Oviedo to the 3rd degree

SO the 3rd week has come and gone, and in fact the 4th week is almost over as well, but I never updated the blog simply becuase week 3 sucked. As much as I try to take things into thE POSITIVE I´m sticken with senioritis, also my inability to sit still in a classroom enitment and endure the bleak boredom of the classroom, I´m would be considered a ¨problem student¨with teachers. It´s not also the class that makes me just fidgety or whatever, it´s the utter frustration of the study abroad program, the program is really intensive, in 1 week were taught 3 forms of past tense and 2 forms of future tenses with the irregular verbs and a slew of vocab and all this was tested last monday with only a week of class time. And god-fuckin-forbid if you have questions or you don´t understand some of the material, as I did, becuase your shit of luck becuase the teachers don´t speak english, so it´s fucking impossible to get an explantion of how to understand spanish from someone who speaks only spanish, it´s a contradiction, a conumdrum.

So week 3 I was told if I don´t act like a good child of ritalin, I was in danger of failing, even though I wasn´t the worst student of grade wise, but becuase my utter frustration and inability to particapate wasn´t to thier level, though that´s total bullshit. It wasn´t becuase I wasn´t able to particapate, it was becuase I wass acting like a ADD kid, which I think I might be, but becuase I was bored and frustrated I took a lot of ¨stepping out¨periods where I would leave the class and take a breather about 4 times a day. I think I always read if your frustrated or something, just about to hit your limit, a lot of psychologists oyu need to take a moment of breather to unstress yourself, but these fuck wad teachers say I need to endure thier bull shit class time. Just anyone with an observent eye only has to turn adn look at the sutudents and see the blank expressions on their faces of boredom to realize that the model of class time and structure doesn´t invigorate the mind, but dull it out, that´s school? For a place thatis culturally identifies itself as the institution of higher learning, school is so ignorant, arogant, and illogical, but heh, don´t rock the boat, eh?

Oviedo week part DUEX!

So the second week has come and gone in good ol´Oviedo, and it has been good. I was off to a rough start when I first arrived to Spain, I was, I was robbed, and utterly sleep deprived. But now that I´ve settled into my new surroundings I can say that this place is cool, you just got to know where and when to go, which I´m still learning.

When I and the rest of my fellow Americano students arrived we were treated to the sight of an empty campus and a home of really ridiculous rules (no drinking in the dorms? Ya right, dumbasses!) with the presence of constant overcast weather, it seemed that my summer wasn´t gonna be in the slumper. But the second week has been sunny weather and Gijon fun.

Last tueday we had an excursion to the nearby beach town of Gijon after class, the weather was nice and the intial free time that was given to us we went straight to the beach and went swimming in the Spanish Atlantic, sort of speak. Of course the whole point of any excursion is to take us to some lame museum or site that has historical signicance, but who fucking cares becuase there was a festival/carnival just down the street, haha! The museum took only a couple of hours then we were given the option to going back to Oviedo right hten and there with the school busfor free, or take a train or bus later that costed like 2 euros, most stayed of course. If anyone has been to a traveling carnival, it´s no different in SPain, except one thing - graphical images. There were a couple of those haunted rides, and in the states they are pretty tamed, but in spain the outside fascade has images of bloody graphical death scenes and women in nude quasi-rape scenes. Certainitly a no go in the states.

In the carnival everyone broke up into smaller groups, I stuck with Ian and Pat, fellow UO peps, that are like friend of a friend that I just never met, Eugene is such a small college town. We didn´t stay too long at the carnival becuase we had to meet up with Shane, an Australian in our spainish class, who lives in Gijon with his wife. When we meet up with him after buying a few bottle of wine, he took us to his apartment, which was close to the harbor and was really nice inside. As he was taking us to his apartment I was asking what restuarant we were going to and he gave me a vague answer, I didn´t really care so I never pushed him. But as we got inside his home he gave us some Spanish version of coronas inside the kitchen and I saw that his wife was cooking. So there was no restuarant, only a home cooked Australian meal of Lamb, Corn, Bread, Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, and some other DELICIOUS FOOD! No offense to the Spanish but their diet is monatonous. With the food and wine we lost track of time and had to take the last train back to Oviedo, and ran into our spanish teacher, who was with her boyfriend. We did our friendly exchanges and we parted ways afterward.

Friday I finally went to the clubbing sections of Oviedo, which I thought were non existant. For the past week and half we´ve been going to the bars and restuarants that were low key, feeling that this place was deprived of youth, it seemed bleak. But this was not the case. All the bars and clubs are in the old section of town, which are a spiral of small cobble stone streets, so it´s easy to miss a street and get lost, and feel like your going to get mugged in some dark alley. I like the clubs here more so than Barcelona, true they are noticable smaller, but they don´t ask for cover, and most of the time they give you a free first drink just to get you into the door. Inside is the Euro scene of hot chicks of Spain, and like any place in the world, the massive sausage fest of EUro dudes that were outnumbering the ladies 3 to 1. I had fun, danced, got drunk, but went home about 3am which is kinda early since usually people party till at least 5 am in Spain, but I had an excursion to the country side of Spain and had to get up at 8am.

The following morning I made some eggs and ham and went to the fruit store and bought a huge bag of plums and nectarines becuase I knew it would be closed on sunday and it was super cheap, didn´t even cost me 2 euros. The bus ride to the mountains wasn´t too long, but I swear I´m with these jack ass guitar playing teacher assistants that just won´t shut the fuck up, they´re the only ones singing their lame ass songs, most of us had our iPods on. I tried to drowned out the guitar goons the best I could, also it helped that the last stretch up the mountain by the bus was so scary from the fact the roads were so small that every other corner I thought we were gonna tip over the and roll down the mountain that I couldn´t concentrate on anything else, but we lived!

I don´t kow what mountian range we were at but the weather was really hot but I didn´t notice from the constant cool breeze, it was so nice I took my shirt off and didn´t even notice how severly sun burned I got until later that night. Cows were everywhere, and so was thier shit, haha! After that we went to a church and fountian that was carved into a mountina side, supposedly if you drink from the fountain you´ll get married in a year, so to put the myth to the test I drank from it, haha! To mess with the everyone arround me when I drank from the fountain I started spazzing out that it burned my throat, like holy water to a vampire, haha! But it was actually really tastey, wished I had a bottle of water to fill up, but then again if the legend was true than I would have so many wives I would need to convert to mormonism.

Well, that´s it for now, wish the best to everyone!

First week of Oviedo and the Bulls

Okay, so the first week has come and gone and I must say that it´s been... eventful. On the first day of school it was the usual orientation and also a placement test that I fretted over the night before doing last minute craming. I was sincerely worried that I was screwed, that I would do so badly that I would be set back and not in the place to recieve the necessary credits, but thankful that wasn´t true.

Well, not really, I placed what I thought at first was below my level, which is kinda true, if I was in a normal class in the US, but I´m not. The material that I use for class is a photocopy packet of questions, but no learning material, like a book to learn new material or explanations, it´s all review in spanish only. It´s pretty half ass on the part of the program, but the teacher speak only in spanish so I guess it´s really the point to listen. The class starts about 9:30 then ends about 1pm with an extra hour of class time for choice, I picked conversation so I can try to talk with the teacher more often. But the last day on friday we just went outside and they gave us a sheet of like 4 songs that we sang along with a guitar, kinda like summer camp, but with only 4 songs and an hour class time we sang the same 4 songs like 3 times each, really fucking lame.

I don´t know, the University is dead, it seems the only people on the small campus are Americans, there are a few spanish students, but you oonly see like 20 at any given moment. Lame. I´m trying to make the most of it, but I feel that the program is just focusing on the immersion of being in Spain becuase the school itself is kinda coasting along with what they could provide in other things. I mean for the thousands of dollars that we spent for this they could have given us a real book that helped explain the spainish language, but not really. All I can say that though this is a unique opportunity and have fun with my fellow students, I don´t have any respect for the current school system, it´s an ineffective, wasteful cash cow.

After the super awesome sing along (NOT) on firday a few fellow students and I hopped on a Bus to Pompalona for the runnign of the Bulls. The ride was about 7 hours long. The ride there didn´t seem so long, I slept, which on a bus, like a plane, isn´t really sleeping, it´s like resting to kill time. Pompalona is a lot more developed than I thought, to be honest I thought it was gonna be a backwards town, which it isn´t except for the bus station. It´s a really nice town, but damn was it crowded, it was opening night for the festival and there was carnival and families and groups were out and filled the streets, about 90 percent of peopel weere only dressed in the traditinal clothes of white shirt and pants with a red sash and scarf.

After Orientating ourselves, my fellow students and I just partied in the streets with eh rest of the crazies. We made our way the section to wehre the runnign was to commence in the morning, everyone was out and getting drunk.At first we tried the bars, but they wanted 8 euros for a glass of jack and coke, which is the cost of a bottle, was too expensive for me, hell for anyone really. But thankfully we found a small store that was selling a booze and we got a bottle of whiskey for 16 Euros. I was in the mood to get drunk and I drank at least a quarter of that bootle, so by around 3 am I was on the floor so fucked up that I got sick. Knowing that I would be fucked beyond recognition if I just tried to let the alcohol run through me I had my friend lead me to the corner of a street where, once I saw do this, I stuck my finger in my throat and forced myself to vomit. Awesome.

By the time of around 5 am the trucks were out and forcing people to leave so they could set up for the running of the bulls, my group and I then went to park and slept for 2 hours. You think that was bad, sleeping in the park? Sorry no such thing, everyone was doing it, so many people were in the city that there just wasn´t hotels to fit that many people, even the parks were crowded. We awoke about 7am and got into position into the street corridors to run. Now I´m not going to get into this too much, but I was with 2 other friends of mine, they got in front of me and i was just slightly behind them, we were moving forward, when out ofthe blue the pompalona cops did a L shaped sweep, and they block off a chunk of the crowd in the street and took out hteir sticks and puched us out into the side street out of the street to run with the Bulls. Yes, my friends barely got past the cops, while I was shouved out, making my whole experience shit becuase I coulnd´t even see the run becuase the cops pushed us out so far. So fuck that, my 60 Euro and 14 hour total bus ride was fucked becuase of these mother fucking cops. I´m fucking done. I don´t even want to even fucking speak about it no more. I missed the first and probably best excursion with ym Study abroad program to go to Pompalona and get fucked over by cops.

Gone From Barcelona to Oviedo

So I just left Barcelona last night on a 12 hour bus ride, which I BARELY made it to since all the subway (metro) got delayed. I mean barely like the buss was pulling out of it´s port. I slapped the driver´s window and he let me throw my bag in and away I went.

I´m not too sad to leave Barcelona, it wasn´t as cool as I thought it would be, the beach wasn´t that good compared to the beach town of Sitges that I visited a couple of days ago that´s just outside of barcelona. The bars and clubs are just any other, or perhaps I´m starting to rescend into my former self as the activity of Bar hopping and Clubbing has lost it´s glam and luster to me. I´m reverting to my Down Low self again.

I did enjoy it though, I thought it was so muhc fun to walk through the old narrow corridor pedestrian streetways of hundreds of year of building that tried to sell the newest designer cloths was a bit of a fantastic site. I didn´t buy any clothes though as I can´t seem to find the reason to pay 50 euro made in china shirts, they looked nice though.

The Hostel I stayed was super nice, funny though to get to the street of LA RAMBLA 3 blocks away, you have to pass the popular street corner that is populated by prostitutes all day, sickly sight actually, just gross. But prostitues were numerous, at night they swarmed LA RAMBLA and cat called any guy that wasn´t in a giant group or didn´t already have a girl, which on my last night walking home from the bars was me, pretty annoying as they would grab you as if you too shy to ask them. I just told tohem to fuck off.

But now the Barcelona trip is over, had fun considering the fact I arrived sick with a mouth full of canker sores that I haven´t had a real meal in a week. Oviedo seems nice, can hardely believe that I´m gonna be here for 2 months, I´m pretty nervous and a little upset, about school starting tomorrow, but this is the experience that I told myself I´ve wanted for the last 3 years. Either way there is not turning back and got to finish strong and enjoy the 3 weeks of travel afterwards.