Barcelona!

Barcelona was a really neat city.

Our evening flight didn't put us in Barcelona until after 9pm, so when we arrived we weren't able to check out a lot of different places to stay. The first night there we stayed in this hostel that felt more like a hotel than anything else. It was nice and everything, but it didn't really have a very 'Spanish' feel to it. It could easily have been in any country. The next day we used our handy 'Let's Go Europe' book to find a much better hostel; one that was definitely more authentic. It was quite an old building (that's hard not to be though, in Spain) on top of a shopping arcade and it had all these little hallways snaking off in every direction. It even had a tower room and a roof top garden balcony! (There was also a very cute cat - Missy - who liked to sleep on our bed.)

After we checked into this new hostel, we went out exploring for the day. We started at La Rambla, which is the main downtown street for shopping and tourists, conveniently a two minute stroll for our hostel. There were a lot of street performers, and I mean A LOT! Also on La Rambla we went to this erotic museum that Andrew and Lisa had heard about. It was... interesting. Some of the art work was really cool looking, and it was neat to see stuff from other cultures that dated back a long time.

After that we found a huge market - mostly fish and meat stands with some fruit and veggie stands; It was packed! Kind of like the Granville Island Market (inVancouver) or even Pike Place Market (in Seattle) but much bigger. We did find a candy stand in it that Lisa especially liked.

That afternoon we walked along the pier (and Troë dipped a finger into the Mediteranian). The pier had a few attractions: a large shopping center, an aquarium, and an IMAX cimena. We decided to find the Barcelona Zoo instead, though. Troë had never really been to a proper zoo before, and the rest of us had been only once or twice each. Plus, this one claimed to have the only albino gorilla in the world, and with Andrew's monkey obsession we had to go in. The zoo was actually really big, but since it was only two days before Christmas and the middle of the afternoon, there were only a few other people there. We saw tons of different animals, and took in a dolphin show and Lisa got to be a volunteer demonstrator. She got to interact with and pet a dolphin. All in all, everyone was impressed with the zoo, even though we found out that the albino gorilla had died a few years ago.

The next day we walked across the city to find Park Guell. It's a miniture city shaped like a park that was designed by a famous architect named Antoni Gaudi about a hundred years ago. All of his architecture incorporates mosaics and is quite distinctive in appearance. Barcelona is home to many Gaudi designed buildings and we stumbled upon several in our way to Park Guell. We spent several hours exploring the whole of Park Guell and found some quite amazing structures. On the way back to the hostel, we made a detour to see Gaudi's most famous building, the Sagrada Familia. It is a giant Cathedral that was never completed.

Barcelona completely wakes up in the evening. After the day trip across the city we made it back to La Rambla to find it totally packed. It seemed like the population trippled from what it was at noon to what it was 5 o'clock. Places didn't open for dinner until at least 8pm, so we rested at the hostel for a while before finding food.

On our final day we went up to Montjuïc. It's a large mountain park right on the edge of the harbour. Our trip had already invovled a lot of walking and hiking on this mountain completely wore us out. The views were quite spectacular from the top though, and we all treated ourselves to some ice cream from a hill top cafè.

In all of our exploring throughout the three days, we discovered Barcelona was full of tiny streets and alley ways littered with cute little shops and cafès. Adam managed to find three different comic book stores along the way and Troë managed to find a cute store specializing in Venitian masks! So both of us brought back a cool souvenir of Barcelona.

Bon Voyage

Andrew and Lisa arrive today and we're off to Spain in just a few short hours.

Consequently, there won't be updates for the next little while - at least until after Christmas.

So...

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE. WE MISS BEING WITH ALL OF YOU AND HOPE TO HEAR FROM OR SEE EVERYONE SOON.

Finished my Christmas Baking!

Well, I finished my Christmas baking yesterday! I brought a plate of it into work today... it definitely didn't last very long at all, so I think people liked it.

On Friday night we had our staff Christmas party. It was actually really fun. We had a nice dinner and then a DJ played for a while and everyone danced. The staff are also having a goodbye kind or tea thing after school on Wednesday (for me and another guy I think), but I won't be able to go cause I'll be off to Spain then! I am so excited that we are off to Spain the day after tomorrow!

A Break From Rossmore

So the week is going ok, no huge complaints... about Rossmore that is. Yesterday I spent the day at a prospective school for January. I was going in for possibly teaching PE for a term (until the end of March). The school, unfortunately, was not all I was hoping it would be. None of the staff were all that friendly and the kids were almost as bad as Rossmore. So all in all, I was not impressed. Anyway, I don't know what I'm going to do now. I'd rather just stay at Rossmore though than teach there I think.

