birfday!

The birthday came and went and unlike the big backyard bash for 25, this one was more wine-soaked, more personal, way more amusing and ended with a handful of my favorite people in the world sprawled out on every inch of my living room floor. I can think of at least 26 reasons why I'm so LUCKY to have this motley crew* for my best friendskis. They make everything so much more fun, ridiculous, and heavenly.
For those who were wondering, Dower and Ashton did indeed wrestle shirtless until 4 am.

*(crue? Which one is the phrase and which one references Tommy Lee?)

three glorious days in washington.

No work. All play. Three days of my favorite kind of travel-- at home, with people I love.

Poulsbo and Port Gamble with dad. Coffee, books, and laughing like we used to when things were a little different... a little time capsule of being happy and simple together.

Oh, yes please.

Seattle dinner with three of my favorite girls. Lots of wine, lots of food, lots of love.

Mukilteo with my best friend at his new condo. Big windows with nothing but water and mountains and the ferry behind them. Ice cream like in elementary school. Diamond Knot brewery growlers. Magenta sunsets. Picking out midnight constellations from the hot tub and late night poached eggs before bed.

Puyallup with the boy. Sunny day reading in the park, Mexican cervezas at dinner, and tricking him again into antiquing with me.

I am so, so home and it feels so, so good.

public love affair

Dear Marlo’s Birthday Dinner,

I did not know what true love was until I met you. Thank you for opening mine eyes.

Provoleta, remember when we didn’t know each other? When you were just being an appetizer of fried cheese and I was doing my thing and our paths never crossed? I now consider those days the Dark Ages. I want to get my PhD in the art of frying cheese and my final thesis will be a book of sonnets dedicated to you.

Oh papas fritas, I’ve known you for a long time, but your face is more beautiful when you crowd out all the table space that would otherwise be dedicated to green vegetables (I used to be really into green veggies, papas fritas, but I’m leaving them for you. I am). You are large, in charge, and ready to party. I respect that.

San Telmo wineries, the consistency with which you have delivered vino tinto to me time and again has not only earned my trust but also my love. You’re cheap, but not in a trashy way, don’t get me wrong. I can’t imagine a dinner without you and don’t even want to think about what it would be like.

Marlo’s Birthday Dinner, these are all side qualities that don’t mean as much to me as the main event: carne a punto. Oh, super rare steak, where do I even begin? You are the size of my head, you are so rare I want to ride you home instead of in a taxi, and remember when you put on that chimichurri sauce and my taste buds wept openly? That was a little embarrassing but worth it because I think I’m in love with you, bife de lomo. I really do.

And just when I thought our chance had passed, you went and saved the best for last! FLAN WITH DULCE DE LECHE that was like unicorns and sunshine leaping directly into our mouths. Fairly certain I saw angels blow kisses onto every delightful spoonful.

Marlo’s Birthday Dinner, at the end of the day, I’m just a girl, standing in front of a massive feast, asking it to love her as much as she loves it. Run, no, roll away with me! We were meant to be!

Un beso,
Laura

toby, give her strength

I don't care what country you're from, this man is a douchebag.


The good part about moving to the new hostel a week ago was an Argentinian real estate agent named Martín, who has eyelashes that could sweep your whole house. Martín got us our little apartment and has been entertaining to hang out with/ fun to look at ever since. We cooked for him and his Uruguayan/vegetarian roommate Urux in what could be called the ultimate bachelor pad (not in a positive way) because these fools have NOTHING besides a bean bag chair, a table and a photo of Che Guevara. I thought Marlo might lose it when she was trying to light the stove with crappy matches and had to pray to the gods of Americana for the will to continue (“Toby Keith, give me strength”). Our tune changed preeetty quickly after dinner, though, when the boys asked if we wanted
a) More wine*
b) Ice cream
OBVIAMENTE. Martín then picked up the telephone, made a couple of calls, and within 15 minutes we had a massive tub of helado and two bottles of Malbec at the front door for less than twenty bucks. “We are NEVER LEAVING this blessed land!” Marlo whispered, her eyes getting watery as we tried to control our emotion. Es la verdad: one’s tune can change about a new country with just a well-timed bike delivery.



*This wine business is no joke. I can’t decide if it’s a problem that we are consuming half our body weight in vino every night, but if the situation calls for it and you are surrounded by $2 bottles of the world’s best Malbec, it’s really hard to remember what they taught us in DARE.

i love seattle hip hop, part deux

To round out a great week of live shows, we found ourselves at a biofuel warehouse in Fremont last Thursday to celebrate the launch of Clockwork's new label Designated Hitters. It was a private event meant to get the funds together to rent out 131 (formerly DV8-- someone told me that changing the club's name is a marketing ploy, but I think it's just annoying) to hold a benefit for Big Brothers Big Sisters on Halloween!

