haus without thee intraweb

today is saturday, october 31.

halloween is here! but not here here. i have purchased a squash, and already eaten half of it, so i guess the other half can serve as a poor excuse for a jack o' lantern. and my dad emailed me a case of 30 candy bars, so ill probably eat half of that too. but im afraid the festivities will probably end there. and although halloween is turning out to be, umm, nothing, there are other redeeming qualities about this country, i swear!

other redeeming quality number 1: the cities end! on the outskirts of town there is a street, and on one side is civilization, and on the other, nothing. so last sunday, being that there was nothing to do because the whole town was closed, i decided to walk west until i could walk west no more. i almost made it! here is where vitoria ends:

redeeming quality number 2: on my way back from the edge of the world, i found a small village that had been eaten by my town some years back. there was a lonely looking stone church all overgrown with wilderness, a small school house built of stone, and tiny stone houses with shuttered windows and gardens in the backyards:

it was rather neat, and as i sat in the tree covered plaza of the village, i pictured myself in one of those houses, one that was probably built 200 years ago, eating vegetables from my garden, and having basque babies. i like it here...

yo te quiero

today is thursday, october 22.

things are very up and down! i really do like it here, but at the same time, its proving to be completely impossible to meet anyone. yesterday i visited the local record store and attempted (in vain) to befriend the woman who owns thee fine establishment. she was not having it! in my stuttered, broken spanish i asked her various questions about the store, about an Lp i didn't recognize, about a local zine she had for sale. but alas! she was barely willing to utter an annoyed 'yes' or 'no' in response. i wanted to be honest, i wanted to tell her i was new in town, and lonely, and that if i couldn't meet people in a record store, than i was a lost cause. i wanted to grab her and shake her and yell "you must understand, you're my only hope!!!" but instead, i bought a zine, and left, defeated...

the fine picture you see here is my daily commute to school. my town is beautiful! my spirit restored!

oh my corazón!

this is getting harder! my throat has started to hurt from my lack of speech. no one will believe it, but im quite a shy and quiet lady in spanish. i think it has something to do with the fact that i hate being wrong. and im always wrong in spanish. so i keep quiet. and now my throat hurts. i woke up this morning from a terrible dream. i was dreaming that i was pulling something out of my mouth, or trying to at least. it wasn't like throwing up. it was more like trying to pull large clumps of something gross out of my throat because i was chocking on it. i kept pulling it out and pulling it out, but there was always more. i had a similar dream 2 nights ago. but last night it was kinda rad actually, because i was throwing this stuff up into a circle of dead rats. i guess i understand the significance of the gross stuff stuck in my throat; but the dead rats? im pretty sure all that means is... im super goth.

chilling dayz in a strange land

its getting cold! the air is crisp and it smells like fall. i've have been drinking much to much coffee and preparing elaborate meals of steamed broccoli and cheese. life has been pretty uneventful, and not much adventuring to post about, so i took some pictures of my house. this is a foto of my messy little room.

and so is this:

and the kitchen:

the entry way:

and what i've been doing in my spare time:

that is a bottle of beer, keler, and its made in the town where my friend eric lives, san sebastián. next to it is a 1euro bottle of wine that i drank last night, and then a bottle of cider, that really just tasted like apple cider vinegar, because it too cost only 1euro. not pictured: a cup of coffee (its in the sink), and the 1euro box (yes box) of sangria i drank 2 days ago. what other delicious drinkable delights does the future hold for me? tune in next week to find out...

somehow i always show up at the wrong time!

today is tuesday, october 13.

kevin! there are chemtrails here. next to mansions of course. but chemtrails none the less:

and mom! i've been eating! a diet to make any mother proud:

today was my first day of actually working. terrifying obviously. i still can not believe that they have entrusted me with their children! i don't feel much older than a lot of them. in one of my classes there was a group of 5 girls that all recognized me from the rock n' roll bar. they all look older than me. great. another girl, a little skinhead, was at the show at the squat the other night. im sure that after class she told everyone how i stood alone at that show for 3 hours and drank the equivalent of 2.5 bottles of wine all to myself. ha. im not sure im ready for this, i dont feel grown up enough. and at the same time, seeing those girls at the bar and at the show, i feel terribly old. too young to be old and too old to be young. what a dilemma. what a horribly depressing and sickening dilemma.

today is saturday, october 10.

the sun rises quite late here. i awoke at 8:15 to this view from my bedroom window. i wanted to live somewhere where i would wake up and say "holy shit, i live in spain". i feel as though i succeeded. my apartment is two blocks from the medieval center of town. its a 5 story building, probably build in the 50's, and my apartment is on the top floor. there's no internet, and no tv, so most of the time i just look out the window. its dark, and quiet, and kind of dirty. its home.

bullet holes in cemetery walls

today is thursday, october 8.

and i have no internet! so im a tad bit behind. yeah so?

vitoria is proving to be pretty rad. i have located a record store, a vintage store, a book store with an impressive selection of graphic novels in spanish, a 'garage rock' bar, and a bartender who IS joey ramone in disguise. i attended my first show on saturday last. it was at some sort of squat/okupa/radness that technically belongs to the church but has been taken over the youth of euskadi (see below). i happened upon it when i was wondering the medieval section of the city, and there was a flyer on the door for a thrash show. i knew by 'thrash' what they really wanted to say was like, 'metal', and not like 'thrash' as in punk, but eh? what else was i going to do? so i went! all by myself! here are some fotos of my epic first metal show in Basqueland...

The photo in the middle is of me with my new friends, Mar and José María. Jose María was the first to speak to me at the show. He drunkenly came up to me and mumbled something about the camera he was holding. I didn't understand him, so I said "que?". He responding by saying, in an asshole tone of basque voice, "oh, you don't speak basque?". well obviously not jerk, or i would have understood you. and then "well, you dont really speak spanish either, do you?" rad. thanks. josé maría went on to educate me about a few things: basque language is called euskara. basque country is know as euakadi. basque punks are known as assholes. well, that last one was just a little keen observation on my part. so, insults duly noted, i smiled and laughed, and was immediately welcomed into the group, basque or no basque. thats how i met Mar, and then the band you see above, Impalator. José María continued to be a dick to me throughout the evening, but by 4am his true drunken feelings came out. i guess being a total fucking jerk to someone REALLY means that you are in love with them. oh wait, same as back home, huh? anyways, the evening started to wind down at about 10am, and my new friends and i wondered the streets of my precious medieval village, and after one last beer, they were off on the rest of their tour, and out of my life... oh the life of a lonely punk!

in the days of '39

today is friday, october 2.

im reading the sun also rises by ernest hemingway. my mother gave it to me as a parting gift. today i read it while drinking red wine at a cafe. i don't particularly like drinking wine, but i felt it was the the appropriate thing to do. so in the spirit of things, i 'utilized' 4 glasses of vino tinto, and after couldn't help but feel a little 'tight'. i think i will get the hang of this.

spanish bombs in andalucía

today is thursday, october 1.

i arrived the night before last to vitoria-gasteiz, my new home in spanish basque county. i have spent the last 2 days wondering the streets, not eating, sleeping more than i should, and compulsively checking my email every 20 minutes. so far: everything is very spanish; i haven't figured out how to feed myself; i saw a dead pigeon in the street; there is a new rail line through town, but there is no map for it yet; i smoked one cigarette; I made a friend from chile; i found a squat; 37 old men have stared at me; and one old woman pinched my butt and asked me if i was french.

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