the night of st joan

Last night the streets of Barcelona were filled with smoke. In every direction there were fireworks and firecrackers of every kind. Children were allowed to stay out until all hours of the night playing with fire whilst there adults just sat calmly by, not even blinking. Old drunken men sang Catalán songs, heads and bottles hanging out of the window as they watched the kids set off more rockets. I heard more than one ambulance last night.

I arrived to my flat at about midnight, just in time to take off to the beach with my flatmate and her mates. The trains were packed. We went to one of the further beaches (PobleNou)and nearly lost one another in the smoke. It was easy to do. If you moved more than a few meters away, your friends became ghosts in the night.

As I walked along the streets, I couldn't help but imagine Barcelona in the Civil War. It must of been like that...the smoke, the gunshots in the distance and sometimes too close. Even the drunken men singing into the night- why not?

This morning at half past 7am as I made my solitary way home (the flatmate and her mates were still going), I saw a Barcelona not yet gone to bed. All the young people in yesterday's clothing and the old people sitting on the benches to make commentaries on the passing youths. A couple of old men engaged me in conversation, but were nice enough to let me be on my way and they told me where to find the metro.

This afternoon as I got up at lunchtime, I saw a Barcelona that looked a little hungover. The streets hadn't been cleaned and there were the remains of firecrackers, spray-string, bottles and trash everywhere. All the shops and most of the bars were closed.

que vida

barcelona sounds like a warzone

For days the festival of St. Joan has been going on. Everynight there are fire works, and this festival coincides with a 4 day music festival that lines the streets with bargain cd's, lp's and free concerts.

The downside is a large number of firecrackers in the hands of the bored youths of Barcelona. They set them off on cars, in the street, on the side walk, drop them from buildings...it sounds like a war.

Now I'm in an internet cafe and the smoke from the street firecrackers wafts through the room. A little girl in a neat checkered dress with a pinafore is alternately fascinated by the crackling sound and frightened by the loud bangs and sparks. She runs to the door to see what the strange crackling is then eyes wide, runs back inside to get away from the sparks and explosion.

Interesting atmosphere. Lots of parties tonight!

back to the strawberry blond

Thinking things over a bit, I decided that despite my preference for darker hair, going to Maldives with it might not be a good idea. It grows too fast. After 5 weeks, it's grown an inch. That's a lot of dying. What if I can't get dye there?

Sensibly, I purchased a pre-lightener and followed that with a blond. The problem was that my hair didn't follow what was on the box. It was awful. It was bright orange. I tried again with a decolorant...worse. My poor hair looked like a super orange and lemon sorbet swirl!

My flatmate Samanta did an intervention, and handed me the business card of some professionals. GO SEE THEM!! It's cheaper than doing it yourself now!! GO!!!

I went. I wore a hat. They thought it was very funny, but do-able. I made an appointment for 6pm.

It took professionals three and a half hours to fix it! They bleached the orange parts THREE times! My poor head is burned. They are fabulous though. I'm in love with Miguel, the guy and co-owner (Esther and Miguel- they're a wonderfully talented couple). Everytime they did something new, he massaged my head. By the seventh and final attempt, he was deeply massaging my head. I was torn between his fabulous hands in the rich creamy texture of dye, and the fact that it felt like slow acid on my head. The massage won out. I stayed quiet and let him finish the massage :-)

The final result was worth it. It's beautiful. It's like my own color after a few weeks of living in the sun. The back is my own strawberry blonde and the top looks like my strawberry blonded.

oranges and lilies

Chatting with my friend Livia online, I mentioned my desire to go to Portugal to which I received the following (heavenly) appraisal..

Portugal is so beautiful!
the countryside is soooooo nice
the ground is orange
the plants are sooo green
and aloe vera is everywhere!
oranges and lilies...

does anyone speak html?

I've spent hours pouring over the code in this blog. Whenever I change things, something else happens and I have to figure out why.

