…are not in this picture. The Barcelona Four decided to spend the weekend in, well, Barcelona. An awesome idea! Fantastic! Outstanding in all respects but one! They did not tell ME! Barcelona is a marvelous city and about as far away as you can get from Toledo and still be in Spain. I’m not going to micromanage these people, they are adults, but the University and their parents , especially their parents I’m pretty sure, like to think that I am keeping tabs on things. I’m not naming names, they know who they are, but forevermore they will be the Barcelona Four to me.
Long weekends are great, except when they’re not, so I wanted to touch base with everyone today and make sure that all is well. We all went to one of their hangouts and had a coffee and pastry and I got to hear some stories. It was everything I needed to get a full night’s sleep tonight! Almost everyone has at least one story about having to work themselves past a communication problem or some weird encounter in a restaurant or store. I learned where you can get the “best hamburger in town” but, being from the land of THE best hamburgers in the WORLD, Texas, my jury is still out until I have one myself. These hamburgers will get their day in court muy pronto. Did you check out Mary’s shades in the picture? Aren’t those great?! If you click on the pictures you get a larger version. That’s one of Spain’s military academies in the background. On occasion there are some loud booming sounds coming from their general direction. There’s also a guy in town who sets off what must be a pretty good firecracker when his teams score a goal. He either has a lot of teams or his TEAM is very good!
Anyways, some couldn’t come for coffee and some came late because their host families were having other family and friends over and making a big deal about the day. This is the best way to meet good people and get invited to see and do new things. I’m happy that everyone else is happy and making friends and getting out and speaking lots of Spanish and are being taught many local customs by their families and a hundred things I was told over coffee. What a great time! Just so they show up in class Tuesday morning with their homework done and ready to do some work and EARN that college credit that costs so much.
I think I did a good job in choosing the group, even the Barcelona Four, and everything is looking up from my perspective. I gave control of the Facebook page to Hannah Grace yesterday and she is setting it up so that the students will be posting a lot of their pictures there. I’ll probably lose a big chunk of my audience to someone else doing a better job at my own web page. It’s all good! I will have more pictures and commentary here, as I go, so, for a comprehensive take on what we are up to, check in on both from time to time as well as the other blogs. I have yet another good one I want to link to but, again, there is some technical issue and my IT department has been slow to respond. It may have something to do with having a two month old, first baby ruling the roost so I’ll just be patient. In the meantime you might check out what Lucas Reilly has been up to at:
http://www.lucasreilly.com/blog/1a
He is about to graduate with a degree in photojournalism, if I decide to pass him in his classes here :), and has good stuff.
The Barcelona Four are currently on the bus back and I’m pretty sure we’ll have some new adventures to talk about in a day or two.
Ohio University Spring Semester in Toledo, Spain 