But when I'm in doubt I open my mouth, and words come out

I was in Madrid last week. I think it was last week, it might have been this week. I have started forgetting what day it is, because it makes little difference - except to bus and train timetables. It's just one big long travelling day it seems. Anyhow, I was in Madrid. I met up with a friend who was telling me about Yes Man, the book by Danny Wallace (you probably know the Jim Carrey movie?). Danny Wallace said 'Yes' to everything for a year, my friend has been trying the 'yes' thing and he said it is working out well. I usually say 'no' before a question has even been formed. 'No' is safe, unless the question is- 'do you have travel insurance?' or 'do I really have to wear a condom?'.

So, I decided to try saying 'yes' more, and had my first opportunity to put it into practise when some guys staying at my hostel asked me to go for a drink with them 'in 5 minutes'. Normally I would have just said 'maybe'...and then not gone. They looked surprised when I said 'yes'. Then they stood outside my bedroom door while I got ready, counting down the five minutes and talking loudly -for my benefit- about how girls usually need a bit more persuasion to say yes to a date with two boys. Apparently there were some interesting results for Danny Wallace - but I doubt he ended up being massaged by two Dutch boys at 3am. So this 'yes' thing is working out fine. Just fine. Fine and dandy. Hey! It was totally innocent, they were pilgrams!


So, Santiago de Compostela was nice...although I did get tired of hearing the people who had done the camino going on and on about how far they had walked each day. It is impressive, but when you've heard 20 people say the same thing, well. It seems that the camino has become quite commercialised, especially seeing as it is a holy year. I saw some tourists (not pilgrams) buying the walking sticks the pilgrams use, it made the guys I was with very annoyed to see that after having walked every day for a month to get there. I spent a couple of days there, and also did a day trip to another town in Galicia called Pontevedra. It was pretty, but I walked around for two hours looking for a tourist information centre to get a map. When I decided to return to Santiago I went to the bus station and waited for my bus...and waited...and waited...and asked when the next bus to Santiago would be...and waited...and waited...and asked why the bus was so late...and waited. Turns out I made the idiot mistake of assuming that what it said on my ticket would be what it would say on the bus - duh! What a novice mistake. I was looking for the company who I had bought my ticket through. Wrong. So my bus had come and gone right in front of me and I had missed it three times. I hate buses.

Now I'm in Porto, Portugal. It's very pretty. Oh, and Portuguese men are more polite than the Spanish, I was wearing a dress today and was only meowed at twice. Perhaps they were Spanish.

Erm, is anyone still reading? It got a bit word-y there, here are some pretty pictures.

The Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, the crowds are pilgrams and bus loads of old German tourists. The Cathedral is important because it is the final destination of the pilgramage..and St...James? is buried inside. I could google it, but honestly I don't care. I went there for the pretty, not the religious experience. I went into the Cathedral out of interest during a service, apparently they do something cool with incense, missed that. I did see people working themselves into religious fervor, crying and prostrating themselves on the floor. It was all a bit creepy for me, and so I left and had a hamburger, with egg in it. The egg makes the hamburger in my opinion. Oh shit, I'm getting word-y again.

Pontevedra

Dreams old men dream

I'm in Valencia again. I'm happy again. Not much else to say really.

Valencia. Photo: Peter Guenzel

Okay, I thought of something to say. I have no commitments until the end of June. I have no solid plans. I'm as free as I'm probably ever going to be, and it feels really good. I'll just try not to think about money.

I'm trying my best not to get excited about the prospect of being able to buy clothes whenever I feel like it (money permitting), without having to worry about fitting them in my suitcase (the beast)...but I can't, it's so shallow.

I want to annoy, and I'm going to enjoy it.

Photos from the weekend in Málaga

And the silence surrounds you, and haunts you

I have been here a year.

What can I say? I haven’t felt like blogging lately. I want my blog to remind me of happy times, so I avoid writing about the bad. Bad memories seem to stick in my head more than the good ones, it’d be great it it were the other way around. The bad memories are like little scars on my mind that won’t go away, no matter what. I have a large scar on my head. Not a metaphorical scar, an actual scar, from riding my bike headfirst into a wall when I was 3. Random interlude. Back on track....

