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.

Let's get down to businessssss.......

Okay I have a laundry list of things to get out on the blog so I stop feeling like a neglectful person:

1. Whales.

2. (okay so the list was huge yesterday and then I went on a tangent about hiking. And now I can't remember. Typical. Did we discuss cheeseburgers yet? Let me go check.) If we didn't discuss them, Cheeseburgers are next on our list.

3. Okay this is just sad. I need to write things down as I think of them.

I suppose we'll go with whales for now, and I'll just tell you about how good my cheeseburger was for like the ninth time. (LIES I just checked and this is definitely the first time. GOOD. I love talking about cheeseburgers. Let's do this.)

Okay first you need to watch this because:

A. How perfectly correct is Dory about men?

and

B. Because I want to speak whale.

and

C. Because I say so and it applies to what I'm going to tell you next.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk3ZxmptZy8

Okay so you went and watched it, right? Okay good. Isn't Dory kind of your favorite fish ever? Whenever I'd be swimming 500 frees at meets, I'd get that stuck in my head. She pulls it off cause she's cute and blue, but after the first two hundred it gets real old, real fast.

So here's my "go green" speech:

We were in the Maritime Museum, here in Santander, last week. They have this huge skeleton of a blue whale that is hanging from the ceiling. It is super creepy looking but the kind of thing you want to touch and climb on. We all sat down under the rib cage in this circle on the floor and the museum guy who hated us started telling us about the whale. I'm going to name the whale Arnold, because I feel like that's a good name for a whale. So anyway, Arnold died. Obviously. But then he started telling us why and I had one of those super emo girl moments where I almost just started bawling. I really don't cry very often, but its usually over ridiculous things like random acts of kindess in the form of free burritos or roadkill. So Arnold and his fellow whales eat krill (SWIM AWAY!) and not clown fish or Dory fish. But they have very poor sense of sight and smell, and find krill by listening to the vibrations in the water. Here's the issue: plastic makes the exact same wave length vibrations in the water as krill. So as trash is dumped in the ocean by companies, fishing boats, fishers, people, etc whales hear it in the water and eat it, thinking: Oh yay! Some yummo krill just waiting to be munched up! And all that plastic "krill" can't be digested and fills up their stomach. The more they eat, the less room there is for actual krill. At some point, once they eat enough plastic, their stomach is too full to ingest any krill and the whales swim around and slowly starve to death, until they wash up on shore like Arnold.

As much as I want to punch every Greenpeace employee who tries to attack me on the Plaza at CSU, this was about enough for me to just put all my savings into a "Save Arnold Fund." I'm not saying ya'll need to go and put your life savings into a whale saving foundation, but I feel like things like this are just 100% ridiculous and embarrassing for humans. Kind of like the oil spill. So maybe every now and then, order a fountain drink instead of a bottle of Coke, or when you go to buy soda for a party, spend the extra buck and get the aluminum cans so you can recycle them, instead of cheaping out like we do cause we are broke and in college and getting the liter plastic bottle. Cause I really like whales, and sea turtles, and seals and sea lions and all those little watery animals. Kay? Kay.

Okay now I need to tell you a 100% opposite from healthy for the planet story called: Michelle FINALLY ate a cheeseburger. And I am ashamed to say it, but I love those Golden Arches. (However, the McDonalds here was in the straight up ghetto and had ONE golden arch.... they are Spanish, maybe they don't know that the arches are an M. For Michelle. I'll educate them.)

So we wake up Sunday after the six hour hike (I'm obsessed with parenthesis, I'm sorry. When I say we, I mean we both woke up, but I was the one who hiked and Rachael stayed home. Just saying.) So we get up and I am ready to just stay in bed all day and pretend to be dead since we made the highly educated decision to go out after the hike and so not only does my body hate me, but I am exhausted. That's what meeting random South Africans in a bar and then getting free Foster's hats and then losing them and then walking home because it is only 20 minutes and compared to six hours that sounds pretty short does to you. The whole staying in bed thing would be kind of perfect seeing as we are in Spain and it is kind of a sin to get out of your house to go anywhere other than church, but by three, my month long desire for a cheeseburger matched with Rachael's constant "OMG I want McDonalds NOW." obviously won. I mean this is me, have I ever refused a cheeseburger? No. I mean I used to require one every time I was going to swim, you know, a cheeseburger and a coke and cheetos are kind of the magic food if you want to rock at swimming, I might patent that idea and sell it to Michael Phelps. He has got the wrong magic "food" down. If only he knew that cheeseburgers are not only better than pot, but are also legal and won't make you look like a real prick... I am still holding a grudge against him for his childish/college baby behavior.

