Irish Eyes

The crazy thing about the UK is that people speak English there.

The first weekend in May was Spanish Labor Day, so Caitlin and I hopped a plane to Dublin. I could understand every announcement on the plane and all the flight attendants getting snarky in the back. And then I could understand the people on the bus and the tour guides and the cashiers, and I tried not to say too much about it to Caitlin, because she's in love with a Welsh man and is well aware of this whole English-speaking phenomenon.

I tend to zone out when I'm surrounded by Spanish speakers; unless someone enunciates their words well in a crowd, it's all mushing together in my head as a drone. I'd love for it to not be like that, but it is like that. I am, however, good at catching certain swear words. After eleven months of letting my ears function at a low level of alertness, all this English was like candy. It makes you feel so intelligent: I just overheard two different conversations at once and understood them! I have moved to the fluency level required to order fast food! Next I'm gonna write a Master's thesis!

Of course, my foreign language default was on, so I kept telling the cashiers, "Gracias!"

It rained the entire weekend, which was not disappointing in the least because Ireland is supposed to be wet and green. And the houses! They're free-standing, not all built on top of each other like Spanish brick houses, and the bus drivers say things like, "Watch your umbrella there, love," and the tour guide at the old jail kept making sure people could understand what he was saying. In a country where customer service is not a high priority, this was all so refreshing.

The crazy thing about good stories is that they're mostly born of things gone wrong, plans come undone, and except for the drunk Dubliner who asked Caiti, "When're you gonna stop being so good-lookin'?" there wasn't a lot awry during this trip. No accidental five-mile walks to the ocean, no hostel roommates asking to borrow deodorant at 6:30am. Instead, we learned bookfuls (or at least bookletfuls--bookletsful?) about the Irish fight for independence, tested the Guinness and corned beef and cabbage, and watched the sun sink into the River Liffey.

The only thing I wish our trip had included was sheep. It was a lovely, rainy little weekend, and I remember thinking to myself as we flew back to Madrid, "How nice. How...strangely uneventful." Which, of course, is exactly what believers in Murphy's Law advise against thinking, but since I am not superstitious, I thought it anyway. Perhaps some would attribute the madness of our next UK visit to such thoughts, but here's what I think: when you go anywhere that's not home, awkward things have that much more potential to occur. And when you throw drunken sports-lovers into the mix, awkward just becomes awesome.

But that's another story.

The Time-Space-Travel-Money Continuum

When I was eight years old, my family took a two-week road trip to California to visit family. I remember dad's cousin Bub's car soaring down crooked San Francisco streets and my fear that Bay Bridge would fall into the ocean as we drove over it. But we loved our California adventure so much that, three years later, when the parents proposed another road trip to Washington state for a wedding, Andrew and I printed out a sign of protest and chanted, "Washington, boo! California, yay!" for a good ten minutes.

(Not that it did any good. We still went to Washington. Plus, we were mistaken. The Pacific Northwest is fantastic.)

Anyway, great-uncle Don was our financial supplier for the first leg of the California trip. Whenever we left the house, he'd hand my brother and me a 5-dollar bill to pick up souvenirs. Andrew would come home with gumballs and erasers and toys from 25-cent machines; I'd come home with five dollars. When we unpacked our suitcases in sweet home North Dakota, my mom asked, "Where did that stack of cash come from?!" Instead of souvenirs, I brought home a deposit for my savings account.

(Should I mention the time I deliberated over a 10-cent bag of My Little Ponies at a garage sale? All that pony magic for only ten cents! But what if something better came along later and I didn't have any money left? I think my mom was proud of my mad budgeting skills at such a young age, but she was also concerned that I had no friends.)

(P.S. I did end up with the ponies.)

This summer is going to go down in history as The Summer I Traveled, and I don't mean to say that in a boasting way. I listened to an online speech last night in which the speaker told high school graduates, "Don't climb the mountain so the world can see you; climb the mountain so you can see the world." This is probably my last summer in Europe and potentially the last with so much free time, and there are so many mountains to climb, places I'd hoped to see, people coming to visit. It costs only slightly more to fly between six different countries than it does to drive round-trip from Minot to Minneapolis, and if I had children to feed I'd stay home and feed them, but that isn't my life right now. My life has been tucking away little caches of birthday money for something, someday, and I guess this summer is the something someday. I don't fully know why I feel like I have to justify it, except that I live in Europe where people don't expect missionaries to be, and a lot of you help me live and work here, and I think it's important to say that my life is not one giant European vacation which you are funding, even though those are the parts that get highlighted on Facebook. I don't want to lose anyone's trust when it comes to financial things; I use support money to live here lightly. Uncle Don's souvenir money is what's keeping me in the cheap hostels and feeding me the breakfast pastries.

A lot of what I'm about to write is going to feel like a travelogue, and I hope it never comes across as, "Hey, world, look how awesome I am at the top of this mountain!" At the end of the day, I'm still as sweaty and tired and wearing as much melty mascara as anyone else, and the number of countries I see will never make me a better person than anyone else, and I am just not that cool. So will you please forgive all my rambling and keep praying that I don't climb mountains just to be seen? Because I don't want to become that person. And what I want to say in all the writing about it and talking about it is only, "Hey, here's the view from this mountain: will you look with me, see as much as we can see together?"

