106 Days After

Even though Spain is already three months in my rearview mirror, life continues to be a continuous series of adventures. 

My time in Europe ended with visiting four countries in two weeks. My mom and I spent a weekend in Casablanca, where I got to trade in Spanish for my rusty French. We explored the Hassan II Mosque, one of the largest in the world. We jumped a train to Marrakesh for the day, and caught a glimpse of the High Atlas Mountains. After running through the Casablanca airport with no shoes on to catch a flight that ended up being delayed four hours, we arrived in Milan and ate one of the best meals of our life. Less than 24 hours later we were on a plane to Athens. We visited the Oracle at Delphi, took a day cruise to three of the surrounding islands, trekked up to the Parthenon, and drank ouzo with my Danish friend Karina. I had my wallet stolen and then recovered (30 euros lighter). We made our way back to Spain via Casablanca, where we once again found ourselves running through the airport without shoes - this time with the legitimate risk of missing our flight to Madrid, where I had only a day to introduce my mom to Iberian ham, Rioja red wine, and the Gran Via.

 

7 months, over 17,000 air miles and 9 countries later, I came home just in time for my 24th birthday.

My current adventure actually began with two doors closing – one to the University of Arizona and the other to the University of New Mexico. 

Suddenly, while I was struggling to say goodbye to my life in Spain, I also needed to figure out what to do with myself for the next year, until I have another opportunity to enter a master's program. 

To say I felt lost would be an understatement. 

Then again, sometimes life comes together in completely unexpected ways. 

I'm in Madrid the night before meeting my mom, when I get a text from one of my former roommates: "Do you have plans once you get home?"

And that is how this wannabe speech therapist found herself teaching freshwater ecology on an 85-foot schooner in Bay City, with one of her best friends as first mate. 

I never imagined myself running a science program, much less learning how to be a sailor. That said, not getting into a master's on my first try has allowed me to gain another amazing set of experiences I wouldn't ever have otherwise.    

What's more, it seems that fountain in Covadonga may have worked - ! 

I don't know where or when my next adventure will happen, but I am willing to bet the days of the chica sola are over.

Yup, life comes together in completely unexpected ways.

From País Vasco to Pays Basque

I had the absolutely wonderful opportunity to travel with my Spanish family this weekend for the first time, returning to País Vasco - the region where Alemana, Findlandesa and I visited Bilbao - but this time to see San Sebastián.

San Sebastián is a beautiful seaside city with canals, churches and a beach that draws crowds of surfers. We arrived Friday evening in time to take a nighttime walk through downtown, and see the elegant old buildings lit up. We stopped for pinchos, the tapas cousin that Basque country is known for.
We did the daytime version of our tour the next morning, walking along the canals and past the churches to see them in daylight.

We adventured across the border to the French side of Basque country to visit Saint Jean de Luz - giving me my 14th country and a rare opportunity to use my French in real life. Since that mostly involved saying "un verre de vin blanc, s'il vous plaît" and "merci" to the waiters, I was feeling pretty good about myself. ...That is until I panicked that I had misunderstood when I actually hadn't, and ended up ordering both a café au lait and coffee ice cream. Ha ha ha, oops. At least there are much worse mistakes I could have made than accidentally over-caffeinating myself!
We visited another French town called Biarritz after lunch to see more of the stunning coastline before heading back to Spain.

On our way home on Sunday we did a tour of the towns along the northern coast of Basque Country. We stopped in four little towns along the way - Lekeitio, Mundaka, San Juan and Bermeo - to simply walk around, take in the ambiance, drink coffee and enjoy the sun.

Doing 'nothing' without wasting time is something the Spanish have perfected, and I wish we did better in the states. The entire trip didn't really include any definitive activities - and yet we saw 7 different towns over two days at a relaxed pace and had valuable time together.
It was exactly what I wanted from my last weekend in Spain.  

The First Lasts

With exactly one week left in Oviedo, I'm starting the torturously slow process of saying goodbye to my life here one piece at a time. I'm almost starting to get the sense that I'm living my time in Spain backwards, parting with things in the order in which I found them.

On Friday, I celebrated my last night out in Oviedo with Mica. What a difference almost six months makes! I remember the lost American girl who didn't know how to order a drink, who was beyond embarrassed when this smiling brunette was ordered to be her friend. I remember that girl, but she's disappeared since October. Mica helped me take my first step away from being that girl. She was the first solid thing I could hold on to in a situation that was occasionally overwhelming. Now, as my friend prepares for her own time abroad, I can only hope she finds her own 'Mica.' All it takes to be at home somewhere is one loving person who will welcome you into their world without judgment or reservation.

