Dual Citizenship!

I can't believe I forgot to tell you, but I'm Canadian!  

Thankfully, my WIG Lauren mentioned it in her blog, which reminded me that I had recently made a trip to the Canadian embassy in Seattle.  I think I mostly forgot on purpose because the whole process of printing a card with my picture on it as proof of Canadian citizenship is going to take about a year (serious backlog), and I was trying not to fixate on the awesomeness that will ensue when those 12 months are up (in an effort to make that time go by more quickly).

So, my mom is Canadian by birth, thanks to my Scottish grandparents who moved there en route to the US.  (So international, I know!)  Anyhow, my mom only lived there until she was two, but her birth certificate gives her citizenship, and after some recent inquiries on my part, I found out I'm in, too.  I just have to fill out this form (done), drop it at the embassy (done), and wait a year while the people in the one office in Canada who process all the applications from all over the world shove mine to the bottom of the pile and ignore it for about six months until they finally get around to processing it (doing).

But that's it!  I will totally have two passports.  This confuses me, by the way.  I read a pamphlet about it in the embassy, and they were mostly like, Make sure the dates of entry and exit are in the same passport for each country you go to!  Also, some countries don't want you if you have two passports.  But I don't want them either.  I just want access to all the former commonwealth countries, which I will have with my fancy new Canadian passport-- in 10- to 12-months time plus 2 to 4 weeks to process the passport application.  So there.

Dublin Invasion

Folks, I am back in the game-- the game being Europe.  After a brief two-month stint working as a file clerk in my mom's law office (thanks, guys, for always giving me a job) and a week of mayhem (ish) in the Twin Cities, I've broken a little higher than even and arrived in Dublin with enough money in account to live here very, very humbly for as long as they'll let me.  Luckily, the Good Doctor has a place, so I only have to pay a fraction of the rent I would if I was trying to get a place on my own.

So, at the moment, I'm chillin' to some Salt-N-Pepa while the GD works a 24-hour shift, planning some errands (mobile phone!  kleenex!), and generally plotting (legitimate) ways to stay in Ireland for longer than the three months allotted to me by the very kind, but very stringent Garda officer who let me in.  He looked up the GD in the system!  He took my picture!  Anyone know someone in Dublin who's hiring?

In the meantime, I'm just working on adjusting to the time difference.  I think I may have slept 11 hours last night?  To be fair, I didn't sleep at all on the red eye, and my four-hour nap yesterday afternoon just did not cut it.  I forced myself out of bed around 11 am (just five short hours after the GD had to get up for work), but I would have had no trouble sleeping another five or so.  I am going to use the same technique shortly, however, to force myself off this couch and out into the streets-- just for errands, don't worry.

Also, apparently I only blog when I'm in Europe?  Or maybe it's just that I only blog when I don't have a job, or don't have a job that takes up more than twelve hours a week.  Here's to more of that, at least as long as my credit card balance stays low and my bank account high.  Cheers.

Back in the Yu Ess uv Ey

I'm over the initial culture shock and back into the routine of living (temporarily) with my parents, and suddenly instead of feeling like I've been back for three weeks (which I have), I feel as though I never left. Frightening.

In May I was in London, Paris, Càdiz, Granada, Madrid, Paris, Edinburgh, Dublin, Prague, Krakow, Budapest, Vienna and Paris. Yeah, I know I said Paris three times. That's how many times I was there. And, okay, I was only in Dublin for 12 hours (would have been shorter if the GD and I hadn't missed our original flight to Budapest), but it still counts. My job ended April 30th, and I was on a train out of Flers the morning of the 1st. Never looking back.

Early on, I think I was pretty good about blogging. That is, I vaguely remember writing stuff about being in London with my sister. Then, as my internet access got spottier and spottier and my schedule involved fewer nights in each city, I found myself becoming lazier and lazier about keeping my (huge) reading public up to date on my travels. Then I got back to the states and was jet-lagged and mostly just felt like sleeping (or not, depending on which was less convenient) and that got in the way of blogging. Then I just hadn't blogged in so long that I felt overwhelmed by the idea of starting up again. And that's where I am now.

I saw more places in a month than I thought I would see at all in Europe, got to feel inadequate in numerous languages, bickered and made up with my mom at least 17 times, and enjoyed a well-mediated birthday dinner in Edinburgh. That is to say, the GD met my mom and managed to cut the tangible tension (after two weeks of mother-daughter travel) with pleasant, engaging conversation. I made it to (surprise, birthday destination) Budapest despite missing the aforementioned "plan A" flight by the second of three overnight trains the GD and I took in our travels.

And now I'm here, wondering if any of that just happened. I'm pretty sure it did. I've got pictures.

Càdiz

This place is amazing. My activities today included (but were not limited to) getting up after 11, walking out to the plaza to use the free wifi, spending several hours on the beach, and filing my nails. Yeah, it's rough here. I can see why my sister might not want to, like, stay home and do her homework.


Tomorrow we're taking a ferry to the nearby town of El Puerto de Santa Maria, which is supposed to have beautiful beaches and some kind of celebration going on. Yesterday we took a day trip to Sevilla. The weather was a bit drizzly, and two-thirds of what we went to see was closed for the day (the Cathedral and the attached tower) but getting to see Alcazar (which I hear is similar to the Alambra in Granada but on a smaller scale) was pretty awesome. I'll fill you in on the comparisons (if I feel like it) after our stay in Granada Tuesday night.

