Barcelona with Mommy

So...October 13-15 I went to meet my Mom in Barcelona :) It was really nice to see her...I hadn´t seen her since March when she and Angela came to visit me. I´ll add pictures of our trip really soon. All my guy friends who saw the pictures saw my mom is hott...oh man....I guess there is hope for my sisters and I to be hott when we grow up lol :D

Upcoming plans

*Me & my roomie Davina

The current agenda:


November30th- Happy birthday Jan :) I´ll be flying to Sevilla with Davina (my roommate from Milan), Joel (from SDSU) and Aiga (Joel´s roommate from Latvia)

December 3rd- Happy Birthday Mommy & Daddy! I´ll be flying back to Coruña from Sevilla

December 14th to 17th- Going to Porto, Portugal :D

December 21st- Fly to Rome to visit friends...

December 29th-Fly to Poznan, Poland :D SUPER excited about this one!

December 31st-New years eve party in Poznan, Poland :P with Erasmus students from last semester :D

January 8th- fly back to Coruña

January 14-18th- Final exams in Coruña

Januray 19th- Fly back home! arrive @ LAX 11:50pm

January 21st- Drive from V-town to SD

January 22nd- SDSU starts

****Subject to change without notice :P***

OKTOBERFEST

ok.....So I went to Oktoberfest and like everything else in the last 2 months...I neglected to post a blog about it. You can expect pictures and a damn good blog entry soon.

much love

PS: It was THE shit! even though I missed my flight back to Spain...ahahah it wasn´t funny at the time...but now it is :)

what i want from home....

i want to be able to shower for longer than 10 minutes with HOT water

i want a dryer for my clothes

i want my car

i want to be able to run errands during 2pm and 5pm

i want to deal with businesses that understand the concept of customer service

i want to tip the server when i go out to eat and be treated like a guest not an annoyance....

i want efficiency

i want the sun everyday!

i want to leave my jacket in storage

i want mexican food at any hour of the day i please

i want to go out in SD with all you crazy people i miss sooooo much

i want to see my family and friends (most of whom i haven´t seen since January..10 months)

i want to sleep in MY bed with my down comforter

i want to go to the supermarket and find everything i need or want

i want to go to class at state and be thankful to have professors who know how to teach and actually use textbooks.....yes i want to read my textbooks....

Berlin & Denmark

Went to Berlin for a consumer electronics show IFA. That was cool....but I didn't get to see the city because I was at the tradeshow and then the hotel the whole time :P.

Well...that´s not entirely true...I did see some of the city via train. I had to cross Berlin (which is HUGE) from West to East Berlin to go from the tradeshow to the airport. I took a flight from Berlin to Copenhagen to go visit Adam, Karin and Noah.

Passing from West to East Berlin was amazing...you can definitely see the difference. West Berlin is much more modern, while East Berlin in a way seems to be in ruins. I can´t say much because I didn´t get to really get to know the city. I can say for sure that I will go back to Berlin at some point.

Denmark was great. I hadn´t seen my cousin Adam in years and it was really cool to see how he has been living the last few years. For those of you who don´t know....Adam´s wife Karin is Danish and they decided to move to Denmark together and raise their son, Noah. Who is adorably cute :).

They have a really cool house in the countryside outside of Copenhagen. Their house connects to Karin´s parents´ house which is cool for Noah because he has his grandparents right next door.

Adam showed me how to cook pizza and chinese food :). He´s a good cook...I definitely ate well.

Adam has been in Denmark for years...I´ve been in Spain for about 10 months...being away from home so long really makes you realize how much we took things for granted in the US. Really....we were able to relate in that way. It´s like...you have to hunt down things like French´s mustard, bagels, peanut butter, tortillas. It´s not just food....the customs are different. The schedules....work habits....everything. It´s another world.

Pix to come

Slovenia/Croatia

Where am I now? Berlin...IFA tradeshow

In the past week & a half I've been in 5 different countries. Proof...
*Coruna student ID, Munich monthly Metro pass, Euros, British pounds, Hungarian Forint, Croatian Kuna (all of the above where in my wallet just before I left for Denmark)

Ok so first I spent 2.5 days in Ljubljana, Slovenia which is gorgeous....hard to believe that a country's capital city can be so green and peaceful
*View out Grega's window in Ljubljana
*Abel & I in Ljubljana just before he & Grega went to their friend's wedding ceremony
*Me by the river in Ljubljana
Why did I go to Slovenia & Croatia and who did I go with?
My friend, Abel, who is from Galicia/ Spain invited me to meet him and a couple of his friends to go on this trip. Both Grega (from Slovenia) & Luis (from Portugal) studied in Coruna in the past. So we are all connected through Abel.

