Four Months In Spain with Tim 'n Laura

Request from Tim - Class Project

2006-10-31T07:44:00.000-08:00

Hello Again!

I have a question for you. I am working on a project for my Entrepreneurial Class here at IESE, something we are nicknaming iRent. The concept is a web platform like eBay that enables people to rent items to and from their neighbors. Protections for the lender would be included such as full deposit and ratings systems.

One of the early stages of our project includes market research, and since I am over here in Spain it is difficult for me to go around to houses and ask their thoughts. I thus have 3 Questions for you.

What I really need to know is the following:

1) Would you be willing to lend things for money to others over a website, assuming the system was easy to use and there were sufficient protections (full deposits & you couldn't be sued)?

2) Would you ever consider borrowing from others over this same website, assuming locations were close and prices were cheaper than professional companies (such things like if you needed an extra barbecue for a gathering and didnÂt want to buy it)?

3) Finally, assuming you would be willing to lend things, I would really appreciate if you could go look in the garage (or wherever) and tell me 10 items that you would actually be willing to lend. I am trying to get an idea what types of things people would lend and what are their relative values.

One thing is clear, I don't want you to say that you would be willing to lend or borrow simply because you know me. Pretend like you heard about this from someone else, and make your decision accordingly.

I appreciate your help in this. At this point it is the best market research I can do from here.

Please send your responses directly to me at tim805@gmail.com

Thank You!!!

Blogger Lives!

2006-10-31T06:33:00.000-08:00

Well everyone, it appears that blogger is finally working again for me. I will take this opportunity to update you all a bit on what is going on.

First of all I am still in Spain, but all alone. Laura has been back in the states since the 16th of October for her interviews. Out of the 5 schools she applied to she received interview invitations to 4 of them (I am very proud). So far she has completed 3 of her four interviews, and is just waiting for her last one at Loma Linda on Sunday.

As for an update on how her interviews are going, so far everything has gone well. These programs are very competitive, so you never know, but so far she feels good about how they have gone. Don't bother to ask if she been accepted anywhere though, because we wont know until the end of November.

As for me I am plugging away at my classes. IESE has been pretty great, and I am learning a lot. I have five classes right now, two strategy classes, my entrepreneurial class, Spanish, and my very difficult one, Intro to Investment Banking. That class is kicking my butt, but it is good. The teacher treats the class like it is a trading floor, and likes to kick people out who are caught not paying attention! Never a dull moment in there, but that is good because I am learning a lot.
I don't have any pictures for you, and for once that is not Blogger's fault. When Laura went back to the US she took her computer with her, which happens to have most of our more recent pictures on it. Then after she has left I really haven't taken any because I haven't done anything interesting.

I am working on a fun business plan in my entrepreneur class, one that you will hear again more because I am posting a little survey about the concept on here for you all to complete. I hope that you will take the time to answer my questions, because it will really help for the market research aspect of my assignment.

Thanks for listening. Hope you are all doing great!

Update - Toledo Trip & Blogger Status

2006-10-11T04:28:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Well I bet you are all wondering what has been happening with the blog. I am very sorry to say that it does not look like blogger plans on fixing the problem with the pictures. Because of this I think this will be the very last blog I place onto this website. From here on out we will be blogging on the new blog I am creating located at www.Mccormacks.Wordpress.com .

But before we go, let me give you a run down on what has been happening here in Barcelona.

The last couple of weeks have gone fairly well. The city has been nice, not great, but OK. We have settled into our apartment and everything is taken care of there (although we still have no internet, something that is driving me crazy!) Since we arrived, we have done fairly little as far as entertainment, as I have started school and Laura has been taking care of the apartment and getting ready to return for her interviews.

When I say we have done fairly little in the way of entertainment, that is in exception of the last weekend, when our friends Truman and Lauren visited. We had a great time with them, and made a trip to Toledo. Toledo is a very neat city, and I wish I could show you the pictures, but I will have to wait for the new blog.

Some fun facts about Toledo. It started as a Roman trade hub for the region, and for a time was the capital of Spain, until about the mid 1500's. Now the entire city is treated as a national monument, and much is maintained from the old traditional infrastructure. They have an incredible cathedral that we really enjoyed.

Today is Wednesday, and my sister and her friend Debbie arrived this morning. We will be spending the days today and tomorrow in the city, and then leave for Seville for the weekend. Then Laura and I will come back to Barcelona, and Robin and Debbie will continue to Granada and Madrid to visit an old friend. Immediately upon our return Laura departs for the states, and I will be left here alone for maybe a month. =^(

That’s about it for now. School has been great, although quite challenging. I have a class on Investment Banking which the professor treats as a trading floor, complete with yelling at the students who do not know the answers immediately. It is a bit stressful, but entertaining and I am learning a lot.

We hope you are all well back in the states, our loyal readers. Thanks for staying patient with our blog during the pause, and we promise we will get those pictures coming as soon as possible.

Bye!

Blogger is Not Working

2006-10-04T02:03:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

You may have noticed that we haven't posted anything in a while. =^(

This is not an indication that because we are now in Barcelona we will stop blogging. Unfortunately, this blogging service we are using, Blogger, seems to be broken. I am presently unable to upload any pictures to our blog. And without pictures, how boring!

We are really picture people. So once that gets fixed, we will start up again.

Here is a quick update on what’s going on....

I am in school. The school is seriously incredible, and I have met some great people. I think my time here will be great, except for the fact that Laura has to leave for sooo long.

As far as that is concerned, you should all congratulate Laura when you get a chance. She has received invitations from three of the five schools she has applied to, which in my opinion is quite a feat.

Her first is at UCLA on October 19 & 20, and then she has others at both UOP and Loma Linda. We are still waiting to hear from UCSF and USC, but I am confident she will get invitations to those as well.

Besides that I had better go get ready for class. I pitched a business idea today in my entrepreneur class, and have gotten some responses about people interested in helping me determine its feasibility, which is very encouraging for me.

Hope you are all great, and that we can get this darned picture thing working soon. If not I have already started another blog on wordpress that we may migrate to. The address is www.McCormacks.Wordpress.com but we haven't posted anything there yet while we wait for Blogger to get their act together.

Bye!

Sintra & Coimbra

2006-09-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

Well, the travel portion of our blog is coming to an end. Right now I am writing this blog sitting in our apartment in Barcelona, and my orientation is tonight. In fact, I will probably not even be able to post this until after my orientation tomorrow, when my classes start.

Laura in some old Moorish ruins on the way into Sintra

So the blog is a bit behind. We almost got caught up in the last couple of places because we finally had internet, but now that we are in Barcelona we don’t have it again. Today we put in an order for internet at the house, but it will be a couple weeks before we get it.

But I don’t want to jump ahead too much. I am sure you are all dying to know what happened in our last two stops, Sintra and Santiago de Compostela. I know this post is titled Sintra & Coimbra, and that is because we stopped overnight in the city of Coimbra on our way from Lisbon to Santiago, but since we spent about zero time there, and actually didn’t even take a single picture (gasp!), I am just sticking it in this one and being done with it.

About Sintra: Sintra is a little town next to Lisbon that used to be where all the Lisbon royalty spent their free time. It has three big sights, two of them especially cool. The three sites are the National Palace, the Pena Palace, and a Moorish Castle. The first wasn’t so exciting, but the second two were really great.

