A Morriña

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and according to this website I found, I am 3,747 miles from home. On Christmas I will also be 3,747 miles from home. Maybe even a little more depending on where I am that day. Perhaps a little less.

No matter the small change of distance, it doesn’t change the fact that I will be very far from home for this year’s holidays. But I am not unlucky, I have chosen to be in this position, to work here, far away from Kirby Ct. In fact, I’m having a pretty good time over here.

Some people don’t have a choice. For necessity of work or a better life, or trying to work for a better life, they’ve traveled long and far, far from home. Some people will never again spend the holidays with their families and friends, for one reason or many others. If you’re a solider, a scientist in Antarctica, a migrant worker picking berries.

There are these guys here in Bilbao, most of them are from Senegal and Equatorial Guinea, and they walk the streets trying to sell cheap watches and caps, mostly counterfeit. Some of them will never go home. Some can’t. There might not be a home anymore. Instead, they’re trying to sell things to passersby, many of whom pretend to not even notice them.

Imagine their holidays, whatever time of the year they may be. Eid. Christmas. Ramadan. They find themselves in Madrid and Marseille and Münich, selling fake Tag-Heuers and Dolce bags instead of being with their mothers and brothers and sons and cousins and friends, wherever they may be. And in a place where many people are at best cold and at worst openly hostile.

Imagine that. Imagine the sea they crossed, one that separated both lands and cultures.

I am grateful and I give thanks that these are things of which I know nothing. This kind of self-sacrifice is not why I crossed an ocean. I did it in search of a better understanding of what life has to offer, of what it’s all about. Along the way, the hard times like this, in rooms alone thinking, and also the good times of lights and colors and laughing, have shown me that so much of the meaning of life comes from simply learning and trying to understand.

So give thanks that you’ve got what you’ve got and that you know whom you know and that you love whom you love and that they love you right back. Somewhere, across many seas, is someone who wishes they had the food you have, the situation you find yourself in. I always took Thanksgiving for granted, but now I’m starting to understand.

And we go on learning alright.

A Respite from the Internet in Portugalete

It can't be.

Because we are changing internet companies at my house in Getxo, we have been most unfairly left without wireless internet for several days. I think it's almost been four days at this point. Barbarity.

I can barely live like this. Because of this most unpleasant interruption in the transcurrence of my normal patterns of looking up random bullshit on wikipedia, my cell phone's 3G bill will certainly have gone up significantly. In addition, this evening, after sitting inside for a while, in the dark, I decided to take my trusty MacBook for a walk.

 I crossed La Ría de Bilbao in the hanging bridge of Puente Vizcaya, and for the past hour I have been ducking into bars trying to find one that has wifi. Finally, on a small backstreet in Portugalete - a most quaint callejón if I do say so myself - I found a bar with semi-functional wireless internet.

I am somewhere over there to the left, in a bar in an alley near that church. 

To be here on my laptop in a bar amongst drunken, socializing Basques is a novel thing indeed. There are many groups of people, and though I am not the only loner, I think I am the only lone person who is not a sad, old, alcoholic government employee drinking by himself. I am, however, a somewhat malaised, young, alcohol-in-relative-moderation-consuming, government employee drinking by myself.

But because I have my computer, that almost counts as having company. I have the world at my fingertips. Or at least, a staggeringly small and narrow-minded part of it, as long as I keep reading The Nation blogs.

The computer's screen turns my face blue.

I think I am going to do this more often though. Go to bars with my laptop. I need to make this commitment, even when we get wifi back at my house. I'm not going to lie, I am downloading a few episodes of Tremé right now, so that is my ulterior motive for being here.

Now, more and more people are coming in, and I am beginning to feel more than a little bit awkward. There is a golden retriever tied outside the bar's front window and he is staring at me intently, with a sizable stalactite of drool coming out of his smiling mouth. He has significantly added to my joy.

And how would he not?

Poner las pilas / Put the batteries in [more or less]

It was a very Basque day today. Typical Basque days are a lot like typical Oregon days in terms of weather. It rains. It's cloudy. There are lots of puddles. This is because of the rain.

