ironic and non-conformist indie music blog.  I'm not fond of hipsters despite the similarities I share with them, the subtle difference being that I'm actually a sarcastic hippie, not a contentious prick. 

This last post will cover some of the people I met this year, not main characters, like my host family, or friends from school, or the Pamplona group, but rather the third-tier.  Characters that come up only every couple of episodes but brighten one's day nonetheless.  These people are more than acquaintances but just barely, they are going to serve as examples of how the world is always filled  with more people to meet.  And barely any of them are hipsters.  The three people I will mention here are surf lady, ganja man, and pastry woman, which all, incidentally, sound like awesome team of super heroes.  They would all work as a team, to enjoy extreme sports, get the munchies, and then satisfy those munchies.

I met surf shop lady in October and have known her by far the longest out of any of the three.  At the beginning of the year she helped me with choosing out a wet suit for classes, but as time went on I stopped taking classes and she helped me out more.  Once every two weeks or so I would return and rent a new board, trying out different styles and coming back with new and interesting injuries.  Sometimes she would ask me how I got cut up and sometimes I would successfully hide the wounds because everybody knows that men who feel physical pain are just covering up their vagina.  Sometimes I would accidentally scrap my feet on the fins and cut up my toes, other times I would use my gloves to wipe salt water from my face and end up getting abrasions all around my eyelids.  The value in surfing for me was a careful balance of how much time I spent riding waves and how much time I spent limping/bleeding for days afterwards.  Surf shop lady helped me out a lot this year but I now realize that I probably know more about surfing than she does.  At first I would ask her a question expecting an all-knowing sort of answer, now I ask her for advice and we sort of awkwardly stumble through a problem together with guesses and assumptions.  I have found that jobs are just a way for people to earn money, just as a McDonald's employee will probably not be able to help you with recommendations for your gastric track, a surf shop employee might not be an avid surfer.  Weird right?  I don't know if I will see surf shop lady again, but I will miss her smile and concerned eyes every time I came back with a new wound.

Ganja man is different, I have only met him twice.  Marijuana is legal to grow for personal use in Spain, thus there are a large number of seed and smoke shops around town.  For months I passed by this one store on the way to and from school everyday, always trying to peek in and see the magical pot world.  At the start of the year I was afraid to do more than just walk by the shop for fear that my host family or host club member would walk by and get the wrong idea.  But then I decided screw it, what are the chances that a member of my host family will walk by and I'm pretty sure that no one from Rotary even remembers I'm here, much less what I look like.  Health class always taught me that if I ever went near a pot smoker without calling my parents for emergency evacuation much like in a zombie apocalypse I would soon descend into the realm of shelling out sexual favors for hits of crack, that is just how drugs work in health class.  Just like how Health class showed studies that said if  two virgins ever had sex with a condom there was a 50% chance you would both get an STD and she would definitely be pregnant.  But in the end my reasoning was 'Screw it, I'm interested and the rest of the world can think what they want, but I'm going into that store.'  So I did, and nothing happened.  I had a talk about the environment, political and economic influences, and medicine.  I will say that even before going into the store I was well aware of the benefits of hemp and medical marijuana as well as the relative danger of alcohol or tobacco compared to weed.  The man must not get many customers because I made it clear I was not going to buy anything and he was still happy to talk to me for thirty minutes about this and that, mostly cannabis but some other subjects as well.  The times when I talked to this man were in December and January when my Spanish was still developing, and I have to say, that out of all the store owners who tried to speak English with me, Ganja man spoke the best.  Explain that Health Class.

Last but not least is Pastry woman.  I dropped by her store from time to time to try some Spanish desserts and recently I arranged a large order that I will take back to the U.S and give as gifts to family and friends.  After I started showing up more and more often to decide what I was going to buy to take across the ocean with me we got to know one another better.  She helped me with choosing travel safe goods that were still typical to Spain and gave me free samples.  My reaction to samples is usually somewhere around this.
Me: 'Well I've already had some at another store and I really don't need any more, after all I don't even know if I want to buy the gifts here.'
Seller: 'It's free.'
Me:'... You son of a bitch, and I was watching my figure too.'
She greets me with a smile and has started calling me 'maho,' which means sweetie, my name just seems to complicated for the Spanish people.  Her store closed for the summer one day after I bought the gifts for everyone back home, and again, I don't know if I'll ever see her, but it was nice meeting her.