I don't want to leave the beach! But I guess Paris* will be okay too. Again. Quel dommage.




*I am afraid that I have not been making any kind of an effort here with the language, and even more afraid of the state my French will be in after a week and a half of English.

The Rain Train in Spain

Is awesome and spacious. It has way more leg room than any I've taken in France, and possibly three times as much as that available on any Ryanair flight. Plus, they show movies! At least the one I was on from Madrid to Cadiz did, although it was confusingly both dubbed and subtitled in Spanish, and what they were saying wasn't always the same as what was being displayed at the bottom of the screen. Plus it was written and directed by David Mamet (Redbelt, 2008), so I might have found it a bit hard to follow in English anyhow.

After a couple of days in Paris, speaking mostly English (hooray for American friends visiting!), I spent one night in Madrid, speaking mostly French. I managed to avoid talking to anyone as I navigated the metro to my hostel, and I totally caught someone trying to pick my pocket! Er, purse. That sucker was going for the outside pocket, where I only keep a notebook to write down travel information. I saw his fingers reaching in there out of the corner of my eye, and when I turned to look at him, he totally pulled his hand away and acted like nothing had happened. I wish I had known something clever to say to him in Spanish. As it was, I hardly spoke any Spanish at all that night. The first girl I met at my hostel was French and spoke Spanish way better than I did. We went out for a tortilla (a Spanish omelette) and I totally let her do the ordering while we chatted away en français.

My Spanish is in a pretty embarrassing state, considering I did study it for a couple of years earlier in life. Though to be fair, the Mexican Spanish I learned in school is pretty different from what they speak here, and I've been speaking French for the past seven months. So every time I try to reach back five to six years in my brain to find a Spanish verb conjugation or the correct direct object pronoun placement, I always come up with the French first.

But, hey, I'm in Càdiz (a.k.a. beachville) for the next four days, so I should just get over any embarrassment and enjoy it. And as long as I'm hanging out with my sis, she should be able to communicate on my behalf. And did I mention my mom is here? Yeah, it's a regular ladies only family reunion. My mom wisely brought along a friend to travel with, whose second purpose (I suspect) is to shame my the three of us out of bickering in front of a non-family member. So far I'd say the success rate is at about 60%. I don't have much shame.

Sistertime, and who is the superior visul artist?

Work is officially over, I will probably never catch up on Italy blogging (basically Sienna, Florence and Venice were all awesome, but I got sick at the end of the trip and spent most of Venice in bed in the hotel room), and my sister and I just spent an awesome weekend in London. We only bickered a few times and we made a good showing at the pubs all three nights. Yesterday we hung out pretty much all day with out second cousin Billy, getting up in the London Eye in the morning and starting a long day of drinking around noon. I started out the afternoon with a meat pie, so things didn't get too ugly. At some point after we had met up with some of Billy's friends to continue the debauchery, I decided to draw mustachioed men on the hands of anyone who was willing. This was the result.



I would also like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my favorite depictions of myself as illustrated by my former students in good-bye cards.


I love this one a) because it's one of the more accurate depictions of my hair and b) because everyone in this class clearly copied the same sentence as given to them by their teacher that spelled my name wrong, but then most of them also spelled my name correctly somewhere else in the picture. Also look at the size of my arm! Or is it a flashlight beam?


I was drawn as a blond in at least five cards. Wishful thinking, I suppose. This was also a very popular spelling of "bye bye."

And finally, this isn't me, but what a crazy/trippy drawing! I love it.


The robot is almost as awesome as the heart-/ex-eyed yes and no characters.

I'll probably share some more when I have a little more time, but I'm about to check out of this hotel in London and take the train back to Paris. Coffee is in order.

Pisa

[Just pretend I'm writing this in real time.]

I got into Pisa on Tuesday (4/14) a little later than desired (this after the bank card debacle in Lucca), but that was okay because all I was really planning on doing was checking into the hotel, taking a nap, and waiting for the Good Doctor's* flight to get in. I accomplished all of these things, plus I went and found a pizza to eat. I was told the hotel had a car service (for only 3 euros!) that went to the airport to pick people up, so disoriented as I was when my alarm went off at 11pm, I went to meet the GD in person.

Pisa was really just a meeting point for us, but we got up and went to see the one, important thing the next day before heading out of town. The Tower! Look how leaning it is!



Amazing! Just kidding, I totally tilted my camera for effect. In case you couldn't tell by the nearly equally leaning buildings in the background. This is what it actually looked like, from the other side and further away.


Still impressive, and the church and dome right next to it were (although standing vertically) quite impressive as well, possibly even more ornate and interesting to look at than the tower itself.

Pisa is fairly small (compared to Rome and Florence), but if you get into the older part out town (nearer the tower), there's a good mix of chilled out cafés and tourist traps. Our hotel was right across from train station, which was very convenient, but meant we were in a kind of crappy part of town. It was only a twenty minute walk, however, to the Tower, and since there isn't much else to see, it wasn't a big deal.

After our big morning seeing all the, er, sight, the GD and I grabbed some panini sandwiches and beers and high-tailed it out of town, this time without incident at the train station. Next stop, Sienna, for some camping!



*I can't take credit, this is what my dad calls him, but I like it and I'm sticking with it.