I will not eat your green eggs, just your ham.

Let's just get this out there: I HATE HARDBOILED EGGS. I would gladly send them by mail to any child in Africa willing to take them off my plate. They would smell exactly the same after two weeks in the mail and three weeks on a bus to a random village to a random kid as they do when they are sitting on my plate, hidden under some delicious sauce pretending to be something yummy. But the SURPRISE that is hard boiled egg.

Here is the issue with eggs and bananas: when I eat them, I can taste them in my nose. You might as well just end it right there. Any food that you can TASTE in your nose is unacceptable. Kind of like how you can taste skunk. Ew.

So anyways this is supposed to be a blog all about my great adventures over here. To be honest, life is kind of school, and then random fights on buses and trips. But then again, this IS my life, so even on "boring days" like today, I'm going to just write and we'll see what happens.

I started off today trying to explain my madre how to get on your bike when the seat is too high. You know, the whole use the peddle to lift yourself as you start moving forward trick. So we are in the kitchen with her new red bike that has midget wheels and is just ridiculous all around, and I'm trying to shower her but am also five minutes late for school, so am doing a really poor job. Instead of just trying to halfway understand my Spanish. she decided it was easier to just try to do it. IN the kitchen. So there I am, holding up the bike while she literally is sitting on it trying to bike in the kitchen.

Apparently, if you want to learn to ride a bike, don't ask me to teach you in a kitchen. Becuase I came back from school and she's in the kitchen with her daughter, with her pants covered in blood. Learning to ride a really tall bike in a white sweat suit was really just teasing fate: betcha I can learn to ride a bike in white pants. HA. I could have called that one right off. Whenever I wear white, it is just a bad story. Or even really any light color for that matter. Once, at my cousin's babyshower, with all my female relatives on my mom's side, I somehow managed to sit on a Hersey's Kiss for about an hour in my silver silk shorts. You get the idea.

White shorts, biking, and blood really don't make an attractive mix. She just walked around the kitchen saying "Michelle you have an old crazy bike riding Spanish mom.... poor girl."

More like "Mom, you have an explanation challenged child."

Back to the eggs. I just can't get over it. The first night she gave them to us, I was like ohhhh my dad used to eat them before every swim meet (maybe I told this story? I am so repetitive I can't remember so am going to go check so I can save you some time.) Okay so I check and I don't think I told this story. I tried explaining how EVERY DAMN MORNING my dad would eat hardboiled eggs at swim meets. Every. Single. Time. In a tiny hotel room in Strangely, in Ann's house, out of a cooler, he would just always have them. Who knows where they came from (Mom.) but I will never get over the smell. Swimming after smelling HBE's is probably the worst feeling ever. Gross. Tonight, Madre goes "I know you don't like eggs hard, but this time you will. They are so good." Yes, THIS time, I will suddenly fall in love with hardboiled eggs, and if not, maybe in 17 more times I will.

Never again. Never.

Let's jump to a random new topic called I want it to be Christmas. I want to go Christmas shopping (so that I have a legit reason to buy things instead of my excuse today which was "I deserve this because I had to do so much homework and because I went to almost all my classes this week. Please don't mind that it was a four day week and I skipped one day, that was just a mental health day. Other than that I have worked soooooo hard.) and I also want to be able to sing Christmas songs without people looking at me like, uhmm excuse me, not yet. Although I think here, they start la Navidad much earlier than in the States... actually possibly on the 8th of November. I need to check that stat. I also want to be able to quote Elf daily, instead of just weekly, and I want to be able to put up Christmas lights in my room. I'm going to have to go to a Chino store to find them. I thought people were totally racist calling stores Chino stores (stores of Chinese people) but it's just their name here.

A story about Tiendas de Chinos:

Mary, Rachael and I went on an adventure up the hill by school looking for a tienda de Chinos to buy clothes hangers at. So we can't find it and finally give up and decide to go into a random store to ask directions. Only we happen to pick the chino store to ask. This clicks ASAP for Rachael and I, cause there are literally Asians all over the place, but apperantly Mary missed the memo because she walked right up to the guy at the register and goes "Donde estan los chinos?" "Where are the Chinese?"

He just looked at her. What do you say to that? "Oh, we are right here with our cheap stuff and our Asian eyes."

Also, when shopping today for all those things I "deserve" I tried on some boots in a Tienda de Chinos and let me just tell you, Spanish in a Chinese accent is a fail. Don't even go there with me. I thought she was speaking straight up Mandarine to me. And I kept saying "Lo siento solo hablo ingles y espanol." "I'm sorry, I only speak English and Spanish."

After about six "Yo tambien." "Me too." I got that ohhhh ps. that was Spanish not Chinese. The amount of people I am shocking with my supreme intelligence is just crazy. They probably think they met the world's smartest person after being graced by speaking with me.

