Información

Next year, if I decide to go back to Spain, I'll be placed in Zamora (Zamora) -- that's in the Castilla y León region, in Zamora city in the Zamora province. I really don't know anything about it, yet, but I have to do some research and decide whether or not I want to go back.

Interesting fact ~ the town where I'd be living in is 35 miles away from the Portugal border. Holy @!#)*~.

Also, this place super far away from the province where I lived in Spain, before (425 miles). Which was here --
Thank you, Wikipedia, for the geography lesson.

Other than that, I don't got much. All I know is that the dialect would change drastically, and the Spanish in the north of Spain is 8000% clearer than in the south (which is probably true of most countries in the world). The weather would also be significantly different.

Now that I'm out of Spain, the thought of going back seems incredibly appealing, because I miss it, but I really have to weigh the pro's and con's. I'm leaning towards staying in the US, since teaching is NOT what I see myself doing in the long term, also, the pay sucked (and is really bad in general)...and yeah, those are the main reasons. I need to find something more in the direction of what I want to do once I get back to the US and stick with it, unless I decide to forge ahead and live in Spain long term (which would mean I'd need to go to school there and find some other source of income...unlikely). So those are the reasons I'm thinking I wouldn't go to Spain, but right now I'm unemployed and feeling Debbie Downer about it, so the thought of going back to Europe seems awesome.

...Thoughts?

cositas

I decided to write a little, bulleted list of things I've seen or done since I've been in Spain. Let's empezar....

1. Affected a hybrid of an Midwestern American/Southern Spanish Andaluz accent. The Andaluz dialect was a surprise to me, and one that took some getting used to. I still find it hard to understand, sometimes, because of the lack of enunciation. The Andalusian people say that they "eat their words" and talk like they have a potato in their mouths, which I find all too true. Example: they don't say "hasta luego" (which means "see you later"), they say "staluego." "Supermercado" becomes "supermercao" and "Jueves" (Thursday) is "Jueve." "Gracias" is "gracia," and "Granada" (the city, and it also means "pomegranate") is just "Graná." The list goes on and on. It may seem like subtle difference in just looking at that list, but when it's a constant stream of shortened/butchered words, in a conversation, it can be difficult to keep up!
2. Swam in the Mediterranean Sea, in Málaga. I'd been to a beach in Europe before, but never to swim, and never to the Mediterranean, before.
3. Went to a botellón. Botellón is basically a massive, BYOB party with all sorts of random 20 somethings getting together, outside, to party. And in addition to partying, urinating in public. Personally, I hate it. Then again, who likes to show up sober to observe a raucous sea of drunken idiots? Throw a foreign language into that mix, and you're in for a good time.
4. Partied until the sun went up. In college, most of the time the parties were officially capped off at 3, but more likely at 2:30, because people were either too drunk or tired or itching to hook up with somebody and get going. In Spain, people don't even go to the bars until around midnight and then keep the party going until...I don't know...your legs buckle?
5. Met a lot of new people - not just because I would've anyway, from moving here, but also on the many trips I have taken outside of Spain. And it's kind of interesting to see how many people you meet while just on a weekend trip. Here's a little list of new people who made a cameo in my life over the past 8 months....

• November - Edinburgh, Scotland trip: Devlyn, Kieran and Lochlan. Interestingly enough, they are all Australian, but they're living/working in Scotland right now. At one point, all of us went to a Thai restaurant, so that would make us an American & Australian group, in Scotland, eating Thai food. That's me, Devlyn and Carole, below. Another interesting note -- Carole is a friend of a friend (that friend is Whitney, one of my best friends since I was little), so I had heard about her since I was 15 but had never met her until right before we left for Spain. We were in the Elephant House, which is a famous coffee joint in Edinburgh -- one of its claims to fame is that supposedly, JK Rowling wrote some of the Harry Potter stuff there. I look homeless sitting next to those girls...
  
• Met some Brits in Madrid, who have my same job. When I met them in my hostel (which was an odd location for them to be, seeing how they live in Madrid...I forget why they were there), I was at a table with an Aussie, 3 Brits, 1 Scottish guy, and 1 Irish guy. Throw in a Canadian and we'd have the major English speaking countries all represented.
• Met some Americans on our bike tour of Munich and then went out to get pretzels and beer with themMet some guys on Spring Break -- an American guy and an Aussie guy, and hung out with them for a few days while we were in Austria.
• Met a ridiculous number of people from other countries, in passing, because I just approach them and ask them where they're from and strike conversations that way. In the hostels you meet people from so many different countries, it's insane.

