Bullfight, Rock of Gibraltar and Nazi's

Got some good stuff to share so here we go.

There was a free film festival being held all over the city of Granada during the week. There were around 8 locations where they were showing movies. Most documentaries but some were fiction. The locations were one of the coolest parts. Movies were being held in outdoor plaza’s, in front of church’s, inside 15^th century courtyards, it made the experience.

We made it around to seeing two movies: one documentary and one fiction. The first one was a documentary based on the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation. The footage was taken by Nazi cameramen to be used as a propaganda video but had never been shown. It was an unbelievable movie that really opens your eyes to the horror of those times. They actually found out who one of the cameramen was and had him discuss what they were doing there. The footage was being taken of affluent Jewish people as well as dying and poor Jewish in order to show how the Jewish race was well off but did not care about their poor. They found people from the film as well and had them give testimony to the filming. They talked about how they would organize people to have large dinners and afterwards film the affluent walk right past dead bodies or dying people in the streets. When people died (typically of starvation) the family members would bring them out and set them on the street. Every day people walked down the street they would walk around dead bodies. The next day they would ship the actors to camps. One of the women in the film cried while watching the movie. She talked about how happy she was that she could cry because during those times there was so much horror around that if she couldn’t function if she showed any emotion. She said she was a human now. Definitely more intense than the second movie experience.

The second movie was called “Running Turtle”. We watched it in front of a huge church in the middle of the city as we sat at a table and ate tapas. It was a really good South Korean film about a bad @ss fugitive and a cop that is tracking him. Both films were in subtitles.

Over the past week we have gotten to watch both of Spain’s World Cup games so far here in Granada. The first one a 1-0 loss to Switzerland was pretty shocking. We watched that with some local Spanish students at a bar, safe to say the streets were quiet that night. The next game was much better though. We went to a huge tent in the middle of a plaza that had been assembled and filled with flat screens and a huge TV in front. It was jam packed full of Spaniards that went absolutely insane during both of Spain’s two goals during their 2-0 win against Honduras. Match wasn’t even close.

On Friday we went to Gibraltar. We visited the Rock of Gibraltar as well as a local court. The rock of Gibraltar is amazing. To be honest I had no idea what it was until that day other than a huge rock in Gibraltar, complicated understanding I know. Well this thing is amazing. It essentially is Great Britain’s version of the Panama Canal. The area is owned and operated by Great Britain. This is not cool with the Spanish and from what our tour guide told us a military conflict is bound to happen very soon. Now the reason the British don’t want to give it up is just like the Panama Canal gives access from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean the strait of Gibraltar is the only access point from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean Sea. So in Gibraltar they use pounds and speak with British accents, was like being in a weird British fantasy land. Now the Rock is covered in diabetic monkeys. Yes the monkeys are diabetic. They refuse to eat vegetation and instead only steal ice cream and candy from the tourists. That being said they are really passive and friendly with humans as long as the humans didn’t have food. A monkey actually climbed on me and over my head in order to get to his buddy sitting on the rail. The Brit’s also built tunnels in the Rock and created their own little world in it with water reservoirs, a hospital, movie theater and much more. They could live there for 2 years without any outside help. Pretty sweet side trip that I had no idea we were taking, love that.

After Gibraltar we headed to Seville. After a couple of bus trips we got to Seville and found our hostal. Turns out we booked it for Saturday and Sunday night instead of Friday night and they were booked. So we spent most of the night finding another place to stay. For the record I did not book the hostal. We did see most of the city that night though.

The next day we get up and enjoy a true breakfast of champions: churro’s and chocolate. They gave us fried amazingness with a cup of warmed up chocolate sauce. We downed the churro’s and dumped the rest of the chocolate sauce in our café con leche’s, best food decision in years. We then head over their main Cathedral which is the largest in Spain and third largest in Europe behind St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s. This Cathedral is actually the burial location of Christopher Columbus, I thanked him for finding America.

We also went to the Alcazar which is very similar to the Alhambra but with better gardens in my opinion. They have huge peacocks running lose in their as well, turns out they chase you if you get too close, haha my friend found that out the hard way. The rest of the day was spent seeing other sites, eating and walking around. I highly recommend seeing Seville.

