I'm home

Last night I watched Blood Diamond. It really, really made me want to go back to Guinea. One of the parts takes place in Forecariah, Guinea, where we did our training! But they clearly did not film it there. Today I got my schisto test - the people at the doctor's office were so confused, clearly none of them had ever heard of it and they just didn't know what to do with me.

My backpack didn't make it on my connecting flight in Dublin. Luckily, I did make it. But they held the plane for me and had a bus waiting at my flight to take me directly to the next one! Crazy.

I have a feeling that the blogging will stop until I know what I'm doing. I just can't imagine that the things that make me excited, like the Oconomowoc Pick 'n' Save, will be interesting to anyone but me. I will update when I know when/if the program is reopening!

Last day of the trip

Tomorrow at this time I'll be boarding my flight.

Camilo, Ana and I arrived in Barcelona on Tuesday night and spent yesterday walking through the city, eating paella, going to the Picasso museum, visiting the aquarium (where we all turned into 10 year olds, especially at the exhibit of these fish that don't stop having sex until they kill themselves from it, which was fricking hysterical. So much fish sex was going on in that tank!), and eating sushi last night.

The highlights were definitely the copulating fish and the sushi. I'd been missing sushi since leaving last July 7th! Actually, everything about yesterday was great. The main strip, Las Ramblas, is really nice and it was wonderful to walk around. The paella was delicious and the museum was interesting.

I have a lot to look forward to at home - family, friends, weddings, road trip from WI to NYC to DC to NC. Hopefully I can get a cheap phone and a pay-as-you-go plan so I can call you all and finally catch up in non-electronic format.

Not so mad anymore

So PC promises to send my things back to Guinea and that I'll still be able to have the 100 lbs. weight allowance in addition to the trunk. I'll survive without my stuff for a couple weeks or months. It's not like I've had many things since January, so what's another couple months?

Also, I got an optimistic email from someone in Guinea who I won't name so they aren't held responsible if the program doesn't reopen, but it makes me think the chances are high and that will make going back to the US on Friday a little easier.

Bags on a boat

It is the government, so it shouldn't be a shock, but Peace Corps has sent my things on the fricking boat back to America, estimated arrival in August. I will be going back to West Africa in June or July. What a mess. Grrr.

Madrid is fantastic. Hotel is great, tapas are the greatest things ever, sangria is delicious.

Stupid Peace Corps.

Cam and his mom, Ana

A few things have changed since Cam's mom showed up, for the better...

1. We have someone else to talk to. And she's adorable. Camilo and I, after 4 months of having no jobs and being together every day, have turned into one of those really, really old married couples who complete each other's sentences and speak almost entirely in inside jokes. It's kind of creepy and good to have someone else around...
2. Our accommodation and eating has improved dramatically in quality. That's a picture in the hotel bar - we are practically sitting on top of the Alhambra in Granada. And today we ate 3 meals and none of them came from the grocery store.
3. We have all the new Grey's and Office episodes so I can be caught up when I get back to the States, thanks to her computer and hotel internet access.
4. She brought me a birthday present! A bag and a coin purse from her and her mom and sister. Seriously, could she be any nicer? (and she doesn't read this blog so it's not sucking up)


Tomorrow we head back to Madrid - Cam and I spent one night there before we got his mom from the airport and took the train to Granada. She got us a room in the Intercontinental and it was so nice it made me imagine what it would be like to live in the developed world with a job...not that I have any plans of doing that in the next 2 years. We have 3 days there (his mom has a meeting) and then we are going to Barcelona for the last 3 days of the trip.

It's now less than a week until I'm back and I think it's going to be okay. They say the culture shock is worse coming back but since it's only temporarily and I've had so much time between Guinea and now I hope it's not as terrible as people make it out to be. And I got a slightly disconcerting email from the PC, saying that they were shipping my stuff on a boat and it should be arriving in the US in August, at which point it will be shipped to my house. I'm hoping I wasn't supposed to be on that email list, since my things should stay in Guinea until May. They told me that they would keep them in case the program reopened and send them to a new country if I ended up doing that. Cross your fingers that there wasn't a major fuck-up. I don't like the idea of my stuff sitting on a ship while I'm headed back to West Africa!!

Do I look older??

In Porto on my birthday. I can't emphasize it enough - everyone should go to Portugal!

In all it´s glory...The Moldy Shoe

I promise that it was even grosser in person!

It's too cold to go home...

Weather report for Okauchee says it feels like 18 and is snowy and windy. I think I need to stay in Spain a little longer.

Forgot to bring my camera to the internet to load the moldy shoe picture. I know you are all anxiously anticipating it.

