A hankering for American Food

As you are reading this, I am heading home.

And I am hungry for some American Food. Yeah, I capitalized Food. Because it is that special.

Some of the things I have a hankering for:

Beef Jerkey
Pulled Pork
Ribs
BBQ sauce (just the sauce...and a spoon)
Pop Tarts
Butterfinger bars
Root Beer
Guacamole

Preferably, all of the above will be waiting for me upon arrival. But I could go with just the beef jerky and Butterfinger bars. Gotta keep it healthy.

FAQs part 2

Tomorrow, as some of you may know, I am heading home. My bags are packed...and I mean really packed. Jam packed. More so than before.

But tomorrow I leave, and hopefully travel will run smoothly, as we always hope.

I thought I'd take the time to answer some FAQs that I know I've already been asked and anticipate being asked for the next week or so.

Here we go...

But really, how is that packing going?

I am at the max weight limit for both my bags, and my carry on is holding various random clothing items that didn't fit into the suitcases.
As with studying abroad, I know I had to leave some stuff behind. I am leaving behind some brown boots that I bought here (they are in perfect shape, too! What a shame!) because they were only 20 euros and every pair of socks worn with them bore holes at the end of the day.
I am also leaving behind my short brown cowboy boots that I bought here back in 2010. The seams are ripping, the rubber sole is wearing down, and the inside is just...wrecked. I think they deserve a goodbye. Also, Eric hated them. Maybe he'll be happy they're gone.

I am also leaving behind some miscellaneous stuff, like a 1-euro sewing kit, a Doublemint Gum tin, and lots of magazines. Oh, and bath products. Lots of random little bottles of shampoos and lotions.
And my gold beach sandals. They need to be in the garbage, like, now.

I will be wearing a LOT on my back. It always sucks, because I start sweating while running around the airport, but then the airplane is always SO COLD. There is no balance. You just have to wear a tank top, button up, hoodie, and leather jacket like I plan on doing tomorrow. Then you can sweat sweat sweat then shiver on the airplane. Bonus: you can use your folded up jacket/hoodie to make up for the massive dips in the lower back and seat due to AWFUL ergonomic design.

 I have said it many times, and I will say it again: who the HECK designs those airplane seats? Never ever have I wanted a seat that makes me curve my back so I hunch forward then have so much neck support that I am stuck in a chin-to-collarbone pose for a flight. Every airplane and airline is like that, so clearly there is some major negative groupthink going on right now.

Why are you coming home so soon?
As I mentioned in the previous FAQ, the contract was up after 6 months. The company tried to extend it, but the government program funding it was ending in May, and therefore my pay was ending in May.

Are you excited about coming home/are you gonna miss Spain?
You know, I don't really have a good answer to this question. In all honesty, I am sad to be coming home. However, I don't want to stay here either. There is nothing inherently bad about either place, but I am in this sort of limbo that makes me not want to be at either one.
It is like that feeling of graduating high school or college. You like it where you are, but you don't want to stay out of comfort...you want to move on. But moving on can be scary and unknown, and that's not something I really look forward to.
That is where I am right now. I can't stay, because there is nothing keeping me here...but there is nothing really drawing me home (that's not to say I don't miss my friends and family).

Why didn't you take a week or something at the end of your stay in Spain to travel or vacation?
Basically, I am rushing home because of our friends' Mark and Lauren's wedding shower that is taking place on Friday. Yes, this Friday, as in five-hours-after-my-plane-lands Friday.
Also, my neighbor who has been like a little sister to me, Emily, graduates high school on Sunday, and is having her grad party that day.

What are you going to do when you come back? What's next?
This answer should really just be "?"
But the long answer is job searching, babysitting, and trying to figure out what I am going to do for the rest of my life, much like how it was after college graduation.

Are you going to continue your Spanish?
I don't have any plans. I don't want to come off as haughty when I say this, but it is really hard to take classes at this level of Spanish at my age. College level courses are what I have already taken, so it would just be repetitive. There aren't as intensive of courses as there are for things like English (adult ESL, for example). However, I am not really looking for classes, either. The only way I have been intensively improving the language was when I was here in Spain, immersed and conversational.
I do plan on Skyping my host family. Hopefully I can call them at least once a month and fit in some Spanish conversation.
But I don't think I will lose it, since prior to Nov 2011 when this trip started, the last time I had used it was in May 2010. It doesn't quite disappear.

Let's do the time warp...again!

I have been writing a post about my trip to Alicante all week. Still not finished (don't worry, it's not a novel. Maybe a novella at best), but I figured I'd release it in snippets. Here is the first part to set the mood for the whole weekend.

I got back from Alicante on Sunday, and it was quite an experience. Emotional, confusing, fun...

 Let’s start with the train ride. It’s a short ride from Valencia, since it is in the same province. It only took an hour and 45 mins. As I was arriving in the Alicante train station, the weirdest feeling swept over me. I have had it before.

It’s a bit hard to describe, but I’ll try my best: it’s a form of confusion of where you are in time and place. I know, it sounds pretty abstract. But when I came into the Alicante terminal, I was confused for a moment (or more) regarding where I was, what was home, where I am in my life, etc. It’s like I was traveling in time, and I was really there, and it all looks the same, so it washes over you for a minute that two years haven’t passed by and that I was still there, Spring 2010, studying abroad in Alicante, living with my host family, hanging out with my friends Carly and Sarah and Scott and Drew etc. It is really confusing and strange because you can’t remember where your “home base” is. Is this a vacation? Am I back “home”(as I would call it when I was abroad in 2010)?

I am familiar with this feeling because I have had it before when going to the states back in March 2009, when I went home for my Nana’s funeral. I was back in the states after only been gone for a couple months (the semester began early January). The feeling wasn’t as intense as other times I’ve had it, but it was the first time it ever happened. Was I done studying abroad? Was it summer already? Was I ever in Spain in the first place? Although I had the answers to all the questions, the whole place/time confusion messes with your perspective and you really aren’t sure about the answers anymore. It happened again when I went home (to the states) for Christmas just a few months ago.

And it happened again in Alicante this past weekend. My friend Sarah experienced the same sort of thing after returning to Iowa from being in Chile for almost six months. She felt like when she returned home, the whole Chile experience felt like a dream. Contrary to Sarah’s experience, I have never felt that way when I finished my semesters abroad. If you have never studied abroad, this is something they tell us in the orientation about returning home: it is a sort of reverse culture shock, resulting from the change you feel inside versus the relative non-change you see in your home in the states. It’s like time stood still for them, but it flew by for you.

But I never felt this time warp feeling when returning home. Yes, there is homesickness (of your non-home in Europe, strangely) and jet-lag, but I never was confused. I think it is from the closure you get at the end of the semester. You say goodbye to your host family, your teachers, your friends. You see your friends go away in their buses, you experience packing your bags with souvenirs, and you think the whole plane ride home about home and what you miss and what you cannot wait to see/do once you arrive. But when I made these short excursions to the states and Alicante for less than a week each, the “goodbyes” are more like “see you soons” to my host family, so you don’t get the closure that allows you to move on to the next setting.

 Now that you know about the whole time warp feeling, you can imagine how strange it was for me during the entire weekend.

(more to come in a future post)

Christmas, New Years, and Reyes Magos (three holidays in one video!)

This is a tad late, since the last of the three was celebrated on January 6th, but here is a video mashup of my holiday experience at home and abroad!

Hey, it could be later. I still have 2009 vaca footage from Seattle that is untouched.


Oh, and the song isn't very holiday-ish. Although it's by a band I heard on Spanish MTV, called Chinese Christmas Cards. So, technically it IS within theme?