Moss and green things that grow

I am constantly astounded by the ability moss has to grow anywhere. Or even plants, for that matter. Out of rocks, on rocks, on trees... as corny as it is, the fact that something can grow despite the circumstances just intrigues me. I was home sick today, which was typical because the past week we have literally had a hurricane and today it decided to blast sunlight and be 71 degrees, while I was stuck in bed.

I didn't know I was in a hurricane, when I was. I mean, I'm from Steamboat. I do white out blizzards, near death driving on Rabbit Ears, four feet all at once snow, but I don't do hurricanes. Well, I didn't. I guess I do now. The official definition of a hurricane is a huge storm caused by warm and cold water mixing; that is according to Rachael who is from Atlanta and goes to school in New Orleans, so if I am gonna quote her on anything, I'd probably guess that she was right about that, so I won't be called out. Well, I'd quote her on that and on anything pertaining to Louise Vouton (yes, I just spell checked that to see if it is available. It isn't. So pardon me for the spelling issue.)

I'm the worst at getting sick, because I absolutely can not stay inside all day. I refuse to do it. I did once, after a slightly rough night out and a rain storm and I thought I was going to die. I mean, I love my little cave, and you can definitely tell I've been sick because there are clothes all over the place and it looks like my room at home, but I just can't stay inside. But back to my story about how I love moss and why that is relevant at all to my day/life/your reading this/but let's just be honest it probably won't really be relevant. I went out for a walk to watch the sunset. I've realized, other than my obsession with moss and green things that grow, that I love being alone. Which might sound weird, for an almost 20 year old to just be realizing that, but I think between the boyfriends, the family, friends at school and living with a roommate in my room for two years, I just never spent time on my own enough. But since getting here, the days or afternoons I spend exploring on my own, walking on my own, eating on my own, are the best. Today I found out that I can bypass the huge long walk around the bay and instead walk over the hill by two palaces and the mansions of Santader's wealthiest, including the owner of Banco Santander which is the biggest bank in Spain and one of the top banks in Europe. No big deal or anything, but we are practically neighbors. So if you feel like robbing him, I can scope it out for you.

The most beautiful area to walk here, aside from along the coast and beach, is called Calle Reina Victoria (Queen Victoria) and it has all these vine covered gazebos and walks along the coast. So on one side you have huge mansions, palaces, and houses that you want to take creepy pictures of (which I did...) and kind of want to just knock on their door and announce that you are their long lost child and hope the husband was scandalous enough to believe he knocked up your "mom. Then on the other side you have the ocean, this islandy beach, and behind that you have little towns and rolling green hills and then mountains covered in snow. It's enough to make anyone just want to stand and stare for the rest of their life. Or until the sun goes down and you can't see anything anymore.

Along my walk I was the creepy person taking pictures of beautiful houses, of the sunset, and of moss. I'm pretty sure a little girl asked her mother why I was taking pictures of the ground. I felt borderline pedifile taking pictures right by an elementary school, but at least I was taking pictures of the moss and not the precious kids. Now is when my "I want to kidnap babies and cuddle with them" comment comes in and I just step up my creepiness to the max. But I like kids. In a strictly let me kiss you and squeeze you and love you kind of way. Not, as a friend so kindly suggested, in a Michael Jackson way. But don't worry, when he called me Michael, I just thought he forgot my name and reminded him that my name is Michelle. He then reminded me that I am a possible pedifile like Michael. And that thank you very much but he knows my name. I think I give too little credit to the male gender.

My walk ended at Lupa, the grocery that is right by my house. Which means that whenever I motivate and do anything, like go on a walk on the beach cause that is such hard work, or don't buy Regma icecream when I walk by it three times a day, I reward myself with a trip to Lupa for donuts. Because those are so healthy and everything.

