And I’m baaaaa-aaaack! (probably the dumbest blog I’ve ever written)

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Julia

and so. way. too. lazy. to blog.

School is awesome. There’s a lot of cool new people that need to be added to our group. Problem is, they’re in a different class. My Spanish class consists of my roomie, my friend from Utah, and a lot of people that were all in the advanced class last trimester.. which means they’re 5 units ahead. Which means studying.

Also, my roomie started watching “Shameless,” and now it’s kind of a room addiction. Apparently JAMES MCAVOY WAS IN THE ORIGINAL BRITISH VERSION…. just found that out while looking for a video to post on here so I don’t seem like a complete bore with only text to look at. Gotta keep up the entertainment factor, if only for my mother, who is probably the only person who really reads every one of these things. Gonna start posting each one on facebook so that people remember I write these (not that I read anyone else’s blogs hehehe)

So, here’s a quick clip of adorableness that I want to share with you all. (ALL of you.. ha.)

http://youtu.be/G_D6r58dtpA

I’d give it to you straight, like my beautiful commentary on life en España, pero it’s blocked from being embedded, so please copy and paste to enjoy.

As a consolation prize–which we know he definitely is not– here’s James McAvoy!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLhSOuu-FjY&feature=related

DARNIT :O This one is also not embedabble! What in the world??

One other thing: How do people keep from getting bored? Even when you have a million things to do and you’re completely overbooked, you can get soooooo completely bored. What brought this on? The internet here is so slow. Maybe I’ll go do something productive. Or sleep.. I’m getting up at 7:30 to take a walk in the dark, cold park. Sounds scary until I realize I’m not in Harlem 😉

Except now my neighbors are making random noises on the wall, which is SO like my first year in college. Yaaayyyy. Stereotypes are not true, but sometimes I want to let out my inner child and say “Boys are stupid!”

I don’t love the boys next door like I loved my Koreans

<3

Julia

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , | Comments Off on And I’m baaaaa-aaaack! (probably the dumbest blog I’ve ever written)

Wash away the sins of the world, grant us peace

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Julia

Yes, I’m misquoting the Bible, so shoot me. Sin number one: I didn’t blog last week. That’s all I’m going to say on that subject. Although I forgot that I wrote something on the 17th instead of being the lazy bum that I love to be when I’m with my family.  That made coming on here into a beautiful “YAY I’m not always a useless slob” moment.

The misquoted Bible passage is one that I’ve heard a lot “Take away the sins of the world, grant us peace.” Pretty sure it’s a Catholic thing, but I’ve always liked it and I very much enjoy the rhythm of saying stuff back to the Priest. Today, I decided to change the “take” to “wash” because it’s raining here in Germany for the new year, and I hear it rained in New Zealand, too.

Due to the fact that I’m not a tv channel with a top 20 list, I will restrain myself from the urge to recap THE ENTIRE YEAR, and look forward. We can wash away the crazy and start over. That’s why I love rain. It cleans the world, leaving a natural peace and beauty behind, just like it will on the fields where my aunt and I got soaked while dogwalking. Admittedly, both the peace and the beauty fade as the post-rain serenity is interrupted by all the crazy that existed shortly before it started pouring. Nothing’s perfect.

I love the rain because it’s inspiring, and I love inspiration because it turns the darkness of the world into something beautiful. Death can be inspiring, pain can be inspiring. A scene of war can make you incapable of containing the creative part of you that yearns to turn it into something good, something useful.

Well, today I will turn 2011 into something useful. I will turn it into 2012. “Julia,” you may say, “Julia, it’s going to be 2012, anyway!” To this I say, “Of course, but I will turn it into MY 2012.”

According to my mother–wise, wonderful woman that she is–every year is better than the last. I hereby don my rose-colored glasses once more to put on record that I fully agree. Every year IS better than the last. I loved living in New York, but I am also amazed by Spain. I don’t really even care that I’m “in Europe” right now. What matters is not that I am in midst of the strange and wonderful union that the rest of the world often romanticizes. I’m simply supersupersuper grateful that I can spend “Silvester” with my German family. People make a place what it is. This is home because of my grandparents, my aunt and uncle, my cousins.. This is home because of extended family and family friends that still care about me after all these years.

I spent last night watching Beauty and the Beast with one of my old friends because she’d never seen this, my favorite of all Disney movies. Yes, Belle’s got a huge library and a story somewhat similar to mine (girl who got bored of the boonies and went somewhere where people understood her) but really she’s my favorite princess because she was the only one with brown hair and I found that completely fantastic when I was six.

