La Chica Sola

I'm gaining a reputation as the girl who does things sola.

I think a lot of people admire my willingness to do things by myself. And normally I also feel that my independence is one of the qualities I value most. It comes with its flip side, however. There are plenty of lonely moments, and I struggle with that quite a bit. I ask myself a lot if it's worth it to leave everyone I love to explore this big world by myself. I have been incredibly fortunate to have friends and families (yes, more than one) who have given their unconditional blessings in all my assorted adventures. Without doubt the question I get asked most is how my parents handle my international wanderings.
The answer is simple: They were the first people who taught me that you have to love with your hands open.
When I cried because I'm represented by a stocking in my family's Christmas picture, it was my mom who reminded me, "But this is who I raised you to be." How humbling it is to realize there are people who love you enough to give you permission to leave them. Seems funny, doesn't it? I only get to be the girl who does things alone thanks to my whole community of people.

Here is where Spanish falls short, however. Sola means both alone and lonely. And I, for one, want to be able to see the difference.

Remember how I got lost when I went to the Alhambra, and my group had to pick me up twenty minutes into the tour? Partway through, we took a snack and bathroom break, and regrouped ten minutes later in the busy area near one of the main entrances. Amid all the hectic crowds and my uncertainty over exactly where we needed to meet (thank you, language barrier), I almost missed my group again and found them just barely in time for the head count. The count came up one short, and my tour guide asked who was missing a friend or family member. One lady immediately piped up, "What about that girl who was here alone?" She'll never know that tiny courtesy is one of the most important memories I have of visiting that world famous landmark.
I was the only person in my tour who was there without someone else, but someone still noticed me and cared enough to make sure I wasn't overlooked. How much more willing would we be to move through the world alone sometimes if we could feel assured that strangers would still have our back?

This idea of myself as someone who does things alone stings at least as often as it's a source of personal pride. Sometimes sola tastes like freedom; other times it's just plain solitude. But I do realize this won't last forever, and that plenty of my life adventures will happen in the company of loved ones. So my hope is that I will remember this 6-month lesson in soledad - in both its senses - when I am back to a place where I have my people around me. That I will remember the true luxury it is to know someone else is looking out for you, and perhaps be someone else's stranger who reminds them we're rarely as alone as we think we are.

Au Pair Confessions

I have a confession: I didn't take this job because I wanted to work with kids.

I've been working with kids in various capacities since I was about Middle's age. Throughout the years I've been a babysitter, a tutor, a nanny, a teacher, and a respite caregiver. I genuinely enjoyed every one of those experiences. In fact, there's a good chance I want to make a career out of working with very small children. But after spending all of college working almost exclusively with adults I got out of the habit of crayons and cookies and Polly Pocket, and I didn't really feel the need to go back.

I decided to be an au pair because it was the best way for me to live abroad. Punto final.
I suspect this might be the dirty secret of a lot of au pairs.

I wanted to live in Europe; I didn't want to spend all my money to do it; I wanted to use my education, but didn't want to be a teacher. That left me with au pairing, even though theoretically the idea of working as a live-in nanny was not my ideal venue.
Now that I've actually lived that role for several months, I can say that indeed it isn't my favorite job. There are plenty of days I'd rather not tutor Little through another science lesson or put in the effort to give Middle an entertaining English class.

But the chance to be part of these three girls' lives for six months has been worth every single minute.

My mom is a nanny for my cousin's three young children. I see her make a serious effort to spend time with them off the clock. She tells me she doesn't want to turn into just 'the babysitter;' it's important that she still gets to be their aunt sometimes.
I've adopted this mindset. I don't ever want me or the girls to feel like they're invading on 'my time' when Oldest asks me to watch a movie with her on a Friday night, or Middle wants to kick my butt at Rummikub on a Saturday afternoon, or Little gets it into her head to undertake making cake pops.

For both my mom and I, our jobs are working with kids, but that doesn't means the kids should be the job.

I have the opportunity to meet each of my girls for who they are and where they are in their lives. The more I learn about them as people, the more I have developed a sense of pride in what I do and who I get to be for them.

The other day, it was Middle's turn to walk Toro, and she only took him for a quick turn around the block in her hurry to go to the pool. Oldest, a dedicated student who was studying every spare minute for all her end of the semester exams, decided to take him for a longer walk because she thought it was so unfair that he'd been cheated out of his usual time. I don't know many adults who have that level of compassion in a situation they just as easily could have ignored, much less an over-stressed high school student.

Middle is going through a rough patch trying to make the jump from kid to teenager. She knows where she wants to be, but hasn't quite figured out how to get there yet, and all too often gets in her own way. Of the three, I've had the hardest time connecting with her thanks to the awkwardness of this transition period, but I fiercely believe in the person she's trying to become. Her sharp wit, sarcastic sense of humor and insane stubbornness are going to be her greatest assets as much as they're her biggest obstacles right now. There's something very important about having other adults you can trust when you go through the inevitable period of butting heads with your parents, and I take that role very seriously.

