The last moments

I don't have a Twitter. However, I felt some twitter-like inspiration on the last leg of my journey back home from Spain in late May.

I had a notepad with me and decided I would write random thoughts down as they happened. I just found this notepad while cleaning my room and realized that I didn't post any of this here on my blog.

Before I write this, I wish I had written "tweets" about the "morning" before traveling. I put quotes around "morning" because I had to leave my host family's house at 4:30am. I ate dinner as usual the night before around 10pm, then said goodbye to Rocio before she had to go to sleep around 11:30. Carlos stayed up, watching TV, while I sat in my room and packed my bags until 2am. Thinking that I should get SOME sort of sleep before leaving, I took a nap until 4am, then made sure Carlos woke me up if I wasn't in the kitchen by 4:10am. Luckily he didn't have to, and I ate my "breakfast" then got ready to leave.

I remember that the first thing on my mind at the moment was how much I would miss my host family and my Alicante home in which I had lived for the previous 5 months.

The second thing that was on my mind was how I would miss the live broadcast of the series finale of LOST, which would be at 6am Spain time. It was devastating, really.

Anyways, on to the "tweets," which are un-twitterlike in their order, because I wrote them in the order they occurred, the newest posts at the very end.


May 25, 2010
(Alicante airport)
6:15am: Just saw a guy make the last call for boarding on his flight. He ran to the gate and chucked his papers at the flight attendant, in a rush.

6:18am There seems to be 2 types of people at the airport: those with some sense of style, and those who equate "travel clothing" with "mountainous terrain clothing."

6:20am There is a woman dragging her duffel through the airport. Someone needs to tell her it doesn't have wheels.

(Madrid airport)
8:55am You know Security's having a good day when they are whistling Duran Duran.

9:04am Airports everywhere are collections of people looking around aimlessly and being confused.

9:15am Asked if the toy store clerk would take a picture of me and a lifesize cardboard cutout of Pocoyo. He said taking photos isn't allowed. Jerk.


Pocoyo.

9:35am I just got abnormally excited for a tortilla bocadillo. I'm gonna miss those.

9:36am Received a plastic cup for my squirt-top Evian watter bottle. Way to be wasteful, Spain.

9:45am Just got a call from Katie [Blubaugh]. It was a much-needed surprise after not talking to anyone in the past 5 hours.

10:15am Why is that man holding a woman's legs in the air at the bookstore? Oh, I just noticed 2 EMTs leaning over her. Sure took me a while.

10:20am I am BALLIN' with $400 cash. Looks like funny money after a semester of dealing with a rainbow of bills.

10:25am Why does the Chupa Chups machine appear to me now, when I am fresh out of Euros?!?!

(on Madrid-Chicago flight)
7:15pm Snack box time on the plane! Unfortunately, due to orange allergies and refusal to eat marbled deli meat, I only scrounge the 1-inch candy bar and small palmeritas cookies.

(Chicago)
2:30pm Back in the good ole US of A: where sedate people ironically wear athletic clothes on a daily basis.

Spice Girls Spanish Style

A couple weekends ago, in the Barrio Santa Cruz, there was this "concert" of people lip-syncing famous songs. Some were techno (with little to no words) some were Spanish, and some were English.

One of the English ones was The Spice Girls. There were 4 above-the-age-of-forty women dressed as the famous group, along with a mannequin, lip-syncing the hit "Wannabe."

It was weird but very entertaining, as you could probably guess.

Want to view it? Well you can! Right here.

This fire is outta control, we gonna burn this city! Burn this city!

My trip to Valencia with Sarah and Carly during the weekend of March 19th for Las Fallas is documented in this video:



Notice the song and lyrics: "We're gonna burn this whole city down!"

Like I said, these people are CRAZY. The city could catch on fire any minute, as shown by the raging flames. How this never actually happens, I don't know.

Shopping carts with booze

Today I woke up at 7:30am during vacation days to witness the pilgrimage to Santa Faz. It begins in Alicante at 8am, where people gather (with bamboo walking sticks with evergreen poking out the top) at the church, then they walk onward, about 6 miles or more, to Santa Faz or something. The people who do it, however, vary in age. There are elderly people, there are parents with kids, and there are loads of teenagers. And since there are teenagers, there is booze.

There are loads of teens doing this, clearly many of them underage. But there are cops everywhere directing traffic (of which there is practically none since it's a holiday) and they sure don't give a damn.

I was walking out my door at 7:50am and saw a group of three teens. The boy was drinking a 40oz bottle of Amstel beer, the girl was carrying grocery bags, and the other girl was pushing a stolen shopping cart filled with more grocery bags filled with liquor, Fanta, Coke, and a cooler of food.

Rocio told me she used to do it as a teenager, where her and her friends would get up early to walk there, bringing food and drinks for the whole day. They would walk all the way there, then spend the entire rest of the day on the beach having a party, then take the bus home at the end of the day.

But now that I think about it, people probably look back on this event like this:

"Remember back in high school, when we would wake up at 7am on a Thursday, fill up a shopping cart with booze and food, and drink 40s of Amstel on the 6 mile hike up to the beach? Those were the good ole days..."

Where they put those shopping carts when they reach their destination, however, is unknown.

"This would never fly in the United States."--Morgen, regarding the flaming madness

Yesterday was the Entierro de la Sardina (Sardine burial) where they carry a giant paper mache sardine through the city to a plaza, then light it on fire with complete disregard to safety.

I filmed the entire "on fire" part, and it was quite entertaining.

They lit up sparklers and those screaming emergency flares, then lit the sardine on fire with them (of course, after they completely covered it in kerosene). The sparks were flying everywhere, on the crowd and the drag queens (there were lots of them there, I don't know why). There were also lots of people dressed in black, as if it were a mock funeral.

Enjoy this interesting spectacle, courtesy of my video (I made it low quality so it was faster to upload...pardon the blur):