Adventures in the great, wide Somewhere: December 2012

12.31.12

Hello everyone! & Happy New Year! Feliz Año Nuevo! Or almost, at least. It's nochevieja (old night) here in Spain and 2013 is but 5 hours away.

It's weird being back in Lugo, mostly because it feels like I never left. Then again, I did forget that the grocery stores are all closed on Sunday & my Spanish has notably deteriorated a bit... So I suppose there's no hiding the fact that I spent the last 12 days in America. I didn't really know how much I loved that place (America) till I left; it's not that it's exceptionally shining and flawless, it's just that it's HOME. Home is hard to trump.

Christmas 2012 was one of the best, maybe even the very best, of my life. I've never been in a situation before where I was planning on spending the holidays alone & without my loved ones. Home was easy to take for granted when I was only living 2 hours away. So, being able to see my family, all my family, and Duane was even more magical that it would have been if I were still living in Land O Lakes right now.

Every day I was home was just great... I will put some highlights here because I'm sure no one except myself would care to read through an hour by hour account of my entire visit hehe:

1. Having lunch with Duane down by the water on my first day back (you can eat by the bay or the gulf in short sleeves in the sunshine in December!! Florida is cool, people) and being able to talk to him IN PERSON.
2. Being able to relax and hang out at the house with Dad and Mom and James just like old times.
3. Making Christmas cookies with James ;)
4. Having Duane be the best boyfriend ever and meet almost the whole family-- all the grandparents and aunt & uncle & cousins!
5. Having a whole day to hang out with my Mama & shop for party dresses & eat at our spot, Mimi's (hooray for Wine Wednesdays!)
6. Seeing The Hobbit in English with my family :p
7. Actually getting to celebrate with Duane for our first Christmas together, including having a magical night at Christmastown at Busch Gardens and watching It's a Wonderful Life at the Tampa Theatre.
8. Bumming around the house with James and playing videogames till we lost count of the hours haha.
9. Spending Christmas Day with my family in our home.
10. Seeing my lovely friends Cristine, Chelsea, Katie Lee, & Hilary (and Stefan too) and Duane meeting all these people who are so important to me.
11. Being able to see and hug my Mom on her birthday.
12. Cuddling with Gracie.
13. Saying goodnight to Duane in person almost every night and not even having to think about Skype or Whatsapp.

Am I forgetting anything?? Oh, probably. There was just such a heavy concentration of goodness. All the memories just overflow when I try to remember them in order, which I'm pretty grateful for.

Here are some pictures, because I love them & the people in them:

Christmastown with Duane <3

We're obviously the cool kids.

The backyard is always full of cardinals:

24 in this picture!

Christmas pictures:

The "kids" ;)

Love my family <3

Christmas Day:

Love this face.

And THIS face.

Fun night with my favorites <3

Thanks, everyone, for making my trip back home so wonderful <3, and thanks for supporting me while I'm here in Spain. And, Duane, thanks especially to you. Without you I never could have made it home & I wouldn't have all these lovely memories that I have now. 2012 was a big year for me: graduating from UF, moving back home, working full time for the first time, and of course moving to Spain... And meeting you. You've changed my life, and it's all been for the better. I'm more excited for 2013 because of you. And I so grateful that I got to spend more time with you this month, time where we were actually together and not just staring into our computer screens. Here's to the New Year, here's to you, and, OK, this is corny, but you know how you make my corny show: here's to us. :-)

And now, I'm off to get my party shoes on, cenar, & eat some grapes like a true Spaniard ;-)
Talk to you all in 2013!

12.11.12

Hello all! Sorry it's taken me a few days to get this up here, I've been a little distracted-- especially since I'll be going home for Christmas in FIVE (almost 4, here) days! This occupies a great deal of the free space in my mind lately.

Anyway, last week, as I let you know, I had a very good weekend. Wednesday night I hung out with Iria and some of her friends again; we played a Spanish drinking board game (which involved a decent amount of talking, and sometimes making rules, so yay for intense Spanish practice!) and then went out to some of their Galician bars (one called the Wolf's Den, or the _____ do Lobo in gallego, can't remember how to say "den", and another called Rivendell jajaja) and then a couple clubs. All the clubs here are very close to the cathedral. It's strange. "Zoning" must not really exist in Lugo, but the upshot of that is that you can walk virtually anywhere you'd want to go.

