2014 in Review

As per usual, every year I set a NYResolution to write more in my blog...and every year it seems like I get worse and worse with keeping up with it.  But one post that I always try to make time for, if not in my blog then at least in a handwritten journal, is my end of the year reflections.  This year was an especially important year for me in a lot of ways, so here are five breakdowns of my best and worst.

1. Love and Heartbreak
This is the first time I've ever written about my love life on my blog, but as it had such a huge impact on my life and my growth as a person this year, it would be counterproductive to moving on to 2015 to leave it out.  After casually dating (or barely dating at all) basically since high school, in February I met someone who completely altered my life and view on love.  Always being the cynic, scoffing at friends 'in love' or overly affectionate couples in the street, and even worse always dating people I already knew would bore me, I was knocked flat by what I began feeling for this person in just a matter of days.  We had an extremely intense relationship, squeezing what felt like years into months.  When the inevitable end came when he made a last minute move to Germany, I was devastated.  As he left my apartment for the last time, I went from living the highest high of my life to the lowest low with the closing of an elevator door.
After everything I experienced, and now that I am finally over the hump of heartbreak 7 months later, I can finally look back and appreciate it for all the ways that relationship allowed me to live an amazing new experience, and in doing so, make me a more empathetic person.  It's hard to understand people in love when you have never felt it for yourself.  I also see all the flaws that relationship had and understand more now about what I need and want, and what things are non-negotiables.  Despite a lot of hard feelings I had towards this person for a long time, I honestly wish him the best in his life, and I'm ready and happy to close that door.

2. Friendship
This year I realized some really important things about the friendships in my life and how distance really, truly makes no difference.  Most of my best friends in the entire world I get to see once a year or less, but every time I see them I feel my love for these people is just as strong or even stronger than the last time we were together.  I also chose to cut a few people out of my life who were once part of my friend circles or who I once even considered to be people who would be my friends for the rest of my life.  These weren't even conscious decisions, to be honest.  It was more so that at some point I didn't even have to think about it to realize these people were just no longer worth my time or efforts.   I also learned that all friendships have their flaws, and you don't always have to agree or get along with even the people you know are your friends for life.  If you can look past the disagreements and still feel a strong bond with a person, this for me may even be the best sign of friendship.

3. Bad Luck
I CAN'T WAIT to be able to write an end of the year post and NOT mention my perpetual bad luck. For the 3rd consecutive year I had something stolen from me here while living in Madrid!  The count so far is one bag, one computer, one wallet, and two phones.  This is why I can't have nice things.

I moved out of an apartment with the world's worst roommate right at the beginning of 2014 into another place with the world's most awkward roommate.  Just to give a small idea, I had a date over for dinner at the apartment one night and while we were eating a nice almost romantic dinner, my roommate came in and brought his own dinner and sat down at the {very small} table with us.  Talk about mood killer.

And of course, to end the year off JUST RIGHT, I broke my ankle about 2 weeks ago.  Anyone who's known me since middle school knows this was a long time coming, however in the last two months I've been doing more exercise than I have since leaving high school, so how on earth I break my ankle walking through a crosswalk I HAVE NO IDEA.

4. An Epic Summer
Sorry, not sorry, but I have to take a moment to brag about a summer for the books.  My parents came to visit for two weeks at the end of June and I loved having them here, getting to show them around Madrid and taking a trip together to Ireland, not to mention having someone else footing the bill for a time.  Then I "worked" tutoring in the mornings for a month, moved out of that awkward apartment and a generous and lovely friend let me crash her place for a few weeks before I went on my first solo trip.  After spending 3 days in Belgrade with my friend Aleksandra, I went to Dubrovnik, Croatia all on my own.  I'd been dying to go to Croatia and I finally got tired of waiting for someone else to accompany me, so in an attempt to also get some much needed personal reflection and mental health repair time (see #1), I pushed my nerves aside and planned a week there.  This was one of my favorite trips ever and I am now 100% convinced on solo travel.  It was so easy to meet other people and I was a lot more open than I would have been had I gone with other friends.  It reminded me about all the things I first fell in love with about traveling, not to mention Dubrovnik met all my very, very high expectations and even took me beyond what I hoped to experience.
Then, in September I attended my friend Mary's fairytale wedding in the French countryside.  Such a love-filled, beautiful, and romantic weekend reconnecting with two good friends from college.  And then I closed off my summer with a weekend in Munich at Oktoberfest - a big checkmark off my bucket list.  It's everything you would expect - boisterous, traditional, and full of massive, heavy pints of BIER...and cleavage.

