VOTE FOR MY MOM!!!!

on Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Hey Everyone!


My mom was 1 of 3 persons nominated to represent the Minnesota Twins Baseball Team at the MLB All-Star Game this summer for her contributions to her community. If you guys know my mom, you know that she devoted her life to helping others, but we need your help so she wins!! 


PLEASE go to www.peopleallstars.com and click on the Minnesota Twins logo and vote for Brianda Cediel. You can vote more than once (you just have to refresh the page or click the link again) and voting is open until June 20th.


Thank you for your support and please share the link with your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, twitter followers, and facebook contacts.

Barcelona, Francisco, Champion's League, Portofino, and Paris!

The past couple of weeks have gone by in a flash! I have been really busy traveling and enjoying my time with Francisco but this Friday I have my first final exam so this post is more of a short summary of what I have been up to than the normal detailed posts I write.

Two weekends ago I went to Barcelona with Johan and we had a great time. Unfortunately I absentmindedly left my passport at home so I had to come back and pay for another flight for the next morning. I arrived to Barcelona a day later than planned but I met up with Johan at the hostel and we had a great time. The highlights included meeting 2 nice girls from Canada, 2 nice girls from Georgia, going to the beach, going clubbing until the wee hours of the morning, celebrating Barcelona's league championship with the rest of the city, and walking around the beautiful city. La Sagrada Familia was a really beautiful site and overall I had a great time. Our flight home was cancelled so we stayed in a hotel an extra night but then came back early the next morning. I really liked the city but I think I would rather work and live in Madrid and then vacation in Barcelona.

When we got back to Milan I was really excited because my brother would be arriving in a couple days. On the special day I got up early to meet him at the airport and it was awesome to see him again. Later that day I took him to the Duomo and the other historic places around the city and we had a lot of fun. That next Saturday we both put on our Inter jerseys and went to Piazza Duomo to cheer on Inter in the Champions League Final with tens of thousands of other people. It was easily the largest crowd I have ever been in (even larger than the Obama speech in Philadelphia before elections). Inter ended up winning and the city went crazy and it was really cool to be able to experience such a crazy event with Francisco. The following morning we headed to the Italian Riviera to relax from the previous day's madness. We headed to a small town called Santa Margharita Ligure and then Portofino, which is considered by many to be the most beautiful port on the Mediterranean. It was one of the most beautiful places I have seen and every way we turned looked like a postcard. We had a great day and we got some well deserved rest.

The rest of the week I finished my last classes and we also went out to Old Fashion one night so Francisco could get a feel for the night life in Milano. He also spent a bit of time watching Entourage because I told him how much he enjoyed it.

On Thursday, Francisco and I headed to Paris to spend a day at the French Open at Roland Garros. Our first day we went to the tennis tournament and saw some great players and matches. The most notable players we saw were Robin Soderling (last year's finalist) and Maria Sharapova (the blond bombshell). In total we saw roughly 10 hours of tennis and we were exhausted at the end of the day from being in the sun for so long. Like my previous trip to Paris, we were very fortunate because we stayed at my mom's friends house and we had a lot of fun with them. Our 2nd day in Paris we went on a bike tour and we had a lot of fun. The weather the previous day was perfect but it got colder and cloudier during the bike tour and it even rained a little bit. I think I always bring the bad weather to Paris. After the bike tour through the historic center of the city Francisco and I went to an area in the SE part of the city near 'Bercy' and saw the movie Robin Hood or Robin des Bois as they like to call it and then had dinner at a micro brewery. It was a really fun evening and we both loved the small village feel to the area with the movie theater and all the restaurants. If Milano or Philly had an area like that, I would probably be there every weekend! That night Adriana had friends over and we had fun talking to them. The husband was French but his wife was Colombian so it was interesting to talk to her. She said that the thing she missed the most from Colombia was Dunkin Donuts so we had a good laugh about that (Our dad's side of the family owns all of the Dunkin Donuts in Colombia).

On our 3rd and last full day in Paris we went to Montmartre, Notre Dame, saw the Moulin Rouge, Arc de Triomphe, Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, and the Statue of Liberty. We also met up with one of Francisco's close friends from college, Lynn Huynh, for lunch at a Colombian restaurant and we had a lot of fun. Francisco had a bandejita paisa and I had a tamale but the one my aunt makes is actually better! That night when we got back to Adriana's apartment we had dinner and then watched the movie Frantic, a 1988 thriller with Harrison Ford, because it was set in Paris and we wanted to see a movie with Paris in it. It turned out to be the PERFECT movie for the occasion because it was entertaining and in the movie the retraced the SAME exact steps we had done that same day. It was a lot of fun.

The next morning we got up early to pack up and head to the airport. When we got to the airport, Francisco and I stood in line at the gate for like 2 hours to make sure we were the first people on the plane so we could sit next to each other and get good seats. Fortunately our plan worked and we were able to watch Entourage the entire way home on his iPhone. Later that evening (last night) we finished watching the last season of Entourage and now I need to start studying for my finals!

I hope you have all been well! We miss you guys!

Camilo & Francisco