Epic Fail

Ok, ok ok... Before you all start yelling at me, please don't... I was already spoken to by numerous people, the most recent being Ms. Catherine Shortliffe (who I just saw LIVE AND IN PERSON in Barcelona!). Anyways, I know that I've been neglecting the blog and it's for good reason: I'm lazy. Moving forward, I'll try to update it at least once a week, not once every 3 or 4 which is the current rate I'm working at. What I'll do is address numerous things that have happened in the past few weeks to get you all caught up:

Classes:
I'm currently enrolled and have started all of my classes! To be honest, my class schedule is pretty sweet. I have class from 1:30-7 on Mondays, 1:30-4:30, 6-8 on Tuesdays, 3-7 on Wednesdays, no class on Thursdays and Fridays. I repeat, NO CLASS THURSDAYS OR FRIDAYS! It's awesome and I'm loving it, although not having class until 1:30 in the afternoon totally messes up my sleep schedule. In otherwords, I can always sleep in, which is NOT good... I think soon, I'll get off at random metro stops and walk around a bit, so that I get a better sense of the city. My first class is Labour Market Policy, which is my university class in English. I've already spoken at length about this class in the past, so let's move on. Next is the Core Course taught at the Space, which is about the lovely city of Barcelona. The class is interesting at times, but usually boring. Today, we ended up going over Spain's entire history in 2 hours... that's more than 2,000 years of event-filled history in 2 hours... Needless to say, we were all happy for it to be over. I'm taking an art history class, Arte y Artistas. Pretty much, it was one of the only classes that fit into my schedule (and it doesn't even fit really... I have to miss the first half hour of it every Monday since it interferes with my UPF class). It's pretty interesting and we'll be covering the artists Gaudi, Miro, Dali, Picasso, and Tapies. It's great to go on cultural visits to museums with the program and actually know what I'm looking at, so this class has already come in handy. My final class is a film class, during which we look at 10 films during the course of the semester. Each Monday is group presentation on the film we just watched and each Wednesday is the film viewing. The professor is really chill and informative, although I can already tell that Mondays will pretty much be ridiculously boring.

Internship:
I'm doing an internship with a local Spanish lawyer, who works for himself. His name is Christian and the firm is called Torres i Mercadal, Advocats (he's Torres). Last week, I skipped class and accompanied him to two different court houses to watch him in action. It was really cool, although I felt overdressed. I wore black pants, a shirt and tie... he wore dark pants, a shirt, and a scarf... it's funny how casual the dress code was. Anyways, the first case I saw was about a theft that took place outside of a bar. A lady walked out after she paid the bill and was robbed by 2 or 3 of 8 guys that were standing outside together in a group. Long story short, our client was one of the guys. Because there were so many contradictions in the witnesses' stories and the ladies story, there's a good chance our guy will be let free, which is good especially since the lady couldn't even ID him. The second case was bizarre, with another robbery, this time at an airport. The guy was caught by police stealing a bag off the baggage claim. While in custody, he tried to hurt himself by ripping up the blanket and strangling himself. He was from Ireland, so there was an interpreter present at the proceeding. The guy got a deal so that he didn't have to serve any jail time, since he had no prior criminal record. If he's arrested again, he's in deep shit (profanity for dramatic effect). Anyways, it was interesting talking with Christian and the interpreter while waiting for the paperwork to get processed. We talked about how it's hard for someone to recover from something like that and that there HAS to be something wrong mentally with this guy. Unfortunately, the forecast is cloudy with a chance of parole. The interpreter asked me about school in the US and we chatted about his career. He said it's incredibly important that in that line of work, you separate your job from your personal life. If you leave the courtroom wondering why, you just get frustrated over something you can't control. Christian agreed and I can see their point. Anyways, it was a good experience and I'm glad to have picked the internship over the other alternative: extensive Spanish classes everyday from Monday to Thursday: yuck. Christian is awesome not only because he talks to me in English, but also because he's in a band and keeps 8 guitars in the glass patio of his office... SCORE!

