Sara Came to Spain!!!

Thanks to Continental airlines and Xanax, my good friend and former roommate, Sara visited Barcelona this past week, and it was so so much fun. It was her first time in Spain so I was determined to show her a good time and I think it was pretty successful.

We saw all the major sites of the city, like Tibidabo, Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia, various Guadi buildings, Las Ramblas and of course, the famous Irish pub in Port Olimpic that has generated so many of my fun memories here. But, as expected, the highlights of the trip weren’t so much the sites of the city but the general silliness that usually accompanies any Sara/Ali outing. Some of the best moments from this visit are as follows:

- Meeting a new friend from Belgium named Jacob. Sara thought it was polite to call him

by his native pronunciation of the name, which sounds like Yah-kub, and proceeded to

say his name to punctuate pretty much every sentence she said in his presence

with our buddy, Jacob

- We went to a bar/club with a DJ and Sara approached him to request a song. He said

he couldn't oblige her requests for the likes of Justin, Britney, Gaga or Kanye. Since I’d

been there before I knew the golden ticket to get the crowd going. I leaned across the

DJ booth and asked in my best “English with a Spanish accent” for him to play “Meester

Yones.” He nodded and a few minutes later, Sara got to see how the youth of Barcelona

really gets down- to early nineties alternative rock by the Counting Crows

- Sara’s new thing is taking videos on her camera and she captured some amazing moments

on video- such as my tough love style of friendship, when you can hear me saying

forcefully “Sara, put your camera away and get out your metro card, now…Sara, put the

camera away, put it away now!”

- We made a quick stop in a shot bar one night. As we were trying to decide what to order,

Sara spotted people doing a flaming shot, and as she exclaimed “They’re doing a shot

that’s on fire!” I just shouted repeatedly at the bartender, “Algo con fuego!!!” Luckily we

had a Spanish friend with us who was able to successfully order us some pretty cool shots

that involved a half an orange peel filled with alcohol, set atop a shot glass then set aflame.

- In another video you see some enthusiastic men jumping around and dancing. Sara’s

narration reports that “these are Irish guys, dancing to some Irish song.” I broke it to her

later that the Irish song the guys loved so much was called “Human” and it was by The Killers

- She put me in my place about music later, though, when she informed me that she was

relatively certain that she had been the first person in Akron, OH to discover Nelly. I

asked where she’d discovered him, to which she replied “The radio.”

drinks on her last night in town

- While there were so many great things to see in the city, one of the most fun nights was

spent hanging out at my apartment listening to our favorite songs from our days as

roommates and rapping as only suburban white girls can. Some of our best numbers

include “Gold Digger,” P.I.M.P. and the Nelly Remix of N Sync’s “Girlfriend.” The videos

of this will not be shared in a public forum of any kind.

rapping, obv