Home tomorrow! Happy Anniversary today!

Hello, dear readers... I know, I know. My post-a-week resolution only lasted, what, 3 posts? The usual excuses: I've been über busy and on the road. I'm still recovering from my first (of many more) epic Euro-trips and to be honest, have found it much easier to catch up on a season or two of Dexter than to tackle another blog post. I've made it a little over halfway through the 4th season... Christmas-y, I know. :)

It's scary how creepy John Lithgow can be... and who the heck shot Deb and Lundy if it wasn't him??? [source]

Anyway, I'm sitting in one of my Calahorra haunts, Cafetería Niza. It meets my criteria of: good coffee, good tortilla, but more importantly, wifi and outlets that work. I would normally be in class at this time, but because the internet at the school doesn't seem to be working and because my activity (showing "How The Grinch Stole Christmas") depended upon it working, my teacher said, "Well, I guess you have a free hour."

If only I could have known this would happen... I wouldn't have bothered getting up at the before the crack of dawn to catch my ride, as I now do now do not have class until 10:20. Oh, and guess what we're doing in that class? Watching the second half of a movie they started yesterday. One of many times I ask myself, "why am I here?" I really could have just skipped the whole week and gotten home early... If there are any future auxiliares reading this, note that you can probably skip the week before winter break starts. Your teachers (at institutos, anyway) have nothing serious planned, and your time would be better spent elsewhere. Sleeping, perhaps.

BUT, morning crankiness aside, TONIGHT, I LEAVE FOR MADRID!!! IN 10 hours, I will be on a bus, napping and dreaming about some ruby red slippers clicking together... Unfortunately I'll have about 12 hours to wait in the airport before I actually take off. Is it strange that I'm actually kind of excited about trying out the whole sleeping in the airport thing? And can you believe there's a how-to website with reviews of airports, tips, and anything else you might need to know? Ah, the things we travelers value. :)

This will be me around 6am... AFTER I make it through security... [source]

I will have stories to share, I am sure. I just hope that they're the kind that make me laugh. :)

Anyway, in less than 36 hours, I will be home for the holidays. Hallelujah. Amen. I need my family. And I need a week to refocus... somehow that's always easier at home. Can't wait. Cannot wait.

I'll try to update from the airport-- I've read that there's free wifi. If not, hasta luego, amigos. I'll catch up with you Stateside!

P.S. Happy 26th Anniversary to my wonderful parents! Boy, am I happy that happened ;)

Kicking off December with a bang...

I've only gone a little bit past my self-allotted one week between posts, and yet, so much has happened! It's been a whirlwind of working, trip-planning, moving and thinking. Here are the highlights:

1. I have moved!
After returning from Santander to an apartment where:

• The internet was down, 
• a particular 19 year-old Spanish roommate STILL hadn't cleaned up dishes that had already been in the sink one week before I left, 
• the kitchen faucet was still dripping, and 
• aside from him mentioned in #2, there is not a native Spanish speaker in sight, 

I decided it was time to look for something new. And I lucked out on the first try! As I write this, I'm sitting in my lovely (full!) bed in my new room on Saturnino Ulargui. The street name doesn't have quite the allure as Avenida de la Paz, and sadly, I no longer have my own balcony, but to be honest, I wasn't using it anyway-- too cold! 

Blue dot is my new home, red is the old. Click for better detail :)

Anyway, this place is CLEAN, there are no smokers, the kitchen is immaculate and my room is nice and bright. It's on the 5th (and top) floor, so no more street noise. I'm a lot closer to Casco Antiguo (old town) and yet, it will probably work out to be less expensive here. All in all, I'm very much looking forward to living here and my only regret is that I had to leave 2 lovely roommates behind, Emma and Martin. I will miss them, but I probably left just in the nick of time, as a fifth room was just let. That would've been 5 people sharing one bathroom and a tiny kitchen! Here, I live with two nice Spanish girls... one's a pharmacist, the other, a psychologist... with the potential of a third moving in in the next couple of weeks. The two don't speak any English so here's hoping my Spanish improves tenfold! But talking extensively with them will have to be put off for about a week because on Monday...

2. I'm going to Italy... and later, to Greece! This coming week we have a puente from Tuesday through the end of the week. And guess who doesn't work on Monday's :) So, with a solid week of free time, I thought it'd be the perfect opportunity to go someplace a little farther away. In searching, I decided to google "european swing exchanges" and guess what?! There's a Lindy Hop exchange in Thessaloniki, Greece from December 9-11. And guess what?! Thessaloniki just happens to be one of the cities RyanAir flies to. 

Swingalonica!!!

The one downside: no flights there from Spain. Oh well... guess I'll just have to fly to MILAN first!!! :) 

The Duomo! [source]

Miwa Matreyek's glorious visions

I love TED Talks. And they are a perfect compromise when I want to be somewhat brainless (as in, don't feel like reading, writing... really doing anything) but don't want to be completely useless (as I would feel if I just watched a TV episode or four). I watch one, maybe two TED Talks and I'm thinking, I'm learning... I'm growing. I can be a good kind of vegetable :P (excuse the corn... pun intended!) Ok, I need to stop. Can I mention that it's late and I'm tired?