Thursday I was originally supposed to go to a free concert in a plaza/park with my roommate, Julia, and a couple other American girls. We decided to go to a fall market that was in town for the weekend first, and it was so neat! I know "neat" is a silly/dorky word, but it really was! So interesting. And so many unique Galician products. There was so much to look at that we decided to come back the next day, too. When we left the market, it was raining (surprise, welcome to Galicia), and we decided to abandon the concert since it was outdoors and uncovered (and which was going to be a band no one had ever heard of before... They had a very odd English name and we weren't sure what kind of music they played, either) at the prospect of hot drinks & desserts in a cafe. We ducked into one of the places off of the plaza mayor, and enjoyed some tea, Cola Cao (like Nesquik but good), coffee, and cheesecake. This particular cafe was all decorated for Christmas and was playing a mixture of French & English Christmas carols. Very cozy. Afterwards we went on a little walking tour of the main streets in the city because the Christmas lights had been lit! Of course, pictures were taken:

Annia & I. This is the street that goes through the puerta (gate) closest to my apartment. :)

Julia & I. The lights actually look really pretty reflected on the wet pavement.

Down another street. Angels &... snowman angels?

So that was a nice night. Friday morning I woke up early-ish to go get my identification card (finally!! I'm official! :D). I also meant to go to the Western Union and find out about paying my credit card bills that way (since my American bank accounts are basically just slowly draining... all my paychecks go to my Spanish account, which, for unknown reasons, I cannot use to make payments on my credit cards. Sigh.), but... well, the first thing I did that morning when I walked outside was slip and fall in some exceptionally slimy and gross mud, get covered in said mud, lose my keys in said mud, and have to tramp in and out of the mud again to retrieve them... so I gave up on my errands early. I did get my ID at least. Actually, I should remember this. It, along with another story that happened in my second week, is a good candidate for any future "most embarrassing moment"s I'm called upon to recount.

After going home, changing back into my PJs, washing my clothes, making another cup of coffee, and going back to bed and reading Harry Potter for several hours, I braved the outside world to go shopping with Annia. Got to go into some new stores I hadn't visited yet, like a fabulous pajama store called Oysho (I will go there as soon as rebajas start and buy this wonderful snuggly robe I have my eye on... Maybe also an adorable sweatshirt with a koala face on it ^_^) and Zara Home. Man, that store made me wish I had a permanent house or apartment here, just so I could decorate it. A few hours later, after Annia had gone home, I went back to the market with Julia (this time, prepared jeje). And that was gonna be about it for Friday; Julia and I were talking about maybe going dancing, or maybe just watching a movie, and things were leaning towards the movie. But then I got an invite from Iria to come out to dinner and then go to a música gallega concert. I'm usually terrible at decisions in moments like that. On the one hand: tired, cold, want pajamas, must wake up early tomorrow. On the other: opportunity to hang out with real Spaniards, get to go somewhere I'd never go by myself & probably never go with my English-speaking friends, experience Galician culture. On paper the choice seems easy, but in the moment I sometimes struggle. Encouraged by Julia, I decided to go. And I'm so glad I did!

For one thing, I got to have a falafel burger for dinner, which is something of a treat in a place like Spain. For another, I got to hang out with Spanish people that I really like, and hanging out with locals is definitely something I hope/want to do more of. And the concert was so much fun! Of course, it was supposed to start at around 11:30, but didn't actually until 12:30 because this is Spain. It was at a bar/club that I honestly can't remember the name of... it was very long and started with a "C;" right off one of the streets I walk down regularly, and I'd never noticed it before. The place itself was decorated with a weird mixture of antiques, Galician crafts, and jazz pictures and memorabilia. There was a large area of chairs cleared away for a dancefloor, and later I saw why. About halfway through the set, a huge group of people got up and started dancing what looked like (to me) a cross between a river dance and a square dance. And it was so cool! So lively, so much participation by so many people, all clearly happy and having a great time... It was just beautiful. I wish I could've joined. I think the dance/stlye more or less falls under the category of "muiñera"... perhaps I can find classes next month ;)

This is a picture of the band. You can kind of see the accordion (behind the woman, who had an incredible voice), the large tambor (drum), and not pictured are the bagpipes ;)

For a sample of the music, see my last blog post!

