This month has been AMAZINGLY hectic for me but in so many good ways!
A few weeks ago I chose to spend a weekend in New York, a trip which I will never regret however I will stick to my guns when I say that it was just too short so may have to do it again sometime soon hehehe. I enjoyed all my favorites of the USA like, IHOP for breakfast, Denny's for lunch and (a new favorite -) The CheeseCake Factory for dinner. I was actually carded when I tried to buy a glass of wine! God love that girl for making me feel so young. LOL
Then I followed that up with a week of hard core work in preparation of missing a week to go to Hillsborough, Raleigh and Durham - all in North Carolina - in the presence of my beautiful and funny familia. As a bonus to that trip, as soon as I arrived in NC, I jumped in a car with my mom, dad and uncle for a 5 hour road trip to Maryland (near Washington DC) to visit a cousin who despite having kept in touch with, I unfortunately have not seen in person in almost 20 years. It was sooooo good to see her. She's had an amazingly busy year herself with the addition of a new house, new husband and new bouncing (literally) baby boy and it was great to meet her and her wonderful family. Her baby was 3 weeks old while I was there and I just could not get over how strong and alert he was... blew me away.
So after a day out in MD, we headed back to NC where we played out the remainder of the week with relatives, sight-seeing and visiting museums and university campuses, but most importantly just having a blast. I can't wait to get a few minutes to edit some video footage I have of my family....I think many of you will learn where I get my overall cookiness and admiration for all things musical. During this trip I learned a number of things such as (1) My cousin Alex could quite literally be the tallest high school student I have ever seen, (2) My cousin Leah plays an outstanding guitar and has a beautiful voice and talent for music which is in blossoming stages, (3) my aunt Meg is an amazing woman for holding all the craziness of that household (including putting up with my wacky uncle) together, (4) North Carolina is a place with many dangers...including HIGH-SPEED-BELLY-GOATS! (aka deers) EVERYWHERE (more to come on this topic soon, with video to accompany, I promise) and most importantly (5) BOTH, my uncle AND my father share the zodiac sign of Aries.....Along with my grandfather! How my grandma did it... i have NOOOO idea.
So here I am now in Barcelona after an extremely long journey. I hopped on a plane from Raleigh North Carolina, landed in New Jersey and then boarded for Spain from there. The flight here from New Jersey was about 7ish hours I think. I popped a sleeping pill and slept solid for a good 4-5 hours of that which was AWESOME. When I arrived on this side of the Mediterranean, it was 9:30AM local time....which was approx. 3:30AM back home... so the sun was shining, the streets were bustling and I was not going to sleep anymore. Instead I roamed the streets, took pictures and saw the Cirque Du Soleil (as I pronounce Circus Olay hehe) live, which I've always wanted to do, and just completely exhausting myself to the point where it is now 10pm here (only 4pm back home) and I cannot wait to hit the sack. Some of my first lessons of my European adventures include:
- Bring an adapter for your plug-ins: Duh... didn't think that one through. I got here and couldn't plug in my laptop till I bought an adapter.
- Debit Cards: require a FOUR-digit pin to use in this continent...why didn't anyone EVER tell me that one day my FIVE-digit pin would haunt me? I figured it out after calling a Collect phone # for my bank after trying to use my card at over 10 different machines in the course of the day. Oh well - guess I'm stuck using my Credit Card for the next week.
- Don't Arrive on a Sunday: Everything is closed... At first I thought perhaps it was because of a national holiday but according to locals... ALL Sundays are dead and nobody who IS working at a restaurant or in a taxi on this day can break a large Euro bill if their life depended on it.
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