My Final Photo Project for my Photo Class while I was in Barcelona. A combination of film, photo and some Matamatics (he helped me film while he was visiting (Shout out to him cause he’ll be back in the states this time tomorrow)).
Last Hurrah
It has come to the final weeks of my European tour and I thought I should write as much about it as I can before I forget anything. These past couple of weeks have been going by quicker than the prior. I’m sure it has something to do with the countdown all of us have been doing of the inevitable future that awaits us, moving away from the place that we have come to call home. Being inevitable, I have tried not to think about it throughout my remaining days with the hopes to enjoy the day at hand. I wanted to address some of the things I’ve been doing here in school since that’s the reason why I came here, right?
I’ve actually been participating in everything that my program has to offer and why not, I did pay for it. The CEA program I’m in has included many trips and other activities within the cost. They have taken us to the Pyrennes Mountains, the Dali Museum, Tarragona and Sevilla. Sevilla has been added to favorite places list that I have travelled to so far in Europe. We started by taking a 6 hr train from Barcelona and then a bus ride to a fancy, schmancy hotel in the center of town. They gave us the rest of the day to roam around the city and check out some of the sites. We visited some bull fighting rings and checked out the open squares that the local inhabitants casually drink and hangout in during lunch & dinner. The river is another highlight of the town and gives the town that European look that is seldom constructed by Hollywood. The program also sets up tours on these trips and this one took us on a tour of a castle that was constructed during Islamic rule. Sevilla is also the spot that Spain decided to bury the remains of Christopher Columbus at the Cathedral in the center of the square. We spent the nights hanging out with students studying abroad there and they took us out to some local nightlife (they got nothing on Barcelona).
Back in Barcelona, our program has provided us with some local activities to partake in as well. One activity that I took part in was the Tapas Workshop that taught us how to make Tapas and which was accompanied with a fine Tapa’s dinner in the end. Along with that they also took us to a Flamenco show to expose to some of the local traditions. My favorite of these activities was the Intramural Futbol (Soccer) League they set up for everyone in the program. It consisted of 4 teams of 5, with one of the teams consisting of the Spanish staff from our program. We set up a team with everyone in our apartment and three of the other girls we already knew from Santa Barbara. Brainstormed for team names collectively and decided to call ourselves Los Cosas Locas (The Things Wild aka The Wild Things). It wasn’t full field soccer and instead was a version called Futsol; it consisted of a smaller field, similar to indoor, except it was still outdoor and on turf. We went on winning every game of the season except for one. We went on to the finals and played the Spanish staff known as FC BarCEAlona. Obviously you know that we would go on to win the Championships with a 6-5 victory with the help of my header goal in the 2nd half. Man I wish that league didn’t have to end because I haven’t done any physical exercise since. On top of that our program also brought us to a European Futbol (soccer) match with European Champions League Champions, FC Barcelona. That was a good experience but was a little taken back that the fans weren’t more rowdy for their home team which is number one in the world. My teacher later told me that that is how Catalan culture supports their teams.
Another option that they made available to us was to volunteer for community service during our time in Barcelona. I attended the meeting and was a little discouraged that you needed at least intermediate Spanish for all of the programs. Deciding to take the initiative, I requested for all of the applications and began filling them out. I eventually got a call back that I could hardly understand (the person on the phone was speaking Spanish at a rate only fit for the Spanish) with a notification that I had been requested by an afterschool day care program to volunteer. I got the position with my friend Cyndie (one of the girls from Santa Barbara) and started volunteering every Monday and Wednesday since the beginning of October. It’s a strange thing monitoring kids who know more of a language than you do, especially when they decide to through in Catalan which is a language none of us understand. We begin the days helping them out with their deberes (homework) and assist them with mathematics, reading and coloring. The mathematics is simple addition & subtraction and I can use basic words such as “este”, ”aqui”, “menos”, “mas”, “muy bien” and the only Catalan word I know “vale”. The coloring and reading is what gets me. Now before you get your panties up in a bunch, the coloring only gets me because their homework is usually in Catalan and has almost no similarities to my lessons in Espanol Uno. The reading (also in Catalan) is the only one that is somewhat difficult. I get by fine though, I just shake my head a lot and say “muy bien” with a smile after every page. I do help them when there is something wrong but I can tell the my pronunciation throws them off sometimes, especially when I have to roll my “R’s”. The half of the time we play games or I teach them sports for a while. The staff and kids have started to show a liking to us as the continuing weeks pass by and I have gotten to memorize almost all of their names. It’s gratifying at the end of the day knowing that I’ve done some good here at my time abroad.