Shucks. Is there anything better than hanging out with a bunch of tattooed rappers with hearts? It was like being in an episode of that show about how Snoop Dogg is really a family man. Their manager literally cried into the microphone about the power of mentoring while we hung around the back and drank free wine. Cheers! It's for the kids!

A few things about Clockwork:
1. Isaac sounds remarkably like a Bone Thug. This guy is unreal.
2. They released their new video for Hold On which is gor.geous. and shot right here in lovely Georgetown!
3. They are playing with Darwin (of aforementioned Lion King fame) and a bunch of other people at the new Crocodile on Oct. 8. See you there.



In conclusion, here is a cute picture of a kitten.

Committed

He was tall, kind, gentlemanly but not in an overbearing-please-love-me kind of way (just enough to come pick you up but you can open your own car door, this is the 2000s you know). He got my jokes, knew enough about when to just be quiet and look out the window, he was introspective. He had an ex-wife who I had graduated from high school with, a fact that bothered me until he told me the whole story, and then I never thought about it again. I hate secrets. He taught me how to drive a stick in a red 1960s British sports car in the pounding rain. He liked reading, knew how to build a fire in three minutes flat, chopped his own wood, and had the deep baritone of a real grownup.


Our second date was at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant where I gulped glasses of Gouder ('French wine is good, Ethiopian wine is Gouder') as he told me about his marriage (too soon! my brain screamed, losing all inhibition with itself as the wine flowed and my severe attempts to avoid judgment fell by the wayside), his divorce (she's an idiot!-- lips still silent as neurons fired furiously), and the six month hermitage that brought him to the chair in front of me: happy, well-adjusted, having life lessons under the belt and a clean conscience to rest next to him on his pillow every night. He was unbearably attractive.

We moved further west and found ourselves drinking IPA at a tiny British bar in Post Alley, nestled into a leather loveseat as the aproned waiter gently complained about Seattle and I read him poems by Oscar Wilde.

He closed his eyes from first verse to closing, a half-smile resting on his face. This pleased me, and I stole glances in between lines, ostensibly for poetic effect but actually to watch the words had as they filled the air between us and settled themselves into our laps.

He kissed my forehead and I was entranced, my fingers intertwined with his as I twirled through the soft glow of wine in my stomach and Christmas lights clouding my vision.

When I woke up in the morning, I knew that it would never happen again.

What kind of girl do you think I are? No. Really. I should be committed to some kind of asylum.

In Portuguese Time, I'm Still 19!

Three years ago on my birthday, I called my mom at midnight to lament, in a panic, the loss of my teenage years. This year, in order to prevent a similarly ugly scene from taking place, Marlo and I packed up and headed to Portugal to take the sting out of the transition to old-ballsdom.

Let me preface this travel tale with the fact that, as we stood at our door, backpacked and ready to go, we made a verbal checklist of necessary items: bikinis, check. Skirts and dresses, check. Money? No check. Right before we walked out the door we realized: WE HAVE NO MONEY. But we left anyway, armed only with our charm and our willingness to eat bread and cheese for days on end.

After a brief stint in Dublin, during which we met a couple of awkward Canadians who explained to us why Guinness is not, in fact, a friendly drink, we spent an agonizing morning coming thisclose to missing our flight to Porto. In the past six months, I missed a flight out of Paris and Marlo missed one to Dusseldorf, so we were appropriately freaked out that we’d repeat the mistake and have to invent an entire week’s worth of adventures so no one in Belfast would ever know we'd never left the island. Fortunately, the travel gods smiled upon us and we were first on our flight. This gave us plenty of time to make friends with our extremely groomed and delightfully feminine “air host” Fergal, whom we took as a good omen for our trip (side note: the other guy was named Fabio. This is not a joke, people are actually named Fabio!).

Important thing to note at this point: Marlo and I, stubbornly insisting that our week would be a 5 day beach holiday during which we predominantly drank sangria in our new bikinis and allowed muscle-bound men to fan us with palm leaves and feed us peeled grapes, were in for an abrupt and unkind awakening when a hostile rain greeted us in Porto. Unfortunately our stubbornness had translated into a ridiculous insistence in packing only “breezy” stuff, meaning we had to sludge around in long dresses and sandals when the weather called for super-traction boots and waterproof tents. We slid around over Porto’s polished tiles for a while before hopping on a bus to Lisbon, crossing our fingers that the beach dreams would not be dashed in the City of Seven Hills...