6. Saw Jesus Christ Superstar in Spanish (Jesucristo Superstar).
7. Visited more foreign countries in 8 months than I had ever in my life...I've been in Spain, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Ireland and Italy. Before this trip, I had been in the US, Canada, France, Belgium and Italy. I still have more on my must see this, though, but those will have to wait, I suppose.


Speaking of waiting, that's all I got right now. Stay tuned.

withdrawal

Apparently I was getting used to my expat lifestyle, seeing how I'm fairly bummed to be back. Then again, I was getting really restless living in my tiny Spanish pueblecito (little town). Since I move every other year, I get incredibly restless without a change of routine. Also, and more importantly, I am BORED without a job, as much as it can be a drag at times to have to work around the clock. I feel so unproductive and lazy. But, as my mom told me, I should just make FINDING a job my job, right now. Bleh.

Anyway, to keep to the theme of el blog, here is a list of the things that are different about my American life versus my days in Spain....

• Hearing people talk to their animals in English, again. It was always so funny to me to hear people speak to pets in Spanish.
• Also, this may seem like a weird segue, but the same logic (to me) applies to people speaking Spanish to children.
  
• The streets are absolutely huge in comparison to my pueblo. In most of the barrios in Cabra, you would have to move to the extreme side of the road so a car would be able to pass on the tiny, one-way only road. If I was with a friend, we'd have to walk single file, too.
• No food stores that only sell one specialty -- bread, fruit, fish, meat, etc.
  
• NO SIESTA! I love acutally SLEEPING a siesta, but the fact that stores and the entire town would go into dead mode for 4 hours a day was the most annoying thing ever, especially because I would want to do errands after my work day ended and I would have to wait.
• Eating times are back to "normal," but they seem so early to me, now! I've grown accustomed to eating lunch between 1:30 - 3:30, which I've been doing, but then my mom will have us eat dinner around 7, and I'm not hungry by then. I'm used to eating between 8:30 - 10, sometimes later.
  
• CARPET!!!!!!!!!!!!! I so missed "alfombra" and it drove me crazy that I would have to put on slippers or flip flops to walk around my apartment comfortably.
  
• Stores are open on Sundays! Oh, and I might add that stores close around 2 p.m. on Saturday and don't open again until Monday morning. Them Spanish Catholics really keep the Sabbath day holy by not doing anything, whatsoever, which annoyed the )@*#% out of me. I don't miss that aspect of life.
• I can drive again! I really missed the ability to just hop in my car to get from point A to B. It's so nice that I don't have to look up bus or train schedules anymore. It really got on my nerves, especially when there were glitches.
• I don't have to put a conscious effort into speaking, anymore, which I enjoy, but...
  
• Soon I'm going to need to sign up for some sort of a Spanish language book club or course, because I'm really scared about my Spanish detiorating little by little, even though my coworkers always reassured me that my español was "estupendo."
• People are soooooo much taller (and fatter, but that's obvious) than the Spaniards. I'm no longer in the 90 percentile of height. The old people, especially, are bite-sized in Spain. Seriously, I'm wondering if there was a serious milk deficiency or something, or maybe it's because the Spanish people smoke like chimneys and drink tons of coffee that stunts the fetus growth?? I noticed, too, that the farther north you get, in Europe, the taller people get. I probably got my height from my Swedish + Belgian relatives, I'm guessing.

That's about all I got, so far.

As to the progress of the blog, I'm working on a list of things that I did during my expat life that I had never done before I left the US. I think it's pretty interesting, it'll be cool to have a list to remember all the stuff I did (preview: rockclimbing, skiing, learning the Andaluz dialect, etc.).

ya está

And so it ends...not the world, although it is depressing that my time is Spain se acabó.

Actually, my time in Spain ended yesterday, seeing how I've been stuck in the London-Heathrow airport for nearly a solid day. Por Diós...Originally I thought "oh, ok, silver lining -- I get to walk around London." But then I changed my mind, because I was too crestfallen about not being able to get home that day, so I just stayed in the airport. I am getting cabin fever from being in the airport for so long - and yes, I slept here last night. Why? I just thought it would be more fun to buy a new outfit at one of those duty free stores than pay for a hotel stay, especially seeing how I don't have my toiletries (minus deodorant, which I packed seeing how this being-stranded-with-no-luggage situation has happened to me before...I also had the foresight to throw extra clothes in my carry on, for the same reason).

The reason I ended up stranded in London, in the first place, is because UK border control took up my entire layover time yesterday, so I missed my flight to LA. The last flight to LA for yesterday. I started swearing and crying and throwing a pity party of one in front of the dude at the British Airlines customer service desk. The cherry on top of this FML story is this: I had to dish out $200 to get on the flight today, which I was pissed off to have to do. @#)$*@#)%*@&

Whew.

