Sailing:

When Kate, Annie, and I first moved to BCN we decided we need to make friends. That’s pretty obvious because everyone wants friends, but we decided we needed friends who had certain attributes. Kate wanted a friend with a boat, I wanted someone who spoke the language and knew the places to go at night, and Annie wanted the know about good food in BCN! Well, needless to say we got all that and more! I met Marc (my intercambio) at TEFL the last day of our teaching. He speaks Catalan, Spanish, English and whatever else I can’t remember. He also has a friend Antonio who owns a sailboat. Their other friend Roger is a photographer who knows all the great places to eat and go out in BCN. We have hung out with these guys ever since meeting at the Marce Festival. One afternoon the guys asked us to join them for a sailboat experience. Just to give a little background I had never sailed before and am afraid of water, Kate and Annie have had some experience sailing, Marc gets seasick, Roger sailed halfway across the world with Antonio, and Roger’s nephew Nolask had never been sailing. We got some sandwiches and boos an d jumped on the boat. Marc was already rethinking his decision of coming with us when it was too late and we had untied and set off to sea. Nolask is a curious, energetic, young man who was jumping up on the front of the boat to have the sea splash him in the face that is until he was in the back puking his guts out! Annie turned about 37 different shades of green and was right beside Nolask puking the entire time! It was great. Well, not them puking but I had a great time with the sea air flowing through my hair and the water splashing up in the boat and seeing the fear in Marc’s face! Roger and Antonio told Kate and I that the winds were pretty strong and the waves were super choppy, but we were having a blast. We only decided we had to turn back when Annie was threatening to jump off the boat in the freezing water and swim to shore! I was pretty happy with myself because I wasn’t afraid and I held down my breakfast! We got to the shore and went to the beach and ate our sandwiches, lomo con queso, and drank bottles of Cava. Annie chilled out on a towel for the remainder of the day to settle her tummy! Marc being the responsible adult figure he is decided to teach Nolask how to kill someone with his bare hands! It was pretty funny to watch Nolask practicing on Marc! I have to point out here that we had only met these guys maybe two times and we were in some town we didn’t know! Real smart. After a great day the guys decided it was out of the way to drive us home so told us we needed to take the train…so like em! So, I can’t remember details but Roger and Ant have sailed for super long distances for long amounts of time on that boat. I could not imagine, but I’m up for sailing any sunny day!