I've mostly got it down, despite the fact that I don't speak html. I'm still having some problems though- I have NO IDEA why the second half of my sidebar is tilting to one side. I mean, I put it up by myself and thought it looked straight, but when I stood back to take a look, I thought, "Is my head tilted, or is that crooked?"

For a bit, it knocked the entire side bar underneath the main page. I forgot a "<" in several lines of code...fixed it though. Then I got SOME of the offending lines to go back in line with everything else, but despite the fact that the same thing that I cut and pasted to fix those bits (after comparing them to straight bits) worked on the first few, the last links and my archive pages are still falling to the right.

Any comments or help would be greatly appreciated. If you think you could help out- contact me and we'll talk it through. I'm convinced that it has something to do with the top part of the template where it sets out the contents of the sidebar...I just don't know what!

i hate waiting

There is just something about Saturdays in Barcelona which makes me pensive. Maybe it's all the wine I drank on Friday? Well you might ask. It is a mystery.

Yesterday I couldn't face the world. I lacked the will to either contact any of my friends, or to go to Andorra as planned I just didn't feel up to talking to anyone. I couldn't. You see, I bought my ticket to London, from where I'll depart for Maldives.

I'm not the most patient person (wow, suddenly I heard voices of friends and family world over all making snide comments...very unkind of you!) I've known about this job for a couple of months now, and specifically had plans for moving for exactly a month. I'm nervous. I'm sure I'll love it.

God has sent me the most amazing dreams of crystal waters and blue skies and serenity for months now. The dreams began while I was staying in Boston and seemed to be somewhat of a promise. When I wake up after these dreams I feel happy, restful and at peace. I know that all the hard stuff I've gone through in the last year is nearly finished and..well, it's like God's telling me that it's all going to be alright. Granted, it's not as much comfort as it should be when someone you love says that, but when GOD does it...well, it doesn't get any more sure than that. You just have to be patient.

I've been doing a lot of work on my book while here in Barcelona-specifically typing up all of my notes. It may seem like a life of travel and adventure is all fun and games, but- well, it ain't. This last year I was alternately hungry, vomiting, depressed, dirty, constantly sleeping someplace new (the floor at best, the street at worst). I nearly died, I was cold (so cold), I was ecstatically happy, I danced, climbed mountains, spent a lot of time with God and my guitar as my only companions as I jumped into adventure with no holds barred. I loved, I lost. I met a lot of people who are very close to my heart, and remain so. I wouldn't trade any of it for the world.

Throw all the bad things that could happen to you all together and what do you get? ADVENTURE

Typing my notes is to relive- but from a safe place. Thank God it's from a safe place! I don't want to face a lot of that stuff again. It's enough that I have the souvenirs (too-delicate stomach, tattoo, pierced belly button, large Maori necklace, toe rings and anklet). They remind me everyday of all that I've done in the last two years. I'm glad that they do.

We all choose are life- this is mine. I may be crazy, I may be a vagabond, I may not have anything to my name...but it's my life and that's all I need. Life is a gift.

I think two weeks from now will find me in The Maldives, in a new life. One where I don't have to wear shoes.

I'm nervous. I don't know what's in store. I never do. I promise to get lots of vaccinations before I begin my jungle trekking trips in Sri Lanka, or to India and Nepal. I'm excited. I'm apprehensive. I AM.
Thanks God.

wine and cigarettes

The weak light of the morning sun hadn't quite reached my window when I awakened this morning to the sound of my normally-quiet-in-the-morning flatmates (all three of them) singing at the top of their lungs.

wuff. I looked at the clock..not quite 8am. Half asleep, eyelids drooping and yet aware that in order to get back to sleep I would have to rid myself of both my headache and the contents of my bladder. I considered the effort and odds of both, and took a couple of Excedrin from the drawer of my nightstand, but couldn't quite motivate myself to don clothes for a trip to the bathroom. Besides, I reasoned, if everyone was up now, in half an hour I could go unseen to the bathroom. Knowing that sleep was futile, I grabbed my book.