Well this change of pace to actually help out others might seem like a shock to many of you so I’d like to take this time to update ya’ll with my plans post-college. I’ve been at this crossroads these past couple of months in college; to go for a business/law career to make money or to benefit others rather than just myself. If I could find something that incorporates both that would be ideal but so far I’ve come to realize it usually comes down to one or the other. This is the reason for my recent exploration into both fields; the first being my recent internship with The San Miguel Corporation this past summer and the second being this volunteer service for Fundacio Perre Torrez. I am currently considering taking my first post-college year in Shanghai to teach English to Primary School children. I have found benefits for both of my options; the first being that learning Mandarin Chinese will be beneficiary for any future resume and business, the second being that I will be able to gain teaching experience. It also seems to be the best solution to the economic recession that so many of my newly graduate friends are experiencing. I feel that within this year, I may use my free time to study for the LSATS or GRE’S. Well that’s enough. It’s more of a thought and my life changes month to month, week to week, and day by day; so nothing is ever certain. I just need to set goals so I don’t get lost.
There are a couple things that I will not miss of Barcelona. The way our apartment rumbles when ever the metro passes underneath us, the tastless food, the horrific service industry, and the mortifying exchange rate. I feel that the American Dream has led many students to believe that studying abroad is a cultural norm; well whenever that part of the dream was made they sure as hell never thought that the Euro would ever succeed the Dollar like it is now. I really would like to spare many of you the troubles some of us have encountered, it’s a learning experience and I’ve learned to deal through it. There also many things that I will be soon to miss as well; the efficiency of the metro system, the unusual wonderful weather (Its December and the weather’s still good enough to go to the beach), the sandy beaches, the culture, the outgoing nightlife, the beautiful people and the articulate architecture.
I’ve got a lot of pictures to show all of you. I shoot in to large of a format which makes it almost incompatible with many photo websites. I actually just got back from Prague but since I’ll be back soon, I’ll just tell it over a nice toasty fire. Hope all of you are well and that the holidays have been treating you just the same. See you in a couple days.
The Old Update E-Mail
Just thought I’d take a break from school and try to catch you up with everything since my last e-mail. We’ll it’s been an interesting ride since the last time I made first contact. I’ve been traveling around a lot lately to the Pyrenees Mountains, Munich for Oktoberfest and more recently San Sebastian.
The Pyrenees was the first trip and was already included in the cost of my study abroad program. They took us on a five hour bus ride to this quaint, little mountain town inland of Barcelona. We unloaded of the bus and toured around the town walking the narrow streets and admiring the old churches. They took us all out to dinner that night something I wish they hadn’t. It was alright, but just like almost every cuisine in Spain, it was completely tasteless and any taste was dissatisfying. They then took us back to our hotel to pass out for what awaited us the next morning. We woke up bright an early the next morning (9 a.m.) to catch a so called “breakfast” which consisted of thin cuts of meat, bread, cheese and coffee. We then took another bus further up the mountain where we were dropped off to await our tour guides. Once we got acquainted with our tour guides, we grabbed our pack lunches and headed up the mountain. Wasn’t much of a hike but I think a lot of the people in the program haven’t been hiking that much because of the complaints that accompanied them on the hike. We finally made it up to the top where there sat a beautiful crystal lake at which we had the pleasure to eat our lunches around. After there’s not much else, we hiked down the mountain, got back on the bus and headed back to Barcelona. We’ll if you thought something amazing was going to happen well I was just trying to pump you up for what lay ahead for us at Oktoberfest.
