l(ate)r

later dudes. thanks for reading.

i'm heading to the airport in a little bit to spend the night there and then get on my 7:20am flight because i'm too cheap to take a cab and the metro doesn't open soon enough to get me there on time in the morning.

it's been fun. it's been expensive. it's been long. it's been cold and drunk. you know how it is.

i'm in seattle from well, tomorrow the 19th to january 6th. see me please. my phone is on.

i get back to san diego on the night of the 6th, right before school starts. let's have some fun.

see you soon.

-mitch

In Regards To:

Sweden.

I'm just going to go with first impressions here. It was big, very tall. I flew into Stockholm and then flew up the coast about an hour to a place called Umea where my friend lives. Big student city. It was very cold and very snowy. There were lots of trees everywhere and very pretty. I didn't really have any idea what to picture it being like so everything was kind of new and really just made me think of Seattle a lot. Maybe it's because I've been in Madrid for so long and a big city isn't anything like a town in the woods. Seattle isn't a town in the woods either, but maybe someone understands what I'm getting at. Thursday my friend had class to go to so I got to hang out walking around by myself for a couple hours which was alright, but it was really cold and I didn't want to get lost so I didn't wander very far. It got light around 10am and dark around 2pm, so there really wasn't much daylight. And the daylight wasn't really daylight either, I'm sure that if the clouds would have gone away the sun would have just been seen barely over the horizon in a weird sort of oval-esque loop. But the clouds didn't go and so I didn't see the sun or really the light for a while. Because of this even when it was light out there was a feeling of perpetual dusk, everything was painted very gray and foggy, and it was really neat to walk out in the woods.

Friday we walked to the city which is next to a huge river that'd been frozen over. I'd never seen such a large body of water, especially one that is usually moving having been frozen. It was neat. The Swedish Idol finals were that night, and it proved to be eerily similar to American Idol, just a lot more pale and blond. Went out that night to a bar place on the campus and there were loads of students in there and it seemed like everyone was lean, six feet tall and very blond. It was fun for a while and a healthy change from Madrid style night life where you get back at 6 in the morning, this place closed at 2.

Sleeping in Airports.

I've decided that some airports are better for sleeping in than others, and Stockholm is at the top of the "go for it" list. Comfy chairs, hardwood floors in the central shopping and eating area, padded benches, easy to find and use computer terminals for internet, and clean bathrooms all add up to a winning place to spend the night if you're so in need.

I flew out of Stockholm this morning at 8am, but had been there since 5pm the night before. The latest flight from Umea to Stockholm was at 4pm, Saturday evening. There was a train that would have gotten me there at 3 in the morning but it would have taken 11 hours and cost just as much as a one hour flight. I opted to spend some time in the airport rather than be cooped up in a train for half a day. I toyed with the idea of taking the train to the city from the airport and wasting time there, but it was over 20 euros each way and unfortunately I haven't found rich girl to give me money yet so I was stuck in the airport. I read and wrote for a bit and then around eleven or so I found myself a nice bench and stretched out on it and got myself ready for the nice long comfortable night ahead. Boo.

First off, sleeping while fearing that someone might rob your shoes and your luggage sucks. Lucky I only had my backpack but the bench I was sleeping on was too narrow to put it next to me so I had to wrap one of my arms through the straps and let it hang down next to the backpack. This position gave me the pleasure of being woken up every hour or so not being able to feel my arm and having to shake all the feeling back into it and try to fall asleep again.

Secondly, normal people don't sleep in airports. Creepy people tend to frequent airports all night long, looking for food or meth I don't know, but they're weird as hell and definitely not the same good looking normal people you see during the daytime. Putting your passport in your pants and sleeping in a protective position with your back against a wall is highly advisable.

Third up, airports never really close. The lights are always on and at some, Stockholm regrettably included, music plays all through the night. I woke up at 4:12 in the morning to heard Kelly Clarkson belting out some man-hating song and it put right in a foul mood. Thanks a lot sweetheart.

Countries in the EU that don't use Euros.

Self explanatory. Annoying.

Dogs in Sweden.

I swear to god I saw a guy walking a full grown wild wolf. Enough of these little crappy Spanish dogs, they have real dogs in Sweden. I saw three giant St. Bernaards just like Beehtoven (the movie you idiot) and at least 5 huskies. They don't mess around.

Movies I download that are in a different language than advertised.

What the hell. Sure maybe it's a funny joke to rip a movie and then advertise it as being in English to all the people downloading it when it's really just been dubbed over with an unintelligible Eastern European language. I mean I guess I see the humor in it, give those pirating bastards something they didn't bargain for. But really? Nothing better to do?
Bummer.

Heima, the new Sigur Ros DVD.

Just like one of those really surreal moments in life where everything is just stupidly beautiful and you get to stop worrying about whatever it is you like to give yourself ulcers about. Except it lasts over an hour. See it.

Being home for Christmas.

I distinctly remember a Visa or MasterCard commercial a year or two ago with triplets talking about how they each got home from their respective colleges in order to be home for Christmas and how it was such a good thing that a price couldn't be put on it. Priceless, they said. Liars. A price can be put on it. One that will make your wallet sad and your stomach empty. See me when I'm home and we'll talk about how much each additional day at home is costing. It'll be fun, you'll see.



I got nothing else. Finals are coming up and the last two days of regular class are coming and passing by Tuesday. Just three tests and 10 days and I'm home. See you then.

-Mitch

Spanish Drivers.

In order to get a license in this country I'm pretty sure all you have to be able to do is display above normal tendency to honk your horn. Not only that, but to honk said horn for extended periods of time. It's great, no really. Please keep honking. The only good thing about drivers here is they give you the the right away all the time even when it's obviously not your "right" of way. You can dodge out into the middle of traffic and instead of hitting you they'd run straight into a car parked on the other side of them. Haven't tried it but I'm pretty sure I'd manage to hop skotch across the highway without a scratch.

Besides that, nothing much. It was James Patrick's last weekend here, so it was a little crazy. I stayed out too late two nights in a row and as a result I'm sick. I also lost 5 hours of my life early Saturday morning somewhere along the line and for the life of me I can't seem to find them. Select few have born witness to their existence, but as for me, they're lost forever. Hope they were good.

Being sick sucks. If it isn't being very cold and then immediately very warm, it's waking up in the middle of the night a lot and not sleeping very well. And let's not forget the pleasure you get from blowing your nose in the middle of class a few times. In fact, the only good thing I can think about being sick when you're away from home is getting to take cold medicine, which is undeniably, pretty fun. When my parents visited my Mom somewhat prophetically brought along matching bottles of DayQuil and NyQuil, and for that, I'm eternally grateful for right now. Taking NyQuil knocks you straight out and DayQuil, well it's like getting to drink during the day without all the tired and nasty side-affects. Or is it effects. I don't know. Sorry.

On a different note, my Marketing teacher didn't show up to class tonight. I wouldn't usually mind seeing as how any break from class is usually a good thing but this class so happens to placed at a strategically obnoxious time of day for me, after a 5 hour break from my earlier class, at 6:30pm. So after being at home cozy in my room for a couple hours I have to wrestle free of the warmth of this house and get outside and walk 20 minutes to school for my least favorite class which is taught by a guy who obviously doesn't want to be there any more than the rest of us. This is the second time he's not shown up, but at least the first time he had the decency to let everyone know, albeit someone came in and told us 20 minutes into class. Tonight, no note, nobody coming in to let us know, so most of the class was treated to sitting in uncertainty for half an hour. Usually I'd peace after 15 minutes but this guy is kind of a jerk and a big attendance guy and I figured if he came even that late he'd still expect everyone to be there (an admittedly ridiculous expectation). But he didn't show. Super duper.

