Raindrops on roses....

Well I am back in Spain. I have one month left here. Wow! I can't believe how "vonderful" my vacations were. I really loved Germany! Here are my 3 favorite things:
1. German Yogurt. It is more delicious then any other yogurt I have ever eaten. Plus they use it as a filling for chocolates and pastries. yummy.
2. Everything was soooooo green and beautiful. My cousins live by a river that has a bike path along it that goes all the way to France if you wanted to go that far. I guess you get what you pay for because it rains all the time there. But still, so beautiful.
3. The Autobahn!!!! My absolute favorite thing is the Autobahn. There are sections on all the freeways that are speed free. You can go as fast as you want. Soooooooo awesome! Here is a picture on the autobahn. We are going so fast that everything is a blur...

Guten Tag!!

My vacations are sent from heaven. I have been having such a good time that I forgot completely about blogging. Adrian came and went. We had a wonderful time cruising around Basque country in a car we rented and then spent the weekend in Madrid before she flew out. Everyday was filled with adventures...and I gave her my camera card, so I will have to post pictures later.
Then, on Monday morning our flights coincided. She flew to the US at 1pm and I flew at 12:55pm to Germany. My cousins live near Frankfurt. They always are inviting us to visit, but I have never been living only 2 hours away. So finally I took them up on the offer...and boy oh boy, I am sooooo glad. Germany is amazing. They live in this 200 year old farmhouse in a little German country village. There are bike paths up along this river right by there house that lead to the train stations in all the little towns and eventually go to France. It is so beautiful and I feel like Disneyland has come to life.
They have been telling me about all these civilian jobs with the military that I could get and I am seriously considering moving to Germany and learning this language too. I absolutely love German. Who would've known??
So, does anyone want to move to Germany with me? Bitte??

my two worlds collide in less than 24 hours.

my old world


Isn't it so weird when the new world you've embraced, for example the mission or a new city and a new life, come to know parts of the old world, like your family or someone from your past. It is always tricky to place the "old" person in the new environment. Sometimes it happens that you move to a new city and see someone out of context and feel, "I know this person, but they don't belong in this context. They belong in a different world that I used to know."
Well, that's the way I feel right now, but in a very excited way. I have made my planet here in Spain. I have a whole group of new friends and family that mean a lot to me and have posed as substitutes for the ones "back in the US(s)A" (Beatles reference for you). But in less than 24 hours, my sister is coming to spend some of my vacations with me. We are going to travel around the Basque Country and then go down to Madrid and check it out.
Think how interesting it will be to join the two worlds! Me, speaking Spanish, with my new Spanish friends, with my silly Spanish personality (which is different than my English personality) and then my sister, who thought she knew all about me since I was born, plopping right down in the middle of Spain...completely out of context.
Personally, I can't wait to share this amazing experience with my old world. I am glad someone will get to see what I am living, otherwise I might go home and feel that all of this was just a dream...

my new world

He will eat you up...

Today at the library in Gorliz I found a book called 3,000 Old Photos: For The History of Viscaya The book is filled with pictures and drawings dating back to the 16th century. It is so fascinating to see how Basque Country has changed...or not. I found a section on the "fiestas" in Bilbao and they are still very similar to the fiestas I just saw here.
In the parades they have "giants" and "big heads" made of paper mache that march around the streets. The giants dance and parade while the big-heads carry bladder-ballons which they use to scare the children...hitting anyone who comes near them. Here is an old picture, like those in the book, of the giants (standing behind) and the big-heads (standing in front) You can see the balloon-type bladders that some of them are holding.

They make the giants look so real that unless you see a normal person standing next to the giant you can't tell its not a real person, except for the floppy arms.

Here's some newer ones:


One of the most interesting giants that I am looking forward to seeing in Bilbao next week is "Gargantua" The French author François Rabelais wrote a series of books called "The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel" They tell the adventures of two giants, a father and a son. Here is the Basque Gargantua that parades in the streets during fiestas. Little children go in through the mouth and slide out the back.

These traditions are so interesting and strange (in a good way). I am having a great time experiencing these things first hand. While surfing around wikipedia I found an English translation of the introduction to the series "The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel" I include it now for your reading pleasure:

Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

BE HAPPY!

Barrika.

Yesterday I took a little hike around Barrika. There are all these cliffs with paths that allow you to get really close to the edge...to the point where if your mom was there she would say, "Be careful, come back a little bit."
Later, I hiked over to where the two boys are sitting. See them?

So I hiked around and took a lot of pictures of myself (see below) Here I am, just me and the sea. I was on a top of the cliff with only the ocean in the background...for miles and miles and miles.


I perched myself on the precipice facing the sea and read my book. It was so relaxing with the ocean crashing below me and birds flying directly over my head and all around me

I always wish I could fly and I loved being able to be so close to those birds as they drifted around in the air. What a magnificent life birds have!! I felt like one of them, there on the cliff and as I looked around at all the bird poo, I just hoped they wouldn't think of me as a target.

Then as I hiked back leaving the birds I thought of this:



She says "wake up, it's no use pretending"
I'll keep stealing, breathing her.
Birds are leaving over autumn's ending
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes 'round the yard

She says "If I leave before you, darling
Don't you waste me in the ground"
I lay smiling like our sleeping children
One of us will die inside these arms
Eyes wide open, naked as we came
One will spread our ashes round the yard

Compounded/'cause I no longer know where home is....

boats boats and more boats



One week ago, I sat on the river shore in Plentzia waiting for a procession of boats to sail past. The procession was for the patron saint of the town. It was that saint's day so he/she got a boat parade. It was pretty amazing as they all filed passed dressed in the colors of Euskadi. Red, green and white flag flew from the masts. I love the tradition and culture that Basque country possesses and remembers.
For some reason, at that very moment I started to think about compound words and how I like them. A compound word is double the word, so it has double the meaning, no? I thought about taking a compound word apart and substituting its two parts for its two equivalent antonyms or opposites...me explico?? I often play word games to keep my mind busy...so for example: "playground" would become "rest-air" and "haircut" would become "bald-mend" I thought a lot about "homesick" and couldn't decide on the opposite of home. What would it become?? and then I thought about this song and how this song makes me soooooo "homesick"....not "foreign-well" at all.
Homesick-by Kings Of Convenience


compounding on the beach

I just ate this....

Arroz Negro (translation: Black Rice)
It is rice with calamari. What makes it black you ask? It is cooked in the squid's ink. This dish would be among those that I like.

Here on the northern coast of Spain I eat a lot of seafood. Some of it is good, some tolerable and some un-swallowable...I hate to be that picky girl, so I have eaten a lot of food I wasn't really into: anchovies, weird pickled asparagus with mayonnaise, all types of mollusks and cephalopods, blood sausage, cooked red pepper drenched in oil, duck, cow, pig....I am turning more and more vegetarian.

It could be that I just miss vegetables. I only ever eat potatoes, carrots (cooked), hard cooked peas (Aaron remember these from Uruguay) and the typical salad that they have with every meal which consists of lettuce, tomato and onion drenched in oil and vinegar.

Or it could be that I tire from the incessant cutting, blood, chewing, fat, blood, cutting, chewing and chewing, blood, fat, chewing &c. gross.

Anyway. I miss good food. Truth be told, I end up eating a lot of ice cream. You can't go wrong with ice cream.

Oh, this letter!!! Oh, this book!!!----sigh-----I love them both

Miss A.E.
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own, than when you almost broke it eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone I think and plan--Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes?--I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feeling, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice, when they would be lost on others. --Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be fervent, most undeviating in F.W.

Do you know where this is from? Who else is in love with this book? I thought I had read it already, but while reading realized maybe I had just seen the movie a lot! I can't remember. But anyhow, now it stays in my mind as a wonderful study and commentary on relationships and personalities. The characters are developed so perfectly, the plot so entertaining and the theme so personally engaging!
I must share this quote from the back cover, "the poet Tennyson, visiting historic Lyme Regis, where a pivotal scene occurs, exclaimed: "Don't talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me the exact spot where Louisa Musgrove fell!"

