Epilogue

I'm back. I got my last meal in Spain--Gazpacho and fries at Mcdonalds--and flew over. I have since: gotten beer and hot wings at Smokeeaters, stopped by Berkeley, eaten more spicy food, not gotten kicked out of Plainfield, eaten a Pluto's salad, gone to Trader Joe's, wandered around Davis...seen old friends and met new ones. The last eight months already feel like a dream. I search for stories.. few songs, pictures, people.. well, it was pretty vivid but when I woke up I forgot.

In between, I traveled to Edinburgh, St Andrews, Dublin, [bus tour through the Wicklow Mountains, through the ruins of the Glendalough monastery and Kilkenny], Lisbon, and Sintra. All wonderful.

I have no culture shock, aside from silly details. Billboards, for instance, took me by surprise--their density, their loudness, their ubiquity as we flew over the highway when landing in Chicago. That English is all around--call it obvious, but in Granada, if I heard a snippet of English (which happened frequently enough) I'd turn around to see the speaker. And that American English sounds so ugly. But it's nothing serious. I'm happy to be home.

When people ask how it was, my answer depends on how long I feel like talking about it. My default is, of course, "It was awesome." That's a lie, but a convenient one. And if I have some time to tell the story, I delve into differences between Spanish and American attitudes to work and stress and how I am so much more compatible with the American model of responsibility and rigor. How school sucked, traveling was generally awesome, although going solo wasn't my cuppa, that the distance in the relationship was hard, how the Spanish party schedule was out of control and way more than I can handle. My roommates. And then, if they're still listening, I start talking about the walls, the colors, the crumbling white paint, the kitties...

Readers, thank you for reading. I hope my rants were tolerable and that my more substantial posts were enjoyable.

The end!

Moving forward

I'm starting to get a little bit sad about going home. I'm still excited, and I don't regret only being here for one semester, but I will miss it. Paradoxically, this makes me very happy. It tells me that after all, I established an enduring, positive connection with this place, despite all the episodes of frustration, loneliness, and anxiety. It felt unhealthy to be as excited as I was to get out a few weeks ago.

This experience was not a utopia, an inconsequential world of parties and carefree attitudes. School first seemed ridiculous, then scary. I spent a lot of time reflecting on my past, on my future. At best, I felt uncertain. At worst, I felt like a miserable failure of a human being. And despite all of that, I will look back on this fondly, as an imprescindible period of growth. Bless rose colored glasses, bless optimism. Perhaps not growth in the way study abroad is intended, as my mind was elsewhere more often than not. To modify one particularly insightful Spaniard's observation, cada periodo de tiempo es como es. Moving on.

Only this past week did everything fall back into place. I feel completely confident and competent. I'm ready to go back to Davis and to jump off the undergraduate diving board into the murky pool of the unknown in a little over a year, to make decisions about my future, my job, to keep moving forward. I haven't felt this capable in years; I'm ready, and steady, and go.

más que blanco y negro

-Las despedidas son una puta de mierda.
-Pero mira, en un mes tendrás otra compañera de piso, va a ser super social y salir de fiesta todo el tiempo...
-Cada uno es como es.

To someone who's grown up steeped in a culture of sarcasm and insecurity, a line out of a cheesy movie about tolerance. To Spaniards, the norm: open, honest, confident, accepting.

Using my travel blog as a soapbox, nothing to do with study abroad.

It's hard not to use Facebook as a soapbox. I log on feeling normal, find ten things that make me rage, and then wage a war of wills against the tantalizing little box that begs to know what's on my mind.

Recently, I've been giving in. Today started with that chain picture that's been going around that tells the story of this racist woman (3rd story down). It's a fun story. It packs a good dose of heartwarming righteousness. It's also about as real as the killer clown who will climb through your window at 3 AM if you don't forward the email to 10 people.

I was about to rant about it on Facebook, then stopped, realizing I'd done a good enough job making myself look bitter and angry after posting this article, with a snarky caption about other anti-science nonsense like cleanse diets or sweating out the toxins. I asked myself: why do I find it so frustrating that people are reposting this, even if they mistakenly think it's real? It's spreading a perfectly good message: don't be racist.