The National Palace

Shot from Inside the National Palace

Laura took this stair shot of me looking hot

I liked it so I tried doing my own. I am not very original I guess. =^P

Another view from inside the National Palace

Here are a bunch of pictures, broken up by each site, with some extras thrown in the end. We had a great time in Sintra, it was the highlight of our stay in Lisbon.

This is the Pena Palace. I think it was the original Disneyland

This is some crazy sculpture in the Palace. Pretty nuts...

OK, That is the end of the Pena Palace shots. It was really incredible to see. Next comes the Moorish Castle...

Me looking fierce!

Laura looking cute as usual

The great wall of Sintra is what we called it

This place was incredible

View of the city from the Moorish castle

View of the Pena Palace from the Moorish Castle

As far as Coimbra goes, we can’t really say. We arrived after 9pm and left the next morning before 10. We had some excellent Indian food, and discussed a possible trip to India in the spring instead of a previously discussed Caribbean cruise. Besides that, we didn’t really do anything. We left early because Rick Steves told us that the next leg of our drive would take 8 and ½ hours, and we wanted to get a jump on it. That turned out to be totally bogus, since it only took about 3 ½ hours. I think Rick is confused.

Now I have to finish getting ready to go to my orientation/reception. I have the first day jitters, but I am sure it will be great! =^)

(end note: I tried to upload this last night, but it didn't work. The orientation went great, and so has my first day of school. There, now you know)

Goodbye for now!

Lisbon, a Pleasant Surprise

2006-09-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

Our next stop on our trip around Spain & Portugal was Lisbon. Honestly we weren’t expecting much from this city, me even less than Laura. After seeing such wonderful places as Granada and Ronda, plus our incredible time in Salema, I didn’t really think we would find much of interest in Lisbon. Especially since the guidebooks didn’t really talk too much about it.

Lisbon after dark

Turns out though that Lisbon is a very pretty city with some great history. Way back when, it was Portugal that discovered some very important shipping routes, and controlled much of the seas. Since then they have lost most of everything, but what is left are some great monuments to their past explorers and some incredible castles. Our next post will show you some shots from Sintra, a small city right next to Lisbon that was amazing, but for now we will focus on the two days we spent in Lisbon.

Neat ruins of old church (Convento do Carmo - destroyed in earthquake 1755)

We arrived late the first night and only had time to go out to dinner. Our dinner was fun though, since we went to a restaurant that had live Fado performers, which is traditional folksy melancholy music of old Spanish sounding guitars. The food wasn’t great, but it was fun overall, and we got to see some really neat city riding around in the cab.

Fado singers

Nasty Fado food

The next day we spent going on a walk through the city that our guidebook recommended. The walk didn’t work too well since a bunch of the things were closed, but we got to visit the institute of port that regulates the Port standards for Portugal. I am referring to Port wine, and they had over 300 different samples. We tried a combined 6, and were glad to stop there since we are not huge Port aficionados, and because it’s fortified 22% alcohol rate went to our heads and just made us sleepy.

Laura sampling Port

Us taking a nap after the Port kicked in

Me wishing Candido and Truman were with me so that we could enjoy a cigar

After that the next recommended stop was the oldest brewery in Lisbon, and that didn’t help either. I ordered a beer and without asking they assumed I wanted the large one. I was dragging a bit after that place, but we persevered on and finally ended up in St. Georges castle, an 18th century castle first build by the Moors. I have come to the opinion that the Moors were pretty cool, as most of their castles and palaces have been even nicer than the newer castles.

Big beer that I wasn't ready for...

Fun city trolley

View from Moorish Castle

In the castle

Laura over the moat

The next day we went to Sintra, but as I am going to cover that in the next post I will jump ahead to Belem, the part of the city we went to on our third and final day in Lisbon.

Not too much to say here, I will just post some pictures. We saw some neat stuff, but we are getting pretty tired or walking all over the place and so some of the enjoyment has gone out of it. Our favorite part was the Monastery of Jeronimos, where we got some incredible pictures. Other neat places were the monument to the Discoveries, and the Belem tower.

Monestary of Jeronimos

Close up of facade

Inside the cloister (same for next couple of shots)

Monument to the Discoveries

Belem tower

Well that is good for now. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Salema, “Beach Beach Beach”

2006-09-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

As you can tell the pace of the blog posts has picked up a bit recently, as our internet connections have become a bit more reliable. Thanks for all of your congratulations to Laura about passing the boards. We appreciate all your kind words.

Laura and I in our really neat house/condo in Salema

Today we are going to tell you about our time in Salema, a wonderful little beach town on Portugal’s south shore, but before that we want to say hello to a few people. Robin and her friend Debbie will be coming over to Spain soon for a trip to Seville. We are looking forward to seeing you guys, and are also excited about going to Seville. We had to drive through it on the way to Salema, and it was hard not to stop. That should be a fun town.

The view from our kitchen window

Additionally, even sooner than Robin and Debbie come, our friends Truman & Lauren are visiting. They are first going to Belgium where Lauren is going to follow up on a really interesting series of old love letters from the early 1900’s that she acquired through an old family connection. Then they are coming to visit us in Barcelona and accompanying us to Toledo, a small little town about hour south of Madrid. We look forward to seeing you guys also. Truman and Lauren are some of the few people that made the harrowing trek to visit us in Santo Domingo for some fun in the sun (and a little amoebic dysentery). =^) Can’t wait to see you guys!

Laura sampling a local dessert wine called "Moscatel"

Now about Salema. Most of our trip so far has been enjoying incredible old towns with interesting culturs and architecture. Salema was totally different. Instead of going site seeing, we spent our time relaxing on the beach, enjoying excellent food, and soaking in the experience of an old Portuguese fishing village. Of course it is not entirely authentic, but that was a good thing. The extremely small town is probably about half populated with tourists and ex-patriots, which made the environment even more relaxed.

The walk down to the beach from our place

We loved our time in Salema. For me it was the first place where I really didn’t want to leave. We had a great room with a perfect view of the ocean, comfortable beds, and a relaxed atmosphere. This was probably the most relaxed I have felt since we were in Tahiti for our honeymoon in April.

Beach Shots

From here I am just going to show you a bunch of pictures, because words don’t really do it justice. Of course, even the pictures don’t do it justice, but this is the best we can do.

And as always, one last one for Manuel (Jr). Welcome back from your road trip across America!!

Laura Passes the Boards

2006-09-21T07:54:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

I was just chastised by our friend Alicia for not informing you all that Laura has officially passed both National Boards, Parts I and II!!! Now she can attend dental school in the US.

We found out last week, but with the trip it escaped my mind to post it here. Sorry!

A few days ago, Laura also got her first invitation to attend an interview at UCLA. This is also very exciting, although the dates aren't really convenient for us since she has to be back in LA before the 18th or October. This is especially inconvenient because we go to Seville with my sister from the 12th to the 15th - so she may have to actually fly from there. We are still trying to figure out what we are going to do about that.

Hopefully UCLA will be just the first of another four invitations, since Laura applied to five schools, but we shall see. I will keep you posted on any other interviews and their dates so you can wish her good luck. The other schools she applied to are USC and Loma Linda in LA, and UOP and UCSF in San Francisco.

That’s it for now. We will try to post our next blog about the wonderful beach town of Salema, Portugal soon.

Back from Africa

2006-09-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Today’s post we are going to talk about our trip to Africa (Morocco). But speaking of Africa reminds me to say hello to our expert on Africa, Armin. I just found out that Armin, Colleen, and Kai have not been included in our blog mailing list. Hope you guys can forgive us. =^)

We will give you a call after we get back to Barcelona. Hopefully we can get in a trip to visit you guys in Munich this winter, we would love to see you.

Besides that, our friend Keith just got back from Africa, although in a very different place (Zanzibar). Hello Keith and Alanna, hope you guys are having fun in San Francisco!

So we are back from Africa, and it was totally different than we expected it to be. I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise, since we didn’t really know what we were getting in to. For one thing, it felt more like the Middle East than Africa, but I guess that is because the country we were in is Arabic and Muslim.

When looking into taking a trip to Morocco our guidebook mentions that “there are many ways to experience Morocco, and a day in Tangiers is probably the worst.” It then goes on to compare Tangiers to Tijuana, and comments about how we need to be wary of all sorts of undesirable things. Because of this, we decided to upgrade our trip to Morocco and skip Tangiers altogether. At the tour office they offered a three day/two night trip to Asilah, a small town about an hour down the coast from Tangiers that offered a truer Moroccan experience without all the big-city, border town problems.

So off we went to Asilah, without any real idea of what to expect. On arrival we met up with our group and started off in a bus, only to be dropped off 10 minutes later and transferred to a small van with the other four people who were headed to Asilah instead of the more common day trip around Tangiers.

The hour long van ride, done as fast as the van could possibly go, passing cars and trucks constantly on the way, was impressive. We drove along the coast line most of the way, and all you could see were miles of pristine beach, totally uninhabited. The land wasn’t too different from Spain, yet the beaches were totally empty. This was pretty exciting, as we imagined spending three whole days just relaxing on the beach without any crowds.

Local beer in Asilah, enjoyed in a restaurant next to the beach

As we neared town though we started to see small groups of people on the beach. The most fun thing was that they actually had camels with them! Now we knew we really were in the Middle East (Africa?), since the people rode their camels to the beach. Then there was another trend we noticed that wasn’t quite so much fun, of all the people on the beach not a single one was female…

This was when one of the side effects of being in a Muslim country started to set in. Since this country has much stricter customs about what women could and couldn’t, we would have to totally change our expectations of what was going to happen.

As we arrived in town everyone was very nice and polite. But as Laura and I walked through town afterwards, all we saw were men, and just about every man stared unpleasantly at Laura. At this point we realized that we would not be laying around in our bathing suits on the beach, since if the men stared when she had a normal shirt on, we couldn’t imagine what it would be like with a bikini.

Asilah's old town

The first day was a bit rough. We felt uncomfortable with the extra attention from the locals, and contemplated staying in our hotel room for the next couple of days until we had to leave. Fortunately we got over the feeling, and Laura made sure to wear clothes that went very high on her neck to avoid the staring (which was pointless, since they stared anyway – but at least we felt better).

The beaches in Asilah

The upside is that we were able to do some very cheap shopping, and saw their old town which is very picturesque. We found some great food, and I developed a new appreciation for couscous. We were really surprised at how good the food was, especially after we had so many disappointments in Spain (most Spanish food has not been very good so far).

The buildings were all done in classic Aribic fashion

Other fun experiences were walking late at night and watching all the people walk by (the woman were mostly covered head to toe – but with their faces showing). We also got to experience one of the prayer calls in the old town. At about four o’clock a loud chant went over a loud speaker and lasted maybe ten minutes. I actually took a video so you could hear it but it somehow got erased. Sorry. We had air conditioning in the rooms, that was nice. And we got to see a bunch of movies (like Gladiator and Pretty Woman). The ocean was pretty, even if we couldn’t relax in our bathing suits.

White washed Portuguese old town

The best part of the trip was when we rode camels on the beach. This was really fun, and we got a lot of great pictures of it. They are very easy to ride, except for when they stand up or sit down! The getting up process is pretty wild when you are sitting on their backs. I almost fell off, but Laura didn’t have a problem with it, so maybe she just has better camel form than I do.

Here is a video of us riding on the camels!!

That’s it for now. We got a lot of great pictures in Morocco, and we hope you enjoy them.

Here is a shot of Asilah at night

One last shot for Manuel (Jr)

Lost in Gibraltar!!!

2006-09-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Lost in Gibraltar!!

This post doesn’t have too many pictures, compared to the last two. Since we were in both Gibralter and Tarifa fairly shortly, (Tarifa one night and Gibraltar just one comical evening), I have combined them both into one post. Then the next one will cover Asilah, a small town in Morocco (Africa) where we went for two nights and three days.

This is a picture of Tarifa, taken from the boat when we were leaving. Most pictures in town didn't come out too well.

We were supposed to stay for three nights in Tarifa, a small dirty beach town on Spain’s southern tip, right between the Costa de la Luz and Costa del Sol. Of course when I say “dirty”, that is not in the guidebooks, and it is one of the principal reasons we reduced our stay from three nights to one.

Our intention for this stop had been to relax on the beach a couple of days, and then take a day trip to Tangiers, Morocco. It turns out, though, that Tarifa is a great place for kite-surfing. Kite-surfing is a sport that requires lots of wind, and when you think about it, lots of wind isn’t always conducive to a great beach experience. Having visited another great kite-surfing location before in the Dominican Republic (where it was so windy sand blew into our camera and broke it), we decided to check out our other options. That combined with no air conditioning convinced us to move on.

The first thing we did was to leave town for the night to see Gibraltar. For those who are geographically and politically challenged, as we are, Gibraltar is a large rock on a small chunk of land located on the coast of Spain. The interesting part is that somehow England tricked them out of it in the late 1800’s, and it is now a part of the English commonwealth. The good news for us was that when we crossed over we got our passports stamped! =^)

The Rock, at night. This shot was taken at the end of our "hike."

Gibraltar didn’t work too well for us. We arrived late, just hoping to fit it in before the day ended. We walked across to avoid the long customs lane, and hopped on the first #9 bus that came by (this was recommended by our travel book). We took the bus to the end of the line (as recommended) and hopped off, only to see the bus turn off its lights as it shut down for the day. It was at about that moment that we realized we were now stranded on the far side of Gibraltar with no way to get back!

As the bus driver began to pull away, Laura walked up calmly and asked him the best way to walk to get out of there. He gave us a funny look and pointed back the way we came, which to Laura and I seemed a very long ways to go. He then pulled away and we were left standing in the dark, at 9:15 in the middle of nowhere on a deserted street. So we started walking. =^(

A moment later the bus driver came back by and told us to get in, that he would drive us a bit of the way back because he felt bad for us. We must have made a pretty pitiful site out walking in the dark like that, so he took us about a mile down the road and dropped us at a run-down casino where a couple hundred old people were playing bingo.

At that point we started walking, and proceeded to make our way out of town. It only took about an hour to get back out, and it was nice to take a sort of walking tour of Gibraltar, but it wasn’t our first choice for modes of transportation.

Proof that we were in a British country...

Check this out. We had to walk across a live runway. Read the sign!

