The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plane.

10/1/08 – (written on 12/1/08 in the airport in Athens waiting for our flight to Santorini)

(Currently 13/1/08 in an internet cafe/gaming center in Thira, Santorini)

After our blogging in the hostel we decided to branch out and make some new life-long friends. I noticed a very approachable looking young man sitting by himself in the bar lounge (where everyone hangs out at Mad Hostel). The characteristics of an approachable person in this situation are a) not using a lap-top, b) not already engaged in an intense conversation, and c) appears to be a chance that the target may speak English if our Spanish fails us in a given conversation.

After befriending him we found out he was Eric, a young man from Philadelphia in his early 20’s and while in the hostel he became friends with an originally German girl named Sara, who learned English partially in school in Germany and then moved to New Zealand to become an official Kiwi (so she has the kiwi accent which is pretty cool). We also found out that they were world champions in the game of ‘spoons’ and that they had been bringing the competitive game to the bar lounge for the past few days.

(For those of you who don’t know, spoons is a card game/elimination game for 3-7 players where there is always one less spoon on the table than there are players [for you math majors: for n = number of players f_n= n – 1 spoons]. The goal is to grab a spoon each round; to not be the eliminated soul without a spoon. There are two ways you can get a spoon: you can hold four-of-a-kind and thus gain the right to grab a spoon, or you can grab a spoon once someone else has grabbed one. This means when one player has four-of-a-kind he tries to take a spoon without others noticing, but everyone eventually notices and there is a mad rush for the spoons. Each player gets 5 cards (though we are used to the variant where you only get 4) and the dealer starts the game by taking a 6^th card and discarding one that he doesn’t want. The player to his/her left then picks up the discarded card and chooses any of the 6 cards to discard to the next players pile. This creates a circle of card passing. Thus eventually people will gain 3 of a kind and wait for the 4^th card to come, and it eventually will because no one else has any use for it (they would only have one of a kind by keeping it). One person gets knocked out each round and thus one less player plays in the next round. At two players the game is fairly stupid… so you usually just restart. You can also make up your own variants by using objects other than spoons. We discussed moving on to sporks, then forks, and finally knifes for the ultimate spooning action. (As they say, spooning leads to forking which eventually probably leads to knifing.. I assume)

Where was I?... umm yeah, so they were pretty cool. Eric was kind of loud, but funny. Sad things like “this isn’t facebook” or “this isn’t your church social” when people weren’t passing cards fast enough. They were pretty fun, and before you ask I did manage to win 1 of the 3 games I played. The third was lame, because this new guy, Lauwren (pr: lou [from the word loud] + ren [from rent]) from Finland came into the game and in the second round I was dealing and everyone else grabbed spoons so it was just me and L – dawg. And we both went for the last spoon, but it slipped from our grasps and flew off the other side of the table. Now Lauwren seemed to be a very shy Finnish boy and so I figured I had position enough on him to walk around the table and get the spoon, but as it turned out he dove across the table to grab the spoon. Mad respect to Lauwren.

But enough about spoons. We all went out later that night to this Irish Pub/bar to meet up with some other people we met at the hostel including Jose Pepe (Mexico), Eddie y Roberto (San Diego), Lauwren (Finland) and others from our hostel that we met there Eva (pr: effa; Germany), Milta (Argentina), and two American girls visiting from their study abroad in France who apparently didn’t make a lasting impression on me. As it turns out we didn’t meet up with Jose Pepe, but he has a crucial role later in the story.

(sidenote: And I thought this post would be shorter, don’t get too used to it. Right now it is my/our journal and later on I’ll probably keep my own journal of daily stuff or what not that will probably eventually be sold into my memoirs… until then, enjoy the free sample.)

The bar was pretty cool, when we came in there was live Irish-ish music and we found our friends in the back. Once we settled in the live music actually stopped, and was replaced by oldies (Brooke says 80’s not oldies) such as ‘footloose,’ ‘loveshack,’ and others. To further prove my point, Brooke knew all the words to all the songs. The waitress also came by to see if I wanted anything, but as it turned out my first bar drinking experience came in Spain in an Irish pub/80’s disco where a Spanish waitress asked me in perfect English what I wanted to drink (I asked what was good) and of course I ended up with a Heineken… great Spanish experience. But it really was a good experience in the end. Nathan, Brooke, Eric, and Sara all went home around 1:00am (Brooke says it was totally later than that… like 1:30am). I decided to stay after and got to know the remaining few pretty well. Milta and Roberto were really great with me, speaking in Spanish that I could understand and helping/correcting me whenever they could. It was also cool learning more about the Finnish and German cultures and Eva and Lauwren’s experiences in Spain. I also spoke with Eddie/Roberto about their surfing addiction and life in SoCal… not to be rude but most of you probably wouldn’t understand, you have to have a SoCal mental(ity) like me. After a bit we decided to move on and ended up at a salsa-ish bar… where we found a room in the back, past the bathrooms to just chill and kind of learn salsa from Roberto and Milta. We then went back to the hostel and ended up hanging out in Milta and Eva’s room (which had its own shower by the way, so lucky) and had some really interesting conversations about different cultures/languages/random stuff. It was really cool and a good group of people to hang around. I went back to the room around 4:30 where Brooke was still awake… when I asked her if she was just up worrying about me she said “no... I was just jet lagged… but I worried a little. We can’t do this one phone thing.” Pobre Brookey, if you’re reading this I’m sorry if I kept you up. And don’t worry everyone, we’re each going to have a phone soon upon our return to Spain. Lets see…

We kind of slept in and met up with Eva, Pete/Tom (shit I forgot about Pete/Tom… I feel so bad), and Eddie to go to brunch and an art museum. [***Pete/Tom was introduced to us by Eric (they were roommates). Eric nicknames everyone and he is also bad with names (related) and thus when he met Pete/Tom he couldn’t remember if it was Pete or Tom… and thus his nickname was born.***] Anyway, Pete/Tom tried to find this restaurant he had seen the day before that he thought looked good, but after a while we gave up on it and had to find our own place. Then Pete/Tom went off to a different museum and we went off to Reina Sofia, an art museum (he had already seen it). There we saw a couple temporary exhibits and tons of Picasso and Dali. It was pretty awesome and a very nice museum. (Student discount half off, only 3 Euro). I also really liked this one exhibit which was a video exhibit showing the same scene from two views… it played around with perspective and there were two of most things in the scene, but people kept moving them so that in one screen you saw one item while in the other you could see both… was really cool (if you want more info I’ll tell you another time). Then we went back to the hostel where we met up with Jose Pepe de Mexico.

Now Jose Pepe may seem like your average Mexican/Spanish citizen (dual!), but he’s not. He just so happened to have gone to a musical the night before… something we had been considering doing that night. And we’re not talking a small time musical like the one 5 min. walk from our hostel, Quisiera Ser (I wanted to be…) or even the probably cool Queensical “We will rock you.” Nope. Jose Pepe would not settle for those musicales. He went to Disney’s “La Bella y el Bestia.” (“The Beauty and the Beast”). After much hard internet research regarding the subject I found the place and number for the theatre. Jose was amazingly nice and helpful and he helped me out by talking to the person at the theatre for me to make sure we would be able to get tickets, find out about timing/seating and even helped me get directions there. Lets all give our thanks to Jose.

Needless to say the show was amazing. It was probably a little bit lower end than, say, a Broadway show… but I was immensely entertained. I also helped translate a little bit for Eva who, as of now, speaks minimal Spanish. Pete/Tom was there as well… but he has little to no Spanish… at least he’s American (San Fran actually) and knows the Disney Classic well. Also, I hate the song “Human again” or in Spanish “Humano otra vez.” The English version is horrible because it wasn’t in the original Disney movie and the added scene in the new version doesn’t fit, and I don’t appreciate it. “Humano otra vez” actually was kind of cool to hear, just because I recognized it… But yeah, we definitely didn’t understand every line of the show, so it helped a lot to know it fairly well. It was also hilarious to hear all the little Spanish kiddies/ninos singing the songs. And the nina in our row asked “?Que paso?” when Gaston kissed Belle and then Belle slapped him back. She also started bawling around the time when the Beast was revived as a human… we weren’t sure whether it was the shock of him dying, or his human transformation, or a combination of the two that caused it… but it was kind of hilarious. Pobre cita.

Oh. And we had dinner before that. Then back to the hostel, which I think is where Brooke’s blog picks up. With the crazy desk guy who me and Nathan had fun/long convo’s with and assured us he would help us get our stuff stored at the Hostel/talk with his boss/leave a note to tell the next person what the deal was… none of which happened. He also told us that his Bolivian friend who was with him was a Champion weight lifter in Bolivia… but he sounded so convincing. We still believe him, to this day.

Yallah Bye, talk to you soon.

Bradley, Brooke, Nathan’s sleeping again.