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.