(no subject)
ill put all my spain entries... just so its easier i guess.
this here is my spain journal that i wrote when i was bored the past 10 days. its mostly boring, especially at first cuz i was waiting around and had nothing else to do. as u will see. but read on if you are bored or want to know what i did and my overall impression of the country.
meet the family:
me =)
my dad
my mom
GuGu- [pronounced goo-goo] my aunt, its chinese for you dads sister
NiNi- [pronounced with long i's, like eye starting w/ an n] my grandma, its chinese for dads mom
YehYeh- [pronounced yay yay] chinese for dads dad, my grandpa
on the plane trip up:
i f*cking forgot to bring a key to my stupid diary. [i was using the remains of my 8th grade english notebook to write this.. it was the first one i grabbed] bleh. im so effing bored. so bored & lonely... so i felt a strong desire to listen to something soft & familiar, so dashboard it is.
wow. so lonely. thats not good seeing as how ive only been on vacatoin w/ the family for about 8 1/2 horas. Nothing has happened yet... i mean, maybe in my imagination, but otherwise, no. things are so dull & im hesitant to write about things of my imagination, mostly becuase i'm rooming w/ my family plus there are ppl around me and i will have to take this notebook to schoool since i plan on taking my ap history notes down in here. [blah blah blah.. complaining about things...] haha, my mom said the other day that no matter the age, if your @ the same age, guys are always 10 years behind mentally. always. i thought things like the even outh at the age of at least 30, heck shes 47. i think.
come to think of it, Yeh Yeh can be really immature at times just becuase he can be super close-minded..
ugh. air is very dry in the airplane and my eyes burn. glasses time.
<3 rebekah.
day 1, el aeropuerto del Madrid:
mom said my pants look homeless. now im sitting next to a homeless man. hes got all his stuff on a luggage cart. and something stinks, but i dont think its him. i think its moms feet. i wonder, you know. what he thinks when he looks at other people. if he even bothers comparing his life to others who have it better off? if hes clinically insane? heh, not that id want to be homeless, but it would be nice to get to do nothing all day. oh wait. i almost already do.
oh, and so much for "smoking rooms" becuase the entire place smells like smoke. everyone here smokes.
so we've got another hour and a half before NiNi & Yeh Yeh will get here, which is the main reason im writing... im bored out of my mind. i wish i could sleep, but no i didnt much on the plane.
you know, not everyone in europe is skinny. most people have healthy rolls id say.
[later that day] 12:30 afternoon, spain time
sh!t! driving started very scary cuz it took yehyeh a while to get used to where the gears are on the car [everyone drives stick shift here]. everyone is trying very hard not to yell, except mom who controls her temper by ignoring it and staring out the window. weve been in the car less than 5 minutes and had 2 close calls to taking all of our lives. but now i guess we are cruising and things are steadier.. i suppose we are headed off to the hotel now, then we will hit the Prada.
they have the cutest compact cars. none of those boring family sedans. oh but they do have those outrageously square euro-vans that drive me nuts, but i think im warming up to them.
day 1 8:52 PM [it gets a bit more interesting now]
ok guess what this makes 30 1/2 hours of hardly no sleep. its hard to describe the kind of exhaustion i feel. i dont know where one day ended and where the next began, so i think i may have had 8 meals in the past day & a half.
anyway, leaving where i left off, we had way more car problems. we parked parallel, but then couldnt figure out how to put the car in reverse, thus making us hit the car in front of us at least 5 times. oh, but before that the car stalled again cuz something about it being in 3rd gear instead of 1st and rolling backward and nearly hitting a car behind us, holding things up a bit. at this point, i was so stressed/freaked that i crunched down in my chair, to hid from who knows what, but i was so tense i cramped up a msucle in my thigh temporarily. a few minutes later gugu, nini and i were able to laugh lightly, i think mostly at the utter craziness of our slightly dire situation, but mom had her eyes closed, probably focused on not throwing up.
