Day Zero Project

So I stumbled across this website via a friend's blog I was reading the other day, and I won't lie, I've been thinking hard about it ever since. I finally decided I'm going to do it: 101 goals in 1001 days (about 2 3/4 years). After quite a bit of thought, here's the goals I came up with:

1. Read all the standard works
2. Be on the Dean’s List
3. Read the triple combination in Spanish
4. Pay off my student loans
5. Give away three pass-along cards
6. Stop biting my nails
7. Think of 5 people who have made a difference in my life and write them a letter
8. Visit my grandpa once a week for three months
9. Write in my journal at least three times a week for three months
10. Learn how to play 10 songs well on the guitar
11. Throw a dart on a map and go to where it lands
12. Let my hair grow for a full year
13. Run a half marathon
14. Document all 101 goals with a picture and caption in a scrapbook
15. Visit 3 new states
16. Get married
17. Pay for someone’s meal behind me in the drive-thru
18. Kiss someone at midnight on New Year’s Eve
19. Go snowshoeing
20. Make a quilt
21. Have 7 friends suggest a book and read them all
22. Splatter-paint a wall
23. Refinish a piece of furniture
24. Learn to cook something new every month and save the recipes
25. Ride a jetski/waverunner
26. Tie a note to a balloon and let it go
27. Do a random act of kindness every day for a month
28. Make and decorate cookies shaped like zoo animals
29. Go barefoot for a whole day
30. Buy a lottery ticket
31. Learn how to swim correctly
32. Keep a dream journal for a month
33. Kiss in the rain
34. Knit a scarf
35. Take a First Aid class
36. Write to my grandparents at least twice a month for a year
37. Master the art of driving a stick shift
38. Choose the songs to the soundtrack of my life
39. Carve my initials on a tree
40. Visit 15 different temples
41. Go two weeks without spending money
42. Learn how to play soccer
43. Leave five dollars in a library book for someone to find
44. Attend four extracurricular lectures
45. Answer/call back all my phone calls for a week
46. Write a song
47. Open a cookbook randomly and make that recipe
48. Make a list of 101 things that make me happy
49. Go to a professional sporting event
50. Keep a blessings calendar every day for 1001 days
51. Make a time capsule for myself in 10 years
52. Kiss in the snow
53. Sleep and eat outside for a week
54. Go to a “real” concert
55. Learn to identify 3 constellations in each season’s sky (12 total)
56. Ask someone on a date
57. Plan a healthy diet and stick to it for a month
58. Do the temple work for my great-aunt Margaret
59. Write to three family members on my mom’s side
60. Start a new tradition
61. Start my family history
62. Visit an extended family member I haven’t seen in a long time
63. Visit a butterfly garden
64. Attend the midnight premiere of a movie
65. Have a mud fight
66. Save 10% of my income for 6 months
67. Learn how to sew basic clothing
68. Take an interior design class and redecorate a room
69. Read 5 church-related books
70. Floss my teeth every night for a month
71. Fly a kite
72. Take a self-defense class
73. Save $10 for every goal I complete
74. Participate in a service project a week for three months
75. Go to Festival of Colors
76. Go on a multi-day biking trip
77. Read the Ensign every month for a year
78. Learn and master the art of baking bread
79. Learn the basics of amateur photography
80. Take, edit, and frame a picture
81. Watch the evening news or read the newspaper every day for a month
82. Complete and internship
83. Own a little black dress
84. Get a pedicure
85. Learn how to can fruits and vegetables
86. Grow a garden
87. Go camping with friends
88. Make a budget and stick to it for a month
89. Take a finance class
90. Make three different kinds of pie from scratch
91. Learn how to say “I love you” in 16 different languages
92. Document my nativity collection
93. Go skinny dipping
94. Put my wishes in a bottle and throw it into the ocean
95. Hike Mt. Timpanogos
96. Go rock climbing
97. Read 5 classic books
98. Sort, organize, edit, and scrapbook my Spain pictures
99. Get a scholarship
100. Write something and submit it for publication
101. Spend three minutes a day thinking only positive thoughts about myself for a month.

Spanish-American food wars

Come mas! Come mas!

I hear this every. single. meal. It means "Eat more! Eat more!"