I spent the rest of the weekend with the family in Tapia, the seaside village where I hadn't been since my very first weekend in Spain. That parallel provided another bittersweet insight into how much has changed since I arrived. I have worked hard for the relationships I have with all the members of my Spanish family. I know their full value because I know the months of patience and acceptance and kindness we have mutually invested in building them. It didn't happen overnight and it wasn't always easy. It was, however, unconditionally worth it.

We made our last Friday night cookies (albeit on Sunday). Little can use the hand mixer without help now. And I am finally a bit more fluent in the metric system!

Tomorrow I'll go to Calle Gascona for my last Asturian ciders to say goodbye to Alemana and Javi.

Almost every day between now and next Wednesday I'll say goodbye to at least one friend, in fact. As painful as that is, it also leaves me with a sense of gratitude. In six short months my life in Oviedo has filled with people and places I love. The catch-22 of travelling like this is you always hope to create something that you know will be hard to leave behind.

  

The Trip Where (Almost) Everything (Almost) Went Wrong

Alemana and I finally made it to Barcelona this weekend! I've heard nothing but wonderful things from the Spanish and foreigners alike. It's a huge city with a reputation to match. Beautiful beaches! World famous nightlife! The home of Gaudi and the proud Catalán culture!
So now I'm going to express a wildly unpopular opinion:
I didn't particularly like it...

I will say this though - Alemana and I got incredibly lucky.
...Or incredibly unlucky.
It kind of depends on how you look at it.
But from my point of view everything almost went completely down the tubes more than once and somehow we always scraped by, so I choose to look at that as exceptionally good luck.

Our trip started off with the thrilling discovery of arriving at the Asturias airport to realize I hadn't brought my passport.
Not that I'd forgotten it. Oh no, no, no.
I had consciously, deliberately not brought it. I looked at it while I was packing, thought, "I need that. No I don't; I'm not leaving Spain. You should bring it anyway, just in case. Nah, don't bother." And so I left it. WTF, brain?!? I don't know what sort of self-destructive, willfully idiotic mood I was in, but I paid 50 euros for that unbelievable FAIL. It was extremely fortunate that B was home and able to put my passport into a taxi, and that we had left early enough for the airport that it could arrive in time. My adventure to Barcelona very, very nearly ended before it even began.

So we flew to Catalunya, and proceeded to wait an hour for our luggage to show up. Which resulted in us missing our last bus to P's apartment, borrowed for the weekend. Alemana teased me for buying a boxed liter of sangria and opening it on the street while we walked. A taxi ride later, our driver pointed us to the street and zoomed away. We found the correct building number... and the key didn't fit. At which point Alemana simply looked at me and said, "Pass the sangria." Turns out we were around the corner from the actual street, and we managed to proceed without any near disasters.
Until, of course, our alarm inexplicably didn't go off the next morning and we almost missed our entry time to the Sagrada Familia....

This is where things finally started looking up. Gaudi's cathedral, over 130 years into construction and still at least a decade from completion, is truly incredible. The most amazing building I've ever been in, actually. We were advised to go in mid-morning when the light would be streaming through the stained glass windows, and the effect was indeed remarkable.

 

You could spend hours in there without running out of new details to discover.
We had found out over breakfast it looked like our itinerary wasn't going to match with Javi's, a friend we'd made on the Portugal trip who also happened to be in Barcelona over the weekend. As we sat in a corner of the sanctuary pondering what to do about trying to meet with him (without the benefit of wifi to boot), he appeared out of the crowd and we were able to make dinner plans.

Alemana and I continued on to Parque Ciutadella, my second favorite place we visited all weekend. For the most part it's a plain park, with simple walking paths and a tiny lake overfilled with people in wobbly rowboats. But suddenly through the trees you catch the glint of sun hitting a gold statue. And when you get closer, you realize it's a huge fountain that looks like something straight out of the Greek myths.

We continued our walk through Port Vell and the beach, for my 

first visit (in memory) to the Mediterranean Sea.
When it was time to meet Javi for dinner, disaster loomed again. We realized we had directed him to a certain metro stop and told him he could take either of two train systems to get there, only to discover when we showed up ourselves that they actually led to two different places that were not particularly close together. On top of which, we'd agreed to meet him outside, not knowing there were two exits. And naturally we couldn't reach him by phone. So we sat and waited, and hoped he'd take the right train to the right stop and choose the right exit. And you know what? He did!
We debated between walking or taking a bus to our dinner location, but Javi's GPS said it was a 20 minute walk, so we decided to hoof it. Thirty minutes later, when we finally stopped to ask ourselves why we still weren't there yet, we found out we'd been on the very street we were wanted for at least half the time. We asked two old men which way we needed to go, and just to put the cherry on top they responded by pointing - in unison - in exactly opposite directions.

