pictures of the Cole family in Cadaques are now posted in the photography section under “Cadaques >>>”. Enjoy and… you are welcome.

1. What time is it: 18:00 (6pm)

2. Name: Gabriel Francis

3. Name as it appears on birth certificate: Gabriel Allen Francis

4. Nicknames : Gabe, Gabe the Babe, the Bay

5. Number of candles on your last birthday cake: 20

6. Date of Birth: July 25th, 1983

7. Pets: Cindy

8. Kids: only the alien baby in Cindy

9. Hair color: auburn dream

10. Eye color: green, blue, gray (seriously, depending on time of day and mood)

11. Piercing: no thanks

12. Tattoos: no. but i did see a cool one when I was in Scotland. A Powerpuff Girl, in color, on this young guy’s upper arm.

13. Hometown: Laguna Niguel, CA

14. Town you live in: Barcelona, Catalunya Spain

15. Favorite food: Wahoo’s Fish Taco in Southern CA

16. Been to Africa? Unfortunatly no

17. Been toilet papering? no

18. Love someone so much it made you cry: once

19. Been in a car accident? a small one. I bumpered a car in the parking lot in high school

20. Croutons or bacon bits? croutons

21. Favorite day of the week? tuesday. its a hidden good.

22. Favorite Restaurant? Wahoo’s Fish Taco or TK Burger in SoCal and Les Quintz Nits in Barcelona

23. Favorite movie: i don’t know. its too hard to pick one. Donnie Darko keeps popping to mind, but really there has to be a better one.

24. Favorite Flower: whatever my girlfriend likes

25. Favorite sport to watch: Football on Superbowl Sunday, Baseball when I’m at the stadium, and Spanish Futbol on tv

26. Favorite Drink: chocolate milk while driving, cocacola with a burger, or a good bottle of spanish Cava

27. Favorite ice cream? Mint Chocolate Chip in one of those extra large tubs you can only find in America. Runners up are the fruit flavors at the Gelato places in Barcelona.

28. Disney or Warner Bros.? as a corporation? for cartoons? for the movies they produce? what?

29. Favorite Fast food restaurant? In N Out

30. What color is your bedroom carpet? Spaniards don’t believe in carpet. I have wood floors.

31. How many times did you fail your drivers test? 0, but i barely passed

32. Before this one, whom did you get your last e-mail from? my Dad

33. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? Best Buy

34. What do you do most often when you are bored? “surf the net”

35. Most annoying thing people ask me? Did you really win a car on the Price is Right?

36. Bedtime: ussually around midnight

38. Favorite TV Shows? Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Seinfeld, Pete and Pete, ghostwriter, the Food Network, History Channel

40. Last person you went out to dinner with? Cindy just made me Arroz con Leche. That counts I think.

41. Ford or Chevy? I don’t care. I have a VW

42. Person you wish you were closer to again? David Gautraud

43. Time you finished this e-mail? 18:25 (6:25pm)

Email log. April 2004. Day 6.

