Can't forget...

Every once in a while... well, way more often than I'd like to admit, I hear a song or see something or smell a cologne that reminds me of him and I just miss him so much. Obviously, I can't help but wonder what things would be like if they had gone differently. Would I still be living in Catalonia with him now? Would we be happy?

I still feel like I love him. I don't feel really crazy in love with him anymore. I don't get butterflies anymore when I look at his photos. But when I hear his voice or I see him smile because of something silly I said to him on webcam those butterflies come back sometimes. It's been more than a year since he broke up with me. Longer than we were a "couple". I just feel so connected to him sometimes.

Fortunately (although rather inconveniently), I think I've fallen in love again with another boy from the Internet. There goes Charles again with that Internet and those long distance crazy things. This one lives in Alaska, is a talented clarinetist, funny, charming, smart, beautiful and more than a foot taller than I. Hah! Well, most people are like more than a foot taller than I am, but that's unimportant. This guy is really special. A pity that he's so far away. He wants to visit me during spring break. I'm nervous that I'll fall pathetically in love with him, like I did last time and then the distance will make me crazy. Oh well. I'm sure it'll all be worth it.

Happy Ending

This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending

Wake up in the morning, stumble on my life
Can't get no love without sacrifice
If anything should happen, I guess I wish you well
A little bit of heaven, but a little bit of hell

This is the hardest story that I've ever told
No hope, or love, or glory
Happy endings gone forever more
I feel as if I'm wasted
And I'm wastin' every day

This is the way you left me,
I'm not pretending
No hope, no love, no glory,
No Happy Ending
This is the way that we love,
Like it's forever
Then live the rest of our life,
But not together

2 o'clock in the morning, something's on my mind
Can't get no rest; keep walkin' around
If I pretend that nothin' ever went wrong, I can get to my sleep
I can think that we just carried on

A Little bit of love, little bit of love
Little bit of love, little bit of love[repeat]

Another Hair Cut!

So I changed my hair style, yet again. I've worn various types of mohawks for the past year and although I love mohawks, I've decided to grow my hair out a little more... in the meantime, I have a cute little transition hair cut... short on the sides, long on top... and new highlights to keep me feeling sexy. ;)

Dying blog

Gosh, guys. I always feel like I have so much I want to share with everyone, but I never feel like actually sitting down and writing.

What has happened since my last post? Gosh, lots of stuff...

I went to Barcelona for two weeks in April for a big conference for the Catalan communities outside of Catalonia. They consider me Catalan now. Hah! I am, well, almost.

This summer, I went to Minneapolis for a week for another conference having to do with TPRS, which is a language teaching method that I simply adore. I think I'm going to become an amazing teacher now that I've discovered this method. I've had such great results with my students so far.

I got to meet Blaine Ray as well, who wrote the books on TPRS and all that stuff. Here's a picture of us!

At the conference, I was also able to meet and spend good quality time with my online friend Ignacio from San Sebastian in Spain. It was so fun to actually spend time with him in person for once and learn together at the conference. Here we are on some bridge near the Mississippi river. ;)

My business is growing, little by little. I love getting to teach and watching my dream slowly become reality. And of course, I can't forget to mention that if you guys get me referrals, I'll give you commissions/classes/my soul.

I think I might be going back to Barcelona for one month in December and January. Who wants to go? :)

People. Ugh.

It seems sometimes that the smarter you are, the more talented you are, or the more beautiful you are, the more people are just waiting and hoping to find a reason to demonize you.

I lost a friend today. He told me that since I’ve lost weight, I’ve become some horrible, arrogant person with no class. It all started a few nights ago when I went out with him and some of his friends.

He has a store and he took some of his employees to JR’s. I asked, “Oh, so you go out with your employees?” Him and all of his employees were so offended by my question because of their stupid mind-talk telling them that obviously my question was a negative one meaning that I couldn’t believe that he spends time with the help. What I meant was, good on him for taking the time to get to know his employees and spending time with them and making the work environment a nice one. Why are people so cynical?

OK. I think I’m finished with my rant.

Needs Contact Information!

Hey guys. I kind of got pick-pocketed on Thursday night... They took my phone and my wallet and consequently, I've lost a lot of phone numbers. So with that in mind, I need a favor from you guys. Would all of you please, please, please send me an e-mail (it's on my business card in the last entry if you don't know it) with your full name, phone number and your address and birthday too, while you're at it, so I can have everyone's agenda again.

Thanks!

Business Cards!

I got my new cards in the mail! They're so cute.

What do you think? Anyone want to design a really cool card for me for my next batch? It needs to be profession, but light-hearted too so as to not scare people away and have them think that I'm some scary big corporation... but still professional looking enough to help me land corporate contracts. If I like it, I'd probably buy the design from you.

Language Courses

So I'm really starting to seriously consider quitting my job and teaching full-time. I just need more clients and a little more stability. But in any case, I'm advertising like crazy. Anyone want language classes? I do individual, pairs and small group classes in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Catalan and English.

My rates look like this:

$50/hour (individual)
$30/hour/student (pairs)
$25/hour/student (3-6 students)

My rates are, of course, negotiable if you want several hours a week or make me an interesting deal. I sell time in blocks and the more time bought at once, the cheaper the rates. For individual classes, for example, this is what I normally do:

Block of 5 hours: $50/hour x 5 = $250
Block of 10 hours: $45/hour x 10 = $450
Block of 15 hours: $40/hour x 15 = $600
Block of 20 hours: $35/hour x 20 = $700

I'm even beginning to offer a new service online that I find kind of interesting. Conversational English courses online through VOIP software such as Skype. My target clientele are students with some English knowledge but who lack the opportunities to practice their spoken English and listening comprehension with native speakers. It gives them a chance to really apply what they learn in class and improve their fluency.