5. Work 
In a rare moment for me, I came to one very firm decision this year which is that I will not be continuing with BEDA Auxiliares for a 4th year during the 2015-2016 school year.  This has normally been one of my most difficult decisions in the past two years, but throughout the course of 2014 I realized that yes, I am finally finished being a teacher's assistant.  I love my school and seeing all my incredibly funny and painfully cute kiddos, so I know that saying goodbye and closing this chapter in June is going to be very emotional.  As for what's next, that remains to be seen in 2014.

¿Cómo se Bama?

We are 2 days post election and I am still on a high!  There aren't really words to do justice to how I feel this week...But I'm going to try to find some anyway! I will try to keep it short because I'm ready for a break from politics too.

It has been a very, very long time since the last time I was proud to say that I'm an American.  Actually, I take that back; I don't think I have ever felt that way.  Most people who know me know that I am not a patriotic person and in-your-face "patriots" really make me want to vomit.  So Obama beat Romney...that makes me happy.  Does that make me finally a little bit proud to smile that I'm a US citizen?  Not as much as some other things that happened Tuesday night. 

WOMEN! MARRIAGE! MARIJUANA! Oh my!

Congress has a record number of women in it now - 20 in the Senate and 77 in the House.  Yes, those numbers/percentages are still extremely small (just 20% in the Senate and 17% in the House) but it's something.  Rape Rupert Murdouch was defeated!! Elizabeth Warren elected!! And I have never been more proud to be a Wisconsinite because I was floored when I heard that Tammy Baldwin beat Tommy Thompson.  I didn't think it would happen.  After Scott Walker, I guess I lost a lot of faith in my fellow Wisconsin men and women.  What an amazing victory for both women and the LGBT community - the first openly gay senator!! From Wisconsin!!  All smiles over here.

Then Minnesota, Washington, Maine, and Maryland all passed same-sex marriage amendments.  In the case of Minnesota, they voted "no" on an amendment to officially define marriage as between a man and a woman and in the other states same-sex marriage is officially legal!  Today I looked at an article with photos of couples' reactions as the news was announced and my heart just felt too big for my body.

Marijuana. Oh Mary J.  I had no idea some states were even voting on anything having to do with her.  All I have to say is - Tax that shit.
We can't win them all of course as California did not vote to end the death penalty nor did they approve a law requiring GMO labels on food.

Today I feel new and I feel so much more hope than in 2008 and it has absolutely nothing to do with Obama.  The last year has been a political roller coaster for a lot of the country, and especially us Wisconsinites.  I had been quickly growing more and more depressed about the ability of my country to truly move forward as it seemed that people's answer to hard times was to revert to mind-sets that I thought we'd left behind 60 years ago.  Tuesday's results have left me speechless and restored a little faith in how I think about the American people (hey, just a little though...we still got a long way to go).
All in all, it was such a successful night beyond the Obama/Romney race.  The choice for president is always a choice for the lesser of two evils.  The system needs to change. The two-party system is what makes my country divisive, not the two people who represent one side or the other.  I agree with everyone who says that we are too divided right now, and I am just as guilty as the next person when it comes to rejecting someone just because they aren't a "democrat" or vice-versa, so I will be the first to admit that a change begins with me.  I just hope the Romney loss won't leave my "republican" friends feeling the opposite.





Some photos from the Election Party I went to, organized by Democrats abroad:

Hanging with the Prez

Prepared for an all-nighter together

5:30 am Celebrating

Planet of the [Toddler] Apes

Time is absolutely flying by! I can hardly believe today is the first day of October. I'm so used to noticing the change of the seasons by the colors of the trees and that crispy cool walk across the Bridge to class that it's hard to grasp that Fall is here.  The weather here is a little like home -- in the fact that one minute I'm huddling inside a warm jacket and the next I'm sweating so much I'm practically a stripper as I walk down the street.
So I have conquered the first week and a half in my school, and it is definitely safe to say that other than teachers and students, there's not a whole lot the same about La Inmaculada (the name of the school I'm working in) and the schools I grew up in.  Today was the first day of the "full schedule". Hey Scottie Walker, are you listening? I have a wonderful budget cut idea for you for that "expensive" little gnat buzzing around your head (AKA the thing the rest of us call education).  The schools here started on September 10th(ish) and the first 3 weeks of school are on "summer schedule" which basically means they start at 9am and the day ends at 1:30, just in time for lunch.  In other words, it is just incredibly silly to expect anyone to complete a full day of school coming right off of summer vacation. Genius?!
Maybe it's the uptight, schedule-obsessed American in me, but from what I saw in a week and a half, it's basically a waste of time the first 3 weeks of school.  But it also seems like Spaniards need a little more time than us Americans to get organized and on track.

Speaking of getting organized...
I am still waiting for a complete and accurate schedule of the classes I'm supposed to help with.  It's been a chaotic mess.  It seems like no one really wants to take the responsibility to organize the 3 Language Assistants (me and 2 others) and no one communicates with each other, just complains that things are unorganized.
I also spent the first 7 days like a lost little lamb in my school. My first day, I met the director of the school, Carmen Jesus (a nun), who asked me some awkward interview-like questions about who I am and then dropped me off in a classroom with one of the English teachers.  From there it was a giant question mark.  I didn't know where any classrooms were, who to talk to about what, and I wasn't introduced to any of the other faculty, and actually if it wasn't for the fact that the students have to wear uniforms I almost wouldn't know if a few of the other teachers were part of the high school classes or not.  There is no dress code.  Basically it's casual Friday everyday, only not even as dressy as that.  And forget about trying to figure out who the gym teacher is since so many people wear track suits.
I have been going to 2 classes pretty consistently: Infantil, which is Preschool ages 3-5, and one of the high school English classes.  The preschool is interesting.  I've been in all three classes, 3, 4 and 5 year olds, and they are all doing the same thing.  Repeating the types of weather and seasons, the days of the week, and vocabulary of the classroom (pencil, chair, table, and schoolbag).  Here's a link to "The Weather Song" that we've been singing everyday:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcW9Ct000yY

The 4 and 5 year olds are a little more attentive to what they're repeating, but the 3 year olds are just parrots.  They repeat everything the teacher says, even in Spanish.  Today she dropped something and made a noise to herself like "Ohohohh!" and it was like a wave through the classroom starting with the kiddie closest to her mimicking the sound until the whole room was filled with "OhOhOHHH!".  They haven't quite figured out what "Kate" means yet either since when she says "Who is Kate??" they all repeat "HOOESKAE".  And the recess. Ohh my the recess.  In the classroom they are fairly calm. Obviously they have the attention span of a fish and spend most of the time gaping at me trying to figure out who this strange new person is speaking in this weird language in this odd accent ("PERO quien es ESA!?" 'But who is SHE!?")... but when it comes time for recess they go absolutely insane.  The first day I experienced it I wasn't sure what I was witnessing. The play yard is pretty small, but there is a fake grass area for "soccer" (or rolling around on the ground which is what I've mostly seen), a slide and monkey bars set in sand, and then cement all closed in by a metal gate.  The minute they exited the classroom half of them ran for the gate, started climbing up, screaming and shaking the bars like they were a bunch of monkeys that had just escaped the lab.  Others climbed onto the windows outside the classroom and started banging on the glass.  Basically like a scene from Rise of the Planet of the Apes...the one where James Franco plays the hot monkey scientist.  I'm like the female James Franco in this school of Monkey Children... minus the genius part and the dashing good looks

I'm enjoying the high school class for the most part because I can joke around with them and have actual conversations, even though today they were so awful and I was reminded that they are a bunch of immature teenagers.
Overall I really like being at the school and getting to know the teachers and all the kids at all the grade levels. I think once things FINALLY get organized and I am consistently with the same teachers and the same kids, it can only get even better.  Who knew I would enjoy the classroom?  Scary. 
Next I'll have to update everyone on my first protest experience over the weekend (Me, at a protest? Never!) as well as my new reality show obsession 'Quien Quiere Casarse con Mi Hijo?' 'Who Wants To Marry My Son?' which is the most perfect combination of The Bachelor and that stupid MTV 20 minute long scripted show Date My Son or Date My Daughter or whatever it was where the parents comment on everything.  It's so terrible, but so hilarious.  I'll be sure to let you all know who gets kicked off next week!