Me in my hiking gear

More proof we were in British territory

After the Gibraltar incident we headed back to Tarifa for the night and prepared to leave for Africa!!!

Back to Tarifa, after our trip to Africa!

And one final shot for Manuel (Jr)

Ronda - the Birthplace of Bull fighting

2006-09-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Hello again everyone!

For those of you keeping track, Ronda was our second official stop on our tour around Spain and Portugal. As a point of reference, I am actually writing this post in Salema, a small beach town on the Portuguese coast, but since we are a few days behind in our posts I am going to catch you up on our wonderful visit to Ronda.

To start it off, here is a fun video clip I took in Ronda of some of the locals dancing Flamenco in the streets. It was a very festive atmosphere!

Ronda is a pretty incredible little white hill town in the south of Spain. When I say white hill town I don’t mean that the hills are white, but that all the houses in the town are white. There are a whole string of these towns across southern Spain, as they demarcate what used to be the border towns for the battle between the Spaniards and the Moors. These towns on the border normally have in their name “de la frontera” which means “of the frontier”. When we left Ronda we drove past a number of other small towns, but none that looked as impressive as Ronda.

Ronda’s most impressive feature is that it is built completely on cliff walls. And not just one, the middle of town is split down the middle by a ravine or crevasse that is over 300 feet deep. Originally the Moors built on one side and were able to defend it against the Spanish. Then after the Spanish overtook it, they built a bridge across and built on the other side as well. The new bridge is a very impressive site, and we have many pictures of it to show you.

We came to Ronda on the end of a big festival that they have every year. It turns out that bull fighting originated in Ronda, as a way for soldiers to train before battles. The “Feria de Pedro Romero” celebrates one of the most famous bull fighters in the country’s history, who was of course from Ronda, and they commemorate it by bringing in the most famous current bull fighters in Spain.

So we landed right in the middle of this festival. We did not attend any of the bull fights for a couple of reasons. We didn’t really want to see them kill the 6 bulls that they kill in each fight, and we didn’t want to pay the 80 euros per person to attend either.

Our hotel was great, and was actually the host of a big party for the most famous bull fighter who attended the event. The hotel, called the “Jardin de la Muralla”, meaning the Gardens of the City Wall” is located right next to the old city walls, and was very beautiful. You can see by the pictures how nice it it, although air conditioning would have been appreciated. =^)

Here are the pictures from this visit:

The first pictures are of our hotel. It was really great.

For Candido, because he asked, here is a shot of the mythical man-purse that is all the rage in Europe. Don't hate me because I am beautiful. =^)

Here are some shots of the town. It was very pretty.

Here are some shots taken by the bridge.

Here is Laura next to the Bull ring. Turns out that it is the biggest and oldest bull ring in the country.

Ronda was also very beautiful at night.

And this shot is specially for Manuel (Jr).

For anyone who just can't get enough of our pictures, here is a link to our Flickr account where we have the rest of our Granada pictures. Hope you enjoy!

Next after Ronda we went to Tarifa, Gibralter, and Africa (Morocco). I will post information and pictures soon!

Granada - A Truly Beautiful City

2006-09-11T06:34:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone,

Things are finally starting to settle into normalcy. By some miracle we have received our bags, all four in the same day yet in three separate shipments, and once again can take a shower without having to wash the day's clothes at the same time.

I am writing this on the evening of Saturday the 10th, at around 1 am our time (about 4 pm on Sunday your time). We have some really great pictures to post for you, but don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. So what we decided to do was post one post for each city we go to (leaving out Barcelona since we will be there all winter and you will see plenty more from there later).

So the first city we stopped in was Granada. We chose 20 of our best pictures, which was difficult since we had over 200 to choose from. We are going to create an account on one of those photo sharing sites later so you can see them all if you want, but we figure most people would prefer the light version. =^)

To quickly describe our visit to Granada, I will say it was magical. The city has four main areas by our description. There is the new area we didn't really go into. Besides that there is the old district, which was really pretty with a beautiful cathedral. Also there is the Alhambra, a series of palaces and grounds that cover both 13th century Moorish buildings and the subsequent Spanish palace that Christopher Columbus made his request to Queen Isabel in for sailing to the new world.

The final area is called the Albayzin. It is a residential area on the hillside that overlooks the Alhambra. It is built in the old style of small white-washed buildings crammed together, with thin narrow twisting streets. It was magical to walk through in the evening after one of our dinners.

Here begins our picture tour:

This first shot shows me looking hot next to a small river that runs through Granada. At this point we had just started venturing out from our hotel, and had no idea where we were going. This was on the edge of the "Jardines de Granada". Soon after we started to learn our way around town, but at this point we were basically lost. It was very pretty though, perhaps more so in person.

Shot number two advances to Laura looking cute in front of a fountain a bit further into town.

Shot number three is taken from the edge of Plaza Nueva, something our guidebook writer Rick Steves talked much about and took some serious searching (and a quick lunch) to find. From here we were able to really navigate town, since by walking straight uphill you come to the Albayzin, you also have a straight view of the Alhambra, and we could access a tourist information office that gave us a free map.

Shot number four was taken in a small series of alleys that were full of shops. Notice that they kindly draped cloth above the walkways to block out the sun. This comes in very handy to keep off the heat. This market we later discovered is called the Alcaiceria, which was originally a Moorish silk market.

Shot number five is of either the Royal Chapel or the Cathedral. To be honest we are not really sure if they are the same thing or not. They are mentioned separately in our guidebooks, yet when we entered we only know we saw the cathedral. Inside we took a tour, an audio tour where you listen on a device, that was very boring.

Here is us on the tour. We were happy to be there, but this is probably the most we listened to the tours since they did a very poor job of holding our attention. It was extremely beautiful inside, but we didn't post any pictures because they don't do the church any justice.

Candido, this one is for you. This is just to show that we are thinking of you on our trip, or that at least we ran into a sign with your name on it. =^) Oh, and we will post pictures of the man-purse on a subsequent post, so stay tuned!

This next shot was taken in what was my favorite intersection. I took like 10 pictures of the buildings on this corner, even though Laura wasn't overly impressed. Branching out from this corner was some excellent shopping, something we took advantage of since we had no clean clothing.

Speaking of shopping, Laura found this neat hat that I told her she had to buy. She since has decided she doesn't like it and didn't want me to post this picture, but she looks so great in it, and the fountain is so neat, that I went and posted it anyway. Let her know if you like the hat, and be honest!

This shot is a view of the Albayzin district from the Alhambra. I really like this shot, because it gives you an idea of how beautiful and scenic it was everywhere we went. There were better views than this from many locations, unfortunately most of them don't look that great in pictures because you can only fit a small percentage of the view into the shot.

This was taken on the grounds of the Alhambra. The building on the right is Charles the Fifths Palace. He was the conquering King who finally drove the Moors out of Spain. To the left are some ruins from some of the other buildings.

This was taken from inside the older Moorish palace, called the "Palacios Nazaries". This temple was really incredible, and had impressive rooms decorated from top to bottom with carved wood ceilings, stucco stalactites, ceramic tiles, and molded plaster walls. One of the neatest things was that on the walls they have molded Arabic script. One particular saying, "Only Allah is Victorious", is repeated over 9,000 times throughout the palace.

Here is Laura next to one of the walls. All the walls were covered with this writing everywhere!
Everywhere in the palace had incredible views.

