Catching Up

Okay the first few posts here will have screwed up dates because I started writing before I set up the blog. Here goes.

...you'd think the spell checker that comes with blog software would accept the word blog as spelled correctly. but no...

January 1, 2006

Okay I've stopped crying. I managed to miss my connection in Paris--what a twit, maybe it was Freudian--but once I finally got to Barcelona it was sunny and pretty and I finally started getting excited. The cabs here are yellow and black, which is both more distinctive and uglier than all yellow. My cab driver was nice and patient with my awful Spanish.

My landlord's son met me at the apartment to give me the keys but was about ten minutes late -- I spent all ten of those minutes waiting to be robbed blind because I had way more luggage than I could handle. I'm a little paranoid about muggings since I was robbed in Spain myself a few years ago and it seems like everyone I know has a Barcelona robbery story. Getting robbed isn't the end of the world or anything, but it would have really sucked to have ALL my stuff stolen. It didn't happen.

My apartment is bigger than I thought it would be, but also a little less nice. And really cold. There's a little space heater in the bedroom, but that's it for warmth and I'm on the fourth floor with a lot of windows so it's pretty drafty. Should be good for keeping the place cool in the summer, anyway. And the roof deck is very, very cool--I can walk out onto it right from my apartment and see the Sagrada Familia and (almost) the Mediterranean. And there are clothes lines to go with the free washing machine--very authentic.

So far it's hard to tell much about the neighborhood. EVERYTHING is closed because it's a holiday. I accidentally slept through lunch on the Paris-Barcelona flight, so by around 7pm I was starving and completely without food. I wandered around for about 20 minutes before finally finding an open restaurant. (Honestly I would have been happy to eat a candy bar for dinner, but no open convenience stores anywhere.) The waitress asked what I wanted to eat. I asked what they had. She said they had everything. I forgot the Spanish word for menu so I just asked for a menu. Turns out that menu here means a three-course meal so that's what I got. A little more than I needed, but the paella was good and when I ordered red wine (I just wrote whine before correcting it to wine) they brought me half a bottle. My six-month Hemingway imitation has begun.

December 31, 2005

Okay, enough with the crying. It's getting old and making me ugly. I've been crying off and on since Wednesday; I think the lowest point was losing it at the airport bar. Nine Inch Nails and Tori Amos seem to be the only music I can listen to without getting all teary. And I'm not even a crier, usually. I guess it would be worse if I didn't have anything in New York to be sad about leaving.

Crying is sorta like throwing up: in the end both are releases, but the buildup to them is pretty awful.

I'm planning to move back to New York, and I'm only leaving for six months. But people come and go and change and whatever I come back to won't be what I'm leaving behind. Change is good; it's just making me sad right now.

December 25, 2005

I'm moving to Barcelona in six days. It's gonna be great. I'll get to travel all over, maybe climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, hopefully learn Spanish. My family's freaking out. My friends are jealous. Only six more days of winter.

I so don't want to go.

This will pass; I've gone through a phase like this before every big trip I've ever taken. I get lazy or scared or cheap and start to dwell on all the things I could do instead of taking the trip. After I finished grad school I went to Russia for a month, and I remember thinking on the subway ride to the airport (at the Charles/MGH stop) that instead of going to Russia I should stay in Boston and learn to sail. Of course I shouldn't have stayed in Boston and learned to sail. But right then, facing a monthlong solo trip in a scary country where I knew no one and didn't speak the language, the sailboats on the Charles looked pretty inviting.

If I weren't going to Barcelona, I could keep my apartment. I love my apartment. I could keep dating the guy I just broke up with only because I'm moving away. I wouldn't have to miss the Superbowl, or find movers on two days' notice, or risk having my teeth worked on by a Spanish dentist. I could keep my volunteer job. I could walk in the park and run by the river. I could try that Portuguese restaurant on Spring Street I've been meaning to check out. I could see the Darwin exhibit at the Museum of Natural History, and the gay cowboy movie, and the Alfred Hitchcock festival at Film Forum.

This will pass. It will. I'm just too in love with life in New York right now to be excited about leaving.