The Final Post

Whelp, looks like the time has finally come. It’s weird to think this is all coming to an end so soon, but at the same time looking back on some things I’ve done here, well, it has been a lot. I’m trying to think of whether or not I will be sad leaving this place I have come to call home. Having finals tomorrow doesn’t help my thoughts but I think even without them I am ready to go back to San Diego. I have however dearly loved my time here and couldn’t imagine not coming. I’ve had some ups and downs, mainly ups though, but I think the best part of me being here was just learning a lot about life. I don’t really know exactly what that means but I feel like my perspective on things has changed a bit in the past 4 months.

One thing that’s changed for me this semester is my faith. I talked about it a bit before but being here was very different at first because when you take my family, friends, and church out of the picture, the Christian life that I was so used to and comfortable with gets radically altered. So there were some tough times but I found out first hand that through just being in the Word and praying I have felt closer to God here than I probably have ever felt before. Nonetheless I am super excited to come back home to everyone I love, its super weird that this is all over though. I was trying to think the other day if I had accomplished everything that I wanted to while living here, but after thinking for a bit, I realized that I didn’t really come with any goals in mind, just the expectation of something new. And new it has been. Living on my own for the first time, plus in a foreign country, is quite the experience and I´ve had a lot of fun and learned a lot. I definitely think that i´ve learned more just by being here than I have inside the classroom, not that I haven’t learned some Spanish and some good Business stuff, but I don’t think that even compares to all these other things I’ve just kinda had to figure out as I went along.

So coming back home is going to be more than nice, and this next year will surely bring some big changes, graduating mainly, when I will really have to think of what I’m meant to do with this life of mine. I’m sure I’ll figure something good out, but if you have any ideas, feel free.

For my final weekend I’m going down to Madrid and staying with my roommate’s brother. It will mean I don’t have to take a midnight bus Sunday night from Bilbao, and will hopefully give me some time to explore parts of the city that I didn’t get to see before. Then Monday morning it’s off to Los Estados Unídos which hopefully won’t be any trouble but with my flying record, anything could happen. Before I go however, I would like to say thank you very much for taking the time to read some of my posts for the past few months. You all know how much I like telling stories and this was my first attempt at putting them into writing, it was really fun and I plan on working on my “Map to the Moon” as best I can for a while. I think I have saved a few adventures that I didn`t write about to tell you in person. It won’t be long now till that time comes. Until then, take it easy.
-Kevin

Relaxation

This past weekend was pretty nice; it was the first one in almost 2 months where I didn’t leave the country. With all that traveling plus school in between it was nice to just be at home and relax for a while. Last week I had the pleasure of 3 huge tests (one being on Thanksgiving) and if I talked to you before them you know I was a bit worried and overwhelmed. They went alright though; the first two were for business classes and are taught by the same teacher. The classes themselves are jokes; I just teach the material to myself the night before the test and then go for it. The bad thing is that his tests aren’t too easy and so this time a lot of the class revolted against him, it was kind of weird and would definitely never happen at Westmont.
On Thanksgiving everyone ditched classes for the afternoon and the guys played “futbol Americano” in the rain which was fun and besides the low temperature was just like home. For dinner that night about 17 of us brought food over to our friends’ apartment and had a good ol’ Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixin’s (except turkey and other key foods) but it was really great and we were all stuffed afterwards.
After we had eaten, a bunch of the guys went to the moving walkways by the metro station and slid down them for a while in the rain. People were giving us the weirdest looks, especially when they were coming up the walkways as we were sliding down, but it was probably one of the funnest things I’ve done in a while. Make sure you have the sound on for the video...