I go home in 2 weeks. Weird. I think the first thing I do will be to go to Panda Express and buy some Orange Chicken. And then maybe take a gastronomical tour of Wendy's and a dirty Mexican place near my house. Maybe round it all off with some ice cream from the dairy next to my house. Yum. Then maybe a drive. It's been a while. I like to drive. My parents finally sold that crappy van. My mom is happy. And my sister can't back it into poles or drive it into the back of other cars now so my Dad is happy. I guess I'm happy too though it was kind of fun to drive to friend's houses and parties.

Tomorrow night I leave for Sweden. Fly into Stockholm then jump on another flight to a city called Umea where my friend lives. I think it will be cold. Close to the coast and close to Norway, actually, I'm sure it will be cold. I'll think happy warm thoughts.

That's it. For now. If I get around to it I'll put some stuff up about Sweden when I get back.

L8s.

-Mitch

Yeah I Know

alright. i've fallen way behind on this crap. there's too much to talk about concerning amsterdam and brussels. suffice to say i drank a lot of really cheap really good belgian beer and had a bad morning and bus ride to amsterdam and then had a good time eating lots of food and looking at red lights in amsterdam. check out facebook for pictures. for a full story buy me a beer when i get home and i'll tell you everything in excruciatingly embarrassing details.

when i got back from amsterdam my parents here in madrid so we hung out for a week and i got a bunch of good food for free and then this weekend we went south to alicante for a couple days. really quite nice. warm and sunny during the mornings and it was on the port with this huge mountain castle thing sticking up at the side of the town and then it rained and there was thunder and rain and hazy views out from hotel balcony out onto the ocean all night.

traveling with the parents is a lot better than traveling on your own. hotel rooms? are you kidding?

so that's that. more or less. i caught a train back to madrid this afternoon and spent a good amount of time looking out the window thinking about how nice life is that the things i'd like to avoid during my time living it.

so here you are. my list of things that i'd like to not do during my lifetime.

get stabbed.
stab someone.
watch someone get stabbed.
get hit by a vespa.
heroin.
get a small dog.
get the clap.
contract syphilis.
go to jail.
pop my colla(r).
spend more than a day at a time in kansas.
loose a limb.
get caught in an avalanche.
fall off a cliff.
have to jump out of an airplane without a parachute like keanu reeves in point break.
have to ever watch another keanu reeves movie while traveling in spain.
have to perform the heimlich on myself.
live for any extended period of time in or in close proximity to LA.
drink bicardi breeze for anything less than a joke.
spend a fourth of july without igniting some sort of explosive.
have my foot run over by a truck.
own a lifted truck.
be seen in a lifted truck.
be seen around a lifted truck.
go to typhoon saloon for anything other than metal skool.
go to pb more than one time a month.
cocaine.
get stabbed by a knitting needle.
get stabbed by a key.
get stabbed by a pen.
step on a nail.
fall down a hole and have to get rescued by the fire department while crying.
ever forget the names of both the dogs (shadow, chance) and the aptly named cat (sassy) in homeward bound.
get spiked by a porcupine.
get sprayed by a skunk.
wear crocs.
wear one of those obnoxious painter's hats.
ever stop playing video games, especially star wars ones, sometimes.
break my back.
break my ass bone.
get badly burned.
start a forest fire.
use facebook or myspace when i either get married or pass 27 years of age.
be afraid to mooch off of rich slash successful friends.

that's it i guess. there's more but my fingers are cold and i'm going to go hang up some laundry to dry and all in all i miss seattle and san diego and the people that live in both of those places.

see you soon.

-mitch

ummmm.

amsterdam and brussels.

gnarly.

more to come. sorry for being lame but my parents are here and my life is way too exciting to sit at my computer all day.

(yeah right)

r and b.

is bad.

i have two roommates who are from south africa who thank god are only around on the weekends. they talk with some pretty thick accents that are a mix of new york, south africa, london and australia i think. they've lived all over the place and i can't imagine how many drugs they've taken, so yeah, they talk a little funny and i can't understand everything they say but one works in barcelona during the week doing some sort of construction and the other works for ups and flys all over europe during most of the week, so they're both really only here on the weekends, which is as it turns out, quite terrific.

they usually get to the apartment for the weekend on thursday night or friday morning, and seeing as how they have pretty permanent jobs they make a bit of money, and unfortunately they have chosen to spend it on a big tv and very loud speakers. the tv isn't the problem, in fact i don't know why they have one, i mean they're never here and when they are here for the weekend they're always out partying. it's the speakers that i'm writing about today. and not just the speakers, i mean they're not evil in and of themselves, it's what comes out of the damn things that makes me want to cry.

r and b. rhythm and blues. it isn't though. it's just bad rap and r. kelly singing 'i'm a flirt'. one of them put on the whole trapped in a closet series last weekend and listened to it on repeat for hours. hours. i'm not joking. and neither was he.

i'll admit it. i bought the trapped in a closet dvd. it's great. it's hilarious and funny and everything you could wish for. but it's also a joke. these guys aren't joking and it's beginning to kill my soul.

it doesn't help that the walls in this apartment are made out of cardboard and they live right at the end of the hall, not 10 feet from my door. without stop this sort of crap plays all day until they leave for a party at night. not to mention their dinosaur steps when they come in at 6 in the morning slamming the 20 pound apartment door and walking like a t-rex and his fat brontosaurus friend. (i know a t-rex would eat a brontosaurus. get over yourself)

they also eat my food. which is really a feat all by itself because i think right now i have 2 cans of beer, an apple and yogurt in the fridge. maybe some pasta in the cupboard i'm not sure. but things like that won't stop them, in the morning i'll wake up to find that i don't have an apple and my beer is all gone. it's lovely. i think i'm going to put exlax on something and see what happens.

another thing. saul william's new album is reeeeally good. you can get it for either 5 dollars or for free here. the guilt trip almost killed me but i came out on top. enjoy.

http://niggytardust.com/saulwilliams/download

-mitch

valencia. more or less.

i always put off writing in this thing when i know i have a lot to write about and it's a bummer because what i really want to do is sit around a table with each and every one of you and talk and talk and talk. maybe with a beer. maybe.

but what i have is this so i'll use it more or less. valencia was incredible. we took a 6 hour train there and were supposed to leave at 6am the morning after halloween which naturally meant i didn't sleep at all and got to the train station with my friends claire and sadie to meet our madrid buddy alex and ilya ready to pass out on the train and wake up in the sun but the train ended up being sold out because it was a long weekend for all of spain. so we had to sleep on the ground in the train station for a while until the next train at noon came. we got on and that was that. nice long trip. spain has a lot of country side. i know every country has it's barren parts filling in between the hustle and bustle of life and it's silly and ignorant to think of a country or a region only as cities but spain has a lot and a lot of country space with absolutely nothing. old ghost villages you pass through on the train which i can only imagine used to stop at them when things were going on and better. interesting.

so because of our delay in madrid we got to valencia later than planned and ended up spending the night trying to find the camp ground we were planning on staying at. i've decided that hostels are for suckers and if you don't mind cramming into a tent and sleeping on rocks and being a little cold, camping is the way to go. so we find the site and set up the two little tents we have on this parking lot loose gravel site they give us. people in spain don't know what grass is i've decided. or dirt. but they sure as hell know what rocks are. the campsite guard rode his bike to the spot to show us where it was... picture a 60 year old man riding a bmx bike with double pegs and a huge flashlight in his teeth and you have what i was looking at.