That night Alemana and I decided to try out Barcelona's renowned nightlife...
Take one: Upon arriving at the metro station after the 10 minute walk from the apartment, I realize I've forgotten my metro card.
Take two: We arrive downtown to meet Alemana's friend from back home, who is living in Barcelona. Braving Las Ramblas from the metro stop to the bar nearly provokes us to violence with the endless parade of club promoters offering bar crawl specials.
Take three: The friend and her group decide last minute to go to a different bar all the way across downtown, and Alemana and I are too fed up to continue this goose chase. We reticently accepted one of the promoters' offers, and found ourselves in a bar full of tourists. So we decided to cheer ourselves up with a continuation of last week's shenanigans.

We chose two Italians as our victims, and proceeded to convince them Alemana was Spanish and I was French and we both barely spoke English. Which was great since one of them didn't speak Spanish, and I kept using Alemana as my 'translator.' The other one took it upon himself to help us practice English and I had a ball stumbling my way through simple phrases. We started playing a game in which we made bets about where the other people were from, which was great fun - until we stumbled across a group of actual French people... Bus-ted!
I should probably feel at least a little bit ashamed about playing tricks on all the friendly innocent bystanders, but there's just nothing like a good prank to turn a dud night around. We met a Lebanese guy later that night who told us he used to convince people in bars he was a Dubai prince, so obviously we are not the only shameless liars.

Parque Güell

Saturday we visited Parque Güell, a former private residence designed by Gaudi. It was a little underwhelming in our opinion, although the area included a great overlook point to view the city from above. And where we happened to run into Javi for the third time. After spending the afternoon with him, we visited the Arc de Triomf.






The next item on the agenda was finding a mall, since - true to the spirit of our trip - I had broken my purse and Alemana had broken her sunglasses.



We went on a free walking tour through the Gothic quarter Sunday morning. Unlike our Portugal tours, we actually got to go inside some of the buildings! My favorite was Santa Maria del Mar. Not because it was necessarily the most beautiful, but because the townspeople built it for and by themselves in just 50 years, carrying the stones from the sea on their backs.
The Catalán culture and identity are fascinating. In contrast to the Euskera in Basque Country, it was fun to see how much Catalán (language) I could understand, with its similarities to both French and Spanish. Our tour guide explained the unique Catalán Christmas traditions of Caga Tió and the Caganer - literally the Shitting Log and the Shitter.

The Caga Tió functions as the Catalonian Santa Claus. It's a log with a face and a Barretina, a traditional red hat, propped up on two sticks. Starting December 8th, the beginning of their Christmas season, the children cover their Caga Tió with a blanket and feed him every day. On Christmas Eve they hit him with a stick and sing to him, encouraging him to poop out sweets and presents.
Similarly the Caganer is a distinctly Catalonian component of nativity scenes, a figure in traditional clothes, pooping in a squatting position. The tradition dates back to the 1700s, and represents how what we consume returns back to nature. His poop symbolizes good luck for the next harvest, as it fertilizes the earth. I have to say, this takes the cake as the most unique Christmas tradition I've come across.

We ended our trip to Barcelona the way we began - with good ol' Gaudi. We walked by La Pedrera and Casa Battló, two houses he designed in his colorful, ostentatious style.
Finally, Monday morning we headed home with no further complications...If you don't count the 4 wrong bus stops we went to in trying to get to the airport, anyway.

Hola, soy Milk

In honor of my 5 month anniversary with Spain, I have decided to reward myself with a laugh! I've dedicated this half year to intensively working on my foreign language skills and those of the people around me, and I know all too well the frustration involved. But I also know how making the effort opens up the world and gives you opportunities and moments of humor you never would've had otherwise. So here's my nod to all of us who have worked so hard to conquer another language! 5 months, 5 bilinguals jokes.
Laugh on, fellow multilinguals!

A Mexican magicians tells the audience he will disappear on the count of 3. He says, "Uno, dos..." and *poof* ...He disappeared without a tres.


An Englishman, a Frenchman, a Spaniard and a German are watching a street performer. The performer notices the four gentlemen have a very poor view, so he stands on a large wooden box and asks, "Can you see me now?"
"Yes"
"Oui"
"Sí"
"Ja"


What do French people call a really bad Thursday?
A trajeudi


A Spanish-speaking man is trying to buy socks in an American store. He approaches the saleswoman and tells her, "Quiero calcetines."
"I'm afraid I don't speak Spanish, but here are some suits," she offers.
"No, no quiero trajes. Quiero calcetines," he repeats.
"What about these shirts? They're on sale."
"No, no quiero camisas. ¡Quiero calcetines!"
"Here are some pants," the woman tries.
"No, no quiero pantalones. Quiero calcetines," he insists.
Finally they pass a rack with socks, and he grabs a pair excitedly. He shows them to her, exclaiming, "¡Eso sí que es!"
"Well!" says the exasperated woman, "If you could spell it, why didn't you just do that in the beginning?!"