I am always surprised when a students brings up something about my personal life I have told them, and then totally forgotten that I told them. They seem to have excellent memories for everything but English grammar. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I can still remember the name of my High School Modern History teacher’s girlfriend, his stories about his dog and his travels in India….but anything about the World Wars? Errr, when were they again? I keep telling myself I need to be more careful about what I say. When I mentioned I am returning to Australia one of the boys piped up with ‘but then you’ll have to pay back your student loan, remember you said you won’t have to pay it back if you’re not earning Australian dollars’ ….oh shit. Oh, and the other day in class we somehow started talking about the Australian bushfires, and the same boy said ‘but you know, sometimes the fires are started by volunteer fire-fighters who want the hero status after they help put them out’ everyone nodded along and I said ‘hey, I was the one who told you that!’ he looked totally blank and said ‘no, I’m sure it was my father’. Dude, half these kids have never been out of their town and certainly don’t spend their free time discussing Victoria’s bushfires with their fathers.

The time is nearing when I will leave here. I actually get teary when I think about leaving my 16 year old class and my crazy class of 10 year old boys, who never fail to make me laugh. Even my 12 year old class....yesterday one boy told me that I should dye my hair back to black, since I look ‘less ugly’ with black hair than when it is red. Thanks mate. Teachers who have been at it for years must have so many funny student memories. Of course I have a few bad ones too, having a fake cockroach thrown at me wasn’t hilarious.

I am pretty organized for my leaving. Travel insurance again, trains, hostels, job…..now it’s just a question of willing away the days until then. I should be back soon with a little more positively and the old world adventuring Te.

Until then here are a couple of photos.

The view from the Castle, Segovia.Very Important Warning in Antequera

Help. I'm alive, my heart keeps beating like a hammer.

On the bus to Granada

It sucks that that oh-so-teenager-ish feeling of 'nobody understands me' doesn't go away when you're no longer a teenager. Luckily though, public transport is always there for me (to over-think things).

They wanna push you off the path

Photo: Timothy Barnes

Sorry about getting all philosophical, but I am pondering the 'wanderer'. Why do they wander? Is it because they are never satisfied, but they're optimistic that they can be? Are they forever looking for something? When a student asked me what a 'wanderer' was all I could think of was 'a traveller without a destination'. A traveller looking for a destination?

I have narrowed down my travel plans further.
- Scotland (again)
- France
- Italy
-Greece
...and then back to Melbourne.

In the afternoon, you’re out on the stone and grass, and I’m sleeping on the balcony after class.

Listening to Vampire Weekend’s ‘Campus’ makes me even more excited to be going back to University. Lame-o. I am such a campus poser, I love walking around with library books and a coffee of epic proportions. I think ‘epic’ is my favourite word at the moment.

I can’t decide which of my favourite areas of study I want to look into further first. They are: sexuality politics in the Classical world (Ancient Greece and Rome, yo) and Arthurian myth and legend (King Arthur and his bitches, dude). How to solve this problem? Well, I’m going to have a travel showdown. I plan to visit as many places with Arthurian importance in the United Kingdom as I can, then head to Greece for a bit of Ancient sight-seeing. One is bound to get my academic panties in a twist more than the other. Urgh, god I hate the word ‘panties’, it’s almost as annoying as the term ‘make love’ (don’t get me started). If I choose Classics I’ll have to learn Latin (and my tendency to SUCK at languages marches on); if I choose Arthurian legend then I will have to study Medieval Christianity at some point (oh bite me religion). So both topics have their downsides. Oh shizzle, what if I don’t get accepted into honours? That’d certainly be embarrassing.



I picked this postcard up in Seville awhile ago, it has been the source of endless entertainment. Imagine a person walking down the street next to you speaking in a language you don’t understand…blah mushy kidkas jksajhk jkaljdkal blah blah skajlskdjfl SHIT LITTLE PARROT blah aslkdjhlkahd blah. They are all literal translations of Spanish sayings which mostly mean something different in context. For example where they have translated ‘Let’s go. Don’t fuck me’ doesn’t really mean ‘come on it’s time to leave, stop trying to hump me’, in Spanish it means something like ‘don’t pull my leg’ you’d say it when you thought someone was having you on. ‘To another thing, butterfly’ is just because it rhymes in Spanish, it’s like us saying ‘no way, Jose’ or ‘see you later, aligator’. ‘Sissy the last’ is just calling someone really camp. Spanish men can be pretty camp regardless of their sexuality. That could have a lot to do with the fact that their mothers still dress them until they’re thirty.