then later when we couldnt find out how to put it in reverse and i was taking super long to find out how in the spanish car manual, we ended up having to put the car in neutral and getting out to push it backwards until there was enough room to pull out, and from there yehyeh did some weird thing and it kept stalling and shutting off and then it smelled like serious car burnage and the car started beeping... oh it was so bad. everyone jumped out in fear it would spontaneously combust, except for me, mostly becuase i thought that was quite unlikely, but also becuase i was trying to move the seat in front of me while getting to be on the verge of finding out how to put the car in reverse. i did find it, about 2 minutes later, when we hauled everything out of the car and started dragging it across the street to the hotel [lucky we landed the car so close]. anyways, my dad was busy checking out the car so he gave al the room rental paperwork to me and i checked us all into the hotel where the clerk only knew a few imporante words in english. [so, yay for my super spanish skills!! hah not really]
mk so after we were all checked in we went to the Prada [art museum] but only after grabbing a bite to eat. i saw the word "chorizo" and translated it for "churro" so i ended up having a sausage sandwhich as opposed to a bready cinnamon stick. but we did discover that the calamares [squid type thing] really is so god, and that when our family is together in a foreign country we cause a hold up. k so after food we took the Metro to la Prada, where everything went well accept nobody wanted to look at Ranaissance art except my & my mom & dad. we decided to go
[and it ends there. i got tired ok??]
day 2, road to Toledo 12:25 AM
hah, sorry for the cut off, i got tired last night. continuing where i left off. we decided to go to the Reina Sofia [another art museum] since it was close by, but we said wed go JUST to see the Guernica then we're going home. well when we got there we did go to see the Guernica, but we also saw the salvador dali exhibit cuz yehyeh wanted to. as long as we were there i looked for the melting clocks picture on Mr. Spechts tie, but didnt find it. i did think it was rather self absorped of my grandpa to be like "i dont appreciate any of this lets go home" at the [rada then make us look at the dali exhibit later. o well. i actually really liked it but i wish we werent so tired so we could have more time.
and guernica was really good, except my grandmas constant commentary. it was cool to have everybody appreciating it but since everyone sees it differently, comments to yourself please.
ok so right after the Reina Sofia we went to a restaurante and OMIGAWD ordering was such a pain in the ass w/ people getting confused w/ pricing and how much a paella could serve and the fact we had to put that all in spanish for the waiter..? so me siento MUCHO frustrado! not to mention, yehyeh seemed to think that as opposed to... say trying to translate or telling me to translate, he assumed the louder he spoke in englsih the easier it would be for the spanish waiter to understand.
after dindin we rode back to our hotel and the rest of the night went w/o a hitch except for my spanish nightmares due to dinner... in my dream everybody was yelling at me, telling me to either translate something i didnt know into spanish or actually yelling at me in spanish i didnt know so that we could get something done but then i woke up and worried about whatever it was i was supposed to do becuase i wasnt sure if it was a dream or not. not until after i got up and had a drink did i assure myself it was just a nightmare. then i forced myself to sleep another 5 hours.
so that was yesterday. this morning we checked out of the hotel and headed over to the Plaza Mayor where my dad read about the spanish inquisition and told about the jewish ppl burned at the stake in the plaza. then we had breakfast where ordering went smoothly. (we have a new system, i order and ask the waiter questions. go me!)
now we are in toledo, looking for the alcazar and are sort of lost for the billionth time on this trip.
<3 rebekah
day 2, road to Cordoba 4:00 PM
yay shopping-ness! i bought a tile magnet with a bull on it. k well Toledo is obviously famous for some kind of swords cuz they were in every shop, wall to wall. oh and they were obsessed w/ LOTR, and this one place had an ork blade!! and they had all the jewels too, and i was dying for an arwen necklace but i think theyre about 80 euros. [i found out later that Toledo, Spain is where they made the swords for the movie! hence the obsession and all the swords.]
k so we were gonna go to the alcazar, but it was closed. so we went to the Catedral de Toledo which omg. amazing! so beautiful, and kinda an eye opener to the wealth of the catholic church. at least back in the 13th century or so. they had a plaque there, with the declaration of isabelle and ferdinand about killing all the jews of all the spanish lands and my dad took a zillion pics so he could translate it when we get home. but its weird cuz in the gift shop they sell a bunch of stuff w/ jewish stars on it.
