Things I’ll Miss About Spain

• The climate.
• The overall beauty of this place. The Cathedral, the Giralda, the graffiti-covered path along Guadalquivir River, the Triana Bridge…. the churro stand at the end of the Triana Bridge.
• Cruzcampo…? I’m slightly more Spanish than I was in January, by virtue of my recently developed love for this shittastic beer.
• The fact that my life is a sitcom. Actually, there are parts of this that I won’t miss. But sometimes I find myself in such ridiculous situations that I have to look around and wonder when the tech guy is going to press the “canned laughter” button.
• Drinking in public/never being carded.
• The Misadventures of Lauren and Francesca. Enough said. Subcategory of this bullet point: abusing the word “jovenes” and speaking like a true Trianera, miarma.
• Constantly improving my Spanish. Living in Iowa doesn’t lend itself well to interacting with native Spanish speakers.
• The overall life philosophy. People just don’t stress as much as Americans do. I can’t say that Spain has killed my pragmatism, but I have started thinking more whimsically since I’ve been here. Although I guess this philosophy also explains Andalucía’s staggering unemployment rate… meh.

Things I Won’t Miss About Spain

• The symphony of god-awful noises in my neighborhood: Triana’s anonymous pan flute artist, the neighbor’s dog who is fortunate to still be alive, the other neighbor whose screaming children obsessively listen to Ke$ha (bless her soul), the guy who clanks giant slabs of metal together midday.
• The occasional important communication that gets hopelessly lost in translation.
• Semi-regular cat calls, ass grabs and harassment from slimy viejos verdes and gilipollas.
• Siesta. Because I never actually sleep, and I can’t even buy a freakin’ pack of gum since the whole country shuts down between 2 and 5 p.m.
• The lack of culinary diversity. I would do unspeakable things for a burrito, for some shrimp tempura, for some grapefruit.
• Never being able to articulate precisely what I’m thinking. Although I may not appear excessively eloquent, I’m obsessed with words and sentences and the way they’re constructed. I have a nuanced way of speaking in English that simply doesn’t translate in Spanish, which also kills a lot of the bad jokes I try to make to Spaniards.
• The overall life philosophy. Going back to the siesta: how does a country operate around a three-hour midday nap? Why is it inconceivable to propose a dinner time earlier than 10 p.m.? Sometimes I’m enamored with this idea of, “Hey we’re in Andalucía, live it up! Don’t take life so seriously!!!” Other times, I want to make this country a chore chart and impose a few new house rules; give the place a sense of order.

PS — The volcanic ash cloud strikes back, this time on Spain. Damnit. And I thought I had escaped it’s wrath… here’s hoping that I can get out of Madrid come Friday morning.
PPS — Ohmygod Friday morning. It’s 10:30 p.m. on Monday and I’ve gone all day without sobbing. 10 points for Lauren. 10 more points if I make it to midnight.