Ben Murrell

November 14th was a bit of an outlier as far as traffic goes. And that’s a huge understatement. I usually get between 200 and 300 visitors a month according to the stats from StatPress. On November 14th, it’s reporting that I had 120 visitors and 1200 page views. I have no idea where the traffic came from or where it went. I haven’t gone digging yet, but I’m hoping it isn’t the result of some exploit due to my not being up to date on Wordpress patches

Just a quick update on my life today. I just moved into a new apartment (my first actually!) down on the Plaza. It’s pretty sweet, and a lot less noisy than at my parents’ house where there are almost always at least three TV’s within earshot. My TV doesn’t even have cable. Actually all it has is an Xbox360 hooked up to it. I’m working on getting XBMC or Boxee up and running, but I haven’t decided which I like more / am going to stick with yet.

Anyways, it’s pretty sweet living here, because:

• I’ve always loved the Plaza – I even wanted my mom to bring me here during the same snow storm that Derrick Thomas died in in 2000
• It’s not Lee’s Summit – Lee’s Summit’s a great place to grow up, but the demographics are really skewed towards really old (50+) and really young (18-). Also, it’s really far from everything else in KC.
• I’m 10 minutes closer to work, but still comfortably far enough away to not feel like my job is my life
• I no longer have to drive 30 minutes to get home after a night out with my friends (or crash couches… haha)
• I wake up every morning and look out the window to the Giralda tower replica & flash back to Sevilla… which is nice now that it’s all cold weather!

I’ll post up some pictures when I finish getting unpacked. I still have a couple of boxes laying around that I need to take care of.

Besides that, life is life. I’m pretty surprised my car hasn’t died yet… one of the tires keeps losing air, but not quickly enough to worry about it. It’s funny how something always went wrong with it when I had no money, and now I have a job and no car problems.

In my last post, I promised to give the details of how I’m going about learning French. I’m studying independently, alone.

When I decided I wanted to learn French, I thought a bit about what the biggest hangups were for myself and for other people in my classes in school. In my mind, it boiled down to a few things:

• Unwillingness to learn the language – A lot of people in the classes were there because they had to be.
• Unwillingness to use the language – A lot of people were reluctant to speak the language. This was probably a combination of being embarrassed about not being able to speak properly and factor #1.

The preceding two factors probably apply to learning anything, be it math or chemistry or anything else – if you don’t have an attitude of wanting to accomplish something, then you’re not going to accomplish it. The next factor is more language learning specific:

• Spelling over speaking – After five years in Spanish classes, there were still people that were mispronouncing the “ll”, “j”, and “ñ”. People that couldn’t properly emphasize syllables with accents. I think this was because of the way the language was taught to us – my class was one of the first to be taught via the TPRS method. In theory, the TPRS method should have avoided this issue… but in school, teachers are all too eager to give out busy work style worksheets to give students something to do outside of class. As a result, pronunciation was being poisoned by seeing the words and trying to read them without having internalized the word already.

Going into learning French, I wanted to avoid these hangups. The first factor I already knew there wouldn’t be an issue with – I’m in it to learn it for myself. I knew that the second factor would be an issue – perhaps not out of unwillingness but just because of a lack of an environment to use the language where I live. I’ve resolved that issue by immersing myself in French material even when I’m not actively learning. To help with the third factor, I’ve chosen my learning methods carefully to focus on pronunciation and speaking over writing and reading.