<3 rebekah
day 3, road to... ? 6:45 PM
after that we drove to cordoba, only to get lost a few thousand more times. we went to the hotel, which was a super cute place w/ a nice courtyard. we then went out to search for a restaurant, but since it was sunday night, everything was closed, but eventually we found an ok italian restaurant, and finished at 11 o clock [they eat dinner super late] when we walked home. across the street was a nice plaza w/ a fountain that we threw pennies into. i had nothing to wish though, i just made up a stupid one.
ok so we were like a building away from our hotel, on the same block, i was walking just a few steps ahead of my family, and all of a sudden i heard some people screaming bloody murder and a motorcycle zoomed by, so at first i thought it was just some ppl having fun zooming down the street, but i turned around and my mother was screaming her head off and she goes "oh no they did it!!" and i thought they stole her purse at first, but it turned out they just grabbed my aunts purse right off her shoulder. there really was nothing we could do, so we went back to the hotel and explained what happened to the hotel clerk and he called the police for us. not like we would actually find the people or the purse [which had 750 cash euros, her liscence and most importantly, her passport], but she was going to need the police report to bring to the embassy to get out of the country. so we had to go down to the station, where i had to translate, the officer didnt speak a drop of english, and it was all a bloody pain, and nini and yehyeh were then FREAKED out of their minds about every little thing. like my dad went to get the car from the garage and when he didnt come out after 5 minutes my grandpa was seriously. having a nervous breakdown, screaming and very close to tears. i mean, the whole situation was a bit scary, i was shaken mostly becuase of my mothers screaming, but once i saw things werent thaat bad, as long as we got the passport worked out, it was ok. well, by the time we got back to the hotel, it was probasbly 12:45 and i was filthy but not tired, just extremely stressed, and as to prevent more spanish nightmares i took a sleeping pill. it did keep me from waking up in the morning, but thats ok cuz i got to skip a lot of the morning stress of "what are we going to do now?" at breakfast. we basically rearranged the entire weeks schedule in order to get to the american embassy in time at the end of the week at barcelona.
of course, i shortened this story.. i cant describe how much of a pain all of this was. or, rather how much of a pain my grandparents are. so today after sorting that out, getting lost a few more times, we went to some... Meztica? i dont remember. but its a muslim church and we got gelate and did minimal shopping and when i asked my mom if she was having a good time she replied w/ "terrible". i dont blame her, but she could at least tryyy to enjoy herself.
well weve been driving postcards for 3 hours today. ive written postcards, slept and listened to music. im running out of things to do to pass the time...
oh! in the hotel last night i found a music video channel on tv and it was so good.. there were only like 3 american ppl i recognized, but omg. this song called "space taxi" was HILARIOUS. i cant even describe it, it was like these totally gay europeans being... homosexual. so funny. go download the video. they have this catchy little dance and everything.
im getting hand cramps.
<3 rebekah
el 4th dia, del Arcos, camino al... our hotel.
after breakfast yesterday we went to Seville to our hotel where our room had broekn a/c =( we went out on the town, [got lost of course], had dinner by the river then walked a lot in search of flamenco, which apparently was supposed to be happening in every bar you passed by but we were very unsuccesful. we guessed maybe you have to go at a certain time, like 2 in the morning... spanish people are night people. the sun doesnt set until 10 PM, thats when they go to dinner, are out all night then wake up early again. but they also have siesta time, from 2-4, everything is closed and they sleep. strange huh?
ok so we got wAY lost on the way back from dinner, and my dad was soo upset becuase he couldnt find flamenco for my g-rents and we were lost for about 45 minutes.
after breakfast this morning we drove to a bank to get tickets for the Alhambra but they were sold out there. we then had lunch at the Paradore at the city of Arcos de la Frontera. Paradores are these old spanish building, sometimes castles or other things, but they are government owned and turned into nice hotels. lunch was super expensivo. right next to the Paradore was a cathedral. it was pretty... but i felt kinda creeped. i mean, with all the.. altars. and they had so much wealth and these incredible sculptures and the pained looks on the saints faces and all the dead people and dead Jesus'. and the fact that all the people are buried underneath gave me a creepy kinda feel.i snooped a lil, opening a locked door with a key in it, but at first i was kinda scared to open it, thinking like a dead body would fall on top of me or something (ive read too many stephanie plum books) but behind it was just another locked door. hmm i think thats it, we then drove through some super skinny streets, then out of the city and now im here on the highway.
thursday! camino al Valencia 12:51 AM [i got lazy on day 5 i guess.]
lets see, after that we went to our hotel w/ no a/c again, but it wasnt that hot. next morning i went shopping a teeny store next to the hotel and tried on a smashing halter polo dress but my mom said it was too tight =(. well that day we took on of the double decker tour bus things and walked all day at the Alhambra [Muslim palace], the garden was so pretty [i will have many many pics], and the palace was too, but not so much. i bought my purse on the way back =D and then we went to BK for dinner were a king size fry is almost the same size as our smalls. no joke. it was a bigger paper bag than the small ones.
after showering and flipping through channels at the hotel [porn! hardcore! scarred for life!] i conked out, and all this morning too, skipping breakfast again. my aunt came back and told me my grandma saw the porn too and would not stop talking about it alll morning during breakfast. and she said my mom told her "boy, she doesnt live much." as if my mother watches hardcore porn often???
-cut irrelevant deep thought-
Sunday, road 2 Montserrat (BOYS CHOIR) 9:45 AM
find new bands much? yeah i need to. a new family would be nice too.
-cut random rant on an old friend-
friends i would kill to see right now:
sarah g.-alicia d.-abby/elana/ben- kim g.
and thats all i really feel like right now.
grandparents and dad made me play piano at the hotel this morning. after a few seconds of playing, i realized, "i do this for me and only me." if i really dont want to play, i wont. if i have a hint of wanting to, i will, and if i dont i will regret it. well since i did play, i did kinda want to since my fingers were itching after over 9 days of no piano. well, after the climax at the end of Chopin, the waiter guy told me something in spanish, but the general jist was i was playing too loud and something about disturbing the peace? whoops. well i finished embarrasedly and returned to the emotional grandparents at the breakfast table.
this is the last time i play for them in public. becuase i dont play for them. i play for me. i dont care how happy it makes them, dont think i did it for you. i paly for me... cuz im selfish like that.
i think hot spanish boys are the only things keeping me alive.
the only reason i have a cd player on constantly is becuase nini is constantly talking and.. yeah. you get it.
driving up the mountain... almost boys choir time!!
<3 rebekah
7PM on the way to small town.
well. this is the most fucked vacation ive ever been on. it reminds me that my grandparents were divorced at one time. lets just put it that way. i cant imagine what gugu and my dad went through w/ this family at my age.
boys choir were on holiday. the monks didnt sing either even though they said they would? mass was creepy. my dad said he didnt expect the boys to be there, becuase it follows the pattern of the entire vacation. papa is disappointed, very discouraged. and it makes me so sad. expecially cuz he worked so hard for so many onths to pull this vacation together and this is what he gets. he didnt get to do anything he came to do. no swimming in the mediteranean. we had to skip gibraltar. and this family.. this horrible family. im listening to my cd player, getting sick from my grandpas jerky driving, take my headphones off to hear everybody yelling up a storm, my grandpa shouting and my grandma to shut up, a few times, then i see him giving some other driver a stiff middle finger.
we should go back to the grand canyon.
post script- writing in the car does no good for my handwriting.
kind of feel carsick. closing my eyes doesnt work cuz the car keep jerking around... wonder whos driving?
homesick like mad. i feel like crying.
ok thats actually the end of everything i wrote, i changed only a wee bit, but i only gave the basics. i didnt go into detail of the terror of my family.. it was so sad, i talked to my dad yesterday and he said he couldnt enjoy a single moment.
i actually did cry, that night in the hotel when everyone went to dinner. i couldnt handle it and i think my lack of social sickness actually drove me to physical sickness. but now im home and everything is fixed.