I only have 3 more weeks of classes and then a few days later I head home. It’s odd to think that this experience is almost over; I know I’ve done a lot here but at the same time I feel like it can’t be over this soon. I’m definitely excited for home however; I also know I will miss parts of living here. Originally the plan was to travel for 8 days after finals but since I’ve done so much already I won’t have enough money to do anything more. Fortunately I was able to call my airline and move my flight up to the 17th which I was excited about and since my family thinks I am coming the 22nd I thought it would be fun to surprise everyone and just show up at home one night. My Mom however is such a good Mom, and knows how to keep track of me so well, that literally only a few hours after changing the flight I got an email from her saying she called the airlines and found out the flight was moved. That’s alright though. I hope you all are continuing to do well, it won’t be long now til we meet again.
God Bless, Kevin

The Great French Rendezvous

I got back last night from Paris which was just fabulous, I had so much fun. Sean, Niki, and I left on Wednesday and after 3 buses and 2 planes met Bertram in Beauvais, France which is an hour and a half bus ride from Paris. We got in to the actual city pretty late but still went straight to the hotel that Westmont’s Europe semester was staying at. Unfortunately when we didn’t show up on time the guy’s went to get crepes on the other side of town. An hour later they finally came walking down the street so Bertram, Sean, and I quietly walked down the opposite side with our heads down, acting like nothing was going on. Sure enough as we got closer we heard a “No Way!” from Charley who came barreling across the street and almost knocked us down with a hug. Bo and Zoradi quickly followed and with that the reunion had begun…

It turns out that Bertram’s cousin lives down the street from the Eiffel Tower but normally just stays at her boyfriends place, so that meant a free room for the 4 of us visitors! We only got to sleep for about 2 hours that night but it was fine by me because in the morning we got to see the rest of our friends who had been sleeping the night before. The whole group ended up being Davis, Zoradi, Charley, Sean, Mikey, Me, Bertram, Bo, and Newty. Dr. Pointer and his wife Barb, who are the leaders of the trip this year, invited us to tag along for the day which we happily did. We went to some cathedral which I actually don’t remember the name of or much about because all I did the whole time was talk with all my friends and other random people that are on the trip about what’s been going lately. After lunch a smaller group of us went to the catacombs which are where a ton of people are buried from the Black Plague. We went down the longest spiral staircase ever, which I ran down and got really dizzy, and came out in a tunnel that went on for a while and then eventually brought us to bones, thousands and thousands of bones. At first we we’re kinda taken aback, none of us really knew what we were going to see, and walking through stacks of bones and skulls was definitely not expected. Here’s a pic of what it mainly was, they were all just sitting there, you could touch them if you want and if you were a really weird creep you could easily have just put a skull or two in your bag with no-one noticing. From left to right again you have Davis, Zoradi, Charley, Sean, Mikey, Me, Bertram, Bo, and Newty.
Sean’s older brother Brent is the tour manager for the band Cold War kids who are currently touring Europe. They happened to be playing a show in Paris Friday night so Thursday afternoon Sean, him, and I walked around the city and went up the Eiffel Tower while the others studied for a test they had that night. We got up the tower at 6:00 which was perfect because we saw the city lights, a little bit of a sunset, and strobe-lights which go off all over the tower once and hour. The strobes might sound cool but when you´re on the top and they go off you just get really dizzy.
Later that night we went to Planet Hollywood to celebrate Dr. Brother’s daughters birthday whom I don’t know but I did get a 10€ dessert courtesy of Westmont. It also gave me a chance to talk and meet with a lot of the other people on the trip, it sounds like they are having an amazing time traveling around Europe but a visit from us for the weekend was a refreshing change of pace.
The next day we met under the Eiffel Tower and went to another church and hung out and messed around. We were in an artsy part of town where a bunch of artist had painting for sale or you could get a portrait drawn if you wanted. We decided that it would be a very good idea if we got a group caricature drawn to immortalize forever our beautiful faces on that wonderful day in Paris. Mikey went first, and we all about died laughing as the drawing started off looking nothing like him but in the end you can definetley tell and it was really funny. Mikey hated it but we all got a good laugh. Bertram was next and came out looking fairly decent, but after him was Zoradi who, well it just wasn’t good. We call the face our new friend Luke, I guess he didn’t have enough prominent features for the guy to draw off of so he just made a new person up. Mine turned out alright, the beard helps a lot and then Davis probably turned out the best. Newty and Sean went last and as you can see look decent. If you click here you can see a larger version, http://picasaweb.google.com/kkewley/Paris/photo#5131900855585995474

We all were laughing our heads off at the final picture, I’m laughing just writing this and I hope you’ll be able to share in a bit of the fun.

