Spain

since I'm not actively traveling right now - I've been reminiscing about some great trips from ages ago. My junior year in college, I spent a few months in Spain studying at the Universidad de Salamanca. It's one of the oldest universities in Europe, and Salamanca was the perfect town for us to study, explore, party... basically have lots of adventures. I lived with two other girls E & M, and our Mama (Carmen)- we were located at the far north side of the city (Calle Petunias), so the program gave us bus passes to get around Salamanca more easily. Below us lived two other girls in the program (did I mention there were 27 girls and 3 guys? lucky guys) - they lived with Flora, another older mama - total bffs with Carmen. We found lots of ways to get into trouble.... here are just a few:

-missing our stop (and the next 3 stops) on the bus

-taking pictures of every mullet we could find

-the situation game. where one of us would blurt out a situation, and the others would have to make faces and we'd take a quick pic. In looking back at the pictures - all the faces are similar, and we have NO idea what the situations were.

-one night we opened a bottle of wine in our room, but we didn't have a corkscrew (and didn't think to get a twist-off bottle), so we had read that you can use a toothbrush to force the cork into the bottle and then drink. it was so hard to push that cork into the bottle that by the time it went through, we splattered wine EVERY where - including the walls. ooooh we were in trouble.

-technically you're not allowed to drink outside of the bars in Spain, but we had to follow the tradition - it's called botellon (bo-tay-yAWN)

-eating was always a bit of a challenge - the Spaniards don't really have breakfast (or at least not a large one), and then the main meal wasn't till 2 or 3 in the afternoon. by the time we'd get home from school for lunch we all thought we were dying of hunger. our Mama was a FANTASTIC and authentic cook - so the apartment would smell incredible - adding to our mini food depression. then we would chow down for 20 minutes and roll back to school for afternoon classes. Madre Carmen did not make extra food... so this one time, we got in from a late night of dancing and decided we were going to die of hunger unless we had a snack. leftover pasta from lunch - perfect, we thought. oh my gooodness gracious, we have never seen Carmen so angry. She gave us a whole speech about communication, and how it's not right to take what wasn't ours, and on and on. Apparently that pasta had been for our lunch the next day- and we totally messed her up for meals the rest of the week. We apologized, of course, but we felt horrible for weeks and weeks about that. Spanish guilt, go figure.

Oy, there are a LOT more stories... I'll have to do a continuation of this post, so that it doesn't get too long.

the wildest.

It was my first trip to Uganda. The last week of my trip - I had been running my tiny little world for 3 weeks, and I think I learned more in that time than I learned in my last year of college. I'm sitting in my office, with my trusty (adopted) watchdog at my feet and in walk 5 gigantic men. I mean, they were huge. Each one probably the size of two of my brothers. I had my confident manager self on, so I welcomed them in and asked what I could do for them. They proceeded to begin asking invasive questions about my office.

"Madam, we are from the police department. How many non-Ugandans are in your office?" "One. Me." (surprised faces) "Do you have a work visa?" "No, a tourist visa." "Madam, you are not here legally." "Yes I am, I work for the United States Agency for International Development. The United States Government." "Mzungu, if you don't have a working visa - you will be in violation of the Ugandan immigration rules. We will be forced to report you to the police."

At this point, my dog is barking at the intruders (yes, thank you Tequila!!!), and my driver Big John is standing intimidatingly in the doorway. I realize that these men are not as scary as I thought, and then I raised myself to my full height, and told the men, "Gentlemen, I am on my way to Kampala in the morning. I will check in at the American Embassy and then I will send a copy of the visa to the police office." (that's the police) The men left, and a few staff came into my office to ask me what went down. I explained what the men said, and my team said, "Oh those thugs just wanted Christmas." (meaning they wanted $$$$!)

Of course, I had to report the 'incident' to my boss, as well as our US Government counterparts. it was totally embarassing that I never asked for their names or identification - I was cowed by a few idiot thugs. Can't believe I was so naive! I was grateful for the presence of Big John and Tequila, though. As were my parents when I told them the story. Big John always took such good care of me!

here's the police barracks I would have gone to if I had answered those thugs the wrong answer: