I just finished eating my ritual Friday night bowl of Ho-Mi Pancit Canton (Think Top Ramen but more asian). I eat two packages every week, and I only have three packages left. So I´m going to have to think of something else. I went to Carrefour today; first time in a while. I usually didn´t go before, because they used to get back really late, well late enough for me to be late to orchestra. Anyway, I bought some powdered hot pepper and some garlics, and a pint of mandarina juice. (Can´t think of what mandarina is in english right now, but it is like an orange, but the skin comes off easier. No it´s not a mandarin!) The pint was only seventy-four cents and if you bought one you could get four kilos of Valencia oranges for free. I thought that was a pretty good deal, so I went for it.

    Friends, comrades, family, anenomes. Lend me your tears. This night is a good night because I am happy. Not to say that I am not happy all the other nights, but just that being happy at night is a choice as it is all all other times. Vespers tonight was up in the music building. There was a good message and it was rather refreshing. I am really starting to get into the whole groove here. If that´s what you can call it after already beeing here about four months. I practiced cello for about five hours today. About an hour and a half with the orchestra and the other hours I was practicing with Marisa on the piano. We are going to be doing special music this coming Monday for week of prayer which starts tomorrow. We are going to be playing ¨Be Still my Soul¨. We´re starting in E flat major and transposing for the last little glitch into F. It´s coming along well, and it is really nice to play the cello with someone on the piano. Something I haven´t done in a long time.

Hello everybody,

I have finished the second week of classes of the new quarter. I finally got my grades today. I was pretty discouraged, ´cause they are pretty bad. I got a C for my cello lesson, just cause I failed to show up a few times. Its not like me to skip class, but it really wasn´t my fault the times that I didn´t show up. There was a confusion with the schedule. They had actually told me wrong. I was sick one day. Told the dean, but I guess they failed to tell the teachers like they were supposed to. And the last time I guess could be counted against me although it wasn´t really my fault either. Hernan bought our train tickets for too early in the day, and so I had to leave before my cello lesson. I did try to tell them. I went to the department office, but whoever was supposed to be on duty wasn´t there.

Well hello there all you peoples. I haven´t blogged for the last few weeks as many of you know because I was busy having fun in the Philippines. Yes they did have internet, but it was so slow and unpredictable that it was rather impractible to try and blog every week. With that said, let us proceed to the issue at hand.

I actually don´t feel alot like writing right; mostly because I am really tired and I just want to go to bed. Nonetheless, I will attemp to regail you with my recent adventures, blunders, and yes even mishaps.

I guess it is obvious that I did finally get my ticket to the RPI. I was very glad to see it. Other than being rather long, the flight to Manila was rather insipid except for one fortunate experience. It happened in Manila. When I was going through the place where they check your visa and take a bunch of money from you the lady at the counter informed me that I had overstayed my welcome by two days She told me that I would have to extend my visa at another counter on the other side of the room. I asked her how much it would cost and she told me; 2000 pesos. Well, that was a lot of money but it wouldn´t have been half as bad if I had even had that much money on me. I fretted for half a second and then I thought, well, I´ll just plead mercy. We had been talking a little bit before this about what my parents were doing in the RPI and what I was doing, so I decided to appeal to her that I was basically a national since I had lived there half my life. Well, it worked. Yay.

¨Ahhhhhhh!!,¨ he yelled ferociously as he dashed through the line of waiting travelers. Waiting in line wasn´t exactly Timothy´s dream of the perfect vacation. Nonetheless, he had suppressed the urge to become violent for almost an hour and a half until...

Now, that I got y´alls attention. That´s not exactly what happened. I just arrived back in Sagunto last night to get my paper ticket of which Stephanie mentioned in ¨Ever wonder if Miracles still happen?

I have been at Hernan´s place up in the outskirts of Barcelona in a little town called Valles Ametlla, or something like that. I can´t remember Catalán names so well, ´cause I don´t know what they mean. It was quite an interesting experience. Especially since I was vegetarian. Well, I won´t go in to all the details here, its too embarrassing, but I will say that I managed to be vegetarian most of the time. For those who care, I am still resolved to be a vegetarian!

As promised, here is the next issue of MIS. These last few weeks have been really hectic. Finishing up the quarter and all. I had three finals just today. Fortunately they were all easy. I´m not realy sure what I am going to do for break. I am going to start by going back up to Barcelona, and then from there I´m thinking like Finland or England and Scotland. I couldn´t find anyone to do anything with, so I´m kind of in a rut there. The thirteenth or fourteenth though I will be flying to the Philippines. I´m really looking forward to that.

