Quick Look at Nick's Current World-Wide Network

Blue= Friends from Exeter

Yellow = Friends from Boulder

Green = Family/Family Friends

Red = Two or More Friends in One Country

List of my Family and Friends Studying, or Traveling Abroad

Alicante, Spain – Mike Anson – Exeter/Soccer-Semester Abroad

Sevilla, Spain- Alissa Eggli- Boulder-Semester Abroad

Barcelona, Spain- Micaela Bloomer- Exeter-Semester Abroad

Lugano, Switzerland- Lindsay Hodgman-Exeter-In her 3rd year at Franklin College

Bern, Switzerland – Ben Utter-Cousin- Studying International Law and Trade Policy at the WTI

Dublin, Ireland- Dave Meline-Exeter/Soccer-Semester Abroad

Florence, Italy – Deven Tentindo-Exeter-Semester Abroad

Copenhagen, Denmark –Jess Blais-Exeter/Family Friend-Semester Abroad

Athens, Greece – Jordan Clarke – Exeter -Semester Abroad

Nairobi, Kenya- Katharine Wilson- Exeter- Semester Abroad (boot camp edition)

Moscow, Russia-Wilson Zinnurov-Cousin-Acting (has since returned)

China – Kaleigh Armitage-Boulder – Traveling (will be in Thailand soon)

Chiang Mai, Thailand – Matt Pope –Exeter/Soccer- Semester Abroad

Wollogong, Australia- Sam Lanman- Boulder-Semester Abroad

Melbourne, Australia- Helen Lederman-Boulder- Semester Abroad

San José, Costa Rica- Anna Nicolopulos- Boulder – Semester Abroad

Río de Janeiro, Brazil – Evan Farr- Boulder/Soccer-Semester Abroad (+traveling?)

Thanksgiving Day Pictures

Beach football post-game shot. Note 'Miguelito' front and center.

Note the bib-style napkins; Pat and I ate until we couldn't eat any more (and drinks were never-ending as well, which never hurt anyone...except for that one guy).

Migueléte really slaying the crowd with harmonica, guitar, and vocals. He's got the works!

Post-"Turkey Bowl" shot of the group. Good people right here.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day in Alicante was a great time. Group football game on the beach during the day (with a gamecap dip in the Med for me) coupled with a giant banquet dinner that night made it a really great day.

Miguelito (or should I say 'Miguelete') put on a performance of two OCMS songs in front of the entire group (close to 150 people?) along with our friend Adam. Mike sang and played guitar+harmonica and Adam provided additional vocals. He closed it out with "Wagon Wheel" which was a huge hit as would be expected!

The last two days have been another group trip, this time to the nearby city of Valencia (3rd largest city in Spain). Today we visited the newly famous "City of Arts and Sciences," which included giant aquariums with whales, sharks, heaps of other fish, and a dolphin show. Dolphin show was really cool. Dolphins jumping 15+ feet out of the water, throwing humans around, and being very impressive and well-trained.

Pics to come.

Nick

Kelly and Mom come to Spain

Alright.  Well Mom and Kelly came all the way to Spain to bring me a camera and this is what I have to show for it.

And for that, this is a tale of pictures (who likes reading anyways).

Background: Pics are from Alicante and Barcelona.

Helllllo there

Queen of the Castle

Fire Away

La Mar

La playa de San Juan

Madre real

Ahhhh

Sooooooooooo good

Of course, upon arrival back home after Barcelona!!  Oh Lucio, you are in my bed as often as I wish Jessica Alba was.
Yeah, all the time.

Michael

Update!

Drenthe (A Dutch guy who used to play for Real Madrid) scored one of the best free kick goals I've ever seen live to give Hercules the lead and 2-1 victory in their game against Real Sociedad last night. Click icon in the bottom right for full screen.