Last week I started to read said book on the metro. My previous book I tossed in the trash because that is exactly what it was. I kept thinking it would get better but being half-way through with no desire to continue I threw it out. I was very overcome with the author's immoral, selfish,worthless and hopeless outlook on life. I was charmed by the movie "Everything Is Illuminated" (it is not as vulgar and crude as the book) but would admonish anyone with principles to not read that book. Tangents aside..."Persuasion" by Jane Austen made me trust authors again. Life is about so much more than was "illuminated" in that other book. And I am so happy to love again.

next spanish excursion...

Yesterday as Maite and I were walking home from playing at the beach, this guy started to talk to us. He was nice and walked with us for a while. He is probably about my age and in the course of the conversation he found out that I have the afternoons free and go around the Gorliz area hiking and exploring by myself. We were talking about all the beautiful towns and wonderful nature in northern Spain and he offered to accompany me next week to this town called Barrika where you can hike down around these amazing cliffs to a beach. So I got his number and am going to call him and meet him at the bus station on Tuesday to go to Barrika. In the meantime, I have found my next destination. This is Bermeo, Spain.
It is only 18 miles away, so I can easily take the bus there one afternoon and take some pictures of my own. This picture is surreal. Anyway, maybe Juan Carlos will want to come with me there too. I love having a friend. Cross your fingers!

saint malo, france, august 15th...

Bowerbirds are playing here:
I really want to go!!! sooooooo hard!!!

I feel like watching a Harry Potter movie...

or ALL of them for that matter.

sin fotos...

Today I had the chance to go around Bilbao shopping and to museums. Finally! It was so fun!!! The first thing I did this morning was go to the Guggenheim. I have been wanting to go through. Unfortunately, when I got there and pulled out my camera to start the photo magic, I noticed the red battery light flashing and then, it gave up and said I had to change my battery pack....so, no pictures. Today.
After going through the Gugg, I came to the conclusion that the best art there is the building itself. Truthfully I didn't like most of the art in there. I found myself just passing by everything....
The heart of Bilbao--Casco Viejo
Then I headed over to the 'Old Quarter' or 'Casco Viejo' as it is called here. The streets are narrow, no cars allowed.
I stood right there today, luckily someone else already took this picture for me!
I was looking for this store called Union Recycling that is a 2nd hand shop. But, I found out that during the summer, stores close early on Saturday afternoon, so I will head back there some other day. Also I found out that by that store, if I wanted I could also become a hippie/Bob Marley follower. It was the funniest street, I kind of felt out of place because I wasn't wearing tye-dye and I didn't have dreads.
In Casco Viejo I went to the Basque Museum. That was very interesting to learn about the culture that is so prominent here in Northern Spain. It is such an old and intriguing history....that dates back to the Neanderthals!!!
All in all, 6 hours of walking and I am tired. Time to charge up. my ipod, my camara and my body.

oh, metro signs...

TOP: Don't pry open the doors.
MIDDLE: Don't walk through the door if the alarm is going off
BOTTOM: You are not allowed to sit in a seat if there is a triple Siamese twin who comes in.

the sabbath.

Directions: open This Page in another window and press play, then read my post.
I went to church in Bilbao today and this has been my theme song for my Spanish adventure so far. Every time I walk through the cities and countryside I turn on this for my soundtrack. It's just too bad I didn't have my ipod when I got lost trying to find the ward in Bilbao and was 'walking the old eroded streets'
Luckily, I made it just in time for sacrament meeting. I met the Branch President. He is this wonderful man from Colombia. They have a class for single adults and I already made some friends. After church, I took a little walk around the Guggenheim.
That thing is amazing. Bilbao is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been in. I contemplate never leaving...
Then I found out the Metro/subway was closed to get back to Gorliz. I still don't know why. It is a 45 min Metro ride, so walking was out of the question. Then I saw two girls from church by the Metro station and they helped me find a bus that would take me half way and then I would have to change buses to make it the rest of the way.
Many nice people helped me out along the way. This older lady that sat next to me on the first bus even called one of her friends on her cell phone to see when the buses to Gorliz pass by and where I should get off.
Now, at home finally, I will rest, like the sabbath requires.

