Let's start this again

Woke up this morning feeling less than fabulous. Thus, I'm still frolicking in my pajamas listening to John Mayer, and I've never quite appreciated how nice barefoot and flannel feel in lieu of the usual scratchy slacks and hells (excuse me, I meant heels) on an early friday afternoon.

It's almost been a year since I've updated this blog, and it's quite sad because I come up with post ideas more often than I have the time for. I'll come to this page every so often ready to write, but then I reminisce about all those past posts that never were, and I get disheartened and then distracted by something on perezhilton.com (LaLoca did what?) or by mama checking in to ask if I'm eating (yes.), then if I've gained weight (maybe.). And of course, school started again for me this past year..real school, I mean including all the reading (huh?) and studying (what's that again? No lo ha(th)emos en Cadi, pichaa.).

Since my last post finishing up my roller coaster semester in Cadiz, I took off for two weeks traveling in Italy (with Karia and meeting Jeni in Rome) before spending two last nights in Cadiz eating diablillos and professing our love to the server at Cumbres Mayores, walking up and down the coast with Paco trying to beat the sunset back to downtown and drinking Cruzcampo with the Italians while burying our toes in the cold sand next to the waves.

Returned to Los Angeles, plumper and tanner, around the end of June and spent that summer...wow, I can't even remember what I did that summer that was remotely productive. But that summer was marked by long bike rides at dusk with Arya, lots of movie watching, (re)discovering my hood and trying out different Israeli and Middle-Eastern restaurants, afternoons laughing at ducks at the park while we sprawled across the warm grass, improv comedy shows at the Upright Citizens Brigade, random "Hollywood" nights, hiking on weekends, fires that lasted for days, and long car rides to nowhere because we had nothing to do and nowhere to go. And that was fine.

Nothing could have mentally prepared me for the culture shock I'd feel upon returning to Wellesley. What a rough start that was...this excerpt from an email sums it up nicely:
" Returning to Wellesley was difficult-readjusting to the intense Wellesley bubble, re-acquainting myself with old friends, reassimilating into the community...there was a lot of re-doing going on."

Despite the rough start, last semester at Wellesley could really vie for one of the best. (No, who am I kidding. Second semester sophomore year at Casa was the best.) SKEMjay and Skulls was established, I was going out to Boston at least three to four times a week, I had visitors come share my humble yet cozy abode with a most spectacular view of the lake especially at sunset, visited my St. James' crew down in NYC, drove to Vegas for a weekend of debauchery during Thanksgiving break with Neese and Sean to celebrate my 21st (also when Sean got swine flu LMFAO, sorry dude. Glad you were there!), reconnected with the K-posse from freshman year from insane asylum Freeman, and I met someone, as someone else put it, "just like you, but with eyebrows."

After a whirlwind winter break of numerous family dinners, weekend trips to the mountains so my mom could "see snow", bonfires at the beach and subsequent drinking reunions, lots of driving back and forth across the 101 and the 405 at three in the morning, day trips to Santa Ines and San Diego with long stops at the beach, adventures in the kitchen with some pretty incredible and tasty creations, dates to the museum, the zoo, the bowling alley, the blacklight mini golfing, more visits to downtown LA than ever before in my life, first tattoos and more family hiking and photography trips to Malibu, I scrounged up a place on Craigslist, and here I find myself, on a friday afternoon in mid-March, staring out the window on a rainy, dreary day, still in my pajamas, still listening to John Mayer, in Falls Church, Virginia.

More updating later. I have too many nostalgic thoughts swimming in my head.

ps. miss you lots SKEMjay.

Finish off strong, friends, and see you soon!!

Culture Overload

Soccer victories , white pueblos of Andalucia , biking in Sierra de Grazalema , rooftop birthday barbeques , Moroccan Arabic class , bullfights , Feria de Jerez and all the flamenco dresses, mudejar architecture, flamenco shows, hanging our laundry like true gaditanas, and capoeira performances in leafy plazas.

A Love Story of Sorts

Whenever I travel, I always carry with me a stack of photos of family, my dog Polly, high school years, and my closest friends to help me through those lonely days, so I can decorate the walls of my new home away from home and to show new friends my oldest friends.

Each photo evokes a distinct memory - birthday bonfires, prom night, a week in Maui with mom, baseball games, random afternoons with the shisha pipe and pink champagne. Sometimes I chuckle; other times I feel a momentary pang of nostalgia.

When I see one photo in particular, at first I always smile, but this quickly changes into a bittersweet sigh and a resigned shake of the head.

It is a picture from almost three years ago. It is of me and a friend. I am glowing from a deep tan after a weekend of sprawling on the hedonistic shores of Ibiza. I'm wearing a dark navy and rich green dress that has long since faded from the sunlight. He is wearing his signature leather necklace that he still sports to this day. We are sitting, and I'm leaning on his shoulder.

This photo always elicits many curious comments and questions. This is the one photo from the bunch that provokes a lightheaded giddiness of familiarity. And this is where it all starts.

I met Paco four summers ago when I came to Spain for the first time through the Experiment in International Living as a high school junior. I lived with a Spanish host family in Vejer de la Frontera for four weeks. I had a host brother Francisco who was my age, and Paco was his best friend.

The three of us spent that summer frolicking on the beach, rollicking in the warm waves, wandering the winding streets for hours, frequenting the small town bars with the other underage hooligans until the wee hours, all the while gesturing and gesticulating madly to each other because I didn't speak very much Spanish and neither of them spoke English.

