This is More or Less the Story of My Life

Lists from the Ever-Never-Satisfied

Things I miss about home while I am in Spain

• I-Hop
• Peanut Butter
• Panera
• My mother's extremely well-stocked cupboards
• Real rainy days
• Not spiders
• My unbelievable bed
• My mother's cooking
• Portsmouth
• American power outlets
• My parents. There, I said it.
• Getting my eyebrows done prior to their usurpation of the top half of my face
• Cafés where you can buy more than a coffee the size of your index finger
• My iHome
• Amigos

Things I miss about Spain while I am home

• Discotecas
• Chorizo and Tortilla Española
• Age Expectations
• High heels, everywhere
• The churches
• Spanish
• Tapas tapas tapas tapas tapas tapas tapas tapas
• My Spanish family
• My sweet, old, broken down apartment where nothing works
• The gorgeous Spanish sun
• The well-dressed, eligible young bachelor types
• Easy public transportation, just hop on the bus and you're in the city!
• Private dance parties in my single apartment (aka: the bachelorette pad)
• The oldness of things
• Pervasive culture of personal style
• My job
• Feeling useful all of the time
• Pull&Bear, Bershka, Blanco, Zara *sigh*

Bamboleo - Gipsy Kings

Because there can never be enough Latin-fueled music in one's life.

A Springly Sprightly Jaunt to the Park

Oh, you know, just some ruins in the middle of the park. It's whatever.

My first day of spring outfit did prove to be a bit cold, but it was worth it.
Pull & Bear asymmetrical dress, high Bershka boots, and my "carpet bag" earrings from Maurices

Trees in bloom in the center of Logroño

Stream of Consciousness

Oh gee, it's been a while since I updated here. All I can do about that is apologize.


Things have been extremely busy on the Spain end of things. I'm preparing for Nepal, fulfilling all of my duties for being a functioning member of the academy family here, fulfilling extra expectations so that things may run even more smoothly once I've left them a man down in two weeks, and sometimes I even sleep. My sleep schedule is as concerning to me as it is to my parents, whether they believe that or not, and I can't help but wonder if it will make jet lag even nastier to recover from.


I'll be on my way back to the US of A on the 12th of April and, as much as I am looking forward to Starbucks, Panera, and peanut butter being a part of my life again, I am having very mixed feelings about pretty much everything right now, leaving Spain chief among them. I hope to write something a bit more conclusive to this leg of the experience either on layover in Barajas or on the plane ride itself. We'll see. If the words aren't there, they aren't there, I'm beginning to learn and accept.


While I don't have anything terribly organized to impart to you, I thought I might share a couple of my thoughts/experiences/little tidbits from everyday life, so that you have a peek into what is going through my mind at 5000 mph these days. I would like to call this part of the post: "Hannah's Faulkner Corner". That was a stream of consciousness joke. Oh my goodness, I am such an insufferable nerd.


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• "Just when you think that four year olds can't come up with a new arrangement for the alphabet, they prove you wrong. Oh, so wrong."

• "If I do calf raises while I'm making photo copies, that should qualify as my exercise for the day."

• "If this Mickey Mouse Clubhouse DVD doesn't work for the little kids, I will cry. I will just sit down on the floor and cry."

• "There would probably be fewer wars if everyone carried a well-stocked pencil case in this world."

• "Asistir = to attend and attender = to assist? Why, Spanish language. WHY!?"

• "Biblioteca = library and libreria = book store? You're still stumping me, Spanish. Is this FUN for you? It is. You're totally doing this on purpose."

• "Gerund. That is the funniest thing I've heard all day. Gerund… hehe."

• "Pastelleria is a much nicer word for bakery than bakery."

• "English, you are such a ridiculous language. Why am I helping you take over the world? None of you makes any sense. Seriously, phrasal verbs? Whose idea was that?"

• "If someone properly pronounces a "j" sound today, I will give them my life savings."

• "Tapas. New Hampshire needs tapas."

• "Chorizo. New Hampshire needs chorizo."

• "I am incapable of speaking any languages today. Words just aren't going to be a thing for the next 24 hours"

• "If anyone gives out a single spoiler about the Hunger Games film between now and the time that I get home to see it, they will suffer greatly."

• "Seriously, you think you can text through my class? I was in high school less than 12 months ago, kid. Between sophomore Biology and senior Chemistry I had plenty of experience with texting under table rims- and no, when I ask you what you're doing and you say 'looking at my hands' I'm not going to believe you. Put the phone away."

• "No, land of sweatpants and Crocs, aka New Hampshire, you'll never take my personal style alive!! AIEEEEEE!"

The Corner of the Internet I Call Home: [Guest Post] Incognitext

Something lovely to cap off my day in its final three minutes! Below you will see a link that will propel you through cyberspace to a blog that I very much enjoy reading and am proud to now be a part of for my window in time. The marvelous Fiona, keeper of "The Corner of the Internet I Call Home", is off and away on her own adventure and is filling the spaces left by her absence with stories of travel from her followers. I'm the first!

The Corner of the Internet I Call Home: [Guest Post] Incognitext

Some Prose for a Wet and Dry Spring Day

I couldn't take my eyes off of them, two boys and a dog- yelling into the lightness of the air because the sound felt so right in the afternoon, just their fair share of noise. The birds know it, the brittle winter reeds let the wind suggest it to them. The whistling cracks in the concrete and stucco know it well as it hollows them into chambers for weed and vine to place frail roots. I can't take my eyes off of them, the rusty step of muscles worn ten years to the future by the sitting and waiting of an entire season, the nervous quickness of their hands, of the dog's speckled knees. They are watching me- the dog with a woman's eyes, knowing of things and ignorant of me, pursued by that lack of acquaintance. The boys with that side-ways curiosity and embarrassed evasion of the eyes- I store each flickering glance of the turning to mirror my turning toward- store each glimpse in jars for lonely days when I've forgotten what innocence looks like out of the corner of one's eye. Store it with the freshness of this air, the smell of soil that must come before the smell of growth.


Introduce new characters to this play directed by finite stretches of blue sky. The sister and brother and the bikes they could only straight ahead in the fall, when their fingers could not quite wrap the handles or their feet cozy the peddles. Now they are propelled by the promise of skinned knees and grass stains. Their mother does not mind that I watch them with unshadowed eyes- no one could mind anything in this weather, this white dress and smile weather, this deceptive near-warmth that pulls off layers and lets the skin of elbows and wrists breathe in with defiance. It's the fleeting aspect of it that lends it perfection, that makes things more beautiful under the looming, passing shadows of clouds moving in. I've been healed of some things by the passing from gray,


I don't know what.


3:54 PM
3.4.12