Then it clicked, as I thought back to 'Change-Your-Profile-Picture-To-A-Cartoon-Character-To-End-Child-Abuse' week, the STOP SOPA statuses for those two days, and the culture of false activism that Facebook promotes. It hinders understanding what actually makes a difference. In our society, most reasonably privileged people have a healthy desire to help the less fortunate and lend a hand in solving global problems. However, when people buy into the idea that changing their profile picture will make a difference and use that to fulfill their 'morality quota,' they are less likely to take real action.*

Next was the idea of raising awareness. There are untold stories of suffering all over the globe, and spreading the story makes it much more likely that action will be taken. The problem is when the effort never shifts from awareness to action. Guiltiest as charged are breast cancer awareness campaigns. As though anyone is still fucking unaware of the existence of breast cancer, or the fact that like any other type of cancer, it's horrible, devastating, and frequently terminal. They pander to the pain of losing a loved one, then fumble their output numbers to pay themselves. (A related issue is funding disease research: it's quite difficult to get pharmaceutical funding for cures and preventative solutions, as chronic treatment plans bring in much more money.)

What do those concepts--awareness for its own sake, misplaced faith in charities, and false activism--have to do with the story of the racist woman? It's the simplification of society to a cute story; with Facebook at the forefront comes a cozy, heartwarming picture of society that shoves aside the complexities, both the triumphs and the failures. It creates a microcosm of comforting delusions in which the flight attendant is society and the old woman is the lingering remnant of a bygone era, in which you help children by changing your profile picture to a cartoon, or to help women by buying a pink-ribbon water bottle. (EDIT: since this writing, Susan G. Komen foundation has retracted their decision to cut PP funding.) But why get warm fuzzies about a make-believe end to racism when one of the forerunners for US presidency can call Spanish "the language of the ghetto" and black people lazy to rousing applause? Because I should have been a sociology major, that's why.**

But when it all comes down to it, ranting in this blog is about as effective as changing my profile picture. This year I donated to Doctors Without Borders and Charity:Water, and I plan to keep finding other worthy charities and donating. Upon my return to California, I'm going to volunteer time at local soup kitchens and homeless shelters.

*Or maybe they wouldn't do anything. Who knows.
**just kidding.

Traveling Part II: Bruges, Paris, and London

(Read the previous entry first.)

We had planned to go to Bruges on our last day in Brussels. I was excited to see the town, despite conflicting reviews. If we were to believe the movie In Bruges, "It's a fairytale town. How's a fairytale town not somebody's fucking thing?" (If it's small and touristy, I guess. If it's like a bigger version of Disneyland.) Anyway I woke up sick. I really did not want to get out of bed, much less go outside into the freezing cold. Alas I was persuaded to go, and maintained myself in an animated state through a mindbending cocktail of hot chocolate, ibuprofen, caffeine, and mulled wine. It was indeed a fairytale town, a beautifully preserved medieval wonderland. And when something's that cool and that accessible, of course it's going to be overrun by tourists. So we walked around, saw about every square foot of the city, ate Belgian chocolate, and eventually found the not-so-impressive Christmas market before heading back to Brussels for our last night.

Next up, New Years Eve and off to Paris. We took the metro to the Champs-Elysées and saw the Arc de Triomphe, then walked down to the Seine and the Eiffel Tower. We substituted champagne for vodka and orange juice, and sat down on some benches by the tower to eat, drink, and wait for the new year. A Tunisian man from the group at our side came to greet us, and we ended up talking for about an hour in French (!!! It's not all gone) about how he doesn't like French people because they're racist unlike us open-minded Americans (good one, bro) and asking us to find him a woman in America to marry so he could get a visa. Also, for the second time since coming to Spain, I was asked to personally justify the war in Iraq. Dammit, people, I was 12 when it began and even then it seemed to me like a bad idea. He had a theory that Bush liked Africans but not Muslims, and Obama likes Muslims but not Africans. Not so sure about all that. We traded beer and Screwdrivers, then left in search of a bathroom.

As midnight drew closer, people came to the park in droves, drinking, yelling, laughing, dancing, and taking pictures. A little while after midnight, we made our way back to the metro station. It was closed. We had to walk for a very long time before we could find an open station, then didn't know where we were once we got off. Eventually, we made it back. On New Years, everything was closed and I was more than happy to take a day off, so we stayed in, and I got eaten alive by bedbugs. An investigation yielded two fully-grown bugs, eight nymphs, and numerous exoskeletons. We switched rooms, but I counted 90 bites. Somehow Joel got none. The next day we tried to see the major sights, but were dissuaded by the absurd lines for absolutely everything. So we saw a lot of impressive sights from the outside: the Notre Dame, the Saint-Chappelle, the Louvre. We tried to find some markets, but none were operating. After finding the very cool fountains by the Georges Pompidou center, we accepted the minor victory, gave in to the cold, and returned to the hostel. Our final day in Paris was slightly more successful. We went to the Marmottan-Monet museum, which had a digestible number of his beautiful paintings, as well as many of Seurat, Signac, and other Impressionist painters' excellent works. All of the amazing museums we visited made me excited to own a house and decorate it with surrealist and impressionist prints. I plan to have prints from: the above, Van Gogh, Dali, Magritte, Chagalle, Cross, Picasso... After the museum, we went to the Montmartre district to see the Sacre-Coeur, the Moulin Rouge, and the rest of the sex store filled Pigalle district. A cheap sushi dinner helped curb some of my constant craving for Asian food of all kinds.

Thus concluded our semi-failed visit to the land of my high school foreign language class, and we were off to our final stop: London. It was strange not to have to put any effort into communicating with the people around us. British signs were like American signs, only with adorably polite substitutions like "Mind the gap" instead of "Watch your step." Also, they have salt and vinegar chips absolutely everywhere, and salt and vinegar flavored everything else. Malt, balsamic, cider, you name it. My mouth was happy.

The first highlight of the city was the pubs. We visited each of the three-star sites suggested by my guidebook, each of which offered a totally unique vibe. First were the Counting House and Crosse Keys. Both of these were converted banks, and as such, had elegantly decorated interiors. At the first, I had honey beer, which was one of the most amazing drinks I've ever had. At the second, we drank cider and ale, and split a steak and kidney pie. The pie was good, but you can't go eating other animals' waste filters every day. The next day, we stopped by Ye Old Cheshire Cheese, a dark, labyrinthine pub that's been around for hundreds of years, then Blackfriars, which was built on the site of a Dominican priory and whose decorations included a facade of monks and proverbs carved into the marble walls.

Another favorite was the Tower of London. There, we got a guided tour from a Yeoman Warder, a castle guard. As it's been for centuries, there are only 35 warders, and applicants must serve in the military for a crazy amount of time and complete other obligations before they are eligible. Given that a major obligation of theirs at the modern day non-militaristic tower is 'tour guide,' I didn't even realize for a while that they were the real guys and not actors. He explained the history of the tower in a captivating, hilarious and engaging way. It was one of the few sites where we spent more than the guidebook suggested--we'd usually slice time in half, yet we spent four hours listening to other tours and exploring the tower's exhibits.

And last highlight: an excellent comedy club. It was small, cozy, dimly lit, filled with comfortable couches and pillows in every corner, tucked away in a non-touristy part of the city we would have never seen if not for the book's recommendation. Tangent: good guidebooks are one of my favorite things. For me, Frommer's Day by Day books have always been the easiest to use, most up-to-date, most personable (sounds like a local and not a Google search wrote it) and have provided the most comprehensive and rewarding travel experiences. Tangent out. If you're ever in London, check out the Comedy Cafe. Oh, to live in London and hear British humor all the time.

(Also, we ate fish and chips. It tasted like fried fish and fried potatoes.)

Then, we went back to Granada and spent a few happy days relaxing as standard Sonia and Joel: going on long walks around the city in the unseasonably warm winter sun, eating tapas, cooking up delicious food, and relaxing with movies and cartoons in the evening.

Now: one semester of knowledge, some papers, two and a half weeks, go.

Winter Break part I: Amsterdam and Brussels

We met in Madrid. I'd fantasized about that moment hundreds of times over. It was nothing like that. We fumbled on our phones, waited for delayed flights, and finally, I managed to guide Joel over to the metro station where I was waiting. We hugged and kissed and marveled at the fact that the other was real, warm, truly more than the image on the computer screen we'd been for the last 5.5 months, before heading to our next flight's terminal. Then I thought I'd lost my passport, and with 30 minutes until our flight left, following desperate phone calls to our program coordinator, the consulate, whose office was closed, and my roommate to see if I'd left it at home, Joel pulled it out of his pocket. So we made it to Amsterdam and were not stuck in the country for the break, and after that point, it was magical. It was wonderful to find out that he and I are so compatible as travel buddies.

After my first night in Amsterdam during my layover on the way to Istanbul, a prominent reaction was: my mom has been to this place, that's weird, what kind of business does a respectable, substance-free woman like my mother have in Amsterdam? Luckily, this time around, as we ventured further than the smoky center with its infamous red light district, I had the chance to find out what kind of business that might be. The canal city is beautiful and charming, and the citizens are ridiculously happy and friendly. To quote the Heineken Brewery's video describing the founder himself: "intelligent, handsome, and extreeeeemely likeable!" The brewery, with its whimsical "become the beer" experience, explanation of proper beer tasting, colorful, interactive exhibits, and of course, two beers at the end, was an excellent way to start off our first full day. Another museum highlight was the Tropenmuseum, which is a sort of cultural anthropology museum that focuses on the evolution of the world through imperialism and colonialism, as well as native cultures and societies. But I'll be honest: the highlight was cuddling. There's nothing like physical contact after going so long without. Oh, and eating a pickled herring sandwich with onions! I have a remarkable knack for finding the weirdest, most fermented/salted/uncooked/obscurely combined local delicacy and thinking it sounds incredible, and then finding it incredible. Yeah, haggis. I'm coming for you.