this here is my spain journal that i wrote when i was bored the past 10 days. its mostly boring, especially at first cuz i was waiting around and had nothing else to do. as u will see. but read on if you are bored or want to know what i did and my overall impression of the country.
meet the family:
me =)
my dad
my mom
GuGu- [pronounced goo-goo] my aunt, its chinese for you dads sister
NiNi- [pronounced with long i's, like eye starting w/ an n] my grandma, its chinese for dads mom
YehYeh- [pronounced yay yay] chinese for dads dad, my grandpa
on the plane trip up:
i f*cking forgot to bring a key to my stupid diary. [i was using the remains of my 8th grade english notebook to write this.. it was the first one i grabbed] bleh. im so effing bored. so bored & lonely... so i felt a strong desire to listen to something soft & familiar, so dashboard it is.
wow. so lonely. thats not good seeing as how ive only been on vacatoin w/ the family for about 8 1/2 horas. Nothing has happened yet... i mean, maybe in my imagination, but otherwise, no. things are so dull & im hesitant to write about things of my imagination, mostly becuase i'm rooming w/ my family plus there are ppl around me and i will have to take this notebook to schoool since i plan on taking my ap history notes down in here. [blah blah blah.. complaining about things...] haha, my mom said the other day that no matter the age, if your @ the same age, guys are always 10 years behind mentally. always. i thought things like the even outh at the age of at least 30, heck shes 47. i think.
come to think of it, Yeh Yeh can be really immature at times just becuase he can be super close-minded..
ugh. air is very dry in the airplane and my eyes burn. glasses time.
<3 rebekah.
day 1, el aeropuerto del Madrid:
mom said my pants look homeless. now im sitting next to a homeless man. hes got all his stuff on a luggage cart. and something stinks, but i dont think its him. i think its moms feet. i wonder, you know. what he thinks when he looks at other people. if he even bothers comparing his life to others who have it better off? if hes clinically insane? heh, not that id want to be homeless, but it would be nice to get to do nothing all day. oh wait. i almost already do.
oh, and so much for "smoking rooms" becuase the entire place smells like smoke. everyone here smokes.
so we've got another hour and a half before NiNi & Yeh Yeh will get here, which is the main reason im writing... im bored out of my mind. i wish i could sleep, but no i didnt much on the plane.
you know, not everyone in europe is skinny. most people have healthy rolls id say.
[later that day] 12:30 afternoon, spain time
sh!t! driving started very scary cuz it took yehyeh a while to get used to where the gears are on the car [everyone drives stick shift here]. everyone is trying very hard not to yell, except mom who controls her temper by ignoring it and staring out the window. weve been in the car less than 5 minutes and had 2 close calls to taking all of our lives. but now i guess we are cruising and things are steadier.. i suppose we are headed off to the hotel now, then we will hit the Prada.
they have the cutest compact cars. none of those boring family sedans. oh but they do have those outrageously square euro-vans that drive me nuts, but i think im warming up to them.
day 1 8:52 PM [it gets a bit more interesting now]
ok guess what this makes 30 1/2 hours of hardly no sleep. its hard to describe the kind of exhaustion i feel. i dont know where one day ended and where the next began, so i think i may have had 8 meals in the past day & a half.
anyway, leaving where i left off, we had way more car problems. we parked parallel, but then couldnt figure out how to put the car in reverse, thus making us hit the car in front of us at least 5 times. oh, but before that the car stalled again cuz something about it being in 3rd gear instead of 1st and rolling backward and nearly hitting a car behind us, holding things up a bit. at this point, i was so stressed/freaked that i crunched down in my chair, to hid from who knows what, but i was so tense i cramped up a msucle in my thigh temporarily. a few minutes later gugu, nini and i were able to laugh lightly, i think mostly at the utter craziness of our slightly dire situation, but mom had her eyes closed, probably focused on not throwing up.