At 8:30am, a mere 5 or so minutes after I had turned over and finally covered my bare breasts with the sheet, I heard my door creak open. It was Omar. Having returned from a night of revelry, he wasn't prepared to sleep just yet, but was abandoned by the other flatmates (school). "Estoy en Terrassa..vino..sol.." I just stared. "What??" For some uknown reason I was waving my book around in my confusion. I'm quite sure he was just thinking, wow. She sleeps naked...."Hmm? Oh. Sorry. I am in the terrace taking wine and sun if you would care to join me."
"Oh".
(wow. she sleeps naked.)
"Ok."
"Yeah? I wait for you. Sorry for the.." (he demonstrated him opening the door.)
"It's fine."
Might as well. I got up, threw on my sunglasses, some sunscreen, a red haltertop and underwear (the shorts kind). We sat on the porch taking sun, drinking wine, smoking and generally "being" in Barcelona. Before long I got my guitar, and a little more protection (long sleeve overshirt and a skirt) from the sun.

Augustin came home and joined us, also stripped down. Then there we were, the three of us scantily clad in the sun, on a terrace belting out "La Bamba" and various songs in both Spanish and English until Omar fell asleep, at which point Augustin and I took pictures, and generally made fun until finally Augustino helped him to his room. Augustin and I finished the bottle of wine, played and sang until early afternoon when we had to get on with our day.

Viva Barcelona!

One for the Gipper

Former President Ronald Reagan died after a long struggle with Alzheimers disease. Click on the title for a link to the full story.

I'm not going to go into politics. I am genuinely choked up to hear of his death. I firmly believe that he was a good man and a good President. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family, in particular his wife Nancy, the love of his life. She was very protective of him during the last ten years since he announced the onset of the disease. Theirs is one of the great love stories of our time.

The following is from the BBC's reports.

Ronald Reagan: In his own words The former US president Ronald Reagan was sometimes known by his soubriquet the Great Communicator.
Over his career he was renowned for telling jokes, summing up issues with memorable lines, and making the odd gaffe.

Here is a selection of his quotes:


Government is not the solution, it's the problem.
Inaugural address, 20 January, 1981

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. 1986

A friend of mine was asked to a costume ball a short time ago. He slapped some egg on his face and went as a liberal economist.
1988

Honey, I forgot to duck. To wife Nancy Reagan in the emergency room after being shot, 30 March, 1981

I hope you're all Republicans. To surgeons as he went into the operating theatre


When you see all that rhetorical smoke billowing up from the Democrats, well, ladies and gentlemen, I'd follow the example of their nominee: don't inhale. A reference to Bill Clinton at the Republican National Convention, 1992

I've noticed that everybody who is for abortion has already been born. 1980

How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin. 1987

My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes. A joke, not realising a microphone was on, 1984

I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.

The other day someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people's democracy. It's the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket. 1986.

If you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation, come here to this gate ... open this gate ... tear down this wall. At the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, addressing a speech to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, June 1987


We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so we may always be free
On the 40th anniversary of the Normandy landings, 6 June, 1984

She's the best man in England. On former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher

If I ache, it's because we are apart and yet that can't be because you are inside and a part of me, so we really aren't apart at all. Yet I ache but wouldn't be without the ache, because that would mean being without you and that I can't be because I love you. A letter to Nancy in 1963, quoted in her 2000 book I Love You, Ronnie

I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright dawn ahead. Announcing his Alzheimer's disease, 5 November, 1994

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/americas/3780871.stm

Maldives

It's been slow going finding out everything I can on Maldives. I now feel just about as well informed as I'm going to be on the subject. The irony is that I still can't imagine what's in store for me there! Everytime I pass a football field I find myself imagining it covered in trees and white sand, then I add bungalows...

The best discovery so far was a report on www.GloboSapiens.net by member Gard Karlsen. Gard and his lovely wife Nikki are devoted to traveling and keep a travel web page, initially for friends and family but eventually they realised that they might help other travelers along the way.

I highly recommend Gard's page, and have put a link to his report on Maldives as well as a direct link to his pictures under my new side column, "Maldives".

