Back "Home" in London...It Does Feel Rather Home-Like, Though...
Man, this is what happened to me the last time I went on vacation during a big LiveJournal run of consistency. The consistency died and I stopped updating altogether. This works well for you, though, because it means that I am very poorly motivated to conquer fatigue and will therefore have fewer and more manageably-sized posts for your consumption.
I just got back from Spain. Those people are crazy…in England, you start partying at 8, bars close at 11, and clubs close at 3. There, they just shift it all by 4 hours…start the festivities at midnight, bars close at 3, and clubs close at 7. On the last day I was there, as I was walking to the bus station in the morning, I saw Spanish kids leaving clubs, looking more energetic and awake than me.
It was pretty intense spending 11 days with one person (Janine) 24 hours a day…I don’t think I’ve ever done that, that I can remember. We didn’t hate each other at the end, and in fact knew a helluva lot more about each other than we started. I’d call that a success.
The whole trip was basically an experiment in “How close can we get to utter crisis without actually reaching that status?” It was 11 days of close calls, from buses and trains to museums and walking. Now that I think about it in hindsight, I can’t justify to myself getting as frustrated as I sometimes did with things never working right, because they always worked, just differently. Sometimes I just want things to be easier.
It was Semana Santa, and now I know never to travel in a Catholic country the week before Easter. I was being constantly chased and spited by Jesus. It was like a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, where I’m the cat running around frantically, and Jesus is just hopping nonchalantly behind. And wherever I try to hide or breathe, there he is, inescapable. Parades spite me. I do, however, get to bask in the irony of someone having a heart attack and dying while marching in a parade for Jesus. To quote Dane, “Where’s your God now?” That’s really terrible and morbid of me (Robin must have liked it), but I just kept thinking, “If that was my dad who just collapsed in the middle of a procession, I’d be having a serious crisis of faith right about now.”
There are various anecdotes that could be shared. Too many, in fact. Just ask, though. Many of them involve things that are sexual or illegal in nature, so you’re bound to find something that entertains you!
The last couple days in Sevilla, we were hanging out in a group of people that included Americans, French, and Romanians, but the only language that everybody could speak was Spanish, so that's what everyone used. It was like the L’Auberge Espagnole movie, not that I’d know, since I couldn’t get anyone to go see it with me. But I imagine it was like that. All these people communicating with one another and not one of them is actually speaking in their own native language. I went 8 consecutive hours one day without uttering a sentence in English, and by the time I got back to Britain, the language sounded strange, and as soon as I’d think of something I wanted to say, I’d immediately start translating it into Spanish in my head before I started speaking. In Spain, I had gotten into the mindset of hating other English-speaking tourists, so aside from being a hypocrite, it felt strange to suddenly be back to being surrounded by a language that had started to make me cringe at its very sound.
Let me tell you, though. It is pretty damn hard to speak and listen in a foreign language you’ve barely used for 3 years when you are RIDICULOUS.
Remember when I wanted to live in Japan? Now I want to live in Spain, either Alicante (which is like the Spanish Huntington Beach) or Granada, working as an English-speaking tour guide or a bartender since they’re always in need of those. The whole experience made me wish again that I’d gone to a non-English speaking country after all, especially considering I did pretty dang well with my Spanish. But yeah, Spain is a non-American culture, non-American language, and yet non-TERRIFYING AS HELL like Japan. And if I just do it myself, I can leave when I want.
My parents are here now visiting, and it’s strange to have this world and that world mixing. It’s one thing when friends from home come here, but parents is something different…it doesn’t integrate the same. Thus far it’s been fairly smooth, but thus far, I’ve also been unable to do anything I need or want to get done other than tending to my parents (though to be fair, I do actually have fun with it). People are all scattered across the continent anyways, and I’m feeling somehow unmotivated to strongly reach out to any of them right now for some reason anyways. I’m starting to think I might want to go back to America a little sooner than I originally planned on after all.
Alright, longer than I planned, but for 2 weeks without updating, I think that’s fair.
I just got back from Spain. Those people are crazy…in England, you start partying at 8, bars close at 11, and clubs close at 3. There, they just shift it all by 4 hours…start the festivities at midnight, bars close at 3, and clubs close at 7. On the last day I was there, as I was walking to the bus station in the morning, I saw Spanish kids leaving clubs, looking more energetic and awake than me.
It was pretty intense spending 11 days with one person (Janine) 24 hours a day…I don’t think I’ve ever done that, that I can remember. We didn’t hate each other at the end, and in fact knew a helluva lot more about each other than we started. I’d call that a success.
The whole trip was basically an experiment in “How close can we get to utter crisis without actually reaching that status?” It was 11 days of close calls, from buses and trains to museums and walking. Now that I think about it in hindsight, I can’t justify to myself getting as frustrated as I sometimes did with things never working right, because they always worked, just differently. Sometimes I just want things to be easier.
It was Semana Santa, and now I know never to travel in a Catholic country the week before Easter. I was being constantly chased and spited by Jesus. It was like a Pepe Le Pew cartoon, where I’m the cat running around frantically, and Jesus is just hopping nonchalantly behind. And wherever I try to hide or breathe, there he is, inescapable. Parades spite me. I do, however, get to bask in the irony of someone having a heart attack and dying while marching in a parade for Jesus. To quote Dane, “Where’s your God now?” That’s really terrible and morbid of me (Robin must have liked it), but I just kept thinking, “If that was my dad who just collapsed in the middle of a procession, I’d be having a serious crisis of faith right about now.”
There are various anecdotes that could be shared. Too many, in fact. Just ask, though. Many of them involve things that are sexual or illegal in nature, so you’re bound to find something that entertains you!
The last couple days in Sevilla, we were hanging out in a group of people that included Americans, French, and Romanians, but the only language that everybody could speak was Spanish, so that's what everyone used. It was like the L’Auberge Espagnole movie, not that I’d know, since I couldn’t get anyone to go see it with me. But I imagine it was like that. All these people communicating with one another and not one of them is actually speaking in their own native language. I went 8 consecutive hours one day without uttering a sentence in English, and by the time I got back to Britain, the language sounded strange, and as soon as I’d think of something I wanted to say, I’d immediately start translating it into Spanish in my head before I started speaking. In Spain, I had gotten into the mindset of hating other English-speaking tourists, so aside from being a hypocrite, it felt strange to suddenly be back to being surrounded by a language that had started to make me cringe at its very sound.
Let me tell you, though. It is pretty damn hard to speak and listen in a foreign language you’ve barely used for 3 years when you are RIDICULOUS.
Remember when I wanted to live in Japan? Now I want to live in Spain, either Alicante (which is like the Spanish Huntington Beach) or Granada, working as an English-speaking tour guide or a bartender since they’re always in need of those. The whole experience made me wish again that I’d gone to a non-English speaking country after all, especially considering I did pretty dang well with my Spanish. But yeah, Spain is a non-American culture, non-American language, and yet non-TERRIFYING AS HELL like Japan. And if I just do it myself, I can leave when I want.
My parents are here now visiting, and it’s strange to have this world and that world mixing. It’s one thing when friends from home come here, but parents is something different…it doesn’t integrate the same. Thus far it’s been fairly smooth, but thus far, I’ve also been unable to do anything I need or want to get done other than tending to my parents (though to be fair, I do actually have fun with it). People are all scattered across the continent anyways, and I’m feeling somehow unmotivated to strongly reach out to any of them right now for some reason anyways. I’m starting to think I might want to go back to America a little sooner than I originally planned on after all.
Alright, longer than I planned, but for 2 weeks without updating, I think that’s fair.