This wraps up my blog from San Sebastian, Spain.  If you've been following and enjoyed it, or maybe just read a couple posts and thought it was funny, write a comment below or send me a message on Facebook.  I'll probably reply but I don't know if I'll write anything special for you, this is just kind of for my ego, after a year of writing I would kind of like compliments from someone other than my mother.  In summation, although this has not been the easiest or greatest year of my life I would recommend a year long exchange to anyone considering it.  The opportunity to learn and grow is fantastic and living with a different family can really make an impression on anyone.  Plus, when you study abroad, you are the person with the sexy foreign accent.  Think about it.

Highlights pt. 2

Next highlight is traveling.  Since I've been here not only have I seen famous sites around Spain but I have also visited France, Italy, and Portugal. Since I'm a nice sort of guy I won't bore you with the details of each cat's name and how old they are and what their favorite toy is and... wait, take those statements, make them relate to cities and traveling and what not, but cat ladies let that be a message to you, we understand, you like cats, if one of them once pulled a child from a burning building tell us about that otherwise shut up before I call the Chinese restaurant (the mortal enemy of cat ladies according to my racial stereotypes).  Just like the lonely women should I will only be providing tid bits of interesting occurrences, no more, and no fucking stories about how god damn intelligent the animal is (not very).  Traveling provides a wealth of experience because there are new adventures to be had every day, and of course my family (The crazy group of people I grew up with who visited me twice during my exchange) is all about new experiences.  Whether it is getting lost in a museum or getting lost at an airport or getting lost in a city and driving for five miles the wrong way up a one way road we love doing it all everything.  I could tell you about all the times my dysfunctional sense of direction messed us up in Spain, like the time my family was split between two cars at an airport waiting for Tony and Leah; six people, two cell phones, two GPSs, food, and water in one car, two miserable bastards in the other.  This was not the best set up as we quickly learned, then spent three hours memorizing it as one car picked up the arrivals and then did loops around the airport searching for the other car which was parked and waiting inside the terminal that no longer contained the people they were searching for.  But there is a better story of getting lost beyond all hope.  After picking up my brother and his girlfriend (who is pretty much a sister by now, which makes what he probably does with her really gross, you hear me Tony? gross) two cars containing a total of eight people traveled to Sevilla.  We arrived in Sevilla during Semana Santa (Ester Week) just a few hours before the processions began (so half the roads were closed) and had to get to our hotel in the center of the city.  Also we were using a four year old map.  This is what news pundits might call a 'perfect storm' mainly because it is considered unprofessional to call it a 'Oh my god, hahahaha, look at these stupid bastards.  Holy crap'  pundit covers face chuckling to self 'Man, they are so fucked.'(What most pundits said off air during the recession).  After driving up and down the same road for an hour studying the map someone had the great idea to ask for help, we would not have survived if we had not.  I had been entrusted with the map because somehow my family does not understand that I'm incompetent, so I got out to try and communicate with the locals and find out how to get into the center of town.  This did not work.  We then tried ignoring road signs and going down taxi only roads and slipping by barriers into closed off areas.  Although this got us more attention it also did not work.  Finally we just called the hotel having no idea how they would actually help but wanted to say that we were on the way and that they should wait for us and not sell our rooms to hobos (as my parents most likely did when I came to Spain).  It turns out the woman at the front desk had dealt with Americans before and told us that one of us should get into a taxi and tell the driver to go to our hotel while the other two cars followed.  This worked beautifully.  At the police barricades the driver just shrugged to the officers and said 'Americans,' but he seemed to be implying, 'You know these people need cork covering all sharp objects, can you help a man out who is trying to do some charity work for these poor, stupid people.'  And the officer let us by, but we could only travel about another half mile until the taxi driver could go no further, he drove away and we parked in a plaza.  After scouting out the hotel on foot we discovered that in order to legally arrive at the hotel we had to actually leave the plaza and go back through the police barricade, or we could drive through streets that aren't technically open that are supposed to only have official traffic on them, also they were one way roads and we were not facing the right direction.  So we turned around and spent another five hours searching for the legally viable way to get to our hotel.  That's what the Kingstons would do right?  Hell no, we drove down those roads and told people to get out of the way like we owned the place, and people listened to us.  Why would people listen to us, a bunch of lunatics in two rented cars, well because Tony made the fantastic discovery of an imitation police vest in the glove compartment of one of the cars.  But impersonating a cop is illegal or something right?  Hell yeah it is!  I wonder what would have happened had I been caught, but I wasn't, instead people moved out of the way most likely wondering what a 19 year-old who has a strange accent is doing directing traffic during their holy week.  We made it to the hotel just in time.  Several hours after the streets became so filled that even moving on foot was impossible.

'Sir I know everyone wants to see Jesus but you're so close you just boner-poked me.'

That is not even the worst picture of Semana Santa in Sevilla, it can be impossible to move.  Also if someone is unfamiliar with the tradition they may be a little surprised to see the KKK wandering around the street being celebrated like holy men.  As it turns out they actually are holy men, in an unfortunate coincidence the robes of the two groups look exactly the same, the only difference is that the holy men have a variety of colors.

Next year: Rainbow

Next story comes from Portugal and Mardi Gras.  Walking around with other Rotary students during free time we decided we wanted to explore famous locations.  At the end of the day we saw a church and two famous plazas, but I've seen loads of those, and the ones in Barcelona have discount hookers, so what more could Portugal offer?  There were huge drum bands for the Mardi Gras celebration and a great parade, just like so many others I've seen in my lifetime, this one didn't even have real midgets.  Instead the greatest memory came from the unplanned, inexpensive, day-to-day beautiful mistakes, that tend to happen.  All this miracle of a day needed were three seventy-year-old women, cheap party supplies, funny outfits, and what I determined to be five bottles of wine.  They laughed and threw confetti all over us, really expressing the mood of the day, showing how the best adventures are the surprises.  See, you don't need to spend a lot of money or be in a historical monument, all you really need is cheap liquor, then everyday is a surprise.  Will I puke in the toilet at home? or will it be on this lovely couple I just met?  surprise, it's in my parents bed. 

Madrid and Barcelona are the largest cities in Spain and I have visited each multiple times.  They are fantastic cities for tourists, each has a number of museums, monuments, and beautiful gardens/ports/beaches and what not, there is always something new to do .In the south of Spain there is a huge amount of Islamic influence.  Note* I'm not going to be insulting Islam, last time I tried to help them out with revitalizing their image and getting to the young people with several images of the Mohammad fellow, looking hip and young with a mohawk and piercings (one of which may or may not have been in his special man-region), and what did I get in return?  Weeks of mail containing death threats and dead woodland creatures, and there was barely enough meat on those animals to feed me for two days.  Although surprises and new experiences are great and all sometimes it is nice to become familiar with a location, have a comfortable fall back.  It was not hard to find one of these in Madrid, a restaurant that just seemed comfortable, had everything we really wanted,  a sense of well being and happiness as soon as we were in the door, or as my parents would call it, 'You know, that place that has German beer.'  I have been in Madrid four times and La Cervezaria Alemana five times, almost enough to be comfortable calling the waiters by first names or ordering a plunger for the bathroom.  All in all, traveling this year has been amazing, albeit stressful.  I've had  so many new experiences and have had to adapt myself so often that I think I'm ready to return to the States and fall back into a comfortable routine, at least for a few months.

Highlights

When I get back to the States in less than three weeks I will be busy.  Seeing family again, getting ready for college, traveling around Canada with friends, and also I'm still trying to figure out a way to make pokemon real, after all if video games and T.V have taught me anything (I get all my life lessons from them) the perfect world is one in which pets battle for the entertainment of ten-year-olds, and I'm almost twenty, I should be a master by now.  Unfortunately the world still frowns upon pokemon thanks in large part to jerks like Micheal Vick, you see pokemon is not about the innate violence in all of us or about making money, it's about picking out the snitches early before they have time to rat you out, pokemon is still a felony.  Thus, with my time here coming to an end, and my time in the U.S packed I'm going to try and recount some of the best times I had in Spain and what I'll remember most about this year.  *Note, there are some parts of this year that I will always remember in a PTSD, shell shock sort of way, I will not be recounting those moments, if you would like to hear about them just ask me, then I will curl up in a ball, clutch my knees, and whisper to myself.  You know what, it's probably better if you don't ask me, and I can just keep the emotions bottled up inside and grow a stress tumor, that's how men deal with emotions.

I will try to cover three subjects in this highlight reel, beach time, traveling, and meeting people.  I could cover other topics about times where I reasonably enjoyed myself, or had an average amount of enjoyment, but those times are not interesting.  It is similar to how it's going to be in the future when I have kids and go the the parent teacher meetings for Kindergarten, the teacher will say to all the other parents how their child is such a 'hard-worker' or 'shares really well' picking out one little point to advertise.  Then the teacher will take me aside away from the other parents and tell me about how my child is the best at fucking everything, he finger paints, then flows seamlessly into nap time, and has sharing skills that would put that other little kid to shame.  In fact the teacher was thinking about organizing a competition just to humiliate the other little brats compared to my child.  At least, that is better what the teacher tells me, otherwise my lazy-bastard of a child is going back to sleep in the basement.  Anyways, the only stories I'm going to tell are the ones that are as awesome as my theoretical child, the stories that beat all the others without even trying.
First up is the beach.  As I have mentioned before all the beaches in San Sebastian are nude beaches, or at least that is how they are treated by the locals.  As with everything there is both a plus side and a male genitalia side to this issue.  It turns out women taking their tops off makes more sense than I thought, I originally believed that the end goal was actually to tan the breast.  This was confusing for me, because I can never imagine a woman in an intimate situation (lets face it, tans are for impressing other people) and she takes off her bra, then her potential partner sees the strange triangle tan lines and shakes their head in disgust before walking away.  As it turns out hen women remove their tops they trying to get rid of the tan lines left by straps so that when they wear another bathing suit they don't have strange lines everywhere.  Also, boobs are great, so why not take them out?  On the other hand there is always a large number of the geriatric crowd, or as they should be known on the beaches, group saggy.  I have seen couples of seventy plus years, smoking cigarettes together as they walk the beach, respective organs dangerously close to leaving trails in the sand.  I am not a fan of sunbathing, so I find other activities at the beach.  Surf and breakdance/parkour are two subhighlights of this year.  I danced on the sand, as opposed to concrete, where landing on my back was not such a big deal (unless attractive girls were watching, then it was the end of the world).  However breakdance is something that one can do anywhere in the world, so I'm going to move off the beach.  I spent a couple hundred Euros getting thrown around by waves and partially drowning, and I also stood up from time to time.  Yes, as it turns out surfing can be pants-shittingly terrifying.  At the beginning of the year I had the double benefit of having an instructor and being treated to nice slow-breaking waves, sort of like a bunny hill.  But that was at the start of winter, now at the start of summer the waves tend to break more like the 'Classic' waves that rise up then fall creating a tube, which is great, if you are good enough to ride inside the tube.  I normally end up on top of the tubes and fall four to six feet into the water, which doesn't seem so bad, until one takes into consideration it is like jumping from a high dive into a wave pool with an undertow and a giant piece of fiberglass strapped to your leg.  But the two hours waiting in the water turn out to be worth it for the ten minutes you actually end up standing on the board.  Just like falling on my back one hundred times is made worth it by finally performing a front flip.  These are highlights because I could see myself improving.  Although after a year I'm pretty sure I enjoy snowboarding more than surfing but learning a new skill and making myself a better/more badass human being is something that always appeals to me.  I will continue to dance in the United States and maybe if I have the chance I'll surf on vacation now and again, but what is most important is that I can wear those rocking shirts and boardshorts without being labeled as a poser, now I get to be one of the pompous jerks that actually do what their shirts say.

This post is the first of a three part series.  After I finish the recounting the best parts of my exchange I will probably have finished with this blog.  As of today there are eighteen days remaining for my Rotary year before I head back to the states.  I might feel compelled to write a follow up post or two from the U.S, but if I kept this up too long it might just devolve into a blog about my life, and no one wants to hear that.  You might think I'm wrong, but if you go ahead and click to the next blog and just bump around this site for a while and read peoples stories about dogs tracking mud into the house or babies first steps.  Then try and rate how much you connect with the story against how much you just want to punch the person in the ovary for wasting your time.  Everyone else shares their stories with friends, in person, why would someone post their lives on the Internet?  An example would be how everyone in public restrooms poops in the stalls, doing their business with who they feel comfortable with, while a blogger would poop in the urinals because the whole world needs to know what shit is going on in their damn life even though it is probably no different from any one else's crap.  The next post will cover traveling.

