Allie in the South of Spain

I am not exactly sure how it started, but for years my sisters and I have been playing an on-going game of "would you rather." If you don´t know, this game entails giving a person two choices and requiring them to pick one, no matter how disturbing, disgusting or just plain dumb they are. Often times this requires choosing the lesser of the two evils since neither option is good or even pleasant. It really is a silly game and it has been gradually getting more and more random as time goes on. (Throw in my brother-in-law, a late night and a couple of beers a piece and things go downhill quickly). I am sure it will continue when I am home this summer but often wonder if things will get cleaned up now that there is a small child hanging around. Here are some examples of choices proposed in the past. As you can see, they usually start off being non-offensive, even thought provoking. Would you rather be able to breathe underwater or fly? Would you rather spend the rest ...

Recently a friend of mine posted a link to the website www.ifitweremyhome.com on her Facebook profile. It is a site where you can compare what your life might be like living in countries all over the world versus living in the United States. Since I am now living in Spain, I thought it would be interesting to see this comparision. There are 3 rounds in this bout. Round one: The Good People in Spain use 45.46% less electricity. (I can attest to this. We don´t have a dryer, we unplug everything when not in use, etc.) People in Spain consume 38.71% less oil. (When a liter of gas costs 1.5 euro, you use public transportation. Big SUVs here are few and fair between). People in Spain spend 63.3% less on health care. (It´s free here. For now). People in Spain have a 32.25% less chance of dying in infancy. People in Spain live 1.94 years longer. (This sort of surprised me since I assumed people lived much longer here. Jose still has all 4 grandparents!)....

Sometimes I think that Spain´s justice system is whack. Maybe it is because I come from a place where we seem to fill up our prisions pretty quickly and have made a business out of incarcerating folks in some cases (see, not everywhere is perfect). But my issue often times here in Spain is that I don´t believe the punishments fit the crimes. I don´t pretend to understand the complexities of Spanish law nor have I studied this very intensely because ain´t no one got time for that. This is just an observation I have made and here are a few examples of what I mean: In Spain you cannot be sentenced to life in prision. It doesn´t exist. There is a maximum amount of time you can be in the clink. This blew my mind when Jose told me. You can commit a horrific crime and eventually hope to be freed from jail. Maybe Spain does a better job rehabilitating their criminals but I seriously doubt it. Some people just deserve to rot in jail. You see this a lot when old national terrorists serve...

On Sunday I spent probably 6 hours watching the last episodes of The Office . This is a show that I have enjoyed for years but that since moving to Spain had lost contact with since they don´t show it on T.V. here. Instead we have had to look for episodes online and after the big finale recently I wanted to finish it off. I needed closure. I was pleasantly surprised by how they wrapped everything up since I had honestly gotten pretty bored after Michael Scott left. How can you replace this? After watching the end of the series I got to thinking about what other shows I have seen every episode of and what this might say about me. Here is the list of what I came up with: Full House  (I even kept watching when they really started to push life lessons down my throat, like the episode Kimmy Gibbler got drunk). Saved by the Bell   (Again, from the young episodes with the weird Britishy teacher to the super lame college years, I stuck it out. Wasn´t there a wedding in Vega...

Remember my discovery of the Eurovision song competition last year? Well on Saturday night it came back to entertain me once again.  This year the show was filmed in Sweden since last year´s winner had been representing this country. After watching the 26 songs I had my favorites. Spain´s performance was a real snoozefest so I knew they weren´t going to win. I liked Greece´s kilt-wearing guys singing about boozing it up (their song was titled "Alcohol is free"). I liked Belgium and Malta. Commercial music tends to do better in the competition I think and both these songs sounded like something you might hear on the radio. After the performances comes the voting. Generally speaking countries with close ties vote for one another. So for example, Portugal tends to give Spain lots of points. Each country gives out different amounts of points depending on how they ranked fellow countries. They cannot vote for themselves. This is the most boring part of the competition. Pl...

When you are in school you inevitably get sucked into the playground fads that all your friends are obsessed with at the time. For me it was Pogs and Beanie Babies. Those were the MUST-HAVEs of my past. Working in an elementary school and having recess duty often times will remind me of when I was young as I see how things can become cool and then spread quickly, becoming a hit. Earlier this year everyone would be showing off their sticker collections. The more you had in your album the cooler you were. They were a hot commodity. Then the classic jump-rope came onto the scene (definitely a repeat offender) and everyone got into it. Recently all the girls have been bringing in giant elastic bands. One let me snap a picture of her rainbow band: They use these elastics kind of like a jump-ropes. They stretch them out and hook them around their legs to create a rectangle to jump over. They have been doing tricks and it does look like fun. They have songs and it certainly ...

