Posts
The whole "don't give into peer pressure" campaign hasn't reached Spain. I made the highly educated decision to allow my two friends to convince me to stay out until the wee hours of morning in traditional Spanish style... six am. I would like to say that after all their hard work and peer pressure we made it, but after a "Go Home Gringos" party at "our" bar and a few dud dance clubs and of course, papas fritas, I can only say that we made it till four thirty.
I won't go into too many details about the night, because personally I tend to get a bit bored with hearing everyone's "Oh my gawwwddd this one night..." stories, but...
oh my gooooddddd Spanish people love their PDA. That is the only way to put it. Our American boys, in true form, preformed a table dance for us. It takes an insane amount of passion and obsession to be so engaged in a public makeout that you don't notice six American boys and an Italian bartender table dancing two feet from your face. Cosmo magazine claims Spaniards are the best lovers, which might be true based on the obsene need to lick eachother in public and have no problem making it very clear what they were going to do an hour later. I understand that sometimes it is completely necessary to express your affection, for example when you get proposed to in an airport, when your boyfriends gorgeous ex is hanging on him in a party and kissing him infront of her will have the same effect as dumping ice water over her head and tiny dress, or when you are 80 and are walking and want to steal a kiss from your precious wife. Unless it is any of those circumstances, get a room. Or, if you are in Spain, get in your car.
The other day I wrote about everything I ate and how I was obsessed with it.... that was just my warm up.
Today, it is four in the afternoon and I just finished the most amazing lunch I have ever experienced, one to rival Thanksgiving:
bread and hot chocolate for breakfast
about 20 different kinds of cheese at the Cantabrian food market
shrimp, jamon cruido (super yummy thin ham), really soft cheese, a salad with green olives, tomatoes, corn, lettuce, and vinigar, paella, bread, and two pieces of chocolate turon (traditional Christmas candy) and regular turon, and then two mystery candies that I am going to eat while trying to focus long enough to write.
The thing about Spanish food is that as tiring as it is and boring to eat fried chicken and salad all the time, the days like today make you fall instantly in love with the Spanish food. As if this one meal is all that you will remember eating and every other meal was just to tide you over until this meal, at which point those memories of the old food are immediatly whipped away and you are left with a fresh love and a desire to eat for six hours on end.
This meal would be the highlight of my life right now, if it wasn't Christmas time. I keep bursting out into random Christmas carrols and scaring people, but today I woke up to a blue sky, a Cantabrian food fair, and Christmas shopping to do. I love buying presents, I am horrible at it, but I always hope that regardless of how bad of a memory I have, I will be able to find something that each person will love. So today, despite the massive amount of studying I will theoretically go do in a cafe accompanied by a cup of chocolate and a massive plate of fried and sugary churros, I am so completely content.
I was having a conversation yesterday about studying abroad. I remember the first couple days when I had finally decided and committed to coming here for a year, and how terrified I was. I am coming to the end of my first semester here, and because I know that due to procrastination and meetings and packing, this week will be insane, I have been thinking a lot about the past few months and what they have meant so far. Studying abroad in Spain was one of those decisions that I felt like was made for me.... I tend to have these life "breakdowns" where I totally freak out and can't handle making decisions and then specific things occur making it so clear what needs to happen. Thank God (literally) that the Big Man Upstairs has got it under control for us, because now I can look back at the last five months of my life (starting a bit pre-studying abroad) and see that everything I have gone through has had a direct correlation with something major that I have learned about myself so far. I really thought that by now I would be depressed, crying daily and wanting to go home. Instead, I spent today with a huge smile on my face thanking God over and over that I am here. I get to wake up and walk by the ocean every day, I get to eat paella and massive amounts of food, I get to travel and I get to live this insane adventure. Sometimes I feel like I will wake up from this dream and think, "Well that was nice, maybe someday...." but this is real life. How crazy is that?
I randomly found this article and it only reaffirmed how much I love Christmas:
I realize that it isn't directly related to Christmas, but I think my obsession stems from this idea that during the holidays, everyone smiles a little more frequently at people they walk by and everyone is a little more inclined to do random acts of kindness. So here is my Christmas challenge: try to do one random act of kindness a day. Here is my list of ideas:
-pay for the next person in line's Starbucks
-pick up the trash on the road (Mother Nature needs kindness too)
-write someone a note telling them that they are pretty
-leave random sticky notes saying "You are loved!" or "Smile, today is beautiful" all over your ---desks or on random people's car windows
-bake cookies and put them in little baggies and give them out to people (but if you are gonna do this, make sure that you don't creep people out thinking you are trying to poison them)
-hold the door for someone
-if you win the lottery, but a random plane ticket and give it to someone
-shovel your neighbor's driveway
-drop lucky pennies all over
I am sure there are about a thousand other small ideas to think of, but maybe just try and squeeze a few in before Christmas :)
ps. I am famous and on the UIMP website. FINALLY. http://www.uimp.es/ (you have to scroll down, and I realize that I am the reject standing in the corner not paying attention, but for reals, the camera man was speaking Spanish, and you'll realize that really only the teachers had any idea what was going on. EPIC fail. But at least we are famous now, right?)
No comments:
Post a Comment