R e - P e t e

Feet Ache!

¿Como se dice “feet ache” en español?

This is our last night in BarTHelona and tomorrow we will be flying to Grenada where they have the world-famous Alhambra. It´s been fun here and I will certainly miss it. Hopefully one day I will return.

Em and I are beginning to feel museum-ed out. We know know enough about Spanish artists (Picasso, Dali) and architects (Gaudi) in order to completely dominate Spanish Culture if it ever showed up as a Jeopardy category.

I´ve been thoroughly enjoying the Basque finger foods they have here and wonder if they have any in the States. I´m only reminded of a really bad experience as a restaurant called Basque in SF. That was Basque done wrong. This was Basque done right!

We had a little R&R FROM our vacation by going to the beach today. It was nice to relax.. and the topless women weren´t so bad… (Em won´t read this because she´s on vacation with me HA HA HA!).

Things are warming up. Our hostel with shared bathroom isn´t as bad as I thought it would be. Interacting with Spanish people at the markets is becoming quite easy for us. I still have to study mucho portuguese before we get there. Ay ay ay.

Sometimes I wonder how things are going back home. How are things at work? How are my bank accounts? Has someone stolen my identity yet? What sort of electronic goodies is this other Peter Chang buying?

And then my mind moves on to other traveling concerns:

Is someone trying to pick pocket me? That person looks suspicious. Why are they looking at me like that? Can I get a breath of fresh air? I´m bombarded with cigarette smoke, exhaust or sewage smells. Why is this person walking so slow? Where´d Em go?

What a glorious mess it all is.

Hope all is well back home,
Pedro the Wanderer

¿Donde esta las Ramblas?

Traveling always makes for a great adventure, especially when it comes to language.

This morning, Emily and I set out to the nearby marketplace to get lunch stuff. We perused the endless stand of fruits, vegetables, meats and cheeses. Eventually we settled on one booth. We were nervous. I flipped through my trusty Rick Steve´s phrasebook to figure out all the right saying.

15 slices of chicken?
¿Quince rodajas *point finger*?

1/8th lbs of goat chees–
How do you say 1/8th?! They never taught us this in school!

Hmm I know how to say one quarter. I also know how to say one half. Maybe I can tell them to give me one half of one quarter. No way. Language barrier is one thing, but introducing a math question is recipe for disaster.

After a few panic-filled minutes, we realized that we should just ask for grams. Kgs to lbs.. do the math — do the math. Figured it out! Woo!

The transactions went mostly smoothly. We told them what we wanted. They responded in light-speed spanish. We responded with “no entiendo” (i dont understand) and they kinda just smiled. But we got what we wanted and came out victorious!

Towards the end of the day I had an experience similar to when I was in Florence. And this has to do with the ineplicable thing where people think I’m a local.

We were going into our hostal when an asian guys walking towards me goes:

“oh!! umm ohh!”

Something about it told me he was American (or Canadian).

“Donde esta Las Ramblas,” he said in Spanish that’s worse than mine.

I responded in english telling him where it was. It was all really funny.

Internet times up! Ciao, Pedro

Barthelona

Hola!

We´re in BarTHelona now. We just arrived here today from Madrid. The past couple days have been awesome.

A couple days we went to Segovia which is a 1 hr bus ride from Madrid. They are known for their castle and aqueduct. The small city had nice charm and we learned more about the Christians vs the Moors and how the castle changed hands between them. We also grouped together with some other Americans (dentists from Wisconsin).

After that, we stayed for a day and 2 nights in Toledo. Toledo used to be the capital of Spain until it was moved to Madrid. Toledo is totally awesome and reminds me quite a bit of Venice, except it´s on a hill instead of water. The streets are very small and windy and it´s fun to lose yourself in them. Em and I shared some mazapan (marzipan) on the Plaza Mayor and we also had some roast suckling pig! Oink oink!

This morning we made a rush to our train which we almost missed!

But now we´re in Barcelona and I can see why people love it. We´re just been here a couple hours and we´ve been walking along Las Ramblas which is a very charming avenue. To me, a lot of it looks like France. That´s probably because that was the first european country I visited. The weathers getting warmer and I can´t wait to end up on some beaches later in our trip.

So far we´ve been safe from the pickpockets but have been hearing bad stories from other travelers.

Oh yeah, funny anecdote: last night we were having dinner in a restaurant in Toledo and we were sitting near two couples who were Americans and seem to have met randomly. It was very interesting because they represent that American stereotype (talking in full english sentences to a spanish waiter who is responding in spanish). And then they went on to talk about the conspiracy against christians and all this other stuff. Bush voters! ;P

Ok, that´s it. Enough time indoors. Hope all is well.

Hasta luego,
Pedro

¿Hola from España?

Ok. I didn´t really intend to write a question but I´m using a Spanish keyboard here so humor me.

Em and I JUST woke up from our siesta. Boy! I´m not sure if it´s for me. We´re still jet-lagged so doing a siesta feels like going to sleep for the night. Getting up is tough! We´ll see how we settle into that bit of Thpanish culture.

Things are going great! Fabuloso. We had a little trouble finding our hostel when we exited the metro station. We found the street easily, but finding the actual building was tough. We ended up going back into some hair salon twice and the woman got all frustrated.

We´ve been using our Spanish quite a bit here. I´m a bit worried about visiting Portugal so I´ll be spending some time learning some common phrases before we reach there. I want to email my high school Spanish teacher and thank her.

Today we went to the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) and it reminded me very much of Versailles (maybe because the King who commissioned it wanted to have his own Versailles). The architectural styles are very similar to what I´ve seen in France. Of course, I didn´t say that to any Spaniards.

It´s a bit chilly here in Madrid (think Fall) but it seems like it will be warming up quite soon. Walking through the some beautiful gardens had me forgetting about work back home. I LOVE VACATION. Wish you all were here. I had some flashbacks to Bryan, Neelesh, Eugene and I having some beer in the middle of the day back in Paris.

No pictures but more updates to come. To DSLR owners: the camera has totally come in handy! I feel like it´s helped out in some low light conditions (for example, churches). Suuuweeet!

Adios por ahora,
Pedro