Here I am enjoying one.

This was inside the palace grounds.

More beautiful scenery...

More palace shots...

From the palace towards the Albayzin...

This pool was outside the Moorish palace. We really liked the reflection on the water.

After we left the palace we went to the Albayzin to enjoy the sunset at an incredible viewspot. We ended up having some wine at a restaurant that had a great view of the palaces.

So we will stop there. That should be plenty of pictures for most of you. I will let you know when we can get the rest online for those who want more.

Thanks for listening, and we hope you are all doing well!

P.S. - Manuel (Jr) this is for you!!!

Disaster!!!!!!!!!

2006-09-08T04:11:00.000-07:00

"When in Rome, do as the Romans" is a very popular saying. Well it appears that this translates for us to "When flying with Iberia, lose all your luggage, stand in line for hours to deal with rude and unresponsive customer service agents, and then plan on the rest of your trip without your bags."

Had we known this before we flew, perhaps we wouldn´t have used British Airways who so graciously handed us off to them in London on our way here. Not only did they hand us off to them, they got us there so late that we had to run to make our connecting flight. So no normal airline could get our bags there on time if they tried. But then add in that Iberia is in the midst of some severe luggage crisis, where some 6 weeks ago they had a strike and no less than 20,383 seperate customers with lost luggage, with at this point only 8,000 of them having actually recieved their luggage 6 weeks later... Well you get the point.

So it is day four, and still no luggage in sight. We are in Granada. Last night they informed us that one of my bags is set to fly to another city that is 2 hours away from us today, the other set to follow - maybe. As for Laura´s bags, they litterally have no idea where they are. Someone from British airways on tuesday told us they are in Spain, but besides that no one knows anything.

Besides that the trip has been great! We have gotten to do a lot of shopping, considering they are to repay us some 110 euros each day that our luggage is still missing. So we have a whole new set of clothes bought as cheaply as possible. I am wearing some very strange european underwear that I would rather not discuss. I also purchased my first man bag. I have never carried a purse before, but they are very convenient when you are walking around town. =^)

No pictures yet for you. We cannot connect to the internet at the hotel for some reason. So we are doing this from an internet cafe in Granada. Everything here has been beautiful. The car is great, the town is incredible, and you will love the pictures once I can post them. Today we go to a place called "the Alhambra" which is an ancient church and grounds that looks very pretty in the pictures. Tomorrow we head out to Ronda and the Andaluccian Hill towns, which are supposed to be amazing. We adjusted to the time change pretty quickly, so that hasn´t bothered us. After we got over the fact that we have to buy everything new, and just decided to assume that we may never see our luggage again, everything has been much more relaxing.

Goodbye - For Now

2006-09-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

So this will be our last post before we leave for Spain!

Monday at 12 noon we will leave for the airport, and then I am not sure how frequently during the first month we will be able to make posts. We are going to take one of our computers with us while we travel, so hopefully we can get something off a couple of times a week. If you don't remember what our itinerary is, you can reference it here Final-Trip-Illustrated

For those of you who are wondering, we still haven't received Laura's scores from her National Boards Exam Part II. This is a disappointment, since we had hoped they would come by now, but we will keep you posted as soon as we hear anything.

Today was a fun day. Laura and I took her nieces and nephews to Hurricane Harbor, and besides the long lines and hot sun, it was a great time.

At one point we had to just give up on the rides. They weren't really worth the wait anyway, but luckily the kids were much happier jumping around in the different pool jungle gyms. I have a bunch of pictures for you here.

This is us leaving the park. We had to leave a bit early, about 3:30, because we had so much more to do to prepare.

So the day was great. On a sadder note we have to say Goodbye to Buster today. We are unfortunately unable to bring him with us to Spain due to some new extremely overpriced plane regulations. Since it would have cost over $1,200 to bring him to take him round trip, we decided to let him stay at Laura's parents house, where he is generally very happy anyway.

I just remembered that I promised you a picture of my new suits today. I took one, but they don't look too impressive this way - mostly because it is a bad picture and I dont have time to figure out how to make it look better. But I will post them anyway for you to see. They look pretty good when I put them on, I will say that.

Goodbye Buster, and Goodbye everyone else who we will miss while we are away. Please post comments and send us emails whenever you can, we would love to hear from you. Don't hesitate to skype us at timlaura or timmccormack (those are our two skype addresses, the first for Laura's computer, and the second for my laptop).

Not sure what else to say. I guess I had better get back to work so that we can leave here on-time tomorrow.

Talk to you all soon!!!

Two Days Left!!

2006-09-02T16:38:00.000-07:00

www.fourmonthsinspain.blogspot.com

Hello everyone!

Just two days left before we leave for Spain. I must say that I am pretty excited to get going, so much so that I am up at 2 am writing this blog post because I don't feel like sleeping. The last couple of days have been all about preparation. I have driven all over LA five times over going to all the different places, and yet I am still not completely ready. I still need to buy a couple plug adapters for our computers, a small camera bag, and a couple of other things.

Here are our bags. Almost complete packed and ready to go!

Today I went and got our International Drivers Permits at AAA. Here is a picture of what they look like, along next to a driving map of Spain and Portugal that I picked up.

I guess they IDP (International Drivers Permit) is really just a little booklet that you carry with your drivers license that translates it into other languages. So that is why they require it in other countries, yet do not make you take any tests to get it.

I also bought a couple of new suits at an incredible place on Glendale. They have an incredible deal going, where you can buy three suits for only $299. And when I checked out the suits they seemed pretty nice! But in addition to three suits, they also give you three dress shirts! And three belts, three pair of socks, and three ties! Wow I said, so I went out and teemed up with Laura's father to buy three suits (because I really only needed two new ones to replace my older ones which I have slightly outgrown - woops).

I will have to get you some pictures of the suits later. They are locked in a room with sleeping people right now.

Here is a picture of the store at least.

If anyone is interested, this place is called Georgio Cosani and it is located at 307 Brand Street in Glendale California. Let me know if you buy anything there, because I am curious to know if my blog wields any power over its readers (convincing them to go buy suits. =^)

Well we spent the evening with Becky Grant, and their two kids Zack and Zoey. We had a lot of fun, hanging around at the house and then going out for Sushi at a nearby restaurant after the kids went to bed and Becky's Mom came over to babysit.

Becky & Grant, looking at a different camera than the one I was holding.

Laura and Becky before dinner.

Here are some pics of Laura and I playing with the kids.

And here is a picture of Grant and Zoey.

I have gotten into the strange habit of taking pictures of the different kinds of beers that I drink. Tonight I wanted to try something new and bought some Boddington's. It is a British beer that comes in a can that is nitrogen charged like Guinness to give it a fresh from the tap effect. Here is my picture of the beer.

It is a lot lighter than Guinness and was pretty good. Here is a picture of the Sapporo that I had with dinner also.

Ok, well that is good for now. I have to get to bed because we are taking the triplets (Laura's brothers children), to Hurricane Harbor in the morning. Should be a long day in the sun, and then we leave on Monday! Yikes.

Thanks for listening. Hopefully I won't get sunburned, because that would turn an already rought 12 hour + flight into a real nightmare.

Fire, Day 2 - View Online

2006-08-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

Note: If you haven't read the previous post I made this morning, then read that one first. Both are much better viewed online, because there are many pictures and even a video clip! Click here to go online now.