Am now feeling totally humiliated because I just realized that I can indent paragraphs on here... for some reason I thought it was like e-mail and that you couldn't. I am grammatically embarrassed right now.

Let me introduce you to my latest crush now: Santander. I don't know how I've managed to make it like 12 blogs without gushing like a little girl in love about my city. I literally feel possessive of it. It is mine. End of story. Everyone else is just here visiting :)

Santander is pretty small compared to Madrid/Barcelona/etc. There are 220,000 ish people, which I feel like is huge since Steamboat is about nothing compared to that. But what is awesome is that the people and the city feel so small town. I live two minutes from the beach and there's this path at the end of the beach that goes out to the point of the coast on the bay, and then loops around to a light house and runs along the coast. I am going to get in shape (ha) and run the whole thing by spring. For now, I should probably start with walking the whole thing. That might be my plan for Sunday. Anyway, my building has a bar, Pizza Hut, and a place I can get fries. It also has the bus stop for all the lines literally down the steps, and is ten minutes from my school. I have a terrace that I can sit on and look at the beach and read, and am kind of just spoiled like no other. I keep waiting to wake up from some dream, but really don't want too.

Now, because I am a really old woman and slight nerd, I am going to spend my Friday night in the bath with a book, and then in bed, so I can get up and go to the fish market in the morning and then to a town called Somo, that's a 30 minute ferry ride away and has a stellar beach. Just promise me that you won't have hardboiled eggs for breakfast, because they are a dinner food, didn't you know?

Letter to a dear friend.

Dear Flan,

I understand that you are delicious, that you are available due to Madre's desire to fatten me up like a little cherub, however, due to my inability to work out and my lack of motivation to go on a run daily to work off my weight in flan, please stop seducing me. Also, if you would inform your friends Nutella and Regma ice cream that I am no longer on the market, I am sure I will find a healthier boyfriend such as the ever eligible bachelors Apple and Orange. Now, I realize that when presented to me in a plate, just after I get out of the shower and you come in all jiggly and declisiouly on a large plate to tempt me as Madre croons "Come, por favor, Guapa, es sano......." it might seem only polite to be consumed, yet I am fairly certain this behavior needs to stop. Not only is it scandalous, but it is just unkind and a bit like torture. Perhaps we could find you a job torturing terrorists, or creepers in jail, but for the love of God's green Earth, back off, jack off.

Love you much,

Michelle

"I wanna bake cookies on your stomach."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Nsk8lTwZU

(for non-Twilight fans.... Mariana in the video is Taylor Launter who plays Jacob in the movies.)

So I am sitting on my terrace right now feeling pretty spoiled and happy (and just missed a call from Rachael in the midst of my I love my life moment.) I am reading Harry Potter, but we aren’t really surprised by that since I am obsessed with it. I am not really sure how to explain to non-HP addicts why it is so great; I can read the seventh book repeatedly and yet always find some new deep life metaphor about it. I read a quote on someone’s Facebook:

"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
— Stephen King

I was pretty much in love with this the moment I read it. I am a Twi-tard, as have been dubbed those people willing enough to put themselves through hours of reading painfully simple and grammatically ineloquent writing to get their fix of Edward and Jacob who are somehow in love with the whiniest, most superficial character written, Bella. Be it the deliciously romantic inability to stay away from Bella that makes us love Edward, or the die hard hottie Jacob’s humor that make just about every girl on the face of the earth want to drop kick their boyfriend (and don’t even get me started on the unanimous intake of breath when Taylor Lautner took off his shirt during the movie….) but despite Stephanie’s ability to write the perfect male characters, any self-respecting writer, reader, or English speaking person should theoretically be in pain over her lack of writing ability beyond your basic sentence structure: noun + verb + adjective. If you gave me a red pen while reading the book, I’m pretty sure it would be about as bloody as the elk hunting pictures the boys from my high school are obsessed with posting on Facebook to remind us what we are eating.

I just am in one of those moods where I feel the need to express how amazing Harry Potter is to anyone who will listen. While I realize that it is not related directly to anything exciting happening in Spain, it is my life today so that’s what you get: a fairly biased due to obsession rant about how amazing, deep, and overall mind-blowing HP is.

Emma and I have a new rule that anyone we date is going to be obsessed with Harry Potter. And reading in general.

So back to Harry. I am just constantly astounded that JK was somehow about to write seven books and by the end, have them not only all connect but bring back to every detail, every unanswered question. I love catching authors on forgotten ends, on the unfinished parts of the story. Generally I can always find at least one detail that they brought up and never tied together. After AP English, I am a firm believer that anything mentioned has a purpose… authors don’t just tell you random details for kicks and giggles (however I also don’t think that everything is symbolic, for example a mango supposedly symbolizes fertility and I am sorry but maybe I’ll have a mango salad and will want to write and tell everyone about it, and that definitely doesn’t mean I am talking about my biological clock. Just saying.) The fact that the story is so intertwined and so complex yet appeals to all age groups is a true accomplishment. I am, to say the least, in love and admiration of JK. But I’ll stick to my blog because I’m pretty sure that while I love to catch authors on their unfinished business, I myself am far too ADD and scattered to write seven books and have every aspect not only tie together but profoundly influence the story.

