I didn’t know that much about Tara Dower before watching this film, but I particularly like how she would rather introduce herself as “trail folk” instead of “ultrarunner,” and that one of her biggest talents seems to be inspiring an entire squad of friends to help her achieve her insane goals (and they all seem to be having so much fun doing it)(video)

Apparently a huge swath of the northern United States could see the northern lights this past week. I missed them, and maybe you did too, but this commercial airline pilot sure saw them from the cockpit of a Boeing 787 flying from Calgary to London and WOW did he get some wild photos of them.

I got really excited when I saw this video pop up on YouTube, listened to it like ten times, and announced to Hilary, “Hey, new José González album dropping soon,” and then realized that the album is not coming until March 27th. So, “Hey, new José González song available now” if you’re into that sort of thing, and if you’re not, let me just say that I have asked my music industry friend if José González is indeed the very nice guy he seems to be, and have received confirmation. He’s just one of those musicians who could keep writing music that’s 70-90% the same as his old stuff for the next 20 years and I’d keep eating it up.

I have feelings of great validation whenever I hear that someone smarter/more successful/faster than me espouses some sort of trick I’ve been doing for a long time without knowing that it’s actually a thing. Like when I read that author David Epstein sleeps in his workout clothes to eliminate that small bit of friction when he needs to get out and exercise the next morning. Or when sports scientist and CEO of newsletter sponsor Precision Fuel & Hydration Andy Blow says to spend two minutes the night before thinking about what training you’re going to do the next day as one of his tips of How to motivate yourself to train this winter. (<—This link will give you 15% off your first 2026 order on the PFH website, but you might also have to enter the code SEMIRAD26 when you check out)

This is the second time in two weeks that I’ve shared a link from the r/FoundPaper subreddit but I particularly enjoy this definition of art, and the photo of the room in the school basement where it was found.

This poem, “Occasional Poem,” by Jacqueline Woodson, simultaneously feels so effortless and so powerful, which is probably why she’s written more than 30 books and won a whole bunch of awards.

This photo gallery of the “snow monsters” that appear during winter conditions at Japan’s Mount Zao ski resort is so cool. I don’t know what else to say but it’s worth scrolling through on a screen, probably the bigger the better. [GIFT LINK]

I loved this short piece on Geographic Geoff’s substack, which answers a question that, like me, maybe you’ve asked before but maybe just in your own head, and maybe you, like me, were not in a place to google it, and then forgot about it, but now, please enjoy the answer to that question, “Lots of countries end with ’-stan’ but why?”

On our most recent Trailhead podcast episode, Zoë and I interviewed our mutual friend Doug Mayer, who started the tour company Run The Alps, and who has also run the 330-kilometer Tor des Geants not once, but three times, and wrote a graphic novel about the race. I probably say this a lot because I try to have fun in most things I do, but this episode was really fun to record, and I hope if you listen to it, you laugh as much as we did.
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube

The thing when you go out clubbing until 4am is that the possibilities for the next day become greatly limited if you want to get any sleep at all. Naturally, I missed the first sunny Barcelona morning in literally a week and woke up at 1pm. After breakfast (if you can even call it that), Natalie, Gracie, and I met at la Plaza Catalunya for some shopping time. Twas very fun, but I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad that we were spending the first sunny day indoors. We visited Bershka, Pull and Bear, and one big box store and the prices at every place were amazing. To add on, skirts, shirts and pants that already were only $20 or $30 often were on sale for 40, 50, 60, or 70 percent. I bought one sequin-ey skirt that I can wear clubbing (when its a lot warmer), but I absolutely hated all the clubbing-quality tops I tried on. Yuck.

Oh yeah, and then I had my first real experience in a McDonald’s. I didn’t eat anything, dare you assume, but I sat perched on the edge of my chair and watched Gracie and Natalie eat cheeseburgers, french fries, and ice cream.

More on the newfangled sunniness here: My host mom told us that unideal weather does not show up very frequently in Barcelona and one day later it started raining and didn’t stop until today. The first day was foreboding clouds warning what was to come, the second and third days were torrential downpours during which I got my new leather jacket very wet (whoops), and the fourth, fifth, and sixth days were general dreariness and cloudiness with some rain sprinkled in (sprinkled- thats a pun). I didn’t realize how much I was craving sun until I stepped outside today and instantly smiled. :)

Gotta go eat dinner- I’m late!

