hoppipolla

bet you were wondering what im doin for the next few years after i graduate college....me too.

1. This summer, road trip across country with Sara and whoever else wants to join the crew - taking pictures and maybe writing about it. I think we are shooting for 2 and a half or 3 weeks....possibly never coming home. maybe we will go to alaska like chris mccandless and eat poison berries and die a terrible death. but then again probably not.
2. Graduate fall 2009 - move home and save some cash. maybe sell my eggs (little sabrinas running around muwahah you know u wanna see that)
3. Move somewhere interesting - I'm thinking Seattle, San Fran, Santa Cruz, or a dirty apartment on top of a laundromat in New York City. seattle rains alot which would be really good for my hair. stop picturing it. i know ur picturing it.
4. South America.
5. in all honestly im not quite sure if i am going to throw to the kings navy (shh) and move to south america in the next two years. im gonna wait till im Reeeeeeeeeaaaallly fed up with my life/job/living at home with my parents and then have a mild to severe freakout and dramatically sell my car and go to south america within a weeks time. but then again that will probably happen extremely soon.
6. uk or ireland (im still extremely confused as to whether or not i can call ireland the uk because only the northeastern part is technically united kingdom territory or something like that but whatever) *side note on interesting facts. the coldest recorded temperature in the history of the world was in -128.6 F in 1983. ouchy. remind me never to go to antarctica.

Hmmmm.....we will see how this pans out. oh wait i totally forgot to mention the fact that i am going to school 5 days a week next semester. monday thru friday. isnt that illegal? school on friday. what am i a freshman? nooo siree.

hmm. i say hmm alot. how annoying of me.

lets go surfing

"We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you're walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever."

the drums - new york's new favorite band. i approve completely. morissey would have been proud.

where we gonna go from here?

its been a hell of a couple weeks. couldn't see the light at the end of the tunnel for a while. i guess u really have to hit a dead end before u realize u took the wrong road. duh. so i changed my major like a month ago from journalism to hospitality and tourism management for reasons i thought were good. i always thought i wanted to be an event planner - i guess i failed to realize that was before id discovered i had any more passions besides planning parties and being really, very organized. i always pictured myself with a sidekick (a phone, not a midget....well maybe a midget) frantically calling/texting/emailing people running around with frazzled hair and drumming my fingers on a table. (too much caffeine as usual) went to spain. came back. thought i still wanted a crazy busy life where i could make someone else feel important at whatever event they were having me plan - - turns out, i've never made more of a 180 degree turn from that. ive never really made a decision and gone....wow, that was the wrong choice. i mean i do it all the time when i order food, which is why i usually stick to what i know. same cheeseburger. made the same way. same sauce. ketchup on my fries. but besides making the wrong food decisions i have never really made a big life altering decision and gone holy shit.....that was the wrong choice. this is the first time ive ever done that. overlooking the fact that i screwed myself over a whole semester with wasted classes, i know it was for the best. i obviously would still be wondering what that life would be like if i hadn't of changed my major - and most likely made some mistake thats kinda like this one somewhere down the road where i regretted not figuring out if this is what i want to do. but it all boils down to what ppl in that major are like. theyre great people. personable. determined. they work great on a team. all qualities that i think (and hope) describe me most of the time, but theres a catch - every last bit of it comes down to networking, and customer service. two things that i hate. nothing worse than a skeezy businessman making too many connections to get what he wants, and end up where he wants to end up. sure ive never worked in the industry - so i could be completely and totally wrong and the skeezy people, but from the outside, thats all i see. i see tight suits and people to busy making other people happy to notice the rest of the world and notice that theyre probably not making themselves happy. ya they probably have money - and they probably think theyre happy...but that wouldnt make me happy. ive been getting inklings for weeks, telling me i made the wrong choice, and then the breakdowns started happening making me go "wow, the world is trying to tell me something". i have certain passions for a reason - and all they talk about in this major is how youre career-destined, straight out of college. sounds great to someone who wants to make the big bucks, support their families, have their cake - and eat it too.....but not to me. to me im destined to be robbed of my freedom - freedom to travel, freedom to wear what i want to wear, and freedom to live my life how i want. its all about the customer in that business. im sorry, my gift to the world is not that i am going to serve other ppl in that way. i want to serve people in different ways - join the peace corps, inspire ppl through writing and music and books and just being a good friend. thats what im here for - not to go put on a too-tight skirt, heels and a itchy blazer and go to work. not me. never will be me. everything is screaming WRONG CHOICE WROING CHOICE and now im like duh-world, what am i even doing here? so for now. my plan is this. finish this semester with a smile on my face, i already screwed myself over so why not make the best of it? finish my major in spanish and get a minor in journalism and graduate in the fall of 2010. work. make money. travel. write. make money. travel. write. ive got places to go and people to do.....uhhhhh. tgif. oh hey, I WORK THERE. bring on the mexicanos.

blinded i was blindsided

i am a victim of opposition. magnetized simultaneously towards dissimilar poles. like most people, i feel certain emotions...shocker, but the thing thats stupid is how i negate my emotions consciously. who does that? im pretty sure most people let themselves cry and be sad for all the reasons that people cry and are sad in their lives, but why do i purposefully remove any feeling from any situation. can u say robot?