Interesting Randomer #1: Mar and I commandeered the entire backseat of the bus to sleep on and silently breathed death threats on anyone who would dare join us, the tallest African we had ever seen sat down between us and gestured that his long legs wouldn’t let him sit anywhere else. Fair enough. Joao was from Guinea Bissau, spoke three languages (none of which was English, but one of which was Spanish luckily), worked for USAID, and currently runs a reconciliation program in Guinea Bissau from its base in Lisbon. Our chat was grounded by my limited Spanish vocab related to conflict work, but Joao was our second good omen and kept us good company for the longest bus ride in the world.

(I need to add at this point that whenever I travel, I imagine myself teleporting from city to city rather than taking normal human transport options. A couple of four hour bus rides will nip that habit in the bud no problem and force a girl back to reality: you can’t leave Dublin in the morning and end up on a Portuguese beach by evening. Scientists have proved it impossible. Don’t ask what kind of scientists, it’s just a fact, ok?)

Landing in Lisbon was a test of the kindness of Portuguese strangers (just like any place where clueless American girls pop into… we’re sorry about our politics, but we’re just here to hang out) and they really pulled through in the clutch. Half the city aided in our hostel-location scheme and as soon as we put our bags down, we decided to find the beach for the last few hours of sunlight. The good news is, we found water. The bad news is, we also found Lisbon’s shantytown and had our dinner on the three-inch stretch of “beach” along the river with one bum peeing on a rock behind us, one sleeping in a box, and another getting wasted out of a paper bag ten feet down the line. Needless to say, we felt right at home and jumped into our newest plot for how to save the world: opening a halfway house, preferably in Portugal. When we got home we found a half-nude Australian on our deck, who turned out to be Nick, our new travel buddy. Nick had just returned from hiking to base camp at Mt. Everest, his buddy Dylan just finished a volunteer stint at a Millennium Village in Kenya and they’d decided to meet up in Egypt. The four of us bonded the first day, and our breakfasts in Lisbon usually involved a few hours of drinking coffee, dancing to the Rolling Stones (the middle-aged guy working at the front desk: “Mick Jagger is my adopted father!”), and finding out the life stories of every single person in the hostel.

Interesting Randomer #2: As we wandered the glorious castle overlooking Lisbon, we met a guy selling those little wire toys that monks supposedly make to tell the story of the universe. Henry from Germany was more than happy to delve into an intense conversation with us, focusing heavily on Brazilian domestic policy, Austrian/German/Dutch linguistic idiosyncrasies and cultural anomalies, Hitler’s secret occupation of the castle and how happy he was to find friendly faces. We rediscovered our dreams of busking on European sidewalks until age 40… or at least painting and writing about every city we go to and selling our “art” to survive in rundown hostels.

Our Aussies cooked us dinner the last night in Lisbon (core ingredients: garlic and eye contact), and we made a vat of sangria (really good wine for €1? We’ll take four) and ran around the Alfama*, listened to jazz, and met Eduardo, the most aesthetically appealing Italian/Portuguese guy currently in creation. Drunk Marlo, when realizing our friend Ashley from St. Louis had swooped in for the same kill, launched a tirade verbalizing the “glaringly obvious” fact that Eduardo liked men. Whoever requested sour grapes, your order is up!

*THE ALFAMA: Lisbon’s major earthquake in 1755 destroyed most of the city, aided by the fires that followed it, but a decent-sized area just below the castle survived the destruction and is now the oldest surviving part of Lisbon, and one of the most unreal neighbourhoods I have ever seen. It’s all jagged brimstone, broken down shops, and unique sights and smells. Not to mention the most killer view in the city.

Interesting Randomer #3: Nobuku, a Brazilian Japanese guy who thought Marlo and I were God’s gift to comedy (no, he wasn’t drunk… we don’t think…), laughed uncontrollably at every “joke” we attempted and repeatedly suggested we get our own TV show. I offered Nobuku obscene amounts of money to follow us around as our promoter, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be and we headed out to Porto; having gained two Aussies but not the Brazilian fan club we’d always dreamed of.

*Story paused for a puke break*: An old boyfriend once used the delightful term “vomit chorus” and it has never applied so fully to my life as it did the day we went back to Porto. Food poisoning is a really good way to NOT see a city. On the plus side, however, my stomach has never been so flat. On the down side, our bikini dreams never came true, so no one can verify that. Moving on.

By the time we made it outside, I fell in love with Porto. The four of us went wandering around wine cellars and sampled port, laid in the sun and hiked up and down the steep hills until hunger drove us home. We cooked the boys dinner, discussed African development, and passed out embarrassingly early that night due to our total inability to deal with the heat and early wakeup call the next day. Overall, a pretty anticlimactic ending to the trip that was meant to contain 4 days more beach quotient, 1 day less puke quotient and a freaking ton more muscled men with palm leaves, but what can you do? Our dreams of sun, sand and sangria were only fulfilled by one third, but Portugal… we’ll be back.

happy heart

Marlo is here! I am so happy for so many reasons, but mostly I am just really content because I have one of my best friends in the world all to myself for the next few months. Her Belfast experience thus far has been

rock climbing (unsuccessful attempts that will soon be repeated)

running up Cavehill only to lounge in the blazing sun, which got here just when she did

Cooking like grownups almost every night. Look! Mar made meatloaf!

drinking wine on the roof while discussing Afghani history, nicotine addictions in six year olds, how to save the world, where the tall Irishmen are, travel plans and how lucky we are

Another important development is that I am unassimilating to Norn Irish social situations, meaning we try to be funny at parties and are now greeted with blank stares. SWEET! So happy that I have a life-pondering, food-loving, beer-drinking, belly-laughing, joyful-hearted and sarcastic friend to share Belfast with for a few months... life is good.

I wear this to test your English!

"NEVER talk to the Ciao Bellas!" In Spain, they're the Hola Guapas, and I hated them more than anything, but somehow the Italian Ciao Bellas seemed more harmless. Maybe because I was too intrigued with everything else to really notice them. I just got back from a loooong vacation in Florence and Rome, visiting Shauna, Megan and Taniko, and I loved every second. I don't think I could fit a decent description of the bizarre characters I met so I will revert to the classic bullet point of events and people I thought were interesting:

• The first day I somehow found myself on the banks of the Arno, drinking white wine out of Dixie cups with a couple Italian-Tunisians. Learned some Arabic, finally went to Thanksgiving dinner at the girls' culinary-school neighbors'. At midnight. With a massive headache.



• We were having dinner at a little trattoria by the girls' apartment when we met an older guy who turned out to be a Prada exec in Florence on business. We kicked it for a while, he told us some jokes, and left. We sat there thinking, Did we just make friends with a Prada exec? I think so!



• Megan turned 22. A night for the record books including: an excess of free shots, a Montanan wearing a cowboy hat and a disgusting t-shirt, and of course, Giacomo, an Italian who spoke Spanish, inspiring the girls to overuse the word "Spaniard."



• Saw Michaelangelo's David (17 feet of amazingness). A few days later, I was at the Palazzo Pitti when I saw an old guy in a UW hat so I started talking to him, only to hear a rousing critique of Michaelangelo's sculpting ability (who does that?!), topped off by a graphic and disdainful description of David's manhood. He even went so far as to bust out his guidebook and point out how poorly depicted David's pubes were. This is a true story, unfortunately.



• The four of us watched the world's most beautiful sunset from the Boboli Gardens on the city wall. This is an instance in which a picture is worth a thousand words, but the sun setting over the Tuscan hills was a moment I will never ever forget!



• Was standing in the SMN train station when a middle-aged guy came up and started talking to me, ignoring the fact that I don't speak Italian, and proceeded to carry my bags for me and sit next to me on the train. After two hours of hilarious conversation (we knew NONE of the same words), he got off, and I thought, 'I could not possibly meet another randomer on this trip. My quota is definitely met.' But I was wrong, enter:



• Angelo. The most attractive Italian man I had seen my entire time there sat in the compartment next to mine. I took a nap so as not to stare. But he eventually moved over and started talking to me, in ENGLISH, so I was forced to look at him (life's rough sometimes). Angelo, as it turns out, is an Italian TV star. Angelo also owns a Vespa and was willing to carry my bags. Long story short, I saw a bit of the Eternal City on the back of his bike, and all I can say about Rome is SHOCK AND AWE. I can't wait to get back next summer. Angelo turned out to be less than awesome, but the point is... well, there really isn't a point to this story, actually.