If you haven’t read the books, shame on you and get started. If you have, you should start at book one and read them straight through. After my super fun getting dumped experience, I replaced boys with Harry Potter and finished all seven books in a week and a half. And let me just tell you: it was the first time I had read them start to finish and while the first two were definitely easy and breezey, it is as amazing as reading them separately times fifty on steroids. If only I could get my dad to read them all, then my full family would be Harry Potter addicts and we could sit around like a precious fam talking about how amazing it is. Until then, I will stick to writing and trying to convert every single person to be a Harry Potter fanatic. It’s like evangelism, only Harry Potterism. But with more peer pressure.

The condensed version of a true story.

Take a deep breath, because this is probably going to be the most ridiculously huge blog post of my relatively non-existant blog :)

Let me just start off by saying I will NEVER travel without Harry Potter again. It is always a terrible plan. I stood repacked my backpack about seven times last Wednesday trying to figure out if I wanted undies or HP. Let's just say that while having fresh undies rocks, I made the wrong choice.

There's really no exciting way to start this whole story, seeing as I need to preface it with: I went to Milan last Wednesday night and thus began five days of: entering every wrong door possible, getting taken out by Italian stallions, and the eating of any possible piece of pizza, panini, or gellato available.

At midnight in a new airport, a toilet sign with a man and a woman pointing towards a door is usually your best friend. So we go busting in like we own the place and this guy is staring at us like uhm hey freaks, and we look at him like uhmm hey you weirdo I have to pee leave me alone and start commenting on how much we looooove Spain because it has seperate bathrooms and is so much cleaner and how on earth do people manage to pee all over the floor. On our way out, the super "nice" bartender calls out to us "OY, THAT one is for you." and points at a door with what they must think is a woman on it.

The entire trip went about like this:

wrong door, get lost, walk around and eat, get lost, eat, get lost, walk around, get lost, eat, eat, drink coffee, eat, eat, walk, walk, get lost, get lost, get lost.

After the bathroom adventure we attempted to explain to a cab driver that we were trying to get to our hostel but Italy is anti-wireless and so we spent the next ten minutes contemplating the busses and then somehow explaining where we were trying to go, getting dropped off, passing out, eating a super delish breakfast with gronola that I wanted to just eat and eat but I think they'd dislike that greatly and then asking for directions at the hostel to get to the bus station to go to Lake Como. Bergamo is probably the tiniest city ever, yet the kid in the hostel managed to send us on an hour walking adventure trying to figure out where we were. An old man on a bike, about a dozen churches and an old woman on a bus later, we figured out the right directions and ended up on an hour (but really two because their guesstimation is way off here) bus ride later we were eating pizza and cheese and wine and dried fruit in Lake Como.

The next part of our "plan" was to show up in Milan for the night, facebook some random kid named Lorenzo who was a mutual friend of Maureen's, and figure out where to sleep for the night. So we get into Milan at like eight and are wandering around lost (surprise) asking strangers where to sleep and this kid tells us to go to McDonalds for the metro. It took us a full day to realize all the M signs were not for McDonalds, and that we were about three subway stops from the sketchy hostels. So instead we end up in a cab asking him to take us somewhere safe and he drops us off at a hotel where we basically are like "What's up, we are poor, cut us some slack" to the corny balding guy. He hated me, mostly because I tried to steal his pen and he wanted it back.

Now onto more exciting things.

When in doubt always go to McDonalds. French fries, happy meals, and almost always Wifi. We ended up at McDonalds facebooking with Lorenzo telling him where to pick us up to take us out and progressed to make a sign with Lorenzo??? written on it, while standing on the corner trying not to keep saying "Lorenzo?" to strangers. We end up getting picked up and taken to this ridiculous club. I'm not really sure how to explain the absurdity of this whole situation in a clever or entertaining way so let's just get it out:

Lorenzo is a genius at engineering, and has lots of rich friends. Not to be rude/gold digger ish, but if you want to marry an Italian stallion with money, I'll give you their numbers. Mattaeo is friends with the guy who basically decides who gets let into the most exclusive clubs, which all have like 80euro cover charges and a three week table waiting list, so we basically get taken straight in and the guys buy us drinks and we all hang out in this club all night. Lorenzo's "sugar momma" was taking him to the Broncos game in London (insert me being furiously jealous despite how humiliating they were last week) and so he was like "Oh, Mickey and Mattaeo will take you out don't even worry." End of night one.

