o/a

I took this picture on the way to Granada. I was going on a field trip with some students, and someone pointed out the clouds to me. Crazy.

The job I have is awesome. So, I got a call from someone at the University of Texas inviting me to visit the campus. They offered to pay for most of my plane ticket, so I really couldn't say no. Anyway, I was a bit nervous to ask my boss if it'd be OK for me to take a few days/a week off. He was really cool about it, though. "Claro, cuántos días necesitas? Una semana?" Um, sure! So, I'm going to be in Austin from April 5th to April 11th. Will you? Lemme know.

Even though I love riding my bike to work, it can have some pretty frustrating drawbacks. Last week I rode it to run some errands around the city (oh yeah, I finally got my resident card, the tarjeta de estudiante; yeah, a student, right...), and when I was the furthest away from home, I realized I had a flat tire. I don't know how I got it, but I had to walk my bike home from the police station. At least Thi was there and she offered to walk with me. She knows what's up. Anyway, that night, I fixed the flat. I had a bit of trouble changing the inner tube, heh, but in the end, I was pretty confident I had done it correctly. Crudely but correctly. As I rode to work the next day, though, I noticed that it was flat again. FAIL. So, I had to walk home from El Palo that day after work. Technically, I've now walked most of the length of Málaga: from El Palo to the police station! Oh, and to make sure I was doing it right, I had looked up "how to change a bicycle tire" on Google and noticed that I had done some things wrong. I decided to give it another try, then. And it seems to have taken this time around. I rode it to work and back today and yesterday. Win!

I can't believe I only have a few more months left in Málaga. I don't like thinking about it. The idea of living in Austin makes me very excited, but leaving Málaga doesn't =/. I still don't have a plane ticket home, but oh my God, the prices are ridiculous. I haven't found anything less than one thousand fucking dollars! Pfft. Anyway, what I'm saying is give me one thousand dollars, plz. THX!

Donchu know?

Greece! Greece was awesome. I got to see the Parthenon, the acropolis in Athens, the Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Athena, a bunch more temples, and some crazy monasteries built upon huge rocks in Meteora. Seriously, how did they even build these monasteries:



And the food. I think I ate a total of nine or ten gyros while I was there. And the feta cheese... damn. Oh, and the gyros there come with french fies inside! Greek salad, stuffed tomatoes... This piggy's dream.



Simone and I made a few videos during the trip. I've uploaded a lot of them to my youtube videos page in case you want to check 'em out.

The last night we were in Greece, we couldn't find a cheap place to stay at all. The city we were in had no hostels or even one-star hotels. They had a total of about five hotels, some of which were closed due to it being low season. The cheapest we could find was Hotel Morfeus, which charged us fifty euros to stay there one night! We had to. Anyway, we held a ritualistic burning of the receipt in a plaza in Athens:



So, the trip was great. The flight home sucked, though. I missed my connecting flight from Barcelona to Málaga by -four- minutes. Four! They couldn't let me check in less than forty minutes before take-off. So I had to buy a new ticket home. Fuck. And, during my sprint from the luggage pick-up area to the check-in counter, my phone fell out of my sweater pocket. I didn't realize this until I had already gotten to the counter, so I ended up losing my phone. I'm about to go to Vodafone to see what I can do. I'm hoping they'll say, "No problem, here is a new, free phone for you onto which we've already transferred over all of your saved contacts. Thanks for being a customer!"