• For various reasons, I found myself on the opposite end of the city than I'd intended the day I left, and I was trying to get the metro back to Termini. I checked out of my hotel and the manager tried to tell me something... but unfortunately, all I know in Italian is 'Non capisco,' 'Molto grazie,' and 'Me dice dov'e devo scendere per Castello Medici?' and that wasn't getting me anywhere. All I have to say is THANK GOD FOR THE PERUVIAN MAID, who translated the manager's bad news into Spanish: "No hay Metro por razon de la huelga!" Huelga...huelga... STRIKE. Yes, my only means of making my flight was closed due to strike, and since all the taxis were full, my only option was a 50 euro private car to the airport. Do they have any idea what an intern's budget is? Eventually I got a taxi and made it to my plane at the last minute, but the last morning in Rome was NOT a fun one. On the plus side, the taxi driver was funny, and despite the fact that I kept trying to pass Spanish off as Italian, we had a good time on the way to Ciampino.

But the most surprising thing that came out of my trip? So I met a guy Chris on the airport bus when I first landed in Rome. We got along really well, he's just a nice little Belfast boy, but we parted ways in Rome and I was just glad I didn't have to talk to a weirdo for that half hour... I didn't really think more about it, but I was so surprised when he walked into my office today with a note and a card... filled with W.B. Yeats and his phone number! I was so floored to see him that I forgot to ask questions... later Desi told me that apparently he'd gone to the Drennan's house to try to find me before heading to the church! I forgot I even told him where I worked... and getting surprise poetry was definitely a first. Deborah freaked out and said my life was too much like a movie... and based on the past week I'm inclined to agree! It is so good to be back in Belfast right now, though, even if I did have to trade sunny days for wind and rain :) But wandering the streets of Firenze, enjoying the art and architecture and FOOD and people and my friends, was unbelievable! I'm so lucky!