Can anyone recommend any good English bands? Vampire Weekend/Wombats/Bloc Party/ Arctic Monkeys-ish…

Letters that you never meant to send, get lost or thrown away

Photo: Anna Rosa Krau

I am pretty damn pleased with myself right now. I have decided what to do. You’re not going to like it, blog readers. I’m heading back to Melbourne. There, I said it. Now I will start defending it. I have decided that I really want to do further study, Honours or Masters. I miss University, I miss Classics, History…getting really excited about the prefect wording of a hypothesis. I want to try my hand at academia, and eventually work for a uni. It’s not like I’m ditching Europe, if this works out I would have a career that would allow me to work in lots of different countries. I feel like I had to come here, to experience everything I have so far, to realise what I want for myself. That said, I’m not hopping on the next plane, I won’t be returning until the end of the year. First I want to finish my contract in Spain, teach in England for a couple of months over the Summer and then go on an epic two month travel adventure – well I hope it will be epic, it needs to smother my European wanderlust for a few years.

If you’d told me a year ago that I’d write this blog entry, after only a year in Spain, I would have said you were crazy. I always dream so BIG, but in reality the future is lots of little steps, not one grand idea.

The other day a friend of mine sort of nailed what I want to be. It's what she wants to be: a University Lecturer/Author. Is this the dream of every Arts student? Now, how can I be special?

I'll sing it one last time for you, then we really have to go

A perfect day in Cádiz - in photos.

I don't wanna hold hands and talk about our little plans.

It seems all I ever do on here is complain that I don't know what to do with my life. I make the decision not to think about the future at least 10 times a day, but it doesn't work. I was miserable in High School and the only thing that got me through was thinking about how wonderful the future was going to be. I'm not miserable now, but I guess I got into the habit of always thinking forward and now that I can't it's a little frustrating. It's not that I don't have any choices, more that I have too many and no single one appeals more than the others. Wah wah wah. I don't think freedom really exists, there's only different degrees of being trapped. I am more free than most people I know, but I keep trapping myself. La la la la.

Okay, how about an interlude from all this soul-searching/over-analysing/shit-talking?

Right now I am in a café with wireless internet connection. There is a big screen television playing some sports game. There is an older man pouring a large beer for a customer (it's half past one), there's a semi-drunk man sitting at the counter watching the television and occasionally my breasts. The staff greet every woman with 'hola guapa' 'hello beautiful/gorgeous'. It is warm and sunny outside, a man is sitting a couple of tables away and his cigarette smoke is drifting into my recently washed hair. I am listening to We are Scientists and downloading the latest episodes of Vampire Diaries and Life Unexpected (don't judge me!). I'm looking out the large windows, I see lots of old people (Spain is good to the oldies) waddling along in their own little world, the women are wearing fur coats, the men are smoking cigars, carrying shopping bags and some are leering at young women. Young Spanish people are walking around, girls wearing the typical uniform here of high boots over tight dark blue jeans. I'm listening to Paolo Nutini. The staff are extending the canopy outside so that more people can sit in the shade. I can smell coffee, cigarette smoke and hayfever inducing pollen (maybe I can't smell the pollen, but it is affecting my nose nonetheless). I just accidentally made eye contact with the semi-drunk at the counter. A gypsy just came in to ask for a glass of water, they all wear skirts that sweep the floor as they walk. I am still amused by the fact that cafés here have vending machines selling little tins of stuffed olives. So, there's a little bit of my Spanish life for you.

Soon I am going to go shopping, to buy more clothes to add to my ever-increasing amount of things that will never fit into my case when I leave Andalucía in a few months.


Photo: Linus Ricard

But I was standing on a mountain top, looking over your homes.

To be a little less vague:

When I was in Cambridge, one of the other teachers came up with the idea of going around a circle of people and saying the first thing that came to your head about them. This was usually done after quite a few beers at the pub, since the removal of sobriety kicks tactfulness in the balls…and if the person before you had just used what you had in mind for someone you’d have to speak on the fly ‘ Whore. Bald. Sexy. Selfish. Arrogant. Virgin. Chauvinistic. Accident. Tall. Woody Allen’ - basically this game was a whole lot of trouble, but significantly less dangerously than ‘I have never’. What was my point? Oh, if I were playing that game now (under only the influence of hot chocolate) I would easily label myself as indecisive. I’ve been in Europe for ten months now. I have come to the conclusion that I came over here looking for something, I have no idea exactly what it is, but I haven’t found it yet and I am unsure how to continue looking for something indescribable. The more I try to explain the more I sound like a tool. Shall we all hold hands in a circle and meditate on Te’s missing something-or-other? Someone burn some incense, would you?