Anyway, SPAIN. I can't believe I'm not going back to Spain for who knows how long, and I probably won't ever live there again, either. After I arrived in Madrid with Claire and we parted ways, I had a mini breakdown, partly out of lack of sleep, hormones, being unemployed now, and leaving Spain, of course. I'm still feeling a bit Debbie Downer -- every time I think about how I can't foresee what's going to happen in the future, I have a renewed bout of anxiety, but what can ya do? I plan on spreading my resume out like a fire hose at every writing position I am qualified for, seeing how the economy sucks a big one and it's going to be really hard for a 23 year old to get A) any sort of writing job, seeing how I have less experience than many, and B) a job where I have a hope at being financially independent, i.e. not living in a cardboard box. RAHHHHH.

OK, depressing stuff aside, let me recount my last few weeks in Spain ---

Lots has happened, actually, seeing how I've neglected my poor little blog. Woops. I went back to Ireland to visit my family there (descendents of my great-great grandma Bridget Moriarity-Parker -- my great grandpa Tom Parker's first cousins are living there, so my closest living Irish relation is my first cousin THREE TIMES REMOVED). That visit was awesome. Most of the time I was joining in the celebration for little 8 year-old Aoibhe's first communion, in Cahersiveen, County Kerry, Ireland. Oh, and I got to jump on one of those enormous trampolines, while in Ireland, which was definitely a fun time.


...May I just interrupt this blog post to state how exhausted I am? I am feeling slightly delirious and I stare off into space as my vision blurs, involuntarily, and it takes all my willpower to keep my eyes open. Luckily, blasting Queen music in my headphones makes it less likely that I will fall asleep in the near future. Oh, and caffeine intake. /tangent.

After I got back from Ireland, the reality of my expat life style ending hit, even though the idea didn't really sink in (still hasn't). The girls and I started planning various farewell parties amongst ourselves. Claire and I had the idea that it would be a lot of fun to throw a Dundie party, a la The Office, so we organized that. I got to be the MC, due to my....I don't know? Constant desire to be an attention whore? Ability to recite quotes from The Office, verbatim? My overflowing amounts of wit and charm?? Yes...all three. Anyway, we decided that we would have one serious and one funny award for each of us, and the awards were as follows:

• Becca -- A) Most likely to need a new passport due to lack of space for new stamps, B) Most likely to consume massive amounts of pasta and butter
• Claire -- A) Most likely to find the perfect place to jog in any given country, B) Most likely to go to Spain to teach and not to have sex
• Emily -- A) Most likely to have an outstanding fine at Caramelandia B) Most likely to stay out the latest unless she has to clean her apartment for the 15th time that week
  
• Kim -- A) Most likely to be the only teaching assistant to have a Spanish driver's license, B) Most likely to still be living in Spain in 10 years
• Michelle -- A) Most likely to cook ridiculous amounts of food and share it with everyone else, B) Most likely to bare it all at a nudist beach
• Meg -- A) Most likely to make people to pee their pants laughing, B) Most likely to punch someone in the tooth, again

...Clearly most of the funny awards come from the inside jokes we've had over the past year, so I won't bother to explain them, seeing how that will ruin the beauty of them. I will say, however, that we TAPED the Dundie awards, and I am in the process of editing the footage into a mini movie, so I'll put that up, shortly.

What else? I finally hit up the Spanish discotecas, which I had (believe it or not), never done. One of the reasons why I never went is because I don't know the young crowd in Cabra. I might have said this a billion times, already, but here it is, again: Cabra is loaded with ridiculously old people (here's a mental image for you: people who take an hour to walk the length of a football field). So, it makes it really hard to make friends in my age group. I know several Spanish guys in their 30s, but I feel a bit strange hanging out with guys who have 10+ years on me. I also know a 25 year old guy named Pablo, so he's the one I went out with the most, in Cabra, and his friends.
The other girls went out to the discotecas often enough, but I felt a bit discouraged to do with them, seeing how they went with their Spanish boyfriends and spent a good portion of their time playing tonsil hockey with them instead of interacting with others. I would rather drink toilet water than be around THAT, so...that's one reason I hardly went out, in Cabra. Woops.

I have plenty of pictures of my last few weeks in Cabra, so I'll get around to putting those up here, ASAP. Even though my Euro trip is over, my blog will have a pulse for a bit longer -- never fear, faithful few who read my humble blog!

Gotta go -- gonna board my flight soon, thank God. Eleven hour flight = wooooooooooo!!!