Allie in the South of Spain

Carrying on the family legacy This week as I took out Cooper for an afternoon walk I was approached by a mud-covered black lab. She was super friendly and when I petted her, she immediately sat down and pushed her head into my hand, leaning in to me (like a typical lab). She looked healthy and though dirty, didn´t seem to have spent too much time outside by herself. I think she is either lost or much more probable has been abandoned by her owners. This is actually something pretty common here in Spain. People (who I assume are suffering from the crisis) turn their dogs loose when they can no longer take care of them for whatever reason. I have a soft spot for labradors. My family has always had them as pets and they are the best dogs! Wonderful with children, friendly and energetic. Though this dog approached a ton of people and was rebuffed by almost all (mostly in quite mean ways) I feel like she must have somehow known that my family also has a history of taking in strays. ...

The Little Giant of Aberdeen County by Tiffany Baker This was a book I randomly picked off my mom´s book shelf before heading back to Spain. It was sort of meh for me. It was neither very good nor very bad, probably one that in another month I will only remember vaguely. Basically it told the story of a girl who suffered from a disease which caused her to become disproportionately large and how this helped shape her life in a small town. A Game of Thrones by George RR Martin After having watched the first season of the TV series and hearing about the books this summer from my mom and sister, I decided to give the first one a try. I was pleasantly surprised. Although this isn´t my favorite genre, it kept my attention and stuck pretty close to the show (which rarely happens in my experience). I would recommend this book and will continue with the next in the series soon. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving I pretty much hated the last novel I read by Irving ( The ...

The tale of our T.V. The other morning as Jose was watching the news our T.V. shut off for no reason. I   was still in bed but heard his curse and it was enough to make me get up. Apparently our T.V. had died which is a real bitch because we had literally just bought a surround sound system (a great deal at a sale we found while grocery shopping of al things) the weekend before. We hadn't even set up the system yet, it still sits sadly in its box.  We bought our flatscreen television no more than 3 years ago when we were in our old apartment and it later made the move with us. It was the first big purchase that we made together which is not to say that it holds some kind of sentimental value. Rather I make that point to show that we spent a good deal of money on this T.V. not very long ago. And it died. Dammit! Not built to last Things are just not built to last anymore. I swear that my family enjoyed watching the same ancient Zenith T.V. from the time of my older sis...

The back story I started learning Spanish in high school as a requirement to get into college. I never in a million years imagined how much it would end up molding my life and leading me to where I am today. That being said, during college as I continued my studies I spent time in Mexico working with children and later in Chile during a semester abroad. That means that the Spanish I spoke when I graduated was a mixture of several different influences and that the accent I had was not anything near what it sounds like today. Fast forward a couple of years to when I met Jose in grad school. After spending so much time with all the Andalucians that were there for the year (and who later stayed for the program) and then coming to live in Seville for a year myself, my accent, slang and intonations have all changed.  This was confirmed for me this week again as I met several people while doing job interviews (in Spanish) and they couldn´t get over how strong my accent was. At time...

Snaggletooth I had braces for three years when I was in middle school. This was a time in my life that basically everyone had them so it didn´t seem like a big deal. In fact, in the very beginning I was even excited to have them put on. Towards the end, though, I would have ripped them off myself given the chance.  There is nothing like that first day when you get your braces off and your teeth feel so big and smooth. Plus you can eat all the things that were either forbidden or too difficult to have. Even better is being able to smile and know that your teeth are straight and beautiful. My teeth had pretty much remained where they should have without a lot of movement (even without wearing a retainer) for the last 12ish years. That is until 5 wisdom teeth decided to grow in (that´s right, 5. I had one for good luck I guess). There obviously was not space for these new, invading teeth so things started to shift around. Now I feel like my once nice smile is jacked up. Most ...

202o Olympic host city top 3 Earlier this month Madrid, along with Tokyo and Istanbul, presented its bid to be the host city for the 2020 Olympic games. This happened to be the third time in recent history that Madrid lobbied for its candidacy, having done so as well for the 2012 and 2016 games. From what I heard and read it seemed as if there was a lot of public support here in Spain for this candidacy. The arguments for Madrid being that it already has a lot of infrastructure in place and that it would help to create a lot of jobs in the region. I, as you can imagine, was excited with the possibility of having the Olympics only a train ride away. There was a lot of anticipation over the weekend as each of the top three cities presented their arguments, answered questions and lobbied in Argentina.  Things were looking pretty good going into the final voting process (as a lot of people were arguing that with the instability in Turkey lately they wouldn´t be a good bet). It ...

This summer and since arriving back in Spain I have been able to knock a few items off my 30 before 30 list. I wrote about it first in May here . The original list is below and I have crossed out the items I have accomplished, plus I have added photos and stories as well. 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 . I don´t want to toot my own horn, but I have been driving our manual car pretty well after about a week of practicing. In fact, I drove by myself for the first time and survived (without stalling at all). Boom! 9. Go to (and enjoy) a soccer game . Jose and I went to a Betis soccer game for our anniversary this spring. I had a pretty good time and wrote about the experience here . There was even photographic evidence of this event: 10. Write a book. 11. Visit Ir...

It takes a village The first weekend that Jose and I were back from the States we attended his oldest cousin´s wedding. She lives in the small village where Jose´s entire family (both sides) all resides. We knew that it was going to be a big wedding, an all day affair (and it was). We arrived around noon and I proceeded to get my hair done. Then we had lunch as a family and caught up with both sets of grandparents while aunts and cousins ran around getting ready. It was kind of a madhouse while we bounced between different residences saying hello to family we hadn´t seen all summer.  Jose´s cousins with his grandfather, waiting for the bride About an hour before the mass was about to start the bride´s family and friends all headed over to her house in order to accompany her across town to the church. Jose´s aunt asked him to escort her since he is her godson as well as being the oldest cousin. This small village has maintained a lot of their traditions and I was interested...

First world problems Since arriving back in Spain from our summer spent in Michigan we have not had internet. It has suuuuuuuuucked. Apparently we had been without service since the beginning of August, though we were not aware of this because we were out of the country. After getting in contact with our internet service provider and being told that we should wait until mid-September to make any decisions about switching since they were alledgedly making improvements to their system, we decided to contract another company. This girl cannot live without the internets; it has been a trial. In any case, the new folks came today and set us up this very evening and I am loving it! Oh, and it turns out our original service provider just went belly up and no longer exists though they owe us like 100 euro. I doubt we will be seeing that. Catching up Now that we are back in business, I feel like there are so many things I need to write about in order to maintain this online peek into my ...