Last Couple of Weeks and Sevilla

Saw my second bullfight (two weeks ago now). I knew what was going on a lot more after reading Hemingway’s guide to bullfights, Death in the Afternoon…went with my friends Craig and Mike L. We saw the 16 year old matadors we'd seen fighting two months prior sitting in the row in front of us. I'm maintaining my prior stance on bull fights in general. It's culture! This was a top end novillada (amateur bullfight), with the winner gaining rights to be a full on matador next season in Valencia. Lots of extremely dangerous contact with the bulls. A banderillero had his leg broken after being tossed a solid 7 or 8 feet in the air.

The night before that had been spent with those two friends and 3 other girls (two of whom were full on Spanish). Great night of practicing Spanish and staying up late. Now on to a recap of Sevilla.

Columbus' tomb!

Flamenco performers.

Trip to Sevilla was a total success really. Jennifer and the good people at CIEE really put together a great trip for us all. This was a 2 day trip that is included in the study abroad experience. Nice 8 hour bus ride each way and $40 of spending money for four meals. Not great for the students who don’t like bus rides…luckily I am considering joining the endurance driving circuit, so it suited me just fine to be passing the time in my seat as we were making moves back and forth across southern Spain. Upon arrival we very quickly made our way to a private Flamenco performance, the type of dance that Sevilla is very famous for. Very technical and emotional.

We were then free to go out and take in the Sevilla nightlife. One of my favorite nights out since I’ve been in Spain; most everyone in the bar area is hanging out on the street and it takes the form of a giant block party. Pretty awesome scene, and I had several successful and relatively long spanish speaking interactions as the night progressed. Good times.

Large-scale breakfast buffet upon wake-up! Hell yeah. Had a group visit to the Catedral de Sevilla in the morning, the third largest cathedral in the world. Some real cool history lessons to be had about the Muslim-Christian influences in Sevilla and specifically the Cathedral which was formerly a giant mosque and was actually totally modified/changed (but not fully razed and replaced like most mosques were after the Christians retook Spain). The Cathedral was a real center for the conquistadors and mariners of Spain to come and pray before their voyages, and Christopher Columbus’ remains are actually currently in the Cathedral after a journey back and forth across the Atlantic (back to Sevilla due to the Spanish-American war in 1898). I discovered these facts from our tour guide who spoke Spanish for us at the slowest pace imaginable. Nice to know I can comprehend that a bit at least. Also visited the Gardens of Alcazar, the Plaza de España, and an oldtime Jewish barrio?(something about Don Juan having lots of women there? I was becoming less attentive at this point…)

It was a funny scene throughout the weekend with many of us not having gotten our full night’s sleep either night and most struggling with their abilities to embrace the historical/architectural/ cultural aspects of the weekend. There were several groups of us…mostly attentive, partially attentive, and disruptively unattentive!

Catedral de Sevilla

Glimpse of Sevilla from high in the cathedral, you can just make out the famed Guadalquivir River (provides boat access to the Mediterranean).

Gardens of Alcazar

Gratuitous palm tree and statue.

This should leave Miguelito room to tell the epic tale of his night before the departure to Sevilla in addition to other anecdotes of the past few weeks.

Shout outs to the EHS boys soccer team, tough luck with another semifinals loss, and to everyone back home reading this, miss you all.

Nick

Long Time No Write

Alright well the past few weeks have been busy busy.  And what that means is we've had a few four day/three day weeks due to holidays and what not.  Longer weekends = busy.  This past weekend our entire group went to Seville.  More or less 75 Americans all together.  Needless to say it provided for quite some excitement.  By the end of the weekend I couldn't even control myself:

Mierda!

 Please excuse me...

Well I don't have the time to write a proper entry tonight, but look for one tomorrow.. if you are devoted so to this blog.

Michael

Random Extra Pics from Fall Break

One of the finer places I've taken a leak

Wild horses in Andorra

Look closely and you'll see Nick

Not quite as good as New England

Herd of goats.  This I did not see, but Nick says they were roaming the town without being given direction from anyone

Midterms this week.  Seeing Real Madrid vs. Hercules here in Alicante this weekend.  La Liga game #3.  No complaints here.

-Michael

My 21st Birthday Weekend

This is 21 year old Nick for those of you who haven't met me yet.

Estany Negre with Port de Baiau (2,756m) in the distance.

Andorra la Vella.The city of 22,000 people and 1,000 stores. Super random; apparently a tax haven of sorts? Not fully clear how that all works but the Wikipedia page tells us that 80% of GDP is derived from tourism. For Mike and I, logistics worked beautifully up in Andorra…maybe that's typical in countries whose total area amounts to 468 km².

Friday morning: a $2.75euro bus ride from the city took us straight to Arinsal, a small mountain town at the foot of the ski resort, 'Pal Arinsal' owned by Vallnord, and the Coma Pedrosa natural park beyond the resort. A bit cold to start off, but a real bluebird day! Maps weren’t great but, again, this is not a huge country, and thus the park wasn't too vast. Found the access to the park after a small walk up a ski trail. We followed the GR 11, a trail that runs through much of the park, and it treated us just fine. Met a Spanish guy thru-hiking it, from the Basque country west to east through the Pyrenees all the way to Cadaqués (a town north of Barcelona on the Mediterranean), who was on his 29^th day (out of 42 or so he figured)! Peaked a mountain called Port de Baiau (2,756meters) on the Spanish border. Gettin’ steep up there boss! A solid day hike and we were back on the bus heading for Andorra la Vella by 5pm.

Hollah!

Not too cloudy.

JC Penny Flannel ($19.99) and an apple on the peak!

Westward view of Spanish Pyrenees (maybe a bit of France also).

Beautiful place, and no fellow hikers!

I managed to leave my water bottle on that bus, and was waiting for the ‘L5 line’ to roll back through town in hopes of recollecting it at about 6:30, that’s when I saw Micaela walking down the street. Kind of nice to run into old friends on the streets of Andorra. Who would’ve guessed? Originally, Mike and I had pictured Saturday being relaxed because of Micaela being there and it being my birthday night (kind of) on Friday (maybe we’d want a recovery day?). However, that didn’t really happen, Micaela insisted on wanting to ‘do something epic tomorrow,’ and who were we to decline such a gung-ho mentality? I was awake at midnight, but not much longer!

Saturday (my 21^st Birthday) we went back to the same Natural Park via the bus to Arinsal and intended to do a lesser version of what we’d completed the day before. After all, this was Micaela’s first ‘real hike’ in her own words…but when the opportunity to head up into the middle valley rather than the western valley of the park arrived, it was a little too appealing… at shortly after that point we realized this was another perfect bluebird day in the Pyrenees and a summit attempt was a real possibility! Hell yeah! Passed some cows, stopped, hydrated and ate when Micaela became mildly dizzy, and then made the final push to reach the summit of Pic del Pla de I’Estany (2,859m) on the French border! Solid first hike right there for Meeks. I was feeling good and made the semi-perilous trek across a 200 yard ridge of cols to the true summit. Descent was also a success, Saturday night too. Andorra la Vella isn’t the most exciting city and instead of the standard American 21^st birthday experience of drinking very excessively, we found a Fresca, a franchise restaurant with an all-you-can-eat buffet. After a week of walking my taste buds forgot about that little thing called ‘decreasing marginal-utility;’ I think I consumed something like 3,000(+)? calories. There was heaps of laughter that slowly became more painful than enjoyable as plates of food were polished off. Great finale to a great week!

Below is a link to a decent map of the Coma Pedrosa Natural Park

http://www.hola-andorra.com/arinsal/english/comapedrosagb.html

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We joked about Micaela having a High Altitude Cerebral Edema (did not happen thankfully!).

Bit steep getting up the final pitch!

View of friends and mountains from Pic del Pla de I’Estany (2,859m).

