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Published: August 11th 2008
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Thinking Man
admiring the view at San Pol de Mar Sunday 20 July 2008 Another hot day, although bit more of a breeze coming through.
Alex went to play footie but only 4 people (including him) turned up, so he ended up going to his new friend's house and played ISS so he's a happy bunny.
Re-watched 21 grams, which I'd forgotten about - probably because it's quite jerky and makes me feel nauseous...dang this motion sickness!
Sent a few messages to some people for some language exchange - got a couple of messages myself, so hopefully this intercambio malarky'll pay off...
Monday 21 July 2008 No lessons today, so chilled out and enjoyed the Barcelona sunnage....
Tuesday 22 July 2008 The students said they were really tired today so could we finish the class 30 minutes early. Fine by me... Whatever it takes to keep the students happy!
It was Alex's last lesson today so he went out for a drink with his students and came back quite late. He seemd to enjoy it - had a beer and got to practise his Spanish. Even found out that if you call the city Barca, they'll just laugh at you and you should call in Barna. That's straight
from the locals' mouth....
Wednesday 23 July 2008 My second ever intercambio session and it's with Jahziel - I thought it sounded slightly Arabic, but don't think he was. He was ok, into rock music and been with his girlfriend for 6 years since they were 17 or 18! We went to a coffee shop in Raval, and he paid for my drink, which was nice. We walked up Passeig de Gracia together until the metro station, and parted ways. It was alright, but ran out of things to say towards the end, so not sure if we'll be meeting up again...
Thursday 24 July 2008 Met up with Victor at 15:30 for some language exchanging, and his English turned out to be quite good compared to my students - think I boosted his confidence by saying it was better than he thinks. He seems ok, had a big scar on his arm which I later found out was from a motorbike accident. He bought one last December and 20 days later got in an accident and was in intensive care for a few days. He had one of those breathing tubes and everything. Sounded bad.
Last
day of teaching the UP students, so they took me out to dinner, which was really nice of them. After finishing the class 30 minutes early (their idea, not mine!), we all drove to St. Katherine's Market, which has a food hall inside with vegetarian, Oriental, Mediterranean, and grilled menus - so much choice!! We got a duck salad with orange and green salad with goats cheese to start with, and for the main course I had grilled calamari while the others all had the lamb. It was pretty good. Then for dessert I had the cheesecake. All topped with a bottle of rose, it came to EUR 90, and they wouldn't let me pay. Then after we walked through Borne, and tried to find a bar with a terrace to have a drink in, but it was really busy, so we ended up sitting inside a bar that seemed to specialise in champagne cocktails. I ordered a Southern Comfort with Lemonade for the first time in aaaaages, but it wasn't the same, because it was fanta limon as opposed to actual lemonade 😞 and drinks were EUR 7 each! After we were done, one of the guys gave me
San Pol de Mar
the beach - you can't quite see the jellyfish a lift back to near the flat, and as I got out he said “you have a friend in BCN, you have a house in BCN - my house is your house”, which was really nice of him and I walked home.
Friday 25 July 2008 Third time lucky - can we make it to San Pol de Mar today??? The first attempt we didn't even make it to the beach, the second attempt we missed our stop. Now if we don't make it for whatever reason, I'm giving up! I gathered some snacky stuff to take with us and Alex and I met with Paula at the metro station to have our fun filled day down at the beach. We managed to catch a train without waiting too long, and everything seemed to be working - pretty smoothly - so we managed to get off at the right stop and started to walk up the beach to a less crowded area. We found a nice spot and set up camp, and Alex went for a dip in the sea. While he was in the water, some girls a bit further down shouted to us “hay medusas en el agua”, which after a little gesturing from one of the girls, I realised they were saying that jellyfish were present in the water. So Paula and I shouted to Alex who couldn't hear us and walked back to see what the fuss was about. I think it freaked out the others about going into the water, but there were some people in it, and no signs about jellyfish, so even if there were some in the water, they couldn't be too dangerous, so I decided I'd be going in for a dip as usual. It probably helped that I'd already been stung by jellyfish in Malaysia and lived to tell the tale - what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger... So after munching on the baguettes that Paula had kindly made for us and some crispies, I ran into the sea, where I didn't get stung and told the others that it was fine. Obviously the psychological aspect of it all was a bit too much for Paula and she was too paranoid to stay in the water for too long. Alex didn't go in at all. The second time I went in, I got stung by something, but I didn't tell the others else they wouldn't go in at all, so I kept quiet, and it didn't come up too badly so the third time Paula went in with me, and unfortunately she got stung. Hers came up quite badly and it looked horrible, but she survived. Needless to say she didn't want to go in after that! After we left, we went to the shwarma joint for dinner and I had a glass of rose to accompany my chicken shwarma. All in all a good day 😊
Saturday 26 July 2008 After yesterday's busy fun filled day of action, today was set aside for relaxing. Not that we don't do enough of it, but it's just the done thing over here. Can't complain...!
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