My Working Life/Spanish Roots V

OK, so it's been a while. But honestly, that's probably because, aside from a select few instances, nothing much worth writing down has happened. I've been working full-time for about four months now, and although it feels great to be fully self-sufficient, I'm living a very different lifestyle, one that took some getting used to. It was a definite shock only after I had settled into my new place when I realized that I really am on my own. I truly am at a crossroads in my life; things are changing fast, and I've tried to keep up. I buzzed my hair fairly short, got a dog, and joined a cycling club, among other things, perhaps as a internal means to match the external pull of vertigo I've been experiencing.

For a while, I had been falling into the trap of letting work completely envelop my life because I thought that was the only thing that mattered at this point. However, as of late, I have become aware of the fact that work is only one of several aspects of my life now. Most of those other aspects are preparation for the future (although I try to be cognizant of the present). I am preparing for grad school. I have started saving for retirement. I am trying to rub elbows with the higher-ups at work in order to cash in next year. I am spending countless hours thinking about what I will say at my brother's wedding in a few years (I still cannot believe he is ENGAGED).

Regardless of my recent cheerlessness, I have become very independent, even more so than I ever was in college, which has its pros and cons. It's beneficial in that I am forced to seek out interaction with other people in non-traditional manners, a lesson I probably did not fully develop before. However, I do get a bit lonely down here--the ultimate irony of living closer to a metropolis of three million inhabitants. You see, since I graduated early, most of my friends are still in college. Now that I live much farther south, it's not so convenient for me to see them, and vice versa. Plus, our schedules tend not to coincide with one another. My roommate is also gone more than half the time.

Sometimes I just feel like I grew up way too fast. I am trying to apply the brakes, though, and still enjoy my youth. In any case, I have Alexei, my new dog, to keep me company :)

My brother did come up to visit me a few weeks ago. After his vacation with Devon in LA, he hopped on a plane to Chicago to stay with me a few days. It was his first time in the area, and it sure wasn't long enough! Unfortunately, he had to be ready to report to base in West Palm only a few days afterward, but I'm glad he was able to squeeze some time in up here. I showed off NU and a bit of downtown to him, but mostly we just reminisced about the past and celebrated the near future. And of course we were able to fit in a few rounds of Halo between.

I also have fun plans for the holidays. Ryan, my cousin in Palm Beach, is coming up for Thanksgiving. We're going to tear up the city, and in the process hopefully meet up with my other cousin, Chad, who lives on the west side. This Thanksgiving will have been two years without my family's Thanksgiving smorgasbord. But I booked a flight home for Christmas, so I can make up for it then. My parents--and a bunch of other family, actually--are also coming up the first weekend in December, ostensibly for a play that Chad is helping to put on, but I like to believe it's mostly to see me : ) It's also my Dad's birthday that weekend, so the next month will be chock full of good ol' family fun.

After the end of 2005, who knows what dreams may come. 2006 is a new year, likely bringing even more change.

P.S. - I currently have what some may consider an unhealthy addiction to bluegrass, wine, and The Apprentice. I don't care what you say, though--each is strangely intoxicating to the point of ridiculousness.

P.P.S. - I haven't forgotten my Spanish Roots journal:

Thursday, 10/14

Another long delay in the journal entires, thanks to my near-perfect trip to Italy. It was quite a blast, and spending it with the friends I’ve made on this trip as well as with Mandy made it even better. Despite the debacle of the return leg of my trip (missing my flight, unsympathetic attendants, sleeping overnight in Fiumicino, having to take overnight train from Barcelona--see below for the full story), I had a blast. I spent the first two nights in Rome, mostly just with Mandy. We stayed in a hostel very close to the Vatican. The last three nights I was in Firenze, AKA Florence. I stayed at Mandy’s place and but spent most of the time with the rest of my Sevilla amigos as well as Mandy.

The first night in Rome, Mandy and I went out for some wine and panini at a local bar. Friday, we toured Vatican City, Castel Sant’Angelo, Piazzas Navona, and Popolo. Dinner that night was amazing—we ended up eating with two local Italians, Giuseppe and Angelo. They practically force-fed us their fresh calamari and eggplant, they were so generous. I was very proud of the fact that together, the four of us managed to communicate in four different languages (English, Italian, German, and Spanish). It was the one time I’ve gotten to practice my German outside of class. Halfway through the meal, I became pleasantly drunk from the Chianti we had with dinner and Cabernet we bought at a true bodega at the Piazza Popolo, so that made it even more fun. After dinner we proceeded to explore the city in the best way possible--by getting lost! We were trying to find the Pantheon to meet up with Jon & Co and ended up taking a very roundabout path. The others never did arrive, however, so the two of us went back and crashed.

