Random insights from Spain.
What's wrong with our society? Why is good never good enough? Why do we have to judge everything by what we've not accomplished, what we don't have? Why can't we be happy with things the way that they are? I'm not talking everything, I'm talking ANYTHING.
Spain is really good for me. It'd be better if my computer broke, but it's good. During orientation, we spent a weekend in Mallorca, and over beers a couple of people in the program and I figured out why Spanish women are so beautiful: they don't feel obligation. To do anything. Fact of the matter is, if we totally stripped ourselves of what we're supposed to do, we'd live a lot healthier and happier lives. They don't work out because they want to lose weight, they exercise for the sake of it. They take crazy step classes, they talk to their friends at the gym, their gyms are practically American spas. They give you a sweat and a shower towel, the machines have televisions in the screens in front of you, classes are free, tanning is four euros...the locker rooms have free soap, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, hair gel, lit makeup mirrors with hair dryers, a machine that washes and dries your swimsuit in thirty seconds for when you use the huge coed jacuzzi or steam rooms... There are vending machines with apples in them, juice machines that actually juice oranges, free Trident white for christ's sake. I love going to the gym. I take yoga and pilates, and some class sometimes called MindBody, I've taken three classes and I still don't know what it is, besides "a lot of swaying." I take it because I do not understand. Precisely.
Spanish women don't freak out if they're late, and they wear ridiculously fashionable shoes. They work, but take long coffee breaks, they dance until six in the morning if they feel like it. They're completely chill, don't care what happens, they roll with it.
I need some of that. It's my goal, being here. And I've been doing a really terrible job of it lately. And why? Because I'm American, and Patrick is too. I'm not ready to get engaged, and because that was brought up, I'm no longer emphatically happy and completely contented, I'm a mess who should be doing her homework but is instead watching the clock until he gets off work and I can call him, AGAIN.
Why do we always have to measure something by what it's not? What's the damned hurry?
Spain is really good for me. It'd be better if my computer broke, but it's good. During orientation, we spent a weekend in Mallorca, and over beers a couple of people in the program and I figured out why Spanish women are so beautiful: they don't feel obligation. To do anything. Fact of the matter is, if we totally stripped ourselves of what we're supposed to do, we'd live a lot healthier and happier lives. They don't work out because they want to lose weight, they exercise for the sake of it. They take crazy step classes, they talk to their friends at the gym, their gyms are practically American spas. They give you a sweat and a shower towel, the machines have televisions in the screens in front of you, classes are free, tanning is four euros...the locker rooms have free soap, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, hair gel, lit makeup mirrors with hair dryers, a machine that washes and dries your swimsuit in thirty seconds for when you use the huge coed jacuzzi or steam rooms... There are vending machines with apples in them, juice machines that actually juice oranges, free Trident white for christ's sake. I love going to the gym. I take yoga and pilates, and some class sometimes called MindBody, I've taken three classes and I still don't know what it is, besides "a lot of swaying." I take it because I do not understand. Precisely.
Spanish women don't freak out if they're late, and they wear ridiculously fashionable shoes. They work, but take long coffee breaks, they dance until six in the morning if they feel like it. They're completely chill, don't care what happens, they roll with it.
I need some of that. It's my goal, being here. And I've been doing a really terrible job of it lately. And why? Because I'm American, and Patrick is too. I'm not ready to get engaged, and because that was brought up, I'm no longer emphatically happy and completely contented, I'm a mess who should be doing her homework but is instead watching the clock until he gets off work and I can call him, AGAIN.
Why do we always have to measure something by what it's not? What's the damned hurry?