i'll seek you out flay you alive one more word and you won't survive

thoughts for the day:

i have always wanted to see like a lion or something about to come after me and scream "RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN"

i really hate when in tv shows someone goes into the other room to talk about someone and they are screaming and oBVIOUSLY they can hear what the person is saying.

do what u want with this information.

oh and the better question...i think its a statement is that IT FEELS WEIRD TO BE ABLE TO WALK INTO A STORE AND BUY CHAPSTICK WITHOUT IT COSTING MY PARENTS 47 DOLLARS AND NINETY SEVEN CENTS TO SEND A THREE OUNCE PACKAGE FROM THE US OF A

well i met you at the blood bank

back stateside. have been for a week and a day now, to be exact. people keep asking me "do you hate your life, do you wanna go back to europe mer mer mer" and it makes me feel really weird. ever since i watched granada slip away through a backdrop of a spanish sunset from the bus window on the way to madrid....some freakish transition happened. all of a sudden the last year of my life turned into a memory. but only for a second - no joke. it was a memory and me and stace were sittin on the bus staring out the windows and we both realized it happened. we both were like - its over. but as quick as that realization came, it turned into something that felt like a dream. we were like ummm did it even happen? honestly, i could go on - but its just gonna be rambling about something that doesnt even make sense in my own head - and thats not fair of me to put ANYONE through that. not that anyone reads this. someday, when i'm a writer, or one of those people who wear two different color socks and scream outside of grocery stores about something crazy (that's an either/or there, have to pick one) i'm gonna read through my old blogs and wonder what psychotic-ness was going through my head..but for right now, my ramblings are seemingly point-ful (as opposed to pointless) and if typing makes it easier to see, then i'm gonna do it. even if nobody ever knows what i'm ranting about. i just looked through my yearbook from senior year - god knows why....and it was weird. that was four years ago. since when are we grandmas? i'm so confused.

tangerine tangerine living reflection from a dream

mmmm so i sat down on my bed approximately 3 hours ago when we got home from tapas and i said, im going to pack. so i went to find a good playlist to get me in the mood (usually tom petty works....and zeppelin will alaways do it...but genius never fails) so of course i then found forty nine million other things to do EVEN though they turned off our internet i hacked into other internet and went crazy doing everything BUT packing. 4 days left in spain. 4 days. exactly 10 months ago i got off the plane in madrid with no idea what the hell i was doing or what it was going to be like....and 10 months later, i have a life here. a life that isnt easy to leave. ive already whined about those reasons enough to last a lifetime but i just cant comprehend it. somehow i have to shove a years worth of my life into one gigantic suitcase and get it home. its gonna be interesting. figuring out how to do that is next to impossible considering a few reasons: all of which are prohibiting me from doing anything but lazing around enjoying my last days in europe. to name a few of those reasons....

A. its SMOLDERING hot, no joke. it is 98 degrees every day and cools down to about 85 at night. gee thanks NIGHTTIME. so alllll i want to do is lay in my room with a bag of frozen spinach on my head with my fan blowing in my face drinking frozen water and listening to bon iver...we attempted shopping at the touristy stores today to buy our families some cheap piece of crap souveniers that they will no doubt shove in a box and forget they existed....i lasted about 6 minutes until i overheated and needed to go pass out somewhere. some otter pops would do me real good right now. to eat and to put all over my body. cheap and delicious air conditioning. just the way i like it.

B. im broke. as a joke. ive got $2.30 in my checking and $.46 in my savings account....and a whopping 11 euro in 2 euro, 1 euro and 10 cent coins.

C. they turned off our internet. so i spent the greater part of my day hacking into my neighbors internet....watching apple.com/trailers and waiting for them to load.

D. washer broke. ohh no not the broken it was before. that was live-able. all it needed was to shove a broom up against it. this time they took the door. awesome. i love wearing a dirty swimsuit ive been wearing all week in greece as underwear.

E. oh no big deal - theres a gas leak. can't cook either!!

F. i just realized im lettering this....

7. im still on an island...in my head. spent the last two weeks adventuring around greece and turkey with sar stace and dom so you do the math at where my motivation is at.

speaking OF greece and turkey. i think its time for a recount. its going to be tedious but i enjoy writing and its for MYSELF thank you very much - so when i'm old and senile i can remember what i did back in my young, crazy year in europe. quit judging me.

last trip of the year. last time i'm gonna have europe at my fingertips. last time for a while i will be sleeping on the hard floor of an airport. taking an overnight train or rampaging around on student loans and getting to see the middle east in style. im not gonna get this opportunity again for at least a couple years - till i re-save up all that money from my south america fund that i was forced to spend in my broke state.