Hiatus

So I haven't written in awhile because I had all these finals to grade, a yearbook to publish, a house to move out of, four friends with backpacks and plane tickets, and now I'm sitting in the living room of my new house, afraid this shirt has adhered permanently to my skin after wearing it for three days in a row. Yeah. I am that girl. Also, all my North Dakotan friends are currently in airplanes somewhere over the ocean, and for the first time here, I feel truly homesick.

I'm going to write some stuff in a day or two, but first I've got about fifteen layers of grunge to scrub away. I'm sure you wanted to know all that. You're welcome.

Good Night, House

Good night, patio
Good night, chairs
Good night, laundry drying
out in cool night air

Good night, barking dogs
Good night, yowling cats
Good night, swooping thing
that I think is a bat

Good night, little kitchen
all crusty with use
Good night, moldy bathroom;
you've seen much abuse

Good night, peeling paint
and good night, crumbling wall
Good night, all the knick-knacks
still lining the hall

Good night, plastic Jesus
asleep in a drawer
Good night, framed old placemat,
whatever you're for

Good night, tiny washer
Good night, clogged-up shower
Good night, Gilmore Girls on TV at all hours

Good night, green-roofed school
living across the street
Good night, all you neighbors
I never did meet

Good night, open fields
just dripping with stars
Good night, walking path
Good night, window bars

Good night, pokey mattress
Good night, dirty floors
Good night, quiet pueblo
Good night, creaking door

Good night to the past year
teeming with memoranda,
Good night, little house
here on Calle La Manda

Like Sands Through the Hourglass

These are the days of our lives. ("Dogs of our wives," as my dad used to say disparagingly when the soap theme crawled through our kitchen after the Noon Show. I don't miss having a TV.)

My roommate is asleep in the room next to mine. My friend Alex is asleep in the guest room. Regina Spektor is singing for me as I start to pack all this junk into my 2.5 suitcases, which somehow all came in under the 50-pounds-each limit last year but could hardly do that now due to the sheer volume of scarves. And I still have to do laundry. Why do Post-Its multiply like rabbits under my care? Is this Norwegian phrasebook going to be of any use? There's the pile of stuff I have to send to friends but never do because the post office still intimidates me. Mom's gonna Skype with me later, and I'm going to tell her which clothes, which shoes to bring when she visits later this month, and my goodness, where did I get all this stuff?!

I graduated from high school ten years ago, the only one in my class of five who wept all of May 2002 away, afraid to leave North Dakota while they were all vowing to get out as soon as they can. I think I'm the only one who attended an out-of-state college, and I'm definitely the only one outside of a two-state region, which doesn't really tell you much except that our plans often end up fooling us.

I cried for a full night when high school ended, and during Christmas break of my freshman year, I cried again that I couldn't go back because nothing was the same, I didn't know anyone, college was nothing like home. Then, what do you know, four years later, I cried in the back of a van because Roseville was home and North Dakota was home and I didn't know how to make it all fit. I cried as Minot shrunk in my plane window, and I'll cry in a year when Camarma does the same. I don't intend to cry now as I shove all this junk into my suitcases, though, because I'm not going to miss my moldy shower in the dark little cave that is our house, or my barely-a-mattress mattress, or the parties that the neighborhood cats throw in the backyard. I am moving across town to a house that is cleaner and cheaper, so even though stories about my living arrangements will no longer be as exciting as they've been here, I also will not miss the bird/bat that sits above my door at night and flutters toward my head when I put the key in the lock.

Our kids graduated on Friday, six days before my friends arrive from the States, twenty-two days before I see my parents again, one month and fifteen days before Caitlin and I attempt a backpacking extravaganza. It's already next summer, the thing we spent all of last summer talking about: Next summer, we'll travel. Next summer, we'll know how to plan for school. Next summer, I'll have shoes that fit. I don't know that it looks like I thought it would look, but--again with the plans. Alex and I walked all over Toledo until our legs were crying, stayed up late until we were crying from laughter over stupid things on facebook. I wouldn't even have known Alex unless I'd moved back to North Dakota, and the girls that are coming on Thursday--some of my favorites--I wouldn't have known, either.

The seniors and their ECA diplomas are spreading out across the States and Spain, and I hope it doesn't take them ten years to figure out that things always change and you cry, but as long as you keep stepping forward, more life will be waiting ahead. Half the time, you won't recognize it; you were expecting something bigger and shinier maybe. But then you'll be packing a suitcase with all the stuff you've accumulated somehow with the money you've earned somewhere to meet the friends you've met everywhere. It won't ever fit completely in the suitcase. Still, life will make room for all these memories, pieces of paper, people. Somehow, your heart will peel open to hold as much as it can if you're not too afraid of tearing that you keep it closed tightly. It will fit.