Can Americans Ever Truly Relax?

Undergraduate is done, I don’t want to get a real job yet, so let’s move to a European country where I can travel and relax for 6 months. Spain, the perfect place for this to be made possible. Spain, the country where they close up shop for 3 hours in the middle of the day to take a nap. After a stressful 2 week period of looking for a “piso,” signing a lease, painting, decorating, and unpacking, we were finally able to truly relax. This lasted about a week. We were finally able to take our siestas, eat our tapas, drink our vino, and walk the streets in awe of it's foreignness. Yet, after one week of not having a care in the world, the three of us became restless.

I began looking for grants and fellowships to do environmental and city planning work with. Carly began questioning the fact of getting a “realll job,” one that would be 40 hours a week. We all agreed we didn’t want "real jobs," but it would look great on the resume. We came to Spain to relax after 4 stressful years of all-nighters, exams and presentations. We came to Spain to get a job, where’d we work the least possible, so we could travel on the weekends and take advantage of our location.

One week of this relaxation and we didnt know what to do with it. I called the GRE international office out of pure panic of lack of productiveness, and scheduled my test for the end of December for my fall applications. I honestly think that between the 3 of us, we’ve taken 10 siestas since we’ve been in Spain. We’ve been here for 2 months. This could be due to the fact that we dont usually get up until 10am at the earliest…most of the time we don’t usually all roll out of bed until noon, however sleeping until 10am in not considered late in Spain. My Spanish professor asks what time I “llevanto” all the time. When I say, “Me llevanto allas diez,” her response has always been “ahh es mui temprano!” And when the three of us don’t wake up until noon, we automatically feel like the day is wasted and were upset that we couldn’t pull ourselves out of bed at least an hour earlier.

It took us a little while to adjust to the Spanish lifestyle of eating late and staying out late, which makes sense for the late wake up time, yet will we ever be able to truly relax in this country and not think of post Spain? Can Americans every truly relax, or is it just us?

Viva la Vida

Dont worry, my blog is not about Coldplay, nor the vegetarian restaurant in Madrid which Kristen had to write a critique for. It is about a restaurant though...well kind of. When thinking of the word "viva," and the saying "live the life" translated into Spanish, I think of Viva, the Mexican Restaurant situated at the corner of the Commons in Ithaca, NY. Viva…the place we’d go to get 2.50 margaritas for Happy Hour on Fridays. This was usually followed by buy one get one free pitchers at Moonies…but we’ll save that for another blog…or just leave it at that. Viva, what we considered the best Mexican in town, even though my freshmen year roommate from southern California told me it was nothinnggg like real Mexican.

On day 1 of my month long Spanish course at Don Quijote, I learned that the letter v is pronounced as “b” in Spanish. Viva….We had been saying it wrong this whole time! We should have been sending texts that read “Biba for margs later?” …Biba for margs later?! That sounds awffull. I know I am probably showing my language stupidity right now, not knowing that Viva isn’t pronounced Viva in its native language, but my semester’s worth of 6^th grade Spanish really wasn’t shining through for me during my 4 years of eating and drinking at Viva.

With this said, I knew that Viva la (expat) Viva was the perfect title for my blog. My blog is not only about my life in Madrid as an American, but mainly about moving on from the Mexican restaurant I would meet my friends at in our quaint little college town, keeping in touch with those people who would enjoy that margarita with me, learning the true pronunciation of the Spanish language, and traveling the globe in search of that 2.50 margarita.

In other words...I didn't want to get a real job so I moved to Madrid, and now I have more time on my hands than I ever can remember...so now you guys get to read about it.

(And yess I know I used Spanglish in my title)