anyways. we did the usual granada - madrid midnight bus ride to the airport to catch a 930 am flight to athens. so u can imagine when we got to athens all we wanted to do was sleep. we were greeted by 100 degree weather and a nice long walk with our 100 pound backpacks in search of our couch surfer. we finally found the place on some sketch side street with the oldest school elevator of all time and went up to the apartment only realizing that we would be sleeping on the hardwood floor of some greek dude's living room with 15 other backpackers. apparently this guy always has ppl stay - literally ever night, so when we got there, we found out he was sick cuz he never gets any sleep. someone told us he tried stopping for a while but he got so bored not having travelers to hang out with, that he just said screw it....and let anyone stay. cool enough dude i guess - but clinically insane for having 12 - 18 ppl stay the night every single night. we were famished so we got food and sat in front of the temple of zeus and played with a dog that seemed to like us. he ended up following us and almost getting hit by a car. welcome to greece. i killed a dog. kidding.

we were supposed to stay in athens two nights but when we started walking around the next day we were like screwww this its wayyyy too hot so we bought tickets for a 5 oclock ferry to santorini. a 13 hour 5 oclock ferry....

when u picture athens, u picture a city with character.....old and covered in ruins and dripping with history - but its only really like that when ur actually IN the ruins. the rest of the city is just like any other dirty place. for all i knew - i could have been in detroit. and it was so hot we literally would have payed 100 euro to get out of there. so thats just what we did. and hopped that 13 hour ferry to athens. good thing were really good at sitting at one place - talking, debating, laughing, bickering, and people watching would be considered a specialty. so with that, we spent the last bit of the sun laying on the top deck, then watching the sunset over passing islands, and getting in fights with indian families blocking the bathroom with their creepy children.

we got to santorini at 630....docking and getting off the boat into a beautiful 75 degree sunny morning in greece. sleep wasnt an option so we rented ATVS and drove all over the island. if thats not ultimate freedom i dont know what is. we drove like madmen to every beach....laying in the sun and eating $2.50 euro gyros for the next two days. delicious. i got to cliff jump and see greece's most beautiful sunset, in Oia, and they weren't lying. it was incredible. pictures dont even do it half the justice. white houses with blue rooftops. dogs sleeping in the sun. it was the most beautiful place i have ever seen in my life.

mykonos is an island and an adventure worthy of it's own novel....but sadly, i dont have the time, or energy to exert to make it that long. we had been lugging a heavy tent around for the first 4 days of our trip in the effort to make our 5 day stay in mykonos as cheap as possible. we had plans to camp at a campsite called paradise beach. it was supposed to have a pool, and food, and a beautiful beach so we thought PERFECT. so we get there....only to realize we have just walked onto the set of an MTV Spring Break reality show. it was nauseating. frat lookin guys walking around in cutoff tank tops drinking monsters and smirnoff and stupid ridiculous girly girls prancing around in their brazilian bikinis. i was absolutely positive i just walked into to a Sig Ep Parrot Bay day party at san diego state. VOMIT. we decided to give it a chance so we pitched our two person tent for 4 people (not as simple as that) and went to sleep. we made a friend who was more than entertained watching us put up our tent, and took a picture with the pathetic looking finished product. spent a terrible night squished together getting eaten alive by mosquitos....woke up, and got the heck out of dodge. as much as i love trashy people getting trashed in their B-suits, we decided to hike over to the next campgrounds. we ditched that stupid tent and went to stay in some grass hut bungalows on the beach. on our hike over we saw more than we bargained for. apparently paradise beach is gay friendly - maybe more than just FRIENDLY. and the things i saw on that fateful day - its still hard to talk about. i shudder at the thought. we ended up having the best time at the other place. there were semi normal people and a fair share of hot australians to watch. we swam to this rock in the middle of a coral reef every day and just layed there, soaking up the sun and diving off the rocks. our nights out in mykonos were interesting to say the least - and are better left to my own memory. dancing the night away to infinity and the dj screaming MYKONOOOOOSSS over the mic every 3 to 6 seconds. swedish guys. and delicious delicious vino. oh and a cockroach here and there.

next leg of the trip was a test to see if we really are capable of entertaining ourselves anywhere. it went like this. ferry back to athens. 22 hour train ride to istanbul. not too bad, except the first part....to thessaloniki. it smelled like old foot and there were these spaniards SCREAMING and playing cards and drinking - being typical spaniards of course. 22 hours is a long time in the big scheme of things - especially when my ipod was A dead, and B the right side of the headphones was broken so i had to duck tape my ipod in such a way that it worked. so ghetto.

istanbul. wow. awesome. we downgraded to a 6 euro a night hostel that overlooked the aya sophya mosque. a 25 bed dorm on the rooftop with all access to the city. and by all access i do mean all access to the 5 a day prayer time where they, throughout the whole city, have a call to prayer that echoes and reverberates off every wall. yes, including 5 am. thats not even mentioning the one on sunday that was 35 minutes. yes, i looked at my watch. but the town was crazy. haggling store owners in the grand bazaar and having to wear a head scarf and a long skirt in the blue mosque were experiences of there own. another experience worthy of a 13 page book is the smell of the mosque - everyone has to take off their shoes to go inside. once again, please do the math.

