i think i left off satudray when i had to leave for my game. game saturday. lost....3-0.....but we had a bunch of players just trying out cuz its still preseason and the coach told me that they would not be making the team. no vale. i played the whole 90 min in i think the second hottest game ive ever experienced. the first being real salt lake. after the game, body hurting, coach says that i have to meet him at the corner of blasco ibanez and manuel candela at 8 am cuz im gonna play with the top team in the club. so woke up early (again) but i was still pretty excited. wow. they were good. i played the second half because the coach knew i had played the day before but this field was unforgiving. might as well played on concrete. and that was one of the fastest games i ever played in. first two times i get the ball i lost it. i improved significantly after i got the feel for the game but i didnt play great. then again nobody played great. we lost 3-2 but we played Crack's cf which is probably the most famous soccer school in Europe. Theyve produced dozens of professional players. Cracks has actually become an accepted term in europa that means superstar. Training tomorrow with the a team.
Today was the first day of work in Picasso-Cafe. I worked from 10-12 in the morning. Quite the experience. To get the job Mary Jose told the boss that i was experienced and there was actually a bidding war for me among the bars in the area. So I was trying to live up to that while attempting to understand what people wanted. I started to get the hang of it. I think there has been worse first days so im satisfied.
im thankful we have no soccer today so my legs can try to heal and i think im gonna study some spanish and probably go to the beach at some point. goodbye for now.

Game day.... we've started out 0-3 but if we could score we would win every game. But we also have new jerseys so we'll for sure win.

sittin on my bed listening to some Marvin Gaye CDs that a friend gave me.

I dont think I'm very good with blogging. I've never been one to share all my thoughts. whats the fun of everyone knowing what your thinking and doing. I do enjoy writing though. or rambling. a fine line with me.

I can't really imagine what else I could ask for out here. I get to play soccer in the mornings. Eat/drink with friends. Watch all the soccer games in a bar right next to my place that has a huge projector and good people. I also start working there along with another bar in a couple of weeks. Everybody says that all the people come during September so I'm excited to see what that looks like. I think its pretty busy right now. But I'm looking forward to there being more students out here and especially English speaking ones.

Yesterday i bought the book Oh Jerusalem by Dominique Lapiere and Larry Collins. Has anybody read it? I spent two hours yesterday reading it. Its in spanish and this is not the conversational spanish that i have been learning so i got through 2 pages. I'm proud to say I understand everything on those two pages. It is good practice though.

I'm likin this Starstrukk remix with katy Perry.

oh gotta go. check in soon. me.

Hey! So got back yesterday all dandy. Train ride was really relaxing and i was just watching south park on my laptop so it went really quickly. Sad i had to leave Barcelona so quickly but I had tons of fun there and it is nice to be home. I went to soccer at 9 this morning. Then after went to the grocery store with Jose, player on Don Bosco, and one of 10,000 Joses ive met. The names that are saved in my phone really aren't helpful cuz i have some joses and some hectors and its kinda hard to remember whos who. and im doin some laundry now. and i cleaned my room and my bathroom. First time ive ever really scrubbed a bathroom with gloves and chemicals and all. not very fun but ihad never cleaned it so the grossness had accumulated. now im gonna eat. its like 1:20 here and then i may go to the beach for a while. might go see the movie public enemies later cuz it just came out here and it looks really cool. anyone seen it? Before that though i need to go and play some piano. its been a while and its no fun playin when your rusty. Oh and im also working on a sudoku samurai that i tore from the paper yesterday. its like 5 sudokus that are all interlinked. its crazy. and its taking me forever. alright well hope all is well back home.

Im in Barcelona! I decided Friday night because if i join this team, Don Bosco, which it looks like i will, im not gonna have a whole lot of free weekends so i thought it would be the perfect time. i came by train yesterday. we watched slumdog millionare on the train so that was fun. it was in spanish but it also had spanish subtitles so that makes it easier. i had decided that when i got in i was going to do a bike tour of the city that i had found on the internet. i had to print of the ticket when i got there. oh ya but i did miss my train yesterday morning cuz i left my passport so i took the later one and had to reschedule to the night tour. anyways it took the whole afternoon but it wasnt too bad. finally got it and was killing some time before it started when all of a sudden i smell smoke. then i see smoke so i decide i should leave. as i stood up the cops rush upstairs and yell at me to get out of the hotel. i was like the last one out cuz im on the top floor. when i get outside they had taped off the street. there were probably 1000 people watching and taking pictures along with the news cameras watching the fire. turns out burger king next door is to blame. so i was outside for like 5 hrs with no money or anything but we finally got back in and the hotel was all good. unfortunately i missed my bike tour...again. but i had really good salad and calamari for dinner and then got to sleep as i had been awake for like 40 hrs.
this morning i changed the bike tour to this afternoon. before i went to camp nou-the barca soccer stadium. i took a tour of it and it was awesome. i also took a lot of pictures that we will never see cuz guy swiped my camera on the metro. im done stressing though and am just gonna enjoy the rest of my stay cameraless. anyways, the stadium was awesome and quite elaborate. there was even a chapel inside the stadium for the players. we got to walk next to the field and it was unbelievable. the stadium holds 100,000 people. it also had the biggest merchandise store ive ever seen. the ccheapest thing there was a t shirt for around 50 bucks but it was packed so i think they were doing alright. then i came back. bought myself a huge water bottle and am currently working on that and watching simpsons before 4 30 when i go on my tour. its been really fun here. im really glad i came. i think tomorrow before i leave imgonna check out the modern art museum next to the hotel. oh and the hotel is a really cool deal. it is practically the middle of downtown but is pretty small. it shares an entrance with a watch store and a dentists office. my room consists of a single bed and a tv. the bed is pushed up against one wall and there it is impossible to walk in the space between the opposite wall and the bed. its like a little box. there is a bathroom though. so im paying like a third of the price of all the other hotels next to me and im right downtown. alright, check in soon

