WHAT a coincidence...

So, since Amy and I made our plans for London and Paris (after school ends), I was trying to look up some stuff for us to do in London. Then, I ran into this...

You best believe I already bought tickets. They will be showcasing items from the Jackson 5's signed contract to Motown and the infamous glove he wore in '83 when he did the moonwalk at Motown 25 for the first time to numerous awards and outfits of his. Apparently there are over 300 items to show. I'm excited!

P.S. I was walking home and saw 5 billboards for his movie that came out today. One week away!
I can't wait!

BOMB THAI FOOD!

So, a bunch of us have been hitting up this Thai restaurant that is literally 10 seconds from our school. It's legit and definitely crackin. Not bad prices either.

I will actually be going there before salsa and hip hop tonight. It's sort of a tradition now...

AMSTERDAM!

So, I have decided that it is really hard to even blog about a trip that happened a month ago. My goal is to get back that far, but I'm going to start with the most recent....which is Amsterdam this past weekend!

A group of us flew out of Barcelona on Friday morning at 6am (which meant getting ready 3am, which REALLY meant no sleep that night...). We got to Amsterdam around 10am and checked into our hostel. It definitely wasn't the best hostel, but the great thing was that we were all together in the same room. On our way to the hostel, we got a little lost and came across this older man with sunglasses on (with one lens missing and the other one as a light green color). "I can help you. I know ALL about Amsterdam!" We were pretty sure he was probably on some drugs, but he was still really nice to all of us. This guy was really awesome. This set the tone for a great weekend ahead...

Overall, the city of Amsterdam is absolutely BEAUTIFUL! While it is a touristy city, it doesn't come off that way, at all. It's a nice city with many different landmarks and artwork. We were around during the "March of the Elephants" which was this art exposition only there for a few months. Basically, it was different elephants painted up with different designs. Here are some examples. All of the locals that we ran into were incredibly nice and SPOKE ENGLISH. As nice as that sounds, I hate going to places like this and then returning to Barcelona. It's depressing to think of how much my Spanish gets worse after just one weekend of speaking only English. I HAVE to keep this going when I get back to the U.S. (P.S. - Yes, that's an Obama elephant on the left).

After stopping by at different coffee shops, we visited the Van Gogh museum. It was really cool seeing his different works, but honestly, I am much more of a fan of Dali. He is my favorite artist, thus far! We also stopped by for a tour at the Heineken museum. We got to see the various stages of how the beer is made and got three free beers at the end. I also ended up getting my own bottle which states: "Brewed at Heineken Experience, Amsterdam, Holland for Brent." Sweeeeet.

Wow, I almost forgot to mention one of the best parts of the weekend. We checked out this rave where Dj Deadmau5 was spinning. It was incredible, to say the least. Luckily, all of us stayed together as a group most of the time and just got to enjoy it. Being a  hip-hop man myself, it isn't my most preferred type of music. Still, I can definitely get down with the house/electronic music. Every time he played one of his more popular songs, he put his mouse head on and people went wild. We didn't end up leaving until 4am (like most raves) and slept till 2:15 the next day. hahaha

All in all, it was a GREAT weekend. Out of all of my trips thus far, this was the hardest one to say goodbye to. Everyone was really bummed to be leaving Amsterdam. It's just such a relaxing city and we all had such a great time. There weren't any crazy stories, like usual (Even though, the Red Light District was crazy enough all by itself). Just a good time in an amazing city.


Alrighty. Time to head to bead. Friend's birthday tomorrow night and with a midterm on Thursday morning, I have to get up early tomorrow and start studying. I really missed the whole "classes are really easy abroad' part. While classes aren't near as challenging as UCSD, I definitely have to work hard to get good grades. I found out I aced my film midterm today. While it doesn't sound like a hard class, we have to analyze the films we watch with our readings and lecture notes to dive deep into hidden themes and comparisons between the film and what was going on at that point in Barcelona. Blahh


One more psych midterm on Thursday and I'm done for awhile. Staying here in Barcelona for Halloween. Thanks to everyone for keeping in touch! I can't thank you all enough. You keep me from getting homesick. T-minus 1 1/2 months and I'm back in the U.S. Whew, time definitely flies.


Next blog entry, I will cover our crazy adventures in ROME! Take care everyone!

My Apologies...

Hey gang! MAJOR apologies for not writing here lately. I have SO much to say and talk about, but because of that, just thinking about it all kind of turns me away at times. It's about 2:30am over here right now and Amy and I just finished booking our last hoorah before I return back to the great state of California. Our program ends on December 18th and we are heading to Paris for 2 nights and then London for 2 nights and finally, back to Barcelona to start the LONG journey home. I leave here around 7:30am on December 23rd and get back to Oakland at 10pm that night.

We were thinking about it and its almost been two solid months since we have been here. That's a REALLY long time, which means only have a month and a half yet. I cannot even think about our last day together. It's gonna be real sad....CHANGE OF SUBJECT!

I went to South of France last weekend and despite it being REALLY cold, it was a lot of fun! In less than an hour, we are on our way to Amsterdam for the weekend! It's going to be a ridiculous weekend, especially with our group that is going...

Okay. I have to shower/pack/eat breakfast all in 40 minutes. Whew.

I PROMISE (seriously this time) that I will have a lot of updates on Sunday. I got about 4 trips I still need to discuss with you all, plus a bunch of random stuff. I also need to cut my own hair real soon, which will be a blog entry in its own.