then later when we couldnt find out how to put it in reverse and i was taking super long to find out how in the spanish car manual, we ended up having to put the car in neutral and getting out to push it backwards until there was enough room to pull out, and from there yehyeh did some weird thing and it kept stalling and shutting off and then it smelled like serious car burnage and the car started beeping... oh it was so bad. everyone jumped out in fear it would spontaneously combust, except for me, mostly becuase i thought that was quite unlikely, but also becuase i was trying to move the seat in front of me while getting to be on the verge of finding out how to put the car in reverse. i did find it, about 2 minutes later, when we hauled everything out of the car and started dragging it across the street to the hotel [lucky we landed the car so close]. anyways, my dad was busy checking out the car so he gave al the room rental paperwork to me and i checked us all into the hotel where the clerk only knew a few imporante words in english. [so, yay for my super spanish skills!! hah not really]
mk so after we were all checked in we went to the Prada [art museum] but only after grabbing a bite to eat. i saw the word "chorizo" and translated it for "churro" so i ended up having a sausage sandwhich as opposed to a bready cinnamon stick. but we did discover that the calamares [squid type thing] really is so god, and that when our family is together in a foreign country we cause a hold up. k so after food we took the Metro to la Prada, where everything went well accept nobody wanted to look at Ranaissance art except my & my mom & dad. we decided to go
[and it ends there. i got tired ok??]
day 2, road to Toledo 12:25 AM
hah, sorry for the cut off, i got tired last night. continuing where i left off. we decided to go to the Reina Sofia [another art museum] since it was close by, but we said wed go JUST to see the Guernica then we're going home. well when we got there we did go to see the Guernica, but we also saw the salvador dali exhibit cuz yehyeh wanted to. as long as we were there i looked for the melting clocks picture on Mr. Spechts tie, but didnt find it. i did think it was rather self absorped of my grandpa to be like "i dont appreciate any of this lets go home" at the [rada then make us look at the dali exhibit later. o well. i actually really liked it but i wish we werent so tired so we could have more time.
and guernica was really good, except my grandmas constant commentary. it was cool to have everybody appreciating it but since everyone sees it differently, comments to yourself please.
ok so right after the Reina Sofia we went to a restaurante and OMIGAWD ordering was such a pain in the ass w/ people getting confused w/ pricing and how much a paella could serve and the fact we had to put that all in spanish for the waiter..? so me siento MUCHO frustrado! not to mention, yehyeh seemed to think that as opposed to... say trying to translate or telling me to translate, he assumed the louder he spoke in englsih the easier it would be for the spanish waiter to understand.
after dindin we rode back to our hotel and the rest of the night went w/o a hitch except for my spanish nightmares due to dinner... in my dream everybody was yelling at me, telling me to either translate something i didnt know into spanish or actually yelling at me in spanish i didnt know so that we could get something done but then i woke up and worried about whatever it was i was supposed to do becuase i wasnt sure if it was a dream or not. not until after i got up and had a drink did i assure myself it was just a nightmare. then i forced myself to sleep another 5 hours.
so that was yesterday. this morning we checked out of the hotel and headed over to the Plaza Mayor where my dad read about the spanish inquisition and told about the jewish ppl burned at the stake in the plaza. then we had breakfast where ordering went smoothly. (we have a new system, i order and ask the waiter questions. go me!)
now we are in toledo, looking for the alcazar and are sort of lost for the billionth time on this trip.
<3 rebekah
day 2, road to Cordoba 4:00 PM
yay shopping-ness! i bought a tile magnet with a bull on it. k well Toledo is obviously famous for some kind of swords cuz they were in every shop, wall to wall. oh and they were obsessed w/ LOTR, and this one place had an ork blade!! and they had all the jewels too, and i was dying for an arwen necklace but i think theyre about 80 euros. [i found out later that Toledo, Spain is where they made the swords for the movie! hence the obsession and all the swords.]
k so we were gonna go to the alcazar, but it was closed. so we went to the Catedral de Toledo which omg. amazing! so beautiful, and kinda an eye opener to the wealth of the catholic church. at least back in the 13th century or so. they had a plaque there, with the declaration of isabelle and ferdinand about killing all the jews of all the spanish lands and my dad took a zillion pics so he could translate it when we get home. but its weird cuz in the gift shop they sell a bunch of stuff w/ jewish stars on it.