The week after the relaxing San Sebastian trip was a bit more exciting than normal. The same Sunday we arrived back in Barcelona Cindy got a call from her friend Sussana telling her that she would arrive from Saint Andrew’s, Scotland that night. We had great fun with her all week, laying low on the tourism activities but going out nearly every night to different restaurants. School was more intersting as well. On monday I learned that my Literatura professora had suffered a hemorage in her right ear and wouldn’t be able to teach the class for the next couple of weeks. Quite a bummer (for her) but I made sure to enjoy the extra time off. Wednesday was Cindy’s roomate Sonia’s last day in Barcelona. She was moving back to France at the end of her school semester. We commemorated her departure by going out with her and some of her friends to an Italian restaurant near Arc de Triumf. First Laura and now Sonia. Why do the best people in Cindy’s pisos always seem to leave? Its a sad trend.
Meanwhile, Cindy’s other roommate Robert plays drums in a band called The Carrots who are getting quite popular here. They already have some songs on the radio from their latest release, All It Takes Is A Little Confidense!. Anyway, while out on the town Thursday I called my friend Liz to gleen some information about renting a car to get to The Carrot’s show in Tarragona the following day. “Why would you want to rent a car?” she asked, “Xavi and I just bought one last week and you can just borrow ours. If we trust you with our kid, of course we’ll trust you with our car…” Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. They are super nice people. So early Friday afternoon I went with Cindy and Sussana to Liz’s place to pick up the car. It was described to me as a used car so I wasnt expecting much, but when we went with Xavi to the garage it turned out to be very nice. Most importantly, it had a great stereo system. After going over a few things with Xavi I drove off and rocked that -ish all the way to Tarragona. The city was surprisingly easy to find.
We spent a good portion of the day wandering through the city, viewing the ruins, and hanging out on La Rambla just waiting for the show to start. Around 9pm we got a call from Robert and we met up with him and the rest of the band near the Ajuntament building for some tapas and drinks before the show. We eventually made our way towards the club, called El Cau, which was literally a hole in the wall, a cave dug into the side of a cliff. We hung out with the band back stage, or rather upstairs above the bar, for several hours waiting for more people to show up before starting the show. At 1am the band took the stage and played an hour long set. I loved the music. Very poppy. Although it would have been nice to hang out afterwards we were way too tired and ended up heading back to Barcelona, getting severely lost and frustrated along the way, but eventually arriving back at Cindy’s place where a slumber party was in order. That Saturday night was Sussana’s last in Barcelona. We went out to the ever popular Les Quintz Nits, enjoyed a wonderful catalan meal and then headed across the way to Jamboree where I danced until I almost fell asleep standing up.
Sunday morning while brushing my teeth I recieved a call from my friend Matt. “Gabe! I’m in Barcelona!” He had just taken a spontaneous detour from Grenoble, France where he was studying and driven all night to Barcelona. Unfortunatly, I couldnt meet him right away as I was on my way to pick up Cindy’s parents from the airport. We arrived 10 minutes late to the terminal and Cindy was sure we had missed her parents. She left to another terminal to drop Sussana off at her plane while I had a bit more faith (realizing it was impossible to debark from an international flight, gather your bags, and pick up the rental car all in 10 minutes) and stayed behind. And although I had only seen her family in a picture, once, I managed to spot them and pull them aside. They were amazingly kind people. With Cindy’s family accounted for and already gone for Sitges I called my friend Matt back. He had managed to get himself lost, but with the help of a map and some time we managed to meet for lunch in Placa Catalunya. After a lunch of tapas at Txapela we dropped off his stuff at my place and then went back to pick up his car and bring it closer to my piso. Both of us were dead tired, him having driven all night and me having danced all night, but we managed to pull off a stop at La Sagrada Familia before heading home for a short nap. At 10pm we went out to a restaurant by Placa Real called La Fonda which was excellent cheap Catalan food. A goat cheese sald, Paella, and some red wine later we rambled up La Rambla for gelato icecream and then caught the metro home.
Monday morning we met up with Cindy at the Passeig de Gracia train station and headed out to Sitges to meet her family. We arrived a bit later than expected and her family was already packed to make way to Tarragona, but Matt and I stayed behind anyway to enjoy the european-Laguna-Beach-type town. It was a beautiful beach day and having the will, but not the swimming trunks, Matt and I decided to go for it anyway and strip to our boxers. We made one quick jump into the Mediteranian, which turned out to be a mistake because it was extremely cold, and then layed on the beach for a few hours. We did our best to make the most of Sitges but it being a Monday during Semana Santa everything was closed. So after a few trips through the cute whitewashed streets we made our way back (Sitges->Barcelona 2.25euro). That night we made the rounds. Xampagneria to Chupitos to El Bosc de les Fades to Cafe de l’Opera to Oveja Negra to home. Matt was a whole lot of fun to hang out with. And here my friends, is where Gabe’s life in Barcelona took another radically awesome turn.
Matt decided that afternoon that he would not drive his car back to France, but rather take a train. The next morning, at 8:45 Matt left Barcelona and his car keys with me. I am now the proud owner of a 1984 Peugeot 305gi. There are a variety of reasons Matt decided to just hand the car over to me (free of charge), one being it wasn’t worth that much anyway and the other being he didn’t want his parents to know he had bought a car with his rent money. Whatever the reason, I now have a car. Not the best, but it runs, and it was FREE. Am I the luckiest person ever or what?
Tomorrow I’m going for a test drive to Cadaques, a beach town on the Costa Brava two hours north of Barcelona. Wanna come?

wish you were here.
Gabe

P.S. Right now Francisco is listening to a futbol game on his small portable radio. His team must not be doing very well right now, because every once in a while I hear a random, “Joder tio!” followed by some swift pacing around the flat.