Learning Methods:

• Pimsleur’s Audio Courses – Since I made pronunciation my number one priority in learning French, I decided that an audio course would be best to start off with. Pimsleur’s involves no reading of the words – there is a reading booklet, but I haven’t been doing the reading exercises yet. Occasionally in the beginning, the speaker would mention silent letters at the end of words and how they trail into words that start with vowels. This isn’t something I’ve considered consciously after the first week – I just do it. And I have no idea how to spell most of the words I’m saying. I think that Pimsleur has been working really well for me.
• Rosetta Stone – I had Rosetta Stone available to me, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t think it’s nearly as useful as Pimsleur – it doesn’t have me speaking and practicing as much. It has certainly boosted my vocabulary, but I’m not sure how much I would be retaining if it weren’t so similar to Spanish. The biggest advantage to Rosetta Stone I think is the writing portion – it does force me to consider the spelling of words. Also, there is no English at all in Rosetta Stone’s teaching method. This means they’re not explaining things like difference between le and la… they just keep penalizing you until you get it right. It also means they can only really teach you things that you can convey in a picture or series of pictures. In Pimsleur, they’ll cut in and say things like, “The French consider it more polite to ask ‘Would you like to …’ rather than ‘Do you want to …’ and for this, you would use the form of the word, ‘voudriez’ rather than ‘voulez’.” I’m half way through Rosetta Stone French I and nothing like this has come up yet.
• Easy French Reader – I bought a book called Easy French Reader. It is what it says it is – I haven’t had any problems reading it. There are notes in the margins when they introduce non-obvious new words… but the story isn’t very interesting. Every couple of pages, there is a question section with true/false, fill in the blank, and short response style questions along with the occasional crossword. I’ve been avoiding it because I don’t know how to pronounce most of the words properly and I’ve noticed monsieur go from a smooth (phonetic english) “messieur” to a more butchered “monseeur”.

Immersion Methods:

• French Music – I have acquired quite a bit of French music. For me, it was hard to find music that I could actually pick words out of at first, so maybe this short list of French music will help someone out there find it more easily than I did. “Un Jour Noel” by Marie-Elaine Thibert (Christmas music that’s easy to follow). “Donne-Moi Quelque Chose Qui Ne Finit Pas” by Stephanie Lapointe (Slower music with mostly simple words). Traditional Quebec music is folk music that is pretty easy to follow and pick words out of, and that’s pretty easy to find. There’s a Quebec group called Les Cowboys Fringants that have a more modernized folk feel – it’s pretty fun to listen to and (again) it’s easy to pick out words and phrases. I haven’t found anything else that I’m to semi-understand and listen to passively while at work, but I’m sure that there is more out there. I’m still holding out for some Raffi style songs!
• French Movies & TV – I have Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain. I’ve watched the first half but haven’t found time to watch the whole thing. The first time I tried, I didn’t understand much. The second time, I was surprised at how much I understood. I also have a couple of seasons of the Friends tv show that are dubbed in French, but I haven’t tried watching those yet.
• LiveMocha - A cool website where you can get feedback from native speakers on your writing and speaking. I haven’t submitted anything in French yet, but I have given feedback on English submissions.
• LibriVox - LibriVox is a website that is in the process of recording people reading books that are in the public domain (much like Project Gutenberg, except for audiobooks). I have downloaded Le Comte de Monte-Cristo and Les Trois Mousquetaires, and I’ll be listening to them at work – initially I won’t be listening for content, but just to build the ability to listen to French and be able to break the steady flow of sounds into words and sentences, even if I don’t know their meanings.
• The Kansas City French Connection – This is a meetup.com group that is based in Kansas City. I went to my first event last Saturday at a French cafe called Aixois. There were seven of us ranging from beginners like myself to a few native speakers from Belgium and Quebec. Basically it’s a French conversation group, and based on my first meeting with them, it’s going to be great. I’ve already learned of a new source called “TV-5″ which is a French channel that I can get here.

I built up the basics of my plans for learning French from this website: How To Learn Any Language. The creator is a Swiss man who loves languages – it’s full of interesting information like how similar certain languages are and the relative difficulties of learning different languages. There is also a forum component where people give advice on how to learn languages and where to find resources to learn languages.