One Month and Hard Drugs

The package will be transported to the United States in one month or less.  It comes with a garuntee of having all four limbs attached and no sever mental scarring, no other gaurantees, he's too damn crazy.  The 'Andrew' model has changed significantly in the eight month period for which it has been absent from the United States.  It has improved its writing skills, been programmed with two foreign languages, come to a greater understanding of itself, and nearly all shame has been deprogrammed to the point where the unit has little trouble making exaggerated compliments about itself in the third person. Also, what a douche.
If I could say the one aspect of myself that changed the most this year it is my sense of embarrassment or shame.  Before this year my idea of living without shame was a theory but this year I have grown accustomed to implamenting it.  I formerly was uncomfortable in a room full of people who knew one another and wanted no part of me, I tried to latch on to people and join part of a group but when they shot me down I tried to hide in a corner, or better yet, self destruct.  Now I have learned that if the people around me want to exclude me they can depart the scene and copulate themselves (Get lost and, well, you know), because I'm freakin awesome.  That's the stance one must take in certain situations.  Analize the situation, if you are doing nothing wrong (like being over-agressive, creepy, high/drunk, Italian, etc.) , and the strangers are unaware of your past police record, and they still chose to ignore you, then screw them!  If they don't want a chance to meet a new person than they don't deserve to know you, and as an added bonus for your imagination, if they're guys they most likely have small genitals at least in relation to a person as open as yourself.  I think that way because if the man does not want to meet me then he is clearly fearful of a situation where he gets to know a stranger and they end up in a sponaneous game of 'Drop Trousers and Compare.'  Also they have irrational fears and strange thought processes.
On the flip side of that situation, if you are feeling lonely don't be afraid to go out onto the street and talk with complete strangers.  Or maybe visit a cafe and offer to sit with someone who is alone.  Seriously.  Chances are some of them are bored and thinking exactly what you are, namely, 'Why don't interesting people just walk up to me and introduce myself, if they started a conversation I would be more than willing to talk with them.'  I have met a decent number of people that way, so don't be afraid that everyone but you is thinking that they are superior and avoiding you in particular on purpose. 
Another change in me is my aversion to drug users.  *Note: Not to be confused in a change of aversion to drugs, I still avoid those like fat kids avoid carrots.  Numbers of people here smoke cigarettes and although I don't care for the smell I've accepted it as just another habit that an individual will change if they want to or ask for help if they desire it.  Marijuana is widespread in Spain, if it is more available than in the U.S I'm not sure, but many people here smoke up from time to time.  Far from going crazy and blowing their brains out these people tended to laugh more and look ridiculous, I actually have found high people to be less dangerous to themselves and others than drunk people.  Although Rotary forbids drinking and drugs, when I'm out on the streets having a party with friends some people will be drunk and high, the drunk person is much more likely to try and get involved in a fight or threaten strangers or vomit all over my new god damn shoes.  Last drug related encounter, cocain.  Oh my God!  Cocain, Andrew why the fuck didn't you run in the opposite dirrection?!  In reality, because it's too common to be running away every time the drug shows up on the streets.  Random people standing on corners will nod at you and hold up a little baggie, or ask you if you're looking for something, and all you have to do is shake your head and walk past, and they will leave you alone.  However on one situation I came a little closer.  I ran into some Americans (and a British guy with a hilarious accent), on the streets and decided to link up with their group because it tends to be easy getting to know Americans than Basques.  We were walking along the boardwalk in front of the beach at about two in the morning when the group stopped.  I thought they were trying to figure out what to do next, turns out they already had that figured out, buy a powdery accelerant to snort up their noses.  My first reaction was to burn rubber and run away like the nearly six foot glob of wuss that I am, but a stronger urge was curiosity.  With my feet ready to haul me out of there if one of the coke-heads decided to go on a stabbing spree that coke-heads are known for, I held my ground.  There were two Americans in the group who tried to ignore the transaction entirely and seemed disappointed the others were buying coke so I was not overly afraid, these other two guys seemed like reasonable nerds, generally a safe group of people.  The group was negotiating quality, quantity, and price of the good, and I have to say they were some of the most empathetic and generous people I've ever seen conduct business.   The dealer provided the group with something called 'tasters' where a buyer wets his pinky finger and dunks it into a coke bag so they could then brush their teeth with the substance, three group members did this.  The Americans then circled up to discuss quality, and I have never heard a conversation that came so close to the picture I have in my head of a female, high school sleepover.  Everyone who had tried it said the quality was terrible, it tasted like baking soda apparently, but the one man felt so bad that they had taken so much in free 'tasters.'  Another argued that the dealer had given them large tasters so that they would feel bad and more likely to buy, and the origional responded by saying 'Well it worked, I don't feel right doing that to him,' in a tone like that of a girl having a fight with here BFF and looking to her other friends for advice.  While two went to buy the low quality drug another said to me and the rest of the group that they were getting a bad deal but they felt obligated to purchase.  The other men then returned and offered free rounds of coke to anyone who was interested, three of the five men then proceded to snort the contents of a little plastic bag.  Unlike my expectations none of them pulled a gun, and no one decided it would be a good idea to jump head first onto concrete.  Instead they just seemed jittery and zoned out at the same time which was a strange combination to see.  Thus I have learned to not completely write a person off do to drug use, they could be good people who have just made some mistakes.  After my morbid curiosity was satisfied by watching strangers take a potentially deadly stimulant I said goodbye and went on an adventure to search for females.
I will try to make a few more posts before I finish up the year, but I'm also going to try to have as much fun as possible.  After all, next year I'll be in college, and everyone know that no one has enjoys themselves at those institutions of higher learning, or at the very least they most likely won't be surfing.