<3 rebekah
day 3, road to... ? 6:45 PM
after that we drove to cordoba, only to get lost a few thousand more times. we went to the hotel, which was a super cute place w/ a nice courtyard. we then went out to search for a restaurant, but since it was sunday night, everything was closed, but eventually we found an ok italian restaurant, and finished at 11 o clock [they eat dinner super late] when we walked home. across the street was a nice plaza w/ a fountain that we threw pennies into. i had nothing to wish though, i just made up a stupid one.
ok so we were like a building away from our hotel, on the same block, i was walking just a few steps ahead of my family, and all of a sudden i heard some people screaming bloody murder and a motorcycle zoomed by, so at first i thought it was just some ppl having fun zooming down the street, but i turned around and my mother was screaming her head off and she goes "oh no they did it!!" and i thought they stole her purse at first, but it turned out they just grabbed my aunts purse right off her shoulder. there really was nothing we could do, so we went back to the hotel and explained what happened to the hotel clerk and he called the police for us. not like we would actually find the people or the purse [which had 750 cash euros, her liscence and most importantly, her passport], but she was going to need the police report to bring to the embassy to get out of the country. so we had to go down to the station, where i had to translate, the officer didnt speak a drop of english, and it was all a bloody pain, and nini and yehyeh were then FREAKED out of their minds about every little thing. like my dad went to get the car from the garage and when he didnt come out after 5 minutes my grandpa was seriously. having a nervous breakdown, screaming and very close to tears. i mean, the whole situation was a bit scary, i was shaken mostly becuase of my mothers screaming, but once i saw things werent thaat bad, as long as we got the passport worked out, it was ok. well, by the time we got back to the hotel, it was probasbly 12:45 and i was filthy but not tired, just extremely stressed, and as to prevent more spanish nightmares i took a sleeping pill. it did keep me from waking up in the morning, but thats ok cuz i got to skip a lot of the morning stress of "what are we going to do now?" at breakfast. we basically rearranged the entire weeks schedule in order to get to the american embassy in time at the end of the week at barcelona.
of course, i shortened this story.. i cant describe how much of a pain all of this was. or, rather how much of a pain my grandparents are. so today after sorting that out, getting lost a few more times, we went to some... Meztica? i dont remember. but its a muslim church and we got gelate and did minimal shopping and when i asked my mom if she was having a good time she replied w/ "terrible". i dont blame her, but she could at least tryyy to enjoy herself.
well weve been driving postcards for 3 hours today. ive written postcards, slept and listened to music. im running out of things to do to pass the time...
oh! in the hotel last night i found a music video channel on tv and it was so good.. there were only like 3 american ppl i recognized, but omg. this song called "space taxi" was HILARIOUS. i cant even describe it, it was like these totally gay europeans being... homosexual. so funny. go download the video. they have this catchy little dance and everything.
im getting hand cramps.
<3 rebekah
el 4th dia, del Arcos, camino al... our hotel.
after breakfast yesterday we went to Seville to our hotel where our room had broekn a/c =( we went out on the town, [got lost of course], had dinner by the river then walked a lot in search of flamenco, which apparently was supposed to be happening in every bar you passed by but we were very unsuccesful. we guessed maybe you have to go at a certain time, like 2 in the morning... spanish people are night people. the sun doesnt set until 10 PM, thats when they go to dinner, are out all night then wake up early again. but they also have siesta time, from 2-4, everything is closed and they sleep. strange huh?
ok so we got wAY lost on the way back from dinner, and my dad was soo upset becuase he couldnt find flamenco for my g-rents and we were lost for about 45 minutes.