after setting everything up we tried to find the beach, which was according to the guy at the desk, straight ahead. it wasn't. it was pitch black out and we walked for over an hour trying to find the beach, we could hear the roar of the ocean but were ultimately unable to find the darn thing. gave up and went and had a fire and roasted chorizo over it like little hobos on a stick. never had better. i barely ate that day and as hemmingway says, hunger will give you discipline. even if it's not a choice and you just can't afford to eat there's something very comforting about hunger. you know it will be there eventually and sometimes it's almost a waiting game to see when it actually happens. comforting to know that your body will always react in one way or another without doubt.

this is sadie. she's from wisonsin. you can tell because of her red hair.


and this is claire. her hands were cold so she's a sock monster.


anyways woke up and we had all decided sometime between rolling over to get the rock out of my spleen and then out of my kidney subsequently that we couldn't stay there another night. got on the bus and headed to a campsite closer to the city that we had seen coming in. got off and checked two out. one sucked. it was a parking lot they wanted us to camp on. next one was great, grassy and covered with trees. we were sharing a field with some spanish kids who were cool and because we had alex with us who grew up in spain we had a good connection of sorts. i've traveled a bit and have decided that traveling with someone who's native to that country or area is a much loved advantage. being able to have her ask directions or figure something out was awesome, we obviously could have done it without her but not so easily. wonderful.

that day was spent wandering around valencia after a fabulous all you can eat buffet with valencian paella and seafood, great salad and lots of coffee. i was in heaven. the city was gorgeous. old and laid back. i feel that any city next to the beach has a more relaxed atmosphere than those land locked. not sure why. maybe it's just the knowledge that you can go to the beach when you want without having to fly there. madrid is great, but it's missing the ocean. i can't imagine how much better it'd be with. probably as good as barcelona, which is now that i think about it, madrid with an ocean.

we wandered around and climbed huge trees in old parks and saw big buildings and cool markets and later that night wandered into a medieval fair being hosted in the city's bullfighting ring. it was incredible. everyone dressed up in old rags and a blacksmith outside banging out farming instruments and frames and booths with people inside selling all sorts of wondrous food and goodies. lots of scarves and tea and meat and bread. it was absolutely spell casting. we stood around for hours trying things to eat and watching all the people there. two men were walking around in purple tights and one was blowing a bagpipe and the other was playing the drums and it was magic. i wanted to dance my way across old times europe into the black plague. good times.

this is a picture of valencia at night.


this is a big tree.


got back to the campsite around 11 and had bought chocolate and fruit and bread and sausage in the city to roast over a fire and set out to find the beach, this time along a much more defined path. found some dead branches on the way there and carried all our goodies down a ways until we reached a parking lot and saw lots of cars with teenagers in them making out an we knew we were at the right spot. waltzed on pass them and came upon this fantastically huge beach stretching out all the way down the coast on either side with nothing but the stars to light the way. the ocean was black and dark and grey and scared the hell out of me and was pounding on the sand with these huge waves that threatened to creep up and take us all under. i don't think there's anything scarier than the ocean at night. absolutely terrifying. we made a little hobo campfire on the side of a sand dune and looked out over the horizon at these impossibly gigantic cruise and cargo ships harbored outside of the city looking to port, towering over the ocean and lighting it all up in this brilliant glow like floating cities. later after we'd been there for a bit this great golden half moon climbed out of the sea and eased up into the sky and cast this eerie ghost light on the ocean and everything all of a sudden made sense even if for just a little bit.

i slept well that night.

woke up the next morning feeling good, took down the tents and headed into the city. we packed all our gear into lockers in the train station and the lady with short hair there yelled at us for trying to pack everything into one huge locker that we could've put an elephant in but she thought otherwise and berated us until we spent 3 more euros on another humongous locker for one more pack and then left. our train was at 8 the next morning so we figured we'd just stay out most of the night, come back to the station, grab our stuff and be good to go.

we headed to these buildings in valencia that a famous spanish architect had recently constructed that were a cultural center, museums and a huge aquarium. i wanted to check out the aquarium but it was almost 20 euros which is a lot of money for fish so we just walked around instead. it was huge. the architecture of the buildings is incredible, white and skeletal. it reminded me of gaudi just a little bit with the tiny mosaic stones worked into the whole thing. it looks like this. and more. it's incredible. everything was surrounded by shallow pools of water and it blew my mind. it was so warm and by the water it was cool and life was good.

like a big weird whale skeleton.


walked back to the city and started drinking a little on the way back to get a good feeling for the night. we found a store selling 20 cent cans of decent beer so hung out there for a while and then headed over to the fair again to get some goood food and by good i mean delicious. i got a huge sandwich with cooked ham (it's all they eat) and it was greasy and gross and most satisfying. after that i treated myself to a bit of chocolate and washed it all down with some cold wonderful cerveza. life is too good sometimes.

oh, earlier in the day i'd found a simple plan poster too. it was great.



we eventually left the fair around midnight and wandered into some bars. got back to the station around 2 or 3 ready to get our stuff and bundle up for the night in the train station but we'd missed the sign on the door explaining that the room was locked from midnight to five in the morning. oooops. after walking around all day we'd left our sweatshirts in the lockers with the bags because it was so sunny and warm earlier so we had a long night of walking around to keep from freezing, sleeping short little bursts of restless sleep using newspaper as blankets and huddling next to the hand dryer in the bathroom to keep from freezing at 4 in the morning. needless to say that at 8 when the train came i was ready to pass out.

too bad it was the most packed train i've ever been on in my life. i had to run to get a seat. i seriously stepped on an old lady and smacked a little kid. i didn't care. i was getting a seat. i wasn't going to stand up for 6 hours after the best (read terrible) night of my life.

got a seat and passed out. after the first couple stops the train thinned out and people were able to sit down. at one point i woke up and realized that i'd drooled on myself and the people sitting across from me facing me were grossed out. i just looked down and then at them and drooled and smiled. they stopped looking then. went back to sleep and woke up in madrid. life's too good.

hugs.

pigeons and assorted other novelty

i think i mostly started this to not whine about my everyday life but to whine about stupid things that people do and other things that annoy me.

number one. pigeons.

filthy little more often than not deformed birds. i'm pretty sure at least 73% are hiv positive too and are just waiting for me to not run after them and kick at them so they can gang up behind me and claw my face when i'm least expecting. those little beady eyes creep the hell out of me and you're kidding yourself if you think they don't know exactly where they're taking a dump.

number two. bluetooth cell phone things.

i hate them. plain and simple. i walk down the street and someone behind me says something loudly and i turn and look, thinking the guy is hollering at me and he just stands there looking at me like i'm the jerk. if you're talking on a phone, use a phone. more times than not i think people are just talking to themselves too which is super weird and creepy and not cool. this isn't even an excuse for people in cars. forget those stupid laws. if you can't drive and talk at the same time then you shouldn't be allowed to walk up and down stairs for your own safety. don't even try the distraction argument, a radio was in the car way before a phone and you have to look down to mess with that... way worse than staring straight ahead and talking. and if you have trouble driving with only one hand then life's just going to be such a bummer for you that i'd suggest staying in bed and watching oprah on tv all day rolling over every once in a while so that you don't get bedsores.

three. people that walk around with their phones playing loud, tinny sounding, crappy music.

i actually think that sums itself up pretty well. get some headphones. nobody wants to hear swede-pop techno at 9 in the morning on the metro courtesy of some asian looking dude sitting in the corner attending his own private concert. seriously man.

four. names.

they're weird. i was talking with nancy about this earlier and it makes sense, but is still strange to me. names are contrived things that are made in reference to something that's not the name at all but something completely and entirely separate and different.

five. dogs that wear clothes.

especially little dogs. little dogs are awful. rats on leashes. they're like little pet mice but a little bigger and a lot lamer because at least mice are mice and in a pinch you can let them go in someone's house you don't like very much. but these things are especially obnoxious when they are dressed up with a plaid sweater or any other sort of lame attempt to hide their inherent lameness. it's awful. if you're really that desperate then just have another kid. or adopt one. at least they can talk.

