Hello Reader. After a week, I have finally mustered up the courage and clarity that it will take to write this entry. One of my best friends, Jennifer Becker, wrote me last week. She said that she had something she wanted to tell me over the phone. I tried to call her on several occasions and never got through. She finally decided to write me an e-mail. Jenna Johnson, one of Jenny's roommates and best friends throughout college, died just before Christmas. She had moved to California and was training with a friend to run the AIDS marathon. After feeling a [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. Christmas morning we all awoke and Josh, Caitlin, and I (accompanied by David) began making breakfast. A large breakfast that included poached eggs, which is close enough to one of my Christmas traditions (eggs benedict) for me. We began opening our presents at the table because the suspense was just too much to bare, like a kid sitting at the top of the stairs waiting for his parents to finish brushing their teeth before they could all down to the living room to see the presents. Caitlin got Josh some incense to get the 'girl smell' out of our [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. On Thursday night I came back to the hostel in Valencia and spoke to my new roommates. Erica, from Canada was a real hippy girl blonde (who I could see my friend Bradley Mosier liking), and Paul, from Western Australia who had met Erica two weeks before and traveling with her ever since. We had a great conversation and then headed to bed with a 'nice to meetcha' as the lights went out. The next day, Friday, seemed to blow by, like the rest of the weekend. I bought some food, hung around the hostel and met a few [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. Sunday night was quite uneventful. I picked up some milk and cereal, juice, and resisted a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I went to the hostel, popped in Kill Bill Volume Two and ate Coco Crispies until I couldn't eat anymore. It was a present to myself. I woke up late on Monday, around eleven thirty. I took a shower, folded my clothes, packed my bag, and went to the train station to reserve my ticket to Alicante. The line was long and when I finally got to the window, the man told me how much it would be. [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. I went to the hostel and read my new book, Brave New World, until Monica came... except she walked right by me an sat down and started peeling an orange and talking to one of the girls that works there, waiting for me to arrive. The girl then pointed at me and Monica, suprised she didn't even recognize me, came over and gave me a hug. She is such a cool girl! We prepared pasta together in the open kitchen while drinking cheap white wine and chatting in Spanish. The pasta was mediocre, but the encounter will not be [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. The following day Nicolas and I decided to be tourists and go see La Sagrada Familia. The guide book describes it as a once-before-you-die kinda thing. It was cool, still under construction after over a hundred years, and will probably still be a hundred years from now. It was designed by the famous artist/architect Gaudí. I didn't go up into the structure. I split from Nick and he went for a haircut (which most people think I need) and I went to Güell Park, also designed by Gaudí. It was supposed to be an entire community but the project [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. I left Vilanova for the last time around eight o'clock. We were running late to meet the group at a restaurant called Sandwich and Friends, where all of the sandwiches have names, such as the Eli and the Ross (which happen to be right next to eachother on the menu). I had been drinking on the train and by the time I got to Barcelona, I had to pee. I mean, this was an emergency, a severe pressure that was causing pain and partial blindness. I separated from Nick and he went ahead to the hostel. I ran up [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. As soon as someone stepped away from the counter at the train station in Toulouse, I jumpped in. I told the attendant that our train was supposed to leave in nine minutes and she asked the others waiting if any of them... well, I ASSUME she asked them if I could go before them, it was probably more like 'This idiot's gonna miss a train, do you mind?' Either way, she quoted a price, we gave the money, and we were on the train only moments before it pulled away. The train ride took almost six hours. We had [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. After catching a long train to Toulouse, I found an internet cafe and called Benny, my host for the next couple of days. Benny is an Irish fellow who is a couchsurfing ambassador (he is really passionate about traveling and learning). He has lived everywhere and now speaks, with great skill and fluency, Spanish, German, Italian, French, and now Portugese. This impressive and inspirational polyglot is only twenty-three years old. I was worried that, because he has already been the host of countless other travelers, I would be unable to tell Benny anything that he has yet to [View Full Entry]

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Hello Reader. After the terror of losing a thousand songs from my Rio, Eric was nice enough to put some of the songs he had onto my player. Eighty-five. Over the next few days I listened to the music, and some of it was really, really good. I even liked a few of the metal songs he put on, (I am ususlly not a big fan of metal). Anyways, this gave me a great idea to just upload music from the people I meet and/or stay with, that way I can take a little bit of everyone with me. And by [View Full Entry]

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