That night we get up the bright idea to do a pub crawl without eating dinner. No puking or sickness occurred but let’s just say it took us about an hour to figure out that the last club they brought us to was a gay bar. After that it was apparent that we all should go home. Next day was painful to say the least. I immediately missed the tapas/cana’s action that Granada offers where I never actually get a hangover. After some much needed breakfast we head over the Museo de Bellas Artes and culture ourselves. This museum specifically holds art from the south of Spain. The interesting thing I noticed was not that they had a boat load of paintings of Jesus (I expected that from a Catholic country) but more that the killers of Jesus (the Romans) in the paintings looked and dressed like Moors (aka Muslim’s that occupied the South of Spain before the Spanish Catholics conquered them). Talk about some propaganda. Pretty sure Romans didn’t wear turbans and have curved swords.

Sunday night a classmate and I stayed behind in order to see a Bullfight. I had never seen a bullfight but it was definitely on my list of things to do before kicking the bucket. This was the last bullfight until the fall so I couldn’t pass it up. We bought tickets out of the sun for 34 euro not bad. Sitting in the sun is much cheaper but luckily a friend told us that it is 1) ridiculously hot and 2) the bullfighters fight in the shade so you don’t get to see the fight as closely, well worth the extra money.

Now going into this bullfight I wouldn’t say I was a fan of bullfights but I definitely thought they were very cool. I have to say after seeing six bulls’ slain bullfights are not nearly as much fun as I thought they would be. It was a crazy experience. In my opinion bullfights are the modern version of Gladiators fighting, entertainment through blood and death, pretty intense. I am not going to say that they should be banned in Spain or Latin America but I am definitely not going to try and bring the tradition to the states. Two of the guys were hit by the bull and one didn’t return after getting hit in the leg so that was pretty crazy as well.

Instead of breaking the bullfights down I just uploaded videos showing each different part of the fight (beware it’s not pretty):

Opening Oley’s:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg4-qoqyodY

Picadore

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkMpbIQHJ00

Bandarilla

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tml8pnUAm-0

Kill Cycle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZryVaRQFWo

Matador gets bucked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBpj8lKJGu4

We ended up catching a 11 pm bus and got back around 4 am. Started environmental law this week and are trying to determine how to save the world, fun exercise. Tonight we are going to the Arabic baths and getting massages and tomorrow we are going a la playa (to the beach) after class, tough life right?

Planning on heading to Alicante. There is a festival in Spain that some of you may have heard about. It is celebrated in Valencia the 19th of March: LAS FALLAS. Well, the same kind of festival is celebrated in a Spanish classmates city, Alicante (Next to south Valencia, in the Mediterranean Coast, South-East Spain). The difference is that they celebrate it in Summer and call it LAS HOGUERAS DE SAN JUAN. Google it, looks like a blast. They build wooden structures and burn them down in the middle of the streets and party on the beach. Should be fun.

Madrid, World Cup and Quiche

So I just spent the weekend in Madrid with Blake Bockhold and Max Winchester. These are the same two guys that came down to Granada with me last weekend. I never gave you the back story on them though, definitely worth sharing:

The two of them have been living in Madrid for close to a year now teaching English. They have a three bedroom flat that they share with a local Spanish girl who is never there. Place is right in the heart of Madrid and pretty sweet spot. I have to say they have been living the dream. Lucky for me they are nice enough to let me crash on their couch, appreciate it. It sounds counterintuitive but the recession has been great to them. In any other time they both would have pulled great jobs out of college and been working the grind in the states but since the recession hit they decided to go live and teach in Madrid. So they signed up for the month long teaching course with no guarantee of employment and headed over to Spain. The first month they spoke no Spanish, had no air conditioning, no job and did not know a soul in Spain. After a year they both are conversational, have made money, traveled all over, made tons of friends in Spain and lived in a foreign country. In the grand scheme of life this experience will be so much better than having had a long term job straight out of college. Not that is a bad thing, heck that’s what I and the majority of my friends did. Looking at this from the outside now though, what an experience. When they are both 80 years old odds are they are going to reminisce more about that one year in Spain then about that finance deal, that trial or that one patient.

