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.

Tenth Radio Broadcast!

I felt like the Spanish never enforced the law. Either that, or they didn't have laws. They drink in the streets, the kids don't have curfew, the cops don't enforce drug laws, etc etc.

This broadcast talks all about law.

Song: "I fought the Law"--The Clash

Ninth Radio Broadcast!

Living with Lola the dog was something new for sure, since I never had a pet in my life. The way Spaniards treat their dogs and how they walk them around without leashes inspired my ninth show on pets...which are called "Mascotas."

I have a couple interesting things to say about this broadcast...

You would wonder what they call mascots...they call them "mascotas" also. Although, mascots truly are an American concoction since their sports really don't have mascots.

The song used is "The Underdog" by Spoon. They don't have a translation for an underdog because it really doesn't exist. They don't have that cultural idea of surpassing mediocrity to get to greatness. That's an American concept.

Eighth Radio Broadcast!

Clearly schooling was different in Spain. Not just the education, but the culture of how to address teachers, how to dress in class, or whether or not it's okay to eat!

Here is my 8th radio broadcast on schools.

The song is "Me and Julio Down by the School Yard" by Paul Simon (one of my faves!).

Seventh Radio Broadcast!

I finally got around to uploading more of my radio shows. Not all of them are up yet, but at least I got to number 10!

Loly (the radio director) suggested I do one about women, since it was women's month in March. So here is my 7th broadcast, on women.

The song is "Just a Girl" by No Doubt.

Recording my Radio Show

Here is what the studio looks like, and here is me recording my final segment.

This is out of order because I plan to post the rest of my radio shows on here for you to hear.

However, I didn't want to forget that I had this clip, so here you go...

Okay. I'll let you in on it, too.

My best friend in the entire program, Carly, left on Friday to see her brother in Sicily and travel around with him before she goes home.

But for me, it was the final day I'd get to see her...until hopefully my graduation party this summer.

It was a very sentimental goodbye, and I wanted to make her a video with all the crazy footage I got of her, because she was the star for a majority of it.

I originally made the video unsearchable, but that proved to be difficult to view for some reason. I made it public on Youtube, and since I made it public there, I figured I'd share it with you all here.

Now, there is a lot of inside jokes in the video, some of which I will try to explain below:
-The "classy as fuck" line by me refers to how we would sometimes use "as fuck" in inappropriate ways, so as to ruin the classiness of the sentence. "That baby is as cute as fuck" and "this is sentimental as fuck" are some examples.
-My dancing: we always wanted to make a dance/sing video but it never was made. Plus, I know how many times Carly acted like a fool on camera for me, so I wanted to reciprocate. Also, the "check out my bum" line was intentional in that sometimes I would accidentally brush up against her butt and she would joke that I was checking her out.
-"This is as exciting as balls" was the same as the "as fuck" line...just a little more strange, and based on how someone we knew talked
-The bus driving away: The actual last time I ever saw Carly...on her bus to Valencia.
-Carly's comments about booze and weed were exact quotes from two of the guys we were walking to the bars with. They were so ridiculous that Carly wanted to mock them on camera.
-Carly mouthing "fuck you! fuck you all!" was in reference to the fact that she, melanie, and I were secluded from the group when we went to the beach. I panned the group (who were all facing away from us) and Carly shared her innermost sentiments.
-The pic of me and Carly staring into eachother's eyes was based on a music video of Bono and The Edge playing in the bar we were at.
-Me feeding carly in cooking class: We stole half the bag of chocolate chips and I would snack on them when no one was looking. When carly was busy chopping, I had to feed her.
-Carly's odd crisscross runway walk: based on an episode of America's Next Top Model
-Marco Polo: Some weird guy who approached Carly in Valencia


The rest is just plain strange footage of us being weird. If only I could capture her trademark weird sound effects. You can hear one when she says "What the-*raerr*" while playing digital solitaire.


Now that you are "in the know," I guess you can watch it.


On to the video already!