Un Buen Rollo: Alicante, Oct. 2005

Hey lovers,
Well, it is has been a month and a half since I began my torrid love affair with Spain. If we are being completely honest, it is more like a warm friendship, but you know, poetic license and everything. Sorry I haven’t written something sooner, but I have been really busy listening to Shakira and watching trashy Spanish Love Connection shows. So getting here was basically the scariest thing I have ever experienced. I hung out in London for a night with a bunch of Australians from my hostel, but that was the only good part, because I learned firsthand the hell that is RyanAir getting from London to Alicante. For brevity’s sake, I will put the highlights in bullet form:
• Learned mid-flight that Murcia, the city we were landing in, was nowhere near Alicante, and had no bus system or train from the airport, which is an abandoned airforce base. Further learned that RyanAir has been sued a number of times for misleading the public about its destinations.
• Met a Spanish guy on the walk in from the flight, who proceeded to dismantle his bike and cram all my luggage into his brother’s car, drop me off downtown and help me find a hostel. Yes, I realize it could have been an Unsolved Mysteries kind of thing, but I was pretty desperate.
• Spent a day braving the elements between the time I got kicked out of my hostel and when I could move into my apartment (which, until the day after I got here, had a landlord with a disconnected number, ie. possibly didn't exist), during which creepy Spanish men invited me back to their places without understanding the phrase HELL NO (I thought it translated fairly directly, I was wrong).
So the university here is gorgeous; I have to frolic through palm trees to get to class. My profesoras are hilarious, and we spend most of the class time discussing important things, like how European toilets are better than American toilets and how obnoxious Spaniards are. One of my profs is from Spain but takes every opportunity to make fun of it; she also teaches us the crucial phrases (Tengo ni puta idea= I have no f-ing idea). That one comes in handy frequently. The best thing about my class is the Japanese boys in it who are so lost, but when I mentioned Seattle one of them was like, “OH! ICHIRO!” Yeah buddy! We’re on the map!
One of my favorite things here is the market every Saturday, which has TONS of clothes, shoes, fruit and veggies, etc. They have huge barrels of a million kinds of olives, pickles, every kind of nut possible, and other random foods that you could never find at home. Everything is so yummy and so cheap, and I can eat kiwi and avocado and almonds all day long. My apartment is amazing, it is one block from the beach and is right in the middle of the Barrio, the area with all the bars and clubs and restaurants. Nothing starts until midnight here, so people eat dinner at about 11, go to the bars from 12-3, and then head to El Puerto, this peninsula on the water that has about 10 clubs in a 3 block radius, until like 6 or 7 am. There are literally thousands of people from all over the world crammed in the Barrio and Puerto on any given night, so it is an awesome place to live. I have one Finnish roommate, two Irish, one Canadian and one British lady who never leaves her room. I love having the Irish girls around so I can finally use the phrase “that’s good craic” again, and Eija, the Finnish girl, is my best friend in Spain. Most of our time is spent drinking sangria, figuring out how to get Europe to take a shower, and wondering what food we just ordered when we go out. We have a pretty interesting group of friends… including Lebo, a Botswanan girl studying in Canada; Angelo, an Italian guy who doesn’t speak English OR Spanish but seems to always show up no matter where we are; Ariel, an ex-pro soccer player from Argentina who is dying to learn English and tells me I get more beautiful every time he sees me (who WOULDN’T be friends with a guy like that?); Andrea, an Italian guy studying in Sweden who wants to marry me for Green Card purposes only; Nelson, a Lenny Kravitz lookalike from Brazil; and Randy, an MBA from Houston who owns a promotions company in Alicante and knows every bartender in the province, ie. I haven’t paid for a drink since I got here.
So I was kind of starting to freak out because I kept seeing all these adorable little Spanish kids and couldn’t hang out with any of them, so I found a job working with these two AMAZING little boys from Muchamiel (the little town about40 minutes out of Alicante). Javier is 7 and Fernando is 5, and I think they are karma payback for putting up with the little punks I nannied this summer, because they could not be more perfect. Pilar, their mom, wants me to speak English with them and just hang out at the park and read and play. Humbling Spain Moment #578: the 7 year old I tutor speaks better English than I do and translates when his mom and I can’t figure out what we are trying to say to each other (she doesn’t speak any English, and is just about the sweetest thing ever). I call them my little Guapisimos and get to hang out with them every day. It is especially cool to get out of the city and into a little town that is, in my humble opinion, real Spain. Pilar grew up there, the boys’grandparents live just around the corner, and she has friends from childhood all over the place and has never left or lived anywhere else.
So despite being broker than one of Schlossmo’s appendages after a night out, I have been able to travel a little too. Sometimes we just hop on the train and see where it ends up and have adventures in a random city on the coast, but we also spent a weekend in Valencia and a couple days in Granada. Valencia is amazing, we got a map and just spent the weekend running around and looking at as many museums, cathedrals, and parks as humanly possible. We are going to try to head back in a couple weeks for a UEFA Champions League game and a bullfight. Granada was quite possible the most wonderful city I have seen since leaving home, and I got to spend some time with Haley Beach (for those of you who don’t know, she’s my long-time lover and is studying in Granada). It physically pained me to leave that place, but at least Alicante is warm.
Ok I am willing to bet that half of you aren’t even reading this anymore, but I am going to throw in a bonus story about Juan, the owner of the hostel I was in the first few days. Juan is a crazy old guy from Murcia who doesn’t know a word of English, and I decided I loved him, and went to his place to say hi. He was eating dinner, and told me to sit down and ran into his kitchen. A few minutes later he plopped a plate in front of me with a fish on it. A whole fish, with just its head chopped off. And a piece of bread with hard cheese, a bowl ofvegetables in vinegar, and a bottle of Spanish wine. I wasn’t sure what protocol is with eating whole fish, and asked him how to start, and he was like,“ehh, eat it however you want.” Then he poured me a glass of wine into a cup that had obviously been used, as it had some interesting backwash in it, but who am I to be rude? But every time he left the room I poured some of it back into the bottle or into his glass. The problem with this was that every time he noticed I had an empty glass, he refilled it and made a toast. As sneaky as I tried to be, my host was a step ahead of me. So Juan was starting to get a bit looped, and kept talking and talking and talking… for an hour and a half. Hecovered a number of topics during his monologue, including Hurricane Katrina, religion, sex, and his illustrious career as a ¬¬___ (fill in the blank. I’m still not sure what he did, but I have a feeling it was the Mafia, based on thenumerous pictures of him with random men and copious amounts of wine. Oh wait, that just means he’s Spanish). I could tell when he was done with one topic and moving on to another when he would pause and give me the hugest, goofiest smileI have ever seen, which made me laugh, and then made him laugh, and now Juan andI are best friends, and every time I peek my head in to say hi he says, “Heyyy, it’s the model from Madrid!” This nickname indicates to me that Juan is drunk ALL THE TIME, but he sure made life interesting my first few days in Alicante.
Love you guys, miss you so much
-Laura
PS. Though my stance is still firmly anti-European boy, I saw firsthand how weaker souls might fall for their charms when this Parisian waiter at Havana pulled my tank top strap down with his teeth and kissed my shoulder… how do you react to such a situation when you are a naïve American girl, is my question to you?!?