That night was the Cold War Kids show which Brent got us into. The venue was really cool, it was down the street from the Moulin Rouge which sounds kinda cool but we discovered that basically it just means the red light district. Anyways, inside was nice and one cool thing was the floor moves when people dance or jump on it. There were springs in the bottom so when a few people started jumping to the beat it caused the whole floor to move up and down a little. It was really rad and made you feel the music instead of just hear it. The Cold War Kids were good, they have a very unique sound and put on a fun show. Afterwards we saw Brent for a bit and he gave me a whole bunch of messages from Tim Chaddick who’s the pastor of Reality LA. He told me the day before that Tim was his pastor so I asked him if he could give me some sermons because I’ve listened to all the ones I have from Britt Merrick a couple times now. After the show we went and got crepes which are my new favorite treat, once I’m back in the States we’re going to need to figure out how to make those things. The banana, nutella, and coconut was simply amazing. Unfortunately that crepe marked the end of our reunion. The group was leaving early Saturday morning for Switzerland and Bertram was also heading back to Italy. Bertram leaving was not only a bummer but meant that we had to be out of our cozy little room by 6am. We spent Saturday walking around the city and then took a bus back to Beauvais so we wouldn´t have to wake up really early and do it the next morning. Overall it was a great little trip and I had an amazing time seeing some of my friends again.

18:25 does not mean 10:25pm

It seems like no matter how hard I try to post once a week, something always comes up and I don’t have enough time to write a proper post. These past few weeks have been great though, besides usually having 1 test a week I have been traveling every weekend which is amazing but also wears you down pretty fast. I went to London two weeks ago which was quite an adventure, just getting to the airport was a story in itself which of course I will share here. You would think that with all this traveling I am becoming quite the expert at everything but sometimes I do the dumbest things. I actually wrote it down in my notebook as it was happening so I wouldn’t forget, here’s what happened…
I was off to Santander, a town 1 hour west of here, to try and catch my flight. I would say off to London but I might not make my flight… The problem was that when I converted the departure time from the 24 hour clock I did it wrong and thus missed my bus to the airport by about 2 hours. Originally I had planned everything out carefully, bought my bus ticket for the right time, and talked with my Professor about missing class. But then a few hours before my flight I was grabbing a quick lunch before going home to pack and I was just thinking everything over in my head. For some reason I re-figured out the time of departure and realized I had way more time than I originally thought (although I was way wrong in thinking this). So then when I was sitting in the class that I had already gotten permission to miss it hit me at 2:37 exactly that my bus had left seven minutes before. So then I was like, man I am an idiot, and I told Sean and he agreed. Buses from school leave every hour so all I could do was finish class and wait for the regular bus. I left the bus and sprinted all the way home, ran up 6 flights of stairs to my apartment, and frantically threw clothes in my backpack. Buses to Santander airport leave every hour so at that time I had 4 minutes to get to the metro which would take me to the bus station that is a half hour away. My roommate Borja was home so I begged him to drive me their instead which he reluctantly did and I was able to make it onto the bus but the chaos didn’t end there. I took a seat in the front row, planning ahead for a quick exit, but then a lady came and said that I was in her seat. So then I was like, alright, we have assigned seats, where the heck does it say on my ticket which one is mine. Some nice old ladies, seeing that I was new at all this, took my ticket and told me I was in seat 49. Great, “Vale, gracias” I said as I made my way to seat 49, which as I got to the back of the bus I found was taken by a very large black man. So I thought, ok, I’ll let him sit there with his friends, and I’ll take one of the empty seats a few rows ahead. However, not long after a guy comes and shows me that those empty seats belong to him and his friend. So then I had to go back to seat 49 and tell the guy that it’s my seat. He then gets out his ticket, which is for seat 15, and tells me I can just sit there. So then I went back up to the front of the bus to seat 15, but then the nice old ladies see me and are like, “Chico, you are 49” and I’m like, “yes, I know” but I don’t know how to say “I switched seats with the nice black man in the back of the bus” in Spanish so then ended up just telling me to sit in the open seat behind them which was seat 21. So I sat there for a while with no problems, but then we had a stop before Santander where more people got on the bus and sure enough a woman came down the aisle and told me I was in her seat. Luckily though one of the ladies told her what was going on (basically that I was a stupid foreigner) so she sat somewhere else.
One of the ladies spoke a little English and said she wanted to practice it with me so we had a pretty good conversation but when I told her what time my flight was she didn’t think I would make it. From the bus station in Santander I still had to take another bus to the airport so she said I should take a taxi which would be faster. Once we got to the station I sprinted to the taxi stop and told the guy I needed to go to the airport and that my flight left in 40 minutes. He was like, “Es imposible” but I had come so far I couldn’t give up yet. From the taxi I ran into the little airport and straight to the RyanAir counter, but nobody was there. I banged on the window but got nothing. I was like, there’s no way I get all the way here only to miss my flight because nobody’s at the desk. I ran around the corner to security who were like, “you are trying to get on the RyanAir flight? Good luck” and just pointed me back to the unmanned counter. I went back and banged on the glass some more with no results, luckily some nice lady who worked at the airport offered to help me, and she spoke English. We went back to security and one of the guards radioed for the RyanAir agent who came running in from the tarmac and was like, “What the heck are you doing here so late?” I told her I was very sorry and then the security guy gave me a lecture on how you’re supposed to always arrive 2 hours early, I told him I understood and that normally I get to the airport with more than 25 minutes before takeoff. So I made it onto the plane! I don’t think I would’ve made it though even if I was just 5 minutes later. It was a nice flight, I sat next to a guy from Tasmania who was pretty cool.
Traveling alone in London was different but nice. I spent all my time walking around all the famous sites and going inside the free museums and galleries which are amazing. One great part about being by myself was that I could take as much or as little time as I wanted at the different places. I spent almost 5 hours wandering around the British Museum and about the same the next day at the Natural History Museum. I felt like it was a trip of learning; I’ve got the London Underground down pat, “minding the gap” and all, I learned to double check my 24 hour clock reading skills, and then just reading about all the stuff in the museums helps you learn a lot about stuff.