So here is a quick follow up on the fire situation. The road we live on, Triumph Ave, normally is blocked with a gate. Today though, the gate was still down from yesterday, so I took the opportunity to drive straight up the street to see how far away the fire came to our house. At the point I stopped driving it has only been 1/4 of a mile. From there it was maybe 20 or 30 yards to where the fire stopped!

Here is a picture taken from the 1/4 mile point when I stopped the car.

Here is the video that I tried to upload this morning. I gave up on Blogger and found a nifty home for it on Google Video. Check it out here or if that doesn't work, type this into your browser. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4807915861672963862

Actually, I am going to try and embed it directly into the blog here also. Lets see if this works...

Wow, it works! Man Google sure makes it easy.

Here are a couple of pictures that I took driving around the block today. One house came insanely close to getting burnt, and seeing it is partially why I am so impressed with the fire fighters. Notice that the burn line ends just by the house on three sides!

Finally, here is a shot of someone's gate. I guess they left it closed while they were gone, and the fire department knocked it down. Too bad for them, but good thing the firemen got up there and stopped it.

By the way. This is totally unrelated here, but I just watched Conan Obrien's intro for the Emmy's on YouTube. It is pretty funny. Check it out here http://youtube.com/watch?v=SmUVKjbCcVM

Fire!!!!!

2006-08-28T18:51:00.000-07:00

Again, this is best viewed online - where you can see all the pictures

Wow, we had a pretty close call! We just had a wild fire come very near to the house. When I came home from school they had roads blocked and I almost wouldn't let me in. On pulling into the yard I noticed a sheriff's car at the neighbors house and went to listen to him explain how "while we aren't evacuating your houses now, the fire department expects the winds to shift this way and then the fires will come directly in this direction" indicating our houses. This was very disconcerting to our neighbor who keeps 22 horses on her property and had another fire come right to her property line 2 years ago.

Now this being my first big fire, and then after listening to our neighbor go on for 10 minutes about the last fire saying "When it comes it comes quick!" like a mantra over and over, it got me a bit spooked. After running around the house and packing up our most valuable things (wedding pictures, computers, clothes) and getting Buster ready to leave by packing him a bag, I waited for the fire department to come and evacuate us. It didn't help that I could see the flames burning in the distance, and moving in our direction.

Of course the whole time I was taking pictures like a good citizen does, especially since I was testing out the new camera Best Buy loaned me because my old one is a lemon. So to your delight I am going to tell the whole story here in pictures.

On the freeway coming home.

Closer

Exiting the freeway at Sand Canyon, this road was blocked off just a couple blocks from where I turned.

Coming up Triumph (our street!)

At our driveway

Here the fire is just starting to peak over the ridge line

Here is another view from the front patio area

This is when I started packing our stuff in the car. I kept hearing the neighbor say over and over again "When it comes, it comes fast!" She went so far as to tell me that the last time they were out in the backyard drinking Margaritas watching it, then all of a sudden the wind changed and it raged right down to their property line. That time they had not time to evacuate and 22 horses on their property! Yesterday they were prepared though, and they were ripping up their property with a tractor making it less friendly to fire.

helicopters kept flying over the house

And dropping water and dirt onto the flames.

There were lots of planes also.

If you click on this picture and enlarge it, you can see one helicopter and two planes, all in one picture!

Those were a few more shots of the flames. They lasted all day long, and then when we thought it was over we saw it flare up again on the hillside, but it looks like that was a controlled burn by the firefighters to created a safety zone, since it soon went out. I tried to take some pictures, but at night they just look like red fuzzy spots, so no use in posting them here.

I tried to upload a video clip I took that shows the fire burning, but it appears it was too large a file.

So that is it for my first big fire. I freaked, calmed down, and then unloaded all of our clothes from the car feeling a little funny. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Final Trip, Illustrated! - Best Viewed Online at FourMonthsInSpain.Blogspot.com

2006-08-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This is much better viewed online!!! If you are reading this in your email, go online right now to www.FourMonthsInSpain.Blogspot.com to see some great pictures!!

OK, so I dont want to bore all of you, so I thought when I gave you the finalized version of our upcoming trip to Spain I would add cool pictures! I spent all day yesterday planning out all the final details for the trip. So far we have reservations in all of the places except for two, so I feel good about it. I am waiting for responses on the last couple.

Here is the final itinerary (illustrated version):

Sept 5: Arrive in Barcelona 2:15 PM (1 night). Here is a picture of the Sagrada Familia created by Antoni Gaudi and still under construction in Barcelona since 1883!

Sept 6-8: Fly to Malaga, Rent car and stay in Granada (3 nights) Here are some pictures of Granada's famous Alhambra Palacios Nazaries.

Sept 9-10: Head to Ronda & Andalucian Hill Towns (2 nights)
Andalucia pics taken from this site

Sept 11-13: Move down the coast to Tarifa (3 nights)
Tarifa pics

Sept 12: Day trip into Morocco.
Morocco pics

Sept 13: Day trip to see Gibraltar.
Gibraltar pics

Sept 14-16: Three nights in Salema, where we stay in a cottage overlooking the ocean here http://algarve.co.uk/ Here is Salema

Here is Rick Steves in Salema, the main who writes such excellent travel guidebooks that we bought three for this trip!!!

Sept 15: visit Cape Sagres & Alfambra
Pic of Cape Sagres
Sept 17-19: Head north to Lisbon (3 nights). I got this pic here

Sept 18-19: Using Lisbon as your home base, side-trips to Belém and Sintra.
Here are pics of Belem

Here is one of Sintra

Sept 20: Drive to Coimbra (1 night) I really like this shot I found here

Sept 21-23: Drive to Santiago de Compostela)(3 nights) Here is a beautiful pic that someone took there. http://www.piersallison.co.uk/photos/locations/iberia.asp

Sept 24-Dec 22: Drop off car at airport by 3:30, Catch Flight to Barcelona at 4:30 arrive 6 pm –check into our apartment
Sept 25-27: settle in to our apartment, sightsee Barcelona, relax and prepare for school.
Sept 28: Orientation – First day of classes for Tim!! Here is a picture of the University in Spain, IESE

OK, I am tired of writing.

Goodbye.

Planning Our Trips

2006-08-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

So we have moved into intense planning mode with our upcoming trip. Since we are leaving in 10 days, we are really cranking up the planning and looking at our maps.

So far we have decided we want to go everywhere. Of course that would be too much to do in 21 days, so we are going to have to start removing cities. Most likely we won't go to the cities in the North. Maybe we will go there at some other point in the year.