Birthday Celebrations and Moldy Shoes

The rest of the birthday was fantastic. Cam and I went to lunch and ate some sort of gravy/multiple meats/cheese/egg sandwich thing that's a local specialty, then to a port tasting and tour, where we pretended to understand the nuances of port. After we ate some ridiculously expensive (for us) chorizo and shrimp and drank some beer. Next it was off to a little place with sangria and the nicest lady serving us. We headed to drink some more port at this place called Vinologia and it ended up being the highlight of the evening.

First off, we got 2 extra glasses of port. Always fun to get free stuff. The guy serving us was about our age and was the most talkative person you can imagine. He went into this 20 minute monologue about how much he wanted to go to Africa and how he watched this television special about this boy who gave a large pink stuffed teddy bear to be shipped to Angola and given to a kid, among other toys to be handed out. *not to be irritating, but that's such a waste of money. Would have been much better for the kids and the local economy to donate money and then buy things that are produced in Angola to hand out. Okay, getting off of soapbox now.* Anyway, he was great and hilarious and told us about all his previous American customers and how ridiculous he thinks people in LA are. We headed to an Irish pub after, where the waitress asked why Cam speaks Portuguese. Seriously, it's ridiculous. I know it's similar to Spanish and everything, but Camilo shows up somewhere, hears someone say something once and then just commits it to memory. Wish I could do that.

Our grand finale was a trip to McDonald's. I know, I know. Poor Camilo didn't want to go because he didn't want people to think he was a bad guy for taking me there on my birthday, but it's what I wanted to eat!! And since I'm not going to keep eating all that crap once I get back to the US I need to take advantage of it now.

This morning we packed up for our overnight train to Madrid, where Cam's mom got us a room in a real hotel!! How fancy. We pick her up in 2 days. Now, about those moldy shoes...

When we arrived in Morocco we kind of panicked. It was so cold and we didn't have shoes. Cam ended up with some cool sneakers that were terribly uncomfortable and he hasn't been able to wear. He got some new ones in Spain that are much better. I bought these terribly ugly black loafer type shoes. When they got wet in Fes we stuck them in a plastic bag and subsequently ignored them for 10 days. Big mistake! This morning Cam pulled them out of his bag and looked inside and they were MOLDY!!! Really, really moldy. I have a picture and will load it when I next use the internet. It was so gross!!! Needless to say, they were left behind in the hotel room. I feel bad for the cleaning lady.

Thanks for all the birthday messages!

The drunker I get, the better I bowl.

Cam and I found a miraculous mall yesterday here in Porto. Before you think we are too pathetic, we did climb 225 steps to the top of a church and look around the church before we did it. We had planned on going to a movie, but then they had an arcade and bowling! So we played 3 games and drank a few beers and my score just kept on improving. I actually beat Cam the last 2 games. Even though my high score was 139 I was still really proud of myself. All in all a very good time.

Today we are headed to have a picnic in this really pretty park and then do some port tasting and then to dinner. What a great way to turn 26. Although the overhead lighting in our hotel made me think I needed to get some wrinkle creams this morning.

Porto is another fantastic city - I think everyone should go to Portugal. What a great place. Sadly, we are leaving tomorrow night for Madrid. Luckily, we are meeting Cam's mom there - I think our grocery store bought meals are about over...

I'm back in 10 days. The last couple days I've really started thinking about how happy I'll be to see everyone and have had to resist the urge to skype all the people I know to catch up. It will happen soon enough!

I wish The Lonely Planet didn't oversell...

While I have appreciated The Lonely Planet's advice on many occasions, they do have a tendency to oversell a place. Yesterday Camilo and I took a day trip to Sintra, a gorgeous town that they said was like "Alice in Wonderland meets Lord of the Rings in a Never-Never Land." What the hell does that even mean?? The town was beautiful and we had a great hike up to a castle and palace and a gorgeous park, but come on, how could it have lived up to it's expectations?? It was similar to our experience at the pastry shop in Belem and the "angel tarts."

The hike was about 5k, all uphill. We should have taken the bus, it was exhausting!! We just kept on saying, "this is good for us." And eventually we made it, a little sweaty but intact. Then we met this annoying Canadian kid who told us he was majoring in alcoholism and wouldn't shut up about his polarized sunglasses. Clearly he followed us around all day. And I tried to ignore him, but it was difficult. Cam was taking photos and left me to babysit the kid. But his photos are uploaded...check them out at

www.flickr.com/photos/camilo11

We also met these adorable women from Arizona. It was like hanging out with my mom and her friends for a little while and I had such a nice time talking to them! Of course they were all impressed with our adventure and took a picture of us...what a riot.

Last night we finally did some drinking at the Lisbon equivalent of NYC's LES. Oh, how I missed it. Then we ate some yummy garlic shrimp and pork while sitting next to a man who let "Smack That" play off his 2 cell phones, even when he wasn't at the table. It was weird, and even weirder given the buzz I already had.