Aaron, Guess what this smelled like????

if you guessed Uruguay, you are right!

yo vivo aqui!

a bridge in Plentzia, Spain. This river runs in from the bay of Gorliz



Gorliz, Spain. taken from a hill in Plentzia, Spain


Jone was tired of riding her scooter, so I took a turn and she took a picture


Josu and Maite walked a little slower than Jone and I


this is Jone and I. She is the older of the two girls that I tend. This is the best vacation ever!

not having a cell phone is weird....

Attention everyone: I am in Gorliz, Spain. Luckily we were able to set up wireless in the house of the family where I am staying, so I will be able to blog a lot! I am an au pair, if you did not know. I just met the family when I arrived here yesterday. They are very nice and this area is sooooo beautiful. I wasn't nervous at all to go across the world and stay with people I did not know, until a few seconds before exiting the plane, when I realized I could not remember what the dad looked like who was coming to pick me up....AH. When I walked out of the salida, I saw a man and woman and waved, thinking it was them, but they just ignored me, so I looked around and saw another man with a little girl who looked very familiar and that was them and they recognized me right away.

We had a 3.5 hour car ride back to Gorliz from Madrid and it was fun to conocer the country side to Basque country. In Basque country, the capital being Bilbao, they speak two languages, Spanish (Castellano) and Basque. Basque sounds really similar, but is written so differently. Quite a few times, I hear people speaking, think it is Spanish, can't understand AT ALL what they are saying, and finally realize that they are speaking Basque.

The weather is a lot like San Francisco and other coastal parts of Northern California. We live really close to the beach and go down to a plaza right near the beach a lot. It is humid, but not too hot, so it's ok!
Their house is so beautiful! I have my own bedroom and bathroom. There are no closets here, just big built-in cupboards/armoires. I think I love that. Also, did I mention that I love bidets? and also Spain. I love it.

ps: pictures coming soon.

Voila!!!

Here is the bike I have been working on. I loved fixing it up and now I can't wait to ride it everywhere!!! After I got it painted by my neighbor's paint guy, I put the crank shaft and handlebars back on by myself.
I went to the bike shop one day to buy some new parts. I told the guy I needed to fix the corroding handlebars and he gave me a Schwinn set of bars that they were going to throw away, so I put those on instead of the old ones. They look so great!!

Then my friend Casey helped me put on the back brakes and the derailers. He wasn't sure how to hook up the cables, so I took it to this shop and they made it ride really nice.
Today, right when I got it home, I stuck on these HOT PINK decals that I bought from Hungary via ebay.

It is sooooooo pretty! I don't think the pictures show how bright the colors truly are...but one day I will be riding down the rode and you will spot me on my custom made bicycle...

Futurific!

Susan had a birthday, shout hurray! We decided to welcome her future of being in the 30's by having a theme party. Theme: the future. We all got carried away and had a blast dancing like robots/aliens/spacemen, eating milky ways and watching Spaceballs.




Now that I have seen a little glimpse of what the future looks like I can tell you, believe me friends, you are gonna love it. The future looks bright.



my friends will and kyle made this video to show at our party, (may not be suitable for children) but hilarious for everyone else

Any advice for a long flight???

Last night as I was looking at my seating assignment for my trip to Spain, I started feeling tired and claustrophobic with a sudden urge to use the bathroom, but the inability to do so freely because you have to make someone else get up each time. I am not really nervous or scared to be in a new country with people I don't know for three months, I just am dreading the airplane ride over the atlantic. It's 5 hours from Las Vegas to Philadelphia, then another 7 hours to Madrid. Right now, I am wishing I could teleport
Any advice for a long flight??