And my personal favorite:
What if soy milk is really just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish?

Lucky 13

Portugal became my 13th country this weekend! (At least by my count, which only includes the countries I was old enough to remember.) Alemana and I joined an exchange student organization's excursion to Lisboa and Porto - that's Lisbon and Oporto in English, since we like to modify even the names we could just as easily pronounce anyway. I am very happy I made it to Portugal while I'm so close already, but perhaps there's something to the superstitions about the number 13...

Our group consisted of 70 people, including our 5 leaders, and Alemana and I counted at least 13 different nationalities. (There's that number again!) Our ten-hour bus ride started late Thursday night, and we arrived in Lisboa Friday morning to find out we couldn't get into our hostel rooms until that afternoon.
So we set off to see the San Jorge Castle slightly less fresh than daisies, in Thursday's clothes, complete with bus breath and ratty hair. How do you say 'multinational zombie invasion' in Portuguese? Well anyway, we didn't have long to wait for our showers at least because it started raining while we were waiting for the 100-year-old tram to take us up to the castle. San Jorge might be interesting and beautiful, but we wouldn't know because no sooner had we entered the castle grounds than it started POURING. We stampeded into the castle museum, which was literally just fragments of pottery and ceramics from various eras... Woo... By the time the weather calmed down enough for one of our leaders to attempt explaining the castle's history, everyone was so freezing and soaked (and tired and hungry and grungy) that he wisely cut it short before we out-and-out revolted.

If a picture says a thousand words, this more than sums up the weekend in Portugal...

Everyone perked up after we went back to the hostel and were able to change, eat, etc. Alemana and I befriended Viki, a music student from Hungary, and the return of our good moods might have had something to do with the bottle of wine we split over lunch.

The post-lunch city tour of Lisboa was our first hint that the trip was not going to be exactly what Alemana and I had anticipated when we'd read the description of our itinerary. The trip had touted an agenda of city tours in both Lisboa and Porto, tram rides, sangria nights, entrance to the castle, a boat ride and wine tasting as part of the price. It didn't take long to realize why all that seemed like an unbelievably good deal...

Plaza del Comercio, Lisboa

Our Lisboa tour consisted of walking around the city in the off-and-on downpour, and stopping outside the noteworthy buildings and squares and scenic overlooks while our intoxicated leaders tried to explain them. Which went something like this: "5 minute explanation in Spanish. Now English: So what you see here is, uh... The church of the (insert name)...And uh, well anyway, yeah." I mean...On one hand I was incredibly happy I understood the Spanish, but knowing the extent of just how badly they mangled the translations - and how much information everyone who didn't speak Spanish missed - made me cringe more than a little. Maybe that makes me a snob, but I wasn't very impressed with our drunk, unofficial tour guides to begin with.

Our sangria night was just as high quality and organized as our city tour. But thankfully sitting on a hostel floor drinking something akin to alcoholic kool-aid has a way of making you forget you're sitting on a hostel floor drinking something akin to alcoholic kool-aid instead of having the sangria you imagined. Alemana decided she was going to convince as many people as she could that she was American, so I challenged her to convince some of the other Germans she was American - in German (Nice twist, right?) We had a fun introduction to Portuguese clubs and made friends with a girl from Belfast.

We left for Belém the next morning, in the outskirts of Lisboa. We got another homemade tour of the tsunami memorial, Torre de Belém (Belem Tower) and Jerónimos monastery and cathedral. And of course Viki, Alemana and I sampled the traditional pasteles de Belém (Belem cakes), usually called simply pasteles de nata (cream cakes), which are the little custard tarts that area is known for.

Torre de Belém

We stopped in Aveiro on our way to Porto for a canal tour in the moliceiros, traditional gondola-esque boats that were used to collect seaweed to fertilize the fields.

Our first order of business once we finally arrived in Porto was dinner, a three course affair in the hostel restaurant that included plenty of red wine and an introduction to a group of a Greek and two Italian guys. (By this point, Alemana had forgotten who she'd told she was American and who she'd told she was German, so our social interactions ended up being pretty hilarious as the groups of people we talked to mixed into different configurations.) We had another shoddy sangria night followed by another fun night out. We made sure we left the club with a couple guys from our group since we hadn't really paid attention to the route from our hostel and then ended up being the ones who saved their butts from being lost multiple times in the ten-minute walk.

Sunday was our day in Porto, and started with - what else! - a city tour. Conducted by a drunk group leader, this time complete with the Harry Potter glasses and scar still drawn on his face from the night before. Which, come to think of it, you could consider culturally appropriate in the city where JK Rowling lived for 2 years, with the fountain that inspired Gryffindor's name and the book store that served as the movie set for Flourish and Botts.