I spent a few hours typing out the journal entries leading up to Barcelona last night. Phew… almost done! I decided to hold off on Barcelona because my interest was waning and I didn’t want it to bleed into Barcelona’s entries – I loved Barcelona and I really want to leave you with that impression. Once I’m done typing all of the posts up, I’ll go back and add pictures to them – that’s another time consuming process, but worth it. It really makes some of those boring, short entries worth looking at at least (I’m looking at you, Berlin). Also, if you’re friends with me on Facebook, you should be able to see the pictures I have put up on there. Even if you’re not, you should still be able to see them… it’s just a matter of finding them. I’ll post links to the albums once I’ve put up pictures from the whole trip (I’ve done pictures on Facebook up to and including Prague).

And the French bit from the title – about half way through the trip, I decided I wanted to learn another language. I was split between Italian, French, and German. I’m hesitant to say I “know” Spanish, but I can definitely hold my own in a conversation… this pushed me towards the romance languages. I knew my knowledge of Spanish would help out with Italian and French, and I decided I wasn’t really that into German… so I had it narrowed down to French and Italian by the time I got back into Germany when I visited Munich.

When I landed in Spain, I was elated to finally speak the local language. For a while, I resolved to just improve my Spanish and not pick up a new language. Then a flurry of things happened that lead to French. On my first day in Seville, I met two guys from Paris – they were really cool guys. By then I was used to being told that I don’t come off as the typical dumb American, but hearing it from two Frenchman (from Paris at that!) came as a surprise. Anyways, the conversation eventually got around to women, and women loving French accents in English. Thihaud and Matthew then dropped this one on me: French girls love American accents in French. On my second night in Seville, I ended up eating dinner in the middle of a French conversation between a large group of people. So here I was eating shrimp with their heads attached… and listening to French. I felt left out, for sure, because they were speaking way too fast for me to be able to pick up anything – even the words I could usually pick out because of Spanish. I gave up on understanding and just listened. I decided then that I really liked the way French sounds.

In Granada, I met Margeaux from Paris. She didn’t really speak any French in front of me, but I really liked her accent. This was the start of me deciding that the French accent is the sexiest I’ve heard. On my second night in Granada, there was a group of three French Canadians staying in my room – two of them barely spoke any English. That was interesting, but then I met another French Canadian couple when I went out that night. Again, really cool people. I had a great time with them and everyone else that went out for tapas and sangria that night.

Finally, on my second night in Barcelona I met two awesome Quebecois girls. I ended up spending two more nights with them after that – at one point I brought up my interest in learning another language, and how I’d narrowed it down to Italian and French. Audrey had plenty of practical reasons for learning French over Italian, including that Italian is only spoken in Italy whereas French is spoken in Black Africa, France, Sweden, Belgium, and Quebec. Then she went on about how I should learn French because France played a huge part in the settlement of the Americas – she couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jacques Cartier… among other things. Pretty hard to say no to I told her I’d learn French in six months, and that was that. On this front, I’m unfortunate because I now spend one to two hours a day learning and practicing French and inevitably I’m reminded of her. I think some of my friends can attest to my inability to get this girl out of my head, and my efforts to learn French certainly aren’t helping!

So, on top of all of the immediate (and somewhat shallow, yet still valid and driving) reasons for learning French, there are some fundamental reasons for learning a new language. I like languages – I think Elliot rubbed off on me. I’m having a great time learning French. The trouble with Spanish is that I don’t ever see myself living in Spain or Mexico (perhaps there are more promising countries further south…) so I don’t ever see myself using Spanish more than for basic travel communication. The thing with French now is that I could see myself visiting France for an extended period of time, and having the ability to adventure into Africa is also intriguing. Finally, there is just some intrinsic value to knowing a language. It makes me more happy and satisfied with myself – probably because I’m picking up more than just a language, but a whole new culture and set of possibilities. In a sense, I’m expanding my view of the world, and I like this.