Saturday, we took the Metro down to the Ancient City. The ride was fairly crowded and was highlighted by the arrest of four young female pickpocketers. It was probably the best expression of justice I have ever seen--two cops boarded the train immediately after the theft and fully embarrassed the girls by shouting “pickpocketers, pickpocketers” aloud in front of everyone on the train. Anyway, during the day we toured the Roman Forum, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, Piazza di Campoglioni, and the Wedding Cake monument/museum. Then we picked our bags up at Colors Hotel and caught our evening train to Florence at Termini Station.

It was a fairly long ride, but we spent the first half talking to an elderly American from North Carolina, who ironically had attended school at NU’s seminary, then later lived in Louisville. Mandy and I ate at a nice tratteria, where I had one of the best calzones, before arriving at her flat.

Her apartment is extraordinary. All of the culinary students are guaranteed a place with a nice kitchen, and you know if it has a nice kitchen, every other amenity is nice as well. My sleep that night was interrupted by the frantic phone calls of Antony, Whitney, her boyfriend, and Zach, as Zach, Whitney, and Jon apparently had been kicked out of the hostel and were trying to find another place to stay. They ended up finding a Best Western, even though Mandy offered to take them in.

Florence ended up having fairly crappy weather--it rained the whole time--and of course I had forgotten to pack my umbrella in my backpack. Florence is a lot more chill than Rome, but the atmosphere is unequalled. Mandy and I toured the Borgello museum, went to mass at a local church (all in Italian, very short), passed through a bunch of piazzas (Vecchio, Repubblica, and Signora), walked across Ponte Vecchio, then met up with the rest of the gang at the Accademia to view the David.

The David is awe-inspiring; as Zach put it, “it inspires homosexual tendencies.” Unfortunately, we couldn't take any pictures--security confiscates your camera if you do--so I have no real record of it. We had lunch at a tratteria that Mandy suggested, where it started to rain again. Mandy split, and I went with the others to wait in line at the Uffizi (since I found out it is closed on Mondays), but we discovered the wait was 3 hours, which would’ve given us ~20 minutes to see things. Thus, we scratched it, and proceeded to look around at some plazas, stop at a café. Then I split with Jon to head back to Mandy’s.

We killed time by shopping for wine and other uniquely Italian items, then went back to Mandy’s place. Earlier, Mandy had offered to have a dinner party for everyone, so we helped her find some last minute ingredients. I was Mandy’s assistant chef, and we had everything prepared in time for the “guests.” Everyone is now completely in love with Mandy. She made a very good meal. We had mozzarella and tomatoes w/ olive oil, salami, and brie/crackers to start, spaghetti carbonara for the main dish, and biscotti w/ vin santo after-dinner wine for dessert.

Mandy was gracious enough to let Zach, Whitney, and Jon crash at her place for the night. The following day we went to the Santa Croce church to see lots of famous dead bodies (Michelangelo and Machiavlli to name a few), then saw the Duomo and Baptistery. The Duomo has the most amazingly intricate façade, yet the interior is ironically starkly bare. We wandered for a bit, then Jon, Zach, Antony, and I walked to the Synagogue, but I decided to stay outside (not being Jewish, I didn't have much of a desire to see it as the others) in order to call my parents and Mandy, since we were to meet up with Mandy later. The rest of my buddies decided to take the train back directly afterward, however, so I met Mandy for gelato.

We then toured the Boboli gardens. The main highlight of the gardens was a hilarious statue of a fat, naked Bacchus riding a statue. It took forever to find it, however, since it was poorly marked. I did get to practice my Spanish with some other Spaniards who were trying to find the statue. In fact, most people we met along the way were also lost trying to find it. We had originally planned to hit up the Piazza Michelangelo afterward, but it ended up being too far to walk for our level of exhaustion. Instead, we ducked back in Mandy's place and cooked some fresh prosciutto pasta and sauce and watched School of Rock and 13 Going On 30 (there were three girls living in the apartment, what could I do?). I crashed hard, and the next morning, began the complete disaster that was my trip home.