By the time I got back home from London, my good friend Bertram had arrived with his friend Dave from Italy where they are studying art for the semester. They stayed with me until Wednesday when we left, along with Sean, for France for the weekend. We went to Biarritz which is a beautiful little vacation town in southern France. It was really fun hanging out with Bertram again and just doing stupid stuff in France. We stayed there for 2 days, surfed and messed around a bit, but then Bertram and Dave had to leave for Italy so Sean and I came back home. Because we got back early I was able to go “puenting” on Saturday. Puenting translates to Bungee Jumping in English and the outdoor club at my school was having a trip which for 2 jumps and transportation was only 20 bucks. So we drove for a while and then stopped in the middle of a big bridge. As they started setting up the ropes and everything I was like, these aren’t elastic at all, just regular ropes. So instead of going first, which they wanted me to do after they learned I had gone skydiving, I chose to see what exactly was going to happen and then jump off the bridge. So it turned out that puenting is where you hang ropes from one side of a bridge, bring them underneath and up to the other side where they are then hooked onto the harness that you wear. When you jump you fall a bit before the rope catches and then swings you underneath to the other side. It’s kinda like a free fall that turns into a big rope swing, which is scary but very fun and the way the harnesses are when the rope finally catches it flips you around before swinging you to the other side. On my second jump I wrapped my bendy tripod around my wrist and then held onto my camera to take a video. It turned out to not be a bad little video and I put it together with some other clips and pictures which you can see here, I think the funniest part is Julian, the guy I jumped with, going crazy in the background.

So my weekends are obviously very fun but I always have to come back and go to class Monday morning and although they aren’t as hard as Westmont I still have to find time to study and do homework. My roommate also got a kitten from someone at his bar so now we have Siam Capitan Puravida running around, yes the cat has 3 names which translate to Siam Captain Pure life, it’s a cool cat except it poo’ed on my socks the other night which was not so cool. The first few days it was really mellow but now it is constantly running around the house playing with everything and anything. On Wednesday we’re leaving for Paris for a long weekend. Sean’s brother will be there along with Westmont’s Europe semester with 6 or 7 of my good friends and Bertram is meeting us there too, so its gonna be a rendezvous in the Frenchest sense of the word and will probably make for some really crazy times. Thanks for reading, hope you all are doing well.
PS: I love when you write comments, especially when they’re not anonymous, and I would love to hear more about what everyone is doing back home or wherever.