So I guess I haven’t really explained anything. Here goes, in short: my job contract ends in June, I’m going over to the UK for a couple of months, then I have NO PLANS. I’ll be back to mopey ‘oh I have no direction now that I’m finally 'living the dream’’ Te. I was dancing around in my room today, in yet another pair of jeans I have hacked into hot pants as a result of boredom (hey atleast I don’t do it to my hair anymore!). I was listening to Justin Bieber on my ipod and making kissy faces into the mirror when I burst into tears at the realisation I am no longer a teenager, and I am no closer to knowing what I want from life than I did at 18. Well, I cried because of that and because I now have wrinkles under my eyes. I have been browsing though some of the 12,000,000 photos I have taken of myself ‘myspace style' over the years, trying to fathom when this wrinkle thing happened; it seems they appeared out of nowhere on my 23rd birthday, along with the (not so irrational) panic about my future.

What have I been doing since King Arthur had his spot of trouble?

Teaching the English .
‘Jose, number five please’
‘ Yes teacher, my father likes cock’
‘you mean: My father likes to cook. cooooook’
‘yes, that I said, my Father likes to cock’.
‘Oooohkay, everyone ‘cook’ ‘cook’ ‘cook’ 'Laura number six’
‘ My father has balls’
‘okay, good, what did you have, Jose?’
‘My father has golden balls’.


Reading awful books – The Vampire Diaries…really? Is it possible for something to be worse than Twilight? No no, it’s not, but it’s close.

Drinking. Then later lamenting the routine of ‘another free shot girls?’ ‘yes please sexy bar tender’ shot shot shot shot. ‘No, I couldn’t possibly do another’ shot shot shot.. Dancing…shot shot shot. Marking homework…shot shot (jusssst kidding). The other night we ordered shots and were asked ’something strong?’ we said yes not expecting to be given JACK DANIELS. Now, I love me some Jack, but not in a shot glass.

Checking the weather forecast three times a day waiting for the promise of sunshine.

Socialising with a hoard of Scottish girls. I am learning their language. They have ‘good chat’.

Photo: Anna Rosa Krau

Whatcha say? Oh, that you only meant well? Well, of course you did.

You know when you’re in High School and you don’t know what you want to do with your life? It’s not a big deal, you’re still so young. You know when you’re at University and you don’t know what you want to do with your life after graduation? It’s not really that big a deal because you’ve got time to make up your mind....



...You know when you’ve graduated from University, and you’re living in a new country, you’re 23, and you still don’t know what you want to do with your life (let alone the next year)? Time to panic?


Geoffrey Barrenger

Stay tonight, and fight the break of dawn. Come tomorrow, tomorrow I'll be gone.

Photo: Geoffrey Barrenger

1. Australia Day was ace, I taught my students some Aussie slang, and drilled them on the correct pronunciation of 'No worries, mate'.Then I went to the Irish pub(where the bartenders only speak Spanish, of course) with my Scottish flatmate to drink Aussie beer (they only stock fosters).

2. Sometimes it's great when decisions you could have never made for yourself are made for you.

3. Dear English grammar, I enjoy inherently knowing you, I hate explaining you.

4. Dear neighbour, you secured your wireless network? Now I can't steal it from you, how unspanish of you!

See that woman, dressed in red, smile at the man when you wake up in his bed.

I hate not knowing what I want to do with my life. No, I hate knowing what I want to do and struggling to think of ways to fund it. I am addicted to adventure now, addicted to having excitement in my life - constantly. I'd like a 'career', something I don't get bored of, but I'm just not good at anything - there is no obvious choice. Teaching English could be a career, but I'm so unsettled that I'd want to move countries at every turn.

My flatmate/work mate is quite content here, content to stay here for a couple more years, I was itching to go after six weeks. Don't get me wrong, I like my job, (most of) my students, my general lifestyle, but it's just, comfortable. Comfortable doesn't seem to satisfy me.

I am so contrary. When I'm out of my comfort zone I seek out things to calm me down, places I know, things I understand. It's some sort of balance between pleasure and pain. I don't like to be bored, so I make myself suffer to be amused. Blah blah, let's not get deep. What is the point of adventures? At the time you're not conscious that they're adventures, it's the person they make you, the person who reflects upon them later.