Back from dinner and now procrastinating doing homework. It’s funky because I swear I want to do my homework- it sounds fun and I want to learn about the stuff we’re learning about in my classes- but the very notion that I would be “doing homework” is what spoils the idea. Maybe I’ll post some photos on here and then start my readings :)

The last few days in Barcelona!

Hello again from Barcelona! Technically tomorrow morning will mark two weeks that I’ve been here. I’m amazed its been two weeks already but then I also feel like I’ve been here for forever; time is wacky. I was reading about the stages of adapting to a new culture for my Psychology class (totally should’ve majored in psych, its so interesting and I actually want to do the readings for this class compared to forcing myself to read the academic journals for my environmental studies class. I’m making a bold claim to say I would even read the readings, but we’re at the beginning of the semester and I have to reach for the stars), and it was talking about the honeymoon phase and then sinking into a deep depression and ultimately leveling out and finding satisfaction with your new situation. I’d heard about these stages many times before, but this particular article made the point that they have very little scientific backing. If I were to go along with it just for fun, I feel like I maybe experienced a small watered-down dose of each stage during my first weeks here. If we can think of my time in Barcelona as a cupcake: I was eating the same cake and frosting every day but the sprinkles would shift.

The first few days would’ve been my honeymoon, where just walking down the street got me excited (to be fair, walking down virtually any street anywhere in Europe would probably excite me because there’s just so much to see). I was so, so happy to have a cozy bedroom, clean bathroom, and a nice Host Mom who always welcomed me back home, and I was soaking up Catalan culture like a thirsty sponge (not true at all- I wanted to be, but I was battling my eyelids to stay awake so I could hear literally any of what we were being told during orientation). Anyways, it was new and novel and exciting and I felt like a real adult.

Then dawned the morning of the fourth day and… the storm clouds of an intense depression rolled in. I cried myself to sleep, I cried myself out of bed in the morning, and I used my own tears to brush my teeth (very salty)- what could be sadder than that? I hope you know I’m lying. In truth I don’t feel like I really ever got that sad about anything. I didn’t miss Talkis or my cat or the American version of McDonald’s like my friends did, and I didn’t find orientation insufferable like the Miami girls (just extremely sleep-provoking). Of course I missed my family (hi guys!!), but it honestly felt like it would feel at St. Olaf- somehow being 4,500 miles away is not hugely different from being 45 minutes away (I know others feel differently). This probably means I miss them more than most other college students, because there are times throughout the day where I really wish I could hug them even for just a second, but then again the same thing happens at St. Olaf. And as for my friends, 90% of them are off on their own adventures and are also halfway across the world!

The main cause of my dark and stormy depression stage and fitful nights tossing and turning and not being able to sleep (joking again) was being worried about making friends on the program. Actually, compared to how it could’ve gone, making friends was a seamless process and was not even that stressful at all. I was never left without a group, and I love most everyone I’ve met (which I guess makes sense because many of them are from St. Olaf. I self-selected the right school I guess). That being said, I will always find a way to worry, and I stressed myself out about the potential of our friend group dissolving and never seeing each other again after orientation ended. Very much first-week-of-freshman-year thoughts and concerns. What I didn’t realize is that we all genuinely like each other and want to hang out, and if we want to hang out we’ll find ways to hang out even if we don’t see each other every single day. The best part is I will see one of them every single day because we live together! Natalie and I (and Gracie) already have one weekend trip to Switzerland booked and have plans for Portugal and Andorra in the mix. I go back and forth between feeling super connected to all the new people I’ve met here and like a powerhouse of relationship building and, five minutes later, brainstorming ways I could survive as a hobbit in a remote forest where I would never have to talk to anyone again because I feel like I don’t really know anyone and how could I possibly be friends with people who have like 3,000 followers on Instagram. But I’m guessing someone with very sage wisdom would tell me that none of that is uncommon.

