Allie in the South of Spain

Last Saturday as Jose and I were flipping through the channels we came across the Eurovision song competition. I couldn't believe that Jose had kept such a gem of a show from me. After watching for 5 minutes, I was hooked. In this song competition, 24 countries across Europe send a singer or group to perform one song either in their native language or more often than not in English (since commercially this is more attractive). When all the singers have finished, voting opens up for about 15 minutes and the audience (there are no judges) can call in or text to vote for their favorite. You cannot, however, vote for the performance from your own country. After the voting ends, the 42 countries that participate (though not all perform) give their top choices points. It is interesting because neighboring and friendly countries usually give higher scores to one another. In the end, a winner is crowned and that song tends to become a hit right away. This year the competi...

I arrived back in Spain a few weeks ago just in time for a vow renewal ceremony with my Spanish family. Silly me, I thought I would get here, get pretty and celebrate since Jose and his parents had been planning for the last few months. Ha. I was wrong. The first week I was here we were running all over the place with last minute errands, meetings, decisions etc. Though I appreciate that they wanted me to be involved, I also would have been fine to just go with the flow (as was seen by my agreeing with just about everything people wanted except for having 9 bridesmaids). Just FYI, if you are ever planning on eloping, you can contract flowers 3 days before your ceremony here in Spain and they will turn out great. Even with all the stress of trying to get a lot done in a short amount of time, I ended up having a wonderful celebration here and feel very lucky to have been able to share this experience with both sides of our families. Like my sister back home said, a lot of people get ma...