So that was awesome. But then I didn't get home till around 3 (everyone was shocked I was leaving so early... haha/jaja), which was not so great because I had to be up at 8. Because I was catching a bus to A Coruña with some other girls the next day! Here comes that story.

I made it to the bus station a bit later than I meant to, but still in time. My companions ended up being Tina, Jill, and Meghan. We got to Coruña in just over an hour, and then began working out a plan of what to do. Fortunately, Meghan had been there one or two other times, had a map, and is also a very logical person, so we were OK haha. We caught a city bus from the station to the town center, and started walking towards the beach. The greatest thing about A Coruña, by far, is its coast:

In the sunshine! By the water! Tan feliz.

Looking down the first beach we came to.

Water & rocks.

:-D

A mermaid!

Mmm. Colors. Lugo needs more colors.

Tina & me, being Super Tourists. ;)

Eep. <3

:))))

The purpose of this walk down one of the World's Most Scenic Sidewalks was to arrive at the Torre de Hércules (Tower of Hercules) before the (free) noon tour. We made it in time, and even got to "hike" up the hill to the tower jeje:

Tower, ho!

SO GORGEOUS.

This is a real place on our planet, the Earth. You can go there.

The "hike" :p

This is the tower. A restored and still-functioning Roman lighthouse. Pretty cool.

The view from the tower base.

On this island, there is a rusted sculpture called "El Cuerno del Atlántico" (The Horn of the Atlantic)

This is Breogán; alleged founder of the Celtic nation, who was a Galician king.

The Romans thought the world ended here; it was where the sun came to die.

A view from the top; looking back towards the city.

At the top. This structure has a kick-@$$ history, but the climb's got nothin' on Florida lighthouses ;)

Me, Jill, Tina, and Meghan at the top. The girl on the left is another auxiliar from the town of Sarria; I'm pretty sure her name was Cassandra. Or maybe Christina.

After our wonderful tower adventure, we were all starving. Meghan said she'd seen a sushi place last time she'd been there, and Tina & I got so excited!! As I mentioned in the Madrid post, there is effectively NO ethnic food in Lugo. So obviously that is where we went to lunch.

And it was de-lee-cious.

I think these the most exciting parts of the day; after lunch we walked around the old town, which, I have to say, I don't think was quite as quaint/charming/old-looking as Lugo's. But we saw the marina, the plaza mayor, and some cute shops.

The ayuntamiento building (town hall) in A Coruña. They had a little winter wonderland, with an ice rink and everything, set up for Christmas :-)

Roasted almonds with sugar and algodón de azúcar (cotton candy).

This is María Pita. She's a badass who helped drive out the British; you can't tell from here, but she's holding a spear. And those are some children playing on/by her statue.

Me & Tina with a monstrous snowman/woman. See the carousel in the background? D'aww.

What I consider to be some cool shots of the ayuntamiento building.

Down by the marina.

Aaand that was about it for my first Coruña trip. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that this beautiful place is really out there, that it's always been out there, and I never could've imagined it. Just think how many other, and even greater, places like this there are out in the world! I definitely would like to go back-- especially in warmer weather when I can actually get *in* the water jeje.

After all this exploring, we headed back to the bus station, and our last stop was the Corte Inglés, which is a Spanish department store. And, man, the one in A Coruña is HUGE! Biggest department store I can ever remember being in. I imagine the Macy's in New York City must be something like that.

And NOW, it is past my bedtime. Last day of real work before my Christmas holiday starts tomorrow! Don't want to be totally out of it, especially since I plan to wake up early and go get some treats to bring in from a pasteleria :-)

Buenas noches, abrazos, y besos a todos!

Adventures in the great, wide Somewhere

Monday, December 31, 2012

For auld lang syne, my dear.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

"All journeys have secret destinations, of which the traveler is unaware."

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Coming soon...