February 28

I have just returned from a crazy scramble up a cliff face into an old cave that overlooks Logroño, I am dusty and sweaty. Now I am back in Anna and Cere´s apartment; some friends I met when Anna was a student teacher at my high school a few years ago. I am here visiting them for a couple days before I fly out of Bilbao to Amsterdam to visit a good friend who is studying abroad there. It´s been absolutely amazing to be with a couple real friends. Even though I really don´t know them that well they have been so kind and Anna and I have been having lots of fun biking around in ridiculous windy weather and talking about MLC. Also I have gotten the chance to use their washing machine and take a shower which is freaking wonderful! I think I might take another shower today! Before here I was in Lakabe, a super small cooperative village in the Basque mountainous region. The Basque country is unbelievably beautiful, with lots of mountains (not big ones like back home in the Cascades, but beautiful nonetheless) and rolling hills all dappled with little red rooved villages. Lakabe is nestled just out of sight above a minor highway in sort of a valley with lakes in the basin and chaotic montains all around. I say chaotic because compared to the neat rows of huge peaks that I am used to at home, the seemingly random juts upward of earth and rock feel that way to me. There are forty people who live in the village, sharing use of the gardens and animals (sheep, cows, horses, chickens, and a pig) and working on various building projects together. In the mornings we would begin work around 9:30, after having toast and coffee. There were usually a couple different projects going on that I could work on. Often I went up the mountain to work in the timber camp, basically getting really muddy and pushing around big logs. For two days I helped to plaster the walls of a house they were constructing. And sometimes I would just stay in the warm kitchen and help to cook lunch for everyone, each day we had lunch all together but breakfast and dinner were eaten separately with the people in your house.
When I first arrived, the bus from Pamplona pulled over along the side of the highway in seemingly the middle of nowhere and I was told that this was Lakabe. Apprehensively I stepped out of the bus and looked around at what was breathtakingly beautiful scenery, but definitely not a village, praying to myself that this was the right place. As the bus pulled away I saw that on the other side of the road was another small road winding up a hill, with a sign reading Lacabe, the C crossed out and replaced with a red spraypainted K (later I discovered that the C is the Spanish spelling, and the K the Basque.) Next to the sign was an old gray horse, nonchalantly munching on the dry grass. Like I said before, the village is completely hidden from the highway, so I had no idea where this road would lead me, but I clumsily slung on my gigantic back pack and trudged upwards. Soon I came upon the oh-so-quaint-and-european red tile rooves and stone walls of Lakabe. No people were anywhere in sight but hawks circled high above and a few cows grazed near by. I slowly wandered down what seemed to me like the main path through the cluster of houses, feeling sort of like I was trespassing on something much to foreign and picaresque for my American eyes, and not quite sure what to expect or where to go. As I passed one house a man with wild sandy hair peered out the window and motioned me to the door. His name was Staci and he welcomed me in and gave me some food before showing me to a room where I would sleep. There are about six houses in the village, each one containing around six people. I stayed in the common house, called Xuxcal, where all the visitors plus a few residents slept, and where communal meals were eaten. The people living there are all learning, if not already speaking, the Basque language, so everything in the house had little labels in Euskarra. I really wished that everything was labeled in Spanish. There were a couple people who spoke English there but they all spoke to eachother in Spanish and by the time I left I could understand about twice as much as I could when I arrived. I still feel like an idiot when I try to speak, but atleast I can usually keep up on the general topic of conversation when I am with others who are speaking with each other.
Being in Lakabe made me wish that I were going to be spending more time on farms while I was here, in order to take the job as an Au Pair in Murcia, I had to give up my plans to WWOOF. But I suppose that I can WWOOF anywhere, maybe in Oregon this summer.
I think I will have plenty of computer access in the next few weeks with Max so I will make sure to write a blog while I am in Amsterdam. Sending my love to everyone in the States, or where ever, I miss you all a lot. Abrazos.