My friends are keeping in contact on facebook, which makes me happy, and I called my mother last night. Yes, last year was epic, this year was incredibly amazing. However, I have to say that I believe with all my heart that 2012 will be even better. The end of the world stuff is a bunch of hooey anyway, because I have a lot of countries to visit before then. No time for Armageddon. Srsly. (yes, I hate myself for writing that, too 😉

My family has arrived. This party is gonna rock. Have a beautiful new year, everyone.

All the love that 2011 has left to offer,

Julia

 

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

It’s almost been a month@@@!!!!!!##(@*#887878383

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Julia

Yeah, a lot has happened. I was an emotional wreck for a week or so, but not before going to Barcelona and having THE time of my life. Now I’m in Germany, and about to go to Hannover and then Berlin with my cousin before celebrating Christmas with my family.

Instead of giving a quick overview in some sort of organized fashion, I’m going to ramble like a girl who is watching random TV with her uncle and is getting up at 5:30 tomorrow to travel for 9 hours. My bad. If you don’t like it, run now.

Here’s a pic to give you an idea of my time in Barcelona:

That’s in Parc Güell, which was designed by Gaudi, just like the Sagrada Familia and some houses. I’m pretending to kiss the big lizard fountain thingy. Natalie and I had to stand in a makeshift touristy line to get our pic time with this gorgeous fella.

The day before going to the park we met up with a few friends who were staying at the same hostel. It was a good time.

I went out for free on the last night, after going to Sagrada Familia and other unmissable awesomenesses of the touristy genre.

When I left Spain, I was supersad because a lot of my best friends are going away, but I’m ok now. Trying not to be dramatic about it so yeah… I love that I can spend time with my family here, and soon Hannover and Berlin are joining the list of places I’ve been.

 

One thing I’m super excited about is the 2014 go I’m going to have at St. James’ Way with a few friends… I guess we’ll see

 

Love much

 

Julia

Posted in Spain | Comments Off on It’s almost been a month@@@!!!!!!##(@*#887878383

Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Julia

..which makes me doubt the faith after having been brainwashed into her little cult of crazy screaming girls and moms for a good four years. But we can give everything a second chance.

So I have two friends from Utah who are super-Mormon, and asked me to come to church with them. I like church, and it’s in spanish, so I went. Three hours of godliness after going out the night before, and I’m sure you know I nodded off a few times. Whoopsie.

The church is more like a club building because they don’t have enough money for a bigger space yet, and the chairs were all close together during the different sessions. See, mormon church starts out with everyone together for an hour, for a sermon-like sharing time. Then, you get separated by age, and you get sort of a lesson but you can all talk about what you think. Afterwards, it’s gender-separation time, and there’s some intense, interesting discussing there, too. I didn’t participate, on account of my neither being Spanish nor Mormon and all. We talked about how God is everywhere, how he’s our father, and stuff. It was interesting and some great Spanish-language immersion. I’m seriously planning on speaking almost solely in Spanish when I come back from Christmas break. I need to find a tv series that I like, and that has subtitles so I actually know what words are happening.

Anywho, after church we went to my friend’s boyfriend’s place and cooked veggie-laden food. They had been served solely meat by a misled man who was cooking without his wife there over the weekend, and they were unable to ingest more… worked well for me because fruits, veggies, bread, and potatoes (WHICH ARE NEITHER, thank you very much. I don’t care what the world thinks) make my lil vegan heart skip a beat. Oh and AJO… so much ajo. That means garlic but I realized I freaking love that word. Ajoooo

The missionaries tried to convert me, and I applaud their effort. They inspired me to pray, just not to be mormon. Also, one of my new friends, who is also my conversation partner (German-Spanish) gave me his own, old, used, loved book of mormon. It’s in English and he took it to Germany with him when he was there for a year. He wrote a lovely dedication in the front. It made me want to convert just to make them happy…. which made me think about other things I’ve been doing to make other people happy.

Also I called my Mami. <3

Love,

 

Juliaaaa

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Julia’s Wonderful, Incredible, Supergood, mostly chill weekend

Posted on November 23, 2011 by Julia

Bodegas… In Harlem it’s what I called the corner stores. In Spain, it’s how I have learned to refer to the grand buildings in which wine is stored and sold. Have I mentioned I love wine? Because I do. Especially red wine from la Rioja. Yes, I have been effectively brainwashed by the culture, but you know what? I’m a-okay with it.

Last Friday, I met with my “amigo mayor,” a retiree who is attending school again. I met him through a program at the University that pairs older Spanish students with the extranjer@s. He took me to the casco antiguo (old quarter of the city) to pick up some PSOE stuff because he’s a socialist. He was probably expecting to lose the election, though. That happened on the 20th, when everyone punished the socialist party for the economy (which is partially their fault for not doing anything, I hear). Anywho, I walked through the Parque de Ebro with him for like 4 hours and we just talked. I now know his life story, and I am proud to report that we spoke Spanish the whole time (I don’t think he can speak English, anyway).

On Saturday, I WENT TO A BODEGA!! It was so much fun, fo’ serious. We tried great wines and walked around this adorable bodega city called Haro (which lies an hour outside of Logroño). I went with a great group of friends and we just meandered around tipsily after the wine-tasting. There are photos that I will, as I always promise but never do, post on here. I swear, one day, this sueño will be my realidad.

A bunch of other stuff happened on Saturday night, but I can’t remember some of it and choose not to remember other parts. All I want to keep in my mind is the good stuff, and that’s what I’m doing. No need to dredge up stories of gross old men who think they can start some sort of sexual relationship with me. Ooops, there I go. No worries, no pasa nada.

And sunday I slept, like, all day.

Love yas,

Hoolia

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Julia’s Wonderful, Incredible, Supergood, mostly chill weekend

I’m tired and my life is great

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Julia

Encontré trabajo! I found a job (or two). One of the teachers at the school wants me to help her kids with English! She’s got a 15-year-old son and an 11-year-old daughter. Both seem very nice. Their bird pooped on me and I was given coca cola and shown the game room.

I think I will like it there.

I had THREE, count them, THREE intercambio dates today. Borja, Alexis, and Pilar. They’re all awesome and I spent most of the day not being home. Aside from two 5-10 minute visits to drop stuff off and leave again, I was out from 8:45 to 22:10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Riiight? That’s what I thought. Also, I’m glad the world in NY is spinning without me, as we all knew it would, but I’m still missing the city sometimes. Especially the Latinos because, let’s face it, European Spanish-speakers and Latin American Spanish-speakers are just not the same. Especially my City College people (you know who you are).

There are a few more teachers looking to hire students from the University to practice English with their kids, and I’m so willing to help out. Also, I found a theater group that might want me. I speak no level of theater-ready Spanish, but if they’ll have me, I think I’ll go for it!!!

Excited, Scared, Tired, and ready for tomorrow (haha)

Love,

 

Julia

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on I’m tired and my life is great

LAZY

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Julia

Woah I just spent over a week NOT WRITING ANYTHING in my blog!! :O I don’t have a lot of pictures or anything because I haven’t actually gone anywhere. I’ve been here, studying, speaking, having fun. I totally had time to blog but I guess I hit the I’m-so-used-to-it moment where I can’t think of things to write about… which is totally dumb because so many things happen here every day.

For example, today I woke up around 3pm because it is not a respectable Saturday night unless you stay out until 6. I had fun last night, but I also have a lot of homework to finish up now. It’s great, though, because I work best at night, and my super-late sleeping sort of made it possible for me to stay up tonight.

I took a walk in the dark park with a few of my friends a couple hours ago. Then we just chilled and I made some rice. Two of us took turns calling our parents via skype on my computer haha

Now I just need to write a few things in Spanish and prepare a presentation. Also, I got an email from a professor who wants someone to teach her kids English. She sent the email to my friend, too, though, and I bet she called her while I was out doing stupid things and she was home being a good girl who calls teachers on the weekend.

Ah, well. My reggaeton music and I have a presentation to work on, an excuse/apology email to write to an imaginary person, and a little paragraph to write about a tradition in the U.S.

I’d like to visit my friends downstairs, but I think finishing this stuff up is probably smarter ^.^ studystudystudy!!!

Love muchly,

Julia

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on LAZY

Inspired by Yesterday

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Julia

I have now seen the most beautiful church of my life. One of the program’s fieldtrips is to a monastery in San Millan, which is maybe 20 minutes outside of the city by bus. My camera’s batteries died, but not before I’d gotten a few good pics of the outside.

View from above: Yuso courtyard

It’s actually much better to have an excuse to just LOOK at everything without a lens in between (figuratively speaking, obviously we can’t avoid looking through lenses :P). I stared, often open-mouthed, at the gorgeous countryside, at the monastery below, and at the monastery above. There are twin monasteries, one giant one sort of in between the hills, and a small one up on one of the hills. They are called Yuso (“lower” in latin) and Suso (“upper” in latin). Yuso is gigantic, with a shop, a church, and housing for nuns. You have to take another bus for like ten minutes to get up to Suso. Oh, also, this is the birthplace of written Spanish. A monk wrote Castellano notes in the margins of a Latin text and, voilá, the written word of Spain was created.

We got tours of both Yuso and Suso, from two different women. The one in Yuso basically thought we understood no Spanish at all, when, really, it was just too echo-y in there to hear her words. I understand a lot of the words during tours, the problem is just coherently placing them together. I did get the gyst, however.