I purposely bought my return train ticket to Rome on the way into Florence with plenty of time to spare in case there was a delay. In fact, there was a delay the morning of my return train ride, but the delay was well past any length I could have imagined for what is supposed to be one of the best rail systems in the world. The train was already over an hour late getting in, and I thought I would have just enough time to make my flight. Once we got to the outskirts of Rome, though, we slowed down and just crept the rest of the way. I was shitting my pants, knowing I had only 10 minutes between Termini and the airport to make my flight at the scheduled time. I kind of got ripped off by the cabbies (I probably should have negotiated with the real RadioTaxi people) but I had no time to negotiate effectively. I knew once I hopped in the cab that my only saving grace was that my flight would be extremely delayed like the one from Málaga to Rome. Of course, that didn’t happen, and I missed my flight.

After getting the runaround many times by a mix of sympathetic and downright unhelpful Alitalia attendants, and waiting around for the elusive “supervisor,” I was able to get myself on the wait list for the evening flight back to Madrid. Tuesday, however, was a Spanish holiday, so all the flights into Spain (3 to Madrid, 2 to Málaga, 2 to Barcelona, and 2 to Sevlla) were severly overbooked. I never made a seat on the Madrid flight, and the only spot they could guarantee me was the next day at 9:05 AM to Barcelona, so I took it. Fuck, I had to take whatever I could get, right? I was probably the last person to eat dinner at the airport that night, as they were closing up shop right as I was scarfing down the last of my pizza (what the hell was on that pizza, anyway? That was the most disgusting pizza ever).

Fiumicino Airport and I got really close that night. It was probably one of the longest nights of my life. I tried to read to keep myself occupied, but I was too anxious, nervous, and exhausted to concentrate for long. I “slept” alone in terminal B, suitcase under feet and backpack under arms, sans pillow, which meant I never got real, deep sleep. After 5:30 AM the crowds started to roll in again. I got breakfast at the café, where I ran into Allie and Lauren who were waiting for their flight. The flight to Barcelona went off without a hitch, even though I couldn’t really sleep on the plane. I took the train from the airport to Barcelona-Sants train station, and discovered the only other flight that day to Sevilla was a night hotel train. I had no other choice: I booked it, put my suitcase in a locker, and bummed around the surrounding outside park at first, then read and shopped (one of the nicer shopping centers, I must say) until my train arrived.

My cabin was shared by one younger and two older Spaniards. We all pretty much crashed as soon as we got settled. One, or maybe both, of the older men had some crazy BO, but I was too tired to let it affect me for long. I slept soundly for 9 hours until we rolled into Sevilla at 8:45 AM, then made the last leg home via autobus. The plan was to sleep as long as possible when I got back to Conci's place, but my rest was interrupted by a phone call from Noelia, frantically concerned that I hadn’t signed my matriculation form. **The administration has been less than stellar in giving us information plenty of time ahead of deadlines, but luckily they stretched this one out (and the Granada one).

Anyway, it was good to be back, able to sleep in a stationary bed with pillow, and eat some of Conci’s home-cooked food. As many people pointed out to me, “lo que no te mata, te hace más fuerte.” Now, to share the story with my parents…

This weekend will probably not involve ANY traveling whatsoever. It’s the only weekend for which I never really had definite plans for a trip anyway. I slept hard last night, and will probably take a gigantic nap again this afternoon. I need to get more of my pictures uploaded to share with friends and family, but I won’t be able to until Monday since the office is close through the weekend. I might burn them to a disc like Dad suggested and send them home.

Oh, I’m kind of upset that I probably won’t be able to do guitar lessons here. The schedule is Tues./Thurs., right in the middle of my translation seminar. I’m already missing that class at least 3 times. If not guitar lessons, then maybe rowing. Get off your ass and go! It’s just so far away…we shall see.

St. Peter's Basilica

Mandy seducing Nile

Il Coloseo

Dinner with Giuseppe and Angelo

Ponte Vecchio Locks of Love

Il Duomo

Bacchus pissing over the head of his trusty shelled steed (yes, there's actually a stream of water coming out of it)