This does not accurately depict my energy level today.

Though I like the rainy weather, it has taken a little bit of my energy away today.


 Accomplishments
Friday, 12th of October, 2012

• Watched half of a pretty well dubbed "Return of the King" (El retorno del rey) on Euskal television.
• Put on pajama pants.
• Walked to Doner Kebab. Ordered Doner Kebab. Took said Kebab home. Ate kebab.
• Looked out the window at all the lovely people.
• Spoke incorrect, unrolled r Spanish with my roommate.
• Watched the Daily Show. Laughed.
• Looked up Paul Thomas Anderson's filmography.
• Downloaded "Punch Drunk Love". Didn't watch it.

So to complement all of this prodigious achievement, I will now post some pictures I have taken of my new surroundings.

Sopelana, Bizkaia

This, however, I did take today.

Though it looks like a small village, this is actually just a part of Algorta, Getxo. Which is a big city.

I found ducks here, though not the the Chip Kelly variety.

I feel partly cloudy today. I need to come home before 8 AM next time.

Well, I'm sure I will have more solid things to say later today. Or tomorrow.

Agur! (Adiós)

La siesta perfecta

This is my first entry from the Getxo, on the coast in the Basque Country, my new home in Spain the Northern Part of the Iberian Peninsula.

(It's not Spain).

Instead of boring you with the whole story of Basque Independence and resistance to perceived invasive Spanish nationalism, I'm going to get right to a much more crucial part of daily life here in Sp-

...the Northern Part of the Iberian Peninsula.

That crucial facet is something they call la siesta. You may be familiar with it. We anglophones refer to this curious phenomenon as a "nap".

As I write this entry, I am prostrate in my bed atop new and boldly colored Ikea sheets. As many of you probably know, the inhabitants of the Iberian peninsula are very fond of napping. The other day, I heard a Basque friend say:

"They say the ideal siesta is twenty minutes - no more, no less."

This was said with a certain air of authority, a smug aloofness. This comment was beyond margin of doubt.

"Bah," I thought to myself. "Everyone knows that twenty minute naps suck major polla." Who would want to engage in the tease of only lying down for a few minutes? Not even a full half hour.

However, a few days ago, I found myself en casa and I was tired as hell. However, I had some big plans for the evening (wearing a suit and drinking wine in the streets). I knew I had to recharge the batteries somehow.

I remembered the dubious claim my friend had made about the supposed superiority of twenty minute naps. "Hell," me dije a mí mismo (I said to myself), "I must as well test this theory out." I laid down on my previously cited (and still boldly colored) Ikea sheets and set to work. Or did the opposite of setting to work. Trying to do absolutely nothing at all and spur on unconsciousness. Thus is the perplexing paradox of sleep.

Goddamn if them weren't some of the best twenty minutes I ever did spend. Maybe I was influenced by the air of authority that mi amiga vasca utilized in her declaration of the veinte minuto primacy. Maybe this is why the placebo effect is so well documented in science; the power of suggestion is indeed quite powerful.

Twenty minutes might not seem like enough, but I direct your attention to how relaxed my friend Pablo appears in the following photographic evidence:

This is how it's done, fools.

And yes, that's right. That is the Simpsons, dubbed in Spanish. And you're right, Pablo did only sleep for about twenty minutes. And you know what? I didn't ask him specifically, but he seemed pretty goddamned relaxed to me.

To answer your question, yes, our apartment is that colorful. We're big on the fuchsia and lime green combo. It's like a Basque Barney the Dinosaur, although he's more a weathered, sun-bleached lavender than hearty purple.

And yes, the Castilian Spanish Simpsons voices sound a lot like the English ones, especially Homer.

I hope you have learned something from this most solemn and thoughtful post. Since someone is outside bumping Beyoncé from a beat-up Peugeot (I can't actually see it, but we can be fairly certain), it is time for me to tell them to go vete y tomarlo por culo.