Little is growing up a little more every day as we approach her eighth birthday. In the last two and a half months, we've built our jokes and routines, and discovered a shared sense of humor that spans the age gap. Every time I think I don't have a drop of patience left, she manages to do something so incredibly sweet or funny I can't help but laugh. We've been working on the times tables all semester, and I taught her the memory trick "8 and 8 fell on the floor, when they came back up they were 64." Unprompted by me, that problem came up at the dinner table one day and she muttered the rhyme to herself before giving the answer. Then she turned to me and said, "You know, Kat, I still don't think I'd remember that one without that." The intense pride I feel in what I do lives in those smallest of moments.

I became an au pair so I could live in Spain, but the real confession is that's ended up being the least important part of these 177 days.

Cuentos de Cuentas y Cuestas

(Stories of Bills and Hills)

I had this problem where I could NEVER remember the word for 'bill' in Spanish. Who knows why, it's just one of those things like how I can always pull out the word for 'hummingbird' at the drop of a hat, but regularly forget how to say 'knee.'
But after my friend recently asked for the 'hill' instead of the 'bill' at lunch during last weekend's adventure to Andalucía, we decided to use that incident as the catalyst for remembering the right word from then on. In her defense it's a very easy mistake to make, considering "¿Cuánto cuesta?" is "How much does it cost?" but "una cuesta" is a hill or incline while "una cuenta" is the tab/bill. One top of that, "un cuento" is a story (And in a great moment of serendipity, I learned today that a cuentacuentos is a storyteller. This just keeps getting better!) Lucky for us, Granada gave us a lot of opportunities to practice all the above.

Monday and Tuesday were national holidays, so two fellow au pairs and I set off Friday morning to spend the long weekend in Granada. I'll call them Alemana and Finlandesa, since they're from Germany and Finland respectively. Three buses, a flight and about nine hours after leaving my front door, I was at my Air BnB without incident.

Founded in the 11th century, Granada is a city of about a quarter million people in Andalucía, a region in southern Spain. Its rich history is based in the combination of Moorish, Jewish, Romani and Castilian cultures. From flamenco and tapas to la Alhambra and winding cobbled streets, Granada is probably most representative of how the majority of Americans picture Spain.

We spent Saturday walking all over the old parts of city. At least from what I could tell, la Catedral de Granada and la Plaza Nueva more or less mark the boundary between the old sections with primarily Muslim roots and the progressively newer sections built anytime after the Catholics gained control of the city in 1492. La Albaicín (Albayzín) is the sprawling Moorish neighborhood with iconic white houses and narrow roads that go two directions - straight up and straight down - surrounding the Alhambra's hill. It's packed with small cafes offering mint tea from squat silver teapots and plenty of shisha.

We wound our way up the hills to the Mirador de San Miguel Alto, a church above the city with a low wall that offers a breathtaking view of the entire city. La Alhambra juts out on a ridge to the left from where you can sit directly overlooking the Albaicín and finally discern the real shape of the cathedral, which is set so densely among other buildings you can't really appreciate its grandeur from up close. The historical areas eventually give way to progressively taller modern buildings that in turn fade into farmland, which disappears into the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in the distance.

Mirador de San Miguel Alto (photo courtesy of Finlandesa's camera)

Very little short of our ticket to a private flamenco show could have enticed us off that wall. Granada is full to overflowing with bars offering highly commercialized espectáculos de flamenco. Thanks to an invitation through my Air BnB hosts, we got to experience this art form up close and personal in a private home. A co-op hosts flamenco and tapas nights periodically, and we were there for the right weekend. Flamenco includes four essential components: singing, guitar, dancing and rhythmic snapping/clapping. While strongly associated with the Romani, it's a true Andalusian art. Dramatic, loud and energetic, I found it mesmerizing with its waves of fiery motion and intermittent calm punctuated by the tiniest of heel taps and soft cries of olé. Most incredible was watching the connection between the three performers. The singer kept her eyes pinned on the guitarist's fingers, whose gaze was intensely focused on the dancer's heels, and together they could transition from the storm to the calm seamlessly.

We started Sunday with the quintessential churros con chocolate. Pretty much all I've ever wanted is for someone to offer me a teacup full of melted chocolate for breakfast, so this was a hit with me. Unfortunately, Oldest generously shared her cold with me and I spent a good chunk of Sunday sleeping while my companions explored the free areas of la Alhambra.



We had an afternoon appointment at Aljibe, one of the many traditional Arab baths. The baths consisted of 7 shallow warm pools of various temperatures, with a cold pool illuminated in the center. The room was humid and cave-like, lit only with candles and heavily shaded lamps. Clients are expected to be silent, so the only sounds are running water and the soft Arabic music playing in the background. Water, sweetened mint tea and lemon candies were constantly available. I chose to include a 15 minute massage with my session. Alemana thought I'd legitimately passed out at one point, if that demonstrates my level of relaxation.
After that hour and a half, we were only motivated enough to camp out at a tapas bar with cards and a pitcher of sangria. Another of Granada's claims to fame is as one of the last cities that offers free tapas, the hors d'oeuvres-y fare offered every time you order a drink. Its possible to visit the city without ever actually paying for a dinner.

Alemana and Finlandesa headed back to Málaga Monday morning, where they had an earlier flight than I on Tuesday. I stayed for my guided tour of la Alhambra - another misadventure in the life of the directionally challenged. First let me say in my defense that everyone's very kind directions revolved around climbing or descending a hill and I just didn't find that very helpful in a city that is nothing BUT hills. So my tour- which was supposed to start at 10:00 at a cafe at the bottom of the hill- actually started with me calling the tour company at 9:55 in a total panic because I had inexplicably ended up already inside the Alhambra. I was told in no uncertain terms not to budge from the Puerta del Vino and my tour passed by about 25 minutes later and rescued me.


We spent the next three hours exploring the sprawling palace, most of it built 800 years ago by the sultans who were trying to impress the Castilians and fellow Moors alike into forgetting to ask how big their army actually was. We saw the Generalife as well, a second palace slightly farther up the ridge, surrounded by elaborate orchards and gardens. It was the sultans' summer home, since vacationing a nice ten minute walk away was the most practical option when your own people were constantly on the verge of rebellion and the Castilian kings were an ever present threat.

By the time I walked back through my front door Tuesday evening, I was thoroughly glad to be back in Asturias. As beautiful and interesting as Granada was, Oviedo is the place to live in Spain as a foreigner, in one temporary expat's opinion. I'm ready to enjoy my time at home after my mini vacation, and in less than a week now I will be back on a plane to spend the holidays in Germany/Denmark!

"Dale limosna, mujer.

Que no hay en la vida nada

Como la pena de ser 

ciego en Granada."

- F.A. de Icaza

Meet Cutes: Part 2

I've been particularly lonely lately.
My life in Spain is full of wonderful people, but I don't have friends. You know, the people you can call up for a coffee or better yet, do nothing with. I have friend - singular - and she's a responsible student with a job, so sometimes we go a while without seeing each other.

However, I firmly believe that if you go out in public often enough without bringing a screen and have enough patience, it's almost inevitable that you will encounter other humans. Eye contact is an incredibly powerful social networking tool. So I've been out by myself almost every day this week in an attempt to put myself in the position of meeting people.
My fellow students looked at me like I'd lost it when I told them that was how I was trying to make more friends. They think I should stick to exchange student meet-n-greets or get another tandem partner, but I told them I'm determined to meet someone like they do in movies. (And no, that is not code for saying I want my life to turn into a romcom. When I say friends, that is actually what I mean.) It might not be efficient or logical, but I can't help hoping that if I meet someone in an interesting way, they'll be far more likely to be an interesting person. It's like an instant quality control test, right? I do my best to be eternally optimistic. Like I've said, I assume today will be the day I make friends every time I leave my house.
There's an art to finding a place where you're more likely to meet someone when you're by yourself, of course. I've been doing this since the very first time I went to a club after I turned 18, so I've developed a good radar. It has to have the right ambiance, engaging but not too loud. There have to be enough people, but not too many, and it can't be a place that would attract primarily couples or big groups of friends. Weekdays are better than weekends. And you have to go before prime drinking hours. My peers may think I'm nuts, but it works. Whether it's graffiti artists who spray paint your name in an alley or old men in downtown Chicago who spend an afternoon teaching you chess, I promise you'll meet interesting people who make for interesting stories.

Following my own guidelines this week, I discovered a delightful coffee shop by campus and enjoyed a bottle of cider on Calle Gascona - but didn't meet anyone except a waiter old enough to be my father, who made sure to inform me cider is an aphrodisiac. Yikes...
Desperate times calling for desperate measures, I went out last night without even taking a book. I scouted through downtown Oviedo until I found a place that struck the right note, sat at the bar with a beer, and started casing the room. And you know what?
I met someone. 
It took less than ten minutes to find the only other person there alone who wasn't buried in their phone, smile, and ask, "What are you reading?"
We spent the next several hours engaged in lively conversation without a hint of small talk, laughing and scribbling on napkins over a single round of drinks. We even discovered somewhere along the line that he is friends with my classmate's boyfriend.
If that's not worthy of a movie scene, I don't know what is.
I see good friend potential there, but regardless of if anything comes of it, I had a great evening and renewed my optimism.

Then, of course, there's the flip side: The introductions you didn't want...

First, I should explain that the fastest way to irritate me is to try to impress me by speaking broken English and acting like it's my fault when I can't understand you. To be clear, I'm not talking about people who enjoy practicing their second language regardless of their proficiency, or people who honestly think they're being considerate by using my native language. I'm talking about this certain brand of person (Usually male. Usually my age. Usually intoxicated.) who can't conjugate a coherent sentence, but persists in talking to me in English even if I only use Spanish, and treats me like I'm an idiot when I can't respond appropriately. Gah, just the thought of it makes me annoyed. I have enough problems without beating my head against your insane ego.

Anyway, so I finally have the chance to see Mica before I leave for Granada tomorrow and we're hanging out at a cafe when this group of three guys starts heckling us from their table. At first it was entertaining and they were having fun trying out English phrases on me. But then one of them starts being super obnoxious and is getting up in my face trying to have a conversation with me in English, but he literally makes no sense. And the whole time, of course, he's acting like there's something wrong with me because I can't decipher his word vomit. I was being openly hostile after a certain point, but I didn't completely lose my patience until he came back from ordering a new beer, sat down at our table without an invitation, and then immediately picked up a phone call and proceeded to have a full conversation...