Madrid:
Our program took a trip to Madrid 2 weekend ago. It was a 3-hour train ride from Barcelona taking the high-speed train. I must give the Trinity-in-Barcelona Program credit for placing us in really nice hotels. We stayed in a really nice hotel and once again, Chris and I were roomies. It's been nice hanging out with him since, let's be honest, we probably never would cross paths at Trinity. The first night, we went tapas bar hopping until we found this one place that let us go downstairs and hang out. It was AMAZING because you sit at these tables that have taps in the middle. They have root beer, light beer, and dark beer. I opted for the dark beer and it was one of the BEST beers I've ever had. It's really cool because you pour the drinks yourself and a computer monitors how much has been dispensed, and charges the table accordingly. Apparently on some nights, they'll put the amount drank on the screens and you can compete with other tables. It was fun until I came to the realization: "Shit, I'm drunk..." Normally I wouldn't care but in this case, I was sitting right next to Carlota (Program Director) and Jo (Professor). I actually carried on a conversation with them, but I have the feeling I was slurring a little... Chris and Katie Laz came up to me afterwards and said, "Greg... we saw you from across the table... with your drunk eyes..." EPIC FAIL. Anyways, I'm glad Chris has the same appetite I have because we ended up going out for food afterwards (tapas definitely wasn't enough). Other highlights included going to the Prado, Reina Sophia, and National Anthropology museums. The Anthropology one was great for numerous reasons, the first being all of the Filipino artifacts that were there. They had lots of fabric on display, the most recognizable being the one that barong tagalogs are made out of. For those of you not Filipino, it's a type of clothing made usually out of pineapple fibers that Filipinos wear for formal occasions. There was also an exhibition on the importance of Islam in Africa. The pictures showcased were amazing and entirely moving. The eagerness to learn demonstrated by these children was incredible, especially when guided by their parents. The museum was also great because of the walk to get there: it was SNOWING and the snowflakes were ginormous. We also stood outside in the horrible weather for 15 minutes trying to figure out where the museum was. We found it when we turned around. Again, EPIC FAIL. We visited Toledo and it was really cool to tour the city with a guide. On my Facebook, there are numerous photos from Toledo. The best part was watching Jaume, our academic advisor, correct the tour guide and try to one-up him whenever possible... absolutely hilarious. Later that night, we all went out to the HUGE club, Kapital. Best part: RIGHT NEXT TO THE HOTEL. After dinner, we threw our coats in the hotel and ran to the club in the freezing cold. The place was amazing: 7 stories with 2 floors for techno, 2 floors for hip-hop, a reggae floor, and a lavishly decorated hang-out on the top floor. At the top, I befriended two British guys: Ben and Paul. They commented on how it's hilarious how many people mistake London to be the entire country, as in London=UK. I eventually ended up sitting on one of Paul's knees and Ben was on the other while we took a picture. Expect a Facebook tag of it real soon (edit: ok, so you can't look at it from my Facebook since I disabled my pictures and videos... this is a temporary measure until I hear back from the internships I applied to). All in all, it was an amazing trip and I had a blast while there.

Euro Shopping:
This past weekend, I went out with Elizabeth and Melissa in an effort to make my wardrobe more Euro. The night before, I went out with them and wore a black sweater over a red and white striped button-up (as seen in my Facebook profile pic). They told me I was screaming, "I'm American, come and pick-pocket me!" I decided that I needed to become more Euro if I wanted to worry less about being beaten to a pulp over 5€ and a UPF student ID. We walked around, in and out of a million stores before I came to the conclusion: there's a reason I dress the way I do... I don't like the Euro style all that much. I couldn't bring myself to buy anything until.... we saw this amazing store that sold million and millions of ties. It's called Andrew's Ties and their ties are made in Italy (there's a few locations in NY, as a quick Google search told me: shout out Sarah Hoyle!). Literally every color was found there. For each pattern, there's at least 10 different colors available. I ended up getting a light green tie with light blue stripes, which looks really good on a blue shirt. Melissa said, "We spend all day shopping Euro and the one thing you get is the most Trincoll thing I've ever seen." EPIC FAIL.

Now that I've explained a lot of things that have happened here, I'll now explain why

I Miss Home:
1. It was my mom's birthday on Monday (Happy Birthday Nay!) and the entire family was over the house... without me. There was a Konditor Meister cake... without me.
2. JMA(G)SH has reunited without me... sadness. See you in a year Mike and Jake!
3. I had butter chicken here and it tasted more like chicken tikka masala... I miss Shah and his butter chicken (more so the butter chicken).
4. Pledging has started and I REALLY wanted to be there for that, now that I'm on the other side. A chat with Manevitz last night made me really homesick (thanks asshole). First, I miss cigar and brandy, now: every single pledge event. I wonder if I’ll be back in time for formal- Powers, want to be my date again? : D
5. I want buffalo chicken. Seriously, there's nothing here. Somebody send me a buffalo chicken pizza from Nick's, a bucket from Windy City, or a sub from Grumpy White's. Anything will do, I promise. Maybe I'll do trivia night at Hooters when I'm back (clearly going for the food and trivia, not... you know what).
6. I actually miss Quincy… a lot. Hanging out with the guys, Al D's parties, randomly getting ambushed by Stunzeed and Urey... I miss it all.

I know that I should take advantage of the fact that I'm in Barcelona and believe me, I am. I'm just saying that the honeymoon phase of this trip is dwindling and I'm starting to miss home and Trinity a little more every day. I hope you all are happy.

There, I said it.

Family comes to visit in March, WHOO HOO!

Anyways, I'm sure this is enough. I'll try to update more often and I hope everyone's semesters, jobs, and lives are going well.

-Greg/Biboy/Greggers/Tuna