six. different languages.

sure they're fun to learn and when you finally get one you feel like a real champ, but really what's the need. if everyone had a common language then everything would be peachy. i understand that lots of diversity of culture and tradition would be lost if all languages were assimilated into one, but just think of how amazingly easy it would be to buy a pair of pants in a different country. i'm not sure if i buy into the whole tower of babble thing but if it's true then god sure is one vindictive dude.

seven. fashion.

it's stupid. look like this guy and you win.



that's all.

right now

i am wondering if monkeys really do like bananas that much. i mean i know donkey kong does, but i don't hold the same conviction for monkeys in the wild and even in zoos.

and now i'm thinking about how i feel bad for animals in zoos even though i've read life of pi a couple times and it's a convincing argument about how they're better off sometimes in zoos but i still feel bad. mostly for that poor rhinoceros in the berlin zoo that had a parking lot to hang out in. unfortunate. at least in africa he'd have safari jeeps to ram into.

that's all.

an island called ireland, random tales from my walk home from class, and my pants blowing a huge hole in the crotch

this last weekend i went to ireland. it was grand. i got in after an early flight and took the bus to my friend's school. what i didn't realize is that the bus doesn't really tell you what stop you're at and it can be kind of difficult to figure out what street you're on when you've never been in a country before and are sandwiched between a 60 year old woman talking about her bad knees and some dude that smelled like the music blaring out of his headphones way too close to my head. garbage.

i essentially jumped the gun and got off the bus too early in fear of getting off too late and ended up walking a mile or two to the campus only to find that my friend was most certainly not where she said she would be. i spent the next hour trying to figure out how to dial her number on a payphone, those things are so damn tricky in ever different country, and finally met up much to my relief.

we walked around dublin a little bit and it is actually a really pretty city. i had it in my head that it was just full of rain and clouds and wind and drunks which is all pretty much true but i didn't picture such a nice city with a big river running through it and clean streets and buildings. another thing i didn't realize is how expensive it was. we went to dinner with a couple of her friends and it ended up being a promotion for amstel so after we got some free beer we headed to find a bar in the old district of town, temple bar area. it was quite a lot of fun. i had never really watched a rugby match before and as i did i realized that the people who play that sport are the gnarliest dudes out there. there was one guy the size of a tree with hair down to his butt and i think if i saw him on the subway at 1 in the morning i'd cry and curl up in the corner. scary stuff.



as we were walking around in this area i ran into someone i hadn't seen since highschool, philip valley. i went to highschool with him and it turns out he's in bilbao for the semester and was in dublin that weekend and what do you know there it was. very random. caught up for a bit and headed home.

the next day we went to the guinness factory which i guess is something that everyone has to do at least once i suppose. when in dublin, right? it was a bit of fun and although i don't really like guinness the tour was neat and the view from the top where the bar is was very nice.



nothing too excited happened that night. the world championship rugby game was on and we watched it a bar and then something wonderful happened. we went and got pizza. it was delicious.

that's mostly my trip. there's more but i'm tired.

now, walking home from school today i took a different route and saw a grocery store that only sells frozen food. everything in the store is in a freezer. i saw a man running down the street with blood all over his shirt and someone else chasing him. it was really strange and i don't know what was going on, but it weirded me out. and right before i turned to make it up to my street i heard a most awful screeching sound and it was an old guy playing a violin he obviously didn't know how to play. funny thing was it seemed he was doing it for money as the case was open on the ground in front of him. i didn't see any change but maybe if he keeps practicing.

that's all i have for now. i'm really tired.

dinner in a house (yes a real house), school ruining my life and high school cheerleaders

i don't really have much to talk about. last night i went to dinner at my spanish friend alex's house. yes a real house. she made a lot of food and it was all very good and i felt very happy. it was kind of far away and i didn't really want to go but i got off my ass anyways against better judgement and it kind of paid off.

today i went to class. it was a bummer.

i came home and transformers had finished downloading. i watched it. i'll go ahead and give it a b. i was going to give it a b+ because it hit all the necessary buttons a movie in that genre needs to hit so well, but then michael bay's name popped up at the end and i just couldn't do it. the guy made pearl harbor.

i mean... pearl harbor.

coldplay is kind of girly. but sometimes i still listen to spies off of parachutes because it reminds me that once upon a time in highschool i would lay on my back on the floor of my friend poli's room and would stare at the ceiling for a while not really doing much. kind of weird? sure. kind of relaxing? yes. until his dog sized cat would come in and walk on me while i was half sleeping, leaving a trail of nasty cat hair all over anything i wore. i hate that cat.

i'm tired of pants that are too long. is it too much to ask for people to sell pants in both a waist size and a leg length? maybe it is. oh it is? i'm sorry, i didn't know.

there's a spanish vice magazine on my table here and i've been keeping it because there are some terrific pictures in it i'd like to put in my room to disguise this filthy wall color but i've been lazy and haven't gotten pins or putty or whatever i need to put stuff up on the walls so it's just been hanging out here on my table for a couple weeks. whenever i got back from san sebastian i guess.

i'm going to ireland this weekend. dublin.

it's pretty ballsy to try and cover a sigur ros song. thursday didn't do too bad. wolf ticket... oh well.

i like the song ohio by damien jurado very much. the rest of it, i just can't really get into.

i ask where she's headed she tells me ohio i've not seen my mother in ages. it's been a long time. a real long time.

time to leave. love you all.

except for nate, nick, casey and poli.

drinking list numero dos. don't judge me.

i'll preface this with a sorry, but these some things just need to be said.

things that pissed me off tonight.

boots with heels.
-no offense to girls who wear them but they're really kind of ugly. stick with heels. trust me.

guys who wear dolce and gabana long sleeve rhinestone t-shirts.
-self explanatory, they have rhinestones

g-star raw.
-the jeans are ugly. sorry.

guys who wear sunglasses at night in bars.
-umm. who the hell do you think you are?

people who smoke hash in bars.
-seriously? go to retiro. they love that crap there.

expensive drinks.
-i had to pay four euros and fifty centimos for a beer tonight. that's like 8 dollars.

little dogs.
-i understand why you have them. you live in a tiny box apartment. but you're still a dick. you cater to every demand a rat on a leash has. you pick up it's poop. come on. and they yap.

bouncers.
-please, make fun of my shoes some more. threaten to not let me in because i don't wear the same leather dress shoes as everyone else. you are so cool. my vans are not. you are right.

spanish girl bartenders.
-you're cute, but don't pretend like you don't like overcharging me for drinks. i'm on to you.

spanish phone companies.
-you drain all my money very fast. very fast. i'm upset with you.

balloons.
-ok, some party i get it. but why do you pop so easily? you really scare the hell out of me every time that happens. please... go quietly into the night.

guys who ask for cigarettes.
-no. i don't have any. stop asking.

guys who ask for a lighter.
-no. i don't have one. stop asking.

people who dress like it's the north pole.
-by my estimate it's 60 degrees out. leave the gloves, overcoat, and beanie at home. you look like an eskimo.

guidos.
-self explanatory. get over yourself. quickly. the sooner the better.


ok that's all i have.

oh wait, this too.

if i'm half as awesome as this guy when i leave i'll be happy with myself.




love you all.

not sure.

today a girl told me that she hadn't heard of fleetwood mac before. and when i asked if she'd heard the song landslide, she told me matter of factly that the dixie chicks sang that song. another friend told me deadly serious that his favorite movie was the girl next door.

i'm not speaking with either of them anymore.

i just got over being sick. that's not true. i still am but almost done. hopefully tomorrow i will wake up and feel like a ten thousand dollar bill which i'm sure feels pretty good.