Oh, and yesterday morning our hostel owner told us there wasn't any space for us for a 3rd night...I asked why he waited so long to tell us and didn't leave a note in our room or anything letting us know and he just looked stupid and pathetic. Luckily we didn't have a hard time finding a new one, it was just across the square and run by these 2 old sisters who seriously only yelled at one another to communicate! They told Cam that we should report the other hostel to the newspaper and were just horrified by what happened to us. What nice ladies. It was like being in my grandma Janet's house - they had all this old furniture and knick-knacks everywhere and plastic flower arrangements. Unfortunately, this also meant that we had to act/be somewhat sober when we got home - you can't return to your grandma's house drunk!!

And the flight situation is resolved. For a $25 fee I can get a ticket reissued in Barcelona just before the flight. Thank goodness. Who the hell uses paper tickets anymore, anyway??

We are off to Coimbra, a university town a couple hours north of here.

Guinea news

By the way, the word is that the new Prime Minister picked all his ministers and they were approved by the President and the people are happy with it all. I'm crossing my fingers that they reopen the program this summer and I can just go back instead of having to start over again, which PC says might not even be possible until fall or winter...

Lisbon - best city ever

We took an overnight train from Seville to Lisbon and arrived yesterday morning. Since then it's been one cultural activity after another. The museums here are incredible - we went to the Modern Art museum (Bill, I might have to have you explain modern art to me. I actually thought the first exhibit was construction work being done on the museum...) and to the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, which was amazing. Apparently this guy only bought the best of the best pieces, so everything was intact - it was all these glass vases and pottery and furniture and rugs in addition to paintings. I'm normally a person who pretends to be really impressed in museums, but it was so cool that I was actually impressed. And it was free because we told them we were teachers! (Well, we were. And will be again this summer...)

Last night we went to see The Departed. Thankfully the Portuguese prefer their movies subtitled instead of dubbed. I liked it a lot, but there was a ton of blood at the end! Ew. I can see why it won Best Picture, though. Tonight we are seeing Music and Lyrics, a Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant romantic comedy that I've never heard of, but I don't care. I love them both. And I've missed going to the movies! Cam is not really looking forward to it, but is a good sport.

Today we spent the morning at a religious artifacts museum that also had 2 mummified children. Ick! But interesting. Then we headed to the Jeronimo monastary, which was extremely impressive and huge. We also saw where Vasco De Gama set out on his explorations and then tried to go to a Design Museum, but it was closed. Then we had a cream pastry that The Lonely Planet said tasted like it was made by angels...and it was good, but not amazing. The writers should get a cream puff from the Wisconsin State Fair before publishing such bold statements!

Portugal is truly fantastic. People have been really helpful and the signs are in English and it's all relatively cheap. Museum entry fees have all been less than 3 euros...compared to 8 in Spain.

Can't believe I'll be back in the US in just over 2 weeks. Well, maybe. The annoying company I bought my ticket home from sent paper tickets to my house in WI, so my dad sent them to Cam's mom in Colombia to bring to me, but they never arrived and my dad sent them regular mail, without a tracking number or anything. Hmmm. Hopefully they'll let me know soon what needs to be done to get another ticket. Otherwise I might just have to extend the trip...

Holy Week aka Slutty Teens on Parade

Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the official kick-off to Holy Week here in Spain. There were about a zillion people roaming about and a ton of parades to watch, but the most interesting thing was watching the teenagers. When did teens get so slutty? Honestly, it was incredible. The girls were wearing the tightest pants and shortest skirts and highest heels. And it was cold and rainy!

While I've been gone, the mullet apparently came back in style. The young men in Seville take their gel and hair products seriously. Additionally, girls have what can only be described as a uniform - tight, white shorts cut like pants, either nylons or tights underneath, sleazy top and poorly tailored blazer. Top that all off with some sparkly heels and matching purse, as well as some chunky highlights and Barbie make-up. I was telling Cam that I forgave a lot of horrific outfits in Guinea because the options were so limited. So what's the deal here? When did that become an okay outfit to wear to church? And when did I get so fricking old?

Actually, I almost lost a year of my life today. Once I turn 26 next week I no longer qualify for the cheap train tickets or any kind of discount. But the lady who sold us our Eurail passes tried to convince Cam and I that I was actually turning 27 and didn't qualify for the discount...and the worst part was that I questioned (for a split second...) how old I was!!!

At any rate, the parades were fun and the wine was cheap and I will now associate KKK hoods with Seville as well as the KKK. Poor Catholics - having their costume idea stolen really ruined the image of the hoods for a lot of people.

Okay, we are off to Lisbon - a train to Madrid and an overnighter to Portugal.