Okay, so my host mom is super nice - I really like her, she cooks very well, the food here is excellent, but every meal is about three times the size what I've eaten my entire life, and every meal is meat. meat, meat, meat, meat. I've tried and tried to eat everything she gives me, but I just can't. Every single meal I eat too much - simply because I'm trying not to offend her, and I'm super sick of it. So I've stopped eating more than I want to eat - it's my body, I'm the one who has to suffer through the stomachache the next two hours if I eat too much, not her. However, she's been getting increasingly frustrated with me every time I leave food on my plate.

Today I went out an hour before lunch and told her I wasn't very hungry, and that I didn't want very much food. She gave me less than normal, but still more than I could eat. When it appeared I wasn't going to finish it all, she started getting agitated - and there we were, the American girl trying to explain she has a small stomach, the Spanish woman trying to tell the American girl she's too skinny, anorexic, and needs to eat more. Anorexia is DEFINITELY not a problem... but geez, how do I even explain that convincingly in Spanish?! I ended up stuffing the rest of the meat in my mouth, excusing myself from the table, and spitting it out in the garbage can in the bathroom.

I'm really looking forward to being in charge of my own meals again.

Slipping away

Today was a super-reminiscent day.

Does anyone else ever look back at the past and feel like it wasn't actually real, that it didn't actually happen, that it was all just a long ago and faraway dream? Sometimes I feel like that... I'm not sure I like it. Some things, yeah, I'm fine with letting them slip out of memory, but others I want to hold on to them forever, preserve them just real and vivid as they were when they happened.

I feel like that's going to happen when I leave Spain. I'll go back to my life, and this land of Spanish and train stations and cathedrals is going to seem like a faraway, foggy sort of dream, that passed so quickly.

I don't want it to. Why can't all the good memories just stay there, perfectly preserved forever?

Don't cry for me, Barcelona...

THE trip: Zaragoza, Monserrat, Barcelona...

So I feel like after this study abroad I ought to write for National Geographic or something, considering I go cool places and then write reviews of them for y'all... Also, I really recommend you look at my Picasa album about this trip, because I took about 200 photos and they're ALL interesting. :D

Anyway, so once again we departed on the autobus for strange and far-off destinations in Catalunya - a part of Spain in the northeast corner that pretty much would like to secede from Spain entirely. They're pretty proud, the official language is Catalan, not Spanish, so all the signs and everything are in Catalan with Spanish underneath. Our tour guide the second day told us that the FC Barcelona soccer players are the World Champions, because more national team players in that game came from the team FC Barcelona than any other team - therefore, Barcelona is world champions, not Spain. In return, most of the rest of Spain calls Catalunya weird and strange and says they're not really Spanish, so hey, everything works out in mutual minor dislike.

Day one - visited Zaragoza, a city between Madrid and Barcelona - it has this cathedral, which is where the virgin Mary supposedly appeared to St. James - I went out on a bridge by myself to take amazing pictures, got in trouble for leaving and taking said pictures, but... it was worth it, if I say so myself.

Basilica of the Virgin Pilar and the river Ebro - photo taken from the bridge.

We continued to Monserrat, in the mountains, where there's a little monastery and a GORGEOUSLY BREATHTAKING VIEW of a mountainous rivery valley.

I was overcome by an urge to take an artsy picture - there's more in my Picasa album. Here you can see the mountains, though. There weren't a lot of mountains, but they looked like this.

We got to Barcelona just after the sunset, went to our hotel, then headed out to see the Sagrada Familia at night and eat. If you haven't seen the Sagrada Familia before, I suggest you go to Google and look up pictures of it. None of mine do it justice. But I'll try...

The next day we took a bus tour of Barcelona. We saw a lot of crazy things. Barcelona is a more modern city, influenced especially by the work of Gaudi, a half-crazy, half-genius architect. I plan to learn more about him - because his works are amazing!

The "Face of Barcelona" statue. After seeing this, I started thinking maybe the rest of Spain isn't so off in thinking Catalunyans are weird... We drove up to the lookout point on a hill overlooking Barcelona called Montjuic. From here we could see the city and the Mediterranean. We later came back to Montjuic and hiked ten minutes up to the top, where there's a castle/fortress. It was closed when we came, but we got to see all the city lights and lights from ships out on the sea.