ANYway, this one isn't actually a talk. It's a jaw-dropping, how-did-she-do-that performance that is completely inspired and completely beautiful. Hope you enjoy! Happy Wednesday-Before-Turkey-Day! :)

ALL about Santander!

I'm going to warn you now: this post is LONG, but it's mostly pictures, so don't be afraid :)

Last weekend, I went to Santander with my friends Rebecca. and Bionca. As you can see on the map below, Santander is west of Bilbao, my last little adventure, and pretty much due northwest of Logroño, in the region of Cantabria.

More importantly, it is ON THE COAST! Sea breezes, sand between the toes... one kind of heaven.

We arrived around 9 o'clock in the evening, in the dark, and without a hostel reservation (oops). As it turned out, this was rather fortunate, as it led us to seek out the Pensión Madrid, only a 5 minute walk from the bus station and a VERY good deal at only 15€ a night/person for one room for the three of us. And OH, was it comfortable (yay for memory foam mattress covers)! Of course, that last bit may have had something to do with the fact that we had just attempted sleeping in the not-so-comfortable bus seats. Anyway, after walking around a bit and eating at a diner-ish place (that reminded me of a Perkin's) where the food was okay but the company was excellent, we decided to heed the call of those lovely comfy-topped beds and get a good night of rest before a very unplanned tomorrow.

And then it was Saturday, where the word of the day was wandering. And in wandering, we stumbled upon so much!

A protest before breakfast: In what would you invest it? (300 million euros)

In search of breakfast, we passed this cleverly named bar :)

After breakfast, we went in search of the Tourism office for maps and advice. From this angle, I was very confused about which direction to go. It turned out the office was behind me :)

At the tourism office, we discovered that the only museum that any of us had

What next?

Today is a ponder-the-future day. Really I think every day is becoming that kind of day as I realize that I have no idea what I'm doing after Spain. I have ideas, of course, but they are ALL over the place. All are possibilities, and for that I should be grateful... and I am. But still, I can't help but wish that some heavenly light would shine down on one in particular... like, aHA! That's what I should do/where I should go/how I should proceed with my life.

I know, I know... this process is not that easy for anyone... even those people whom I (only kind of) envy that have always known what they wanted to be they grew up. Everyone has to find their way... but oh, how much easier it would be if I knew which way I was going.

Anyway, right now the ideas bouncing around inside my head are:

• teacher (always been on the radar... but is something I'd like to become once I retire from some other mystery job)
• economic development (MEDEG program I mentioned in a previous post)
• international spy á la Alias or Covert Affairs ... because that's realistic... but hey, I'd learn how to kick some butt, pick up some more languages, and travel the world... but then again, I want to "settle down" someday... hmm...
• artist... my job is to create!!! (in spurts anyway)
• professional student... of the world...

Yeah... like I said, working on it. :)

Post to come: my most recent weekend in Santander!

Bilbao and the Puente

Bilbao! Frank Gehry's architectural masterpiece, The Guggenheim Museum and El Puente de la Salve

I have decided to ride the wave of my freshly asserted motivation (see last entry) and tell you all about my trip to Bilbao over the puente two weeks ago. But first, let me answer the question that some of you may have: what in the world is a puente? Yes, I am a mind-reader ;) Actually... funny story...

A lovely girl named E.* who is also an auxiliar here as well as a palm-reading enthusiast told me that I have "the mystic's cross." In other words, I kind of am a mind-reader. Or at least, I'm intuitive enough to be... according to my right hand. But I digress...

This is puente in the traditional sense.

Puente means 'bridge.' This can be a literal bridge (as in build one and get over it :P), but it is also what Spaniards call a 4(or more)-day weekend. For example, the most recent puente was due to All Saints' Day (November 1st and a National Holiday in Spain). It fell on a Tuesday this year, so the schools and a lot of businesses go ahead and give everyone the Monday before off as well, thus they bridge the weekend to the holiday. Get it? This is a Spainism (yes, I made that up) that I wish the U.S. could adopt... but alas, they have manipulated our federal holidays (MLK, Memorial, Labor... do we get off for Columbus?) to all fall on Mondays.MLK's birthday's on the 15th? Let's put his day on the third Monday of the month. Columbus landed in America on the 12th of October? The second Monday of the month for him (regardless of the fact that the rest of the world celebrates it ON the day). Sheesh.

A resolution.

So it's a Monday, a day off and a day to get myself together before I have work again tomorrow. In an attempt to be "productive," I got on my computer to do "research." On what, you may ask? Oh, it could be anything, but usually it starts with Google and ends with me falling down a rabbit hole of web surfing and not really accomplishing much of anything.

I wonder if Alice was simply procrastinating? Source.

Today, I started with googling "getting a haircut in Spain" because goodness knows, I am very much in need of a haircut. I was soon directed to some girl's travel blog that was actually pretty helpful in that it included useful, haircut-specific phrases like "Quiero un recorte" (I want a trim) and "Me gustaría escalado" (I like it layered). Now I just have to look up how to say "Stop! Too short, TOO SHORT!" and I will be good to go.

Anyway, this travel blog in this instance could also be called the entrance into