In Ljubljana we stayed at Grega's parents apartment. I have something to admit....They had horse meat...chorizo/ sausage made from horse meat....and I tried it :O ....it didn't taste bad but I couldn't enjoy it b/c I knew what it was. Anyway, Abel loves it :P go figure.

*Grega, me, Abel & Mateja (from Slovenia) @ the wedding reception

Grega & Abel had a wedding to go to in Ljubljana which is why we were there in the first place. The wedding was held at the castle there and I explored the city a bit while they were there. I went with them to the reception afterwards. :) That was fun. It was actually a Slovenian girl marrying an Israeli guy. So they had a mix of traditions including the Jewish glass breaking tradition and Slovenian folk music. Of course there was wine too....so we had a good time. Especially attempting to dance to Slovenian folk music....Reggaeton style :P
*after a bit of wine @ the wedding reception (Grega, me, Luis, Mateja & Abel)

We went outside of Ljubljana to see some of the countryside and some really cool caves. We were about 60 meters under ground and it was like 10degrees C....which is pretty damn cold. It was pretty amazing. Unfortunatley the pictures inside the cave didn't come out great but outside the caves is beautiful and those pix are good ;)
*Luis & me in the cave.... what? it was bright.....or something
*cave shot
*just outside the caves (Luis, Abel, me & Suzana) Suzana also studied in Coruna...she was Luis's roommate there....she is from Slovenia as well.

Next we went to see a castle.
*yes, I am well aware that I look fantastic in this picture...but anyway...focus on the castle people! it was pretty damn amazing
*near the castle....talk about green gorgeous-ness (yes, i created a word)
***********
So then we drove to Zagreb, Croatia and stayed in an aparment there. Grega's girlfriend Bruna came with us as well. She's from Croatia. When we drove across the Slovenia/ Croatia border (which means leaving the EU) we handed them 5 different passports...the customs agent was like...."uhm....what's this? how do you guys know each other? and why are you coming to croatia?" it was funny. here's a pic:
*Passports- USA, Portugal, Croatia, Slovenia & Spain
*Me, Bruna, Abel & Grega sitting in Zagreb
*when you're in Zagreb and you don't have a can openner....fret not, Luis will come to the rescue-knife in hand....sometimes pineapples are worth the risk

I made dinner for everyone since we had a kitchen that night...nothing special but it was fun.
*Luis & I sitting at the table after dinner
*Abel & me after going to meet the "tour group" for a drink in Zagreb

So that night, after dinner we all went out to have a drink with the group of American students who came in....Basically, Grega was hired as a tour guide for a group of about 20 MBA students from Northwestern University (Chicago, IL) It was strange for me to be around so many Americans after so long. They were cool though and we had a good time. We were with them the rest of the time....we all took a bus the next day from Zagreb through the countryside and to the island Pag. Croatia is amazingly beautiful. I'll shut up and show more pix now...
A series of pix from a national park called Plitvicka Jezera (Croatia)




*me, Luis, Grega, Abel & Bruna

So then....we were on to Pag:

*apparently random donkeys roam around....so here we have 3 asses all in a row :P (Luis, el burro, and Grega)

*****Both Slovenia and Croatia are parts of former Yugoslavia...who knew it was actually this gorgeous? The only evidence of war I saw were some houses and buildings with bullet holes in the walls. That I saw in both Croatia and Slovenia*****

On my last night in Croatia...we had a bottle of Port wine (thanks to Luis who's from Porto & brought it for us....and a couple drinks then went out once again with the Americans) I didn't sleep @ all that night because we stayed at the club until 430am and I had to catch a bought to Rijeka (where my flight was leaving out of) at 6am....so yeah that was an experience. Here are some pics:
*me & Grega on the patio of our bungalow in Pag

*me, Abel, Grega, Luis & Chris (the tour company owner from the States)
(Port Wine! Yum)
(Abel & me)
*us 5 again ;) just before going out

So yeah....6am I took a boat to Rijeka...arrived at 8:30am....on 0 hours of sleep....then waited for the bus to the airport to arrive at 12noon! then arrived at the airport at 12:45...and waited for the plane to arrive at 3:45pm....then....I arrived in Leipzig at 6ish....from there I took a train to Berlin...arrived at 8ish and then waited to get the hotel info...then I took a cab to the hotel and arrived finally at around 9 :O longgggg day. Well worth it though ;)

Ok......so I'll have to wait on the Berlin & Denmark updates....sorry...but they should be up within a week or so.... gives you something to look forward to, right? ;)