I fell in love with the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, looking at it from on top of Montjuic was as close as I got to it.

From Montjuic, we went back to the Sagrada Familia with the guide to take the official tour. It's a cathedral dedicated solely to the Sacred Family - Christ, Mary, Joseph - started in the 1800s, that's STILL under construction. It's the most crazy cathedral ever invented. However, it's also incredibly cool, because everything is symbolic. The front side of it has scenes depicting Christ's birth, and the back side has scenes depicting his death. The whole thing was amazing - it's been declared a world heritage site, it's definitely one of a kind! They anticipate finishing it (for real this time) in 2016. The world is waiting to see if it actually happens.

After our tour, our group basically spent the rest of the day walking around Barcelona. We saw the Plaza Catalunya and Las Ramblas - a street with lots of flea-market type stores - we saw a statue of Christopher Columbus, who visited Barcelona after his first trip to the Americas, we explored a neighborhood of Gothic -style architecture, and best of all we ate at an all-you can eat that had FRUIT and VEGETABLES and PASTA and I was in heaven!

Yes, that IS grapefruit! It was AMAZING!!!

On our way back to Alcala the next day, we stopped at Monasterio de la Piedra - monastery of the rock - and it was cool, but the best part was the park - basically it was a mountainside with trails all over through the trees and waterfalls EVERYWHERE! It was quite possibly the most beautiful place I've ever been.

This is the biggest of the waterfalls we saw - and this isn't even the bottom of it.

The trip to Barcelona was, for various reasons, the trip I was both looking forward to the most and worrying about the most. However, it couldn't have gone better! The only sad thing was that we were only there a day and a third. Someday I'm coming back to Spain, and when I do, I'm going to spend all the time I want in Barcelona.

My Wish

"My wish for you is that life becomes all that you want it to.
Your dreams stay big, your worries stay small,
You never need to carry more than you can hold.
And while you're out there getting where you're getting to,
I hope you know somebody loves you,
And wants the same things too."

This has been my very favorite song for the past... three years. Hands down. Nothing tops it. I often listen to it and think about my life, thinking about all the people that love me, that feel that way about me, thinking about all the things I want my life to become. I think about my dreams, the ones that came true, the ones that didn't, the ones I still wait for and hold in my heart, and the ones I'm living every single day.

However, more often than I think about my dreams and the wishes I have for me, I think about the people I care about more than anything, and the wishes I have for them. And somehow, it means a lot more to me than my own dreams and my own wishes. There's something wonderful about seeing someone else's dream come true, watching their successes, their happinesses. Loving others somehow makes more of a difference in my life than any amount of love anyone has for me.

"If it's cold outside,
Show the world the warmth of your smile"

When you share a smile, you can't see it yourself.
But it blesses your life anyway.


- song: My Wish - Rascal Flatts

Only in Spain...

would you go to class in the morning and find the outer door's lock glued shut, yet STILL have class, in a different building, which class consists of talking about everything under the sun and pretending to try to get the computer to work so you can have REAL class, then going back to the original building for your SECOND class of the day, watching two men drill the door open, entering, and then having class in the normal classroom, which class consists of girls against boys Scrabble and Scattergories, and learning all the words you should never say in Spanish, just for your information, so that you don't accidentally say them.

Today was the day of the "Huelga General" - general strike - in Spain, maybe just in Madrid, not sure. There were stickers stuck all over EVERYWHERE, and people had gone along last night gluing the doors of businesses shut so that people wouldn't be able to enter and work. By noon or so, most people had made it into their stores, though a large majority were still closed. There was picketing and flag-waving in the plaza, large groups of police officers everywhere, on the watch for chaos, etc. In Madrid it's the same, only on a much larger scale - we were advised not to go to Madrid today just in case there were picketings in the stations or Metros, etc.

Well, I don't know that a strike such as this will really work, but it sure made for a great day at school! :)

My Achilles heel...

So I have a weakness for good deals...

And shoe stores...

The good news is I got all of them for under 9 Euros each... that makes it okay, right???

No worries, the end of summer sales will soon be over. Hopefully my wallet survives until then... haha. Just kidding. It will. I promise. :)