Christmas baking is half done. The Oh Henry bars turned out very nicely. Less than a week and we will be in Barcelona! Horray for another adventure!

"The Holiday"

Last night we returned to the cinema (after a week absense due to poor selection) to see the new romantic comedy "The Holiday". Yesterday was a gruelling day for both of us and we were thrilled to get out and relax.

The movie follows the lives of four different people in relationship problems in two different continents (half in the UK and hlaf in the US). The movie was cute and fun - everything you would expect from a typical romantic comedy.

None of the characters' situations were very orinigal or complicated and for the most part the film was fairly predictable. It was still loads of fun and we both enjoyed it.

A Long Weekend in December?

On Thursday afternoon I officially quit my job at Beales. I told my department manager, Sue, that I was leaving on the 19th of December and then I handed in my formal letter of resignation to the Human Resources office. Most of my co-workers seemed upset that I was leaving - but when I explained why I was leaving everyone was supportive. We're living over here to visit new places and see things we've never seen before. I had a really shitty Christmas experience the year I was in Australia, and I don't want this year to suck. We figure that we can deal with the possiblity of both of us being jobless for a little bit in the New Year if that's the cost of enjoying ourselves to the fullest while in Europe.

Then on Friday, in a surprising turn of events, my new floor manager Paul came to me with an interesting offer. Apparently, Beales is willing to make an exception and let me have two weeks holiday over Christmas if I agree to come back to work in January. Also, he asked if I had any other upcoming travel plans, so I told him about our trip to Italy in February for Carnivalè. Paul said that wouldn't be a problem and he'd make sure I could have as much time as I wanted off then, as well. This is crazy: the man has been my boss for four days and already he's willing to bend over backwards for me - an employee he knows is only staying with the company for a year at most.

Oh well - now I get to go to Spain with-out having to worry about possible unemployment in January - and I'll get paid for it: three of the days I have off are bank (pay-for-not-working) holidays in England. Now that I'm staying longer I'm entitled to more paid holiday days too, so they might pay me for every day I'm off.

Also, the Teacher placement agency that found Troë the job at Rossmore called on Thursday to tell her that a full time teacher position opened up in the Bournemouth area for the January-April semester. It's teaching girls gym, coincidentally, at the same school Troë's soccer team practices at. She's applied for the position, but we won't know anything for at least a couple of days.

And on top of all of that, I have a long weekend this weekend: we were originally going to London for Saturday/Sunday/Monday for a teaching conference for Troë, so I pulled some strings to get the time off. But now that Troë is leaving Rossmore, she's no longer going to the conference. So now we get to spend the whole weekend together (a rarity for sure).

After the stress of the last few weeks, things are definitely looking quite good for us right now.

Comic Books & Superheros

I actually have the day off today - the whole day - something that hasn't happened in quite a while. I have been working a lot lately (picking up extra Sunday shifts) and using all of my weekdays off to volunteer at Troë's school. So, seeing as how it is a Wednesday I think that it is only appropriate that I go to the comic book shop in Poole (even though new comics don't come out in England until Thursdays).

And so, in honor of my return to comic books, I felt it was necessary to let everyone know about this great website I've found where you can take a quiz that tells you which superhero you are most like. My results:

I am Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80% Green Lantern 70% Batman 65% Robin 65% The Flash 65% Iron Man 65% Superman 60% Catwoman 60% Supergirl 50% Wonder Woman 50% Hulk 50%

I am intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test Yourself

Weekend after thoughts

The Talent show seemed to be a success. The kids really enjoyed it, and I have to admit that it wasn't quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. Plus some really great kids who totally deserved to win it won, so that's good. They sang 'Point of No Return' from 'The Phantom of the Opera'.

The weekend was nice and relaxing... though I didn't sleep very well on Saturday night. The wind and rain was just ridiculous and so loud! Plus we just got off a mild Tornado warning, so that had me a little worked up. Sunday also sucked because Adam picked up an extra shift at work thinking I would be at my soccer game all day anyway - but my game got cancelled yet again due to poor weather. So I spent Sunday all by myself. On a good note though, our Christmas shopping is pretty much finished and our packages will be mailed out this week!

Friday, however, was a good day. We purchased our tickets back to Canada! Yay! We found a really cheap flight through a website called Globe Span. The tickets were just over 400 euros for both of them, so that's pretty sweet. Our flight leaves on May 3rd, and we arrive back in Canada two hours later on May 3rd. (Flight being 10 hours, time difference gaining a day, cool.) So five more months till we come home. Meanwhile, everyone is still more than welcome to come and visit us anytime! And we still have pleanty of places to go see before we leave as well.