Two weeks on the road and I am now arrived in my new home in California.

The house is adorable, and, as expected, a hodge-podge of donated furniture and utensils and the like. Lucky for me, I'm not terribly concerned with things like if the furniture matches. I find the humble nature of it charming.

The good news is that the kitchen is STOCKED. Came with pie pans and cake pans and a coffee grinder. So they understand that I'm going to bake my ass off.

The road trip was, in a word, EPIC. I'll have to post about it tomorrow.

It does feel great to be in an actual place.

Planning a cross country road trip is, in a word, daunting.

Trying to reconnect with old friends, find places to sleep, things to see, and ways to not go crazy after 10 hours in a 2000 Focus. Two weeks of traveling, then a year of living on the West Coast.

Holy hell!

Not to say I'm not ridiculously excited. Fuck Spain, this is my great adventure.

To my love, the Midwest:

Look, we've had some amazing times, and I really tried to stay with you. After four months in Europe, missing you terribly, I'd decided that I wanted to stay with you forever. But you shut me out, dear. Look, I know you're going through some rough times, and I wanted to stick around to help you through them, but you refused. I tried to stay in Detroit, you wouldn't have me. Neither would Chicago. I didn't want to look elsewhere, really, but you gave me no choice. So I'm leaving behind your bitter winters, your hot-headed summers. I've been courted by Watsonville, CA and I'm leaving you. Watsonville promises me bike rides to the beach and weekend trips to San Francisco, endless 72 degree days and most importantly, a job where I get to talk about food all day and hang out with people who speak Spanish. I didn't want it to end like this, Midwest, but you gave me no choice. Please don't be too broken up, you will always have a special place in my heart. Some of the best years of my life have been with you, and I am eternally thankful for them, and for you. I'm sure we'll see each other on holidays. It's been lovely, but it's time to move on.

I'll miss you,

Ryanne

Let's just go right ahead and say I failed at effectively blogging my 4 months in Spain.

To be perfectly honest, when I was there I felt cheated, for lack of a better word. Everyone promised me that my semester abroad would be the time of my life. It was such an expensive trip that I didn't get to explore the rest of Europe like I thought I would. Aside from my week in Morocco (which was incredible and one day I'll get around to documenting that here) I never even left Spain. I didn't make any close Spanish friends, I didn't connect with my host mother. I felt cold and tired constantly. And right when the weather got lovely and beach-worthy, I had to go home.

But after an airline mixup and a ridiculously expensive 24 hours stuck in Madrid by myself I realized how much my Spanish had improved in the last 4 months, at the very least in how comfortable I was in speaking it to people.

The day I landed in Michigan was Mother's Day, and some of my extended family was at the house to greet me, including my paternal grandfather (the only living grandfather I have and the last generation in my family to be native Spanish speakers). It was the first time in my life that he spoke more than a sentence to me in Spanish, despite that I've been studying it for over 10 years. We bonded over our distaste for Spaniards and the fact that we were the only two people in the house who could understand our conversation. It was a great feeling.

I've been home for about 5 weeks now. I've been splitting my time between New Boston and East Lansing, the former filling my hours with ambitious cooking projects and lots of quality time with my piano, parents and grandma; the latter with miles and miles of bike rides, farmers' markets, coffeeshop dwelling, and philosophical debates held over gin and tonics.

And I've come to realize that, while the adventure was definitely worth my time, my heart and happiness is here, in my humble existence among the people who love me.

East Lansing has become a bittersweet place for me, only because it is not a city of permanence, and I know that I cannot stay forever. What makes East Lansing amazing are the people I know there, and everyone leaves eventually. I am no exception; I have more adventures in me.

But this summer I will couch surf at my friends' house(s), bike to a bullshit job in a Mexican restaurant, volunteer, bike to the Allen Street Farmers' Market on Wednesday afternoons, crash house dinners at the co-ops, and occasionally come back to New Boston to hang out with my parents and sing at my piano.

Cheated is definitely the wrong word. How fortunate am I, that the "time of my life" isn't 4 months in a foreign country, but my every day?

Cuéntame la historia del mundo

de la música que dio luz a la revolución

de la revolución en que nació el anti-imperio

de la guerra en la que se murieron tus sueños


Ensáñame a ser radical

sin miedo, irrazonable

y te enseñaré a usar lenguas extrañas

quitaré la que ya tienes

cultivaremos una nueva

con nuestras propias palabras

que expresará mejor que

no somos normales

no somos racionales

no somos nada de este mundo


La Tierra va a olvidarnos

y vamos a olvidar todo.

Dear 45 year old women,

You are too old to have pink hair. Or wear leopard print dresses, especially to work. Please act your age.

Dear Spanish men,

Dread mullet? Really? You went into a salon and asked for that?
Also, you realize you're carrying a purse, right?
And why do you all simply neglect to cut the hair on your nape? Are you saving it for something?
Sorry, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I just can't respect any man who has a hair 'style' even if it's obviously apparent that you haven't actually washed it in weeks.

Dear everyone,

Brush your fucking teeth! Your breath smells horrible.