life right now feels very surreal. not sure if it's the weird lamp on my table or the french cold medicine i took an hour or two ago but everything seems very strange.

it could also be this awfully colored room. it's like snufflupagus from sesame street ate a bunch of mik and oranges and then become violently ill, spraying all sorts of filth out of his snuffly trunk onto my walls.

it really is disgusting.

probably the coolest thing i've done since i wasted 2 years of my life in junior high playing diablo

we went camping in the mountains.

friday around 2 i met some people at school and from there we went to the train station at atocha and got a train to segovia. the only problem was that one of the girls that was supposed to come with us ended up being late and we had to catch the 6pm train instead of the 4pm and we were worried about the light because it ended up taking an hour to get there and we wanted to hike a bit before setting up camp but it ended up being alright.

so we get on the train and are heading northeast and after about an hour we see a stop that we like and get off at a little alpine village called cercedilla which was really cool. we traipse through the town and one of the spanish girls asks a local where the hiking trails are. by now it's getting dark and we all have huge backpacks and one guy has a tent lashed to his and they ask us why we want to hike mountains in the dark and us not wanting to say we're camping because it's probably (yes it is) prohibited just say we're dumb and like to hike in the dark. with big backpacks. and tents.



they point us in the right direction and 30 minutes later we're in the woods, 6 of us climbing almost straight up towards the top of the mountain thing. there were my two friends boris and ilya and then a couple of random people who had heard us talking about it and wanted to join. they ended up being really cool and i was glad that they came. a guy named alex from jersey, a girl named rosie from switzerland and this alex girl who grew up in madrid. it was a really random group but good.

so we get up to this clearing on the top of this mountain and the light is almost gone so we start gathering wood for a fire (which was prohibited along with the camping) and putting up the tents. we borrowed one from the school and it was the easiest damn thing i've ever done in my life setting it up. you just unzip the package and it pops up and you have a tent. we didn't even stake it down because we threw our packs in it and it kept it in place. i was very happy. so we end up getting the tents set up right as it gets pitch black and start a small fire in the middle of this rock circle so nothing can catch on fire and life is good. this was our tent.



my friend ilya had brought a tiny camping pot and some rice and soup so we filled it with water and put it in the middle of the fire with rice and a little wine and had a nice hot hobo dinner. i was ecstatic. the stars were out and the fog was rolling around the mountain, there wasn't a bright moon so the smoke couldn't be seen which was good. i was paranoid that we were going to get rolled in the middle of the night by cops but we were in the middle of nowhere, at least a 45 minute hike up the woods with no trail on this mountain so we were fine.

we fit 4 people into a tent made for 2 and woke up the next morning very cold, very sore, and very tired. but a good night in all aspects of the word good. we cleaned everything up and headed back down the mountain, but not before checking out the view we'd missed because of the darkness. it looked kind of like this.



we went back down to the town and the alex girl and i were tired and had work to do so we took a train back to madrid while the others took a train further up into the mountains and went hiking all day. i was too tired to hike and ended up coming home yesterday and falling asleep for a bit, watching some tv shows on my computer, reading and writing, and doing a little studying.

last night i went to the girl's house for dinner again and we went to a party that someone in lyndsey's credentialing program was having all the way out in the middle of nowhere around 1 and because her friend is gay almost all the guys at the party were gay and it was kind of funny to be the only straight dude in the room. everyone was really nice and it was a good time in a nice apartment with lots of different types of people with good music and good food and good drinks and we took a night bus back to gran via (the main street) at 3am because the metro stops running at 2am (lame) and walked back to their house to drop some stuff off. a few people decided we still wanted to stay out but by the time we were back in sol, the area with all the bars and fun places, it was 4 and most everything besides gnarly clubs were shutting down so we went back to their house and i fell asleep on the couch and woke up this morning to a french girl hitting me in the head with a pillow. came back home and slept for a bit.

oh how wonderful life is.

today i've been working on writing an evaluation to an answer i gave to an essay question on my last economics test to improve my grade. it's long and slow work because of the complexity of these darn models. i think that tonight i will go to buen retiro park to watch all the crack addict hippies burn outs bang on drums and get some reading done.

that's about it for the life of mitchell right now. i'm tired but need to write the rest of this paper.

oh and call me. or skype me, my name is mitchellburbick. surprising hm? it'd be nice to hear from anyone.

+34 610389550

ummm.

this is why god created youtube. and awesome bands with pretty dudes.


(i know god didn't create youtube.)

(and no this is not a joke. it's awesome.)

rain

it's been raining in madrid for the last couple days pretty much without stop. it's a nice break from the sun and the heat all night, but when i hang my clothes up on the line to dry, i'd appreciate a couple hour break from the rain and for the sun to come out and say 'hello' and dry my clothes extra super fast.

they've been on the line for the last 3 days becoming even more water logged than when i had originally taken them out of the washer. i only have 7 shirts and 4 of them are hanging on the line being rained on so this puts me in a sort of predicament that i'd really care about if i were a girl. turns out i kind of like wearing the same clothes 3 days in a row so it suits me well.

midterms are this week. but they're not really midterms. they're tri-terms because we have two sets of midterms but the word 'mid' has a connotation of half and half the semester is most certainly not over. only a third is. though it's strange to think that a month has already gone by.

oh another nasty thing about the rain here. there are trees planted in the sidewalk at regular intervals and they are set below the level of the sidewalk so their little cut out square holes in the sidewalk that they sit in fill with water running down the street and the water turns brown and nasty from all the mud and the cigarette butts that people just leave everywhere. somewhat icky.

i booked my flight to sweden yesterday. i'll be there for 4 full days in december and i think i may just freeze. i'm heading to dublin in october and then amsterdam and brussels in november, sweden and budhapest and croatia in december. hopefully. if my money doesn't run out.

on a happy note, when my apartment got broken into the other day 80 euros of mine were stolen. i'm still not entirely convinced that it wasn't my roommates but whatever. the landlady is taking 130 euros off my final month's rent because of the inconvenience. i don't know why she made it 130 when only 80 were taken but if this is the way it works then i'm going to have a friend break in and take everything. we'll see where i get with that.

more studying to do now.

oops.

oops. here are the pictures that didn't work and one more.

keanu reeves, san sebastian, and the elevator in my apartment buliding that always smell like smoke

i've been putting this off for a while because i knew that when i was going to write it would probably turn out to be kind of long. bummer.

went to san sebastian this last weekend, left on thursday afternoon and got back last night. it was very nice. i got in thursday night and it was raining. it looked like this.



nice. very nice. thursday night we went to the hostel and they gave me a bed to sleep in that was soft but didn't have a very heavy blanket so i stole one off the bed next to me. turns out i slept in a room with 5 other beds all by myself for two out of the three nights. the second night there were a bunch of strange girls in there with me but i came home late and they came home later and made a bunch of noise in the morning when they were leaving but i just kept my head under the covers wishing they would disappear and eventually they did.

after the hostel we went to some silly irish bar that we used to hang out at by the water. it was nice. friday we walked up monte urgell and hung out by the jesus statue and looked around. made it to the magic bar on the side of the hill and checked out the view. we got sidra for cheap and poured it all around. it looked something like this.



thanks bree. oh and to anyone who cares i code these pictures links myself. i'm so cool.

went to the beach later that day and slept for a little bit. it was nice and relaxing. while at the beach some guy that ashley had hung out with last time we were there recognized her and invited us all over to this house for dinner. turns out he's in some super duper chef school in san sebastian and ended up making us a delicious 5 course dinner thing. we ate some part of a duck that's illegal in the states due to ethical animal treating and such. i felt kind of bad. just a little. it was funky tasting but whatever. some german girl came in half way through and proceeded to roll a blunt the size of a hot dog and take the whole thing down herself. ask the girls. i'm no liar.