We had a big party the other night for Christmas and the like. We did something called Secret Santa. About a week ago we drew names from a hat. And then the person that we got on the paper we had to by a gift fo them that couldn´t cost more than five euros. Some people got confused and thought they said no less than five euros, but anyway. My teacher José Aniorte got me apparently, because he gave me a box of these fancy chocolates. They are so good. There are only three left. They are called Lindo Lindt. Sixty percent cocao! Amazing. I got someone named Angela who is also from Southern. I bought her four bars of these chocolate bars of different variety, and these peanut thingies. We had to kiss everyone that we got something from or gave something to, but fortunately for me, Aniorte wasn´t there. Actually, now that I mention it. In case you guys didn´t know. They kiss people here for greeting. Anyway.

Well, I´m back. I noticed that there weren´t very many reads on my last one. Actually only two. So I just wanted to alert you that the first page you come to only showsa preview of the blog, not the whole thing. In order to read the whole thing you have to click on the title. That said, I can now proceed to the issue at hand.

Well, school is starting to get pretty hectic as it is closing down to the final daze. Grupo E had its oral exam in Conversación today. It weren´t hard at all. We were supposed to just pick a topic, go in his office for five minutes and tell him about it. Well, I was going to tell Dr. Amoros about my vacation, but he just asked me questions as soon as I went in, so we just talked about extraneous things the whole time. It was pretty easy, so I´m glad that I didn´t worry about it.

Hello and welcome to another fun episode of MIS. In this issue we will explore the profound depths of human intellect in all its glory. To begin with, lets talk about my experiences this last week or so. Well, I went on the tour to Andorra and Barcelona (BCN). It was pretty awesome. I absolutely loved Andorra. We stayed in the Hotel d´Urgell in the capital city, Andorra la Vella. Its a large town amidst these rugged mountain. Barely squeezed in there like I don´t know how. There are houses perched up on cliffs, like you wouldn´t want to be a sleep walker and live up there. There is something that looks a lot like the Trans American Pyramid, but it is smaller. Turns ou that it is part of a gigantic spa called Caldea. Yes we went to it. It was pretty expensive, but the school paid for it, so its all good. We went to the spa the first evening for three hours. Next day we left and went back down south to the illustrious city of Barcelona, capital of the controversial region of Cataluña. BCN is a cool city, but it is still a really big city. What I liked more was what we stopped at on the way there. The Monasteri de Montserrat (Cátalan). I have really started to like monasteries. In order to be secluded and to reduce the chance that things will grow up around them they were usually put in remote, rugged places, such as the top of a near vertical granite mountain range. At least that is where Montserrat is. There was fog blowing by, rather cold. I have pictures at www.myspace.com/palawan I think that there is also a picture of the little pyramid at Caldea.

It is really weird to think that the first tremestre is almost over. It seems like I just got here. Well, I did just get here. I´m trying to finish the book that I´m supposed to read for my class. It´s called El Bosque de los Pigmeos by Isabel Allende. Its actually kind of an interesting book. I´m hoping to get a lot more read on the tour we are going on this monday. First we are going to be going to Andorra. We are going to stay at this really really nice spa with a hotel. I´m not really sure what a spa is, but I know it has something to do with water. Then we will be going down to Barcelona for the remainder of the time. It already snowed in Andorra, so I hoping to get in on a little snow then.

I am really looking forward to going on this tour because both of these places are really cool. Andorra is its own country, and Barcelona is the capital of Cataluña that wants to be its own country anyway, so it´s going to be cool. Cold in in Andorra. I am really hungry right now and I couldn´t figure out why; I just realized that i didn´t eat supper because I was rehearsing with the orchestra. I guess that there´s always breakfast tomorrow.

This Sabbath my roommate Hernan and I went up on the mountain in front of the school to look for caves. I though I had seen a cave when i was up there before, so we were going to try to go to that. It took a lot longer to get there than I though it would. Especially since all the little bushes up there remind me a lot of Kebatangan. They are not as thick, butt still very wiry. There is also a lot of prickly ones up there too. Of course neither of us had the sense to wear long pants. Our legs got scratched up preetty bad, but it would have been a lot worse if it hadn´t been for the hair on our legs. It really does protect your legs. Some. Well, we found a lot of holes in the rocks that didn´t go back very far. One interesting thing that we did find though was an old hideout for soldiers during the Spanish civil war back in 1936 to 1939. It was a litlle cave that didn´t go back very far at all, but it could hold quite a few people. The entrance was partially covered up by a rock wall that had been put there by the soldiers. It used to cover more, because you could tell that part of it was broken down. Anyway, after about 3 hours Hernan had had enough and wanted to go back. There was one more little valley that I wanted to check for caves, so we made an agreement that if I found a cave that we would go back and take a look at it, but if I didn´t find anything, we would go back. Unfortunately, I didn´t find anymore caves, so I had to submit and go back. We went back through some orange groves. The oranges tasted so good. Anywho.