dom has a friend from Sd who has a turkish friend. he was there for the summer so him and his friend took us out every night. they payed for everything because they are supppper rich. we got to see the other side of istanbul. nightclubs on the bosphorous that cost 50 euro to get in. 20 euro drinks. valet boats that dock u on the dancefloor. it was almost like we were in the richest part of LA and u would never picture turkey like that.

i dont even know what im talking about anymore. all i know is i will never forget that trip and the other thing i know is that its bedtime. good night freaks.

at the bottom of everything

i absolutely forgot one of the most annoying things

*people who wear windbreaker pants and feel the need to actually walk from each room in the house 67-90 times at 8 am. aka my italian roomate. if i hear that goddamn swish one more time imma.....imma....ummm

WHY IS TIME MOVING SO FAST

JESU CRISTO 

and all the roads we have to walk are winding, and all the lights that lead us there are blinding

like you already knew...im a little retarded...and i have never been able to whistle. so that was this weeks goal. we went on a hike and i annoyed stacey trying to learn how to whistle the whole way. i got a lot better but by no means can i do it yet. and im already making plans to learn how to whistle with my fingers. except only guys can do that. whats with that? what about me being a girl makes it impossible to do things like that. LAME. YES THAT WAS A LOUD ONE. im practicing whistling at the moment. u know when ur going about ur everyday life and u realize there are lots of obnoxious things that don't exactly get documented as obnoxious things. ok obviously ppl who honk their horns too much and chomp their gum (guilty) and say song lyrics wrong clearly make the list of annoying things. but these....oh man....these ones are the worst.

1. being the first to open the hand soap. those dispensers? some ur supposed to pull really hard up until the thing pops out, others u have to twist them like 47 times. these are the times they need directions. not on shampoo bottles. and WHEN THE SHAMPOO BOTTLES HAVE NUMBERS TO CALL. honestly i would call if they put the number for the soap-help line. not to be confused with self-help. thats a different number.....that i would also call?? 

2. UGG WALK - ok so 52 degrees in the morning and getting up for class and putting on sandals sounds awful so NATURALLY u put on uggs. if ur warm it makes goin to class easier riiiight? NO. because by the time its 11:30 and class is over and u have to walk home and the sun has decided that its going to be the hottest effing day of the year - this is where ugg walk comes in. that HOT sweaty scuffly shuffly cant-pick-up-your-feet-cuz -its-too-hard-holding-six-books (that ur mad u brought to class cuz ur teacher didnt even make u open them)-and -thirteen -grocery- bags SWAGGER. its terrible. and u most definitely know what im talking about. (dont ever confuse this with the SHOPPING-ugg walk).

3. words that shouldnt be spelled the way they are spelled. like february. enough said. 

4. when the R and L gets rubbed off of ipod headphones. i have a mini heart attack every time i go to listen to music and i don't know if theyre in the right ears. 

*subcategory of annoying things about ipods. when ur scrolling through ur ipod and it says The Beatles. The Beetles. TheBeatles. Beatles. Beetle,The. kill me. why do u think i spent an entire weekend fixing those devils. 

ok. theres more where that came from. but theres a fly trying to find the 5 ft open window in my room and its smacking against the side.....idiot. 

rock me mama like the wind and the rain, rock me mama like a southbound train

it was may 1st three hours ago and i had a heart attack about it. apparently now its may 4th. the clock is ticking. and i know this because every 30 minutes my watch beeps -24 hours a day, 7 days a week. i guess thats what i get for buying a stupid cheapo watch that doesnt even work. constant reminders of my freedom slipping through my fingers. and what am i doing? i spent the last 5-6 hours dicking around on my stupid mac cuz its angry at me. wow sorry i dropped you jeeeesus, but seriously - the thing is borderline suicidal. and the 3 hours before that we spent sitting at a buffet stuffing our faces and people watching. now theres a whole lot of things in that one sentence that i thoroughly enjoy. especially because i did witness a larger woman filling up her ice cream cup, excuse me bowl..no i'm sorry what i meant was PLATTER with approximately 8-10 servings of fro yo. i mean good god woman, sorry about the tremors china - but this lady means business. anyways enough with that. all i have to say is that i cant believe this year is almost over. i absolutely 100 percent am going to lose my mind at the thought. i mean we have always said that - wow where did time go? wow where did the week go, the month the year WHERE DID MY LIFE GO. its just absolutely insane that i showed up here with a suitcase (or 2) and no idea where i was gonna live and no clue what to expect and now my life is here - little did i know that i was gonna be living in a shithole 5 bedroom apartment with 15 klepto roomates from all over the place and that i was gonna have to live without a dryer and a garbage disposal and i was gonna have to cook with propane. i never foresaw any of that - but now that it is going to end i actually cant believe that my life has ever been different. im not quite sure that im gonna be able to adjust back into american life - i mean ya sure i'll fit right back in with the whole in-n-out, taco bell, wendys at midnight and dennys runs...BUT everything else im not ready for. i will never ever take for granted how lucky i am for the life i have this year. i wish every person in the world could experience even an OUNCE of the freedom we experience every day even when were dirt poor. never.leaving.europe.