I could have written this post in seven words : What the hell am I looking for?

We are going to play badminton on the roof now.


Photo: Andreas Burz

You can tell by my attitude, that I'm most definitely...

Three things: I am almost 23 (how did that happen),visiting Madrid next weekend (to try to forget I'm almost 23) and I'm planning a trip to Morocco.

Tell me who makes these rules. Obviously not you, who are you answering to?

The first time I went to Madrid I was unsure and culture shocked. I felt vulnerable due to my inability to understand anything that was said. I was incredibly disapointed in myself for being so cowardly that I would end up eating in McDonalds because I was too afraid to try speaking Spanish. I started to think that maybe my dreams of moving to Spain had been just that, dreams. I thought I had romantised the whole thing and I had arrived to find I had been naive; in the worst moments I thought I would have to return to Australia and face all the people I had earbashed for months about my move. I was taking a course to give me some teaching English qualifications, it was intense and I didn't get to spend as much time enjoying Madrid as I would have liked. When I left Madrid it was as a city I liked, but I didn't feel the connection to it that I had anticipated I would.

When I went to England in the summer my initial emotion was relief, relief to be out of Spain. I felt comfortable, nothing really challenged me. It was different enough from my life in Australia to be interesting, but not as different as my life in Spain to stress me. I had decided to stay in the UK but then I re-read my blog posts from earlier in 2009 and remembered how passionate I had been about living in Spain and learning Spanish; on a whim booked a ticket back to Spain with no accommodation or job lined up. I spent only a week in Spain before I got the job I'm in now, I returned to Valencia because it was the place I had the happiest memories of in Spain, two days after being told I had the job here I was on a train down to Andalucía and that was that.

...the point of this post was to talk about my love for Madrid after my initial indifference towards it. The Spanish capital is so...alive. My time in Andalucía has made me much more comfortable with not understanding everything, and has helped me understand many things I didn't before. This time in Madrid I was the experienced one ( My friend snoop from Australia was with me) and I could really appreciate the differences between Madrid and my town in Andalucía. I think it would be almost impossible to be bored living in the capital.

Unfortunately I seem to have made my way into almost all my Madrid photos - a pro (or con when it comes to blogging photos) of travelling with anther person.

That's right put in work, eat your salad, no dessert

Along with every woman and her blog (rather than every man and his dog) I have made a 2010 resolution to be healthier, starting with my diet. Gone are the days of eating pasta for lunch and dinner, or eating popcorn while watching Jason Statham beat people. Now I will be watching Jason whilst sipping on apple tea, and eating salad for dinner. So far my resolution has lasted two salads. I am very proud of them, so here they are


Walnut, pear and parmesan.

Rocket, smoked salmon and burgos cheese. Both salads are great with balsamic vinegar.

More trip photos to come.

The exit sign is always on my mind

I'm rather concerned that a pop singer with a dollar sign in her name seems to be singing about my attitude towards 'romance'...and it's catchy. Hmmm.

It's Disgusting - Ke$ha

[My heart goes at the speed of light/But the exit signs always on my mind, always in my sight/I can say that I really want to stay/But the devil inside always wins the fight, always gets his way/Jump out the window gotta get out on the highway/ Think things have getting too attached I need an escape/I'm seeing stars and there is nothing more that I hate, baby

There is something that I gotta say/It's disgusting, how I love you/God, I hate me/ I could kill you/Cause you're messing up my name/Gotta walk my talk my fame/ but I just want to touch your face/It's disgusting/It's disgusting, how you changed me/From a bandit to a baby/Thinking about gotta change my name, If I'm gonna walk this walk of shame/Look at what you do to me/It's disgusting

My mind blinks like a traffic light/It's green and red and stop and go/Changing all the time/And it makes me scared, that I haven't loved/That it's still right here, more or or or less/Stuck out in traffic, ya, I gotta go my own way/My head is slipping, too intense I need an escape/I'm seeing stars and there is nothing more than I hate, baby

Chapter by chapter, I'm falling faster and faster, Becoming manic and magic it's so romantic/ I panic, oh/Hit the eject button but it must be stuck, somethings up/What did you slip into my drink? Baby/It's disgusting, how I love you/God, I hate me. I could kill you/Cause you're messing up my name/Gotta walk my talk my fame, but I just want to touch your face/It's disgusting.]

Photo: Timothy Barnes