Fire, rain, and beauty

Well it has been an interesting past few days for me. I was able to more or less keep updated on the fires through messages from you guys and websites, www.sdcountyemergency.com is a good one, and thanks be to God that it seems like the worst is over for our neck of the woods but with only 1% containment who really knows. I guess all of our friends houses are fine and right now my parents are staying at home and watching the fires even though they technically should be evacuated. My Mom said that their only problem is they don´t have much to eat and can´t leave the house to get food because the cops won´t let them back in. I guess I feel weird because I feel like I should be doing more. I know that prayer is stronger, I'm sure much stronger than I know, but I still feel very helpless. It was nice to be able to help a bit during the Cedar Fire and it seems like one big problem is there aren´t enough men to fight the fire.
On a lighter note I am leaving tomorrow for London for the weekend. I´m going by myself which should offer some new experiences but it will be nice just doing what I want the whole time. The weather looked like rain which is too bad but I guess I´ll get the true experience. I am meeting up with my good friend Chrissie Mayer who just graduated from Westmont this past Spring and lives in London. She has kindly offered a home cooked meal which I am really excited for and it will be cool to see what her life back home is like.
Friday is also the 26th which may not mean much to you guys but it is the day that I worked all summer towards. Friday is when Bella comes out and its a shame that Southern California is a mess and probably won´t be feeling up to a movie for a little while. If you do feel like seeing it you can go to www.BellatheMovie.com and click on Find a Theater to see if its in your area. It might actually be a great way to get away from all the chaos for a few hours. I'm excited to see how well it does, if it really has sold more pre-sale tickets than any other movie in history then it should do pretty well I´m guessing. If you do see it be sure to let me know what you think. I´ll try to post pictures next week from my weekend, I am praying for everyone in San Diego, and for those of you around the world or in the states, I ask you to please do the same if you aren´t already.

I just found out about all the fires that are in San Diego. It sent shivers down my spine to read and remember the same situation that we all faced not to long ago. Please be praying for everyone in San Diego. It seems like the worst has struck again.

“It tastes like Christmas”

After our Spanish final on Thursday a bunch of us guys from Westmont flew to Dublin for the weekend. One highlight of our trip was the amazing food we ate for dinner each night, within an hour of arriving in the city we had already found an awesome restaurant and promptly ordered hamburgers (something Spain isn’t too good at making) and it wasn’t long until our friendly Irish waiter brought out our big, warm, and juicy burgers made with real beef! (something Spain doesn’t use in their burgers). He also brought out a tray of condiments that were just what we’d use in the US, except one of the packets was ambiguously labeled, Brown Sauce, which led us to the obvious question of “I wonder what Brown Sauce tastes like?” Danny bravely gave her a try and immediately knew what the mystery substance was, “It tastes like Christmas” he says, which prompted the next obvious question of “I wonder what Christmas tastes like?” well, I then took a swipe of the sauce and by golly, it did taste like Christmas. The rest of the group quickly gave it a try; wanting to experience their favorite holiday in the form of a sauce, and the consensus was that Danny’s first classification was correct. Why? Well we don’t quite understand the mystery that is Brown Sauce; we think it might have been some sort of ginger or nutmeg or something.

That meal kicked off our Irish adventure, seven guys from Westmont attempting to see all the sites that the capitol of that little green country had to offer in 2 days. The next morning we hit the ground running from our hostel with plans to see a good amount of the place.

We first saw the Christ Church Cathedral and Dublin Castle which we’re cool I guess, pretty much your basic cathedral and castle. We ran around and played tag in a courtyard at the castle which had skinny lanes of brick running through the grass. The grass was of course hot lava and would melt you upon the slightest touch so you had to stay on the bricks while running around. It was fun and helped us get really tired at 9 in the morning which is a good thing to do when you have a big day of walking ahead. From there we stopped by St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then continued to the Guinness Storehouse where the world famous beer has been brewed since 1759. After we learned a little about the history of Guinness and how it’s brewed we made our way to the top of the building and enjoyed a complementary pint.

