- The toilet paper here is so soft.
- I love my family.
- I love my dogs.
- GREEN GRASS TREES AND A BREEZE
- A banana actually tastes better without peanut butter-what?! Has my obsession vanished?
- We have the best showers. Long heat (I wasn't even at max heat!) and lots of water pressure.
- Back to civilization-no more bushy brows. I am so clean and waxed.
- The English language is so easy. Never take for granted your ability to express yourself.
My Spanish Adventures: La vida sevillana
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Observations from Abroa-HOMEEE
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Time is curious
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Rejoneo (Bullfight on Horseback)
Friday, May 6, 2011
On riding in Feria
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
A change in attitude
Germany, day 8
Friday:
Woke up bright and early again. Drove to the gas station and filled up on gas. I hadn’t slept very well—like everyone, so I was in need of a cup of coffee. Go inside to get a cup of coffee. It’s kind of a blur at this point, but essentially, our conversation started in German, switched to English, but clearly I still didn’t understand her, so she stated (not asked, mind you): “You, big coffee”. Exactly. You read my sleepy mind.
Got to the airport, hung out, and boarded. Sat between two German men and behind two devil Spanish children and their mother. The Spanish aren’t very into disciplining their children. The whole time the children are screaming and whining (they were probably ages 4 & 6). Of course both German men grunt at the mother and yell in German for her to discipline them (I’m assuming, since I don’t know German). She gives them the blank stare and continues with her non-discipline. However, when one daughter’s hair gets messed up, the mom screams at her child and tells her everyone is looking and that she cannot have her hair so ugly and that she only gets four gummy bears because she is already fat. Way to go Spanish parenting.
Got off the plane in Málaga, jumped on the train to Sevilla. Writing from here now.
Looking out the window—maybe I’m too hard on Spain. It’s pretty here. My Spanish has improved a little. I like my host mom and her family. Classes are more or less reasonable. But I know it’s not my country. I could vacation in Spain and enjoy it. But it’s not home and I could never even think of calling it home. Home is in the US with people I love. But Germany could very well be my home too. The climate is more to my liking, the food is pretty good (apple everything?!), the people are outgoing and friendly, they are active, I look like a German. All that’s left is to learn the language. And convince someone to come with me. I think it’d be fun to live there a year or two straight out of college. I’ve never felt a connection like that with a place before. We’ll see what comes of it. But for now I’m super content with my vacation. Now to edit all my photos!!!
Germany, day 7
Link to Munich Album:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1989256779284.123272.1479270362
Thursday:
Wake up bright and early and drive to Munich. No messing around this time—we took the autobon and we arrived on time haha. Got up to my current record, 195 km/hour. Crazy part was I was following someone and losing ground.
Get to Munich and start off with the open air market. This was by far the coolest market I’ve ever been too. Part of it may have been that Easter was this weekend and so they were selling lots of flowers and other Easter goodies, but either way it was sweet.
After walking there we walked through the city hitting up lots of the tourist sites—it is such a pretty city! I think one of the reasons that I like European cities so much is the fact that they don’t have skyscrapers; the cities are much more inviting and intimate that way. I’ll have to look up the names of all the sites; you see so much in one day that you forget everything you saw.
We walked up into the English Gardens. Megan Dale: You and I would own this park. It was awesome!!! They are so active here. In Spain all they do is lay out and drink. In Munich there were Germans surfing in the river (which was super high) and in the open grassy area people played soccer, volleyball, Frisbee, and extreme tight rope walking (slack rope?). These kids were insane! They were on the slack rope jumping and twisting and flipping. A jersey shore look-a-like tried it in his boxers. Hilarious. Tool.
In the Gardens we walked to the Chinese Tower. Sat in the shade after getting a tan in the park—the sun is so much more friendly to pale skin here! After we headed back into the city in search of Haxen—ham hocks. We got back to the market and sat in the biergarten with our liters and haxen and brezen (pretzels). Yum. Divine. We hung out at the biergarten from 6 to 10 or so, making friends with a few Germans, a Frenchman married to a Mexican, and a drunk Canadian with a crazy mustache. Also, I love the random men dressed in traditional German attire. The hat with the pins, suspenders, short shorts, high socks and shoes—seeing one of them walk by is like reaching into a box of random candy and blindly pulling our your favorite kind. It’s delightful.
After our stay in the biergarten we walked around town and hit up a few bars. But everything was very overpriced and closing down. Around 1130 or so we packed ourselves back into the car and I drove to Memmingmen. No worries, I hadn’t drinken anything, Mom. We spent the night in the car in the Netto parking lot from our first day; so things had come full circle. It was a good last day. Everyone got along and laughed and relaxed; it was the perfect ending to our trip.