Waaaay up North

''I brought breakfast meat, lunch meat, and dinner meat,'' said my cousin Ruthann upon arriving to the cabin... ''There are 40 pounds of dinner meat.''

I perked up as the song ''God Bless America... my home, sweet, home...'' started ringing in my ears. No joke. This happened systematically every time my aunt started taking food in triple Costco sizes out of the cupboards.

The whole group

This fourth of July was spent super-ultra-Minnesotan style, waaaay up north near Warroad, right on Lake of the Woods. The journey began with a six hour drive through miles and miles of textbook definition ''middle of nowhere'' towns. Of course, a stop for pasties, an empanada style meat pie covered in dark gravy, was obligatory. We were, luckily, the first to arrive to my aunt Renee's cabin. I say luckily because this lovely 4th of July weekend my aunt and uncle had a guest list of 20 family members. Yes, 20.We settled in by picking out our beds as quick as possible up in the extended loft. Well, extended is kind of an understatement... that loft sleeps 13 with five queen size beds and three twins. My aunt and uncle made the cabin from scratch, with their own hands and their own ideas, and decided to make it "big family party" friendly. It's like camp up in that lovely loft... Camp with a bunch of snorers. This loft wouldn't be complete without an industrial sized pack of ear plugs on the only nightstand because, of course, the loft has no wall or no doors to soundproof the huge sleeping/snoring area. Your ears are completely vulnerable to people's early bird or late night habits. Up there, everything is heard. Forget privacy for a week, this is a new way to define an intense family get together.  But I have to say, it's a lot of fun.

A deer's eye view from the loft

Where did the remaining family sleep, you may ask? Well, my aunt and uncle intelligently made their own closed off room to sleep in, right next to the only bathroom. There's also a screened porch with a pull out couch, and the youngest cousins got to (more like had to) sleep in tents pitched somewhere among the campfire pit, three boats and god knows how many cars in the driveway.

And as a closing point in my attempt at describing this lovely place... this cabin would not be complete without a vast representation of Minnesota wildlife looking over us with their dead, marble eyes. Deer, ducks and fish... hard to get used to but definitely put on the perfect, final touch to completely integrate yourself in good ol' Minnesotan culture.

Our first meal consisted of some delicious hot dogs, baked beans, hash-browns fried to a crisp in everything greasy and some chips. Mmm. Did I mention I love America? The eating, of course, did not stop there. We ate three hefty meals a day, usually separated by a few hours spent fishing out on the boat. Puzzles, cards, movies and other "light" snacks, of course, were also involved in separating meals. Coolers upon coolers of beer and pop were also a must. Lets just say that anything you could ever want to ingest ever could be found. No exceptions.

Really expensive gigantic illegal fireworks were also involved in the weekend. Did I mention they are also life-threateningly dangerous? Year after year a couple of those moving-box sized fireworks tip right over and shoot directly at my dear family members. Somehow the majority of my (perhaps slow?) cousins sit front row in chairs just asking to be blown to confetti pieces. I chose to hide behind the truck or inside the porch along with my more intelligent father. This year was a miracle, only one shot out horizontally towards an unoccupied tent. Phew!

Roger's first catch!

Pelayo, whom you are all now familiar with, had his first experience "up north." I think he was a bit shocked by the "watch out for" list... may flies, horse flies, deer flies, ticks, poison ivy and last but not least, vampire mosquitoes. The poor thing, with his fresh sweet blood, was covered in golf ball sized welts all week. Although, not all was bad for Pelayo this week. He spent his first days lake fishing sporting a great thrift store find: an old pro fishing shirt. Kinda like a bowling shirt, but for fisherman I guess. This once belonged to a man named Roger. So now Pelayo is kinda known as Roger up in Warroad. I guess worse things could happen. I am very proud to report that Roger caught his first few fish that weekend- supplying us with three walleyes for an amazingly amazing fish fry.

Roger also picked up a lot of Minnesotan. "Oh yeah," officially became a part of his vocabulary, along with changing his Californian pronunciation of "bag" and also chuckling appropriately when anyone let an "Uff-da" slip. Fishing license in hand, twins hat on his head, and all four limbs limbs covered in mosquito bites... shhhhh... I am secretly turning him into a Minnesotan!

I have to say that when I am away these are the things I miss the most. Family gatherings, friends, and over-eating. I guess mostly over-eating.