Back to the story. We Google Map McDonalds, and there are six, but none of them are in the city center or anywhere near our house, they are all out in the boonies and beyond. So we hop on the bus that looks like it goes the farthest, and decide it is a good plan to just ride the bus till we see it. It seemed all intelligence and ingenius till the bus driver stops the bus and is like "Kay bye!" and gets off in the middle of nowhere. So we obviously are totally lost and he kind of must have felt bad because he asked us where we were trying to go. So we say McDonalds and he kind of looks at us like uhm wow okay you idiots, and then instructs us to get on the opposite bus, and he asks that bus driver to tell us when to get off to get on the right bus, and sends us on our merry way. So two bus stops, two bus drivers and a cute but strange Spanish old man later we see those lovely Golden Arch(es) and are all proud of ourselves. Until we drive right past it. And until the next bus stop is literally five minutes down the highway, and through two roundabouts. To cut to the chase, thank God my heart and soul needed that burger because my body was not pleased with me as we walked back up the highway to Micky D's. Ohhhh let me tell you though, that was the best eight euro I've spent thus far. Hmmmm Hmmm Hmmmmmm I'm lovin' it.

So two things are now check off my list of what I need to write about. When I think of the other fifteen, you'll know. Because I'll WRITE IT DOWN and will stop failing at remembering the funny stories, as opposed to my food obsessed ones.

Today in Spanish class, my professor was having us practice saying things like

"It is important to study in the library so you can focus."

or

"It is difficult to understand another language."

She straight up asked me if I am obsessed with Italy and food because all mine were:

"It is difficult to go to class at eight in the morning because I am always so hungry."

"It is important to always eat lots of Italian food."

"It is exciting that I get to eat pizza and pasta and gellato for the next five days."

"It is likely that I will be fat by Monday."

I think she's kind of shocked that I am not a whale like Arnold.

Cows left, right and center.

Okay here we go on my epic Picos de Europa adventure:

Can I just preface this by saying I'm from Steamboat and am pretty unimpressed with what most people who aren't from Colorado think are mountains but let me tell YOU: these were mountains. Colorado would pee its pants if it had to compete for greatness against the Picos. The drive up is like the Poudre Canyon on steroids with a green paint job. Even the ducks are cuter here. Don't even get me started on the cows.

So we drive up there at like nine in the morning and it's a two hour drive up. Then we get to the lift and it's freezing and awesome and smells like the mountains. And I was just like, OMG I AM HOME and everyone else was like oh this is pretty, but if you aren't me and aren't obsessed with anything green or fall smelling, it probably wasn't as exciting. So we wait in line and I eat my lunch because it's like eleven so of course I am starving. Then we get in this super sketchy gondola with blue walls and go literally straight up a huge mountain cliff and across this huge ravine (is that even a word?). Then we get up there and all around you, from this balcony area, you just see air and mountains and the green valleys. Heaven much??

So Gloria had asked us of we wanted to just hang out at the top or if we wanted to hike down. In Spanish walking time (aka a light jog) it is a four to five hour hike. So in American walking time, five or six. But nobody was listening, because everyone (the boys) has an attention span of about four seconds when anyone important, tour guide related, museum related, directions related is talking. So we all voted to walk down the mountain. Which I was pumped for, minus that downhill is probably my knee's worst enemy. But how do you really say no to being out there? Being on top of the world in Spain. You don't, that's how.

So we go on this amazing hike and there are cows left, right and center and I was taking a million pictures of cows while everyone else was taking a million pictures of the mountains. We all know where my priorities lie. If only there had been ducks riding the cows or hanging out having a little duck and cow party, I'd have lost it.

We stopped and had lunch on this little hill by a stone church and watched the sheep dogs chase around their little wooley friends, and watched some insane mountain bikers bomb all over the place like crazies. The sad note was that I'd already eaten half my lunch, so I was kind of still 98% starving. But that's pretty normal between meals and then my mom stuffs me with so much food I feel like I am eight months pregnant with a baby elephant.

Anyway, back to my epic hike: I'm just obsessed with it. The only issue is that I now am walking like I got plowed down by a bus repeatedly. But, to quote the creepy plastic surgery obsessed girl with black hair who is always always at the gym at CSU: beauty through pain. Only this was nature's beauty, not plastic surgery. She should figure that out and it would save her a lot of money and would save the environment from so much plastic when she dies.

Not going to lie though, by hour five of the hike my bitching was just about to explode. The first few hours rocked, super pretty and lovely and happy and new. But by five hours of hiking down hill your legs are screaming at you and you are all hot and sweaty and it is starting to all look the same. And then we started getting yelled at by hunters (okay so here, they think that sitting on walkie talkies on the side of the hiking trail in orange and camo is hunting. So comical.) for disturbing the peace. Not to mention the ADD boys kept going off trying to pet the "wild" horses and "wild" cows. I mean, I love cows and everything, but when a super precious cow with a bell around its neck starts full on staring you down like it wants you run you through with its horns, it's probably a good idea to walk away. Fighting a cow seems like a bad choice. But that's just me.

We got down and I kind of just passed out on the bus, but then fifteen minutes later Gloria was like OKAY SURPRISE we are going to a church! Which was actually really cool minus the fact that they had this statue of Mary breast feeding little baby Jesus, which was kind of creepy. It actually got stolen in 1993 and they just found it in 2003, I'd tell you why but I was so exhausted by that point that I really only understood that before the Spanish part of my brain started laughing at me and stopped working. Sometimes, after a long day, I think my Spanish mom thinks I have been faking understanding Spanish because she'll ask me super easy questions and all I can do is sit there like WHAT ARE YOU TELLING ME?????

Moral of the story: if you ever get asked to go on a four (six) hour hike down a mountain, do it. Yes your ass will hate you and your legs will be asking you kindly to saw them off, but being able to say that you spent a day in the mountains in Spain with cows is totally worth it :)

French fries and bus fights

First of all, God really loves me. Which might sounds egotistical or something, but I´m flat out spoiled. I live two minutes from the beach. Rachael and I have our own bathroom (which is a HUGE deal here, most houses have one bathroom that everyone shares, ours has three) and we are ten minutes from school. My madre loves feeding me, and I love eating, so we get along great. And all of this is really awesome and I am really greatful, but here´s the real reason why I am positive that the Big Man Upstairs has a special eye on me:

There are french fries, of McDonald deliciousness status, in my building. And a bar. And a pizza hut.

It´s like he is saying "Okay, you are going to get sad and homesick, so here, eat your favorite food and shut up. I´ve got your back."

Did I mention I had a donut to rival Dunken´Donuts from the Lupa grocery store (oh, by the way, this is a two minute walk from my house) that were three for one euro.

On a little sadder note, I´ve yet to find the legendary AMAZING paella, or seafood. Everything thus far has been, mehh, alright. In San Sebastian, I had the best food thus far, but in Santander I haven´t had that mind blowingly delcious meal that leaves you saying "I´d move here, just to eat that every day."
One of my main goals for coming was to eat, so I feel like a bit of a slacker. I´m going to try to get to the open air market next week... I planned too this week but had to open a bank account on my two free days, so that didn´t happen. I AM going to find cheese. That is a must. Where the hell is all the famous Manchego cheese, that´s what I want to know. I´ll keep you posted though, on my cheese mission, as it is my new life goal.

Now, about the bus fight. THIS is a classic.

So it was like a week ago, and Rachael and I decided to be really motivated for a Sunday and go down to the Center. Just a note about Sundays here... if you are desperately in need of anything, you´re SOL. Everything closes down. Other than Regma ice cream, Santander looks like everyone died of the plague. By three, families start going for ¨"pasaos" for an hour, but aside from the one hour emergance from their little dens, the city is dead. D-E-A-D. So we get on the bus to go down to the Center, and join two other women who look like they just crawled from bed, to their seat in the back of the bus. We sit down by the driver, since we have no clue where on earth we are going. And then an old man gets on. He walks up to us and starts telling us to move. We figure he wants our seat, uhm, okay sure whatever, so we get up and move across to the other side. He sits down and progresses to take out this blue card thing and starts telling us something along the lines of "See this pass? Do you have this pass? My leg is hurt, I have this pass, your leg is not hurt. I need space for my leg, idiots." Following normal instructions about men and harrassment, we don´t look at him or respond and sit there trying not to laugh. Which pisses him off even more and he progresses to start yelling at us. Full on "**** you, you dumb American ***^**añlsdkjf, etlk, lwerwler lwerkwer" in other words, you should go back and walk the streets, along with some very choice vocabulary rhyming with duck and boars. Part way through his rant, he starts standing up and waving his cane, at which point the women in the back start screaming at him to leave us alone, we paid, the bus is empty, we all work, calm down, at which point the bus driver starts yelling at everyone to shut the hell up or he´ll stop the bus and kick us all off, which really pisses off the already livid old man who then starts another tirade about how he pays taxes and the bus driver can stick it somewhere.

I know enough Spanish to follow this whole absurd fight, but not enough to take part in it, so I owe it to that woman for saying what I couldn´t. Leave it to me to start a full on bus fight over a seat I didn´t know not to sit in, and then have to sit and listen and try not to laugh slash cry the whole time. I kind of wish I had a video camera, because there´s really no way to explain the total freak out of the old man on the bus, other than to say, having had more than my fare share of yelling fights with my father, this man had skills.

It's okay to be a little jealous.

The left top is my beach, down the steps from my house :) The one directly below (top right) is the view from a park near my house at sunset. The other three bottom ones are also from the park. This is where I live :) I keep waking up every day and feeling like this is a dream. How many people are blessed enough to be able to live here for a year? The reality that I won't be waking up from some drawn out dream is just starting to set in. So here is my little piece of heaven.