Budapest, Hungary

Budapest was the shit... Here are some pictures...
we did Hungarian wine tasting, saw the Red Bull Air Races pre-qualifying round, went out on the Danube River for a cruise, went to an open air club on the Danube....I randomly ran into a classmate who I studied with in La Coruna who is from Hungary....but seriously what are the chances that I would run into him?!?! We had a really great time...Oh and I got to drive a BMW 5 series in Austria on the way there....AND on the German "Autobahn" which really just means freeway in German....but that means no speed limit :D So I did 195km/hour= 120mph
good times....enjoy the pics!
*Red plane flying in front of the Parlament building & over the Danube River
*Me with Stephanie (from Munich) & Dustin (from the US)
*Nice architecture :)
*don't remember what this is
*Hungarian currency: Forint
*the Danube River @ night
*Red Bull Air Races pre-qualifiers
*in Budapest @ a live dance show @ night


*some damn good dessert on the Danube River @ a nice boat/restaurant called Spoon...On the right...Watermelon balls soaked in Malibu with coconut icecream....let me tell you it was like eating pure fresh coconut..it was awesome...on the left is a pear strudel with ginger bourbon icecream...also good

August-->October Itinerary

Ok so I have a ton of stuff planned for the next couple months and I'll be doing quite a bit of traveling...to let you all know where I'll be and what kind of pictures you can look forward to :) here's what's on the agenda**:
*Neuschwanstein....I didn't take this pic obviously ;)
*Budapest, Hungary...Pic I also didn't take...RedBull Air Race 2007...i leave in a few hours!!! :)

August 18= Neuschwanstein Castle (postponed)
August 19th= Dachau concentration camp (postponed)

****So, the above has been changed and I am now going to Budapest, Hungary for the weekend with a friend and his co-worker...both work for Nokia. Apparently the the Red Bull Air Races
( http://www.redbullairrace.com/ ) will be going on as well so it should be a good time. Looks like Neuschwanstein & Dachau will have to wait....and looks like tonight I'm going to be cramming some studying in!!!****

August 24th= take a bus to Ljubljana, Slovenia
August 27th=leave Slovenia to go to Croatia :)
August 27-30=living it up in Croatia...going to hit the Croatian islands as well :)
August 30th= fly from Rijeka, Croatia to Leipzig, Germany
from Leipzig I'm going to take a train to Berlin where I'll meet my coworkers for the 3rd most important consumer electronics show in the world (IFA)
August 30-Sept 1=in Berlin @ IFA
Sept 1=Happy Bday to my brother Jason!
Sept 1-4=Copenhagen, Denmark (via plane) to visit Adam, Karin & Noah
Sept 4=fly back to Berlin for the last day of IFA
Sept 5th=last day of IFA heading back to Munich afterwards
Sept7-9= going to Innsbruck, Austria to visit Clemens (my roomie from last semester)
Sept 10th=Happy 21st to Erica Roth!!! Holy shit I can't believe I'm missing all my friends' 21st bdays!!!
Sept 12=fly to Coruna
Sept 14=Financial Intermediaries Exam :O
Sept 19-22=Mallorca, Spain...meeting Jason & Mike there...super excited! :)
October 1=Semester starts @ UDC (Universidade da Coruna)
October 13-15=Barcelona to meet my Mommy who will be going on a cruise from there afterwards
October 15th= Happy 21st bday to Melissa Nicole Gomez! I wish I could be there to celebrate it with her!
October 31st=Happy Halloween...we'll be throwing a party at Geographic like we do every Wednesday.

That's all for now!


**Legal Disclaimer: this agenda is subject to change without notice

:P

Venice & The Alps

OK....I set a new record in a matter of less 6 hours I was in 3 different countries!

Saturday morning I drove with Tori and her friend from Pennsylvania, Martina, to Venice. Tori has a car and lives here in Munich so she drove us down. It was the most picturesque road trip I have ever taken in my life. We drove through the Bavarian, Austrian and Italian Alps and eventually made it to gorgeous Venice, Italy.
*In the beautiful Austrian Alps*Autobahn...just before reaching Munich again
*Saturday night- Venice, Italy
*In the Italian Alps...looking out the window at a horse's butt!
*Me in front of a Gondola on Sunday Morning
*The girls (Tori on the left and Martina on the right) Sunday morning in Venice
*A lake in Northern Italy
*Me in Piazza San Marco
*Venice is famous for their beautiful glass products here are a few :)

*Austrian Alps
*Venice by night
*Tori and I on one of the bridges over the Canal Grande in Venice
*Weeping Willow tree y River Brenta in Oriago across the street from where we spent the night
*Italian Alps/ Lake :)