And onto the third stage where I can comfortably position myself now: the leveling out and finding satisfaction. I’ve (mainly) stopped gawking over my new friends and searching for their approval and started joking around, being myself, and having fun. Mainly. I’ve become accustomed to eating whatever I find on the dinner table, even if said thing is “cheese” but looks like whale blubber, or is a slice of ham that appears to have an equal ratio of fat to meat. I’ve stopped scanning the sidewalk for dog poop anytime I walk anywhere and checking the bottom of my shoes when I get back to the apartment. Okay, that’s a little bit of a lie- I definitely still do that. What I’m getting at is that now life in Barcelona feels like exactly that: Life, and not a trip. I’m not going to say I’m practically a local, but I’m developing routines and picking up on behaviors that initially confused me. I’ve developed a balanced work vs. play mindset where I’m still in discovery and awe mode but homework and sleep are catching more and more ground.

Well that whole thing was supposed to be like three sentences and then I was going to write about what I did this weekend, but alas… here we are. I’ll give a really quick tiny summary of the weekend events and maybe write more later!

Thursday:

• Day 2 of internship. It was the final day of intensives for the kids at Learnlife, so I got to admire amazing art pieces, help them set up their restaurants, and listen to a bunch of basically professionally recorded songs!
• Went out to Brunch and Cake with my fellow interns for lunch and got a basque cheesecake!
• Booked flights and hostels for our Switzerland trip
• Dinner, made possible by Cristina
• Went out- the college student meaning- with friends to the Sutton club, which was the most fun club I’ve been to yet. We stayed and danced until 3am.

Friday:

• 1st 3 day weekend! It felt like infinity!
• Slept until 1pm (cry) (cry) (cry)
• Went shopping with Natalie and Gracie. Stores visited: Bershka, Pull & Bear, McDonalds (referenced in my “Post About Nothing”). I bought a really short pink skirt and a gray sweater for just $25.00!
• Dinner, again made possible by Cristina
• Debated doing something but decided not to because we had to wake up early the next day to catch the bus

Saturday:

• 1.5 hour bus ride to Tossa de Mar
• We had from 10:00am-7:00pm to explore the town. However, it was mainly abandoned and empty for the winter (its more of a summery beach town) and it was torrential down pouring for the majority of the afternoon sooo we spent the last 2 hours huddled inside a supermarket counting down the minutes until we could get back on the bus :) The morning was fun though! We hiked up this hill to a castle and soaked in the most gorgeous views- I’ll post photos! And we had a good lunch at a piza place.
• Went out that night to George Payne (George Payless haha inside joke) Irish Bar. It was extremely hot, loud, and smokey and not the most enjoyable place to be. Gracie, Natalie, and I played cards: a few rounds of B.S. and a few rounds of Garbage, then headed back around 1:30am.

Sunday:

• Woke up and finished reading Hudson Bay Bound, finally!!
• Went on my first true run since I’ve been here! Explored 5 miles around Sarría Sant-Gervasi and it was sunny and not raining for the first time in forever. I saw a few markets, churches, and green rolling hills in the background.
• Natalie and I took the metro into central Barcelona and found an adorable coffee shop where we sat for 5 hours and did homework. I ordered a pistachio croissant and ended up getting banana bread instead because the lady accidentally sold my croissant to someone else (after I’d ordered and payed for it). The banana bread actually ended up being really good.
• Dinner made possible by… Cristina! We had canelons, which are like a Catalan lasagna/enchilada.
• Purchased flights to Portugal! Got scammed again and the flights ended up being $15 more than I thought
• Blogged and pretended to do homework

Now I really have to go to bed! Goodnight, good afternoon, good morning wherever you are on the planet!