Anyways, French is coming along nicely. I feel like my French after three weeks is comparable to my Spanish after three months. I think my attitude and motivation behind learning the language is probably partially responsible for this, and already knowing another romance language is definitely helping out. I’ll throw up another post with my methods later for those interested. I’ll just let you know for now that I can speak with (in my opinion) relatively good pronunciation and speed, I can kind of read, and I can hardly write. I’ve been avoiding reading and writing in French for now because I have a feeling that seeing the words is going to poison my pronunciation… which in my mind was going to be the big sticking point for French.

I just spent the last few hours typing up entries – I made it through June 10th, or day 21 of my adventure. I started adding pictures to the first few posts, but it’s pretty time consuming so I’m going to wait until I have the whole journal transcribed, then go back and add pictures. Just a heads up – if you read everything now, you’ll miss the pictures! Don’t worry though, it’s a good journal, and you won’t mind looking through it again

If you don’t want to wait on me to go through the pictures and add them to the journal (where they’re in context and make sense / have stories behind them…) you can head over to my picture site and see them all! My pictures are located at http://pictures.benmurrell.com – check it out! Quick warning though: I took a lot of the same pictures, especially in dark places. This is because I didn’t figure out the high-ISO setting until about half way through the trip, so I was struggling with holding the camera really still during long exposure times. I’d just keep taking them until I was happy with the picture… which is why you’ll see several of the same basic picture in a row. Also, it took me a while to perfect taking pictures of myself Enjoy!

I started transcribing my travel journal yesterday – for the most part it’s 1:1 with grammatical/spelling issues taken care of. When I come across confusing stuff, I elaborate or expand a bit without making any comment about it. Things in [[]] are my comments looking back, and a few times I’ve written out some reflections at the end of a post. I’m through 11 days so far, and I have 28 left to transcribe – I’ll probably finish up by the end of the week.

The transcriptions are backdated in the blog – I’ve set the publish date for each post as the actual date I wrote the journal entry. This just means that you’re not going to see the transcriptions showing up at the top of the blog – they’re more towards the bottom. For a quick listing of all of the entries, you can view the EuroTrip 2009 Journal category.

Well, I’m in Dublin now – I just landed today at 3:45 and got to the hostel around 7.

Interesting facts about the flight from Barcelona to Dublin: in Reus (where my flight left from) my visa section got looked at for the first time ever. They kept asking a lot of questions about why I had no entry stamp so I told them where I came from and when I came to Europe and stuff like that. It didn’t make sense to them that Italy wouldn’t stamp me upon arrival. They finally let me through and I got my first stamp in my passport. Then when I got to Dublin, I was asked the first time “what is the purpose of your visit?” I told them I was flying back to the US on Sunday, so they gave me a 24 hour visa. Woo, another stamp! Also, I almost missed the flight, which would have been an expensive mistake. The train didn’t leave as regularly for the airport as I thought and I didn’t check the time table beforehand. The flight left at 2:05. I got to Reus at 1:30. Got a taxi to the airport, which got me there at about 1:45. Checked my bag literally a minute before it shut down, and lined up for RyanAir’s visa check stand which took forever because of the people in front of me. No line at security – I made it to the gate at 2:00 and got on the plane at about 2:08. Phew. But I made it!

Anyways, I had an amazing time in Barcelona – it may end up being my favorite city of the trip. I met back up with Andres and Chris who I met in Berlin, I had great roommates, and I met a lot of really cool people every day. The only downsides were the constant stream of drug dealers and velocitutes in the streets at night… And the guys on the beach saying “fanta agua cola cerveza beer”, “coco coco coco”, “massahee, massahee”, and my personal favorite, “dadu dadu dadu dadu dadu dadu dadu” (this one remains a mystery to me). The velocitutes are the super aggressive prostitutes of Barcelona. Mostly they’re out to pick pockets – they grab everyone that walks by and are super annoying. Same with the dealers – they’re also out to steal your stuff and are quite agressive about it. In one night I had my butt grabbed/slapped by a velocitute and had two dealers double team me with a high five let’s dance move by one while the other wrapped his leg around mine. I made it home with all of my stuff thankfully… Unfortunately on my first night one of the guys on the beach with us during the Dia de San Juan festival had his pants stolen, and my Argentinian roommate had his wallet stolen (which he promptly recovered by breaking the guy’s nose – lost the cash in it but it still had the cards and stuff).

I’m sad to go home tomorrow – I’m looking forward to it, but I’m having the best time of my life here, and there is still (after 39 days) so much to see and do, so many people to meet, so many things to try… This just means I’m going to have to step it up back at home

I leave at 9:20 Dublin time and get to NY (JFK) at 11:55. I have 4 hours there, then I leave for KC and will land at 6:30. My job starts at 8am on Monday. Yay?

I got up at 11, checked my email, got out my copy of Crime and Punishment, and went to the roof of the hostel to read and try to get some sun before hitting the beaches of Barcelona. I read till 12:30 and thought I hadn’t really gotten any sun. I walked back inside, Facebooked, then walked to the Plaza Nueva and got a Tortilla Patata (Spanish omelet sandwich), then walked to the Corte Ingles [[big department store, like a mall all in one store]]. I found some swimming trunks and sunscreen… and didn’t buy either – they were way too expensive! I did buy some gum though. I went back to the hostel, changed & showered, then walked to the train station (I got Schwarma on the way). I decided I’d like to leave tonight and take the night train that arrives in Barcelona at 9:00am instead of the day train that arrives at 5:00pm… I got a night train reservation, walked back to the hostel, played ping pong with Collin (who I met in Seville), then said bye to Oliver. I made the final decision to leave (the reservation was only 5 euros, so I was still up in the air about leaving). I took a 1 hour Spanish course, then shared my 1.5L of sangria with David, Tatiana, and Collin before I left (David and Tatiana I met during the Spanish course). I left the hostel at 9:20 (I lost my 18 euros for the night – I had paid the day before), got to the train station, got on the train with some Irish girls from the hostel, then realized I had reserved a seat and not a bed. (When I ordered the ticket, I did it all in Spanish – the guy had a really strong accent, and I thought I had gotten a bed but I guess not. With 10 minutes left, I asked “Puedo cambiar a una cama?” and switched to a bed for 25 euros more). I’m on the night train right now and I’m looking forward to Barcelona and the Dia del San Juan festival tomorrow night

On the train, I met Felipe from Brazil on the train – we were sharing a room. He didn’t speak English, so we spoke exclusively in Spanish for about an hour – He’s from Brasilia (the Capitol of Brazil) but is living in Spain. He said I know a lot of Spanish compared to most people from the US that he has met. He also cracked some McDonald’s and Coca-Cola jokes on Americans, but I thought it was funny! We talked about a lot of random stuff – where we’re from, what he’s doing in Spain, about America and how people seem less friendly/personable there, and about Brazil, about Rio de Janeiro and its crime. This really brought the Spanish back – I had been using it a bit in Seville and Granada, but this really gave me an opportunity to practice, and it was good!

I got up at 10:30am, ate, and went on a walking tour of the Albaycin. I got done at 1:00, then walked to La Alhambra for my 2:00 entry time. I got my ticket at 1:30, then waited a bit and had ice cream, then went to get an audio guide. I got behind two girls who kept asking questions – I thought I was going to miss my entry time… But, like most people I’ve gotten annoyed with for stupid reasons on this trip, they became friends: While I walked to the entrance of the palace, I was lost and I could tell they were too. I said hi and asked if they knew where to go (no) and so we made a group and I led the way. They were Aisha and Lindsey from the San Francisco area – they were studying Spanish in Seville. When I told them my name, they groaned – something about ex boyfriends named Ben… haha. Anyways. We did the whole Alhambra together and then went and got some tinto de verano (like sangria) and tapas at a bar. They had to catch a bus back to Seville and wanted me to come back with them (aww, but I had Barcelona to get to!) I saw them off at the bus stop, got Shawarma and ate it at my hostel. I finally reunited with Oliver. I showered, then met new people in my room. Oliver, Urs (Switzerland, physicist), Ilya, Margaux, and I went for tapas and hooka (shisha). After tapas, we ended up in a cool Moroccan/Turkish hook place with fountains and couches and had green apple hookah and tea. We got home around 2:00am.