this is the sound of freedom

finalllly back from backpacking eastern europe. what an adventure. man. not gonna even blog about all the stories cuz there are way too many and it wouldnt do them justice just quickly ranting in my usual sporadic rapid storytelling tone. but quickly i will say some advice. DONT go to slovakia, you will leave it with that same horrible feeling you get after watching the movie i am legend when u went in to see a matinee and you came out and its dark and u feel like u will never see light or happiness again. ok, im being dramatic - como siempre, but really, it was a boring city - of course we found our ways to entertain ourselves seeing as how thats our specialty, but thats beside the point. on the other hand, DO go to Budapest, Hungary. it was one of the most awesome place ive ever been. a city dripping with that thick middle-eastern summer heat, bumpy bus-ride, hot and sticky glorious swagger. we did everything from going caving on the Pest side of Budapest *fun fact - Budapest is the only capital city in the world build on a hill with caves* to wasting away the day lying in turkish baths and doing some serious people watching. we also met a pair of intensely creative swiss guys who we made music with on a park bench. that's why budapest was rad - it was all about the experience, it wasn't about running around trying to squeeze monuments and museums and parliament buildings into a 2 hour window, or desperately pacing through the city head bowed down to a map missing what's in front of your face - not that sometimes we don't get caught up in trying to be educated tourists who do things like museums and tours and all that, but most of the time, we fail miserably, and im glad we do. because who wants those to be their memories of traveling? now as our days in spain are inching closer and closer to an end, i keep getting this far too familiar feeling of desperation - that itchy feeling of trying to do everything i want in no time. i cant believe this year is ending in 2 months - and i have to go back to SD and find a place to live next year and try to remember what it was like to be a real person. once you're granted the euphoric feeing of freedom its nearly impossible to revert to my old day to day, color-coated planner lifestyle. i love that life, dont get me wrong - i'm a clinically diagnosed organize-aholic but living here has given me a delicious taste of life - and what it feels like to not know where you're going. and bob (not marley) said it just right - like he always does. this is the sound of freedom. 

You were a child crawlin' on your knees toward it. Makin' mama so proud, but your voice is too loud.

umm im sittin in the wombat - hostel in vienna, austria. its the most amazing hostel ive ever stayed at. theres this HUGE bed slash couch thats the size of an average room and its just got a million pillows all over it and ive just been chilling on it listening to bon iver and reading a mystery. we've been here for 2 nights so far and this is our last night - tomorrow were takin a boat down the danube into bratislava, slovakia. its way cheaper than the train and who would rather be on a train when u can be on a boat. austria - interesting. cant speak anything besides "speken ze doutch" to tell ppl i dont speak german. we've been easily entertaining ourselves (as usual) trying to pronounce the 16 letter words - and we sound like absolute idiots. before vienna we were in salzburg - ya the place they filmed sound of music. after a frikin long night of traveling we FINALLY got there. we took a 10 pm flight out of granada to london where we had to sleep on concrete floor till our 630 am flight to salzburg. it wasnt that bad at all, and were used to it by now EXCEPT the alarm in the airport kept going off every 5 minutes until we were awoken by a fat security guard woman kicking stacey. but anyways we finally got there. it was so beautiful - just how you would picture it. we went to this cave club the next night but we were so dead tired that we left at 11 pm and got on wrong bus - the last bus of the night.....and as 5 ppl were screaming at us in german trying to tell us what to do we were just sittin there like idiots like UHHHH no speken ze doutch bla bla and THE PRECIOUS bus driver took us all the way back to his stop, out of the way, and didnt make us pay, when it was his bus....and he could have gone home. its ppl like that that make u realize that u have to pay it forward (not trying to be lame and quote that movie, but seriously....you have to). we were just like jeeez he never had to do that,but he helped us. what an awesome person he was. anyways.....theres this sound of music tour u can take with the hostel we stayed at and all we wanted to do when we were in salzburg was run through grassy hills singing the hills are alive with the sound of music, but the tour was A. 37 euro and B. we are the dictionary definition of non-tour people....and C. it was 37 euro and we are broke jokes......so we asked everyone we could find how to get to a grassy hill that we could run and sing on. they looked at us like we were crazy and usually answered "uhhhhh i dont know"....so we were like SCREW U PEOPLE im finding some grass. so we did. and we ran through it. just like we pictured. just like you pictured. once we did that - we were way happy. so we picked up our 300 pound backpacks and set off for the train station....bought some pringles, and sat outside waitin for our train to vienna. its so warm here - were completely blessed to have sun shining every day when these middle european countries havent seen the sun since the beginning of last year. dom and sar were here 2 months ago not knowing if they were gonna survive the snow. so were lucky, way lucky. sooo ya yesterday we rented bikes and rode around the city. i crashed my bike and flew off it in front of 30 ppl trying to cross the street. i still have pavement in my hand, dont worry about it - its fine. we went to this bar last nite called "chelsea" thats totally like porkys for those of you who know what porkys is and it was apparently made for us cuz as we walked in they started blasting MGMT kids and kings on leon - sex on fire. bloc party - banquet and the bravery - honest mistake also got us goin.....so we danced and we danced. and here we are. thats all for now. goodnight and good luck. 

take the straight and stronger course to the corner of your life.

las fallas is this "huge" festival in spain where they build these statues that all have some sort of political or pop culture satire in them and they light them on fire and run around the streets in their usual debaucherous (not a word) states. i say "huge" cuz everyone told us it was going to be way crazier than carnaval - but carnival was a huge botellon in the streets with a huge crowd of people and las fallas was just a bunch of freaks watching fire all spread out over the city. little did we know that the fallas were made out of styrofoam so the spanish are singlehandedly adding to the thinning of the ozone layer...but it doesn't really matter to them seeing as how theyre all for lung cancer. we ended up having alot of fun - not really cuz of the festival but.....give us carnival fatboy food and a means to find an adventure and were pretty much golden. we climbed up to the top of this mountain that had a 360 degree panoramic of fireworks all over the city. we layed on the wall and shared bottles of tinto and watched the sky light up all night long. then of course we got hungry and said heyyyy maybe we will do what we actually came here for so we watched the tallest falla burn and fill the sky with black smoke as we enjoyed 30 dollar hot dogs. the usual. we didn't exactly have a place to sleep so we had to sleep in the car. wasn't too bad. there was 4 of us. sara wasnt exactly the most comfortable. she slept on top of the center console. i assumed the fetal position in the back seat and had to get up every hour and roll over sara nick and ace to pee outside in the freezing cold. but adventure it was - and we actually slept a good 5 hours and woke up to have a delicious spanish meal. not. drove another 5 hours to madrid. went to the wrong hostel. had an old woman in her leopard print skivvies answer the door and give us a room. crookers was insane. we danced the night away and met them as they were leavin the stage. drove two hours the next day to find spain's first taco bell. sara fell up the stairs and threw our tray of food 6 ft in the air. the usual. the freedom of having a car and being able to drive it wherever you want and stop on whatever random road you want is a beautiful, beautiful thing. 

music's got me feeling so free

"the function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought" 

if thats not true i dont know what is. but then again. is conscious thought always dangerous? ummm we know its not. and if a certain song releases you from your own head then obviously theres something powerful enough about it to be able to do as much as unchain us from our own worst enemy: our mind. so maybe it does release you from the tyranny of conscious thought - but what about unconscious thought? im pretty sure thats where music gets us. it slithers in our ears and into whatever they call that wild part of your brain that does and thinks things without you actually knowing what its doing or thinking and it morphs into something we cant comprehend. an idea or a feeling or something that sounds absolutely insane. and thats the release. a release from ourselves. so consciousness doesnt get the best of us by talking us out of something wild that brews itself up wayyy inside our own useless heads. music is like the drive you have been making everyday for 10 years....that weird feeling you get when you get home and u dont remember driving at all. you dont know how you got to the end or if u ran a red light. you don't even know whats its doing to you until its done. nobody can trace where it happens. thats why we are addicted. 

mississippi moon wont you keep on shinin' on me

just got back from portugal. been there once already and didn't think i could love it more than i already did. lagos is a lazy town and a breeding ground for anyone born to experience endless freedom. people there waste away the days lying on secret beaches and the nights singing in bars that are owned by people who came to lagos and couldn't bring themselves to leave. we rented a car and drove all over southern portugal. lagos. sagres. and portimão. i learned how to drive a manual on strips of deserted portuguese dirt roads. stood on the westernmost point in europe and almost got blown off the top of a cliff. climbed rocks. watched sunsets. drove 110 mph and screamed to oasis - wonderwall. found secret spots where hippies live in their vans with their dogs, drink beer on the cliffs, and listen to the waves crashing as they go to sleep. of coure we stayed at the cock with mama shoving 35 crepes down my mouth. and most of all...didn't want to leave. something about that place just pulls you in. im guessing its the freedom....but that's just a wild guess. 

creature fear

everyones turning 21 this month. its kinda freaking me out. as much time as we have all spent cursing the world because we weren't a certain age, now we're finally to the point where there's not another age to look forward to. when we were 6 we couldn't wait to be double digits, when we were 10 all we wanted to be was 16 so we could drive, and once we turned 16 all we cared about was turning 18 so we could buy porn and smoke?? and vote. or somethin like that. and then when we were 18 we were like....whats the point, so we wanted to be out of the teens....and then it's all about turning 21 so you can go to bars and clubs and buy beer....but now that everyone is turning 21 i kinda wish i don't have another birthday. I'd be happy to stay 20 for the rest of my life....or 21, that works too i guess, but no later than that. pretty soon im gonna be drooling and taking out my teeth at night. im not ok with this. spending a year abroad only made me realize more how i never want to get any older. life is just too much fun to be hobbling around. 