• 8:10 - Alarm goes off
• 8:20 - Mazie gets out of bed
• 8:45 - Mazie manages to put her shoes on and leave the apartment
• 8:49 - Catch the L7 metro
• 9:00 - Mazie exits the metro station in Plaza Catalunya and starts speed walking to hopefully condense the 19 minute walk into a 13 minute one.
• 9:17 - Mazie gets to class two minutes late, but its fine because the professor is having technical issues which, as she is learning, happens nearly every day in this class.
• 9:17-11:00 - Class: Comida y Cultura en el Mediterráneo
• 11:00 -11:15 - Mazie walks up 7 flights of stairs twice because she is very cold and her next class is on the top floor
• 11:15 - 1:00 - Class: Cross-Cultural Psychology. Mazie engages in deep analytic thinking.
• 1:00: Mazie leaves the SIS building to find lunch (she still hasn’t got into the routine of packing a lunch because the seven million bakeries across the city are too appealing)
• 1:30 - Mazie lands on a lunch spot: a French bakery near La Sagrada Familia. She orders half of a chicken curry sandwich which tastes as good as it looks.
• 1:45-3:30 - Mazie wanders around Barcelona. She finds some really cool looking historic buildings, a hospital that also happens to be in a cool historic building, and a beautiful modern park that is her favorite park she’s encountered so far.
• 3:30 - Class: Sustainable Development in Spain: Challenges and Pathways. We had our first field trip during class today, where we stopped into little (claustrophobic) hidden parks around the Eixample barrio and learned about how Barcelona was supposed to be one of the greenest cities in Europe and ended up being the least green. These teeny parks are the remnants of that ambition. I will say, my shoulders hurt so bad by the end. Even after making my backpack as light as it can be, five hours of carrying it around is still a lot.
• 5:15 - 5:30 - Mazie’s second speed walk of the day, back to the SIS building
• 5:30 - 7:30 - Class: Global Internship Seminar. This only happens every few weeks.
• 7:30 - 8:00 - Mazie and Natalie hop on board the L1 and then the L7 back to El Puxtet and Sant-Gervasi.
• 8:05 - Mazie and Natalie are 5 minutes late for dinner. Cristina has graciously prepared us salad, soup, bread, beans, and some sort of meat for dinner with fruit for dessert. Mazie slices and inspects her meat carefully.
• 9:00 - Everyone cleans up dinner. Cristina watches the finale of her reality TV game show!
• 9:30 - Mazie cleans up her room a bit and does some texting and phone maintenance.
• 10:20 - Mazie calls her tech support guy Jamie and they chat for longer than you would expect your typical provider-client small talk to go on for.
• 11:21 - Mazie posts this blog post :)

Oh whoops, I totally didn’t realize micro.blog was going to format my post like that! It was supposed to be organized by line and not an assault on the eyes hahahaaaaa

Tossa de Mar! Didn’t catch any pictures from the last three hours when we were stuck doing laps around a supermarket and waiting for the bus because it started pouring rain.

Oh yeah, also didn’t realize the snails I was holding for a solid 30 minutes were extremely poisonous 😬

Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen/Watch on YouTube

For My Favorite Things, I’m interviewing people about the books, movies, music, art, and other creative works that have helped shape their lives. My guest for Episode 8 is Chandra Brown, writer, educator, raft guide, and founder of the Freeflow Institute (where she has graciously allowed me to teach an annual writing workshop since 2019). Chandra’s favorite things are:

1. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Publisher’s Page | Bookshop | Amazon

2. My Morning Jacket, At Dawn (album)

Apple Music | Spotify | YouTube

3. America Windows by Marc Chagall, Art Institute of Chicago

4. Sturgill Simpson concert at the Wilma in Missoula, November 8, 2016

5. Her dad’s Micromet weather data collection units, early 1990s to present

—

If you get partway through watching this 9-minute video about “The Owl Man of Logan Airport” and you think, “OK, I get it,” please let me advise you to stick around to hear Norman Smith tell the Starling vs. Peregrine Falcon vs. Snowy Owl story (video)

This post has a handful of the captivating photos that Martin Roemers took of people around the world posing with (or in) their vehicles, and if you want to see a few dozen more, click through the links to his website (I wondered why the background was white in all the photos but one of the first photos on his website is a behind-the-scenes shot where you can see a vehicle parked on a huge white fabric backdrop). The book, Homo Mobilis, looks pretty great.

If you click on one thing in this week’s newsletter, let it be this wonderful story Anne Kadet wrote about The Trumpet Player in a Tux at Grand Central Station—and do yourself another favor and press play on the video so you can listen to the music while you read about this guy’s amazing life story and perspective.

Sometimes I think really good satire is just basically holding up a mirror to the things we do, without much exaggeration, and forcing the audience to admit that yeah, humans are pretty ridiculous. Like this McSweeney’s piece, Let Us Walk You Through Our Very Reasonable Baby Registry.

“The algorithm” gets a lot of well-deserved flak nowadays, and I think rightly so, but every once in a while it delivers me something like this 30-minute live set from this super-chill Ethiopian jazz duo Zena, from this Addis Ababa-based YouTube channel that has barely 1,000 followers, and it redeems itself a little bit. (I am aware that it’s not just one algorithm, of course).