My traveling companion (Mason) and I woke up 4 hours before our flight to make sure we caught it. Our other roommates (Sam & Bryce) had gone the previous weekend and missed their flights. With no other option than to go to Oktoberfest, they coughed up an extra $400 for brand new flights. With this in mind I made it a point that we made our flights. We made it down to our metro station (Monumental) and made it to the train stop with plenty of time to spare. You see the thing about this train is that it arrives in 50 minute intervals, unknown to us at the time and we had missed the last one by 5 minutes. Need less to say we grew more anxious by each passing minute. By the time it got there we only had about an hour and 45 minutes left till our flight departed. Now a small detail that I left out about our roommates missing their flights was that they had actually gotten there 45 minutes before their flight and that the airline still refused to give them their boarding tickets for being late. So…by the time that we got on the train we actually only had about 45 minutes to make our flight. Go figure it would take the train exactly 45 minutes to get to the airport. Sprinting to the ticket counter, we were sweating and breathing heavily as we checked in. We then got on the plan and slept the entire plan ride. When I woke we were in the wonderful town known as Munich. We got on the metro and headed to the camp site that we were suppose to stay at. We decided to go through this company that was suppose to set up a camp site for only study abroad students that was accompanied with tents and sleeping bags. It was pretty pricey considering what we we’re paying for but all the hostels and hotel were way out of our budget. I don’t want to get into to much detail but talk about a rip off. Anyway we meet up with everyone and headed to the center of town to join in the festivities. Now I have been to some places but never have I ever seen so many intoxicated adults per square foot. People are passed out on lawns, people are throwing up, stumbling everywhere, singing songs, being jolly and all the good fun. Since it was the middle of the afternoon, we couldn’t get into any of the tents and had to go one of the outside beer gardens. It’s the exact same thing as inside except it’s outside. We sat down and waited for the delivery of the largest mug of beer I’ve ever had the pleasure to put my hands around. It was fresh, smooth, and refreshing. I wanted to ice skate on it for this upcoming winter and then melt it and bask in it the spring. After we got our buzz on, we decided to leave and go back to our campsite. We seemed to have gotten back when everyone else did and just stayed up drinking with a bunch of other people in our program and…
It’s 4 a.m, I was suddenly woken up by one of the guides in charge of the campsite. He decided to wake us up with some pots and pans so not only did it annoy us out of our sleep, it also ended up annoying half of the inhabitants of the camp grounds awake as well. Disoriented from the events taken place, I grab my stuff and get on a bus. Little did most of us know, they weren’t waking us up early for Oktoberfest. Instead they decided to wake us up early to watch the finals for Australian Rules Football at some venue. This would’ve been okay if we had been going on our own will but to be woken up in this fashion, to watch something that we don’t have any idea about, pissed of more than just a couple of us, just about everyone who wasn’t Australian. After watching nonsense for about 25 minutes, I decided that we had had enough and got our group together and left the Bus2alps group. We found a metro station close to the venue and headed to the center of town to once again feel that cool, refreshing sensation touch my lips once again. We walked into the festival at about 7 a.m. to find ourselves waiting in one of the many huge lines that surround the beer tents. We decided to take our chances by waiting in the line for the Hofbrau Beer Tent, one of the most famous tents of the festival. These lines ain’t your typical Disneyland line, they are instead made up of alcoholic men that will do anything to get their hands on the scarce tables that await them inside. We this said, while most of the groups had men, we were a mix band of men and women. We toughed it through and fought our way to the front of the line with our brute strength. Then all of a suddenly, the pearly gates opened up and the massive scramble to find a table began. Grown men running for any free table, diving to claim one for his own, it reminded me that we still do live by our animal instinct of survival of the fittest. Of course, I would be one of the fit enough ones to find our group a table in a decent location. We immediately began ordering beers to fill our bellies that had been running on nothing but coffee and croissants. The atmosphere inside of the tents was definitely worth the fight, every 10 minutes a “Roust” chant would come on and the site of seeing everyone take sips of their beer in sequence, the live band that kept our ears tingling, accompanied with the delicious food aroma’s that would pass our noses further feeding to the stimulus of senses. A couple hours later we found ourselves on the roller coasters that surrounded the festivals. That didn’t sit well with a few of our stomachs. Well it seems that I went into this more than I thought I would so I’ll end it like this; we passed out, went to the airport, and had a uncomfortable plane ride back to Barcelona.
This past weekend we went to San Sebastian. Let me start by saying it was one of the most beautiful cities that I have ever visited. We decided sporadically to go with some of the other guys in our program. We took a 7 hour bus ride to get there for €60 round trip. Our roommates had left 10 hours before us and had already enjoyed the surf that the city is known for. We got there late afternoon and checked into our hostel called Olga’s. Not only being one of the best cities I’ve traveled to so far, this was also the best hostel I’ve stayed at so far. The receptionist is this old, Russian lady named Olga who goes above and beyond for her paying patrons. The hostel is well kept and is a block away from the beach. We dropped off our luggage and meet up with everyone else from our program to head into “Old Town”. Old Town is an area that is part of their old gothic quarter. It is packed with Tapa Eateries & Bars. Tapa’s are small, cheap, delicious appetizers that vary in flavor and price. We went from one eatery to the next, trying out all the different types of tapas available. A lot of these Tapa Eateries also second as bars and each one of them packed with locals and tourist. We went to bed early that night because we wanted to wake up early for the surf. The next morning, we ended up not waking up as early as we thought we would (the hostel have these shades that make the room pitch black) and liked the town so much we decided to stay another night. The only problem was that there weren’t any open bookings for that night. Olga still let us leave our stuff in a storage closet while we went surfing which was very nice of her. We then went to the surf store to rent some stuff but we were stuck renting the last of their equipment. This consisted of torn up wetsuits and 6 ft Styrofoam surf boards. We still rented the stuff for €15 and headed down towards the beach. The surf was average (1-3 ft sometimes larger) and the locals were pretty nice about sharing their waves. Four hours later, we found ourselves exhausted and ate at a bomb burger shop and got some Gelato. When we got back to the hostel, Olga decided that she was going to accommodate us by putting three extra beds in our friend’s room. This helped considering a lot considering we hadn’t spent any of our day looking for another hostel to stay at. Like I had mentioned earlier, our roommates had arrived a little before us and took us to this Paella place that they had gone to the day before. This place had the best Paella and Sangria I have ever had in my entire life. It was served in a large, circular pan the size of a car tire and each bite tasted like you we’re tasting a bite of the ocean itself. We then went back to the hostel and did the same thing from the night before. The next morning we went to a different surf shop and we’re surprised to find how of a rip off the other shop was. We rented good wetsuits and real boards in various sizes for €3 more than the other place. I guess you learn from your mistakes. We headed down to the beach and convinced some of the other guys in the program to go surfing for their first time. After a strenuous day of paddling out, we finally headed back on a 7 hour bus ride back to Barcelona.