just got back from soccer- its 10:49 here- and am eating a delicious ham and cheese sandwhich. today, i hung out most of the day. did all my laundry. i went to the beach for a while to find a place to use my internet and hang out but ended up hangin out with this argentinian guy and this other guy that lived in the puerto rico and the US for a while. they were really cool and im gonna go hang out with them tomorrow at the beach. i couldnt today cuz i had to figure out how i was gonna get to my tryout. anyways that was fun today. then for the tryout. geez these guys were annoying. the coach would call a foul when we were playing everytime this one guy would fall down. i was getting so annoyed. we both went up in the air and he just fell and started whining. i decided to give him a real foul. it was worth it. coach said to me and the other c mid after the practice that we were both good enough for the team but he had already signed 5 c mids. im thinking you could have mentioned that earlier and saved a lot of time. well the other good just takes it. hes like oh i know i know, thank you, and then just walks away. the coach had said earlier that he was just looking for forwards. so i made up a nice little story that sounded even better in broken spanish saying how ive played forward all my life and am actually better at it then c mid but i just prefer c mid cuz its more fun. sooooooooo tomorrow im going back to try out as a forward. well that was pretty much my day. im gonna eat my sandwhich and go to bed. have a good rest of the day everybody!

just woke up! today on the agenda is laundry and soccer tonight. Im trying out with another preferente team tonight at 8. im looking forward to that! the laundry not so much. i play soccer in 100 degree weather and then take a shower and stick the soccer clothes in my bag where they sit for about an hour. it all gets pretty bad. think im gonna go grab a coffee quick and then I may head over to the cafe with the piano. checkin back soon.

oh and a shout out to my boy TD who balls everyday up on Biscay

So its been sorta tough to get to the blog lately because the internet has been so unreliable. but right now its working so ill take advantage. Last night I went to Museros- another preferente team. When I got there the coach said i could practice with them but he didnt have any spots open on the team. I figured I would play anyways. Bad News: Facing a lot of rejection from soccer teams. Good News: Last night was the first night that I was really happy with how I played. While I dont have any teams especially interested in me right now, I have improved since the first time I played here more than I could ever have expected to. While the Rapids season was a challenge, the soccer here is developing a forgotten area of my game. The pace and strength of this preferente level is forcing me to play with my head up and think quicker. My first tryouts here were frustrating because I seemed to never be able to find an option and consequently held on to the ball too long. Now, I'm thinking and acting quicker. Im excited for tryouts to come because I believe that in the month or so I have been here I have finally started to adapt to the level of soccer I want to play here. While constant rejection from teams is frustrating, my confidence is growing. I believe that this year, despite what team I make, I will vastly improve from just a season ago and am excited to show the new soccer me to college coaches at some point in the future.
Today, I have no teams to practice with. Yesterday was rough. But with the amount of teams out here my determination has not been detered. Today Ariel has offered to help find teams on a website suggested by the coach last night and he said he'll call them up. I can get by with Spanish face to face but over the phone it is impossible. I also think Mom might have been right when she said I listened to the TV too loud because I now find it very difficult to talk on the phone to anybody, even in English. Oh well, everybody says that the communication in our world is increasingly more impersonal so maybe I'll just claim that I'm fighting a world without human interaction.
The last few days here its actually been cloudy which has been fantastic. There was even a slight drizzle this morning. When its like this I always go to the cafe downstairs and have a coffee and read the newspaper in the morning. I love how empty the streets are and the air seems so fresh.
Last night, me, Ariel, and Mary Jose went to the Kebab place after soccer. I was dying of thirst so I had three waters and a coke- which is unbelievably expensive here. A tiny bottle of water is like 2.50 euros. An angry debate over U.S. policy ensued. As they continually denounced capitalism as a moraless greedy plot devised by George Bush and Dick Cheney to take over all the oil in the world and then put poor people on the streets, I found it really hard to argue in Spanish. After they would say something I would sit and go over each word in my head to understand it. By the time I understood they would start on with something else. I am really sick of all these Europeans taking shots at the Bush Administration. While I don't agree with many of his decisions these people need to get their facts straight. They call the U.S. imperialist but then critisize for lack of action in third world countries. Apparently, news of U.S. aid to other countries doesn't reach Spain. Also, even though the number one source of income in Mexico is money sent from immigrants in the U.S., legal and illegal, the U.S. is "repressing" those poor people. It was a tad frustrating.
Mary Jose did explain to me what a CV is and what finding a job here entails. I'm a lot less intimidated now. The CV is just a resume but a really informal resume. I went to a lot of cafes and bars to ask about job opportunities a couple weeks ago and all of them said that they needed people. I think this is a good industry for me because i am told that my spanish will improve quickly. Also, all of the lounges and cafes on the beach said they are looking to hire people so once soccer is a little more concrete I think I may get a job there.
I also thought that in Sunday night's Entourage episode E was extremely dissapointing. I now have very little respect for the man I had admired so much this season. He is back to being the little guy. Have a good day everybody! I'm going to blog more often! I mean it this time!
Anyways, I should get back to my search of soccer teams.