Meet Spanish Nate

It's time to meet Spanish Nate, which is my alter-ego while I'm in Spain. Before I introduce you, let me say that I have one more sister who has yet to make an appearance on the blog but she looks the most Spanish, so when my little sister emails the photos from the cape cod folder on the home computer to njweaver@gmail.com, I'll slip her into the Spanish mix for you.

I flew to Spain a week ago to find my fortune in logistics. I'm studying at the Zaragoza Logistics Center for nine months in Zaragoza, Spain, which is about halfway between Barcelona and Madrid. The flight was long but I had a pack full of treacle tarts to tide me over. The recipe for a treacle tart is: fill one tiny pie crust with maple syrup, add one treacle, and sit on it for a day. The result is a delight only the Brits could love.

I flew into Madrid by the light of noon, which is six hours ahead of the East Coast time. The time change wasn't a big deal except that I didn't have a watch or a clock or a phone, and also I didn't speak Spanish. Luckily the Spanish peoples are nice peoples and they directed me to the nearest honky so we could talk. This is a picture of me in the Madrid airport looking disoriented and culture shocked. Those are two dominating characteristics of Spanish Nate.

The train station in Madrid is completely over the top. There's a rainforest in the middle of it and the building can probably hold four or five treacle tart factories. There is also a pond with lilly pads and probably Spanish crocodiles in it, so watch your kids around it. Pictured with me at the train station is Francisco Lopez. Francisco was a famous treacle tart supervisor when a batch of hot syrup fell on him from the sky, forever capturing him with his checklist. At the time, Francisco was working on a new way to produce treacles, but his secret is now buried in the rainforest. Unfortunately, I couldn't ask any locals for any maps or clues to Francisco's secret treasure because of something called a "language barrier."

I took a bullet train to Zaragoza, which is not as dangerous as it sounds. The only tickets available were "preferentes," which means awesome in Spanish. At the train station I met Micah, who happened to be in my program and happened to be from Chicago and happened to have an awesome ticket too. We must have had our honkydars on full alert. In awesome class, you get your choice of newspaper, free movie (more valuable to Spanish speakers), and shrimp salad. There's a full meal, but you really get a shrimp salad. I tried to take some pictures from the bullet train but the train was going as fast as a bullet and my camera was no match for it.

When I got to Zaragoza (pronounced thar-a-go-tha with a lisp), I met Laura. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that everyone here speaks Spanish with a lisp, including Laura. It doesn't affect the name Nathan so I'm most likely immune to it. Laura escorted me to the hostel where I met Long Hai and Jermaine. Guess which one is which. I now live with Long Hai, Jermaine, Micah, and Anand -- you'll meet them all later. Also pictured is Fellipo from Italia. Jermaine is giving Fellipo directions to the nearest bar where he can drink Mojitos and get punched in the face, which actually happened to him the night before.


After such a long journey, all I wanted to do was rest. So this week I've been moving into my apartment, tasting delicious treats, meeting my classmates, filling out top secret documents in triplicate, and snapping pictures of Zaragoza. All that jazz is for another time, though. Adios.