Who among us has not at least once in their life been left hanging when trying to high-five/fist bump someone? This video of “left hanging moments” from NBA games was heartening for me, as I got to watch Very Cool NBA Legends like LeBron James, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant get left hanging many, many times, and do the same thing we all do: self-clap. Like don’t feel bad, it happens to everyone, including the greatest shooter of all time.

I was going to try to write something original about this 17-second video of this guy getting served food, and by the fourth time I watched it, cackling every time at the end, I can do no better than the most upvoted comment, “Oh the look of betrayal on that man’s face”

AND: a quick favor to ask: I’m coming up on one year as co-host of UltraSignup’s The Trailhead podcast. If you’ve been listening, and could take 60 seconds and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, I’d be grateful. And if you write a review, send your mailing address to me at brendan@semi-rad.com, and I’ll drop one of my “Put in the miles so you can put in the miles” stickers in the mail to you. Thanks!

—

This was a blog post I was going to publish a little over 24 hours ago before things got crazy. Like… really really crazy. This is the first time since then that I’ve had five seconds to just publish anything. So yeah I was going to write about the events of Saturday (Natalie and I embraced our inner tourists and visited some iconic Barcelona sights as well as witnessed a castell (human towers) and correfolk (fire dancing? playing?) festival, but then Saturday night happened and what I had thought had been an eventful day paled in comparison.

It’s funny because when I think back on this weekend, so many things happened, but I never remember feeling like that much was happening in the moment. Interesting how that works; maybe I’m just getting used to these plump three day weekends. I’ll give a quick overview: Friday the program took us on a day trip to Codorníu and Sitges to experience Spanish cavas (basically a sparkling champagne, but never tell a Spainard that because apparently they invented cavas before the French invented champagne) and a really adorbale beach town! At the winery, we got to ride a train (which actually felt like an amusement park ride) around the underground caves inhabited by thousands of wine bottles and taste two variations of cavas (I didn’t like either one). In Sitges we walked around, had lunch, left drawings in the sand on the beach, and got gelato (I went with a fire strawberry mango combination).

Natalie and I’s tourist Saturday began a little after noon because we went out on Friday night. We visited the Mercat de Encants first, which was a gigantic market housed in what I think was a bus station. There were multiple levels and so, so many vendors and people walking around. The most common items for sale were: watches, cameras, random vintage objects, fabric, so much fabric, clothes, jewelry, and rugs. Natalie bought an amazing gold heart watch that she adores and we both got matching flower necklaces! We shopped our way over to Mont Juic and the Museu d’Art d’Catalunya, which has free admission after 3:00 on Saturdays! We walked around the Gothic/Medieval art sections and then, desperately in need of rejuvenation, got a coffee/croissant at the museum cafe. We didn’t have time to see much before the museum closed after that, so we headed out to the Gracia neighborhood for the castell/correfolk festival! This is worth a blog post of its own, which it shall get later, but what I’ll note here is that this felt like one of the most authentic things I’ve done so far and I kept thinking to myself: I am witnessing culture! We stayed for an hour and a half and were late for dinner, but the party was still going strong when we left!

And then Saturday night… just a crazy night at the club. It was my first time (and Natalie’s too) going to one of the beach clubs. The beach clubs have a reputation for being the nastiest and the most dangerous of them all, so I haven’t been super keen on experiencing them. However, Natalie’s friend had free tickets and a free VIP table for us, so we decided it’d be worth it. We stood in the cold for an hour waiting to get in, but once we did we got to enjoy our own little area with a bottle of Vodka and a bunch of sparkling lemonade to mix it with. I drank a glass of sparkling lemonade with a quarter-sized amount of Vodka sadly mixed in, and I was sad I had any at all in there because the lemonade on its own was delicious. After we’d had our fill of the VIP life (really not that exciting), we transitioned to the dance floor and crazy stuff ensued. I guess they were right about the beach clubs after all!

