My good friends Chad & Candy Pearson are trying to rase money to bring there new adopted son Clifford A.K.A. Cliffy G home from Ethiopia. Chad & Candy are two of the most loving and other centered people that I know. And now they are adopting a son from Ethiopia, how amazing is that! Help support and bring Cliffy home by buying a shirt and wearing it with pride.

After leaving London we spent a few days in Salisbury England, to see Stonehenge and we made a new friend named Tobias, who was staying in the same hostel room with us. Tobias was from Denmark and had been traveling for the last month or so trying to figure out where he wanted to live. It was nice to get to know him for a few days and interesting to hear about Denmark.

We then left Salisbury and traveled by train to Luton to catch a plane to Spain. After traveling for about 12hrs straight and riding on just about every form of transportation imaginable (plane, train and automobile), we landed in Spain only to realize we had missed out train. By that time it was already 12 midnight and our only option was to spend the night on the street in front of the train station… AMAZING! I had never spent the night on the street but it was kinda fun. There where a lot of other foreigners that had missed there trains as well so we had plenty of company. That pretty much sums up the last 5 days, we are currently in Barcelona and it is raining outside. Hopefully we will have better weather the next couple of days we are here.

London:

Salisbury:

the youth hostel where we stayed.

Church we attended while in Salisbury.

Our new friend Tobias.

Barcelona:

Day 1:

Was spent mostly traveling on a plane, I didn’t freak out as much as I thought I was going to. I had never been on a plane longer than 6 hours, so I swear I was going to end up running down the aisle screaming “We’re all going to die, this plane is going down!” but I spent most of my time just watching movies. Confessions of a shopaholic is a horrible movie by the way.

Day 2:

After the long plane ride and lack of sleep (about 24 hrs of no sleep), Eric and I headed straight to downtown London and met up with my old roommate Josh Peters (see photo). Josh lives in London now and works for a church called Oasis in the downtown area. He was gracious enough to let us sleep for a couple of hours on some big bean bags and then gave us a quick tour of the city once he got off of work. We spent most of the afternoon walking around snapping photos and and asking Josh every question imaginable about London. He has done it all before so the quick tour we got was pretty pro.

London is a wonderful place, it’s like everything that I had imagined it to be. There are so many people riding around on bikes and scooters, public transportation is amazing. Cars have the right of way so you have to be carful not to get hit when walking across the street, they don’t stop for anything. There are fixed gear bikes everywhere! I was kinda surprised by that. Josh says that London is mostly flat so you can get around on a bike really easily, as long as you don’t get run over of course. After our tour we headed to Josh’s place for dinner. Josh was gracious enough to let us crash at his place and spend the weekend at his house. He has a great place with four other guys in a small town called Camberwell, about a 5 minute train ride from downtown.

Tomorrow we meet up with Jeff who broke off for the day to visit his daughter who lives in England. I think we are going to head downtown again and spend the day being tourist.

*Eric Barrios

*Josh Peters

Just picked this up, may the grooming begin.

Well I must say that this is really my first attempt at a mustache and I’m pretty proud of it.

So my stash has kinda turned into a full beard… well not “full”, but Im getting there. I think I’m going to keep it like this for the next couple of weeks and then maybe shave it into a nice stash.

Here is my letter to Jiffy Lube customer service:

Dear Jiffy Lube,

I just wanted to take a moment and let you know today was the first and last time I will be using one of your oil change services. I thought I would take a moment and tell you why. Today I went to your Charlotte Ave location in Nashville TN (location #2263, 1710 Charlotte Ave. Nashville, TN 37203) to get my oil changed. I can’t complain about your oil change service as it was exactly as advertised, but upon check out I have never been so racially insulted in my life.

After the employee asked me where I was from (Southern California), he began to tell me his views on illegal immigrants using racial slang like; “All them illegals from Guadalajara come’n over here steeling all the jobs” and “Now that our economy is doing bad all them lazy mexicans are going back”. I was completely astonished that in all my interaction with your employee and while he was taking my personal information to enter into the computer, he never bothered to realize my last name was Hernandez, one of the most common hispanic last names you can have.

Well I will tell you that my father came to this country as an immigrant, became a citizen, built his own business and payed for my college education all while doing some of the same work that “all those lazy mexicans” do. My father is the epitome of the American dream and I am very proud of him for what he has accomplished and for the better life he was able to give me and my family.

As a small business owner myself, I would never make any kind of racial or ethnic comment while dealing with a client or customer and I am appalled that you would hire anyone who would. Racism and ignorance are a plague on this country and I would hope that if you had any pride in your company, you would not employ anyone who displays any of these personal attributes. You have not only lost a customer but offended a second generation immigrant.

Just thought you should know, cheers.
Joshua Hernandez (second generation immigrant)

P.S. I will be posting this letter and your response on my blog and on every social internet community that I am apart of.

Lets see what they say back.