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Things I don't Understand......

It's pretty easy not to buy clothes here. You see, everyone is convinced that even though the weather hardly changes at all, their clothes still need to change. I think its crazy that every clothes store I pass is selling winter jackets and wool sweaters with christmas tree and reindeer patterns while I'm sweating in a sun dress. Are these people actually going to put on a winter a jacket in one month when it is 20 degrees? Are they going to buy the toques and scarves and boots and pretend that it's cold so they can have a fashion change? It actually makes me a little nervous. It's like everyone knows something I don't and suddenly I'm going to wake up one morning and the temperature will have dropped 30 degrees and I'll be the foolish Canadian that didn't bring wool mittens to go live off the coast of Africa.

Although, I do have to admit that last weekend we went camping in the mountains and it was kind of cold. It was like that last week of camp at Pines
 in August.....or maybe camping up at Grow For It at the beginning of June, you have to bundle up at night to go to bed but it warms up a lot during the day. But in Canada its fine because we make a CAMPFIRE. I think its so funny listening to all these Spanish people bundled up in winter jackets complaining about being cold while sitting around a LANTERN. Well of course you're going to be cold if you're relying on a candle to give you heat! I understand that there is a risk of forest fires and yes, there are a lot of trees around, but there are the same factors in Canada and yet we still have campfires......do we just not care as much?  In any case I made sure that I lived up to the stereotypical view of Canadians by insisting that I wasn't cold and that this was nothing. I survived perfectly fine in Mandy's brown zip up hoodie. If I had been at home I probably would've been complaining........

Okay one more thing I found hilarious. When I was in France there were always deer signs on the highway but I never once saw a deer. Helene insisted that they hide during the day and come out at night. ( even though I never saw one at night non plus...) So I didn't see any but apparently they were there. Last weekend while we were driving we passed a deer sign. Naturally I asked if they had deer. They answered by saying that sometimes there were goats on the road. But no deer? No, no deer. Are there any deer on the island? Nope. None. Nunca.
haha so.......why the deer sign? Well, its because there are goats.
Well at least they were honest.....

Slippers

Am I the only one in the world that doesn't like wearing slippers?

Picture highlights from the last 2 months!

La Bretagne! A summer day with Alice and Suzanne, Emilie was learning how to run away with the circus!

 Eating on the beach in El Palo, Malaga where my Spanish classes were. I ate every  kind of seafood that you could imagine!

The main street in Malaga. They took down the coverings about 2 and half weeks after I arrived when it rained for the first time.

Trip to Gibralter! Went to the UK and it rained!

Having fun being tourists in Sevilla!

We don't just suntan on the beach!

Churros con chocolate with Eva. They are like donuts that you dip in chocolate.

Ronda was absolutely beautiful.

I met up with my cousin Leif and his wife Christina in Vienna, we went to the Schonbrunn palace and then got a free tour of the natural history museum from one of Christina's friends. She's up above with a giant turtle! And the last picture is taken from the balcony top floor of the museum.

Airplanes Kill Confidence

I have decided that I shouldn't go on airplanes. I will be fine all the days up until I go somewhere new until the day I get on the airplane. There, sitting at the boarding gate, with nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, all of a sudden I will start to question everything. What the heck am I doing? Why am I going to the Canary Islands? Why am I trying to learn Spanish when I can't even succeed at rolling my r's? Why is it that just when I'm feeling comfortable in one place I feel the need to uproot myself all over again and dive into a situation completely different?

yo no se.

There's some Spanish for ya. But I do it because for some reason I love it. I'll board the plane, still cursing myself for my idiot decisions, and sit there thinking of all the times I've been in the exact same situation. The time I went to France and I boarded the plane from Paris to Brest after a crying panic attack but on the plane calmed down while listening to some old French sailor type men laughing and talking rapid French. There was the first time I was all alone in my huge basement room in Victoria and didn't know what to do with all the space so ran around spinning all over the room. There was last August standing in the rain in the Morlaix train station realizing that ya, I was actually going to Spain and they were certainly not going to speak French. And finally there was this plane. I calmed down listening to the rapid spanish of middle aged women drinking beer on the flight, fell asleep, woke up and was brought to this huge house where they drink fresh squeezed orange juice every morning and don't have a house number or street name because after three years the Spanish government hasn't gotten around to licensing them yet. I like the orange juice, the lack of street name and number concerns me a bit.....definitely going to use my backtracker in this place!

Anyways I guess the point of all that is that I am constantly questioning myself, but in the end it always turns out great, right?

Brief Update!

I´m a little bit anxious today as everything seems to be moving so fast! I just spent an amazing week in Austria, met up with my cousin Leif and his wife Christina, experienced a fire shot with some crazy Australians, went to the opera ( I´m so glad I went!), climbed some mountains in Innsbruck, and ate a lot of cake. I actually stayed at a hostel that was above a bakery and in the morning they brought us cake for breakfast, didnt even ask if we wanted it, just assumed that no one would turn down cake! And the fire shot wasn´t the kind they light on fire before you drink it, it was the kind that they light on fire in your mouth. For some reason my basic instincts told me not to swallow fire and I ended up spitting up the shot on the bar tender. Felt a little bit bad about that the next morning....
But anyways I have to get OFF the computer and pack so that I can fly to the Canary Islands tonight! It all seems a little sureal.....I´m not really sure wha to expect!