Due to the fact that this area was once Muslim territory, the “upper” has the cool arches between columns and high, rounded ceilings. Two extra columns were added after Suso was originally built, and you can tell how Roman they are as opposed to the Muslim architecture of the first three arches inside.

(((http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/805))) Check it out, yo! It’s a UNESCO heritage site! We also have homework: find a UNESCO heritage site in your country and present it in class. <3 love my life

There are statues of San Millán (c. 472-573 AD/CE) all over the place, because, after all, the municipality is named for him. Apparently this hermit lived in the mountains until he was summoned to be made a priest. Then he gave so much money to the poor that the other priests threw him out and let him go back to those mountains. His real name was Aemilian of Cogolla, and he is said to have been born in Berceo, which is super close to here. Berceo is also the name of the mall where we go to reach the Spanish walmart, Eroski.

Sadly, I will not be journeying to Eroski today, due to the not-so-lovely amount of rain we’ve been getting. I’m listening to classical music on RNE, studying my favorite language, and doing some laundry. Yoga will also happen before my roommate and a friend of mine from downstairs walk to a dinner party with me. We’re all cooking a dish, and then bringing the food to a friend that moved out of the dorms. First housewarming party!! It’s at 7, though, so I don’t think it’ll get too crazy.

Well, I’m off to be all domestic! (gotta clean my room and the kitchen, too)

Love,

Julia

 

P.S. Another thing that inspired me was seeing one of my friends scribble all the words she didn’t know into a tiny notebook. I wanted to be that cool nerd with the tiny notebook!!! Check back for updates 😉

Posted in Spain | 1 Comment

An Expatriate Halloween

Posted on November 1, 2011 by Julia

We had big plans for Halloween, and we accomplished most of them. Candy was bought, costumes were donned, dancing occurred, and I didn’t get back to my room until around 7 or 8 in the morning. I deem thee a success, Halloween in Logroño!

Of course, I had nothing to dress up in because you can only take one suitcase on the plane, so I used fancy stuff that I had and did my best to look like a principal. The strict over the glasses glare that I developed for the part made everyone crack up. They were amused and a little intimidated at the same time, which made me laugh because I’m not scary.

Surprisingly, I saw a good amount of kids in great costumes. The adults here really don’t seem to care about this holiday, but the niños just want some candy. Very understandable. I danced so much in the disco and my muscles are total jelly today. After the disco we went to eat at Döner Kebab and it tasted soooo good 🙂 I really love falafel.

One thing I haven’t had here is Chinese food. I know it exists, I’m just a bit wary of the Spain version :p

I think I’ll devote a whole blog to it when I do consume some “chinese” cuisine here.

Toodles and *BOO*

Love

Julia

 

Posted in Spain | Tagged | Comments Off on An Expatriate Halloween

Actually studying!

Posted on October 29, 2011 by Julia

Be proud of me. I’m circling words that I don’t understand in the newspaper, and listening to a program on gay rights (or something about gays.. they mentioned jobs and stuff so I’m 90% sure it’s about rights) on the Spanish radio. The NPR equivalent in Spain is called RTVE, and it has a website. Yup, you guessed it, www.rtve.es is the url. Smart cookies, out there.

Dali-like clock! 😀

We’re turning the clocks back here tonight, so I’m gaining an hour of Spanish tv, radio, studying time. I WILL use it because the beautiful thing about getting bored of studying a language is that you can just switch to watching a movie. Have I mentioned how gloriously happy I am that I got this amazing scholarship and get to be in Europe until June??

One of my friends here said she’ll be depressed when she has to leave this awesomeness and go back home. I have a different point of view, though, and it’s largely due to my parents. Being happy with what you have is one of the best ways to live life. As much as I think I could exist like this forever, I am going to be ecstatic when I go back to my life. I will have the privilege of returning to my home in the US with my Oma and Opa for the summer, and then going back to school in NYC the coming fall. There is nothing wrong with missing things, but there is no way that I will let any one part of my life be the best it will ever be. There are enough people whining about how great life used to be. I want to be like my mother and decide to expect that life is inevitably going to get even better.

I will never say that my life was so much greater when I was in Spain, because I will always be expecting something even more awesome around the corner. Like true love, for example. If I don’t fall in love while I’m here, that’s obviously something greater that will happen at another time. And that’s only one option.

In the meantime, however, I am going to enjoy the heck out of my life here because, so far, it IS one of the best things that has ever happened to me. It almost made me believe in God, actually. Almost.

I hope you get a chance to see life the way I do.

Much love,

Julia

Posted in Spain | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment