A New Kind of November

11.3.12
The cold has found me. We are old, bitter enemies and I was silly to think that crossing the ocean would be enough of a getaway. My journeys bought me a few more barefoot sun-kissed months, and I cherished the feeling of going to be still warm, like the sun was retained beneath my skin, and the pronounced tan line drawn past my collarbone. But I could not hide forever; the chills have found me again. Man they must have a killer GPS system.

Ok, if I'm honest its 63 now, and it was in the 50's all week, and that is absolutely nothing to frown about considering that it's currently 37 at home with frost crunching the ground and ski hills preparing to open. I have a wacked temperature gauge, I tell you. Perhaps I'm cold blooded, like a lizard. It has definitely gotten colder here though, in my defense. It was kind of a rainy week in the city, the water bouncing off slick hurried umbrellas and pooling in the cracks between the bricks of the street. "It never rains in Barcelona!" my friends say, and tell me I'm the one who brought them bad weather. If that is true, soon the streets will be blanketed with four feet of snow and as far as snow plows, they are surely a foreign mystery here as I have not seen a pickup truck since the day I left the US.

This week was a short one for the country of Espana: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday  Fiesta, Fiesta, Fiesta. As Dino, my tutor, explained, "The holidays are on Thursday and Saturday, but Friday just bridges them together so people don't have to work." Halloween passed without much bang, well, not the jack-o-lanterns and haunted houses and green witch noses and streets-crammed-with-excited-costumed-kids that I am used to. I will say that as I dressed up as a European: skinny jeans and a scarf, but I'm not sure that counts. Wednesday night was a chilly one, and my friend Andrew and I decided we'd go swimming in the school's pool to warm our bones. Not going to lie, I could almost feel my heart break when I saw there was no hot tub. But the water was warm and the pool-noodle fight was fun (until we noticed there was a backstroker trying to be serious a few lanes over and had to quit) and the swim caps we were forced to wear didn't even cut off our head circulation so it was all good. The rest of the night was spent lost in Barcelona, searching and searching for a certain cinema that plays movies in English--which we had confidently looked up directions and bus routes for over hot chocolates at Starbucks, but evidently neither of us is stellar at directions. I think that the public transportation and city layout is fairly simple in Barcelona, which would be real helpful if I didn't have the direction sense of a rock. We went to see the movie Savages with John Travolta and Blake Lively, but instead saw a bunch of drunk British, a man dressed as a bunny and a woman as a spiderweb, a few cafe owners annoyed to be giving us directions, a delicious sandwich shop happy to hand us over piping-hot onion rings and subs, a dozen street signs that were not the ones we were looking for, and finally, the cinema closed tightly by a silver gate, our movie having started 40 minutes ago. Oh well. The way I see, it, movies are made into DVDs, but my nights spent in beautiful Spanish cities can not be replaced.

Thursday morning we packed in the car and headed north again. Four days in Pals is a very very relaxing little vacation. It's calm here, and the days are broken up by siestas and aparaprentivos: this is the word for the small snack we have about 15 minutes before lunch, always pistachios, peanuts, pepper potato chips, and olives. To me it seems a little funny to have your snacktime right before lunch, but I like it. On Friday we went on an excursion. We biked to the beach and then down the boardwalk, onto the path that brings you to the nude strip of beaches (unoccupied because of the cold) and then into the woods. There is an old American radio base back there, a bunch of old abandoned buildings that were used years ago when the whole Costa Brava was nothing but miles of sand beach and trees (which is beautiful to think about). Blanca and Bruno knew of a secret gap in the barbed wire fence, so we got to explore the crumbling buildings and imagine them bumbling with American soldiers, back in the day. That was fun. Last night we went to Begur, a neighbor town, to check out the festival. The specialty of this fiesta is castanas (this means chestnuts roasted over the fire) and panalletes (a thumb-size pastry thing, covered in piniones which I'm not sure what they are exactly but they come off the trees kind of like baby pinecones). I ate a Nutella crepe -they are crazy about Nutella over here- and watched the ninos play a guessing game to win cookies.

As for now, its about 10 and Blanca, Bruno and I are splayed out on the couch watching a Spanish family game show. Bea is tucked in with Cito, her bear, and Javi and Irene are next door having dinner. The sun sets around 5:30 these days, which catches me off guard just like the cold. Tomorrow at some time we'll head back to the city and get ready for the week, which I hope brings sun. In three weeks my mom and grandma will come to visit me, and for that I am incredibly excited.

Thank you so much to everyone sending me letters and blog comments. I absolutely love to read them all and it makes me feel warm knowing that you guys are thinking of me. I like it when you tell me what you're up to back home, family and friends. I hope you're all well and staying warm and wishing you the best week November can offer.

PS. A new kind of November. What I am missing about this month at home: fires in the fireplace at night, Friday night football games, apple cider, my family all together and fat after Thanksgiving turkey, fall hikes with friends, big sweaters, cheering on the xc runners, my mom's potato soup, the sound of the wind whipping the trees, going to the apple orchard, the end of the tennis season, roasted pumpkin seeds, bonfires.
What I love about my new November: the riled sea in autumn, my fluffy gray scarf, the warm pastry shop on my way to school, seeing snow on the mountains but wearing a t-shirt, the old-fashioned curved-handlebar bike I borrow from the neighbor, the windsurfers in their neoprenes, admiring the buildings from a bus seat, soft cardigans, watching the rain from the terrace, not wearing a parka, walking everywhere, the small gelato stand in the mall, letters from loved ones, the sense of new things.


and that's all for now, folks.