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.