Dear Ryanne,

Try not to be so angry with this culture full of arrogant, ethnocentric perma-teenagers.

I've come to realize a few things in my two months in Spain:

1. I really suck at blogging.

2. "¿Eres italiana?" is the polite way for a Spaniard to tell you that you speak with an accent.

3. I walk, on average, 20 miles a week.

4. I am slowly losing my ability to speak English like a native. All of the students here speak a sort of 'middle language' that I won't call Spanglish because it's more mixing syntax than mixing words. We say things like, 'How are those called?' and 'Do you want to take a coffee later?' and my personal favorite, 'It doesn't import me.' (meaning 'I don't care').

I can't believe I'll be coming home in 7 weeks.

So it's been about three weeks. I'd love to say I haven't posted because I've been up to my eyeballs in wondrous adventure. Which in some cases hasn't been wholly inaccurate. But more truthfully, the last three weeks have been really hard. I knew there'd be a period of transition, an inevitable culture shock, but I really had no idea just how jarring it'd be. I guess I figured that western Europe couldn't possibly be THAT different from the US...drinkable tap water, internet, paved roads, etc. And yes, a lot of things are similar enough that at surface level, nothing seems that different. But I've still been having a hard time with the details.

I'd say the thing I'm struggling with most is living with a host family. Not just because they don't speak English, but because at 23 I've been taking care of myself for a long time, and having someone cook my meals and fold my laundry is unnerving. I am not a picky eater by nature (and I spent plenty of years as a fat kid proving that), but being an achalasic vegan has made my diet terribly restricted. Which doesn't bother me, but is a major pain in the ass for my host mother, a 70+ widow who spent decades living under a fascist regime and who considers a diet consisting of various soups made with beans, rice, and vegetables to be proletariat and common, if not horrifically boring.

The language barrier doesn't help much, though things are getting better slowly but surely.

Later today I'm hoping to get around to posting about my trip to Barcelona and my more recent observations of the city/Spain in general. Maybe I'll even get around to posting my pictures! But right now I have homework. So later it will have to be.

In less than a week I've noticed:

Stuff Spaniards like:

Pastry/candy/sugary stuff. There are pastelerías and bulk candyshops everywhere.

Getting their hair done. Peluquerías (hair salons) are everywhere as well. and speaking of....

Mullets, dreads, and random combinations thereof. The mullet is alive and well in Europe.

Scarves. For every person not wearing a scarf, there are 14 who are.

There's a lot more to observe but that's all for now.

So I've been in NYC for just over 24 hours. Things have been pretty low key, though I've managed to spend all sorts of money already. Spent last night just hanging out in Katie and Dan's apartment, eating Chinese takeout, drinking gallon jug wine, and watching Religulous. It was actually a nice night, since I'm always more concerned with the quality of the company than the excitement level involved in the activity. Their downstairs neighbors are cool as hell, they have a beautiful dog named Steve McQueen and an adorable cat named Lucy. It's a very cozy existance, and I'm enjoying it.

This morning(ish) we all went to a vegetarian/vegan place in the East Village called Counter. It was AMAZING. They had a brunch special where you could get a coffee or tea, glass of sangria or mimosa, and a vegan breakfast consisting of tofu scramble, home fries, toast, and mixed greens, all for $11. Which would be amazing even in the Midwest. We, as a table, also got a basket of mixed vegan baked goods which came with sangria marmalade, vegan raspberry butter, and vegan nutella, and I got a raw pistachio-macadamia nut tart for dessert. It was a $30 meal by the time I was finished, but well worth it.

Later we bummed around Union Square for the afternoon. We checked out Strand, which was an overwhelmingly large used book store that I could've gotten lost in for quite some time had I not been borderling food coma-ed. We stopped in a micro-brewery called Hartland Brewery for some over-priced food and decent beer, grabbed a coffee on our way back to the subway and are now sitting in the living room again, on computers and playing Guitar Hero. Which is fine by me considering I've managed to spend, oh, $100 since I landed in NYC last night on food and transportation alone. These next few months are going to be so expensive. Tomorrow's mission is to do things that don't cost any money.

Everyone's always leaving in college towns, so I shouldn't be too surprised at the number of people who didn't bother saying goodbye. This is a place of constant transition, and mine is no exception.

I really need to call my host mother, but I'm terrified of doing so. Not only because my Spanish skills aren't exactly stellar when it comes to phone calls, but because talking to her makes her real which means I'm really leaving the country for 4 months. I don't think any of this will feel real until I set my suitcase down.

Pre-departure

I know these next two weeks are going to go by so incredibly fast:

Tomorrow: Parents coming up to Lansing to move my furniture out of the apartment.
Sunday: Last day at Clara's. I can't believe it's been 8 months.
Monday: open. probably finishing packing
Tuesday: Say goodbye to Lansing:(
Wednesday: Head to Chicago with the Mom
Thursday: Pick up my visa/passport from the Spanish Consulate office, maybe hit up the aquarium, head back to the mitten.
Friday: REALLY finish packing
Saturday: Fly to NYC for a few days, not see the mitten again for 16 weeks.

I'm moving to Valencia for four months! This is where you can see what I've been up to!