the last post from spain

I will be spending my last three days in Barcelona, the city I began in and the city I will end in. This time I will be staying with friends I made while I was there in February. In (less!) than a week I will be back home with friends and family, gearing up for the always wonderful Oregon summers. I have been terribly anxious and excited to return. My hands are trembling along with my brain as I plan all my summer projects, my mind swarming with ideas for art pieces, plans to finish the apple cider press Taylor and I started last year, plans for bicycle trips, and the prospect of seeing loved ones. Lately my dreams have been strange, vivid, and always of people back home. Here in Murcia the days are getting hotter, the birds are singing and screeching, my allergies are getting worse, and the family is very sad to see me go. I am going to miss them a lot, and I hope with all my heart to return someday not too far in the future. Clara and I have formed a really strong bond, and she is especially bummed.
I will be coming home with strong arms from carrying around Manuel. Among many new things I have done and experienced in the past few months, I have gotten very good at preforming tasks such as loading a dishwasher, brushing my teeth, reading the paper, and playing hungry wolves, all with a six month old in my arms.
I have decided that if for whatever reason one cannnot or does not wish to join PeaceCorps, work for the U.N. or stick daisies into the fire arms of riot police; then the best thing you can do to create world peace is to travel and learn another langauge. That knowledge is compassion, and most hate comes from lack of understanding. Never in my life have I felt so stupid as in the last few months. I generally think of myself as a sufficiently intelligent person, occasionally even clever, but in Spanish I am just the American girl, fumbling over words and expressing myself with the most basic of vocabulary. You can see how someone who had no previous knowledge of me might talk to me for two minutes and decide that I am an idiot, and then decide that my entire country was probably full of idiots, and that we really aren´t worth anything.
Recently I was talking about spelling bees with my family. As the Spanish language is totally phoenetic, the concept of contest for something as simple as spelling is ridiculous to them. If one didn´t know how completely not phoenetic the English language is, you can see how they might see a spelling bee on television and think us to be a bunch of slow brains.
The more understanding that is spread across the globe, the more friends we have in every country, the less likely we are to blow each other up. This spreads beyond human kind, if somehow we could communicate with chickens, perhaps have a conversation about Freudian theory or even the weather with a cow, I think it very unlikely that we would feel the same about slaughtering and eating this animal afterwards.
Two things that I think our country could do greatly improve our relationships with the rest of the world (okay fine, there are a lot of things...) are 1) to somehow convince our corporately sponsored media to report on what is going on in countries other than our own. And 2) to make learning foreign languages a higher priority in our public school system.
At this point I have sort of gone into ranting mode, and I am not sure how to wrap up my thoughts, but in my very first blog I warned my readers that I am not a talented writer and I think I am just simply not going to end with any sort of conclusion. I am going to go swimming instead. I will see you all in Portland soon.

Actually this lack of conclusion is very fitting for my last blog from Spain, because I do not feel like anything is ending. I am going home, but not forever, and I am leaving Spain, but I plan to return.

Bye.

The beginning.