Besides my traveling, I’ve also had a wonderful time experiencing Barcelona and its culture. The Catalan’s are proud people that had been oppressed in the past by the Dictator, Francisco Franco. People in this area of Spain also speak a different dialect of Spanish and French called Catalan. They pride themselves on their F.C. Barcelona Futbol Club and view them as heroes of the Nation-less state. The true Catalan youth are recognizable by their dreadlock, mullet hair styles and their lack of hygiene. The other youth have taken a liking to the American boarding (skating, surfing, snowboarding) culture and trends. Barcelona is considered the skating capital of Europe and it’s a nice touch of home seeing boarding sports so popularized here as well. One interesting observation is something I’ve noticed when going to the clubs around here. You’ll notice everyone in the club’s singing along to all of the American songs in perfect English, then when you try to approach some of the girls with something like “You like this song?” you get a look of pure confusion because they can’t understand a word that your saying and that they had just memorized the words of the song through repetitively listening to it. Another thing I forgot to mention is that Barcelona has one of the least percentages of an English speaking population in Europe. It is because of this that I feel that my Spanish has improved at a much greater pace than my Tagalog had when I was in the Philippines. It definitely helps learning a language in the classroom and being able to directly apply the lesson of the day. I’ve also taken a huge interest specifically to my Photography class and in due time (it takes about 10 minutes to load an image on Photobucket because the format I shoot at is so large) will have them up for your viewing pleasure. I have also never been on so many class field-trips in my entire life. I think so far, for all of my classes, I’ve taken about 10 field trips all around Barcelona. I’ve also grown to learn that we got hooked up with one of the better apartments in our program and have been very thankful that it was accompanied with great roommates as well. Besides my friends from the fraternity (Jordan & Mason), Sam & Bryce have been growing to what I consider to be good friends as well. We all get along well and have share similar senses of humor. I have been cooking a lot since I’ve been here to save money as well. So far I believe I have the must experience in the culinary sector with Jordan trailing shortly behind. For the others, well I’ll just say that they didn’t even know how to prepare scrambled eggs before I showed them. The experience here has been wonderful and has really made me think about my future just a little bit more. I have made goals to keep up my hobbies in photography and plan on getting better at surfing with any chance I get. It has also reconfirmed that I want to travel around more after I graduate. I’ve greatly considered teaching English in China for a year as a likely option. Two of my pledge bro’s (Garrett Sacks & Gianmarco Pastore) are there right now and tell me everything that I would expect it to be.
We still have a lot of things planned for this trip. Tomorrow I will be attending my first F.C. Barcelona match against Zaragossa. I’ll then be separating for the rest of my traveling group (all of my roommates) by staying in Barcelona for Halloween while they head to Amsterdam. Following Halloween, our program will be taking us on a field trip to Sevilla for a weekend. After which I will be heading to Amsterdam with a couple of other guys in our program. That’s about all I have planned for now but it should be interesting. I will write back with word of those travels later on in November. Once again, I hope everyone the best and look forward to seeing ya’ll when I get back.
The E-Mail from Europe
It’s been a hectic month for Nick Soriano and now that I finally have some free time I decided to write a little about what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. As many of you know I am studying abroad in Barcelona (the best) and that I also did a little pre-trip which took us thorugh New York, London, Geneva, Interlaken and Paris.
I’d like to start off by saying that New York was amazing. I flew out of LAX with my good friend Jordan Rosenheck and landed in JFK. One of my aunt’s gave us her apartment for the three nights that we were there. We spent our first day going to times square, walking through central park, checking out the metropolitan museum and eating at a delicious jewish deli called Katz. We spent the next day walking across the Brooklyn bridge, checking out the statue of liberty, going through the Guggenheim and looking at the construction site for the freedom towers. We spend our last night their going out to dinner and some clubs with our good girlfriend Charlotte and her model friends. It was a good night cap to our New York experience. We used our last couple hours in New York to reciprocate our gratitude to my Aunt Mandy for letting us stay at her apartment by taking her out to dim sum in China town. After a wonderful lunch, we packed up our stuff and headed back to the international airport known as JFK….
The next nine hours were spent in a quaint little seat that was shoulder to shoulder in the middle row. But I didn’t mind too much, I knew that I would soon be in England to start this European tour. We got to our hostel the St. Christophers in the Camden area and meet up with the third companion to this trip, Mason Rathe. We we’re really jet lagged and a little hungover still from New York but we decided to not waste our time and proceeded to take in as much of the city. We went to Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, London Bridge and all the other tourist things you can think of. Besides that, meet a lot of English people with great accents but bad teeth. We then parted for our next stop, Switzerland.