Oh yeah, a few other things that have happened since my last blog post…

• I got my first experience of the world-class Spanish healthcare system with a visit to the hospital! Not for me- my roommate sprained her ankle by falling off a two-inch tall step on the sidewalk. She thought she was fine and we kept walking, and then it turns out she was very much not fine and walking turned to slower walking which turned to hopping on one foot which turned to sitting down and not moving. So I got to be the concerned parent who ordered us a taxi to the clinic and sat in the examination room while the doctor took her back for an x-ray. The whole thing was quite an adventure, and if you don’t count not being able to put any pressure on her foot, she’s totally fine! The doctor wrapped her foot up and gave her crutches which made 10 year old Mazie very jealous, and we’re just hoping she’s going to defeat the odds and come to a full recovery in four days before we leave for our Portugal trip!
• Noah Kahan released a new song- the first glimpse at his new album! Now begins three months of pure torture and anticipation and longing until the album is released. Listen to “The Great Divide” NOW! I urge you! Unless you want to miss out on the latest era of great music.

I’d love to keep writing but it’s past 2am and I have class at 9:15 that I still have to finish homework for, so I’m going to go do that! But to tie it all together, time really flies; its February 2nd now! Goodnight everyone and sending best wishes!

OMG I just have to say: Every time I get back for the night, the first thing my host mom says to me is “Que tal su día? Esteis cansadita (How was your day? You must be tired!)” and I know its said out of a kind and caring place, but it comes across as condescending and gets on my nerves, to the point where I flat out will say “Nope!” and give her a big, energetic grin to really prove it. It feels like a statement more than a question; like her thinking through the events of my day, taking a look at me- I must just naturally look tired- and concluding that there’s no way the person standing in front of her could have survived a day like that without ending up weary. Like thanks Cristina, but its going to take more than a 30 minute metro ride, a few hours helping kids with math or science or photography or piano lessons, and a 45 minute walk back accompanied by some banger music to break me down like that.

Some (ok actually kind of a ton) of pictures from the last week!

Even if I am putting other things off, posting is still a very valuable use of time on its own. It’s productive procrastination as I like to say. Anyways, there are two points to this blog post.

1. To tell everyone about my day (cuz why not)
2. To report on recent earth-shaking happenings in the music world that you mines while go bury yourself in a hole if you don’t know about. You can dig yourself back out after reading this.

Today was of the go-go-go type- not quite rushing from one thing to the next, but walking to the next thing, just really really fast. My route to class Monday and Wednesday mornings is: Metro L7: El Puxet - Plaza Catalunya, then a 20 minute walk from Plaza Catalunya to Carrer de Casp 130, Oficina COACB. From there I scan my fancy little student access code and walk up seven flights of stairs and down the hallway to my class. It’s literally the farthest classroom in the entire building. One of these days I’m gonna make a day in my life vlog and you can all watch this process instead of reading about it, which I’m sure is just riveting. Anyways, the point is that I can be a bit of an optimist in the mornings and sometimes the Google Maps walking calculations really do forget that you have two functioning legs and are not 105 years old. This morning I attempted to shove the 20 minute walk into more of a 10 minute kind of thing, which is better than some mornings have been but still not ideal (my dream is a lazy walk down the street where I can stop into a bakery for a croissant). I was 5 minutes late to class and sounded like a freight train bulldozing into the room after championing all those stairs.

We took a field trip today in my Comida y Cultura class to the Barcelona Chocolate Museum (I don’t think micro.blog really does emojis, but I would put a shocked face or chocolate bar or something here cuz thats how I felt when I learned there was a museum about chocolate in this city- and that we were going!). It was a very small museum; the coolest thing were the sculptures made purely of chocolate. They had Messi, the Smurf’s, Yoda, some historical scenes, a giant elephant, and a bunch more stuff made out of chocolate (I’ll include some pictures). Oh yeah, and our tickets themselves were bars of chocolate! Delicious! Turns out me and one other girl from my class took too long inside, so the rest of the class walked back without us and left us to rush back (no wonder…) to school just in time for my second class.

Cross-Cultural Psych was also fun today- we watched a documentary about babies. There was no narration which would usually bore me, but this documentary was actually really interesting! It followed four babies and their mothers from distinct areas of the world- Namibia, Madagascar, San Fransisco, and Tokyo, during their first year of life and hinted at the multitude of different ways to raise a happy and healthy child.

After class I have a break from 1:00-3:30, and today I set out on a mission: All I wanted for lunch was my absolute favorite “Empanada Pollastre” (which is just an empanada with chicken and peppers) from a bakery, or Forn de Pa in Catalan, right by my internship. As my internship is a solid 30 minute walk from school, I usually try out something different on school days, but today my mind was set. But when I arrived at 1:30 with a chicken empanada shaped hole in my heart, the lady told me that they hadn’t made any today and they’d be back tomorrow. Cry. After much deliberation I found a solution: Tío Bigotes, an empanada chain place that looked good. Another 30 minutes later I walked in the door there and ordered two empanadas: a spicy chicken and a caprese. These empanadas were a little longer and flatter than the one from the Forn de Pa by my internship, so they weren’t quite capable of filling the hole in my heart exactly, but nevertheless they were quite good (and they were heated up!). On my way back to school, and with time to spare, I passed the most adorable and delicious looking bakery I had ever seen in my life and simply had to stop. I ordered this mini hazelnut-filled donut thing and it was the most adorable and delicious tasting donut I had ever eaten in my life. And an added plus was I got to sit there amidst the heavenly smells for a while and do some work before I had to head back for my next class!

My last class of the day is Sustainable Development where the lectures are genuinely so interesting. Today we continued learning about how the city of Barcelona as we know it today has been shaped by historical factors and conflict, especially the Spanish Civil War, Franco’s dictatorship, conflict between Madrid and Catalonia, and the 1992 Olympics. We also had some time to work with our final project groups- we’re building a project proposal for the UK’s Darwin Initiative, assisted and constructed largely by AI with us as overseers and quality control. Its funny how professors have completely opposite views on AI use for assignments- I think my Ecospirituality professor from St. Olaf would faint if she heard about this project.

After class ended it was another 30 minute fast walk over to LOVECYCLE Barcelona for my first in-person spin class in Spain, which also happened to be free! The building was hip and cool, and so were the other people in the class (if I’m going to judge books by their covers). The class itself was SO much more fun than any other spin class I’ve taken, probably because it was live and the energy in the room was palpable, but also because the instructor literally had us dancing the entire time! It was never: Set your resistance to blank and cadence between blank and blank, but instead she would tell us a number of times to spin the resistance dial and then everyone would naturally fall into rhythm with the music. Every song was a dance party- she would give us a sequence of new moves for each one. I’m not kidding when I say dancing while spinning had so many benefits: it gave your upper body and mind a workout along with your legs, it noticeably increased the group’s energy, it made me connect with the music more, and it helped keep me from getting bored. I felt like such a newcomer trying to understand the instructor’s shouted Spanish over the loud music (also in Spanish) and being constantly surprised by class routines and traditions (like when everyone waves their towels in the air during the last song). But it was seriously a really fun time- cultural immersion for the day? check!

It was also right on my way home, so I had the perfect amount of time to get home in time for dinner at 7:40 after class ended at 7:05. If, of course, you define perfect as 35 minutes for a 35 minute walk. I barreled up those streets and ran red lights for fifteen minutes until I glanced down at Google Maps and saw that I somehow still had 30 minutes to go and was going to arrive late for dinner. So I shook off the confusion (my route was basically a straight line following a big road for 2km, so if I actually did manage to stray from the route, I’m honestly impressed) and barreled even harder this time all the way back. I did some serious barreling and walked in the door 8 minutes late, but better 8 minutes than 9!

Dinner was the most wonderful experience tonight. Cristina made cheese tortellinis with tomato sauce which was just so perfect, and we had our usual salad with the crunchy fried onion bits and bread. She also put out these fried fish stick things which were pretty good. After we cleaned up, Natalie rushed off to go see a movie and I ate my leftover chocolate pudding while watching a bit of Cristina’s game show. Then I decided to be smart and kind to my future self and hopped in the shower. Turns out that shower was an experience almost as wonderful as dinner.

