Friday, October 30, 2009

Fall Break '09

I started out my trip with a little jaunt to Madrid where i met up with Mollie Schultz and crashed with Brian Collins. Brain has a cool roommate named tommy who has an unfortunate addiction to fast food and is still eating McD's in Europe. They live in a apt that is being renovated so only boys and their host mom live in the apt right now. It actually pretty much looks like a crack house on the outside but their room is legit. Their host mom is a great lady i think, but since i dont speak a lick of spanish i had to have my buddies translate... but they are not fluent or anything like that. As far as my buddies think their host mom called me "El Guapo" or the beautful one.

The Spanish lifetsyle is nutz. They eat diner around 9 or later and then they stay out until 7 in the freakin mourning! Its a tough life but somebodies gots to do it.

We went to the Prado museum which was darn cool especially since we only had to pay 4 euros since we were students. I saw allot of cool Goya paintings my favorite was the "Execution on the 5th of May" or something like that. It was brilliant to see in person.


Then i was off to amsterdam. It is a ridiculous place so the very damn least.
Like Las Vegas but on super raging steroids.
During the day i went to the Van gogh and Rembrandt museums which were amazing. My favorite was the van gogh though. Being able to get right up to paintings and see how he stacked the paint was incredible.

and during the night... well lets just say what happens in amsterdam stays in amsterdam

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Something of a tutor

I have been an english "tutor" for the last 3 weeks to a kid named Quetin who lives in my apt building. I use the term tutor very loosely though. I basically just go down one day a week for an hour and talk about whateve. The first week we talked about music. We have pretty much the exact same taste in music. It was a grand time. I would talk about a band and he would play a song from them and i would try to guess it, very satisfying. We worked our way from Zep, to Floyd, to Sabbath , to even Metallica. He actually prefers the blues so we talked about Stevie Ray Vaughn and Muddy Waters and some others. He is unbelievable at guitar truly he should drop his studies and start a band as i always tell him.

Last week we discussed some philsophy, quantum physics as well as if there was a god. You know just the usual tuesday night discussions. Last night we about video games and low and behold we love the same games as well. We played some Gears of War for an hour or so.

Quentin is a great kid hope he goes far he is damn well smart enought to make it.

Monday, October 5, 2009

St. Victoire

La montagne de St. Victoire is the mountain about 15 minutes outside of Aix that Cezanne always painted. It is jokingly referred to as "Cezanne's Obsession". Last Saturday i decided to conquer said mountain. I caught the public bus and en route made friends with 3 chickskis. There was Norwegian, a Swiss and frenchie, or a Spaniard i never really caught on bc they all spoke french.

The hike up was fairly easy in that there is not a ton of vertical footage that you have to conquer. The hardest part was the fact that all the stones have been worn smooth by the countless hikers. Not mention that it is hard to stay on your feet when a wild pig is threatening you from the bush, that thing scared the hell out of me.

The top affords a picturesque view of the valley and the natural landscape. A factory in the distance is the only drawback.

My new friends and i picknicked at the top and took a lil nap in the sun. All in all it only took me about 5 hours for the excursion and that includes my nappy-poo.