11-11-11

First of all, I would like to start off by acknowledging that today is the 11th day of November, 2011, so no matter if you are in Europe, where we write the date, day-month-year, or in the states, where we write the date month-day-year, today, they are all the same.

I am a guy; if you didn't know that, we would have some problems. Before I left, I had a very simple view on fashion; no shirt, no shoes, no service. A shirt is a shirt; pants are pants. In order to dress well, one needs to wear one of each. Now, two months to the day of being in Spain, I still believe with all my heart that one needs to wear pants and a shirt to dress adequately, and don't forget the deodorant as well, which seems to be forgotten here quite often. However, being in Europe, I have started to develop a taste for fashion. Granted, when I come home, there is a very poor chance that American Eagle will become my favorite store, or that I will ever actually enter the store, but I have started to notice that black and blue don't go together- never cared or noticed about that before. Also, wearing a blue shirt that matches the shade of your jeans doesn't look right either. My knowledge of fashion has literally tripled in the last two months. Before, basically I walked to my closet and grabbed the first shirt I saw, and the first pair of shorts I could find, and that was it. Most of the time, that worked, but there were days when I wore white shorts and a white shirt, baby blue shirt and brown pants, blue shirt and black pants- you get the idea.

Now, one thing I am noticing is that here, shorts are almost not existent on the streets of Valencia, or Sagunto for that matter; t-shirts don't really have a huge place either. I am starting to develop a taste for black sweaters with white dress shirts; nice jeans and a polo shirt do well. By coincidence, I have made a lot of friends who know a lot about fashion, and I guess their knowledge is rubbing off on me a little. Every once in a while, I ask one of them how this shirt would look with those pants, and maybe those shoes, etc. Today, we went to a shoe store because we had time and nothing else to do, and some girls were looking at boots. I just stood there while they were talking about likes and dislikes, and I looked at some myself- it's amazing what you find yourself doing when you are bored. The short story is that by the end of the time, I had developed my own taste for women's boots- women's boots for goodness sakes! Normally I make a point of staying away from the women's shoe department, as well as the clothes department, makeup department, and anything else to do with them, but today I actually sort of enjoyed looking, and when they asked me what I thought, I didn't just say what would get us out of the store faster, I was actually able to give an honest opinion that they seemed to appreciate. Don't get me wrong, I am not going to return with a whole new wardrobe; I am just becoming more aware of what I like and what I don't, and what works and what doesn't. On average, the style of my personal wardrobe is about 5 to 7 years behind what the current fashion is, so today, I am not going to say that I am current with fashion,  I am going to say that I am only 3 to 4 years behind now.

Let's see, what else happened today? For starters, Josh, Ally, Juan and I ran about 3.5 miles to Carrefour, a European Walmart with about the same quality for about twice the price. I have come up with a very simple motto for myself after my last few visits, and it goes something like this, "Stay away from Carrefour at all possible costs". The school takes us every Friday, so we thought it would be a great way to get a nice long run  done, and return on the bus. Another reason why I don't like going to Carrefour is when we go, the school gives us about two and a half hours in the store when we only need about half an hour, so we are always waiting around in an overpriced Walmart. After we browsed the store, browsed it again, and a third time, we checked out, and left. There is a shoe store across the way from Carrefour, so Ally, Jon, Brianna and I went over there just to kill time, and that is where I developed my taste for boots, and mens' shoes as well. The only problem with the shoes over here is that they are the same shoes we have in America with an average of 30-50% more cost. My shoes I have now are just fine, but even if they do ware out before the end of the year, part of me just wants to wait it out until I can go to Cabazon and buy some of the same shoes or even better for a fraction of the price.

Tomorrow, Eric and I want to get up really early, climb the hill that overlooks the school, Sagunto, the castle, and a part of Canet, the neighboring city, and take pictures of the sunrise. If all goes well, we will have a time laps of the sunrise and still make down in time for breakfast- I am not sure both are possible. If not, then it is PB and J time in my room or we may possibly have to sneak them in to church. We'll see how that goes. Well, I've got to go to bed- got to get up early tomorrow to catch that sunrise.

Hasta la proxima vez...