How to make money in a big city

Step 1: Dress up as something crazy.

Good ideas include old men dressing up as babies, some sort of non-moving statue, a pair of trolls (you will need a friend), a really angry-looking Mexican Minnie Mouse, or a head sticking out of a box.

Step 2: Find a plaza

In America, these are called squares. Really any place with a lot of people will work.

Step 3: Annoy people

The easiest way to do this is to be really loud. This probably won't do if you are dressed up as a statue, though, in which case you should wait until people aren't looking and then chase after them.

Step 4: Watch the money come in

By this point you should have already purchased a cup of some sort for people to throw money in. If not, you won't get paid and you will just look like a fool for no reason.

Well that was weird

Earlier today I was sitting in the lobby of the hostel just minding my own business when a random girl happened by and said, "Hey... I have kind of a weird question for you."

Now, I'm always interested when people begin conversations in that way, but when I looked up and saw her face, I could immediately see that the full weight of the weirdness of her question was bearing down on her, and she understood just how odd of a request she was about to make.

After making sure that I spoke English, she told me that she had a friend of a friend who needed me to come say "Cheers" for some reason and was wondering if I would be interested in helping her out.

Well of course I was.

So a few minutes later, we left the hostel with a pretty sizeable group that she had rounded up in tow and headed to a recording studio; none of us really knew what we were about to do.

After some time, it became clear that the guy we were following was a local recording artist who was making a song with international themes about how people from all over the world can have a good time. He needed each of us to say phrases in our own languages about partying or having fun.

And so we did.

We spent about two hours in the studio when all was said and done, laughing, singing, speaking, and generally feeling kind of awkward. And it sounds like we've worked up a pretty good track.

We were assured that production on the song would be done in a month or so and we would be able to hear the song on facebook. Looking forward to that embarrassing moment.

It's not too often that I get asked to record my voice for things. This was definitely one of the most random but also coolest experiences that I have had in Spain.

The Catch-up Journals

Wow. It has been quite a long time since I have gotten on here and actually written a blog. You can attribute that to spotty Wi-fi, busyness, or laziness on my part… perhaps a mix of all three. Anyway, since it’s been several weeks since I have posted anything, we’ve got some catching up to do

I am writing from a big modern hostel in the heart of Sevilla, the capital of Andalucía. Hopefully I can get the Wifi working at some point long enough to post this as well as have some time to talk to my family and loved ones. It’s been pretty spotty so far. Anyway, here is what you missed out on:

1.) Two weeks without groceries.

We were supposed to be living with a host family in Almería, but when we got there, we found out that we were going to be living in a rented flat and our host family was supposed to bring us food. At first, that seemed like a pretty sweet deal; we had freedom to do what we wanted and come back to our place whenever we wanted, our own individual rooms and space to work on our homework, and we still had the benefits that come with having a host family.

But as time passed, we started to see less and less of our host family and less and less food was showing up at our house. Our host mom told us that if we needed anything we should just make a grocery list and she would just pick it up for us. So we did. And she didn’t. We made a grocery list – we made a few, actually – and a week went by before she finally brought us two or three items on the dozen-plus item list. Meanwhile, we were buying our own groceries to keep from starving to death.

Having failed to acquire many of the items on our list, we made another list… and another. And we kept making grocery lists and not receiving any groceries.This continued for some time before we decided to take matters up with one of the program coordinators, who apparently called our host mom directly and gave her a good chewing out for not getting us the groceries we had paid for.

2.) This ain’t no Brady Bunch

For some reason, our host mom was deeply offended by this action, and was waiting in our flat with intentionally crappy food and a vendetta against us when we got home. We sat through an uncomfortable lunch where she pretty well just yelled at us the whole time and we tried to explain to her that all we really wanted was groceries. She informed us that from that point on, she was going to be more or less down our throats the whole time, eating every meal with us, hanging out in our flat any time she could, and that there would be no English spoken while she was around.

And so it went. Supper was awkward. When she showed up for breakfast the next day, John was already eating, because he had gotten up early and was hungry.

“Why didn’t you wait for me to eat with you?” she asked.

“Well, I got up early and was hungry. I didn’t know you were coming.”

So she made three coffees, one for me, one for Jackie, and one for herself, informed John that if he wanted coffee, he could buy some at the café at school, then somehow used the stove to transform perfectly good bread into charcoal briquettes and fed them to us as “breakfast,” all the while still yelling at us in Spanish.

So the next few weeks we more or less lived in fear of her fiery wrath any time we went to our flat, and spent as much time as possible away from our place – going to the beach, taking an extended weekend trip, going to school early to “study for our tests.” On the bright side, we didn’t have to spend much more money on groceries. On the other hand, we got really crappy food all the time and had to eat it with someone who openly disliked us. It was awkward.

3.) An emotional farewell… wait, no. Just a regular farewell

In time, our school program ended and I left Almería after saying goodbye to the people in my program that I actually liked. I had one final cordial breakfast with just me and my host mom, as the other two had already left, and then headed down to the bus station with my luggage. I got on a bus that morning headed to Granada, a wonderful city about two hours away from Almería, where I stayed in a backpacker’s hostel. I was living in more or less the Arabic district of town, where there are lots of neat little shops to go in and those beautiful narrow cobblestone streets that you imagine all streets in Europe are going to be like.

4.) Nice is nice in every language

I met some random people in the hostel common room the first afternoon there, and we went on a hike together through the mountains outside of town. Then we went to the grocery store and cooked ourselves a great meal at a friend’s apartment.

The next day, most of them had left, and I had nothing to do, so I started just walking around Granada on my own. I eventually found my way to a tapas bar with a good deal on Heineken and food, and being really sick of low-quality Spanish beer, I decided to stop in. A few minutes later an older couple came in and sat down at the bar next to me, we eventually started to chit chat a bit in Spanish about all sorts of things, and they actually paid for my meal before I left, so that was super awesome. Nothing is better than meeting amiable strangers when you are alone in a foreign country.

That night I went out for tapas with a big group of people from Australia, Canada, France and other places around the world. It’s really refreshing to be the only American in a group of people.

I only spent two nights in Granada before heading out to come to Sevilla. I’ve got four nights here to see the sights and explore the city before heading to Madrid.

I’m having a great time here in Spain, but more than ready to be home and finished with this trip. Traveling alone can really wear you down.

With love from Seville,

Blake