After we were nice and full from a tall glass of Guinness we decided to skip lunch and stop by the Museum of Modern Art and the National Museum of Ireland neither of which were very interesting and we didn’t stay long. We headed to the Old Jameson Distillery which wasn’t nearly as big as Guinness had been but still very interesting and we all enjoyed our complimentary glass of Jameson whisky at the end.

**Ok the picture on the left is a story in itself. We wanted a group shot of us in front of the gate but with no passers by I set up my sweet mini tripod in the middle of the road, turned on the 10sec timer and ran into position. Right as I got to the gate a huge semi-truck turned onto the street and I was like, "Oh gosh...hurry camera, take the pic, take the pic" but the dumb thing wasn´t and the truck was still coming and ah jeez I had to run for it. So you can see the timer finally went off right as I was reaching down to take my precious camera to safety.

You may be thinking, isn’t it like 1pm and you’ve already had a pint and a whisky? Well yes, but you have to remember that we were in Ireland and we were just trying to fully experience the culture. We all were fine though, we were joking that we were feeling “inspired” because some of the Guinness ads around the city stated that’s what the beer will do to you.

We then continued to the National Irish Gallery which I enjoyed very much as it was my first time seeing paintings from a lot of famous artists such as Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Michelangelo.

With all of those places checked off the list we tiredly walked back to our hostel and after a quick nap were back out to dinner, which was even better than the night before. We all got double cheese burgers which were amazingly delicious; I’m making myself hungry just thinking about them, if only I could go back. We hung around the Temple Bar which is the most famous bar in Dublin and a center for restaurants, pubs, and street performers. There was a guy who had messed with the steering of his bike, when you would turn the handlebars left the wheel would go right, and vice-versa. For 4€ you had 5 tries to ride the reverse-steering bike about 20 yards. I really wanted to give it a go but didn’t feel like spending the money and I think the genius part of the whole thing is that its way harder than it looks. It would be fun to make a similar bike and take it to IV or State St. I’m sure you could make some decent money.

The morning of our departure we went to Trinity College to see the Book of Kells which is one of the oldest Bible’s in the world from 800ad. It was interesting learning about its long history but my favorite part of the college is the Long Room which is an enormous room that holds 200,000 of the library’s oldest books. As you walk down past the books that are stacked from floor to ceiling you’re watched by busts of literary greats such as Plato, Socrates, Homer, Demosthenes and Newton who almost seem enjoy seeing you in awe of such a massive collection of famous texts.

It was a whirlwind trip but we got a good look at the city and I would love to be able to go back someday and see more of the countryside. It was a nice vacation from Spain and one thing I really enjoyed was the people who always gave a warm welcome and offered a good time. It was really nice to be able to speak a lot of English again and I am really looking forward to going to London next weekend.

Once again I have had a crazy/busy week that has flown by. This past weekend was great though, my family came on Friday and we were able to spend the whole weekend together. We had a great tour of Bilbao, the Guggenheim and whatnont, and we also drove East on Sunday to San Sebastian and Biarritz which is an awsome town in France. It was great having them here and looking back it all seems like a blur. They´re still in Spain right now and I could go down and meet them in Madrid for the weekend but I feel like Í´ve already seen Madrid so instead I leave in a few hours for Ireland.
Dublin should be a great mini vacation from the constant business of my life here and I´m excited to hang out with some of the other Westmont guys. We all had a pretty crazy week, the professors here love the schedule tests for the same week which makes things very fun for us. My first 2 tests weren´t bad, I´ve had enough econ and business classes at Westmont so this new stuff isn´t anything too tricky. I had to study a lot for my Spanish final though, but I think I did pretty good. Spanish classes here are either 2 semesters in 1 or if you´re feeling really ambitious you can take 4 semesters in 1. It´s nice to think that I´ve already finished 101 but then I remember that on Monday it all starts up again with 102. My spanish is definitely getting a lot better, I guess my previous knowledge from taking Spanish 1-2 twice in high school is paying off, and I´m excited to see myself improve even more in the next 2 months.
I will try and write a better post next week about my weekend and put up some pictures from the past few weeks so until then I hope you all are doing very well.

PS- I wanted to throw out a little shout out to my good friends Brooke and Tricia who sent me a very nice postcard yesterday, I never thought i´d get a card that talked about cannibalism, but it sure was nice. thanks girls!