february eleventh

Only two full days left in Barcelona. My how the time does fly. I am taking a train to Pamplona on Sunday morning, staying for one night, and then catching a bus to Lakabe the next day. Apparently it is snowing over there in Basque country and I am a little apprehensive about heading out with my sneakers and rain coat, but I guess I´ll just figure it out as I go. Already I am digging through my backpack and tossing out things that I´m not sure why I brought in the first place. Before I left, Travis tried to tell me that I should pack really, really light. I only sort of listened to him and this is my most recently learned lesson: always listen to Travis. (Babe, I hope you´re reading this because I am never going to say it out loud.)
Anyways, so Lakabe is a town that a Spanish friend recommended to me, but all I really know is that it is some sort of commune type deal, one of those "live off the land and eat vegetarian meals together in a big community kitchen" places. A while back I emailed a woman named Mabel (in broken Spanish) about visiting, and she told me to come February 15 through the 25 and bring my sleeping bag, so that´s what I´m doing. At the very least it will be an adventure.
Currently I am sleeping on a couch in a flat belonging to some friends of friends. There´s no hot water and they all speak only a little English, but they are very kind and I am happy to be here. Everynight we eat dinner together and I get a long Spanish lesson. Two of the guys are in a punk band and tomorrow I am going to their show in a near by ocupada, and then on Saturday we are going to Sitges (small town a quick train ride away) for Carnival. Apparently Carnival in Spain is sort of a mix of Mardi Gras and Halloween; basically every one dresses up in costumes and gets very drunk and there´s some sort of parade. Should be a rich cultural experience.
Tomorrow is also my last day of Spanish classes. I have been studying a lot on my own, trying to teach myself past perfect and imperfect. What is hardest for me is listening to others speak. Reading and writing is fairly easy and even speaking I can manage but I can never understand what others are saying to me. And from what I hear, in the south the accents are unbelievably thick so I had better figure it out now while I can.
Okay my fingers are way too cold to type anymore, today was absolutely frigid. I´m going to go boil some water for a bath. Hasta el proximo blog.

February 5th

I feel like I have now settled into a comfortable rhythm. For the past week I have been attending Spanish classes every morning, and I have been at the same hostel for a while now. My days are repeating patterns of going out to explore with my little green backpack and coming back to the nest to read or nibble on bread and avocado. It´s been very nice, although tomorrow I am leaving this hostel for a free couch belonging to a friend of a friend, and in nine days I am leaving Barcelona.
As I am already half way through my Spanish courses, I am beginning to panic over still not being able to hold anything close to a real conversation. It´s remarkable the way that a foreign language can take over your brain. It´s like a little Spanish speaking parrot is lurking in the back of my mind. I think to myself, "Hm, I need to go to the post office today," and the parrot chimes in, "Hm, necesito ir al correos hoy." Every thought is repeated in Spanish, or a mental note is taken that I need to learn how to say whatever it is that I was thinking. It is exhausting. And even though in class I feel like I can communicate most of what I want to say, and understand my teacher´s response, once I am out in the real world of Barcelona people tend to speak a lot faster than my teacher.
Anyways, on a totally different subject, last night I was planning to write a blog entry but the power at my hostel kept going out. I had a headlamp in my pack so I got it out and went to assist the manger and his wife in attempting to fix the problem. The manager is this tiny old Indian man who putters around the place all hunched over, anytime I walk past he looks at me and says, (more to himself than to me) "La señorita de Oregon," then follows that by naming off all the states of the U.S. that begin with an O, "Oklahoma, Ohio..." and then complains to me, "¡Hace frio!" So after the power finally seemed to decide to remain permanently on, I was too tired to write, and went to sleep. "¡Vale! Me acuesto ahora,"
Today I walked all the way down the beach to a neighborhood called Poble Nou which I hadn´t been to before, but it is definitely my new favorite area of Barcelona. It´s lovely and old, but much more open than the Barrio Gotico, where I am staying, and have spent most of my time. The narrow winding streets of the Barrio Gotico are intriquing and also beautiful, but they are dark and cold and dirty, which gets old. When I come back to Barcelona before I leave in the summer, it is my first goal that I find a place to stay in Poble Nou.
I have been offered a position as an Au Pair in Murcia for the months of April and May, and though nothing is yet final, I plan to take it. I´ll save a lot of money this way and I am hoping to stay a few weeks longer than orginally planned. Plus the family sounds rad.
Alas, I am all out of words, but I will be sure to write again before I leave Barcelona.
Saludos y abrazos.

february first

Everything is getting much better. I have met two people off Loquo (the Spanish Craigslist) for language exchange, and both turned out to be very nice and eager to show me around. Their English was much better than my Spanish (thank god or we wouldn´t have gotten far!) but it did mean that we did not speak much in Spanish. I´m really looking forward to my classes, which begin tomorrow. I also met some other travelers at my hostel, and we went out for drinks the other nights, so nice to have a long English conversation over wine! They thought it was very funny that back home I can´t go out to pubs (one being from Australia and the other from Quebec.)
Today my main goals are to find a pair of sunglasses (very nessecary here), locate my language school, and get cash from a machine to pay for my classes. I spend most of the day wandering around, sometimes with a destination but often not.
The main lessons I have learned so far, in my three days of misery, are: 1) it is perfectly okay to not have fun all the time. And 2) that in order to move forward you must be bold and make yourself a little vulnerable. My mom passed on a quote to me from her friend´s facebook status, "All real adventures start with the feeling, I am not so sure about this." I have this quote written in gigantic bold letters across a page of my journal, which I write in constantly, and it has been such a source of strength for me. So thank you very much to whoever wrote that on Facebook. Ha!
I have also just received an email reply from a friend of a friend lving in BCN that has offered their couch to me for a little while. Sweeeeet. I think I may be staying with them starting Tuesday.
Of all the famous gothic architecture, art, parks, cathedrals, museums, and Gaudi, by far what has excited me most in Barcelona is the graffiti (or street art, which is really more apropriate.) Here you have all these incredibly old and beautiful streets, quaint and so very European, and it´s all covered top to bottom in both hectic little tags and and extravagant works of masterful spray paint. It was only a few years ago that graffiti was even made illegal here, and the sense of limitation when it comes to choosing your canvas is nonexistent. The street artists paint anywhere and everywhere. The whole city could easily be considered a free museum. I will try to post some photos soon.
I really appreciate all the support and encouragement that I have received from home. Keep commenting and emailing! ¡Abrazos para todos my amigos y familia!

january 28

I have never been so jet lagged. Last night I lay in bed, eyes wide open, for eight hours. No kidding. This is probably a significant contributing factor to why I was in such a crummy mood today. Since I arrived here in Barcelona I have probably cried more than I have in the entire past year. It´s funny, all the time I spent planning this trip, thinking about where to go and what do to, I never questioned the decision to go alone, it seemed obvious to me. Now that I am here in this breath taking city, all I want, more than anything is a friend. This morning I took off towards MACBA (museum of modern art) thinking that walking around and looking at beautiful things might cheer me up. The whole way there I fought tears. Once inside, I still fought the tears. "This is horrible!" I thought, "I am in Barcelona! A city oozing with art and noise and magic, and all I can do is cry!" And the museum sucked. It was much smaller than I had thought and full of that pretentious red streak on grey background crap. And I didn´t even get to enjoy making fun of it because there was no one to laugh with. Outside the museum were hip university students lounging around in the sun laughing and skatboarding. How dare they enjoy themselves in front of me! Can´t they see I am miserable! I decided then I would not allow myself to be sad. If I couldn´t be happy I would be angry. But then I started crying again and melting into the big pathetic bowl of chicken noodle soup that I am. Then I was angry at myself for being so pitiful. Aha! Anger is good. Angry and happy are powerful emotions, while sad is just useless. I decided to only notice things that made me happy or mad. At this point I was meandering around without a point of destination and I happened across a beautiful wall of grafitti. Of course this city is filled to the brim with grafitti, but this wall was especially impressive. I even recognized a couple of the artists. This made me very happy. But them some jerk came along and started harrassing me to get coffee with him. That made me mad. My plan was working! I walked on, murmurring mean and violent things to myself, trying to stay angry. Then, amoungst all the quaint little Spanish shops on the avenue which I was walking, I saw a Starbucks. This ammused me, which I figured was also an acceptable emotion, sort of a sub category of happy. Then another good thing came, I spotted a sign "Youth Hostel" pointing down a narrow alleyway. I do not like my current hostel and was hoping to find something better. I rang the buzzer and up the windy steps lay before me a cheery room with walls covered in a childish mural. The man said they had plenty of space and I could come tomorrow. HAPPY. This brightened my day significantly and since then I have felt much better. No crying. I have a feeling that this bipolar pattern will continue for atleast a few more days, but atleast I am learning to deal with my emotions. No one said this adventuring in foreign lands thing was going to be easy, so I´ll get through it. The future only looks brighter. This weekend I am going to the Dali museum, no more modern art.

january 27

aha! I have made it to Barcelona. Last night I arrived in the BCN airport feeling so proud of myself because I had already arranged for a hostel to stay in and drawn a little map based off of google on how to get there. Finding the bus from the airport to Plaça Cataluñya was no problem, but finding my hostel after that ended up taking almost two hours of wandering semi-aimlessly and making pathetic attempts at asking for directions in Spanish. So much for google maps. I knew that my Spanish was no good, but I did not realize just how much you need to know for even simple conversation. It was very frustrating, and I cried, but only a little. Finally I found the place, a funky, but clean, hole in the wall with three small floors connected by steep stairs painted bright green. Atleast it´s cheap! Only €9 per night! I went to bed feeling a little discouraged and lonely, and very jet lagged.
This morning I dressed and left the hostel as soon as possible. I neeeded to find a mobile phone store. And food! First stop was the little market across the street where I bought a loaf of bread and three bananas. I have a feeling I will be eating a lot of bread. After that I did find a phone store and although the girl working there spoke no English whatsoever, I managed to get a phone and I think it has minutes on it. Now that I was equipped with a phone and some food in my belly, I decided to hop on the metro and get down to the beach. Everyone is walking around in coats but it is really only about 55 degrees and the sun is warm. Walking down the beach I was even warm enough to take off my sweatshirt. Oh so much walking, I am already sore. I also found the Parc Citudella which is absolutely beautiful, and full of ping pongers eager to give you a turn.
That was most of my day up until now, except that I did make a friend in Plaça Catalunya named Usman, a man from Senegal who talked with me in Spanglish for over and hour.
This city is beyond incredible, very big and very beautiful. It is easy to feel lonely when I am hanging out at the hostel but walking around in the sunshine is wonderful. I´m looking forward to beginning my Spanish class and hopefully learning enough to hold a conversation.

January 19

I leave in six days and I am feeling remarkably prepared. Originally I wasn't going to make too many plans, I thought I would just sort of figure it out as I went along. But after receiving a few emails back from various WWOOF projects, an itinerary formed itself. Here's the outline of my plan:
I'll arrive in Barcelona on January 26th and begin taking two weeks of intensive Spanish classes on February 1st. My classes end on the 12th and on the 15th I have arranged to go to Lakabe (a commune near Pamplona) for ten days. After that I will probably visit some friends in Logrono for a few days and maybe hike on the Camino de Santiago. Then in March I plan to go to Sanguesa to work on a strawbale building project. At some point in the end of March, my best friend, Taylor is going to come visit me on her spring break. In April I will go down south to Granada and work on an organic farm run by an English woman. After that I may go to Amsterdam to visit Max or I may just bum around in Granada. Of course none of my plans are set and I'm sure they will change, but it feels nice to have things mapped out.
Currently I am just trying to say goodbye to my friends, get my taxes done, and eat as much delicious vegan Portland food as possible.