Mom knows best...

Message from the Mother front:

So, words of wisdom from your mom. If you keep going to the same Mass, some smart madre will notice you and bring her handsome son to Mass with her one Sunday! So, go to church

today!

Love mom.

Let me just say: church is not where you find cute boys on a Sunday in Spain. You find cute boys at the soccer games. Futbol, if you wanna get all fancy. I'm

really starting to wonder if the only place that the

legendary delicious and nutritious Spanish hotties lurk is at futbol games.

Because let me just tell you: they are in hiding. They must have heard that the desperate American girls were arriving, and

they felt it was in the best interest of their health to hide out under a rock, pond, tree, in a small box, cave, marshy area, or the likes. I fail to believe, after sitting in the

cold for 90 minutes (oh... 93 cause the refs get to add time here if the

y want) of dramatic falls, broken ankles that miraculously heal upon standin

g up, shirt grabbing but no real fighting, and zero goals that anyone goes to a futbol game for anything other than the hotties. I'm not sure what that says about all the old men there but as far as I can tell, the only worthwhile

way to spend that 90 minutes of actionless torture (unless taking a slig

ht nap as I was accused of doing) is to check out the players, fans, contemplate kidnapping the precious kids that go to watch and yell really loudly and get very upset, and to eat excessive amounts of candy. No wonder Real Madrid was so famous, with David Beckham and all. Why else would they be? Nothing ever happens in soccer games, maybe a goal (GOOOOOLLLLLLLL) or two, but even then you are getting pretty freaking lucky.

So after my total of two soccer games, one here and one in S

weden, that is my conclusion: hotties are the only reason people go to soccer games. The girls to scope them out, the boys to wish they were them, and everyone else because they have nothing to do because everything is closed on Sunday other than the soccer field and bars that are playing soccer games on TV. I will probably have to start pretending to like soccer so that I can make friends here, because if I told them I

didn't like it, I'm pretty sure they would not only hide under a rock or pond, but would probably also install a high tech sec

urity system warning them against my arrival.

I've been bored enough by soccer for one day though, so new story. Yesterday w

e spent the day in Santillana del Mar and Comillas. Sant. del Mar looks like the town from Beauty and the Beast so of course, I fell in love with it just about the second I stepped

off

the bus. It has precious cobblestone streets which are actually not so precious if you plan on walking, skipping, moving in any way, and then these little shops and I had the sever urge to start singing the soundtrack but decided that might be kind of a. American and b. weird. There's a tradit

ion in S. del Mar that if you go there but don't drink a glass of cold cow milk and have a sp

ongy cake deal you definitely have no hope on Earth of getting married. I'm not sure if I have ever been so excited for a glass of cold whole milk. Literally squeezed from a lovely fat dairy cow into a jar and into the FRIDGE as it should be and then into my cup. As opposed to out of a box that is kept in a cabinet. They drink their milk warm, in Spain. Don't get me started on the things I don't understand about Spain, th

e list is long. This tradition is my new favorite, because not only does it ensure that some

delicious (hopefully) man who will love me as much as whoever writes country love songs loves the girl they are writing about will marry me but it also involves milk. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if girls write those songs and then sell them to male country singers

so they can get famous. I would probably have a mental break down.) I'll probably go back repeatedly just for the milk, but a girl can't get too careful when trying to make sure she gets a good guy, you never know what creeps are out there.

Comillas is absolutely my favorite town in all of Spain, despite it's lack of Beauty an

d the Beast soundtrack singing inspiration. It is right on the most beautiful coast and has tons of huge gothic churches. The man who made it so famous was involved in the first explorations of America (not Chris Columb) and he made all this money trading resources, goods

, etc. and then wanted to prove that he was weathly. To do so, he built the most beautiful school I have ever seen (I'll put a pic

ture on the bottom) which happens to be the top school in Spain to learn Spanish at (lovely that I didn't end up there. not.) and then he had some "famous" architect named

Gaudi? build him a "folly" aka something that is totally not necessary but just there for show which I though was flat out hideous and looked like it came out of a Candyland board game or Alice in Wonderland. He also build a huge palace slash church and had all of his famous architect friends design it, so it has just about every style from Romanesque to Gothic built into it. It definitely made up for his poor taste in the "folly."

After touring the

buildings we had thirty minutes free time so we walked up towards the coast and found this beautiful ancient graveyards. It had some of the most beautiful tombs I have ever seen and was comple

tely full of flowers. Every grave was covered in flowers, most of which were wilting, after being placed there on Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead) which was No

vember 1st. It was amazing, to see that even after so many years, every grave was remembered, and every grave was decorated.

We went to two sets of caves on our little outting, the first one had hand prints and drawings from I think she said 6,000 years ago. The temperature stays at 14 degrees C year round, regardless of the outside temperature. It was totally creepy and drippy and wet and misty and great. The second one..... not so much. It is 10,000 years old, but the r

eplica that you get to see is definitely no

t. It has these really strange and bad dream inducing electronic images of people in a cave (who speak Spanish, of course, because that was the language of choice 10,000 years ago when they lived in caves and painted with bone marrow) and the rocks were plastic replicas of the real deal, cause I guess to preserve it they just decided to shut it down. Not to be a cave sn

ob, but if you aren't a real cave, don't act like it. Just say "Oh hey sorry the real one is closed kay bye!" Instead of spending a ton of money to make a plastic cave with creepy computerized people. If you have been to the dinosaur museum in Vernal, Utah, you'll understand when I say it was soooo much cornier than that.

Last night we went to play pool (my first time ever) and I managed to lose two

games in a row, but also managed to get two balls in the hole. Both were mine, so that was kind of a big deal. The bartender liked us so gave us "bubblegum" flavored shots that you take in a circle and do this chant "Abajo! Arriba! Dentro! Something else I forget!" and then you al

l take it together. Except it really just tasted like those Shirley Temple cherry's juice. Then we went to a hookah bar and almost feel asleep on their fabulous Moroccan couches, and then Erin and Amanda and I started our adventure home.

All drivers in Spain need to thank their lucky stars that almost every single car here is white. Because I promise you, it makes it very hard for drunk wanna be drivers to figure out which car is theirs. Last night this guy was litereally lying on the sidewalk by a car he had been trying to open and then fell over in the process. He then tried the next white car, and kept walking up and down looking at them all like "Well shit, which one is mine?" Let's just all be glad that it didn't occur to him to press the panic button on his car to lead him the right way.

In Spain (and probably everywhere but I just don't know it) there is a fast food called Doner Kebab. It is basically Greek/Turkey-ish style Gyros. DELICIOUS at all times of life but particularly after a few drinks. Yesterday was 70 and sunny, but by nine was windy like no other. Erin and I decided to get DK at 2:30am because if you walk by one, there's no way you don't go in. It was, as always, fabulous. But I had the great idea that we'd get it t

o go and then walk around, totally forgetting that it was about as windy as standing in front of a full blast fan.

Just in case you ever end up in a "to go or to stay" situation with DK, always get i

t to stay. Because DK in the wind is just a bad idea. End of story.

Okay I said I'd put pictures here of something and now I forget so let me go look. OH the beautiful school! And I'll just add a few more for those of you that don't facebook stalk. (Because obviously if you have facebook you just stalk me all the time cause I'm that great. HA. But really I just stalk you cause I am creepy like that.)

Kay pictures:

Okay so this is the school I am obsessed with. This is me eating in the wind. Cute, I know. Then is the school I love. Then is the precious boy at the soccer game. My kids better be that cute. Just saying. I think then the next one is MILK! and then the Beauty and the Beast town :)