Gluten-Free Orange-Cranberry Bread with fresh orange zest and only natural sweeteners. What a happy way to start my Saturday! Cheers, everyone :)

meganwysocki:

I blame Mr. Feeny for that too. 

(via straightoutof)

(via straightoutof)

Today we hiked Los Gigantes. If any of you were confused, Los Gigantes actually are…GIGANTIC.

Seriously. The highest point was like 2400m about sea level. Which is pretty tall. Although one can never be too sure HOW tall exactly as I am all shades of terrible with the metric system. We were exhausted, both at the top before the decent and then at the bottom as we tromped back to the cars. The nourishing salami sandwiches helped at the top though, clearly.

All the things they say about thinner air at high altitude are all true, too. I could hear a My Little Pony-sized wheeze in my lungs at a couple points, not so much because we were scaling the side of a mountain whilst avoiding loose rocks but because the air just does not let you recover. It is SO CLEAN though. The mountains are really quiet too – at certain points we just paused to listen to the nothing – and then of course, Nachi, Virginia’s recently-married cousin would start whistling something with a sizeable beat and set us off laughing, breaking the silence.

Surprisingly Carolina, Virginia’s younger sister was the only one to eat shit, but not even that bad, just a slow-mo slide into some pebbles. I also added another couple rocks to the collection, always a good choice. And snapped a couple of epic fotos, let’s be honest. And got a good workout! In the words of Virginia, IMMASLEEPGOODTANIGHT hahahahaha.

Being on vacation in South America with two of your best friends really is all it’s cracked up to be :). Shopping and criollitos and hiking and eating and playing with Facu (Virginia’s 5-month old cousin) and seeing the Fast and Furious 5 with Ale, another cousin (surprisingly really liked it despite the loud racial stereotypes and poor Paul Walker acting…just shouldn’t open his mouth) and lomitos and going to the park and champagne toasts with the family and drinking maté and just loving the reunion after not being together since last December. Win win win. It’s also really cool speaking Spanish in another country than Spain. Everyone here comments on my SPANISH accent and not my American one. It’s AWESOME. Hahaha but seriously I’m actually a little proud of everything that I learned and practiced in Spain. It’s funny too because I’m speaking more English here than I have in the past 5 months and the Argentine accent is WAY not as intelligible to me as Spain-Spanish is but I’m learning. Just gotta pronounce all y’s like j’s and aspirate most any ‘s’ you come across. TOUGH. I lisp a lot and enunciate my g’s and j’s more and accidently use different words a lot but it’s still a lot of fun to hear their comments on how “Spanish” I am hehe. I am going to miss Spain and traveling and Spanish a RIDICULOUS amount.

What I will not miss is the shortage of fresh water while traveling, the lack of public restrooms (especially free ones), getting murdered by exchange rates, being broke, scary/fried Spanish foods, pushy and rude Spaniards, the metro commute, and being foreign.

What I will miss are the Spanish friends, speaking a different language and communicating with a lot of wonderful people I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, sangria, discos, jgust leavin to go out at 11pm or midnight, the Puerta del Sol, my American seester and Spanish host momma (minus the jam and cigarettes), palmeras, my Reunidas classes/professors, my fantastic study abroad group, traveling, and being foreign.

Back to reality. Argentines are really a wonderful people. Their culture is so welcoming and so set on making sure everyone is happy and well-fed and enjoying life that you can’t help but be happy here. I still can’t believe I’m here with Katie and Virginia. Absolutely the best.

More later, chau chau.

My next set of adventures has involved a nice 24hr+ commute to South America. WORTH IT. I already love Argentina. It’s such a cool mix of things I’ve seen in other places…We went to Carrefour for groceries today, they eat dulce de leche here like it’s their job (i.e. Chile, anyone?) plus totally unique and awesome Argentine-ness. I’m looking forward to mate and their world-famous barbecue, something I haven’t been able to try for years. Guess who’s not a vegetarian anymore?? Haha.

It’s actually really funny to be foreign in yet ANOTHER place. Even though Madrid has been home for the past 5 months, let’s be honest I’m still totally a guiri (foreigner!) there too. Not all the time, but a lot of it. Like I will never be able to say “hasta luego” like a Spaniard (” ‘sta lugo” ) nor will I lisp correctly or understand why their houses are so neat and their streets so dirty. Esta bien. I’m already learning what to say and not to say here - made the really awesome mistake of informing Virginia’s aunt and uncle that I @$@#$’d a taxi instead of caught/took one hahahaha - and they also insert ‘Dale’ instead of ‘Vale’ which will be a hard habit to break for sure. It’s funny too because I am finding that everywhere I go I miss certain things about other places. I miss the Guinness and pubs of Ireland. I miss the quaint streets and telephone booths of London. I miss the Puerta del Sol and Cien Montaditos of Spain. I wonder what I will miss about Argentina! Probably having two of my best friends plastered to my sides. 

Our reunion in the airport this morning was one of the absolute greatest things of my life. I love them to death and cannot believe it has been 5 months since I’ve seen them in person. Cristi caught the whole thing on film too :). I LOVE IT HERE, like I said. I love the feeling of family here too. Sharing Virginia’s and also our family of friends between the three of us. SO. HAPPY.

More soon! Perhaps about the fact that I got randomly put in business class and then randomly had three seats to myself and said “don’t mind if I do” to some vino blanco en route. I LOVE TRAVELING. :) 

Besos.

Content :)

I don’t really know why I haven’t kept up with this thing too much, I really should have. Suffice to say things have been kinda crazy over here, with three straight weeks of visitors, midterms and two weeks living out of my backpack…

I’ve said this before and I will say it again, “backpacking around Europe” is highly glamorized and I HAVE NO IDEA WHY hahaha. No no, don’t get me wrong it was an awesome experience and really teaches you a lot about yourself (AND about the people you’re traveling with haha) but in the end wearing dirty socks (or socks you washed yourself in a sink with a bar of Dove), the same hoodie zip-up everyday for 16 days (through sweating on a bike in the Tuscan countryside to a beach in Galway), and having your feet so sore you’re sure you broke bones gets to be a little taxing.

What isn’t taxing are the beautiful sights (I’m pretty sure I took 47 of the same picture at the Cliffs of Moher) or the sense of luck that follows you about. Well, most of the time anyway haha sleeping in the train station in Milan is not as fascinating as it sounds and hostels with crazy toothless men and other ones that refuse to let you cut up your own onion are less than ideal. I would love to go into that hahaha but I digress.

This spring break trip has probably been some of the most fun and some of the most ridiculous moments I have had while abroad. Italians are very helpful but also just as fiery and easily offended as any American movie stereotype makes them out to be. Irish men are just as sweet and charming as you’d hope, and I’m not kidding, have the best pick-up lines of anyone, ever. More on that later bahaha.

Being in those two countries was also interesting because we went to places that we could have studied at alternatively. In Rome, both my travel buddies basically hands-down said that they would’ve have studied in Rome over Madrid looking back. Not that Rome wasn’t great (it was) but I wouldn’t study there. No way. First of all, I’d be afraid that the Colosseum and Roman Forum etc. would lose its significance to me (maybe it wouldn’t) but also because I don’t know, maybe this will sound really ridiculous but Italy wasn’t really much more than I expected it to be. With the exception of The David and the Trevi Fountain. Those were pretty cool. Okay okay, so were St. Peter’s Basilica and Vatican City, but aldskjfalksdjfjdddddddd I’ll have to think about this more to explain it I suppose. Maybe I just really love Madrid?

From Rome we flew to Dublin. And guess who fell in love? With the city, come on. DUBLIN IS FANTASTIC. Bahhh. I really really really loved it. The city has SUCH a storytale feel and even with its urban-ness is still very pretty. I found the beautiful charm there that Patrick and Caroline spoke of in Rome, I think. It’s no longer a huge mystery to me why so many incredible writers came out of that city. The Dublin Writers’ Museum nearly made me pee my pants hahaha. Loved it. And apparently I’ve developed a thing for bridges on my travels, and always insist we cross them hahahaha ask Patrick and Caroline. Guess how many bridges there are across the Liffey? :)

The Temple Bar area is really cool too, somewhat touristy I suppose but I have a huge soft spot for it now that it’s where I tried my first Guinness haha. Guinness is incredible, and from what I’ve heard is very different over here from back home. Curious. Slash different from even in Madrid I think. Weird. We also went to the Guinness Storehouse which was legitimately really cool although I still don’t funny understand brewing science. Not concerned. The whole Guinness Book of World Records thing was also explained (embarrassing epiphany, I know) but it was funny all the same.

Then Galway. Caroline studied abroad there her sophomore year so it was really like having a personal and very knowledgeable tour guide. During the day we divided our time between feeding swans and tromping about the beach or staring off into the Atlantic or sampling TASTY brews from a nearby microbrewery and in the evenings we worked very hard to get off the Spanish time schedule to arrive at the pubs at a decent hour haha and then listened to really good live cover bands or watched Irish dancing and drank Galway Hooker (real name of a real and tasty beer hahaha) and marveling at the compliments of Irish men while accepting additional Jamesons and red lemonades.

Ohhhhh, Galway. Please go. Everyone. And take me with you. And back to Dublin. The people in Galway are so. nice. And generous. And very welcoming. Not to mention complimentary bahaha. Galway is great enough that I was only partially distracted by a certain Game 7 loss. Impressive, I know. Okay fine, I was pretty distracted, but STILL GALWAY IS GREAT. It’s right on the water so we really did hang out at the beach a lot haha and by feeding the swans I mean feed them about 40 pounds of bread and sometimes from our hands. Those fuckers are pretty damn big lemme tell you hahaha. Then one day when we were feeling particularly adventurous we even swam in the Atlantic hahaha. It wasn’t warm.

It was also really cool to think about being on the “other” side of the Atlantic, considering I’d seen it many a time before on the east coast of the States. Weird weird. We did a good job hunting for crabs and shells too. Hope the shells make it back without complete destruction haha. Also, get ready for an absolute barrage of landscape pictures haha. And I bought myself my first Claddagh ring! Exciting. And perty.

Anyway, my iPhoto has been on the fritz but I’m going to go attempt to upload some fotos, so there’s that. Love!

un besito

Elise

p.s. As much as I love Madrid and am having a hard time coming to terms with leaving it, it was really really interesting to get prolonged exposure to other cultures. Namely, friendlier cultures. Irish being even more so than Italians (Italians still don’t smile on the street.) So imagine my surprise when I get on the metro on my way home from the airport, EXHAUSTED after two weeks of travel and a group of freaking gypsies tries to gank my shit. I am not even kidding. Hahahahaha ohhhhhhh Madrid. I do love it. :)