Peace yall and keep it crackin!

GOT MY TICKETS!

I got some of the very last tickets to be sold in Barcelona! For being the very last footage that we will ever see of him, I'm pretty sure this is gonna be epic. I can't wait...

Movie trailer

P.S. Check out the 1:06 mark in the trailer. MJ starts beatboxing! I'm amazed everytime I watch that part of the trailer.

Taxis

Back home, I rarely ever take a cab. However, when it gets late over here, we have the option of either taking a cab or waiting for the night bus. A couple of us went to a hookah bar tonight, so afterwards, we just wanted to get home asap. I took a cab home solo and got in. Now in Spain, you can either talk with the driver or just have him/her take you where you need to go. The driver seemed like a nice guy, so I decided to chat it up.

Even though it was only a 10 minute ride back to my house, it had to be THE best conversation I have had in Spanish since I got here. I could tell he was excited to have me practice my spanish with him and I got across everything I wanted to tell him. He was a real cool guy. We talked about the U.S., California, Bay Area, San Diego, New York, Miami, girls, the economy, my activities back at UCSD, my major, my future plans, my trip in Barcelona so far, etc.....all in 10 minutes.

As we pull up to my house, he tells me about this restaurant on the beach that his brother owns. He gave me his name, the name of the restaurant, and his phone number. He told me if we name dropped, we would get just about everything for free. No problema! If we had an issues, he told me to just give him a call and he would help us out.

From now on, I'm gonna keep striking up conversations with the drivers. It reminds me a lot of my dad, actually. Everytime I have been with him in a cab, he always starts talking with the driver. I guess I get it from him!

Great guy, great night, and now a great connection. Ahhhh, Barcelona. I'm in love with this city!

Dreams / New Motivations

Josh and I have been talking about dreams for a couple of weeks now. I told him about two weeks ago that I can't remember the last time I actually remembered a dream. Ironically, this past week I've been having extremely vivid dreams. The weird thing is that these go back before my years at UCSD. The two constant ones that I have involve me being in kung fu and acting in shows in high school. Rehearsals, tech weeks, and cast parties repeatedly playback in my dreams from the different musicals I used to be in. It throws me off, because they end up being incredibly real and without much change to what really happened. As for the kung fu ones, I keep dreaming about when I was in 10th grade and had to give it up (in order to pursue theatre and music, keep my job at Red Onion, continue tutoring, etc.). To this day, that still remains as one of the hardest decisions I had to make. I loved kung fu and everything about it. However, if I chose that over theatre, I guarantee I wouldn't have had the opportunities or met the people that I have. It's about 7:30am and I just woke up from a dream depicting the day I quit kung fu. Kind of creepy. Maybe these dreams are a sign....No clue. It does make falling asleep a lot more interesting, though.

As I have mentioned several other times, my eyes have opened up to a lot of things since I have been abroad. One of those happen to involve a lot of people from the past. I was looking at old school pictures last night and it made me realize how many people I have lost touch with over the years. While I understand that this is completely natural and happens to just about everyone, I do want to make an effort to connect with some of those people. I had some great times in high school and even the early years in college with a lot of folks I don't speak to anymore. We didn't end on bad terms, but we just ended up going our own ways. This will be one of my first goals when I get back to the Bay Area and San Diego.

Time to shower and head to 9am class. I realllllllly hope class isn't cancelled again, because I'm really sleepy and could use a few more hours.

P.S. I'm SOLD on hip hop and salsa. I will most definitely continue those in San Diego. Salsa is such a fun dance and I love all off the different moves I have learned, so far. Now that I finally got down how to "lead the girl," it's cake. As for hip hop, well I think anybody can agree that its in my blood. haha

Here's a picture of Bobby and I from How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. I was trying to find other pictures, but apparently I never put that many show pictures up on facebook. I will have to get on that when I get home too. Bobby is going to hate me for putting this picture up. I played J. Pierrepont Finch and since I didn't get much off-stage time, I always had to make sure my makeup was okay and wasn't going to be bothering me. I remember this picture being taken and being irritated with my makeup; almost ready to just take it all off. haha. OH theatre! I love stage managing for sure, but I will never forget my days onstage...

Spanish Midterm ugh

So, today I had my first midterm. I love my spanish class and my teacher. I look forward to it every week and we have had quizzes already that weren't that bad. Then came this midterm...

Let me just say spanish midterms in SPAIN are much harder than the ones back home. I'm not looking forward to the exams in my other classes now.

THIS weekend, we all decided to stick around in Barcelona and hang out since we haven't done that in awhile. Plus, beach weather is just about done, so we want to get the last of that. Apparently, in a city about an hour from here, they do a mini Oktoberfest, where they bring in the beer from Germany and it seems to be a legitimate Oktoberfest...in Spain. I'm intrigued by it, but since a lot of other people made it out to Germany, we are shooting for this.

Off to salsa and hip hop.............

MY TRUCK!!

So, I was debating when I came back home what I was going to do with my truck. Honestly, I love that car to death and would never want to sell it. I have had that car since my junior year in high school and just about all of my friends have rode in it at some point or another. TONS of memories with that thing.

Since it is just sitting in my driveway right now, my amazing dad decided to fix it up a lot by replacing the dents and scratches, paint job, tires, as well as some of the stuff inside. This is what it looks like now. I cant WAIT to drive it again in December!

Thanks Dad! MUCH love! d:-)