Jose and I no longer live in Sevilla capital. Instead, our new apartment is in a suburb right outside the city called Dos Hermanas (two sisters). We are very well connected to Seville but have the perks of living in a smaller place. The name Dos Hermanas honors the two daughters of a king´s military commander in the 13th century. We have every thing we need here: shopping, restaurants, bars, cultural events, even a big feria (fair). Since we have adopted this city as our own, we decided to visit the fair when it was in town last weekend. When you walk into the feria, you usually enter through a big portal which is colorful and gets lit up at night. Here you can see the symbol of Dos Hermanas, the two sisters: Basically a fair is divided in to several sections. First there are tables and tents set up with people selling things. Most of the time these booths offer what you would expect at a fair, a bunch of crap you don´t need. You can find personalized t-shirts, ...

Today Jose and I celebrated our one year anniversary (again). We were officially married on December 30th last year in Michigan but we also had a wedding here in Spain on May 12th. We decided to try to do something to celebrate both dates. In December we went out for a fancy dinner at an Italian restaurant. This was the day Jose planned. Today it was my turn. To begin, I planned on surprising Jose with a lunch out. He had no clue where we were headed. But he definitely enjoyed the food when we arrived. In case you can´t tell by all the crap on the walls, this is a TGIF´s. It is way overpriced here in Spain but you can get a good burger. After lunch we headed to a soccer game, my first here in Spain. We went and saw Jose´s favorite team, Betis. They actually won which seems not to happen very often. It was pretty hot in the stadium but I survived. I especially loved the mascot which is a palm tree. I didn´t appreciate all the people smoking around us and as you can see...

I saw this idea on another blog and liked it enough to come up with one myself. This is a list of 30 things I would like to accomplish, see, do, complete, etc.  before I turn 30. I have a little less than 3 years to try to cross everything off. As you will see, most of the list has to do with my passions in life, especially traveling. Also, the order is more or less how they came to my mind, the numbers do not necessarily reflect importance. 1. Go on another cruise. 2. Learn to cook Indian food. 3. Start a family (read: have a baby). 4. Become my own boss. 5. Visit Morocco. 6. Spend Christmas in Michigan. 7. Walk at least a part of the Camino de Santiago. 8. Drive comfortably here in Spain. 9. Go to (and enjoy) a soccer game. 10. Write a book. 11. Visit Ireland. 12. Cook a Thanksgiving dinner solo. 13. Keep a plant alive for more than a few months. 14. Go 6 months without buying anything new. 15. See the new Pope. 16. Learn to braid my own hair. 17. Throw a succe...

The first time I visited Spain was four years ago this month. It is sort of odd to think that so much has changed since that time. I can honestly say that at the time of this trip I in no way imagined that some day I would be living here. My first visit was with a dear friend, Kate. We traveled through Italy before coming over to Spain. It was an awesome trip! Seriously a blast! In these past years I spent a good amount of time finishing my M.A. in North Carolina before spending a year basically studying abroad in Sevilla. I like to think that I was testing the waters whilst staying here. Jose and I had a lot of adventures during this year in Spain. I think we traveled so much so that Jose would have an easier time convincing me to come back (permanently). Visiting Ronda and Los Pueblos Blancos This was such a successful stay that apparently Jose thought it would be a good idea to spend the rest of his natural life with me (he´s nuts). So we got married (twice). The first ...

It´s been about a week since my last post and though not a lot has been going on around here, I figured I would write a quick summary of the more "interesting" things that have occurred. To begin on a high note, we got our first set of curtains put up (and all the rods as well). My mother-in-law is currently sewing the rest of what we will be hanging so hopefully within the next few weeks we should be finished. That leaves only a few more lamps and we will be pretty much done!  This has been a very long process and I am happy that people can´t see in to our living room anymore. P.s. I hate the way my wall color was photographed here, in real life it is a lot more gray. Bad lighting, whoops We also had our shower stall doors installed in our guest bathroom. It´s all set up now for people who are wishing to visit : ) Needs a lamp  Plus we closed off our small inside balcony where we have our washing machine (which is also relatively new) with opaque windows. T...