If you are interested in finding out more about this tiny little country, please visit the new links.

*Also, I'm slowly working my own galleries into better order, feel free to peruse them, or check them out later as I've cleaned them up a bit and labeled more of the photos.

insomnia and legalities

The plague of insomnia...in Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude", it was a cause of great fear, and all the servants fled. Highly contagious, it soon infected the entire town. At first it was the most wonderful thing, all the things that everyone could accomplish! Before long they understood how terrible a thing it really was...or they would have if they could remember anything.

In Amelié, a young Amelié thought that her comatose neighbor was actually getting her whole life's sleep in one go. After that she could stay awake day and night!

Mornings, days, I want to sleep. I'm tired. Nights I come alive, even if I've not slept in a day or two, it's forgotten. Or, if I know I'm tired, it grows on me like an increasingly irritating pain rather than something to ease the transition to sleep.

Last night I was home by midnight and fretful until sunrise. After a two hour nap this morning I got up, got ready and was ready for a nap which I refused to take. After all, I have things to do, papers to fill out and legal things to sort in order to get to Maldives.

Raquel met me in Plaza Espa?a to see about getting a police record. Can you do that on a tourist? The answer, "No." At first all of the officials were mystified and finally thought I ought to go to the American embassy, but just to be sure, I should talk to everyone at every counter in the Commisary before proceeding. The final counter was a small office around the side where a lovely young woman gave us directions to the American Embassy, which is up the mountain. Lovely.

Up the mountain on the rich people's train, we took every wrong turn we could out of four possible directions and finally set off down the right way and followed the American flag. When arrived, it was to a sign- hours Monday - Friday 9am -1pm. It was closed! sigh

Well, at least tomorrow I can go easily without questions.

Next order of business was to secure passport size photographs and copies of a document from my email. Would you believe that the first FOUR internet cafes' printers were down! Number 5 had no internet in it's internet cafe. (I wished him luck.) Number six charged me 2 Euros for half an hour and the four printed pages. Actually, it was 1 Euro whether I was on for 2 minutes or 1/2 hr, so here I sit...

Now to mail the thing.

Wish me luck!

even the apartment was hungover

I know you don't have any sympathy for me- hell, I don't even have sympathy for myself. How many times have I been told that no matter how filling I think it is, soup is NOT FOOD...at least, not when it comes to absorbing alcohol.

You see, there's this girl. She's Italian. She plays and sings really well. Guitar, I mean. I'd marry her if she were a guy. She's wonderful. She came over last night and I cooked Japanese for her and one of my flatmates. It was great. She couldn't use chopsticks to save her life, but it was all good. How we laughed! Then cigarettes, wine, guitar playing in English and Spanish, more wine, more guitar, more laughing, another bottle...

We missed the first party we were supposed to go to. Then Albert came over (Albert was the person who lived in my room before me) with his friend José (or some other name nothing like José) and we all went to a club. Whoa. Albert is hard to be in the car with careening down the streets of Barcelona defying death at every turn when I'm sober. Bless him, he's a lovely person- really dear, but I prefer walking. We stopped the car once so that I could get out and walk. I was dying to just be wherever we were going. I felt bad. Really bad.

At the club, I can see it's a regular type club (opening night, and it has a pool). There's a long line, and we only had tickets for 4 and there were five of us. To me the solution was simple- I would stay in and around the car while they went in, and maybe I could get some sleep. Sleep eluded me, mostly because I was double over for the pain and nausea of my poor abused stomach. Luckily I had a few euros in my pocket and there was a naf hamburger stand in the parking lot. I bought two bottles of water and a hamburger. Oh. The hamburger. I don't remember much except that it was an endeavor to either make me throw up, or to soak up the alcohol. I don't know which one I was routing for. Aside from the fact that I have been vegetarian for a few months now (avoiding red meat since Peru, a year ago), hamburgers in Spain are foul. Truly awful and on the "don't do that" list. It was about a foot long and served like a hotdog. I barely choked it down. What it was going to do was uncertain for awhile, but finally it began to soak up the alcohol. Somewhere around 4:30am I went to sleep. 5:30am my friends poured out of the club. I have no idea if we were speaking in Spanish or in English. Probably Spanish, or maybe even a mix.