So I picked up his full beer and drank it without an invitation.
I may be desperate to make friends, but I'm not that desperate.

Thoughts for Food

One of the most amusing aspects of living here continues to be discovering the differences in how Spaniards and Americans eat. We humans hold our eating habits very near and dear to our hearts, both individually and culturally, so it almost always produces strong reactions when we are confronted with something we consider strange in the food world.
While trying not to place positive or negative value on these differences, I do nonetheless get quite a kick out of them.
In honor of tomorrow's holiday dedicated to stuffing our faces, here are a few of my food-related observations:

1. Cookies are an acceptable breakfast food...

2. However yogurt is a dessert.

3. And I've only seen people eat eggs for lunch or dinner.

4. Oldest thought it was gross I had a glass of milk in the afternoon with my bizcocho (essentially like coffeecake)...

5. But doesn't think orange juice is primarily a morning drink.

6. Neither does Oldest believe in the wonder of leftover pizza... My American college student sensibilities are deeply troubled by this.

7. Cups of coffee (which you would assume rarely spill) get their own plate...

8. But bread (which leaves a pile of crumbs without exception) is placed directly on the table.

9. Nobody seems to eat or drink on the go. I don't even see to-go mugs for drinks in anyone's hands. (No Starbucks holiday cup crisis in Spain, at least...)

10. Coffee- apparently always in the form of espresso- can acceptably be taken with or without milk, however people are universally shocked that I like mine without sugar.

11. Breakfast is whenever you wake up, lunchtime is around 2:30, and dinner is never earlier than 8:30.

12. Still trying to figure out what exactly is "dried fruits" (frutas secas) vs "nuts" (nueces). Unlike in English where fruit is fruit and nuts are nuts, some of what we Anglophones call nuts are in the category of frutas secas. Lots of confusion over this one.

Happy Turkey Day to my fellow estadounidenses!

Getting Off the Map

Sunday morning found me walking through the pouring rain while it was still dark to catch a bus to the mountains with Auseva, the hiking group my Tuesday morning tandem recommended to me. Definitely a morning that seemed better suited for staying in bed with a book, but it ended up being well worth the separation from my pillow.
I feel like, for me at least, far too many of my excursions into nature are only fully appreciated after the fact. Don't get me wrong - I love camping and hiking and playing in the woods. But you inevitably end up spending a lot of time hungry, cold, wet, tired, etc. and it seems like I can only get to the point of "That was awesome!!" once I'm back to my creature comforts and the edge has worn off that part of the experience. So I promised myself I'd make a conscious effort to enjoy this excursion in the moment. I wasn't going to spend the whole day wishing my feet weren't so tired only to turn around and realize I'd had a great time the moment I got home.
My good attitude kicked in on the right trip apparently, because the line between adventure and disaster sure did get awfully blurry at times....

Up the Mountain
I'm a little hazy on where exactly we went, but I am fairly certain it was somewhere in the Picos de Europa National Park. We had to ditch our planned route last minute on account of the weather. As the bus wound its way up into the mountains, the snow progressed from a picturesque dusting over the clay tile rooftops of the completely still little villages we passed, to a 3-inch blanket camouflaging the last of the fall colors in the woods.

Our group consisted of about 20 adults with a median age somewhere in the 40's. There were certainly some in their 30's, but I was clearly the baby. As soon as you put them in the woods, however, age disappeared. As we progressed upwards, the snow deepened to mid-calf, to knee-deep, and finally to mid-thigh. Everyone's sense of mischief apparently increased proportionally, because people were constantly shaking branches to create mini avalanches, throwing snowballs or shoving people into snowdrifts as our path meandered between sweeping vistas and wooded stretches.
It never stopped snowing once the entire day. Big, fat, lazy, storybook snowflakes the whole time. Everyone fell silent as we climbed and there was that complete, soothing stillness you can only find in the wilderness, broken only by the muffled squeak of our footsteps. By the time we reached our highest point, the whole world was a whitescape. The separation between the silhouettes of the surrounding peaks and the flat, white sky was indiscernible.  

We Arrive in Narnia 
We dropped down from the peak into an unbelievably beautiful stretch of forest. The bare branches of all the trees were perfectly iced with a thick layer of snow, that occasionally came down in a sparkling shower when a breeze moved through. The snowflakes continued to fall unceasingly around us. We alternated between awed silence and childlike joy. As our route continued steeply downwards, we frequently gave in to the temptation to run downhill in flying leaps. The drifts were thick enough to cushion any misstep, and occasionally someone's miscalculation would leave a colorful streak of upturned fall leaves.

