Bright Ideas

#1 Cathedral in Leon at Night

#2 My New Home Girls at the Country Bar in Matallanas

#3 Top of the Mountain Overlooking Quaint Villages/Drunken BBQ Night

As an enthusiastic sort of person my life has been peppered with some bright ideas. From marriage at a young age to the more recent event of trapsing off to Spain for an indefinate period of time, I've been afforded a great deal of adventure as well as awareness of my faults. I seem to thrive on finding out for myself what people mean when they say something is difficult, but worth it. This trip is proving no exception to that rule.

When you set off to lead a nomadic lifestyle for a while you become, well, nomadic except that you lack the experience that beduoin tribes have been accumulating over the centuries. So far I've spent maybe 3 1/2 weeks of homless wandering and I find it taxing. I've been enjoying the ridiculous American luxury of living alone for the past year, and it's been a shock to find myself secuestered for two weeks in a small mountain town outside Leon, Spain in a cabin with three other women. If the hot water is even working I have to deal with schedules. Can you believe it?

Of course, along with the delicate dance of coordination, I get beautiful mountian views, runs along the river Torio past the abandoned monastery, and two incredible Spanish cooks to make me some delicious down home tortilla espanola with ensalada mixta for dinner(at 9pm, mind you). Poor me.

Part of my brilliant plan includes a TEFL certification course that has been compressed to fit into four weeks of June. This means five hours of class everyday by some extremely compentent teachers from what is called the Canterbury Institute based in Madrid. I was concered it might be below my level since I already have a teaching degree, but at the same time hoping that it would be the perfect refresher and intensive English grammar boot camp I need to teach at the summer camp in July, and possibly classes back in Madrid, or even some junior college ESL when I get back to Chico. Besides some confusion and frustration inherent in traveling and life overseas, it's proven the latter, and I'm not exactly getting perfect scores on class quizes. Who the hell knew a subordinate clause could function as an adjective? I'm actually a grammar geek in Spanish, so while most of my classmates are groaning, I'm secretly fascinated with such questions. Yes, I'll never exactly be one of the cool kids.

I'm reminded that the very reason I love travel is the same reason I hate it. GROWTH. Keeping yourself in a place where you are safe from all challenge and change means you'll be comfortable, but complacent. I wasn't aware of how that had creeped in many areas of my life, both personal and professional, until this week. Even though I am certainly a perfectionist, I have deliberately chosen situations in which there is no one of authority that I respect who could possibly contribute to my progress. Granted some of that was due to being surrounded(surrounding myself?) with authority figures I could malign rather than those who could mentor. At the ripe old age of 36, it's time to seek situations that will help me move from surviving to thriving in the areas of teaching, music, and even love.

Speaking of which, brings me to another crazy scheme: finding an unexpected love, and carting off to another continent without him. It sounds counterintuitive, but I swear to God it makes some sense. At least that's what I try to tell myself when the mere thought of him makes me choke back a sob at midnight. Logically, I understand that I've got an adventure I need to attempt, and he's got his own life to attend to as well, but damn it, it's difficult.

All in all, I'm enjoying the experience when I take it day by day, and when I believe in the many good things my bright ideas have brought me in the past.