Art

I am not a huge fan of art.  I find it boring and uninspired, or if not, lame it seems to be hack and unmotivated.  I'm always disappointed when I'm shown a famous piece that has been critically acclaimed and is worth tens of thousands of dollars and there is just a red square slightly off center.  Let me take a moment to clarify, I love almost every artist I know and I love their works, street artists do a fantastic job as well, cartoonists, surrealists, and graphic designers all turn out paintings, drawings, sketches, and strips I can appreciate.  I have a problem with 'art' as defined by the art community with power, that is curators, critics, and collectors.  The three C's love money but hate art and will do anything they can to destroy said industry.  They collect, swap, and bargain classic pieces to give them great value but never let a new name break onto the scene unless they create terrible blotches of paint on canvas.  Dali, Picasso, Monet, Da Vinchi, Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, Warhol, what are the two things they share?  First, they are the only artists a common man would know Second, they are dead.  If you want something to be valuable in the art world it better have one of their names on it (or some other popular dead person), otherwise no one will buy it.  Why not?  Because if art was valued based on style, originality, detail, and overall beauty then collectors and museums would suddenly lose a whole lot of money.  Also they are trying to destroy art because their hearts are suspected to be two sizes too small.  Note: I made all of that up, but it sounds pretty freakin logical am I right?  Anyways, I think if the starving artist types decided to take authority and take control of the community because those are the people who really love art.  They could find works that have vision and a creative artist behind them, re-work cliched museums, breath new life into worldwide interest in art, and maybe even make a little money.  Now I know some artists will be opposed to the making money part of my proposal, it might interrupt their whole starving lifestyle, but think of it like this: you could just give all the money away and leave yourself barely enough to scrape together for a bowl of Kraft Mac'n'cheese and a pack of cigarettes per week, just like you're accustomed to.  So I don't hate artists or most of what they create, I just hate what collectors have done to warp the idea of 'art' around some contrived concept that keeps them rich and feeling like they're better than everyone else.  So I say starving artists punch art collectors in their tiny hearts, with any luck they'll have a heart attack and die, we don't have time to help the Grinch in this story.

There seem to be only a few types of famous 'masterpieces' left in the world.  There are a few that I really appreciate, Dali and MC Escher being all of them.  I once thought that I enjoyed other artists but then I went to these horrible locations, formed of broken dreams and artistic constipation, called museums.  Besides the Surrealism that I actually enjoy there seem to be three main types of art, Classical, Modern, and Drug Induced.  I hate them all, and will explain why.  Classical art is all painted in the same style and the subject was either the bible or whatever royal family could get their kids to sit still long enough to have a portrait done.  Sometimes really crazy artists painted kings and queens with angels and Jesuses, combining the two themes to create something twice as boring.  I discovered this after visiting the Prado, one of Spain's most famous museums, all the pieces looks like the same guy painted them all in the exact same way.  That is when I stopped liking most artists, when I found out they were all copy cats.  It would be like if I was a writer and copied Stephen King's writing style down to a pin but then added in some M. Night Shamalan twist endings in.  There are those who would call me a good-for-nothing fraud, and then once my mother got done making fun of me the critics would be worse.  That's all I find in Classic art the same thing over and over, with a slight twist. 
Modern art is bullshit.
Drug Induced art has a potential to be decent, there might be some ideas partially visible, and maybe an overlaying theme or social commentary, but the person clearly took one too many pills before starting.  It does show more initiative than Modern art, which, as previously mentioned, is bullshit, but there is still a great lacking in true artistic presence.  A good example of Drug Induced art is Pablo 'drop the acid' Picasso.  As the nickname I hope catches on suggests, he liked him some hallucinations brought on by massive amounts of foreign chemicals in the blood stream.  He painted some good art at one point, people bought some of his paintings, he earned enough money to buy some really powerful drugs, painted some terrible and crappy art, people bought his paintings because he was already famous, and he got enough money to buy more drugs.  There is a lesson in his story people of the world.  If a friends shows you a piece of art clearly influenced by drugs that may have life threatening consequences, do NOT buy it to make them feel better.  They will think the art is good and think their inspiration came from the crazy acid trip.  If anything find out where they got the drugs and then buy some yourself, the drugs made that piece of crap your friend painted look like a masterpiece, it must be some good shit.

P.S  Starving artists, if you take my advice and renew real, beautiful, new, and creative art please don't use the money like Picasso did.  Don't do hard drugs if your in a position of power, you'll just end up ruining art for everyone all over again.  There is plenty of time for hard drugs when your retired, besides the nursing home could use some people who live it up.

Football aka Soccer

I love professional sports.  Or I should say, I love parties based around professional sports with a mild interest about what is happening on the T.V.  Pizza, spicy wings, cheerleaders, one dollar pride bets, cheerleaders.  The only way sports could be any better is if they were something I was actually interested in following, like the Governator (when he was in his youth) fighting Mongals and the Zerg in the Colosseum, which I would totally pay to see.  There are competitions I would love to watch: sword fighting, parkor, video games, and stand-up comedy are great fun for me to watch, except for there are neither cheerleaders nor hot wings.  Statistics of a study I just made up say that men interested in those activities are 1/3 less likely to win the girl at the end of the romantic comedy than their helmet wearing, quarter-back tackling peers.  So when I was asked if I would like to attend a Futbol (yeah, they actually spell it that way) match I was conflicted.  In the end I remembered what Rotary had taught me to accept any offer to meet new people, so I headed off with my host brother to watch San Sebastian's team play some other team.  I was assured by all of the Basque people that the other team was totally lame.  We went to a bar, ordered red bulls for some reason, and sat down to enjoy a fierce human competition of... what is, sure to... be, ugh, I'm already bored.  I sat through the full ninety minutes of game plus the half time review of whatever was happening in the game then the next morning everyone was talking about the game, but I can't even remember who won, the only fact that sticks in my mind was that there were no hot wings.  In fact there was no food at all, there weren't even cheerleaders to help direct blood away from our cramped stomachs. 
Oh well, that was just one evening, I figure I should give Futbol a second chance to prove itself, after all it's the national sport of Everywhere that's Not the United States.  I did in fact attend a second soccer game, this time in person.  I went to see my host brother and some friends play in a high school match.  Since we were in person I was hoping for some Spanish sports food to be passed around the stands, like cheese nachos.  Instead I had a conversation with the people around me about how Americans are so fat they're always eating something at sports matches.  I could see their point, one can get distracted from the match when they're trying to not drop ketchup on their pants, the Spanish don't have this problem, smoking cigarettes assures zero percent spillage onto clothing, they're light years ahead of us.  During the game I learned some of the fundamentals of soccer and why it will fall into the category in which I hold most other sports, meh.

Here are some key facts I understand:  You want to put the ball in the goal, if you put the ball in the goal enough you earn millions of dollars and get to date supermodels, and intelligence/speaking skills not required.  I used to enjoy playing rec league soccer, rec meaning recreation, which means everyone wins.  I enjoyed this set up, we could still be competitive if we wanted to, but there was no need to beat the shit out of anyone over a win or a loss.  Unless you were a parent, because your neighbor's bastard kid was ruining your childstar's chances at reaching the Olympics and forever redeeming your wasted life.  With enough reinforcement kids start to believe that they are indeed superior to their peers and then they can scream and curse all by themselves (they grow up so fast).  For example I would not say that a sports match is a reason for killing another human being.  There are some people who would politely disagree with me, right before shanking me in the stomach, putting a Real Madrid Jersey (soccer team) on my corpse, and calling the cops, the police would plant a suicide note on my body and everyone would understand why a person who liked that team would off themselves after Madrid played Barcelona. 

Madrid and Barcelona are the two biggest teams in Spain (also they are cities but no one seems to care about that fact) and this year they have played five times.  Every time they played, for days afterwards, every conversation is dominated by what calls were unfair and who really should have won or why the team that won deserved it.  Every XY chromosome has some sort of input to add just like in the United States.  Something about Spain (or maybe just my region), there seem to be no competetive female sports on any level.  I have no idea why and I'll be honest about something here, I miss strong females.  One favorite past time of the Basque people is screaming at T.V screens and the starting fist fights in real life because of what happened on said screen.  Out of all the problems that affect the game one of the worst is the refusal of referees to use instant replays.  It would be like working on a math problem then not double checking with a calculator, sure the technology is there but where is the excitement of a stranger showing up at your house to break your knees after their building collapses to faulty engineering.  Actually for causing a building to collapse you would probably just get fired, but if you fuck up a Futbol call you better start wearing shin guards and and a cup year round, because the fans are coming for you.  And they're pissed.

All in all I can't wait to get back to the U.S and have a Superbowl party and some March Madness parties.  Who knows, I might even watch some sports.

A third language and more

With only a month and three weeks left in Spain I have decided to move onto my third language.  Well technically practice  my second language because French came before Spanish for me, but no one really cares about technicalities.  For example, I once fought five people, by myself, and won, now technically they were all sleeping nursing home patients with heart conditions, but no one needs to hear that part of the story.  So French, language of fries and toast, formerly of romance, but then too many creepers with greasy mustaches started speaking it.  I have several reasons for relearning this language, some personal, some general.  My main personal reason for buffing my french is that I have a great friend who will be bringing his family to visit me this summer in Canada and I can't wait to see him.  General reasons, aka why anyone would learn French, one, it is a widely spoken language, and two, the women.  I know that I bashed the romanticism of French just a moment ago, but that is just on an overall/worldwide level, for the individual it can be very useful, as long as you don't grow ridiculous facial hair patterns.  French is most useful for picking up American girls who think it is beautiful but have no real idea what you're saying.  Trying to pick up a French girl with French is significantly more difficult because you're no longer allowed to spout gibberish in her complicated language.  I would like to get to a level where I can speak French as well as I speak Spanish because there are some fairly attractive European women, and I hear with just two to three weeks of training they can learn to shave their legs, sit, and roll over.  I learned it from a book 'Man's best friend, how to communicate and train,' so I assume I'll be making great friends, also according to this book I'll be able to get all the bitches I've ever dreamed of.

Now just for some random updates and observations of Spain.  I have been exercising a fair amount this year, however my routines have not been what a normal person would describe as enjoyable.  Running long distance alone, strength and core work outs alone, weeping to myself at night because of how lonely I am, with a spotter.  For me exercising alone is not terrible, I just have to imagine I'm training for the zombie apocalypse (It's unavoidable, I've seen the documentaries), but every so often I enjoy utilizing what I worked for.  I have not played Ultimate Frisbee in eight months, not only do I miss the adrenaline and competition but I miss how laid back it was.  I have played some pick up basketball and pickup soccer here in Spain (not very often but more on this in a later post), and people get intense and people get pissed.  I think that was the main reason I quit most team sports, screwing up for the team. So on the other side there is breakdancing, but since my host apartment is not designed for the violent, flailing motions invloved in bboying I have to practice outside, in public.  In the U.S I had a crew, basically a group of people who help one another out and ward off haters.  Haters are like mosquito with slightly larger brains, they buzz annoyingly, suck what they can, but all it really takes is a good slap to get rid of one.  Unfortunately with their advanced brain function they learn to suck at one's back, which isn't a problem if you have a friend to guard you, but all alone I feel vulnerable to the hate.  I have tried to find other dancers in Spain but I think learning to dance is too embarrassing for them.  So I dance alone, without music, strangers watching as they pass by, sometimes I give one or two a bitch slap, just in case.
During one of my runs recently I came to accept some realities about the United States versus Europe.  I passed by a woman on my run who was taking an active interest to help out the global population crisis, by chain smoking cigarettes.  But her commitment did not stop there, while smoking she was also sticking her head in a stroller to comfort a baby, reassuring the child that he would be consuming the earth's precious resources for far fewer years than the selfish bastards like me.  The only problem I find with smoking as a way to control the population is that it's just too damn sexy, smokers promptly ruin the benefit they're having on the planet by reproducing like rabbits.  In America we have far fewer smokers, but our drive to save the planet is no less powerful, in fact I believe we are doing a better job. With fast food we have solved the tobacco conundrum, lower life expectancy and less attractive as a reproduction partner.  Unfortunately fast food just doesn't agree with me so I can't do my part to keep the population down because I'm already cursed with extreme sexiness.  Were I to start smoking sure I would die a few years earlier but with the added attractiveness, by my calculations, the planet would be unable to support my offspring by the year 2027 with my children making up 12% of the world population. It's a tough life.