The saving grace was that we finally had some beautiful weather, and Porto is a beautiful city. Viki, Alemana and I had lunch and gelato by the Douro river and soaked up the atmosphere and intermittent sun. Even though Portugal and Spain share a peninsula, I think they have a distinctly different feel to them. I don't properly know enough about Portuguese culture to honestly say how they differ, but it was nice to simply know - for whatever intangible reason - that I was in a different place.



Our last agenda items were a wine tasting and boat cruise on the river. By that point, you can imagine Alemana and I's reaction when our fearless leaders boarded the boat with grocery store bags full of various brands of white and red port. Went something like, "Yup. Saw that coming." So the 70 of us cruised up and down the Douro river for about an hour, swigging port straight out of the bottles and watching our leaders recreate the Titanic scene.

The grand twist came when our boat tour was over, and we proceeded to go to an ACTUAL PORT CELLAR for a tour and tasting!
Madre mia, a legitimate activity!!!
Things went quickly back to normal though, when - surprise! - they'd accidentally booked our tour in Portuguese. A little problematic when about half our group already spoke little to no Spanish. I was pretty delighted to learn I could more or less follow the general idea though. As a native English speaker, I've always been intrigued by languages that are closely enough related that their speakers can essentially understand each other without actually learning the other language. English has some pretty far-removed variations that may seem like sister languages, but this phenomenon doesn't actually exist for us anglophones. It was cool to finally get a taste of it for myself.

Lucky for us, the Portuguese speak infinitely better English than the Spanish, and we found someone to give us a tour we could legitimately understand without too much trouble. The Ferreira cellars are some of the oldest port cellars, and we got to learn a bit about the production process. I didn't like the white port, but the classic red was tasty. Alemana showed me how to swirl 'n' sip properly, and I just ignored our group leader opening a bottle with his teeth next to us...

In a lot of ways, our weekend was more than miss than hit, but I don't hold that against Portugal. For better or worse, country 13 was certainly memorable!

Happy Leap Day, everyone!

Encycl-au pair

Thanks to being an au pair, I've acquired a lot of random facts.
Little, especially, is insatiably curious (particularly when it allows her to ask random questions about whatever she's supposed to be studying instead of actually studying it).
My Google history serves as documented proof of the endless questions I get.
One day I sent my friend a link to a meme and she responds,
"That made me laugh, but why in the world does the link have 'do hamsters make noise' in the middle?!"
Because I'm an au pair and these are the things we have to Google,
that's why.

"What do you like better- your hair or your eyebrows?"
This was directed to her father, a propos of nothing, during lunch and I just about choked I was laughing so hard.

"Do you have strawberries in your country?"
She has trouble remember which one actually is 'my country,' so that's her safe term. Incidentally, she also refuses to even try strawberries because she thinks they look gross...

"How was Luke No-sé-que's hair?"
She meant Luke Skywalker.

"What's inside a lava lamp?"
It's primarily a mixture of salt water and the chemicals found in brake fluid and anti-freeze, in case you wanted to know.

"What was the first plant to have seeds?"
Ferns, which is why some types produce spores and other types produce seeds.

"What does lavendar look like?"

"Do hamsters make noise?"
Apparently they do. Middle won that argument.

"Do you celebrate Carnaval in your country?"

"What does ASAP mean?"
This was from Middle while we were reading one day, after already asking what BTW, OMG, NYC and RSVP meant. At which point she finally yelled, "You English people just don't like to talk, do you?!?"

"What do kangaroos eat?"
They're herbivorous grazers, similar to cows.

"Why do both twins have belly buttons?"

"Are fairies real?"
"Nope."
"But they must be real in the US..."
"Why in the US?"
"Because that's where the Tooth Fairy is! What about her?"
(The Spanish version of the Tooth Fairy is a mouse.) I had a deer-in-the-headlights moment over that one. I'm not a fan of lying or ignoring questions, but admitting the Tooth Fairy isn't real starts a domino effect I am not nearly prepared to take responsibility for. I reverted to the mumble-cough-suddenly-remember-something technique.

"What is your fifth favorite animal?"
She knows my first four by heart better than I do. I also get ambushed with personal questions such as my third favorite color and sixth favorite food in Spain.

The best (and occasionally worst...) part is Little retains the information I give her, whether it's the answer to one of her inquiries, a personal fact/story I told, or just an everyday conversation we've had.
In a moment of excessive frustration over some division problems that refused to behave, I told Little that sometimes it's ok to scream into a pillow if it helps you blow off steam so you can refocus. About a week later, I was dealing with a huge international banking nightmare while Little did homework on the other side of the screen that divides my bedroom from her playroom. Right at the moment I thought I might legitimately Hulk out, a sweet little voice floats pleasantly from the other side of the divider: "You can scream into a pillow if you need to, Kat. It's ok."