We took EasyJet from London to Geneva scheduled to land at 10:15, giving us a comfortable amount of time to make our train to Interlaken at 12:30. However we ended up with an hour an a half delay in London which, according to our pilot, was due to the fact that we were waiting for the rest of the baggage to make it on board the plane. That was a load of bullshit because once we made it to Switzerland at 11:45, my luggage and twenty other passengers luggage’s didn’t even make it on the place. In our limited time frame due to easy jet, I had to leave the airport without by luggage and catch our train to Interlaken. Fail. That sucked but Interlaken more than made up for that one bad experience. It is one of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever visited, nestled between to gorgeous, crystal, clear lakes and surrounded by a breathtaking mountain landscape. We stayed at a hostel that ended up being the only bar/club in town. This hostel looked like a modern-dutch style house if that makes sense. We went Canyonning on our first full day there. Canyonning is illegal in the United States and is one thee coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. You repel off of rocks into waterfalls, jump from 50 ft cliffs into river beds and slide down natural rock water slides. My description doesn’t give justice to the experience but it will remain a memory that I’ll never forget. The only problem is that we couldn’t bring our own cameras and those memories had to be purchased for $50 from the professional photographer that followed the group. After such a purchase, we decided to lay off on the spending for a while. We ended up finding out that the hostel next to ours had a pool and massive water slide that used to be a bmx bike ramp. The best part about it was that it was completely free. We got a bunch of videos of us doing multiple flips off of the 60 ft water slide. So we played around on that for a while until we left. On our way out we stopped in Geneva for a little to see one of the biggest fountains in the world. I guess its cool but I think I’m still not at the age to appreciate it. I mean it just shoots water into the air….cool.
Anyway our next stop was Paris. Just in case you were wondering, I did wear the same clothes for all 3 days that I was without my luggage. Picked my luggage back up when we got to Geneva airport, changed into some new clothes and then headed for Paris. Mason Rathes’ (the third companion) grandparents were going to let us stay in the apartment they own in Paris but at the last minute decided not too. Instead they decided to put us up in a nice hotel next to the Eiffel Tower and even let us order room service. We toured the city and checked out the Eiffel Tower (duh), the louver (mona lisa), and Notre Dame. We didn’t really check out the nightlife because we wanted to save ourselves for our final destination, Barcelona.
I don’t think I could have chosen a better place to study abroad other than Barcelona. This is the greatest city I have yet to experience. Upon arrival, we met up with the other 400 students in our program at a nice hotel in the middle of the city. The first couple days here were spent with our program orientation and getting to know everyone else through the amazing nightlife offered here in Barcelona. The program then moved all of us to our designated living situations for the next 3 months. Our apartment is a very modern and located in the Sagrada Familia Neighborhood. The location is ideal because its in a good area and 2 blocks away from the Sagrada Famillia Church (a church designed by Gaudi that is still under construction). I’m living with my co-travelers (Jordan Rosenheck & Mason Rathe) and these two other guys from Maryland (Bryce Jones & Sam Day). Bryce and Sam have been friends since Kindergarten. Bryce goes to Miami Ohio University and Sam goes to Cornell University. They are really cool guys and I consider it lucky that I ended up with such a good group for roommates. School just started and I spent a lot of the first week switching my classes around to get an ideal class schedule. Now I’m taking Espanol Uno, Barcelona: Sport & Culture, Art & Architecture of Barcelona and Photography of Barcelona. A lot of girls that we know from Santa Barbara are on this program as well and we’ve been hanging out with them the majority of the time. I don’t constrain myself to just them of course and have been meeting as many people in my program as possible. It is nice to go out with those girls since they get free drinks wherever they go. When I’m not in class I’ve been adjusting to my new surroundings by seeing the sights, going to the beach and checking out the nightlife. The culture here is a lot more laid back compared to my experience of American culture and I’ve been assimilating myself to the daily habits of these people.
Alright that’s enough for now. My roommates been nagging me to play some basketball and I’ve spent close to an hour writing this thing. I will write again soon. Hope all is well and I’ll try to keep everyone updated with my adventures.
Uploading pictures takes forever on Photobucket but I finally did it. They are kinda out of order because they come from different albums. This is everything from New York, London, Switzerland (Interlaken & Geneva), Paris and some Barcelona.
http://s783.photobucket.com/albums/yy117/nicksoriano/Eurotrip/
(There´s a little preview of the photos below)
Fuck You in a nice friendly kind of way,
Nick “Rick” Soriano
The E-Mail from the Philippines
Well so far everything’s been really good here in the Philippines. I landed on Monday at 5am and went to work almost immediately for Orientation. They have assigned me to Ginebra San Miguel Red in Corporate Marketing. On my first day (not orientation) we took a trip to see the Ginebra Kings. The Ginebra Kings are the professional basketball team that we sponsor that has recently made it to the finals. We took pictures of the team for posters and a team calander. That same week we went to a Barangay in Alabang for one of our Ginfest Events. These are philianthropic events that the company holds for the poorer areas of the Philippines. At Alabang, we set up events for the locals to participate in and we gave out prizes for the raffle and bingo events. I liked this particular event because it felt that the company was giving back to its main consumers and to see how much these people appreciated the littlest things that we were giving out in the raffles. During the weekend I tried catching up on sleep and meet up with some family members for dinner. That weekend I had Dinner with Tita Aying, Tita Teressa and Michelle on Friday. Then had dinner with Tita Edna and her husband Sunday night at the newly developed parts of Makati where the old military base use to be.
The next week was just as interesting. We went to Balayan, Batangas for the Parada Ng Lechon. We left tuesday from the offic and got there that night for our Videoke event that we were suppose to supervise. We woke up early the next morning at our hotel on the beach. We then headed back into town where we got breakfast with the rest of the Ginebra San Miguel staff. They then equipped everyone with water guns, courtesy of the company, for the days events. We loaded into trucks that followed our float that we entered into the parade that was a Lechon dressed up as Zorro. There were 3 trucks filled with GSM employees in the bed and we got in position to be part of the parade line. Once there, I dont think there wasn’t a time that someone wasn’t splashing buckets of water or shooting me with a water gun. People got there garden hoses and pressure hoses out to join in the festivities. It was a water fight with the entire town. After the parade, we went back to the place that we had meet up with the rest of the employees to eat some Lechon. With a good meal, we went back to the hotel to lay in the jacuzzi before we went back to Manila. This was one of the funnest things I’ve done so far in my trip. Later that weekend I went out with some of my co-workers and met up with more family members. I meet up with Tita Victoria on Saturday and we went out to Greenhills for Shabu Shabu. We then went out to repair some electronics and I was able to get my blackberry unlocked for $10. My new number while i’m here is 09206203436. The next day I went on with Tita Edna again and we went to another family members house but i forgot what his name is. All i know is he use to be President of a bank, he also said he knew you dad and that they came and visited us when i was like 7 for one of your birthdays. He had a really nice house and my cousins were pretty cool.
This week we had to wake up early and pick up Manny Pacqiuao for a T.V. commercials that he was endorsing for us. I never thought shooting a commercial could be so boring. For the first three hours its pretty exciting seeing the set and watching Manny say the same thing over and over and over and over again. Then it just drags on and by 10th hour you might find yourself napping. All we did was stay at this studio for 13 hours straight to shoot a 30 second commercial. The only good things is that they feed you really good meals the entire time; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Second Dinner. All in all that work day lasted from 6am till 11pm.
Please excuse for the spelling errors or if parts of this are incoherent. I just got off of work, I’m tired and I’m being distracted by the music I’m listening to. Obviously there are a lot of minor things that I’ve left out here and there but this is as good as a summary as your going to get. I have been busy almost the entire time though and haven’t had anytime to just sit down to relax (I work 9am-6pm everyday and most of the time its longer than that). Not in a bad way. At least I’m always doing something interesting. I hope everyone is doing fine back home and that you to are all enjoying these summer months. Love you all.
Ciao,
Nick Soriano
