Two weeks ago Sean, this girl from Australia, and I took the metro to the big bus station to see where we could go for the weekend. We basically looked at all the departures, read about them in a travel book and ended up choosing Gijón which is also on the North coast of Spain but is about a 5 hour ride West. Sean ended up feeling “sick” and “over-it” and didn’t go but Niki and her roommates ended meeting Jacqui and I in the city later that night.
-One thing that I’ve realized while being here is how big a difference who you’re traveling with has on your trip. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy my time in Gijón but I definitely would’ve had more fun with people who would want to go explore a place instead of just walk around and look in shoe stores.
One memorable moment from the trip was as we were walking on the edge of the water one afternoon I heard this dog yelp and a mob of people rush to the wall above the water. At first I thought that a dog had fallen down into the water or
onto the rocks but I walked over and saw that a dog had gotten its head stuck in between two columns in the wall. The dog was pretty good sized and somehow had squeezed its head into this tiny little space. With a large group gathering to offer advice and the owners attempting to move the head up and out it soon became apparent that more help was needed, thus Los Bomberos we’re called in. As we walked away we could hear sirens going to help the poor pooch and later that day when we walked past we could see where the wall was greased up and the cement actually broken in order to get the dog free.The port of Gijon was sponsoring a National Geographic photo exhibition and they had a whole bunch of photos from this guy named Reza who has been working for the magazine for years. Each photo had a paragraph or two written by Reza explaining what was happening or going on in the area that the particular photo was taken. They were mainly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran
and different countries in Africa and most if not all depicted horrible atrocities that have taken place over the years to the people of those lands. They were really hard hitting and in some cases, like Afghanistan, Reza’s photos have directly led to aid being given from the US and NGO’s because of how moved they were by his work. It was a hard hitting exhibit and really made me think about Burkina Faso and what we are trying to do there. It was encouraging to see that even if we don’t have the resources to make a big change, just casting a light on a situation, like Reza does with photo’s and Chase and I are hoping to do with our film, can lead to big things that change lives.- side note: I’m not sure or not if the flooding in Africa has been big news in the States but over 30 people died in Burkina Faso, I emailed my friend there and luckily no one we know died but they can still use prayer, it’s the worst flooding in like over 50 years.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6998651.stm
Anyways on a much lighter note, I found a go-kart track just like the one I used to work at in San Diego. I went inside and started talking with these girls that work at the front desk, I told them that I work at a track that is very similar in California and they got really excited. They had me show them our website so they could see pictures, they really liked it. One of them told me that they would give me a very good prize, I was like “Cool, I love good prizes” but I really didn’t know what she was talking about. I talked with them for a while but started realizing that no good prize was coming my way so I told them that I might come back and race later. On my walk back to the hostel it hit me, she said “good price” not prize, which makes a lot more sense and I felt stupid. Later that night Niki and I went and the girls were once again so nice and friendly, they gave us the employee discount which was 50% off and then while we raced one of them took tons of pictures for us. It was something that we definitely would not do at my track back home and was much appreciated.
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