Now I believe that all experiences need to be balanced, work, play, solitude, social interaction, travel, time at home, etc. and without work play is nowhere near as fun. But as I do this traveling I see a world that many people don’t ever get the chance to see or experience. I see myself growing through experiences that can only occur in an uncomfortable setting such as Spain. Not being able to ask for what you want or have a small conversation with a Spaniard is extremely frustrating but invigorating at the same time. It reestablishes the fact that I really don’t know cr@p. That the world is a big place and the more I think I know and the more I think I have a grasp the farther from the truth I get. Now I know not being able to speak Spanish well is not a prerequisite for intelligence or knowledge but it does make me realize that there is so much more out there that I have not seen or learned about. It makes me admire Blake and Max for having the gusto/b@lls/guts to take on such a scary experience. I think that is what life is about, challenging ourselves by continuously putting ourselves in uncomfortable growth filled situations: speaking in front of a board room, tutoring an at risk youth, having children, getting married, attempting to speak a language you are sure to butcher, asking you boss for the raise you deserve, etc. These are all opportunities for each one of us to face our fears head on, accept them and grow stronger because of them.

Talking to Blake and Max about their year in Spain it makes me even more excited about my year abroad after I graduate. It does bring up a lot of the fears I have regarding it though. I have never lived outside of the country for more than a month and even then I had the comforts of a study abroad program which makes the experience much less intimidating. I have never spoken a word of Mandarin before. I am not a big Chinese cuisine fan. I will be half way across the world from everything that I know and love. It makes me ask myself, are all the dangers, fears, uncomfortable situations going to make me regret going to Southeast Asia? I don’t believe so but these are the thoughts they provoke. I think in any situation that is new and foreign (actually and/or figuratively) whether it be moving to NYC for an internship at an Investment Bank (Mose, J Brown, etc.), diving head first into a relationship, or joining a gym for the first time all of these things bring up fears and concerns. The people I admire the most are those that see those fears and decide to deal with them instead of avoiding them. Those that understand that fear is a part of life and the more you accept that fact the easier it gets to handle.

I couldn’t help reflect what I have seen and learned from both of these guys. They are both going to be extremely successful in life and I am very happy I have gotten to share this experience with them. I am extremely excited and happy to be going to Southeast Asia after hanging out with these guys.

Ok, now that is out of the way, here is a rundown of what happened over this past weekend:

Wednesday: School then basketball game against some South American’s, we lose the first game because we are half playing and half checking them for knives, second game we destroy them. Had to get big and dominate like the original Dream Team, America Rules! (theme of the weekend, more in a bit) That night I find out that someone stole my identity and withdrew $803 from my account out of an ATM in North Hollywood, CA. I am getting a new card and fully reimbursed, thanks Suntrust! Hate you SoCal, someone just got that much closer to calf implants, have fun too bad now you can’t put on your bedazzled Ed Hardy skinny jeans anymore. Enjoy that irony buddy. After figuring that whole debacle out we end up going to a club that used to be a theatre, pretty sweet actually. We saw a male Spanish Go-Go dancer get violated by a larger than life woman, my eyes still burn from seeing that. He seemed to like it though, other than that great times.

Thursday: Heavily caffeinated class session, last of the week. Grab a bus to Madrid and get into Madrid around 9 pm. Reunited with the aforementioned Blake and Max and the glorious weekend begins. I have to say I already played tourist last year in Madrid so this time around I was looking to just have a good weekend with friends that live in the city.

To start off Blake and Max cook from scratch every night. So in their tradition every night we would head to the grocery store and grab the nightly necessities. The first night we had homemade Sangria, nachos with turkey meat and homemade salsa. The second night we had Caesar salad with shrimp and tapas with French toasted eggplant with caramelized onions and salmon on top. The third night was the day of the world cup match between the US and England so we ended up going to their friends place and BBQ’ing. We made black and bleu burgers with sweet potato fries. We had some leftover meat so Blake and I were downing burger on top of tomato, lettuce and bleu cheese. I called this our game day tapas but Max told me that they weren’t tapas. I think he was pissed b/c he missed out on my sweet creation, Black and Bleu tapas !

Thursday night we didn’t end up doing much other than eating and hanging out. We did reminisce about our families, haha always a fun talk. Great sangria, great food, great night. Love you Family. J

Friday: Slept in (going to be a theme for the weekend as well), Blake makes a quiche best one I have ever had at least until he made a better one Sunday, we go to the gym. The gym is nice but for some odd reason Spanish gym goers do not like to wear deodorant. There was a corridor of the gym that smelled like a soiled diaper, dipped in a vat of 4 day old sweat. Sorry for the description but it was palpable, safe to say I chose to do free weights on the far side of the gym. We eat dinner, its great and head downstairs to Blake and Max’s American friends place. They are celebrating something and there is a British guy named Pedro there that is hilarious. We end up going out to a club called Joy. It is three stories and pretty cool. It cost 11 euro to get in but you get a free drink with admittance and drinks are 12 euro. Blake and I both got our one drink, whiskey on the rocks and make it last. That drink literally lasted 3 hours lol. We leave the club around 4 pm and head back to the flat, their buddy Aaron comes back with us. Aaron is a Fulbright scholar that writes poetry and teaches English. Oh Aaron also played linebacker at Kalamazoo College in Michigan, real cool guy. We all end up smoking hookah until around 7 am and talk about life until we realize that it is light out. Fun night.

Saturday: Sleep in even later, it is game day though. The World Cup has started and the US is playing England at 8:30 pm in Spain. We get the food for the BBQ and head over to their friends place. Blake has a 1996 USA Grant Hill jersey on I am jealous because I have no red or blue. That ends up not being an issue. The group we meet up with is dressed ridiculously and has red, white and blue paint (see pic). We are blasting the theme music to Team America, Charlie Daniels, and anything remotely American while singing our national anthem throughout the day. Blake continuously kept yelling out “Freedom”, we were set to have a great time abusing whatever Brit’s we saw. I personally had 1776 and USA tattooed on my forearms and red, white and blue face paint. Game time is upon us so we take our overly obnoxious group of ‘Mericans and head to an Irish bar. Turns out foreign countries don’t have English or American bars but they do have a ton of Irish bars. So we head to one and get a room in the back because ownership was sure not going to let us out amongst the normal’s. We do make it a point to sing the national anthem amazingly loud, loud enough that people were coming from other rooms to catch a gander at the awesomeness that is our Star Spangled Banner rendition (see clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWZhzw5yGqQ ). For anyone that didn’t watch the game, we ended up with a draw, 1-1. We played a good match and considering were a little lucky with our goal I was more than satisfied with our performance. I will concede Mr. Ryan Moseley, England might be better but we have a better goalie, God Bless Tim Howard!

After the game we head back to the flat, eat some cereal, watch “The League”, great show for those who haven’t seen it and call it a night.

Sunday: Sleep in (shocker), Blake makes a quiche and I pack up. Oh I hadn’t mentioned the weather was horrible all weekend long until Sunday. Sunday was beautiful, we walked all around Madrid, had some café con leche while people watching, ate Tapas and played a bit of tourist. I said goodbye to the fellas around 4:30 pm and headed back to Granada. Unfortunately the woman next to me partially filled up my seat and hers and smelled like cat food. Looking on the bright side I did get most my reading done for class this week, something about the smell of cat food keeps me awake. ME-OW!!!

Safe to say it was a great weekend and I can’t thank Blake and Max enough for making it happen.

P.S. I am writing this right now because I can’t sleep thanks to sleeping in so much this weekend. Looks like a 2 pm siesta is in my cards for tomorrow.

Granada, tapa's and segways......yep

Hola Amigos!

It has been a joyous first 5 days in Espana. Just like in any good mini-series I will start where I left off. I had successfully gotten sleep, met up with Blake and was about to head to Granada.

So Blake, his sister Brooke, his roommate Sarasota native Max and I all jumped on a charter bus in Madrid and made our way down to Granada. The 5 hour bus ride was filled with neck breaking nap sessions, coma inducing European Union reading, beautiful scenery and random ginormous blacked out billboards of bullfighters, bulls and other random Spanish objects. Turns out billboards were banned and so the owners of the billboards just painted them black and left them there. I had close to 37 different explanations conjured up before Blake told me that. Aliens were involved in 19 of them, yep, imagination is alive in this guy.

We finally got to Granada around 8 pm and it was still light out. It doesn’t get dark here until 9 pm or so, I immediately thought how it would be a great, cheap place to play baseball/sports, no need for lights on the field and after school neighborhood sports could go on for hours. We drop our stuff at the hostel and head out on the town. The cool thing about Granada unlike most Spanish cities is the unique Tapas situation. In nearly every tapas bar you get a free tapas when you buy a Cana (pronounced Kan-ya close to Kanye West but with an a sound at the end), aka baby beer), wine or sangria. This is so fantastical because you can bounce around from place to place drinking and eating for hours on end while never getting drunk. I felt like we hit the food and drink lottery. We only ate in this manner for the entire weekend and didn’t think twice about it. I actually just had my first real lunch and first dinner tonight.

Saturday night was a night to remember. The night was slowing down and we were headed home. As we walk up the street we see the happiest, fattest Obama bin Laden looking man any of us had ever seen. He was Algerian, had a huge beard and owned a hookah restaurant. Being the salesmen that he was we bought in. We ended up smoking coconut flavored tobacco while hanging out with our new found crazy friend. He danced with Brooke, tattooed our names with sharpie on our forearms (confirmed to actually be our names the next day), talked smack to all of us for about two hours, he definitely didn’t like that we predicted a US victory over Algeria in the world cup and served us the best tea I had ever tasted. It was a great time and will never forget our crazy, fat Bin Laden hookah restaurant owner.

On Sunday we embarked on a tremendously nerdy adventure. We segwayed our way up the side of a mountain. Blake, Max and I had never ridden segways and thought that why not cross that goal of our life lists: segway up a mountain in Granada, Spain uhhhhh check. We found out three things during our segway adventure: 1) Segways are never cool 2) It is impossible not to have fun on a Segway and 3) you can seriously injure yourself on one. As an athletic individual I had to swallow my pride when I thought I tore my ankle and knee up spinning out up the side of a hill. Lucky for me I didn’t tear anything and I can officially secure my athletic pride for some time longer.

Now regarding my speaking of Spanish……uhhhhh yeah, no bueno (that’s not good for the non-bilingual folk). Ok so I’m not that bad but I am nowhere near good and when I say good, I mean decent. Luckily Blake and Max had been living in Spain for nearly a year and could handle all situations and negotiations while they were here and my roommate can speak Spanish well. I do have something good going for me though, I have no shame butchering this wonderful language in an attempt to get what I want. I am told most people are much more shy when they have the vocabulary of a 3 year old like I do, I still don’t know if that is a compliment or not. I continuously fail at what I am trying to convey in Spanish but eventually the poor Spaniard figures it out after a few rounds of elaborate charades and well intentioned Spainglish. All in all though I can pretty much order food, get directions and stay out of trouble with my Spanglish, I can survive on that. Thanks Rosetta Stone, you’re the best!

Granada is known for the Alhambra which is this church/palace/village/fortress built from the 12-15^th century by a bunch of Islamic Sultans. So on Saturday we went. It is planted on top of a big hill and is beautiful (see pic). I recommend that everyone see it in their lifetime. The inside of the Alhambra is amazingly ornate but I did find out that the intricacy was made from moldings not by hand. Still very impressive though. Our tour guide shared a pretty disturbing, Spartan-esque story about the Alhambra: The Sultan that ran Granada and lived at the Alhambra defeated by the Spanish (Ferdinand and Isabella) in the 16^th century was crying as he left the city. His mother supposedly said to him, “Cry now like a woman because you could not protect this city like a man.” I just want to thank my mother for never saying anything like that to me……well at least to my face, BURN!

School has started and we have a different subject each week here, four in all. This week we have two teachers from the University of Granada teaching us about the European Union and I don’t want to kill myself. Yes beware huge nerd alert, the class is interesting. Seeing that no one is reading this to learn anything about the EU I will share only one interesting thing. The teacher informed us that the Marshall Plan ($ provided by US to rebuild Europe after WWII) was money given by the US not loaned and Europe did not necessarily want it because it helped the US export industry so much, interesting difference in view points. We have University of Granada students in our class which adds to the perspective change as well.

Went to an Irish bar last night and I am convinced that every time an Anglo Saxon goes into an Irish pub in Spain an angel dies. It just seemed wrong, nevertheless it was fun and there were tons of Americans. We also were taken up a hill and got a view of what Bill Clinton called the most beautiful sunset he had ever seen, it was spectacular. Ate the best paella I have ever had tonight and headed to Madrid to hang out with Blake and Max again this weekend.

Getting to Spain

I am writing you from Blake Bockhold’s (friend from UF and Sarasota for you that don’t know him) in the middle of Madrid. The flight was good and I am surprisingly coherent which from what you are about to read might surprise you. I ended up sitting next to 3 UF students on their way to build a house in Madrid for a competition, very random. The following I wrote while on my way to Philadelphia from Tampa. Going to try and write you all once a week. We are heading down to Granada via bus in a few hours. Hope you enjoy!

So here I am, sitting on my flight to Philadelphia, fighting to stay awake because I have been getting up early and going to sleep late. I use this sleep deprivation technique so that I will fall asleep early and easily on the flight to Madrid. I do this because of the hellish experience I had on my first international flight.