I can hear the Google Translate windows opening as we speak.

Crossed the land / Cruzado la tierra

Well, I have come a long way. Literally. Physically. Metaphysically.

A few days ago, Cassidy R. Berk and I courageously completed our journey across these United States in his trusty, and now dusty, charcoal-colored Honda Civic. We saw sights and heard sounds emblematic of so many facets of this great country of ours, details from which I will go into further on down the line. Promise.

But now I find myself standing on the deck of a veritable castle in the Hendricks Park section of Eugene, Oregon, a town I have come to know and love so dearly over the years. It's a place I will always hold in my heart for the times, both terrifically terrible and terribly terrific, that I've had within its municipal limits. And in other municipalities nearby.

Oregon, it's good to be back. Oregon people - you are much loved, family and friends alike.

View from the hilly heavens, looking down upon the masses

In many ways, this, and not the East, feels like home. And in many other ways, this is still part of my journey, being here, seeing what there is to be seen. I originally created this blog so people could keep track of me (and I could try and keep track of myself) while I was in Spain, but I realized that "journey" - viaje - means a lot more than just when you check bags and pack toiletry kits. A journey is where you see things you haven't seen before, even if it's in the same places as always.

There are many kinds of journeys, and everywhere can be a new place.

Gibraltar Has a Burger King. / Gibraltar tiene Burger King.

If you don't like watching baby monkeys at play, and are therefore a total douchebag, do not watch the following astonishingly precious videoclip, narrated by me. Also, if your heart is made of pure stone and you have a vacuous, gray soul, please do not watch the following video as you may find yourself feeling inklings of real human emotion. 

***

I guess, in the end, I was never really given any pumpkins. Nor any other type of squash for that matter. Sort of a let down when you think about it. But I did get this Gojira album. In their hometown. In France.

How metal is France? Very. What does this picture have to do with anything? Nothing.

I'm back in the United States now. Do I feel different? Yes. How exactly? I need more time to think about it.

Would I have done it again? Definitely.


In fact, tomorrow I'm going to ride the Metro down to D.C. to take my new visa application in. I'll let you know how it goes, blog. I'm talking to the blog like it's a person. Yes. I am.

And let's be clear that yes, I do feel like a slacking reprobate for not writing more. Then again, I was never known for my ability to turn in homework assignments in a timely fashion, and of late it's dawned on me that maybe failing to update my travel blog is a manifestation of this same complex.

Sometimes, I guess, I just feel like I ain't got nothin' to write good about.

So to calm the clamoring-for-pitchfork uprising, I give you a picture of Granada at sunset. Print it out, use it as a post card. Postcard. Is there a space?

Oh yeah, Gibraltar has a Burger King.

What does that have to do with anything? Nothing.



More coming soon.

The waning days / Los días menguantes

It's starting to feel real.

I'm quickly approaching my last days here in Valladolid. As difficult of a relationship as I have with Pucela, leaving this town is bittersweet. Big upheavals in life are always difficult, and leaving the place where I've lived and loved and worked and bled for the past ten months won't be any exception.

There have definitely been cold nights and times where I wanted to feel something familiar. And of course, the cultural peculiarities - more often than not the little things - really me tocaron los cojones sometimes.

Above all the great people I have gotten to know in this city on the Pisuerga will be tough to leave behind. Moreover, tomorrow is probably the last day I'll be going to my instituto to see the kids I've spent the whole year with. That will be hard. Apart from the beautiful, thoughtful gifts they've given me throughout these past two weeks, the times I've had with them I'll never forget. Never.

If you're reading this, guys - and you should be, because I've taught you English for the past ten months - I want you to know that I am going to miss you very much and that I will always remember the classes we shared together. Sometimes, I think you taught me more than I taught you, and that's not just because a lot of you don't study! (Joke.) (Sort of.) But you really helped me learn a lot of things about the world and about myself.

We're not so different, you and I.

And I know I told you all not to cry the other day, but I know that I might have a hard time following my own rule soon. I really will miss all of you. Even the bad ones who don't study.