managed to find our way out the place after dinner and wandered around parte all night. passed by tas tas and thought of sward wearing some gross v-neck and gold chain. i shuddered. went to the metal bar but txomin was on vacation and some goth girl was working the place. it was unfortunate but still fun. sorry john, your score isn't on the machine anymore.

woke up late saturday and spent the day doing nothing. the girls ended up having to go home earlier than they thought to avoid travel complications so we tried to do early dinner at the chinese place on zabaleta but they were going to open to late so we went to an indian place i'd been to before and had a nice spicy dinner for megan's birthday. happy 21 kid. the girls left to go spend the night in the airport in bilboa and i managed to meet up with some people from madrid who were there for the weekend as well. sat on a bench in front of the congress hall and talked for a long time. it was the last night of the film festival and there was some playboy party at bataplan, the club on the beach, but we were over it and went to sleep around 5.

sunday i had the day to myself and it was really sort of strange. i love san sebastian more than any city i've ever been too and having all that time there to myself really made me feel weird. all the memories i have from that city are with lots of people i really cared about, and to be alone in a place i loved without anyone i loved was a new experience for me. it made it something completely different. not living there anymore was strange enough but to be alone sitting on a beach in the same spot where just under two years ago we'd sit and drink and joke and run into the ocean a huge group.. it was interesting. it made my heart both very full and very heavy.

the thing that really made my weekend though i think was this man.



riding a merry go round when you're a kid is cool. riding a merry go round in a pink shirt with your cardigan tied around your neck when you're 60 is bona-fide kick ass.

the only complaints i have about the weekend is that txomin wasn't there, francisco didn't ever get back to me, and that the movies on the busses were scooby doo 2, charlie's angels 2, and a keanu reeves movie where he plays an angry chain smoking dude who's life is a mess until he finally messes up so badly he winds up getting assigned to coach an intercity black kid baseball team which eventually makes both him and the kids better people.

he's such an ass.

love.

oh, and some words from amy hempel to leave you with.

"It is possible to imagine a person so entirely that the image resists attempts to dislodge it."

dayummmmm.

umm. yeah. this place is nice.

i love san sebastian.

more to come after i get back.

i'm hungry

tengo hambre. not much, but enough to make me start off talking about it. for some reason i always manage to forget that on sundays this country closes down. you'd be lucky to find a store open selling water to people dying of thirst. in addition, i don't usually possess the foresight that would enable me to buy groceries for a couple days at a time instead of making it a daily adventure to see whether or not i can feed myself. today i couldn't. i woke up late and had a lunch of french fries that i managed to make myself and then today while walking around i had a popsicle and then tonight i've had water and teddy grahams. or chiquilin ositos. same thing.

last night was el noche blanco here in madrid. i guess it's the second time they've done it so far and it's been done by other cities in europe for years. the city basically stays open all night with lots of exhibitions by artists and performers that take place in the street. i guess the museums were open all night as well but i had better things to do on a night like that than to look at a bunch of old paintings i could waste a sunday on.

started out by going to the palacio real with my friends boris and ilya to check out the gardens and to see what they were setting up there for the night. here is a picture.


this is a picture of ilya and boris riding wild boars. they are such brave friends.


after that we went to retiro park where a very random performance art piece was taking place on the lake in the middle of the park. creepy people dressed in black costumes with weird masks rowed boats out to the middle of the lake and on the front of the boats were mermaid-esque topless spanish girls wearing turquoise sequined ballroom masks with long hair covering their torsos. they were supposed to be sirens i'm pretty sure. they rowed to the middle and turned and faced back the way they came, probably 20 boats, each with a creepy monster thing in black rowing and these mermaid chicks. about 20 more boats then launched from the shore, one in particular leading them. each of these boats had a creepy rowing monster too, but instead of topless spanish women, there was another eerily dressed guy playing a tuba with a single light glowing at the top of the instrument. they played eerie noises and rowed towards the mermaid boats with the guy leading the tubas clanging a bell. it was supposed to be like a ship i think sailing towards these sirens. they then just chased each other all over the lake, the whole time these creepy tuba noises and bell clangings just echoing through the lake, over the water, against the statues and the people and it was a very strange and weirdly inspiring visual.

from this i ran to my friend lyndsey's to have dinner and i swear this girl and her roommates never disappoint. the food i eat there is as good as any i've ever had time and time again. i did the dishes again and all the women swooned. i'm so popular. we went out to meet my friends in sol to head to some more exhibitions that we'd scheduled in different parts of the city through the night only to find that it had started raining while i was eating delicious food. the whole things kind of shut down because nothing could really go on outdoors so we sat on a bench, in the rain while some girl had my hoodie on because i am so nice and froze for a bit until we wandered to a bar where the girls had to flirt with the bouncers to get me in because i was wearing shorts and my nikes because i'd been walking around all day and had planned on continuing doing so throughout the night and not going to some lame bar with music and bouncers wearing suits but plans change and i got in and danced for a bit to pulse thumping bass blaring blips and bleeps european electronica at it's finest. all the other people were from italy or france so they loved it. yay.

this is a picture. my smile is fake. theirs are not. my mom hates it when i do this. i can hear her now actually.



walked around a little more after that and had planned on going to the showing of a movie that daft punk made that was to the south a little bit in the city but a pretty long walk so we were planning on taking the metro. all the other girls had gone home and i was left with a french girl and we went to the nearest metro station but for some unknown reason, on the night that the city had put months of planning into to keep everyone out all night going all over the city, they decided to shut down the metro at the normal time of 2. it makes no sense, didn't last night and not even today after a bit of sleep. so that was a bust and after walking the girl home i ended up walking the hour back to my house to finally talk to my parents briefly at 6 in the morning here when my mom asked me if i was drunk in code ('are you seeing double'?).

thanks mom, but i'd been out walking around for 16 hours and hadn't had a drink in a while.

passed out pretty tired and woke up at 1 only to discover that i had no food. studied and walked around a park for while.

life is good.

the best sandwich i've ever made

today i made a very good sandwich. i woke up at 11 and was very hungry because i hadn't eaten dinner last night because the light in my kitchen was broken and i didn't want to cook in the dark. i can barely cook when i can see what i'm doing. i bought some bread from the place on the corner and then grilled some chicken i found from a little bit ago that i'm pretty sure was still good but i cooked it anyways so my guess is that it can't have been that bad for me, cut up a tomato, got some lettuce and cheese, and then put that sucker together.

yummmmmm.

i should've taken a picture but i was too busy eating.

i have a midterm in my international trade class on wednesday and have spent most of today trying to figure out just what the hell import and export biased growth for a country really means.

saturday night is el noche blanco which is when all the public buildings like libraries and congress and museums stay open all night with the lights on and so do stores and bars and there are concerts in the street randomly. rumor has it that daft punk is playing at 6am somewhere. i'm going to pee my pants if this is true.

everything to come.

this thing kills pictures

i posted some pictures but the site chopped them all. not sure why. i'll figure it out next time. sorry.

where to start.. i know, how about used love socks floating in the ocean

so yeah, there was a condom floating in the ocean at port olympic in barcelona. i was going to take a picture of it but i was too busy trying to hide my eyes from all the topless 60 year old women walking around. yuck. on a lighter not my hand still smells like garlic from last night's dinner of chicken. i was going to make pasta and chicken but the german girl used all the pots and just covered them with foil and put them in the fridge. so i just ate some chicken and garlic. yummm.

barcelona was a lot of fun, really nice city. big. really big. i liked it a lot. we took a midnight bus there on thursday night and got in friday morning groggy and feeling like crap after not having slept much and then wandered around the city with the group for a while. the girls checked into their hostel and took a nap and i went to the terrace on the top of the roof and read and wrote and smiled in the sunshine for a bit. then it got cold and i got to put on my flannel and hoodie and it was nice to be cold after the weather being hot for so long. i ended up staying at my friend stephanie's because it was cheap and free and was really amazing actually because she left for ibiza that weekend and just gave me her key. she lives in a science lab, a modern building with brushed concrete ceilings and floors and white walls and white shelves and ikea chairs and plates and pots and silverware and halogen lights in the walls with door numbers on the bottom right of the doors.

went out a little that night and ended up in some alley far from everything with two girls and a bartender that was ecstatic to have americans who spoke spanish in his bar and kept talking about tennessee for some reason and gave us all free beers and i went home early to my white cell and woke up feeling terrific. i got to take a shower in a bathroom that was approximately 1 foot by 2 feet and ended up almost standing on the toilet during the whole experience.

went to the beach and saw my wonderful friend my plastic floating in the water and then climbed the moutain of the jews with a jew and saw a castle and a olympic stadium and a concert place and a couple of museums and a really quite fanstastic view of the city. i stood in front of a palace and took a picture for my mom. it looked like this.



went down and bought a pizza to cook in the kitchen and it took me 10 minutes to figure out how to use the damn oven and when i finally did the pizza burned on the top and didn't cook on the bottom but i was hungry and out of money and ate it anyways and spent the next couple of hours with a stomach ache worried i was going to throw up because of eating uncooked bread. i didn't. or at least i haven't yet. went out again that night to a bar that kelsie and peter and brett and everyone else had talked about called la ovella negra and it turned out to be super ghetto and smelled like dirty cigs and old beer and was like a big cafeteria hall but had a good atmosphere and a pool table and lots of places to sit and lots of life and was all in all a pretty good vibe. ended up sitting on a plaza with a fountain with a guy from ireland a girl from germany and a girl from france talking about nothing in particular til 5 in the morning. this is a picture from that night with my friend monika. look how happy i am to be in barcelona. i'm smiling. positively radiant.


sunday i went and saw all the gaudi stuff which is really quite spectacular. it's like dr. seuss was just coming off a three day sleep deprived acid trip and then immediately jumped into a week long mushroom bender and then rounded it all off with a little bout of alcoholism all the while drawing and sketching. the apartment buildings are crazy, segrada familia is going to take forever to finish and is very neat, and park guell is nuts. all very pretty. all very scary in a subliminal sort of way.

that night we rounded out our stay with some good old fashioned chinese food and the whole speaking spanish in a chinese restaurant will never get old to me and then went and met everyone at this incredible fountain light show thing at placa espanya where in front of the palace that's a museum there are waterfalls flowing down and leading to a huge fountain that reminds me of seattle center except no giant half orb just water and it pulses and changes color and music plays and all the way down the road leading to it are fountains. it looks like this. kind of.


yeah, so kind of. a lot prettier in person you can imagine.

ran from this place to the bus station, hopped on an 11 pm bus from barcelona, got into madrid at 6 after sleeping for maybe 2 hours, went home and passed out for an hour, went to class and work all day and then finally died last night for a couple hours. this is what i looked like on the metro going to the bus, happy to be leaving a city full of stink and love.



all these pictures are for matt who whines a lot.

and yeah, i wore the same thing all weekend. big deal.

rent a cops that pack guns, missing the ocean, falling in love with a french girl, and the homeless guy who sleeps in front of my house

i think i finally got a little rest from the weekend. haven't been doing much and have just been going to class and working and having chill nights with friends.

we went out to my friends boris' apartment the other night which is probably about an hour north of my neighborhood walking and it's kind of in the ghetto. but it has a rooftop terrace where we sat and talked and drank and hung out for while looking over some of the skyline of madrid and the sky was dark but the clouds were still pink and light and moving fast. it was a nice night, caught the last metro home and ended up talking to a crazy lady in spanglish about ocean beach where she had incidentally spent two years of her life as a troll right outside of south coast. small world.

i was walking to work today and noticed i was hungry, probably because i hadn't eaten anything in a while and popped into a supermarket to grab some bread and noticed that there was a security guard just kind of wandering aimlessly through the store with a horrifyingly bored look on his face. i suppose i would be bored too if i were protecting apples and cans of pringles. but that wasn't the most interesting thing, he was packing a gun. like a real cop.. it was the strangest thing to think that a rent a cop working inside of a grocery store had a gun. kind of scared me when i realized i was wearing a backpack and he was eying me suspiciously. i grabbed my bread, paid, and got the hell out of there. maybe next time i'll leave the backpack at home and try not to look like i just woke up.

i've never really lived in a city that's far away from the ocean. i don't like it. it's i imagine it's like living in nebraska. nicer. but kind of like that. maybe. there's just no water around here. it doesn't rain and there's no ocean for 7 hours in every direction. there aren't even large lakes. it's weird because i'm not a huge fan of the beach, i actually really dislike the beach but i do enjoy the ocean, just having it around. i remember in seattle going to alki beach and having bonfires and the water being freezing and sky gray and cloudy and the air cold, the smell of the ocean drifting up and down the street and just sitting on the sand next to the cold water listening to the little waves on the shore. i miss it.

last night i went to my friend lyndsey's house who is here from new york doing school at a place that teaches you how to teach english and hooks you up with a job after. pretty cool thing.. she lives in sol which is more or less the center of nightlife in madrid and she also lives with 8 other girls, 4 italian and 4 french. they were making pasta and she had invited me over and i got to sit in the kitchen watching all these girls make pasta and yell at each in italian and spanish and french and trying to figure it all out, the craziest scene imaginable, languages flying and people packed into a tiny kitchen, drinking wine and laughing at the stupidest things in other languages that i only half understood. it all culminated with a plate of steaming pasta in front of me that tasted like pasta that i can only imagine yeshua could have topped. i don't know what was in it and i don't care. i volunteered to wash dishes and i think it went over well. i am such a gentleman.

afterwards my american friend lyndsey said there was a birthday party she was going to and i didn't have class until 11 this morning so i said i would go and so did a french girl named louise. i have in the past had a very poor view of french people and i would like to take every bad word i said about them in generalization back. well not all of them, but most. lyndsey ended up getting wasted and dancing and i sat on a couch lining the wall of the back of this bar with this girl and made faces and stamped around awkwardly laughing and speaking spanish and her speaking french and only half understanding each other the entire night. she learned how to say smack a ho and super duper. it was magic. i think i'm in love.

this morning i left for school and passed the homeless man who sleeps on the bench on the street in front of my house. not an unusual scene, except this time i noticed he had peed his pants. i felt bad and put two euros in his pocket. he didn't move. after seeing the 3 boxes of don simon sangria under the bench, i can only imagine why. he may have just had a better night than i.

miss you all. if you've been calling my cell phone i'm sorry. i've gotten the missed calls but every time you've called i've been in class. and i'm a bad person.

love.

gnarly suburban fiestas, fourteen year olds throwing up in alleys, drunk girls, and spending the night in a train station

i´ve decided from here out to abandon most grammar constructs. i´ll save them for the school papers.

this weekend was insane. i don´t think i got to sleep before 6 or 7 in the morning three days straight. it wasn´t even like stupid club crazy, it was just eating dinner at 11 and staying out and walking around most of the time until you realize the sun is climbing over the horizon and oh yeah you really are that tired so maybe you should catch the metro home. it also doesn´t help that the metro stops running at two in the morning and doesn´t start up again until six, leaving a pretty big gap if you´re stuck in the middle of madrid kind of far away from your home on the edge.