That means I try to stay really conscious of the things I say to her. In that sense, my job as an au pair is 24/7 because those little eyes and ears aren't going to care if I'm 'on duty' or not.
Last week Little received a BFF necklace (Another acronym. Middle might have a point...) from one of her classmates, and was worried about another professed best friend seeing it. She asked me if I thought she should take it off when she knew she was going to see the other girl. You can write it off as meaningless third grade drama, but I put my phone down, sat next to her, and gave it some thought. In my opinion it was actually a tricky situation, one that required her to consider how best to avoid hurting several people's feelings, while also trying to be honest and decide how she would deal with the hypothetical conflict. There isn't an answer that can be so easily Googled for that one.

I hope I'm teaching Little the right things during my time as her au pair. Whether it's a study trick, a fun fact or a life lesson, I never fail to be amazed by the moment a child independently uses something I had previously taught them. I think of it like leaving a fingerprint, and I want to be proud of the fingerprints I've left on this perceptive, hilarious, amazing little kid.

Of course, not every lesson sticks perfectly the first time...
I explained to Little that she needs to use hot water to wash the dishes to kill the germs, only to find her leaning over the soap scum two minutes later hollering, "Kat! What's in the sink? Are those the Germans?!"

And no matter what I say, she still belts out, "It's raining beds, Hallelujah!" every time it rains.

Once Upon A Time In Asturias

Once upon a time, a young woman found herself far away from home in a strange land. Although she lived in a beautiful city, she missed the forests and hills and rivers of her home. So her friends arranged to take her into the wilderness outside the city for a visit. They brought her to lakes surrounded by snow-capped mountains that stretched as far as the eye could see. They walked along clear rivers spanned by bridges that had stood for thousands of years. They visited small villages, where birds sang even in the winter and everything smelled like warm grass. And they stopped at a holy cave, with a waterfall just underneath, cascading into the pool below. Next to this waterfall was an old, mossy fountain with seven spouts. The legend says that anyone who drinks from all seven spouts will find true love within the next year. So the young woman drank from the fountain, and went off to continue living her happily ever after - no matter what happens in the next year.


I spent two weekends recently exploring places so beautiful, only a fairy tale could accurately depict them.

My friend and her family took me to Covadonga, in the Picos de Europa National Park. A striking rose-colored basilica sits on top of a ridge, set against forested mountains. An apparition of Mary is said to have appeared in a cave there, during the fighting between Christians and Muslims. The site is now a small chapel built directly into the rock. And just like the fairy tale says, a waterfall emerges from the cliff directly underneath to fall into a pool below. Where there is indeed a narrow path that leads to an old, mossy, stone fountain with seven spouts that are reputed to bring true love. Where I did indeed drink. The unromantic side to that story is the sign warning that the water isn't purified and how wet and muddy you get in the process, but I had fun with it.

We drove through the mountain roads to two nearby lakes, Enol and Ercina, to have a picnic lunch and take a walk. Asturias is breathtakingly beautiful, reminiscent of the Scottish landscape in places. We ended the day in Cangas de Onís, a small town boasting a Roman bridge arching over a beautiful river that runs with salmon every spring.

I went to Coviella with another friend the next day, to visit her parents' farm. Coviella is a tiny town in the same area as Covadonga, on the fringes of the Picos and overlooking the Sella River. It's full of tiny, winding dirt roads separating adorable houses where everyone seems to have cows in their backyards. My friend taught me how to feed orphaned bunnies milk out of a dropper, and let me hold a lamb. I got to ride through the meadow on her horse Copito (Snowflake). Her mom took us to Lastres, a port town with stunning views of the bay, just to take a walk around. We stopped at a stunning overlook of the Picos, where you could actually see the fog coming in off the ocean to drift between the peaks.

The next week I borrowed a bike and fought the 2 kilometers of hills to Parque de Invierno, where there is a bike path I have wanted to complete for nearly five months. It seemed like around every bend there was something that made my breath catch. The 7-kilometer path runs through forests and farmland and tunnels cutting through the ridges to end at a bridge overlooking a stunning, classically Asturian landscape of village, river, forest and rolling hills dotted with cows. It was one of those crisp fall-like days when the air is sharp and the light is soft, and food somehow tastes infinitely better when eaten on a damp picnic table under the trees. I was exhausted by the time I'd made the 9-kilometer return journey, but well satisfied with having finally met my goal.

Asturias has truly become my idea of paradise. It has the perfect climate, like living in an eternal mix of spring and fall days. One of my favorite things about northern Spain is that birds sing and flowers bloom all year, which makes everything feel like a dream in January and February to this Michigan girl. It has rivers, mountains, forests, farmland and the ocean - all right here. The cities are beautiful and peaceful; the towns are even more beautiful and peaceful. Every day I become more and more enchanted with living here.