after breakfast this morning we drove to a bank to get tickets for the Alhambra but they were sold out there. we then had lunch at the Paradore at the city of Arcos de la Frontera. Paradores are these old spanish building, sometimes castles or other things, but they are government owned and turned into nice hotels. lunch was super expensivo. right next to the Paradore was a cathedral. it was pretty... but i felt kinda creeped. i mean, with all the.. altars. and they had so much wealth and these incredible sculptures and the pained looks on the saints faces and all the dead people and dead Jesus'. and the fact that all the people are buried underneath gave me a creepy kinda feel.i snooped a lil, opening a locked door with a key in it, but at first i was kinda scared to open it, thinking like a dead body would fall on top of me or something (ive read too many stephanie plum books) but behind it was just another locked door. hmm i think thats it, we then drove through some super skinny streets, then out of the city and now im here on the highway.
thursday! camino al Valencia 12:51 AM [i got lazy on day 5 i guess.]
lets see, after that we went to our hotel w/ no a/c again, but it wasnt that hot. next morning i went shopping a teeny store next to the hotel and tried on a smashing halter polo dress but my mom said it was too tight =(. well that day we took on of the double decker tour bus things and walked all day at the Alhambra [Muslim palace], the garden was so pretty [i will have many many pics], and the palace was too, but not so much. i bought my purse on the way back =D and then we went to BK for dinner were a king size fry is almost the same size as our smalls. no joke. it was a bigger paper bag than the small ones.
after showering and flipping through channels at the hotel [porn! hardcore! scarred for life!] i conked out, and all this morning too, skipping breakfast again. my aunt came back and told me my grandma saw the porn too and would not stop talking about it alll morning during breakfast. and she said my mom told her "boy, she doesnt live much." as if my mother watches hardcore porn often???
-cut irrelevant deep thought-
Sunday, road 2 Montserrat (BOYS CHOIR) 9:45 AM
find new bands much? yeah i need to. a new family would be nice too.
-cut random rant on an old friend-
friends i would kill to see right now:
sarah g.-alicia d.-abby/elana/ben- kim g.
and thats all i really feel like right now.
grandparents and dad made me play piano at the hotel this morning. after a few seconds of playing, i realized, "i do this for me and only me." if i really dont want to play, i wont. if i have a hint of wanting to, i will, and if i dont i will regret it. well since i did play, i did kinda want to since my fingers were itching after over 9 days of no piano. well, after the climax at the end of Chopin, the waiter guy told me something in spanish, but the general jist was i was playing too loud and something about disturbing the peace? whoops. well i finished embarrasedly and returned to the emotional grandparents at the breakfast table.
this is the last time i play for them in public. becuase i dont play for them. i play for me. i dont care how happy it makes them, dont think i did it for you. i paly for me... cuz im selfish like that.
i think hot spanish boys are the only things keeping me alive.
the only reason i have a cd player on constantly is becuase nini is constantly talking and.. yeah. you get it.
driving up the mountain... almost boys choir time!!
<3 rebekah
7PM on the way to small town.
well. this is the most fucked vacation ive ever been on. it reminds me that my grandparents were divorced at one time. lets just put it that way. i cant imagine what gugu and my dad went through w/ this family at my age.
boys choir were on holiday. the monks didnt sing either even though they said they would? mass was creepy. my dad said he didnt expect the boys to be there, becuase it follows the pattern of the entire vacation. papa is disappointed, very discouraged. and it makes me so sad. expecially cuz he worked so hard for so many onths to pull this vacation together and this is what he gets. he didnt get to do anything he came to do. no swimming in the mediteranean. we had to skip gibraltar. and this family.. this horrible family. im listening to my cd player, getting sick from my grandpas jerky driving, take my headphones off to hear everybody yelling up a storm, my grandpa shouting and my grandma to shut up, a few times, then i see him giving some other driver a stiff middle finger.
we should go back to the grand canyon.
post script- writing in the car does no good for my handwriting.
kind of feel carsick. closing my eyes doesnt work cuz the car keep jerking around... wonder whos driving?
homesick like mad. i feel like crying.
ok thats actually the end of everything i wrote, i changed only a wee bit, but i only gave the basics. i didnt go into detail of the terror of my family.. it was so sad, i talked to my dad yesterday and he said he couldnt enjoy a single moment.
i actually did cry, that night in the hotel when everyone went to dinner. i couldnt handle it and i think my lack of social sickness actually drove me to physical sickness. but now im home and everything is fixed.