I guess the moral of this "story" is that, despite all things, moss grows. You can hurricane on it, and you'll still have moss growing all over. Okay maybe not so much in winter when it's blizzarding, but still. I guess it makes the corny "Michelle is trying to grow up and discover herself so she can do something awesome with her life other than write about eating donuts" part of me want to hope that despite whatever situation I am in, I'll find some way to grow from it. Now is when you can all get out your kleneex or, if you are my mom, you can get out a handkerchief, and dab your eyes :)

On to a quick new topic called my other new obsession other than moss is Modern Family. I love it. If you have 20 minutes when you are eating and kind of bored, get on ch131.com and start with season one. I promise you will:

a. be laughing a little bit hilariously (perhaps to the extent that your roommate goes and buys ear plugs. Which might also be the partial result of your sleep talking, not that it just happened to me or anything.)

b. never be bored again when given 20 minutes to watch

c. be addicted to something awesome

and

d. find every part to be relevant in some way to your own family.

I just really appreciate a show, book or movie that can depict real life. Or that can use intelligent humor, can tie everything together, doesn't have to use sex/drugs/rock and roll to get people interested, and can hold my attention repeatedly. Such as HP (one week till it comes out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and till I see it in Spanish, not too excited but at least I can see it, right?) anything by Jane Austen, and I would say Grey's Anatomy but they really just get me with the scandal, the sex, the surgery and the constant blood and love.

Just watch it. And appreciate how great moss is. And try and see deep corny messages from plants. Love you bye!

Monday takes the cake.

I feel like we should give Monday an award for constantly kicking every other day's ass at being able to, despite all circumstances, be the roughest day of the week. I mean, I'm used to the terrible waking up early after two sleeping in days, used to the first few hours of class that feel like a sin, the dread that you have four more days of sitting in class while it is sunny out (okay so not so much here but still.)

(SMALL FREAK OUT MOMENT I JUST HEARD THUNDER! YAYYYYYY! I love Tuesdays.)

Let me just tell you though, about my Monday (yesterday) and why I am sure that I will never be able to say "Monday sucks" again without just being grateful that it wasn't my day yesterday.

So in order to stay here for a year, they told us (they being the ISA people) that we just have to get a year long visa. About three weeks ago, I was reading my visa and realized, oh hey, PS it expires at the end of November. At which point I asked our director Gloria what was going on and she remembered that we needed to actually apply for residency and get a residency card. Begin the official fight with the Spanish police. After trip one down to the Center and then up into the ghetto we left the police with some rando papers to get stamped at a bank. Blah blah that isn't exciting, bank stamping, passport pictures in a photo booth (ps we are NOT smarter than photobooths, as I discovered 8euro later) and such business.

Let's jump to yesterday. Wake up, full on down pour, walk to class, literally get blown into a tree, and Facbook stalk for an hour in my 8am. I have decided that the 8am class is my social hour, to catch up on the lives of America and such.

At eleven we left to go to the police for our appointment at noon. An hour should be plenty for a 20 minute bus ride. HA.

Cool story called seven stories of scaffolding decided that due to the wind it was just too much work to stay in place and decided to take a little lie down in the road. You know, no worries about the cars, people, buses, little men on mopeds in the pouring rain, etc. So the 20 minute bus ride turned into a 45 minute bus ride seven blocks. At which point we bailed and walked (but let me just say that for Spanish people walking is my running. I don't know what it is, but I just wasn't given the gift of being speedy. For example for the two weeks I attempted to do track in high school, I was full on sprinting and it was everyone else's warm up. I'm just not quick. So hopefully nobody ever wants to chase me, cause I'll lose that real quick.) The walk wasn't exactly close, seeing as we'd taken five of the 20 minutes on the bus. And Mother Nature decided to just be a real pal and start bawling her eyes out on us, while also thinking it would just be nice to continue with the scaffolding destruction strength wind. I tend to just laugh when freaking out, so I was walk/jogging (YAY LIGHTNING!) and laughing and about ready to cry because it was freezing and I looked like I had stood in an ice shower for five minutes in all my clothes. Let's just say, that upon arriving at the police, I am really surprised they didn't think I was some crazy person trying to blow everyone up and/or cry and get free food.

We got there at 12:05 so missed our appointment and thus got to sit waiting in our soaking clothes in the wind for an hour. On the bright side, they just finger printed me (and don't even worry, I already sent my prints to the FBI and I haven't been convicted of murder/terrorism/child-napping/grand theft auto/blood diamond smuggling, you know, all the regulars) and then sent me on my merry way, allowed to return 45 days later for my card. No bother that my visa is up in three weeks. It's Spain, stop worrying. Of course.

Let me just not jinx anything and say I AM SURE it could have been worse, I could have been the one smushed by the falling construction work, or swept off a dock by a massive wave, or run over by a crazy person on a moped, or not been fed a delicious dinner. But I am obsessed with rain, and even I wasn't obsessed with yesterday. Or today, since it was basically the same story.

But you don't even KNOW how awesome the lighting and thunder is right now. If I was braver/not freezing I'd go scope it out, but I might be tempting fate then and would probably get fried like a squirrel on the powerlines behind my house in Steamboat. Those little buggers just seem to have the worst luck when it comes to getting buzzed. (Lizzy, my friend at CSU, just really loves squirrels so she might cry when she reads this. She is yet to fall in love with geese though. I'll convert her. Because let me just tell you: the geese at CSU are pretty adorable, minus the little digestive presents they leave you all over.)

If you want some mad puddle jumping, or want to watch people get crushed by scaffolding or surfers get pummeled by hurricane force winds, hope on a plane, you know where to find them! OH and quick funny story: my Spanish teacher was asked by some Americans how to say "cheers" in Spanish, but she thought they said "what is your name" so she said "Gema!" and they progressed to say "Gema!" every single time they had a drink. I don't even want to know how many times I have said something equivalently as mixed up as that :)

No big deal or anything....

Big wind, big waves, pouring rain....
makes for:
insane surfers risking their lives,
scaffolding being blown onto cars,
showing up to class dripping wet,
getting sick and wanting to crawl in bed,
watching excessive amounts of tv and reading Harry Potter
anddd....
the closest thing to a hurricane I´ve experienced.

These were taken by the newspaper/news yesterday and this morning. So thanks to them because now I have proof that we don´t even know what wind is in Colorado :) Wanna walk to class with me?

maybe it's time to motivate?

Here's my number one problem about Sundays: I sit around and think about all the things I should be doing.

For example:

1. Running off the three pieces of different pastries and the chocolate mousse that Ma fed me last night.

2. Washing the tattoos that her granddaughters gave me off my hands and arms.

3. Writing the first few pages of my eleven page paper.

4. Doing Spanish homework (and also, remembering what the homework is would be a good start)

5. Making vocabulary cards because I am DETERMINED to be fluent soon. It's just not working. Something's gotta change.

6. Getting all my papers lined out to go to the police tomorrow to declare myself NOT a their/terrorist/prostitute/homeless person/assassin/kidnapper (other than babies and cute little animals)

7. Stretching

8. Cleaning my room slash trying to find all the things that I lost (and trying to remember what all those things are)

9. Searching for all my MIA socks.

10. Blow drying my soaking boots.

11. Not sitting on my bed for hours stalking every person I am friends with, all their boyfriends, all their ex boyfriends, all their friends/sisters/brothers/mothers.

12. Reading guide books about Spain so I know how to get from Madrid to Santander for less than 200euro.

13. Booking my plane ticket from Madrid to Seville (YAY)

14. Eating lunch (this one might actually tempt me enough to accomplish)

15. Reading HP instead of stalking.

Overall, the culprit is Facebook and the victim of seduction by Facebook is me. I think it is time for Facebook and I to sit down and have a little talk, things are just not working out, he demands all my time and is far too needy and dull yet addictive. I think it is time we broke things off for a little while....

however, like with all bad boys, I know I'll keep coming back. What a tragedy.

OH but can I also just add that I got Belle on the FB Disney Princess survey? This is why we can never break up, because that is necessary to my life happiness. Can you imagine if I had gotten Snow White? Or Sleeping Beauty? The world as we know it, would be over. I'd have to take down my Belle poster on my door or would have to pretend that quiz never happened (kind of like when I got Slytherine on the which House would you be in quiz. I deleted that ASAP and am ashamed.)

AND my Ma made Paella for lunch today. I'll report back as to how legendary it is. I am preparing to be astounded by food amazingness, hopefully I'm not let down!

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?