"I wanna picture with the bad boys!!"

This Christmas I visited home. It was just about the strangest feeling. I was stopping by, saying hello, and leaving for another six months. But, it was also happy. It was like a layover to help me push homesickness away in order to enjoy my last lag in Spain. I was at a point in my life timeline where I was pretty positive my Iberian Peninsula adventures were coming to an end. I would be moving back to Bird-Town in summer. I was already pondering going to look for some rockin' bilingual job, interpreting on the side, and hopefully becoming stable enough to move into the near-Uptown area. Well... that was before I met the Spaniard everyone said for years and years that I would end up meeting. Right when I was pretty convinced my love affair with this country was ending, turns out it was just beginning...

Summer came and the days started to pass, and pass, and keep on passing. I soon realized I had to make a decision: to move home or to visit. I ended up with the later choice, and "take my Spaniard home day" came in late August.

The visit home is a strange sensation, as suddenly meeting up with friends and family is for catch-up and meet my fabulous boyfriend purposes. Days in Minneapolis were filled with concerns about where to eat? where to drink? where to do everything I love about this city and only have two weeks to do? Talk about decisions!!! The plus side is that playing tour guide with a foreigner makes things way more fun. We were generously gifted Twins and Vikings tickets. My mom threw a family BBQ. My friends made lots o' time to hang out. I got to watch Pelayo eat his first s'more, and, shit, we even got to shoot a gun at Bill's Gun Range!

I considered filling this blog entry with a blurb about every stop on our month long American adventure. But then I realized that can get quite boring to read, and even to write. SO, I am going to debut my fabulous Spaniard on my blog today with the most entertaining story of the trip... And if this bores you then you are probably boring.

...

It was a stickily humid weeknight right in the heart of Uptown, where we were engaging in the typical tourism chat which always consists of: "This used to be hipster and cool and unique but is now commercialism center." Yes. Very typical. And overdone. But true? Anyway, as we were walking up Lake, a few guys sped past on their neon-glowing motorcycles. Pelayo does the whole, I'm a dude and love motorcycles thing, whips out his camera and tries to snap them, failing pretty miserably. So, the chase down starts. We run, as casually as possible, stalking them into the Cowboy Slim's parking lot. Suddenly there was no way to sneakily takes pictures of them. I am used to being a foreigner and have come to discover that when you are foreign you can get away with shit you cannot get away with being a local, like asking three scary, gangster looking bikers if you can take their picture. My conclusion? "Pelayo, ask them if you can take a pic with them." To my surprise, he does.

"Hey, can I take a picture with you guys?" he asks innocently.

"You can take a picture of the bike, but not of me," biker 1 growls. Camera in hand, I started to back up slowly...

It seemed like an eternity passed before Pelayo let a huge grin spread across his face and spit out, "But I wanna take a picture with the bad boys!!" He recalls regretting that the second it flew from his lips, but it ended up saving his ass.

"Umm, you're not from here, right?" questions biker 1.

"Nope, I'm from Spain."

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Is that really what he thought, though? Of all the foreign dudes asking to take pictures of you- a scary as hell dude- they would be from Spain? Whatevs. All I know is that all of a sudden this guy was like, nicer than I could have ever imagined. "Is it your first time here? Why are you here? Where did you guys go?? Did you go to Dinkytown for Mesa Pizza? Are you gonna go in to Cowboy Slims? There is a better one is Bloomington, you should bring him to Bloomington. Did you go to the Mall of America? When are you guys getting married????"

We chit-chatted, took a couple of pictures, and kept on our way.

I guess pigs can fly now.

And then I didn't stop moving for a month (Pt. 3)

Only a few days after arriving back to Gijon from my German adventure, I was off to the states. Better put, I attempted to get back to the states. The whopping 4 inch "snow storm" in England left all their airports closed for round about a week. (England has one of the biggest and most important international airports in Europe.) France also closed their airports for a couple of days, along with Belgium and who knows who else, all for a few sprinkles of snow. And so the airline industry all over Europe was totally fucked for the holidays. The consequence for me, being a standby passenger, was that other airlines, affiliated or not affiliated with Delta, were sending all their passengers to fly through Madrid on any airline back to the states (instead of through London, Paris, etc. etc.) because it hadn't snowed here.

My fellow standby travelers

During these airport crisis, standby usually end up chatting. "How many days have you been trying to fly?"... "Who do you know that works for Delta?" ... "What's your standby priority?"... Anyway, I met two super nice girls, one from Minneapolis (cause my world is always small) and one from Atlanta. We spent our waiting time getting to know each other. We bought some cheap wine at the duty free store, ate lunch, and enjoyed our nerve-wrecking time together. In the end I got pretty lucky, we all did, and we only had to try for two days. On my second day at the airport I got on with style in business class and accompanied by my two new friends Amanda and Til. Together we enjoyed some cocktails, take-off and landing, and then lost each other between connections. Freezing rain and snow in Minneapolis luckily delayed, but didn't cancel, my flight home. When I arrived I was picked up by my brother, who was just finishing his shift at his new job with Delta. So, home for the holidays. You could say I got lucky. There were paying passengers all over Europe who got stranded on vacation and missed Christmas. =/

A combo of my two homes:

Pouring Asturian sidra in snowy Minnesota

And then I was home for my first "vacation" home. It was quite a strange experience, just stopping by home to say hello, to visit for a couple of weeks... no work, no worries... just time to enjoy my friends and family. I ate, ate, ate. Drank a bit, of course. And ate. Went sledding. Made "ooh" and "aah" sounds at the three feet of snow covering my house. Tried to explain to extended family members that I still have no idea which continent I want to live on, let alone what I want to do with my life. I made "ooh" and "aah" sounds at my friends who have at least figured out something in their lives, like their life partners or their jobs. I had deep conversations in English, my native tongue, which is always fun. And then, before I knew it, it was time to go.

Yes, the ball.

New Years Eve brought me to New York City where I did pretty much what I would have done in any other city on NYE, except without knowing anyone except my dear Rachel. Drink. Eat. House party. Another house party. ("Ahh how do we make this the best NYE ever?!... OMG I just can't decide what we should do!!...Where should we go?? This has to be fab!!") In the end, NYE is always a night like all others but with higher expectations and champagne. But, I did get rites to say I was in NYC for NYE which always gets some good reactions out of people. Oh, and I got to call my mother after midnight because I (to my surprise) wasn't drunk, just to have her ask me, "Did you kiss Rachel?" which my answer was, "Yes, mom, you know us so well!" (AKA she knows neither of us is ever dating anyone, but by default, each other... and that after 13 years of friendship germs are no longer a worry.)

This dog was the best thing I managed to take a picture of on New Years Eve....

Anyway the following days were more exciting. Rachel works in the "music biz" in NYC and so one day we went into a recording studio where one of her friends (name drop here:) Eric Arc Elliott was recording some tunes. Some beats. Some rhymes. And as Rachel and I were (drinking and) talking about "rad hip hop music" in our good old Fargo-style Minnesota accents, Mr. Eric said, "Go in there and record that!" So, we chit chatted in Minnesotan over some rockin' beats and vualaaaa! I was in a song. And I would show you but it's kinda embarrassing so you'll have to come to Spain to hear it. Hah.

Representin' the small cherry in the big apple!

(Get it... Minneapolis in NYC?)

As usual I got lazy and didn't do much sight seeing, because my thought is that I will be there again soon... I did eat a lot. And drink a lot of delicious IPA beers that are impossible to find in this beer-deprived country called Spain. I did go to the Museum of Natural History where I saw an overload of things, so many things that I have no idea what I saw. The only thing I remember was learning about this rockin' fish that changes its sex organs depending on what its society needs from it....! So cool, modern, useful:

In my book, the most interesting fish in the sea.

And then I arrived in Madrid on Reyes (liiiike, "3 wise men day"). And spent a few days out eating and drinking with my cousin Tomas. It seems that now I have traveled so much that the only thing I can stand doing is eating and drinking. Hm. Surprise? Oh, and sometimes shopping. I'm not much of a shopper, but I was on Madrid's biggest shopping street on the biggest shopping day of the year. Love H&M.

Reyes. With mi primo Tomas and his pals

And here I am, back "home." And, of course, sick again. Conclusions: Europe needs a snow plow. Going home on vacation is kinda strange. NYE will always be overrated. Rachel is my BFF. Yes, I said it, best friends forever!!!

Hasta luego, guap@s!