Vejer is in Andalucia, and this is where my interest in Arabic and Middle Eastern studies was sparked. The legacy of Al-Andalus is apparent in the mudejar architecture and every summer there is a Moroccan arts and crafts festival. I returned home with the seed planted that would guide the course of my college studies.

Before I left, I exchanged my email address with several of the Spanish friends that I met in Vejer. Paco is the only one who kept in touch. We emailed each other every week for a year. We never missed a birthday or a holiday. The next summer, I had graduated from high school, and my parents congratulated me with a trip to anywhere I chose with a friend. I chose to return to Spain.

Denise and I went on a Contiki tour that included all the big cities and (party) sites. Before we returned home, we made a surprise stop in Vejer. Those few days were some of the best ever. I ran into old friends, and Paco and I spent almost every minute together.

During those few days, only we seemed to exist in this ephemeral bubble that would pop when I left again. He was my first love. I'd never cried so hard leaving anyone or any place in my life, and I vowed to him and myself that I would come back some day.

Neither of us knew or quite believed that I would actually be back three years later as a study abroad student. Here I am in Cadiz just a two hour drive from Vejer, and I've been here for over four months already. I’d known that Francisco wanted to study at the University of Cadiz, and I knew that Paco was working in the port. As small as this city is, I finally ran into Francisco and Paco just a month ago. They have been living in the new part, and I live in the old part of the city.

Paco and I had kept our internet correspondence strong just until, strangely enough, I arrived in Cadiz. I had written him several times that I was going to be studying in Cadiz, but he never responded to that part of the email. Apparently, he never quite believed it either. This past year, he wished me a merry Christmas, and I told him how I'd spent Christmas Eve in Bethlehem. And then, the emails stopped.

I gave up hope talking to Paco again after the email connection was so abruptly severed. I never saw him or Francisco in my daily warblings up and down the streets of Cadiz. I sought out places in the city that would seem like his favorite haunts but to no avail. I finally bumped into Francisco at a local club, and the next day I ran into Paco and his girlfriend on the seaside promenade.

Since then, our contact has been short and scarce. I met with Paco twice, and both times, we spent the day in a reverie of nostalgia. We galvanized old names and old faces from distant memories as we sat on the beach watching the waves crash like we used to those past summers in Vejer.

It’s been three years, and much has changed. When I saw him with his girlfriend, I was surprised by my reaction. I was neither hurt nor jealous; I was simply so glad to finally see him and that he was happy and that she was making him happy.

Two nights ago, Cadiz won a football match. Paco has been writing me for years about how gaditanos celebrate their football victories by jumping into the fountain in front of the old city walls. Two nights ago, Paco and I swam in the fountain together as the crowd surged around us in a sea of yellow waving flags, drunkenly singing regional gaditano anthems, and jumping wildly around with flares to crashing beer bottles.

For a brief moment, old feelings were rekindled, and he claimed in a drunken release from his inhibitions, “te amo”, and that was simultaneously what I’d hoped to hear from him before coming to Cadiz and what I’d hoped to never hear after coming to Cadiz. We haven’t talked since that night, and I’ve only got about a week left in Cadiz.

There are times when I sit on the ramparts by myself and look out into the ocean as the sun sets, and I know that he is doing the same a few miles down the shore. Part of me wonders with a bit of sadness what might have been. But most of me realizes that our paths diverged long ago.

This is a tribute to young love, and to how pure and powerful it is, and to how long it can last despite its youth, and to how wonderful it is even in retrospect.

There, Tif. There's your update.

A Jerusalem Moment

Had a funny even almost nostalgic moment today:

I was walking to class when I noticed a lone backpack on a bench outside of the school. I half expected it to explode while wondering where the bomb squad was.

Carnaval, Picha!

(I meant to post this last night, but THOMSON, my wifi-privileged neighbor cut off.)

The week of Carnaval is wrapping up here in Cadiz.

Tonight is night seven, and there are still South American street vendors trilling their “lingua de gato” whistles at groups of costumed Gaditanos roaming from plaza to plaza. There are still warbling, bleary-eyed drunks on every corner. I’m still caught off guard when I wonder why that man behind the trash can is standing so closely and staring so intently at the wall.

There are still confetti and empty Cruzcampo beer bottles littering the narrow alleys left by the throngs of chirigotas fans. There are still nightly concerts of Andalucian flamenco wailing-at-the-top-of-my-lungs-while-my-guitar-gently-weeps that last until 3am.

The temporary buñuelo stands woo passerbyers with fresh fried donuts drenched in chocolate sauce, and the candy vendors bundle up under fluorescent colored lights and five euro hats and wigs waiting for the nocturnal sugar craving or the beer munchies. Men still frolic through the streets blowing their kazoos and flouncing their chirigota costumes; while the neon carnaval lights strung up in every street beckon night-long debauchery until dawn.

Carnaval in Cadiz is legendary. The city’s population swells up to more than double with Spaniards from nearby and not so nearby cities as well as with extranjeros ranging from Germans to Americans.

The city’s demographic also becomes conspicuously young as the elderly, seasoned Gaditanos take their seats along the busy pedestrian streets to judge this year’s selection of costumes on the fresh-faces of carnaval aficionados. Hippies and bums come from all over Spain to sleep on the beach and sell their hemp wares while admiring each others dreadlocks.

The first Saturday is the big day for costumes, when if you aren’t wearing a costume or some sort of ridiculous, colored wig, people will stare and wonder what the hell you were thinking. I was Michelangelo-you know, from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I was never a big fan, but I thought I’d give my brother a tribute. Regardless, I’ve seen costumes every day of this week. Carnaval-goers really take to heart, “go big or go home”.

Weekend number two, here we come!