We found a recommended trip plan on Rick Steves' site, which is for a 22 day trip (which is about exactly how much time we have). After adjusting it to compensate for the fact that we aren't going to rent a car, here is the trip plan:

Rick Steves' Spain & Portugal Trip: found here

Day 0 - Sept 5: Arrive in Barcelona (figure out how we will go to Madrid by plane I think).
Day 1 - Sept 6: Arrive in Madrid and check into your hotel (2 nights).
Day 2 - Sept 7: All day to explore and sight-see Madrid.
Day 3 - Sept 8: Go to Segovia (1 night) try to see El Escorial, maybe fly to Granada, but the train could be scenic.
Day 4 - Sept 9: Take the early, direct train from Madrid to Granada (leaving around 8:25 a.m.)(2 nights)
Day 5 - Sept 10: All day to enjoy Granada and visit the Alhambra
Day 6 - Sept 11: Bus along the Costa del Sol to Nerja (1 night).
Day 7 - Sept 12: Spend beach time at Nerja, then move on to Tarifa (2 nights)
Day 8 - Sept 13: Use Tarifa as a home base for a day trip into Morocco.
Day 9 - Sept 14: Bus North to Jerez (sherry bodegas and horse shows), then on to Arcos de La Frontera (1 night) maybe not able to bus to Jerez
Day 10 - Sept 15: Find Andalucians Route of White Villages
Day 11 - Sept 16: Bus to the Alrgarve and sleep in Salema (2 nights)
Day 12 - Sept 17: Enjoy a free day for the beach, and consider a side-trip to Sagres.
Day 13 - Sept 18: Using Lisbon as your home base, side-trip to Belem and Sintra. (3 nights)
Day 14 - Sept 19: All day to explore Lisbon.
Day 15 - Sept 20: Using Lisbon as your home base, side-trip to Belem and Sintra.
Day 16 - Sept 21: Take the train from Lisbon to Coimbra (2 nights)
Day 17 - Sept 22: All day for Coimbra.
Day 18 - Sept 23: Take an early train? from Coimbra to Salamanca (2 nights)
Day 19 - Sept 24: All day for Salamanca
Day 20 - Sept 25: Take train or fly from Salmanca to Barcelona get apartment
Day 21 - Sept 26: Move into Apartment and Sightsee
Day 22 - Sept 27: Sightsee Neighborhood, wash clothes, Prepare for first day of school!!!

Luckily today we found some insanely cheap airlines in Spain. Both Vueling.com and SpanAir.com have incredible flights. I found flights from Barcelona to Seville on the other side of the country for only 20 Euros each way (about $25). That is pretty cheap!

Hopefully by mixing in some cheap flights and not staying at expensive hotels we can keep this trip somewhat reasonably priced. THen again this could too many stops for us to make in one trip.

So that is what we are looking at right now. Hopefully we can do it all. You may notice we left both Toledo and Seville out of our plans, but that is because we will be going to both of those towns later. We are going to Toledo for the weekend of the 8th of October with our friends Truman & Lauren. Seen here...

And then we will be going to Seville the next weekend with my sister and her good friend Debbie. I dont have any pictures of Debbie unfortunately, and you have already seen my sister just a couple of days ago, so no new pics here.

Thanks for listening. Let us know if you have any tips about any of the cities we are looking at!

Back from Seattle

2006-08-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, we are back from Seattle!

Hope you had a great weekend, because we did. Our trip to Seattle was a perfect success with excellent weather and a chance to see the family.

Our trip started on Friday afternoon with an uneventful plane trip from Burbank. I am happy to say that we saw absolutely no slowdown due to the new security measures in the airport. And besides the inconvenience of not being able to take drinks aboard it actually was a bit faster since we didn't have to wait for people to try and cram 300 pound carry-ons into the overhead compartment.

Friday evening we arrived at my parents house, had a nice dinner and were soon joined by my sister, her husband, and their three kids (Molly, Mason, & Marshall). It was a great night of catching up and preparation for arrival of more family members the next day. On Saturday my Aunt & Uncle, Grandparents, my cousin John & his wife Danielle, as well as my Mother's cousin Tim came by. It was a nice sunny day and we got to eat fresh Salmon my dad caught fishing in Alaska as well as some fresh Blackberry pie made the same day brought by my Aunt & Uncle. And I can't forget the incredible pixie popcorn that Danielle brought. In fact I should post the recipe for you all on the blog because it is pretty wild.

To my family it was great seeing you all. Laura and I had a great time catching up with all of you.

Sunday was a lot of fun. We woke up and strapped on our helmets to do a 20 mile bike ride (what we thought was going to be a 10 mile bike ride, but who's keeping track?) =^) Here are some pictures from that day. We rode on the Burke-Gilman Trail to the Redhook brewery where we ate a great lunch and took a tour that was very generous with its beer!

Here we are, gearing up for the ride. In front is Marshall, who was lucky enough to have both the smallest legs and the heaviest bike. =^) Oh well, he is young so he needs the workout. =^))

Molly and Mason had it easy riding behind Kevin.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, but not too hot.

Here we are at the brewery. This is Laura , Robin and Molly getting ready to eat.

Marshall was very hungry after his workout.

My parents look nice and refreshed, having somehow dodged the ride. It was probably good that they didn't go though, so that we had someone to call when we got lost. =^) Like I said before, the ride turned out to be a bit longer than we expected. Instead of 5 miles each way, it turned out to be about 10. Of course the extra miles we rode when we missed the turn didn't help either. Woops!

Kevin was the least affected by the ride, being the most season biker in the group.

A picture of some of the beer we had. With lunch we tried a season brew called SunRye Ale, which was very good.

Here we are starting the tour. Little did we know that for only $1 we were going to get five 5.5 ounce glasses of freshly brewed beer. A great deal, but not always the best to do before a 10 mile bike ride.

Here are Robin and Molly looking cute before we started our journey back.

Before we left we met a woman in the parking lot with a friendly bird who quickly took a liking to Laura.

Robin was the first victim to the 27 ounces of beer they gave us on the tour, although this could just as easily be blamed on those pesky toe clips. =^)

The rest of the trip went smoothly, although a bit hotter on the way back.

Here are Kevin and Laura taking a breather mid-way back

Of course I couldn't leave out a shot of the happy couple, or give you a glance at me in my sexy helmet. I guess helmets are now the law in Seattle. Go figure.

Well that is good for now. Anyone reading this far is a trooper. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Stay tuned, I will send more soon!

Happy Birthday Laura

2006-08-17T18:15:00.000-07:00

So today is Laura's birthday, as you probably already know. Last night we celebrated with some friends at Gaucho's Village in Glendale, a churrascaria. If you are thinking about going there we would say the food wasn't the best that we have had, but we had a fun time so it really didn't matter.

Attending at last nights gala event were Brent & April Lytle, Becky & Grant Tanaka, Tim & Laura McCormack (of course), Jenn Wright, Uday Dewan, and we had a special surprise appearance from Cynthia & Jon Mahoney! Thanks to all of you for coming out, we had a lot of fun and were glad you could be there. Here are some pics from the night.

Here's the whole gang all together. Que Guapo! =^)

Here's Brent showing us his best Gaucho imitation. Very chic!

Here's Uday practicing to take over the family business. We can't wait until you bring Godfather beer to the US!

Here's me with the birthday girl herself looking beautiful as usual.

Becky and Grant left the twins at home for the night to come out with us. Thanks guys, although we don't know if you came to be with us, or for an excuse to leave the kids home for the night! =^)

Afterwards the women formed a chorus line and sang YMCA in downtown Glendale.

Us men just stood and giggled as usual.

So we all had a blast. To all of you who couldn't come, you were there with us in spirit. Thanks for all the nice ecards and birthday posts on Laura's myspace. Laura says thanks!