Next up was Brussels. For one night, we stayed in a fancy hotel, which was silly. It turns out fancy hotels are places where you pay lots of money so that you have the opportunity to pay lots of money for random services you don't need, like dry cleaning your bowler hat or feeding minced filet mignon to your pet fennec fox, or for normal services like laundry that you could get at a quarter of a price anywhere that isn't a fancy hotel. Plus, the interior of the building was awkwardly fancy. I much preferred the cozy hostel of the next four nights. We got off the metro stop to get to the hostel and were dumped right in the middle of a huge Christmas market, in between an ice skating rink and a giant ferris wheel. Tangent (but not really): Europe knows how to do Christmas. It was the first time I didn't anxiously await the end of Christmas because of the insufferable music, but instead was sad when the markets closed down and the lights turned off. They don't seem to bother with outside house decoration, but every city strings banners of colorful lights above the main streets, creating hallways of cheeriness. They range from standard Christmas-y designs to psychedelic to funky lit up wire-framed shapes. The markets in big cities go on for block after block lined with tents selling all kinds of delicious food, mulled wine, crafts, and candy. It's neat to see more secularized nations embrace the holiday in such a fun way, bringing light, warmth, and joy to the otherwise gloomy northern winter. (Kind-of-tangent out.)

So I always strolled extra slowly through the market while Joel pulled forward, taking the time to admire the same tasty looking food for the fourth, fifth, sixth time, wondering if this time should be the one in which I gave in to the smells and sights, or whether to resist just a bit longer, after all, I already had a "Big White Sausage" and fries for lunch...right, food. I don't know how they make their mayonnaise, but it's delicious and substitutes ketchup on fries. With the power of the internet, maybe I can figure out the secret. Other things we ate: chocolate, obviously, it's Belgium. Cuberdons, cone-shaped fruit gummy candies with a brittle shell and goopy inside. Mussels, which were kind of disappointing since I didn't splurge the extra euro for cream sauce. Steak a l'americaine--remember the whole "gross sounding delicacies" thing? That's a patty of raw beef, into which you mix mayonnaise, capers, onions, raw egg yolks, and assorted sauces for seasoning. It's also referred to as toxoplasma-salmonella delight in some circles, but I figured: it's a thing here, this is a first world iI and the woman next to me is also eating it. It was delicious, and I'm not dead yet. I liked it even better than Joel's stoemp (elaborately spiced mashed potatoes) and carbonnade (steak in burnt sweet sauce). And, of course, beer. All Belgian beer is delicious but the country is uniquely known for two styles: lambics and trappist ales. Diverging from the standard careful, sterile process of fermentation, lambics are fermented by exposure to the wild yeast and bacteria of the Senne valley, in which Brussels lies. The beer then develops a sour and dry flavor. My favorite type of lambic is kriek, which is refermented with sour cherries. Trappist ales are some of the strongest beers aside from novelty creations, frequently 8-10% ABV, but you wouldn't guess from the taste, which I can't describe more accurately than as the epitome of the taste of beer you drink because it tastes good, and the polar opposite of Natty Ice. They're rich, nutty, and sweet.

I guess we also went to some museums when we had extra time in between eating, drinking, and strolling through the Christmas market. The best was definitely the musical instruments museum. They give you a pair of headphones and you plug them into headphone jacks next to each instrument and you end up hearing music of all styles, from all cultures, and from all periods. Another excellent one was the Magritte museum, which displays many of the brilliant surrealist painter's best works. The city's love of comic strip cartoons can be found everywhere, from huge murals, to sculptures, to the Museum of the Comic Strip. The Tintin exhibit took me back in time.

...That's more than I expected to type, and definitely longer than my bulleted list of everything we did in all five cities, but such is the bloggy process. I will leave Bruges, Paris, and London to my next wave of procrastination.

In irrelevant news, 6,8 on my philosophy midterm, that's a B on my UC transcript. Not dancing in the streets about it, but totally acceptable. (1-10 scale, below 5 is a Spanish fail, below 4 is a UC-adjusted fail.)