April 18th, 2008

I realize this is long overdue, but I've been spending most of my time recently working on my ISP and any free time I have is been devoted to doing anything BUT typing. However, last night I finished the full first draft of my paper and so I'm feeling like updating today.

So I was in Barcelona last weekend?!?!

I left Thursday afternoon and got in around 5pm. Took a half hour bus ride to the center of the city and met Jena at Placa de Catalunya. The city was unbelievable. My first impression was, woah, there are a lot of people here. Guess that comes with living in a village with 2000 people for 4 months. The city does not have the old, historical feeling that many European cities (Paris, Geneva, Brussels) have. The city is fairly modern. Another impression - there are no people between the ages of 30-60 in the city. Everybody is either old spanish or young students.

Thursday we hung around in Jena's apt for a while with Mandy, and then went out to get some dinner in the neighborhood of La Gracia. After dinner we went over to Shana's apt and hung out for a bit there. Then we met back up with Mandy and went to a few bars. We were in a cool bar with good music and lots of Spaniards but the electricity kept going on and off randomly. We called it a night around 2 or so.

Jena and I woke up early(ish) on Friday to go start exploring. We walked from her apt which is near La Sagrada Familia (crazy Gaudi Church) to Placa de Catalunya and grabbed a quick pastry for breakfast. Next we headed down Las Ramblas, this cool touristy pedestrian mall with performers and little booths that sold any kind of animal you could want (including pheasants!). Also, two of Gaudi's famous houses are located on this street. Gaudi is known for his INSANE architecture. We walked around Jena's favorite food market where you could literally buy anything you could possibly want. Then, we headed straight down to the pier.

Barcelona is sweet because its a huge city, but its situation right between the sea and the mountains. So, we walked from the pier to the beach! It was really nice out and even a bit hot! So much nicer than Geneva's decision to be 40 degrees and rainy for all of April. We chilled on the beach for a while, then headed to a cool restaurant to meet Mandy for a good lunch. After we headed back to prepare for one of the craziest nights of my life.

Friday night we drank a bit in Jena's apt after gettin some really good Tapas. We headed out to meet Jena's friends at this awesome old Absinthe bar where supposedly Hemmingway and Picasso used to frequent. At about 2 am, we headed to this insane club called Pacha. The club was really cool and fun and there was even a live violinist and guitarist playing over the DJ. We left around 6 am and passed out in Jena's apt finally.

Sat morning/afternoon (hahah) we woke up and headed out to El Borne, a sweet shopping area with cool boutiques and stuff. I got many gifts for various people and spent far too much money (as always with Europe). After, Jena and I grabbed some lunch and headed to her favorite park, Parc de Ciutadella. There were tons of young people outside and it was beautiful and we just chilled for hours catching up. After, we headed home and made some plans for the night.

Sat night, Jena and I got excellent Mexican food and then walked around El Borne and found some really cool bars. After, we went to another club, Mary's Place (I think named after the Bruce song), where the DJs were awesome and everybody was having a really good time. Around 4:30am, or so, we headed home

We woke up on Sunday and Jena really wanted to show me Gaudi's Park, called Parc Guille (pronounced Wheel). It overlooks the city and is HUGE. It has amazing architecture because, according to Jena, he was obsessed with making nature look like art. We walked around and took pictures for a few hours and then headed back down into the city. Jena took me to a really sweetly designed hospital near la sagrada familia and we got some lunch along one of the streets near it. After we came back and chilled at her apt, then got some dinner at a really cool restaurant (Princesa 23 I think). Then Jena took me to a really cool backpacker's bar where they had excellent Sangria. Jena wasn't feeling too hot though, so we left earlyish. Got up on Monday morning early and headed to the airport - muy triste!

It was amazing to see how much life the city had. No matter what time, or where we were, there were always tons of people out. People were really friendly and didn't seem to have a care in the world. It was an incredibly happy city, I think there is no way else to describe it. I had a great weekend and it was great to see Jena again. Oh also, it was fairly entertaining because from Friday on, Jena had no voice (for a change) and so communicating was fun. Also, Catalan is a crazy language, a near dead mix of French and Spanish. ANNNNDD turns out I remember a lot of Spanish which was a nice surprise.


The rest of this week has been kinda shitty. Geneva in April sucks - its constantly raining/snowing and has been fairly chilly. I spent most of the week getting interviews, getting annoyed at my ISP/professors. They haven't been really clear about what exactly they want until this point and now we have limited time left to fufil the requirements. Regardless, I have a draft complete so I'm much happier now than I was the rest of the week. Time to go put in my edits....

April 9, 2008

So Saturday night ended up being a lot of fun. I went out in Nyon to Cactus Jack's (or "Tex" as the swiss call it, like a kind of island themed bar" with Chiara and Nico. We met up with a bunch of their friends and drank for most of the night. Glad to know that i can still outdrink somebody, because by the end of the night most of them were wasted, and I wasn't really feeling much (although I think they thought i was very drunk lol). I also introduced Nico to the wonderful world of Jager Bombs.

Most of this week has been pretty low-key. Most of the group was still in Barca until Tuesday, so I spent Monday in the UN doing some work. Yesterday, I ended up getting an interview with some people at the BTRF (Borneo Tropical Rainforrest Foundation) through a contact I had at the IISD (Internat'l Institute for Sustainable Development). It was a guy and a girl who were working in the field trying to implement a microfinance scheme in this remote part of the rainforrest to encourage forest conservation in addition to working with them to encourage eco-tourism as a way to increase money flow into the village. This would allow them to build infrastructure and other necessary things for the village. Anyway, they were really cool and helpful.

Today I met Greta and Steph for some thai food for lunch, shopped a bit at H&M (which has surprisingly cool guy's stuff for cheap) and then went to meet my guy from the ILO after lunch. Turns out he forgot about our meeting, but I did get him to agree to be my adviser for my project, so that was good.

Other than that, i just scheduled for a kick ass next semester (no classes on mon or fri). Just packing up some stuff, as I'm headed off to visit Jena and other wisconsinites in Barcelona tomorrow! Hopefully the weather will be much better (its been raining/snowing here for the past few days - turns out its snowed more in March & April than in January & February!)

April 5th, 2008

This week was fairly low key, most of it was spent working on my isp paper. That entailed spending most of my days locked in the UN Library looking at hundreds of journal articles and books. Basically, if i see the word microfinance again, I'm going to throw up. I started writing my paper a little bit yesterday because I had nothing better to do. This weekend 20 out of 26 kids on my program are travelin out of the country. I would have joined, but like 15 were headed to barcelona, and im going there next weekend to visit Jena and other wisco people.

Last night Greta, Ida, and I went out to the Fisherman's Pub and had a pretty good time.

Today turned out to be great, though. Nico and Chiara and I woke up early, grabbed some breakfast, and headed out to Neuchatel. Neuchatel is about an hour and a half by car and is yet another amazingly beautiful old city on a lake. We walked around for a while, saw the obligatory old church and castle, grabbed a small snack and enjoyed the great weather.

After, we drove to Lausanne, a city not far from home, which is really cool because there is a big university there so the city is filled with younger people. Nico and Chiara showed me the centre of the city, which I had not been to yet. There were a ton of people and really cool stores and shops. We had a really good time just walking around and talking and chilling. Oh, and we had sushi for lunch - tres bonne.

Thats about it, prob going to work on my paper for most of tomorrow and monday, and then I'm off to Barcelona on thursday!

Also, working on going to Basel, Switzerland (near germany) to see a soccer match with nico, and then to Lyon, France to see the top French soccer team play the last weekend of the program (hopefully both will happen) - thus fulfilling my dream to see a European soccer game.