you ever feel like you just literally lost moments out of your life, precious moments you want to get back. its that feeling like when you're in a taxi and you're trying to pay the driver really fast when theres 19 million cars behind you on a one way street, honking and screaming expletives in spanish at u....and then u drop a euro in between the cracks where the seat slides back and forth and u can see it but u cant reach it and the driver screams at u to get out. so u have to just LEAVE your euro there. the euro u can see but ur stupid fat arm cant fit into the crack to retrieve it. thats what i just did. except for it was less literal and more along the lines of a commonly known ordeal paying rent in which u literally (i guess it is literal) throw minutes of your life into the trash or to the 907 year old dueña with no teeth who hasnt shaved a day in her life and smells like soup. but like old soup. soup that has been left sitting on the stove since last week soup. like retirement home soup. but dont let the retirement home visual fool you. bitch. is. crazy. i feigned every illness possible to try to get her to stop talking...nothing worked. finally i went insane. and thats where im writing from. a mental ward. as im typing this im running around slamming myeslf into padded walls and wearing one of those starchy white uniforms that itch more than the devil. ALKJ)!)!)@(!1&! I WANT THOSE MOMENTS BACK

you were born. now go wild.

bloody well right

just got back from scotland. edinburgh and glasgow. did the following:

-got locked in a famously haunted mosolium in the middle of the night. felt cold spots from the poltergeist's presence 

-walked in the same graveyard that inspired 

charles dickens, t.s. eliott, and jk rowling

 -saw where ppl were hung

 by the neck in the 17th century

-danced the night away in a scottish club that smelled like vomit and piss

-spent 2 hours standing outside in literally twenty degree weather wearing only a t-shirt....all while

 being soaking wet from sweat, rain, and the bassists water bottle we poured all over ourselves in a fit of passion. can you say hypothermia?? while youre at it....say groupies as well. 

-met tyson ritter

-took a picture with tyso

n ritter 

-embarrassed ourselves in front of tyson ritter 

-passed out from sheer exh

austion and pure relaxation on a beautiful day in malaga

-and ate. alot. and i mean, alot. 

A day in the life of a foreign spaniard

While eating cold "nachos" with un-melted cheese that tasted like they had been bonfired in a smoky pit of charcoal....me and Stacey began to ponder the ridicularity (its a word) of our lives here in Spain. Not only do we go to school two days a week and have never done a lick of homework, but we spend the rest of time traveling to every other country in Europe and/or Africa on government loans that we will never be able to pay back. Life is great - but there are quite a few struggles we are forced to overcome daily.  

Chapter 1: The "nachos" We had some leftover meat from making burritos the night before, so we had the brilliant idea to finish it off by making nachos in our kitchen the size of a half bathroom. So I plug in the oven and start covering the shelf from someone else's oven to use as our nacho pan. This shelf has never been washed, and "I'm not washin it" so we cover it with aluminum foil and put the nachos in the oven, that, as it turns out, was not preheating, because the single outlet in the kitchen had blown out, but it had blown out right after it started to heat up – so it was lukewarm , if that, so we thought “if we just leave the nachos in there for like 15 minutes the cheese might melt”. It didn’t. Our second brilliant idea was to stove-top cook the nachos on the shelf using two burners you have to light with a match. Instead of heating up the nachos, it burned the nag never-been-washed shelf, and charbroiled the bottom chips. Smoke was rising as we looked for marshmallows to roast on the bonfire….we might as well, right? The cheese started to get stale, and age – as did we, so we decided what the hell we will just eat it cold. We own no oven mitts to take the shelf to the table, so we stood over the stove and ate our smoky nachos. Just to contribute to our nacho-making endeavor, this was all done by working by the light of the stove flame in the dark of the night. (the kitchen light had gone out weeks ago and we can’t ask our dueña for another one – to be explained later) . Someone had put their desk lamp in the kitchen for a shadowed half glow to work in, but that fell on the floor and broke two hours after it was put there because you have to limbo under the one foot long cord that is draped over the flame of the stove. Real safe. Anyway, we began to think about every little thing that is the craziness of the Spanish lifestyle….and here are a few things we came up with. -As if the light that used to work had to receive permission from the god of lights before it could turn on, it took approximately 7 minutes to heat up. “Hey Stace, do you wanna cook dinner in thirty? Cuz we should probably get that light goin’.” So we stand there in the dark and wait, refusing to feel around in a kitchen that even the moonlight never touches to start getting stuff out of the also broken fridge light to make dinner. -The laundry cubby off of the kitchen is a story in itself. It’s on a 1x1 foot balcony, a definite after-thought of the original architecture of the apartment. First of all – there is no dryer, so if you want to wash your clothes one must ask themselves, “Will I be needing these jeans in the next two to three weeks?” If no, you may proceed. In the shit hole that is our house, the state-of-the-art washing machine has a door, but that doesn’t mean it’s attached. One must shove a broomstick up against the door to keep it shut so it doesn’t flood the kitchen with laundry water. *see picture* If the broomstick doesn’t suffice, you must also shove the bombona up against the door, as well. (a bombona is basically a propane tank that gives your apartment hot water and stove fire). *To further explain the true luxury of what we call the bombona, one must light the fire box to heat the shower. It’s no big deal until you are in the middle of your shower and you realize all the gas has run out and you are going to have to call the bombonero man to bring you a new one, hopefully by the end of the week. (this is all while you are slowly dying of hypothermia). After a three-hour wash cycle, you need to find somewhere to hang all your clothes. Outside won’t work on the line from the 1930’s because it’s always raining or freezing. Instead, you must hang it around your room on chairs and curtain rods until it dries six weeks later all crustified, which cause them to be hard as rock, and may or not be used as a lethal weapon. -The design of the bathroom will always remain to be a mystery to us all. The bidet (for those of you who aren’t lucky enough to have seen one, dictionary.com’s definition of it is “a small, oval basin used for washing one’s genital and/or anal area”) is placed where the toilet should be, so to get to the toilet you have to contort your ribcage to be able to sit down. The wonderfully placed bidet is used for storage of objects like books, magazines, towels, and the toilet paper roll. We refuse to think about the possibility that any of our dirty Spanish roomates use it. -Back to the kitchen. The dishes and cutlery are a separate issue worthy of it’s own mentioning. You want soup? Well, you have to eat it off a plate. Because the bowls in Spain are a one-centimeter deep plate that allow you to eat three spoonfuls of soup or cereal. Cooking on the provided pans is a joy in itself. The handle and the pan spin unsimultaneously from one another, so when you are cooking, let’s say….eggs, you pick up the pan and the entire pan spins away from the handle and pours all over the gratings of the stove, and you don’t clean it up for 7 months. If you do succeed in keeping the food inside the pan, you will consume bits of pan along with your delicious meal. “Oh pepper! What a nice touch!” “I didn’t put pepper in it.” “Oh, then it’s just pan.” Mmmm. The knives. Period. They’re bent and/or not attached to the handle, and when they are, the blade is on the top of the knife.  

Chapter 2: Sleeping -The prison blinds that adorn your windows let not a speck of light into the room, so don’t count on waking up during daylight hours. You will need alternate methods of despertando. If for a very very slim reason, the decibel levels of the consistent thirty minute long beautiful church “bells” (as in dongs, and only dongs, no dings) do not do the trick, the leg on the five-star resort beds that have springs bruising your face and hips will suddenly collapse during your deepest slumber, sending you jolting into the corner of the room and clawing for your life. True story.  

Chapter 3: Leaving the house -If you can sneak past Dueña (the landlady who hasn’t shaved a day in her life, nor brushed her teeth, NOR showered) without her stopping to scream at you for ninety minutes in her Andalcian gibberish, a very complicated task, you can breathe some “fresh” air. (you practically smoke 12 packs a day when you’ve never smoked a cigarette in your life) -As you venture outside, you stroll down the one-inch sidewalk dodging everything from dog shit to broken glass and slow walkers. Sometimes a frisky moto-bro will bruise your ass as he slaps it on his way past you going 50 km/hr. If you make it out alive, you sometimes have to use ninja skills to get away from a mob of 13-18 year old Spanish chicos who grab you from all directions. Then you realize. It’s. Sunday. Nothing is open, no food, no stores, no nothing. If it’s not Sunday, and the stores aren’t closed due to either siesta or personal vacations, all you will find is a delicious shot of coffee in a shot glass, or some ham. Qué aproveche! While thinking about all of the pleasures of Spanish life and dying of laughter, I took off my sweatshirt and punched a cup of apple juice off the table and onto the floor, spilling it onto the bed, and into the outlet….severely electrocuting myself and staining the white sheet that hasn’t been washed since we moved in. Shit, now I gotta do laundry and sleep in a sleeping bag for four weeks as my sheets form a crusty layer while drying. While I'm up I'll put the stick of butter on the furnace while it's on from 4-10 pm so it softens up enough to make cookies. *Written and illustrated by Sabrina Norris-Turin and Stacey Tallian. None of the above is a dramatization. Not based on a true story, but...an actual true story.

if a 6 turned out to be a 9 i dont mind i dont mind

I feel the utmost need to converse with myself right now because nobody is awake. just watched into the wild and it was a little unsettling. made me all ancy. but one of the best movies i have ever seen. i cant sleep. is that how u spell ancy? stupid red lines on macs. i want to run through some tall grass right now on a mountain and have the camera pan out and spin around really fast like it does in all the movies when the character is all FREEEEEDOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

over the hills and far away

ill never understand why grapefruits are the way they are....its actually impossible to eat them so i always end up turning it over and sucking the juice out of it and leaving all the actual fruit. soo weird. like who invents a fruit that takes 13 times as long to cut it then the time it takes to eat it. its mental. so the other day were walkin home from class and its snowing outside and colder than a witches titty in a brass bra and were like we gotta get outta here, its frikin freeezin so were all hmm where can we go thats warm and we overhear someone say "canary islands are warm" and im like noo way i thought they werent so we come home and buy tickets for 80 euro round trip and thats that and were goin to the canaries on feb 5th for 5 days just because. we might have school. we might not. nobody really knew what the school schedule was so we just said F it were goin no matter what. so were going and gettin a tan when the rest of the world is freezin their nipples off. well i guess the rest of europe at least. some of u lucky southern california beezys are warm. now i appreciate life there. anyways imma go eat some banana pancakes like jack johnson.