My flatmate saw me home. Good thing too, as he had the keys and I did not. We came in the living room about 7am to see flatmate number two (Augustino) lying, sprawled on the dirty floor in what looked like a painful position, and like he had fallen. Flatmate number one (Omar) with great effort managed to at least get Augustino off of the floor and onto the love seat. He continued to sleep in a contorted position (he's tall) half on and half off of the love seat until around 9am.

I couldn't sleep. I felt bad. Further, I walked across our floor barefoot and then there was something sticky on my feet and..shudder. I decided that the thing to do was to take an hour long shower and send text messages.

After the shower, I re-read a book and around 10am went to sleep until noon. At noon I woke up and walked into the living room..it looked like something terrible had happened. Shot glasses, wine glasses, dishes, empty bottle, guitar, music, laptops, SAM, speakers, toilet paper(?!), wine openers, empty cigarette packs...everything in this terrible mix that just looked like a hangover.

Still feeling pretty bad, I noticed that someone (my guess is flatmate #3, Samanta) put out a mop, broom and dustpan. Sure that this was the cure for my own poor stomach, I set about cleaning. I SCRUBBED the whole house. Shocking really.

Later, Augustino came home (he had left at some point in the morning) we all wanted to know what happened!! Samanta told us that when she came home, she walked into the livingroom and it looked like it had been ransacked, everything was open (all the doors and windows) and there was a man lying on the floor with his elbows covering his face- it was with great fear that she sneaked up on him and moved his arms to discover it was her flatmate! Try as she might though, she couldn't get him to go to bed, so she left him. He seemed to think he was being normal- only had five beers, but was very tired, and had been sitting on the floor and then..

galleries at long last!!!

I know that some of you have been asking for a very long time about my photos, and here they are! I'm still working on the galleries, and hopefully later this year I will have all of them in lovely order with captions. You can click on the title to this article to go directly to all of the galleries, and If you would like to access them in the future, or one by one, I have laid them out by country under "MY GALLERIES" in the sidebar below "previous posts".

Special thanks to Mark and Simon Baltovic who have made these galleries possible.

my new flat

I awakened my first morning in my new flat to discover that my room was interior! If you know Barcelona, you understand the significance. If you do not, well, Barcelona is an extremely noisy city. It's very common for people to be unable to sleep at all for the first week or two here, after which they collapse unconscious from exhaustion. To have an interior room means to have a bit of peace. You can still hear the sirens, and hum of cars but are unlikely to be driven to kill because of the loud motos (city motorcycles) echoing off of your walls and your brain.

Last month I stayed in my friend Tony's flat. He had just purchased said flat and as such, it was just me, my sleeping mat and my suitcase in an empty flat. No hot water, no refridgerator or cooking (no gas), just me and my stuff. It was wonderful, so peaceful...until the second week when the workers began working and fighting.

The building is having some work done on the front and on the roof, and it begins every morning at about 8am. The first morning the workers were in a full rage. I heard yelling, blows and encouragement to the fighters. This was all on the roof directly above me. I had only just crawled into bed around 6am. Then the machinery and the hammers and picks and...shudder. I got up and showered in the frigid water, and fled the house by 11am.

That week was the worst. I'm not tired at night. I want to sleep in the morning. As a result I didn't sleep more than two hours a night all week. Some days I managed another 1-2 hours at lunch time when they went on break.

Oh. I hated them. I swore at them as I washed my face, hair and teeth and fled the house daily to escape the noise that surrounded me.

Last week they didn't fight or work very much (mostly they just stood around looking like they had just stopped what they were doing), so I had some respite. Of course, it was nothing compared to waking that first glorious morning in a bed looking out over all the interior terraces of the block! It's amazing to see, like an inner sanctum of the habitants of Barcelona. Each unknown to the other and all sharing this oasis of peace in the sea of noise.