Back in my room drying off, it was almost 10pm and I was still lingering in all that wonder and dreaming about getting a lot of sleep when I opened up my laptop to the scariest email I’ve ever received. The sender was Wrangell Mountains Field Studies, Alaska, one of the places I applied to for the summer, and the subject read: “In google meet call- here’s the link if you’re having trouble getting in”. I had totally forgotten that I scheduled an interview with them for tonight, because who schedules an interview for 9:45pm other than a forgetful study abroad student? I immediately turned the light in my room back on, threw a professional-looking shirt on, and logged in, blurting out an apology that was 70% truth and 30% excuse. I quickly realized that it didn’t matter that I’d been late, because there was no way I was going to be participating in this program anyways. Just a few of the reasons, from most to least salient, include: It costs $14,000 for seven weeks, there’s a bunch of fancy required gear, the guy interviewing me was way too cool, and you’re conducting actual field research and writing scientific reports the whole time. I know that last one is literally in the name, but somehow I read “field studies in Alaska” and understood “fun camping trip in Alaska”. It was still cool to hear about the program though, and now I’ll get to see if I even would have the option to go (if they accept me).

Then I did like two minuscule productive tasks and began writing this and, just like that, it appears my dreams of getting sleep jumped out the window to their death. I should’ve known to never leave dreams unsupervised. Ooooh inspirational quote moment, I like that! Tomorrow I’m back at my internship and part-time piano teacher position with a growing interest base, and then Friday at 4:00am Natalie and I will be heading to the airport bound for a verified 100% rainy, no getting around it weekend in Portugal! But its all good because tomorrow I am going to have a chicken empanada for lunch.

OMG I forgot I was going to write about Noah Kahan! No time- he came out with a new song, you have to listen, it’ll change your life, you also have to go to his tour, that’ll also change your life. And text or call or talk to me about it cuz I’d love to change our lives together :)

The day’s chocolate (and some other things I talked about in my super long post)!

All of the little scenes are from the chocolate museum and were made out of chocolate.

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For a good chunk of this video, I thought, “maybe this is a little too heavy to put in my newsletter,” and then I remembered the director is Irish, and it couldn’t stay heavy the entire time, which is probably why it got nominated for an Oscar (video)

I started following Dedra Smith/Pikitsuaki Designs on Instagram a few weeks ago because one of her wonderfully clever western designs made into my feed and I thought “well, this looks interesting” (I think it was this one or maybe this one? ) and they’re too good to not share here too. (here’s her website if you’re not on Instagram)

I don’t know how many people who read this newsletter will perk up at the mention of “a collection of 40-plus essays, short stories, comics, poems, illustrations and other works by trans creators, exploring the deeper meanings of the Fast & Furious franchise,” but I’m just going to say that I finished reading 2 Trans 2 Furious: An Extremely Serious Journal of Transgender Street Racing Studies this past week and it was one of my favorite books I’ve read in the past few months. Probably one of those books/fanzines that will sell 1,000 copies but I’m really glad to say that a bunch of people made it. (It does say it features “erotica” but I think there were only one or two stories in the whole thing that were, ahem, racy.)

This is a story about my friend Syd’s friend Brian, written by their friend John, who happens to work for the New York Times. It’s about Brian’s nearly three-year battle with prostate cancer (after his oncologist told him he had three to five years to live in March 2023). It’s called “A Role Model for How to Die,” and is of course about a tough subject, but in the limited time I’ve spent with Brian, his spirit and personality definitely shine through the story. [GIFT LINK]

We interviewed author Brad Stulberg this past week for The Trailhead about his new book The Way of Excellence and it was a great time. I found myself highlighting lots of passages in the book, and my first question for him during the interview was basically “So your new book is about excellence. What’s something you’re you terrible at?” And he was a good sport about answering that (as well as our other questions).

I saw this Ringer headline, “How will we remember the Luka trade 100 years later?” And thought, “This HAS to be a joke, because, you know, American professional basketball leagues aren’t even 100 years old (“Go Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons!”), and a hundred years is a long, long time to remember anything, let alone a trade between two (OK, three) basketball teams. I am please to report that it is, indeed, a joke, and honestly a good bit, since I am barely aware of what’s going on in the NBA and I couldn’t escape coverage of the one-year anniversary of the Luka trade this past week.

Here’s a fun project coming up from some friends of friends: the World Climate Relay, a challenge week (June 5-12, 2026) involving (hopefully) 10,000-plus people from more than 50 countries, to raise more that $100,000 for high-impact climate charities via the Giving Green Fund. (It’s the same dates of my Freeflow Institute writing + trail running workshop so I wasn’t going to participate—but maybe we’ll do it as part of the workshop?). More information here if you’re interested/need something to get you motivated to get out there in June.

And finally: This mug was the best-selling item in my DFTBA shop last month (and so far this month):