Tonight we are having a second b-day party for Laura at the house . Laura's extended family is coming over and her cousin Morris is going to cook his famous stake on the barbecue. Besides that we leave tomorrow for Seattle where we will be visiting my family. Look for some more fun pictures of us having our yearly family get-together, and celebrating again Laura's b-day (thats three b-day parties!!), as well as my Mom's and my brother in law's (Kevin). We can't wait to see you guys up in Seattle!

Talk to you soon.

By the way, to everyone who knows Jeff, Congratulations on getting a job at Google!!! That is impressive these days. We all knew that you were smart, but now we know you are pretty cool also. =^) Say hello to Larry and Sergey for us!

Laura's Birthday Dinner - Details

2006-08-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

To everyone in the LA area, here are the official details for Laura's birthday dinner Wednesday night.

Where: Gaucho's Village Brazilian Churrascaria "Steak House"
Address: 411 N. Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91203 (818) 550-1430
When: We have a reservation for 8:00 Pm

If you are reading this, you are officially invited. Please feel free to just show up, but a confirmation email or phone call would be nice so that we know who will be there.

To those of you outside the area, we are sorry you can't be there in person, but we will consider you to be there in spirit.

Big Day for Laura - National Board Part II Exam

2006-08-15T07:17:00.000-07:00

Laura just left to take the first half of the National Boards exam part II, the continuation of the other grueling test she took right before our wedding earlier this year.

For those who don’t know, to practice dentistry in the US you must pass two very difficult exams. These exams, the National Boards, are broken up into two sections. The first, Part I, is generally considered more difficult because it covers all of the basic sciences that you study in the beginning of dental school. Normally you take it after your first two years of dental school, but since Laura went abroad she had to wait until she got back to take it. That made it even more difficult since she was taking a test on things she had not studied in a while. Fortunately, she did very well, scoring an 87, a score we expect will be good enough to get her into whatever school she wants to go to this next summer.

Now today she is taking part II. This part is clinically based, meaning it is a lot more specific to the kinds of things you need to know to actually practice dentistry, like pharmacology and dental procedures. This test is so long that they actually break it up into two days, giving about 400 questions today and another 100 or so tomorrow.

We all expect that she will do well, but any encouragement you could send by way of email would be appreciated.

Don't forget everybody that Laura's b-day is in two days! August 17th Laura will be turning 27. For those of you in town we will be going out to dinner Wednesday night to a Brazilian restaurant. Please contact me if you would like to go and eat churrasco with us, which is... "Churrasco is Spanish and Portuguese term referring to beef or grilled meat, differing across Latin America but a primary dish in the countries of Argentina, Brazil and Nicaragua." Ok, so that description doesn't sound that great, but the food is excellent. If you would like to learn more about churassco, visit http://www.v-brazil.com/culture/cuisine/churrasco.html

Here is an example of how big Laura will be smiling when she sees you at her birthday dinner. =^)

And here is a picture of Laura and her brother a few birthdays ago.

Come celebrate Laura's birthday and the end of all these dentistry tests! Email me at tim805 @ gmail.com or call to (661) 313-8219 and we will get you on the reservation.

Hope to hear from you soon.

3 Weeks till departure!!!

2006-08-14T07:13:00.000-07:00

Well, it is exactly three weeks until we depart for Spain. We are very excited about this, and have been doing a lot to prepare. Since I know there may be some future exchange students from Pepperdine reading this at some point, I am going to list some of the things we are doing to get ready to go.

Things to Do (or that we have done):
1) Find a place to live - Well we officially put down a deposit on an apartment in Barcelona. It is very close to my school, so the location is perfect. We got lucky and got one that doesn't cost too much, but unfortunately had to sacrifice the second bedroom we wanted. If you want to see pictures of the place we are going to live for about 3 months, we included a few.

Here are a couple of pictures of the place.

It is about 50 square meters, which is about 480 square feet for the whole one bedroom apartment. - For anyone that is curious, the site we used (SHBarcelona.com) was pretty helpful. It took us maybe two months to settle on an apartment that we liked, and that was available. Hopefully we won't be sorry once we get there, but we have our fingers crossed.are confident we will like it.

2) Get our visas - This part of leaving was a big pain for me. I had to get the paperwork together for both Laura's and my visas. I had to fill out 6 application forms, three for myself and three for Laura. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why they require three copies each, especially since they give one back to you as a receipt. They could have just photocopied them and saved me the time filling them out.

Anyway, in case you are curious, here is everything that we had to have to get our visas:
- Three applications, filled out by hand (why? - makes no sense)
- Three passport photos, one for each application
- Health Insurance (I got a joint plan for Laura and I, about $300 for three months)
- Signed Letter from Pepperdine saying I would be enrolled there
- Signed Letter from IESE saying I was accepted there (that’s the school in Spain)
- Letter from Pepperdine stating I have financial aid to cover the trip
- Copies of our airplane tickets - and since they were e-tickets I also had to print out a page from my credit card statement showing the charge went through
- Copy of my marriage certificate, along with a special seal called the "Apostile of the Hauge" that I had to go to another office to pick up (they told me I have to travel with my marriage certificate, to prove that Laura and I are married - necessary? I think not)

3) Buy plane tickets - This is something we did a while ago, but was a very difficult one for me. I have always been a bargain ticket shopper, getting great deals in the past. For our first year anniversary Laura and I flew to Paris from LA for only $400 per person. Needless to say buying these tickets just about killed me, since I had to pay almost $1200 per person. To me I feel like I spent $800 too much on each ticket, but what can you do? That what prices are like these days.

4) Prepare to say goodbye to Buster - When we decided to go abroad, we had the full intention of taking our cat Buster with us. Unfortunately, they changed the rules on my planes so that it is now exceedingly expensive to take your pets. Perhaps I have Paris Hilton to thank for the new rules, since maybe the airlines are sick of all these little dogs being taken on flights, but now you must ship your pet seperately, at the tune of about $600 each way! I sure was not going to spend $1200 to send Buster to Europe for four months. Here is a picture of Buster for you to enjoy. =^)

Well, that is good for now. Laura told me not to bore you all with boring details or you wouldn't read it. =^) We will try to make sure to keep this as interesting as possible, especially since we have you all being spammed every time we make a post. - by the way, feel free to cancel off the list or add other people any time you want.

Thanks for listening!!!

First Post!!

2006-08-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

Hello World!

Greetings everyone to the first post on Tim 'n Laura's "Four Months in Spain" Blog. We hope to keep our friends and family posted on our travels and what is going on in our lives through this blog. Right now this it Tim writing, but expect to see Laura on here as much as me, since she may have a bit more free time this fall & winter than I will.

Here is a shot of Laura and I at our wedding...

A bit of background here for anyone who doesn't know. Laura and I got married this April 15th, 2006, in Santa Clarita CA. We are now heading off to Barcelona for four months in an exchange program through my university, Pepperdine. I am there earning my MBA, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a four month exchange with IESE in Barcelona, one of the most top ranked International B-Schools in the world.

So today I am starting up the blog, and I thought a good way to start it off would be to show how my co-workers said goodbye to me yesterday. After spending the summer in an internship at Countrywide Financial Corporation, working as an Operations Consultant in their Enterprise Data Security & Privacy Office, my co-workers decided to give me a send-off straight off the internet. Thanks to an email I forwarded a couple of months ago regarding pranks people pull on their officemates, they decided to actually cover my entire cubical with tin foil!

Here are some pics..