I was flying to Ghana, Africa February 2009 and was all excited to get some good reading in (“Good to Great” was the book of choice), maybe watch a cinematic adventure or two (I think I watched “The Train”, the movie about the Syracuse Heisman trophy winner, not the “other” one……perverts) and sleep around 4 hours or so. It was a solid plan, so I thought. Well that plan was a complete and utter epic fail, unbeknownst to me the international flight gods had strategically placed me in the corridor of flight hell. I ended up sleeping approximately 15 minutes due to not 1, not 2 but 3 crying babies being positioned within rows of me. Since babies do not know how to pop their ears they have serious problems on flights. These three seemed to be in competition with each other fighting over who could scream the loudest about this issue, I am pretty sure the one closest to me won. I spent the whole next day feeling just like those newborns: sensitive to sun, incoherent, cranky, hungry and sleepy. The international flight gods got a good laugh out of that one, I think they are French.

So coming into this flight I think I have developed a pretty good formula for international flight success. Take 2 iPod headphones and shove them very deep in your ears and blast chill music (counterintuitive but it works), cover your eyes with an eye mask, don’t get any sleep the night before and most importantly medicate yourself during dinner (I prefer an ambien). Even those French flight gods can’t mess with that right?

Well even that plan has seemingly backfired. I can barely stay awake and it will be a miracle if I don’t fall asleep by the time the flight attendant comes with the beverage cart carrying some splendid beverages to quench my ever growing thirst completely ruining my plan not to sleep. Speaking of drinks on a plane, I hate how I can’t bring water into the airport, on principle I refuse to pay $5 for a bottle of H2O so I am stuck forcing myself to stay awake waiting for a 3 ounce cup of ginger ale (ironic choice I know, jokes surely to ensue) to satisfy my 40 days in the desert thirst. On the bright side, at least I don’t have to get up to go to the tiny plane bathroom every 5 seconds. I also think it’s interesting that I always get ginger ale on airplanes but never anywhere else. Must be some deep seeded issue I am going to have to work out with a therapist at $300 an hour 10 years from now, thanks US Air.

I actually wasn’t planning on writing anything before leaving but I refuse to fall to those French Flight gods and writing keeps me awake. I have literally fallen asleep twice on the woman next to me reading about European Union Law, she is a sweet German lady that always vacations in Sarasota. I thanked her for depositing her hard earned Euro cash in our great city and state. I compared her vacation in Sarasota to her government providing money to Greece (German giving money to beautiful beach country/state in economic distress). Not sure she understood me, probably better that way, don’t want her blitz krieging me or never returning. I love foreign vacationers, they make Florida so much money.

I have been knocking out some Rosetta Stone in order to be able to talk my way out of whatever trouble I get into, not there yet, might want to pray for me. On a deeper note, I am extremely excited for this summer but as always it is bitter sweet because I love Tampa/Sarasota and will miss the summer fun there with all of my friends and family, some new some old. All in all though I am jacked up for what lies ahead.

Just to give a tentative itinerary for the summer, I am enrolled in two study abroad programs put on by Stetson Law in Granada, Spain and Buenos Aires, Argentina (thanks Stetson for the scholarships to make this possible). So here you go:

4 weeks studying law in Granda, Spain with weekends free to travel. Coming in early to spend weekend with Blake, his roommate and sister in Granada. Probably do Madrid for a weekend, Portugal for a weekend and somewhere in Southern Spain for the last weekend.

I then have a two week break where my friend Perin Registre is flying out to meet me. We are going to Ibiza for 4 days, Madrid for 2 days and Morocco for a week to visit my other friend Jay who will be living there.

After that I fly back to Tampa for a night before leaving for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I plan on skiing in Chile and visiting the Iguazu falls.

More details once I actually do these things. I am gone from June 2-Aug 14.

Also, for those of you that I haven’t talked to or haven’t been following my twitter/facebook/myspace/bbm/email status updates I found out the other day that I am the recipient of the District 6890 Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship for 2011-2012. The Rotary Foundation will be paying for me to study internationally for a year. I should find out where I will be sent at the end of the summer but it tentatively looks like the National University of Singapore. I graduate this coming May, will take the FL bar in July and then pursue a L.L.M. in International Law and Economics there from Aug. 2011-June 2012. As cool as that might sound I am most excited about the fact that I can play varsity athletics while there. The varsity basketball and softball coaches have already been sending me recruitment letters. Ok not really but if they knew me they would be.

p.s. I don’t have myspace.