thursday night we went salsa dancing which was a lot of fun minus the fact that i can´t dance and that the bouncer made fun of my shoes. it´s not my fault i don´t own dress shoes and didn´t want to pack them even if i did all the way to madrid with me. you have to dress nice here to go out and since nice for me is a pair of jeans a t-shirt i catch a lot of crap and it usually results in the girls we´re out with pleading with the bouncer to let me in. it´s great. i love it. i´d break down and buy some dress shoes but out of principle i won´t. never. anyways salsa dancing was fun and there was a nice girl who tried to show me how to do it but i have about as much rhythm as a caterpillar so i eventually just sat on the side of the dance floor watching some haggard looking dudes pull some good looking chicks. amazing. this one guy was at least 30 pounds over weight with no hair and man boobs but the guy could dance and girls loved him. he was like poli but fatter. and no hair. and he could dance. so nothing like poli.

got home late. friday i didn´t have school so i worked a bit, made some money to go out with, and then friday night we thought we were just going to have a chill night at a friends house so nobody dressed up or anything and we were just sitting around drinking and then someone threw a show at the window and down below on the street there was a group of 10 other people from school going somewhere in sol which is the area for general hedonism so we got our stuff together and went out and had one of the better nights i´ve had here. just general bars and nothing crazy and just singing mulan in the streets. songs from aladdin too. my friend boris at the beginning of the night had given me a book he´d hollowed the pages out of so i could hide valuables in it because someone had broken into my apartment and taken a bunch of money earlier in the week so all night i walked around carrying a fake book with no words inside of it on the divergent views of the american capital punishment system. i am so scholarly.

was supposed to go on a day trip with friends to toledo on saturday but i slept through it and went to the park next to my house to read and ended up sitting on the grass next to a large fountain reading the dharma bums and thinking climbing mountains and writing for a couple hours. the sun was out, the grass was warm, the shade was cool, the water was loud, and i was happy. grabbed dinner with my friend lyndsey who neglected to tell me that i´d be the only boy on their all girl outing (this has happened more than once, maybe they think i´m gay?), and ended up eating at a chinese place with two american girls, two french girls, and two italian girls while nobody spoke the same language. one of the italian girls could only understand italian and french and one of the french girls could only understand italian and one of the american girls couldn´t speak spanish so it was just a whole drunken mess of languages falling all over each other. there was much pantomiming. i think that´s how you spell that.

ran to the train station at 11 to catch the last train out to the gnarly fiesta in the suburbs of madrid. each suburb during the summer has it´s own party every weekend and this one was calling something like pozuelo and it was pretty fun. problem was it was a 15 minute train ride and the first train didn´t start up until 6:30 the next morning. which wouldn´t have been a problem, but nobody deemed it important enough to tell us that everything shut down at 3 in the morning and we were left to wander the streets watching high school kids throw up in alleys and sit in pools of their own filthy filth. ah to be young in spain.

i was also wearing shorts and shirt and it got cold so we all ended up huddling together in the train station at about 5 in the morning half asleep half alive telling stories and for some reason i woke up with words written in bright red lipstick all over my arm. three showers later and it´s still all sparkly.

i´d also like to welcome my dad to the readership, i just hope he doesn´t cut me off because of these anecdotes.

small apartments and 45 year old male models

Complaints.

My small apartment.
My expensive apartment.
The dead cockroaches I find in the kitchen.
How hot is is here.
How big the city is.
Hangovers.
My expensive books for my classes.
How I get stared down every time I leave my apartment.
My non-existent internet that I´m paying for at my apartment.
My 60 year old land lady who saw me out at 3 in the morning resulting in some altercation that I can´t remember.
Having to really cook for myself again.
Soft beds and large pillows that make it so I can´t sleep comfortably.

That may be all for now. School just started today and I met some people yesterday on some run all over the effing city scavenger hunt thing and I´m starting to feel a little more at ease. The metro is the coolest thing in the world and once I figure out the bus system I think everything will be fine.

One of my roommates is a 45 year old guy from New York that spend the last 20 years in South Africa working as a male model and is now living in a crappy little room next to me living his dream of modeling for the big department store here in Spain and dating a Spanish opera singer. He pulled out all his head shots or whatever the other night and showed them to everyone in the apartment. There is one of him holding a cat wearing a sailors hat with a beard. I wish I had it. Ít´s good. Roommates are nice but never around, there is no common area in the apartment just rooms so I find myself either in the kitchen or my room which doesn´t really have room for much else besides a bed and a closet a tiny table and a chair. I sit on the bed a lot. I don´t have internet yet even though I´m paying for it which is bullshit but trying to argue with a little old lady in Spanish when she talks two hundred thousand words a minute it becomes sort of difficult to understand.

I think that´s pretty much it. Not too much has been going on. I walked down Gran Via last night and saw a line of hookers probably 50 long. It was cool. I kind of got a job with a company that houses students in apartment and I have to go walk over there right now so this will be the end.

More stories later I suppose.

long walks

i wasn't able to sleep last night. the time change still has me all messed up. i was however able to wake up at 4 in the morning just fine and roam around the streets of madrid before anyone was up which if nothing else put the fear of being beaten up and mugged back into me after i passed a group of unscrupulous looking youths at a metro stop. maybe i'll camp out in the room until it's a little later next time.

i went to school today and met a bunch of people because today was the day that most people were arriving. they seems nice. they didn't make too much fun of me and i didn't have to eat my lunch in the bathroom so i think that's a nice thing.

i found an apartment. it's a little expensive. it's a little small. i haven't met the roommates. should be exciting. the address is 005 piso 4 derecha, guzman el bueno, madrid, spain. write me sometime. there are 6 bedrooms, two of which have two beds in them, so a total of 8 people will be living there eventually i think. pretty effing big. there are two spanish girls and a guy from new york apparently, but i haven't met them yet. i move in tomorrow so maybe then.

not much else going on. waiting for tonight by jennifer lopez is on the hostel's tv. i think that the pop music that either doesn't really make it in the states or just the shit that's 3 years old comes to europe and blows up. haha ew. gross.

in closing i fell in love three times last night. too bad spanish girls hate me. i would too though, so i suppose i can't blame them.

my number is 034+91+610389550

-mitch

drunk list number 1

music videos i have seen on the tv in the common room of the hostel i am staying at in madrid.

child of mine by guns and roses
bleed it out by linkin park
every song ever made by maroon 5
umbrella by that black chick
some usher slash alicia keys video
the great escape by gwen stefani
something by keane
three, count them, three songs by korn, each better than the last
some video about a cute ethnic angel by velvet revolver that totally sucked ass
and a bunch of uninteligible spanish music videos featuring guys who are huge fans of the fahion mullet which incidentally, has most definitely not gone out of style here.

he shes

last night after sleeping all day because my time was so messed up i got up, took a shower like a good young man and went out with some people i had met at the hostel. we ended up at a club inside this mansion that looked 300 years old with marble floors, weird old paintings on the walls, ice in the urinals crazy lights loud music with no discernible words and yes, a transgendered man or woman dancing in front of a huge mirror with stripper stringy orange latex pants on. i was so enthralled i don't think i stopped staring for 5 minutes. i think i gave some people the wrong vibe.
After that wonderful person stepped down, conana the spanish gnarbarian stepped up to take its place. Adorned with tribal tattoos that would make indigenous people put a shirt on in shame, leopard print tight pants and horse boots that went past the knee, this sex powered whirlwind of labido put on a show that left few mouths closed. I think i heard little girls crying outside on the street.

That was my night. And morning. Kind of.

Complaint: I can't find a power converter that will work with my laptop. I forgot to bring one and now I'm screwed. Another complaint. This city is effing expensive and I can't find an apartment for less than 430 euros a month. I'm screwed. Also, it's hot.