American For Hire

As a native English speaker in Spain, I'll never be more employable in my life. I now have secondary tutoring jobs every day after au pairing, Monday through Friday. Although I'm not wild about working an hour later every day, I truly enjoy the kids, the work and the extra income.

Aside from my Tuesday and Thursday reading buddies, I have agreed to do English classes with my friend's five-year-old son, who is having articulation problems in both English and Spanish, on Fridays. It's not actually therapy since I'm not licensed yet, but I can use my educational background to come up with games and activities that will help reinforce good habits. I'm excited for the challenge (his error patterns are pretty unusual, which I find professionally fascinating) and I plan to treat him with all the care and creativity I will use for my future clients. I actually got caught up daydreaming on my walk home about how we could pretend to be motorcycles to practice different sounds (you know - b's to rev the engines, v's for vrooming along, r's for braking, etc.) and didn't realize I was actually making noises to myself until a lady gave me a really weird look. Oops.

And I just started Monday/Wednesday classes this week with an 8-year-old girl whose parents want her to gain confidence speaking English. When I first got to their house on Monday, she was so nervous she hid behind her bed and wouldn't speak to me in either language for a while. But one of the most useful lessons I've learned, through both speech therapy and my job in a group home, is the importance of getting on to someone's level. So when she hid behind the bed, I simply walked in and sat straight down on the rug and ignored her dad's odd look. I mean, who wants to be towered over, especially when you're already nervous? By the end of that first hour we had bonded over her pet hamster and I got her talking to me in Spanish. I went back for our second class this evening with a storybook and a game. She still won't speak to me in English unless it's explicitly for the activity (ie reading aloud), but as we sat coloring together at the end of our second hour she told me, "I'm sad you're leaving!" "But I'll be back on Monday and we'll play more games!" "That's four days away! ...You could come back Friday, if you want."
The moment you win a kid over has to be just about the most gratifying moment in the world.
Now to get her to say that in the right language...

Ongi Euskadira

That means "Welcome to Basque Country" in Euskera, if we're inclined to trust Google Translate. I translated it from both English and Spanish just to be sure, but I've maintained a healthy dose of skepticism ever since I used it to proofread a French skit about a bakery and somehow the word 'lightning' showed up more than once.

Finlandesa, Alemana and I took a weekend jaunt to Bilbao, a major city in the País Vasco (Basque Country) in the province of Biscay. It was a last hurrah for us before Finlandesa returns home. The Basque language, Euskera, predates the arrival of the Romance languages and therefore has no roots in Spanish. It was cool to see all the signs in Euskera and Spanish, albeit more than a little confusing at times.

We knew it was going to be a good weekend when we were greeted at our Air BnB apartment by a bottle of Rioja, a loaf of bread and a package of Iberian ham. Having our own piso in Casco Viejo, the old part of the city, would have been worth the trip even if we hadn't been completely enchanted by Bilbao anyway. Au pair vacations apparently involve getting excited about things like cooking your own dinner and waking up without having stuffed animals lobbed into your room overnight.

We spent the majority of Saturday wandering the city, soaking in our surroundings. We made our way from Casco Viejo down the main road, through the parks and along the river to the Guggenheim museum.
It's hard to explain exactly why we loved Bilbao so much. We didn't do very much, per se; it was more of the feeling it gave us. For one thing we had unbelievably perfect weather: 60 degrees, the smell of rain in the air and the parks were full of blooming flowers and singing birds (aka my ideal version of January). The architecture was gorgeous. I'm not much of a city person, but with few exceptions Spanish cities don't have the bustle and stress of most American cities. The streets and parks were full of people, but it didn't feel crowded. There's a charm to them I hadn't experienced before.
We had a fantastic three-course lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the Guggenheim. My one complaint about Europe is the unfortunate lack of drinking fountains. Other museum-goers may or may not have caught Findlandesa and I drinking from the bathroom sinks...

We attempted to go out on Saturday night, but the part of Casco Viejo our host had recommended was a little on the...uh, viejo side. If nothing else, going out with girls five years younger than me really opened my eyes to how much changes in just a few short years. When my friends were groaning about everyone in the bar being too old - and granted there were a lot of people that looked like they could be our parents - imagine my surprise when I realized they were also talking about the mid- to upper-twentysomethings.
Oh... Awk-ward......

Sunday morning took us on a short stroll past the gorgeous cathedral (but I mean, what town in Spain is complete without a stunning cathedral?) to the Museo Vasco, all about Basque culture and history. We took a cue from the Spanish after our museum visit and seated ourselves on a staircase in the Plaza de Unamuno to enjoy the sun and ambiance. One thing the Spanish do extremely well is leisure. The whole plaza was full of couples walking hand-in-hand, wine glasses clinking in the cafes, and kids chasing soccer balls over the cobblestones. Everyone out and about, but no one hurrying anywhere.