Now begins the downgrades. We wake up the next morning and the stupid hotel man who I want to fight is all "ohh, sorry we have to move your room." So we get moved from a three bed and bathroom with a terrace room to a double bed and cot with a tiny bathroom and no terrace room. Then Saturday we got moved to the cot and double with a shower and no toilet room. Am pretty sure that if we had stayed one more night, we'd have been given a room with just a shower. To all huddle in and keep warm like sardines.

Anyway, the next day we spent wandering around the Duomo which is the second? largest church in Italy and walked around this huge gorgeous park and then took a lovely nap and the boys picked us up again to get dinner. Aka they ordered a ton of delicious pizza and we had it at Matteo's super nice family house thingy with his grandfather/possibly his uncle's wine and we ate and taught them to play King's Cup and then, surprise, they made that fabulous "We have connections and like to show them off" call and got us into a club where drinks were something like 100euro a piece and we spent the rest of the night dancing and walking around Milan in the middle of the night because "Americans think walking is a good idea." Apparently.

On our midnight walking extravaganza, Mickey tried to tell me something along the lines of "they are hiding things under the Vatican, I am sure of it, because they won't build a subway under there." I don't even know. But I'll check with my bestie the Pope and shall keep ya'll posted.

Begin part three of my story: Follow the panini.

That's really all there is to say. If you are ever in Milan, follow the panini. It will lead you to Luino's, which is the most delicious fabulous amazing I want to marry it and send it to my friends and family for birthdays/weddings/Christmas/Wednesday kind of panini. Let me try to explain: it is kind of like yummy bread that is biscutty but not cause it is buttery and chewy and then you pick what goes inside; I got ham and cheese and just about got back in the half hour line that goes down two full city blocks in each direction to get another two.

We ended the day with a bread and cheese and grapes and wine picnic in our room (don't worry we didn't invite the cranky hotel man) and then the boys cooked us dinner. Yes. Let me just repeated this because I still feel like I'm making it up in my head: the Italian boys cooked us pesto pasta and salmon and fish for dinner and let us watch Sex and the City and normal TV in English in their fabulous hugeo house after driving us all around and getting us into richey clubs. I'm pretty sure three girls have never lived two more opposite experiences. Because then the next morning we checked out so that we didn't get downgraded into the basement and/or dungon, and got in the train to Bergamo. If it hadn't been a full on downpoor all day it would have been lovely but this is how our day went:

Stop 1: Irish pub. You can always count on a Irish pub existing in any city, and being open when everyone else is closed. Stayed there for three hours.

Stop 2: Pizza restaurant. Eat pizza for an hour and a half. Eat gellato for a half hour. Wait half an hour. Have tea to waste another hour.

Stop 3: Pouring rain walk around the market.

Stop 4: McDonalds. Buy three small sodas. Camp out amidst the little kid Halloween party occuring (McDonalds is the place to be on Halloween just so you know) and use the three soda cups for wine. To drink with our cheese. Spend the next three hours in McDonalds.

Stop 5: Irish pub number two. Just an hour here, success.

Stop 6: Train station then bus to airport.

Stop 7: The floor in the airport, for a few hours of sleep before being informed we aren't allowed to sleep in the airport.

Stop 8: Through security, to McDonalds by our gate. (I feel so nasty/American with all this Golden Arches nonsense. On the bright side, was now so broke that did not purchase happy meal. Just sat and fantasized for two hours. Not sure which is worse, being broke, or fantasizing about a happy meal.)

Stop 9: The plane. Amen.

I started this with all these hilarious ideas, but now that I'm done I am fairly sure that the reason they were all so funny was because we were so sleep deprived and living off a wine and cheese diet. But seeing as I somehow missed a few random and possibly funny points:

Hannah, to a french kid trying to tell us his name was Paul: "Wait, Bart?" "Paul." "Bart?" "Paul." "OHH Bart."

Hannah when talking to same French kid, as he tries to explain where he lives "What about Harry Potter?"

Hannah on the train in the rain at night "I just wish we were going to Hogwarts."

Hannah, on getting a text from 1-1-9: "Is that the police?? Did they text me?"

Overall, here are the main travel points of the trip:

1. Always assume that you are going to enter the wrong door, be it into a bathroom, or somehow finding a door out onto the tarmac while searching for a bathroom. Double check, for your sanitary sake.

2. Never leave home without Harry.

3. When in doubt, the old people are always nicer to ask for directions.

4. Take your own pen, they don't give them out like candy on Halloween from creepers over here.

5. When possible, always know rich Italian boys to take you out.

6. Always get your bus/train ticket stamped or you'll get a nice little fine.

7. Turn your flash off in churches so you can take sneaky pictures.

8. Ask the Pope what he is hiding, if you ever meet him.

9. Always follow the panini.

10. Eat everything in Italy.