Funny story – the night before, I was a bit congested and slept on my back which apparently made me snore. When I woke up in the morning, I remembered a small girl pushing me and telling me that I was snoring – oops! It was so distant that it seemed like a dream… I asked Ilya about it later and it was her! So I woke up to a small Swedish girl beating me with her sheets from across the aisle (we were both on top bunks). She cracked me up when she retold the story – “I looked for anything I could throw at you, but I couldn’t find anything, so I rolled up my sheet and hit you with it. After one time, you stopped for a second. Then I hit you again, harder. I was so tired, I’m so sorry for being a bitch! Then I hit you again and you woke up” this is the part I remember… she said “Sleeping on your back is not allowed! You are snoring! You need to roll over!” So I did – hearing her describe it was hilarious though, how I was “so obedient” – ha! I had her teach me a bit of Swedish for that one, so I can now say hi and bye in the language that I still can’t identify!

[[Commentary]] Granada is one of the few cities in Spain that still does free tapas. As you order drinks, they progressively bring you better and better food. And it’s good – not like chips and salsa… like real food.

I haven’t posted for 10 days because I haven’t been in a hostel with free computers since Prague. I installed the Wordpress app for my iPod and it lets me post without long loading times, and it has a horizontal keyboard so I can type a bit quicker. I’m writing this from Granada, España. It’s really hot here!

The last post I wrote, I wrote from Prague. That was 10 days ago. I will briefly describe what I’ve done and where I’ve been since then (yay iPod keyboard).

My path was: Prague, Vienna, Munich, Seville, and Granada. In Prague it rained basially the whole time I was there. I went out on a pub crawl and met a local who gave me a tour the next day (thanks Zuzana!). That night I went out with the same guys from the night before. The next day I left for Vienna by bus. I got there around 5 or so, and met My roommates then I met some more people in the bar at the hostel. We ended up going to a club called Chelsea which was really cool and packed. Ended up meeting a local who gave me a tour after we left at 6 (thanks Julia!). I slept till 3 then got up and went out to get some schnitzel. When I got back I ran into my roommate Simon and we decided to go see an opera. It ended up being a ballet, Anna Karenina. It was good, but I had never read the book so it was hard to follow.

After Vienna, I caught a train to München (Munich). On my first day I walked out to the Oktoberfest fairgrounds and saw the giant Bavaria statue. I walked home then it rained. I met some people from Florida, then some people from KU that I had run into in Florence. Went to the hofbrauhaus with them, then came home. The next day, I went to Dachau, then ran into some guys I met in Prague. Hung out with them and some aussie girls, then went to the hofbrauhaus with them and a guy from Munich.

On my last day in Munich, I went on a bike tour of Munich. It stopped off in the englisch gardens at the Chinese pagoda… Good times. Afterwards, I did laundry and ran into some guys I met In Berlin. We did the hofbrauhaus (again) then went to the kultfabrik club area which ended up being pretty lame. Got back at 4ish and slept till 7. Got up early cause I had a flight to Seville at 1145. Got to Seville around 5 and checked out the giralda tower. Went to a tapas bar and then a flamenco show, and then to some bars with a guy from Uruguay and 2 guys from France who were cruising in their yacht around Europe. The next day in Seville I went to all of the sights.

After Seville, I went to Granada. And this 10 day post just went to 8 or 9 because I’m tired of typing on here! More to come later!