Things Go Downhill (Literally and Figuratively)
I never thought this would happen, but I seem to have gained a reputation for being exceptionally cold tolerant. Maybe it was inevitable after living in the U.P. for 4 years (in a drafty, old house we were too cheap to heat properly, no less...), but I had certainly never noticed it. The temperature hovered around freezing. I was NOT prepared for an all-day snowstorm in the mountains - both through my own fault and an unfortunate lack of available gear. On the way up, I was able to compensate for my lack of boot gaiters (polainas, en español. Adding that to my list of weird words I never expected to learn.) by following closely in the others' footsteps. But on the way down I had to compensate for my lack of trekking poles by not following the packed path, so I was less likely to slip. By the time we were coming out of the enchanted woods into open ground, I was soaked through to the skin, including my boots. Fortunately I wasn't cold in the least thanks to the lack of wind and our steady pace.

The trouble started when we got lost. Between changing our route last minute and landmarks disappearing under the drifts, there was a lot of room for error. While the leaders debated, the rest of us milled around in the snow and my imagination started to run wild the second I started shivering. I might impress the Spaniards with the fact that I don't feel the need to wear a down coat when it's 45 degrees outside, but I'm a gecko under a heat lamp in my soul. I know all too well that wet clothing is one of the biggest dangers of winter hiking. I immediately started picturing what would happen when it got dark and we were still lost in the mountains and... that's where the better part of my brain went, "WHOA. Shut up, eat your cookie, and wiggle your damn toes."
Finally we bushwhacked our way down a steep bank and quickly found the little clump of cabins that were our landmark to stop and eat. I would have much rather kept moving, but even shivering through our rest period, it was a huge relief knowing we had found a clearly marked path again.

Final Stretch
The last hour or two took us through a winding country road, past mossy stone fences and placid cows wearing old-school cowbells. I warmed up again as soon as we started moving, and just did my best to ignore the extremely unpleasant sensation of sopping wet socks and boots. We met the bus in an adorable little village where we stopped for drinks and snacks at a little bar where the power had gone out. I had a cup of instant coffee with milk that came directly from Heaven itself. Predictably, my chill set in for good once we weren't moving, but I tried to socialize and avoid thinking about the long bus ride in wet boots ahead of me. But you know - just when you think you can't wait another second for a hot shower and a warm pair of socks - leave it to the Spanish to break out the orange liqueur on the bus...

Walk the Talk

My wildly popular ability to speak English as a first language is filling my social calendar and my wallet, and putting a surprising amount of miles on my shoes.

My lovely chain of connections around Oviedo continues to grow one link at a time. B introduced me to a friend of hers who wanted an English reading partner for her 12-year-old daughter, filling my Thursday evenings. That friend in turn introduced me to another friend who wanted a reading buddy for her 5- and 7-year-old kids, a job for Tuesday evenings. I also met her 18-year-old niece who wanted an English conversation partner, so now we have a standing Friday morning date for our tandem (We take turns speaking in Spanish and English so we both get to practice). This past week B introduced me to a friend of hers from her English course who also wanted to do a tandem, which we've agreed to do Tuesday and/or Thursday mornings.

Thanks to these tandems, I spend a LOT of time walking around Oviedo. We wander around downtown, stroll through Parque San Francisco, follow the running path in Parque de Invierno. Hours upon hours of walking through Oviedo in all its hilly glory.

Now, to top if off, my newest link found out I love to hike and connected me to a friend of hers who is part of a local hiking club. They go into the mountains every other Sunday for 6-8 hours treks. I'm going to try it out for the first time this coming Sunday. I strongly suspect it's going to kick my butt, but I suppose that's the price I pay for the wine... the baguettes... the chorizo... the bizcocho... the Friday cookies...

Well Said, Johann

I got to thinking today about what I might want to blog about since it's been a few days, and came up empty. It's been a pretty run-of-the-mill week, aside from a stomach flu apparently going around. I've finished my two grad school applications. Continuing to fight fires in SSF, our non-profit, that are really more of just an eternal flame. I pick Little up from school with Toro every day, do a LOT of homework with her - third grade in Spain is absolutely brutal. (On the upside, I never expected to know how to say esternocleidomastoideo in Spanish, but it's a relevant speech muscle so... thanks, elementary school science...) I do my English lessons with all my girls as often as their crazy schedules permit. Honestly, unless you're interested in hearing about Little's escapades with long vs. short vowels or Middle's ongoing battle of the adverbs, my daily life is not much to write home about.

That sorta bugged me at first. I mean, I moved to Europe for adventures and new experiences, but the reality is 95% of the time I lead a very normal life, discounting the whole bilingual element.
Then the quote I used at the top of this blog started bouncing around in my head. "Although I am still the same I believe to have changed to the bones."

It struck me that this - this lull, this daily grind, this comfortable routine I've formed - is exactly the other half of the reason I came here. My passion for experiencing new places comes from two seemingly opposing roots:
One, my love for the discovery of the new and strange and exciting.
Two, my love for the discovery of the normal and comfortable that is always hiding underneath.

I LOVE knowing that anywhere in the world can be home. Everyone's ordinary is someone else's extraordinary. The backdrop may change, and of course you're going to have your preferences, but you can carve out a niche for yourself wherever life may take you. How incredibly liberating is that?? My favorite part of traveling - a close second only to the moment you encounter something new - is the moment that same thing becomes normal. It's the moment your comfort zone has inched outward just that much further.

It seems like a paradox, to be the same and yet to fundamentally change.
But I think I understand what he's talking about. It's a growth process, like adding rings to a tree. What was there hasn't changed, but neither is it the same.

This in turn made me think of my group of college roommates-turned-family. We're a college senior in a climbing co-op, a farmer in northern Michigan, a tour guide in Washington D.C., a restoration ecologist in Chicago, a sailor in the Caribbean, and an au pair in Spain.
But whether we are taking in the view from the top of the Washington Monument or drifting past the volcanoes of Saint Eustatius, the day-to-day of our lives still revolves around that sacred first cup of coffee in the morning (You know who you are, black sheep. Go back to your skittles and popcorn.) and the new shows we've discovered on Netflix.
There's no where you can go and no one you can be without simultaneously finding you're still simply you inside the personal orbit of your everyday existence. And it doesn't mean you're not growing.

Meet Cutes

I've been thinking a lot about all the unobtrusive ways important people enter our lives. It just really tickles me to think about how you hardly ever know in the moment that a significant event has occurred.

Case in point, I met a Dane in front of a bank one afternoon in Ghana. We got to chatting because yevus always like to know what other yevus are doing in Africa. Little did I know that this chance encounter brought me one of my closest friends and the person who was to become my NGO co-founder three years later.

Less than a year after that, I heard someone talking about Ann Arbor while I struggled to lock my dorm during orientation weekend at NMU. I went to investigate and met Rachel, who graduated from the same high school a year after me. I never talked to Rachel again after that weekend - but her orientation roommate Hillary and I got along so well we decided to try rooming together. We lived no more than 20 feet apart until the day we walked to commencement together, and met our best friends and roommates in similarly mundane circumstances.

I forced myself to go out one Friday night, feeling lonely and discouraged after my first full week in Spain. It honestly took a lot just to force myself to walk into a place. Even more to walk up to the bar. The moment I did, however, a kind man offered to buy me a drink. As soon as he discovered that I was new to the city/country/continent, he started doing his best to help me meet people. To my horror, this involved grabbing some poor girl, pushing her in front of me, and saying, "Hey, give her your number; she needs friends" while I apologized profusely.

Not exactly mundane, I suppose, but neither was it an incident I expected to have lasting importance.

A month later, Mica and I have seen each other at least once every week. She has introduced me to her friends, invites me whenever she goes out on weekends, and asks me to meet up for coffee or cider. We took the 30-ish minute bus ride to Gijón yesterday, a larger city on the coast, just to explore and spend some down time walking by the ocean.

It's obviously too soon to know if this friendship will have the same long-lasting impact that my introductions to Karina and Hillary have. What I do know is that Mica has given me the one thing that guarantees my survival in a place that doesn't yet feel like home: a real friend.
I really believe the only reason I can cope with living in new places - new countries - is my eternal hope that every time I walk out the door I might meet a new important person.

All it takes is a lack of ATM in Dzodze... or the inability to lock a door...
or a random guy in a random bar to grab a random girl and demand that you be friends.
You just never know.

Friday Night Cookies

After a week full of writing a gazillion versions of story problems for Little about cookies on trays, it's finally Friday evening - aka time to make actual cookies in the au pair world. Here's a little insider advice if you ever find crazed 8-year-olds, sneaky German Shepherds, and two entirely different systems of measurement between you and warm, gooey cookies.

Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Oven is in Celsius. Do quick conversion on phone. Set as close as possible.

Melt 16 tablespoons butter.
No actual measuring spoons in this house. Butter label is marked in grams.
"Like this much?" "Errmm...Keep scooping, Little."

Cream butter with 1 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar.
There are no measuring tools marked in cups. Grab a kiddie cup. Eyeball it.

Beat in 2 eggs.
Thank God for an objective measurement finally.

Add 2 teaspoons vanilla extract.
Okee dokee, 2 capfuls it is.

Add 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 3 cups of flour.
Now we're just throwing ingredients in willy-nilly. This is entirely an intuitive process at this point.
Little: "Our cookies need more cauliflower!!!"

Instruct Little for the thousandth time to stop licking her fingers and sticking them back into the dough.
Immediately lick fingers clean while turning to grab something.
Decide that a little hypocrisy is one of the rights of adulthood when it gets you more cookie dough.

Add 3 cups chocolate chips.
Here's a measurement the whole world ignores anyway!
Finally some cultural carryover!
Remind Little again she really really cannot bite into a piece of chocolate and dip the other half into the dough, even though you're making a mental note to do exactly that in the future.

Start scooping cookies onto trays.
Try to contain the mess without leaving the dough balls unsupervised. Little seems to constantly have something in her mouth. Apparently now you're playing Red Light, Green Light with the dog because every time you turn back around he is noticeably closer to the table without ever having seemed to move.

Bake 9-11 minutes.
Pull out phone for a conversion before remembering minutes are still minutes.

Put first batch of cookies into oven.
Dog has reached table. He pretends not to speak English when you try to kick him out of the kitchen.

30 minutes later - dishes scrubbed, counters wiped, Little happily watching cartoons - decide you have thoroughly earned a pre-dinner cookie.

And just like magic, with cookie in hand, the dog is suddenly bilingual again.

El Sonido de la Lluvia

I'm having a case of insomnia, and subsequently experiencing a unique witching hour when most of both Spain and Michigan are asleep. With a six hour time difference, this doesn't happen often. I suppose it could be lonely, knowing I'm just about the only one awake. Instead, laying here in the dark, listening to the rain pattering on the windows, I am enjoying the thought that from Chicago to Oviedo the people I care about are all safely tucked in bed.
It's the magic of the rain.

We have this saying in Michigan: "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes."
With the exception of the occasional summer storm, it's pretty rare for it to rain for more than a few hours at a time. Actually it's rare for Michigan's weather to do anything consistent for more than a few hours at a time.

Oviedo, in contrast, is famously (or infamously) rainy. There are times when it's forecasted to rain for more than 24 hours straight - and to my surprise, it really does. I've woken up before at 5 a.m. to the sound of rain, and it will still be raining when I go to bed at midnight. Asturianos carry umbrellas the way most of the world wears sunglasses.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I love it.
Rain makes me want to wear sweaters and drink coffee and read something written before 1900. I got my first kiss in the rain. One of my favorite memories with my roommate of four years is of us standing in a street running 6 inches deep with water during a storm, laughing like lunatics with all the other people who felt inexplicably compelled to do the same.

But my true love for the rain started when I was living in Ghana.
I moved there during the rainy season, during which it typically pours for a couple hours in the morning and a couple hours at night. The sound of the rain on our metal roof could drown out everything else. Even when I wondered how our house could possibly stay standing, the incredible force of it was like putting pressure on a wound. I convinced myself that I wasn't allowed to be homesick when it was raining - and it worked. That roar could fill my head and silence everything else.

I'm not particularly homesick here, but even so the sound of the rain has the same soothing effect. There are a million and one ways to feel at home somewhere. For me, it's as simple as rain hitting the windows.

Happy one month anniversary, Spain.

Las Palabrotas

At first glance, Concha, my oral expression professor, was essentially terrifying.

We did a dictation the first day of class and I got a scolding because apparently I did not use the page margins appropriately. She has this precise diction and stern eyes that make her seem like she walked out of a Victorian novel. Already feeling like I’d been placed in an overly advanced class, I was more than a little intimidated.

After dictation, the class discussion somehow veers onto the topic of palabrotas. I wasn’t familiar with this word, but with context clues I was decently sure it meant bad words. But just as soon as I was convinced I was right, she starts talking about tacos! And how tacos is the name of the food in Mexico, but here it means the heel of a shoe, which is also called a tacón, but it also refers to palabrotas.

So now I’m back to being thoroughly confused.

Then she asks for examples.

Now I don’t have particularly colorful Spanish, but I know enough swear words that I figured I could confirm my theory based on what other people said.

No such luck.

About four people come up with words I’ve never heard before and then Concha looks directly at me and demands an example. No choice but just to go for it. I gather my courage and squeak, “…Carajo?”

And she whips her head back around and barks, “What did you just say?”

So I’m obviously having a heart attack because I just randomly called my scary new profe a part of the male anatomy in front of the whole class.

But laser vision can only melt you once anyway, so I go ahead and repeat myself.

“Ah, vale.” And, just like that, class continues.

I definitely scared years off my own life in the process, but I learned with crystal clear certainty that palabrotas does indeed mean bad words.

Get Lost

I promised I'd give myself two weeks. 14 whole days.

I would allow myself two guilt- and judgment-free weeks to adjust to the culture, new job and - most importantly - language barrier. After two full weeks, I thought, I should be reasonably in the swing of things. The mental snarl of switching back to Spanish after spending the last four years studying French should be more or less smoothed out. Congratulations, me! You're going to waltz through all the embarrassment and self-criticism and anxiety of this adjustment period unscathed!
Because I am, don't you know, a pro at living abroad. I mean, I moved to Africa fresh out of high school. At 18 I was living in a world where I had to learn how to draw water out of a well, fight off daily marriage proposals, snap at the end of handshakes, feed monkeys, and struggle through basic phrases in Ewe. This time I'm 5 years older, 4 years more educated and moving to a European country instead. ¡Que fácil!

JA JA JA HA HA HA.
(That's me laughing at myself in both languages.)

I am solidly proficient in Spanish. I have lived in a place with significant language barriers before. I am educated in a communication field. Even so, nothing quite prepares you for the exhaustion of getting used to functioning in a second language. I like to fancy myself something of a fearless adventurer, and yet the thought of crossing the street to buy a new printer cartridge suddenly became a veritable landmine of missing vocabulary words. I went to the bar and realized I didn't know a single local beer brand or the name of any mixed drinks in Spanish.
On top of which, being an au pair presents some unique challenges. There is no going home from work. You're never truly off duty. There's not the usual line between Katherine the 23-year-old who comes home at 5 a.m. on Sunday after a night out, and Katherine the childcare professional who picks Little up at school on Monday. There aren't many forms of employment in which you're guaranteed to run into your boss at 9 a.m. when you're drinking coffee in Mickey Mouse boxers.
I had passed the two week mark and it definitely didn't feel like I was over the (first) hill. Then something magical started to happen...

Yesterday, for the first time, I got that little thrill of butterflies for Oviedo.

I fall in love with places. It's the only accurate phrase for what happens. Just like in relationships with people, my relationships with places have highs and lows. I learn things from them and in some ways they are changed by me. It happened with Aflao and it happened with Marquette.
I tried to give myself 14 days, but it would seem it took 24 for that first little root to take hold in Oviedo.
I hadn't explored much before yesterday. I can't navigate worth a damn and getting myself lost seemed like the least appealing thing to do. Nonetheless, it's what I've spent the last two days doing.
It was like turning a key.


I discovered an incredibly charming city with hilly, cobbled streets and gorgeous old buildings and a 1700's cathedral as the perfect orientation point. It's full of little cafes and tapas bars and plazas with fountains that invite you to take an umbrella and a book and wander for an entire day.
Oviedo and I barely know each other, but I already know this is going to be love all over again.

Over and over and over again, I keep learning that the best things come from getting lost. The more willing you are to lose, the more opportunities you have to find something unexpected. So lose the thread of a conversation. Lose your way. Lose sleep. Lose your pride. Lose the limitations.

Suddenly the Michigan girl who was incapable of navigating, wouldn't eat a bite of seafood and couldn't dance a step of bachata... is nowhere to be found.

Welcome to Oviedo

Before I dive in, a quick explanation of what I'm doing here and why.
I debated long and hard about whether or not to blog about this experience. For the sake of both the family's privacy and my own, I had decided against it. But 25 days into my time, I've caught myself composing posts in my head one too many times and finally gave in. I'm a bit afraid that if I don't give myself this outlet I'll end up channeling it all into overly sentimental, obnoxiously long Facebook statuses.
And nobody wants that.

In March, a break-up left me without post-graduation plans.
I'm headed to grad school in August 2016 to finish my education as a speech-language pathologist, but I had always planned on giving myself a gap year after college. I've been sold on the wisdom of this concept for a long time, based on my experience with my first gap year in Ghana post-high school.
Wanderlust has always defined me.
Maybe it's because I'm sleeping in a baby carrier in my first passport picture. Maybe it's because I spent the first three years of my life as an Army brat in Germany. Maybe it's inherited from a mom with a formidable sense of adventure and a dad who always preached the power of giving yourself options.

So needless to say, within weeks I had purchased two international plane tickets and found employment as an au pair in Spain. The end of that relationship was really only the beginning of a yearlong adventure that should span at least 9 countries, not including my home country.

I flipped my tassel in May and headed to Bermuda for two weeks with three of my best friends - a trip that fortunately was not documented on the internet. The month of July found me in Ghana, doing some serious restructuring of Students of Success Foundation - a trip that was documented in From Ghana With Love, at least as much as the shoddy internet would allow. I came home in time to welcome my amazing niece into the world before leaving for a week in London with Karina, my partner in... well, international scholarship charities.

On October 1st, I moved to Oviedo, Asturias in northwest Spain to be an au pair.

I chose to be an au pair because it is a exciting way to live abroad while using my speech therapy background. An au pair is more than a live-in nanny; we focus on language and culture exchange with our kids. Teaching the girls English is a unique way to practice a wide variety of my new clinical skills.
I chose a Spanish-speaking country because I had studied it for about six years in middle and high school. I took a break in college to minor in French, and wanted to come back to it before pursuing bilingual certification as part of my master's degree.
I chose Spain specifically because I wanted the chance to explore Europe and see as many of my friends on this side of the ocean as possible.

Oviedo is a town of about 200,000 and the regional capital of Asturias. It's situated about an hour inland from the Atlantic and has a mild, coastal climate. Since I'm here on a student visa, I'm taking a Spanish oral expression class at Universidad de Oviedo - founded in 1608 (only some 200 years older than my last university).

My household includes 7 people aside from myself:
B, P, Oldest, Middle, Little, Erika, and Toro.
B is a stay-at-home mom (for the moment) and has studied English for many years. P works in Barcelona during the week and can only come home on weekends. Oldest is 14 and loves surfing, movies and photography. Middle is 12 and loves all sports and has a wicked sense of humor. Little is almost 8, and the family member I spend the most time with. She is hilarious, bright and rarely complains.
I've won the au pair lottery in terms of my girls.
Erika is Colombiana and we've quickly becomes friends, even with language and culture barriers and a 15 year age difference. Toro is a German shepherd/Golden retriever mix, and the only bilingual dog I know.

And so it begins! We'll see what the days bring until March 28th, when I get on a plane for Casablanca! My hope is to see as much of Spain as possible in between class and work, make it to southern France, visit my former exchange sister in Zurich, and spent Christmas in Denmark, New Year's in Germany and - after the Spain visa clock runs out - Easter in Morocco. (That's for the benefit of those of you who were counting the 9 countries earlier. Yes, Mom, I mean you.)