That's the section of Andorran mountains we climbed on Friday.

Peak livin' in the Pyrenees!

Continuing the Story of Fall Break

Alright so the morning after Mulhacén (Tues, Oct 12) we let ourselves sleep in before setting out off into the mountains again.  Our goal was to reach Alto de Chorillo (2,727 meters/ 8,947 feet).  Vertical rise for the day was 1,251 meters (4,104 feet) from Treveléz.  Don´t know how much distance was covered.


Anyways, the morning started off fantastic but after an hour or so we were up in the clouds with occasional glimpses of blue skies or views.

Guess what? More cows..

El pueblo blanco de Treveléz

End of the trail, Alto del Chorillo

Clouds covering what would be a view of the big ones (Mulhacén and others)

Capped off the day again with some pizza and vino.  The next day (Wednesday) we had some time to kill before catching the bus back to Granada.  We spent the early afternoon reading up on another trail with a view of Treveléz before heading back into town to ship on back to Granada for the night.  Treveléz treated us fantastically for the three nights we were there.

Nick reading

We arrived in Granada to some light rain.  At the hostel we were informed about 4 euro seafood paella dinner.  I wish I had a picture of it being cooked.  It was in three foot diameter pan that had Nick salivating ready to pounce on his share- he was second in line and crushed his generously portioned plate in mere minutes as we were in a rush to make it to the Alhambra for our allotted ticket time.  I´ll have you know Nick´s paella devouring episode parallels any story concerning Mark´s legendary ability to shovel food down (minus the mac´n cheese incident).

Not us, but demonstrates the size of the paella dish

We scurried off for our night time visit of the Alhambra, which was definitely a cool place.  Only problem: at night there is less to see.  And we only secured tickets for one part of the Alhambra.  And we couldn´t get the camera to really function properly to capture what we were seeing.  It happens.

So after the Alhambra we went back to the hostel with the following plans for the rest of the trip:  a flight to Barcelona early Thursday morning.  Nothing else booked.

We went through our options and realized that our original idea to go to a National Park wasn´t going to work out with the bus schedules.  We proceeded to throw ideas out in the air.  One of them was the country of Andorra.  Vaguely fascinated from having both read this Rolf Potts travel article a few years back, we jumped on the idea. We saw that people did actually live in this country and that hostels existed in its capital, although none of them had websites to book ahead with or check rates.  Then we found that there was a bus that goes from Barcelona to Andorra.  Then we just went to sleep cos we were flat out tired.

The next morning we rose early to make our flight to Barcelona, semi-sure of our plan to make it to Andorra.  After figuring out logistics, we determined the bus to Andorra really did exist and that we really did want to go to Andorra for the rest of the trip.  I fell asleep for most of the ride but woke up as we approached the mountains that make up the area around Andorra.  Finally we hit customs, passed right through, and were in the tiny little nation between France and Spain.  I first impression was that Andorra was stuck in 2009 as the Andorran radio station played every song that made the summer of 2009 what it was.. and by that I mean Black Eyed Peas "I´ve Gotta Feelin" pretty much on repeat (I heard it several times, trust me).

The lady at the tourism office was super helpful and provided us with great information about accommodations, as well as maps and bus schedules for the entire country (not that big, remember).  It was imperative we made sure we had somewhere to stay that night so we decided to take care of that immediately.. immediately after a celebratory "wow I can´t believe we´re actually in Andorra" beer.

The first hostel we tried was a great success.  Real cheap in a great location.  Success.  Next on the list was to contact Micaela to try and persuade her to come join us in Andorra for the weekend.  We ended up calling internationally from a pay phone as our cell phones didn´t work.  After reminding her it was Nick´s birthday on Saturday, she told us there was an 80 percent chance she would come.  We told her we would be waiting at the bus station the next day at 7pm.

Andorra La Vella

Ok.  So now we were in Andorra and at least had a roof over our heads.  What to do next?


-Michael