Bilbao is famed for its pintxos (pinchos). I'm not really sure what the supposed difference is between pintxos and tapas, but it seems like - to a non-Spaniard in any case - there isn't one. We headed to the Plaza Nuevo and picked out a variety of appetizer-esque dishes to share. It was my second time eating octopus. The extent to which my diet has changed since coming here still regularly astounds me. You'd think living in Africa would've been the experience that broadened my pallet, but I've lost count of the new foods I've started eating over the last four months.

My time here is starting to slip away faster and faster, and I'm working hard to shorten my Spanish bucket list proportionally. I may still have a lot of places left to go, but I think Bilbao just became my favorite city in Spain - present location excluded. There's no place one's current home, Toto.

¿Un Morreo?

The misadventures of the bilingual continue.

I went out this weekend with two other au pairs, Alemana and a fellow American - who is a guy, which is always really nice to encounter in the au pair world.
I took them to a little bar that specializes in kalimocho - a mixture of red wine and coke with different flavors of spirits added - and drinking board games you can play with it.

The guy landed on a square that instructed him to roll the die against a player of the opposite sex. The loser had to either drink or give the other person a morreo. None of us knew this word, and it wasn't in our translation apps either. I was ready to just ignore it and simply make the loser drink, but Alemana decided we should ask someone. I was surprised, because usually she's too reserved to talk to people in Spanish. Typically it's only me who orders or makes small talk or asks directions, etc.
But she had decided to make an effort to be more extroverted, and apparently there was no time like the present to start.

So she and I grab the nearest stranger by the arm and ask him in Spanish,
"What is a morreo?"
The young guy we'd asked immediately gives her a startled look and stutters, "It's uh...a kiss...uh, with the tongue..."
Alemana immediately goes scarlet and I just about fell out of my chair laughing.

Well, no one ever said learning another language was always a dignified process...

Three Holidays in Three Countries

The last three weeks have found me all over the map, more so than usual.

I met my friend in Denmark on her 26th birthday, marking the sixth country we've been to together in less than six years. I spent ten days with her and her family and friends, and celebrated Christmas there. I can't say Danish food was particularly to my taste- it's a lot of herring prepared every way imaginable, other combinations of things piled on rye bread, and lots of licorice candies- but their traditional rice pudding with cherry sauce is the stuff of dreams. It was a great trip, albeit not anything very blog-worthy. I finally got to see one of my closest friends in her home country and meet the people I've been hearing about for years.

I saw three other friends in Berlin, two of whom are a couple I haven't seen since their wedding in Ghana almost four years ago. I met their adorable year-and-a-half-old daughter, and spent a quiet New Year's Eve eating fondu and watching fireworks out the kitchen window for the first half hour of 2016.
I did a little more tourism in Berlin than in Denmark. The sites ranged from the hotel where Michael Jackson infamously dangled his kid off the balcony, to the former site of the bunker where Hitler committed suicide - now merely a patch of grass by an apartment parking lot without a single marker. I thought it was a beautiful city and would've been well worth dedicating more time to if I could have. I did, however, absolutely freeze my butt off. You'd think 4 years in the U.P. would've prepared me for anything, but I've been living the soft life here in northern Spain where it has barely ever dipped below 50 and lost any yooper grit I ever had.

I came home to Oviedo in time for Reyes Magos, the feast of the three Wisemen on January 6th. It's a big deal here, like Christmas, and I had at least as much fun as my girls. We went to the city parade the night before, which was way more interesting than American ones in my opinion. My favorite part was the flock of geese that marched in the parade. On one hand I felt bad because I think that must be really stressful for them, but it was still a great sight. I was woken up on the 6th by my girls yelling at me to come open presents, and we spent the afternoon at their grandmother's house.

I've written a lot lately about the experience of doing things alone and dealing with being lonely as a result of my decision to travel so much. Well, the last three weeks opened my eyes to the amazing network of people I have exactly because I've traveled so much. In the last four months I've been able to visit people in London, Denmark and Germany - all of whom I met during my year in Ghana. Even an ocean away from my family and the majority of my friends, I had wonderful people to be with during the holidays. Coming back to Spain likewise opened my eyes to how much I've bonded with my little community in Oviedo already. I hadn't fully realized how much I missed my girls until I saw them again. And even outside my host family, there was a handful of people I was excited to come back to, and who were excited to see me.
In getting caught up over the fact that I often explore alone, I'd ignored all the other explorers I've met along the way.

Tomorrow my girls go back to school, and I'm happily digging in to the second half of my time in Spain. 75 days to go and I don't plan to waste them!