One of the really cool things is that they can pay me online with debit or credit through Paypal!

For that service, my rates look like this:

Block of 5 hours: $35/hour x 5 = $175
Block of 10 hours: $30/hour x 10 = $300

This one is negotiable too, of course.

If you know anyone interested in lessons, refer them to me and I'll pay you a finder's fee (that means 10% of the first contract!) So if you find me a student who commits to 20 hours at $35 an hour, you get 10% of that $700! So, that's a nice $70 for having done nothing except making a phone call.

Keep me in mind, guys.

First posting for 2008

Well guys, another update finally. It's been overdue for a while.

Well, what's new? In my quest to find people to practice my Catalan with now that I've left Catalonia, I discovered an organization called AICS (the American Institute for Catalan Studies). It's like a cultural center for Catalan things here in Houston (or a casal català as they call such things in Catalonia). Anyway, they had one of their semi-annual cultural events in December, which I attended. Wow, how exciting. I met a lot of Catalans and had a great time. I met the board of directors of the organization as well and they adored me, being that I'm a Texan with no real connection to Catalonia other than my crazy love story and linguistic interest but I speak Catalan pretty fluently and am interested in their culture... so I left them with a really great impression.

Then they made me an offer I couldn't refuse.

The president of the organization asked if I would lead the youth portion of AICS and help organize stuff for the youth in Houston's Catalan community. Awesome stuff. And now they want to send me to a conference for casals catalans all over the world as their youth representative in April for five days in Catalonia! Awesome stuff some more!

Well, the fun doesn't end there! In December, a reporter from Catalonia doing a documentary on Catalan products sold outside of Catalonia found me on the internet. She was sending a camera crew to do interviews with some guy who sells Catalan nugats here in Houston and while they were at it, they wanted to interview some Catalans living in Houston and also people interested in Catalan culture. Well, this woman searched on Google for "catalan" and "houston" and up popped my blog. She read my story and watched my videos about my story with Rubèn and she said that it was such an interesting story that she asked me if they camera crew could film me and do several interviews with me in various parts of Houston. And on top of that, she offered to pay me money to just hang out with them and interpret.

Well, they came, and it was an awesome week. We had so much fun and I feel like I made three new friends who live in Barcelona. You know, I've learned three very important and practical languages (French, Spanish and Portuguese) and nothing too interesting every came of it. And now, I just recently learned this little bit European language and suddenly all this cool stuff is happening because of it. Who could have imagined that speaking Catalan would bring so many fun opportunities to my life. Maybe I should learn another small language!

So what else?

Well, there is my weight loss. In 2007, over all, I have last around 50 pounds. When I got back from Catalonia, I had lost about 55 total, then I gained like 15 back in September and October... and since then I've been working to lose it all again. Well, I lost about 10 of those pounds and I'm almost back to where I was. 2008, I plan to lose thirty more pounds maybe. We'll see what happens.

Here's a visual aid to help things out. I started it over. At first I only wanted to lose 50 pounds... well, now I've gotten there so I've upped my goal. I think I should weigh around 120 with my height... actually, I just want to lose my fat. So whatever weight I end up with after I lose the fat is good for me. In any case, I made a ticker to show what's going on. :)

And... well, here are two new photos just for fun. :)

This is me playing with some blue contacts. I think it made me look kind of evil. Hahaha!

This is me when I went out to the Red Door with that camera crew and some other people we met. Miquel (Miki) is the one right behind me with his hand on my shoulder and then there is Enric next to him, this one with his tongue sticking out and the crazy face. The girl and the guy with the cigarette are some people we met through interviews and stuff. Anyway, Enric and Miki are awesome. I miss them!

Samhain!

Holy crap, I'm going to the Samhain festival organized by CMA. I'm so excited!

A year and a half ago, I went to a Beltaine festival put on by a small group and I had such a wonderful time. This time, however, will be with hundreds and hundreds of people. I'm so excited. I'll be going with my friend Brett who convinced me to go with him (and kind of helped me a little bit with the fees).

Who else is going? Let me know so I can plan to find you. Maybe even camp out near you. :)

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Wow, so I'm finally back in Houston. I really wanted to update sooner, but when I returned to El Vendrell from Lisbon, we didn't have internet at home so I was kind of disconnected for the last month.

Well, so what happened the last month of my trip? Not a whole lot. I ended up going to the hospital twice because I had some extremely high fever. It turns out that I had an upper respiratory infection. I also travelled around a bit with Rubèn. He took me to the Pyrenees into the Vall d'Aran where they speak a really neat language called Aranese which is somewhere in the dialect continuum between Catalan and Occitan. We also went on a few other small trips to other places and saw lots of pretty things.

Oh! Just before I left, two Wednesdays ago we went to Sitges (basically the gayest city in all of Europe) which is only about 20 minutes from where I lived. We wanted to go out to the bars and party. Well, we were walking around and came upon a club that was having a foam party. I'd never been to one, so I was really excited. We went in, checked in our clothes (most people were wearing only undies) and danced in foam up to our waists. It was so fun! Hehehe. Just lots of really hot, foamed up, attractive men in wet underwear dancing.

In the last week, when we started paying more attention to one another, we really reconnected. It's too complicated. I'm happy to far from him now, even though I feel like I left my heart there with him. I love him and I just can't let that go. There is even another WONDERFUL guy named Fábio who loves me and simply adores me and the sex we have is exponentially better than the sex I had with Rubèn... but I just can't open my heart to him. It's such bad timing. I need more time to heal.

Well, I don't really feel like writing much right now. I'll say more later. I just really wanted to update. And just for fun, the grand total of weight that I've lost since January is 54 pounds. Here is a photo of me as a fatty and some photos from this week so you can see the difference. :)

Fat Charles:

Chubby, New Charles: