Thursday, November 26, 2009

My First Thanksgiving as an Expat…

…was just like another day in Barcelona. Of course, I waited until the last minute to decide how to celebrate. I couldn’t make it to the Thanksgiving dinner held by the Hotel Arts, as it was during practice. Since the only way I commemorated Thanksgiving was by wearing new clothes for dinner, I will relate my day as an example of a typical day in Spain.


10:00 (or maybe 9): My alarm goes off and I hit snooze.

11:00: I actually wake up, get ready and eat breakfast.

12:00 I meet the other girls at the store across the street. We hang out for 5-10 minutes, before going to the locker rooms to change.

12:15 or 12:20, sometimes 12:30 (this is Spain): We actually start practice, usually in the gym. Today we lifted at 80%.

Between 1 and 1:30: We get into the pool and swim some before doing water polo drills.

2:30: Practice ends, we change, and my roommate and I go to lunch. Spanish tortilla was on the menu today. It is the best meal at the restaurant.

4:30: I am home from lunch. Today I went and bought shampoo during my free time. Wooo!

7:30: I head to the gym for extra cardio, if I feel like it. Today I used the stationary bike for a half an hour.

8:30: Again we meet at the store. This time we are usually quicker to get to practice.

8:40: We do more water polo drills or scrimmage. We played terribly against the younger boys’ team this evening.

10:00: Practice ends. My roommate and I go to dinner. New shirt, new pants, new shoes for tonight! I had to acknowledge Thanksgiving, somehow, since I am missing my favorites: turkey and mashed potatoes. And cheesecake. But, most importantly, monkey bread! At least there is Christmas.

1 AM or maybe 2: I am hopefully asleep.



Such an exciting life! The trick will be to use my free time for more interesting purposes than buying shampoo. Some examples so far: the Aquarium, shopping, dealing with my broken computer. But those are for another time.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Resonating in the Shape of Things to Come

This is my first blog post ever and yet I have more questions than I do solutions. What is a first blog post supposed to be, anyway? Does anyone actually read them? I imagine that unless a friend of yours sends you a link to a blog he or she has just started, you probably start reading long after the first post was written. If you are like me, you find new blogs through other blogs. Someone has to be reading that blog before you find it, it seems impossible that you would catch it while the first post is still on the homepage. After the blog has been running for a while, is there anyone that is dedicated enough to read that far back?

I can’t imagine that first blog posts are all that interesting anyway. Do most people give a short biography of information that seems relevant? Or do they outline what their blog may be about? Or do they just write something so they can say they have taken that clichéd first step? Or do they write that they hope they can find enough interesting material to write daily? Three-times weekly? Weekly? Monthly? Just occasionally? Or whatever their goal may be? There must be millions of bloggers out there. How many of those only ever put up a first post? Did it end before it began like a new years resolution to lose weight? Or is it like the xkcd comic where every post is an apology for not having anything to say?

And say someone does make it. He or she writes consistently for years. Writing skills have been honed and a ‘voice’ has been found. I can only imagine how uninteresting and undeveloped this first blog post must be in comparison and how many rules and conventions of blogging were unknowingly broken. So is a first blog post just a throw-away post? Just something to get out of the way before the real work can be done? Is losing your blog virginity always destined to be bad just like real life?

I know the answers to none of these things. But I can say, I will write about myself. I will write when I feel like it. I may write about the past and I may write about the present. And I may never have more readers than just my close friends. So, if you are reading this first blog post after the fact, how does it look from the future?

A special thanks goes to my friend Professor Chaos for inventing the blog name.