Skiing in Spain?

Yes, there is actually skiing in Spain, up north in the Pyrenees. Perhaps not as famous as the Alps, but beautiful scenery. The sun seemed to play with us on almost all of the days, so we battled between white-out conditions (ie, which direction is down?) and gorgeous blue skies.

The goal of the trip was to see my cousin ski (she is on the US ski team and ranked in the top 100 in the world!) Unfortunately she got mono late last year, and so she was at home resting. But we did get to watch Europa cup races (a course that I could not even stay in for the first 3 turns, these racers were amazing!)

Also was great family time, my nephew's 12th birthday occurred on the trip (my brother and I gave him lots of snowballs as presents, delivered at high speed of course ;) Only a few small calamities. Michelle hurt her knee on the 2nd day of skiing (total bummer!) and I shot off a 10+ foot hill trying to follow the snowmobile after her. I was able to ski afterwards, Michelle meanwhile is limping a bit, but no major damage thankfully!

Business time means no personal time (when traveling)

I know I mentioned this before, but business trips in Korea versus the US are different. Koreans have STRICT rules, and they just don't bend them. If you want to leave a day early on a trip (say Saturday instead of Sunday), good luck. Trying and take a vacation over a business trip? Good luck. And all of this makes you wonder, what do they really do on business trips in Korea? (And why are the rules so strict, how badly have they been bent before?) Is it lack of trust, or have people done something to lose the trust? (I am not going to answer that).

Do not disturb in Spain

No molesting...I should have kept this sign.

Barcelona: Tribute to Gaudi

Spent about 2 days in Barcelona last week, amazing place (and weather even better than San Francisco!) Explored around with Michelle, seeing various places/cathedrals/parks done by Gaudi. It is fascinating to have an older European city that has all of the beautiful architecture from the 19th century, and also really interesting modern buildings. Simply walking into the cathedral (which may be completely in the next 20 years), and looking up at the ceiling is absolutely amazing with the lines that are modern AND graceful.

On a totally random note, Michelle struck up a conversation with a girl at a Tapas restaurant, and this led to an introduction of someone who was a year ahead of me at Harvard (and rowed for 2 years, what are the odds?!?) We headed up to a bar at the top of one of the hills, and had one of their interesting beer concoctions, in effect a fresca-tasting beer. Pretty nice for an afternoon in the middle of February!

Losing a friend to the states

So it is strange to watch friends of mine from over here leave. First two of the women in our group left, which definitely makes me sad. In addition, another co-worker is transferring to the NJ office. I can understand why, but when you have a small network over here, it hurts to watch people leave who are a lot of fun and just genuinely nice people. One of the hardest ones is my friend who is a dentist over here. He is going to Harvard for 2 years to as a visiting professor, and I am truly going to miss him and his wife and their baby boy. I met with him about once a week to teach him some random English and give him pointers on Boston. Their whole family is so nice, and I realize that I would not have necessarily met him if he hadn't been going to the states, but I am definitely going to miss meeting with him!

(Add to this losing co-workers to other countries, and it is a bummer to have the number of folks I know over here decrease!)

Too many languages!

So we have a Korean test in about 2 weeks, and I am not looking forward to it. My time in Japan has made my language MUCH worse! Before I would pause before thinking of the word I needed to say in Korean, now I think of the word in Japanese, and have almost forgotten the words in Korean! We'll see if Spanish will make it worse!

Ice sculptures and winter festival

The last day of my vacation in Japan was spent at the winter festival in Sapporo. I spent almost the whole day with my host family from 1997. In typical Japanese style, they brought me gifts (which was unfortunate given that I had brought them gifts as a slight gesture of everything they had given me in 1997! They one-upped me! It was wonderful to see my mom and host brother though, we wandered around the snow sculptures (there were two full avenues full of them, ranging from the swans to the pyramids of Egypt). We went up a tower in Sapporo, and talked about life in general and some of the differences between the cultures. The kicker is that my host mother had been to Korea about 5-6 times and spoke better Korean than I did! My Japanese came back in floods though. It was still not much better than an elementary school student, but that was the only language which we could really communicate in, so I did my best!

Night-time was my first meal to test my stomach (after all, I wasn't going to let a stomach flu or the likes actually ruin my vacation!) We had all you can eat crab (king crab, hairy crab and snow crab). Fantastic, and then after dinner I wandered around Sapporo at night (the statues were light up and looked amazing!)