Qué me quiten lo bailao

¡hola! i'm koly, i'm 22, and i like adventures. i'm took a chance and moved to catalunya, spain after graduation to be an au pair for a sweet 2 year old boy named Nil. while i'm there i attempted to learn spanish AND catalan, travel europe, and read a lot of books.

[kolyincatalonia]

Do you have any experience with AuPairWorld?

I don’t have any experience with them. When I went to Spain I had an account on aupair.com and I have a couple friends who used greataupair.net to find their families and we have all had good experiences with them. 

[kolyincatalonia]

dublin

hey guys! I’m back. This past month has been a combination of settling in and getting ready to move again, a mixture of welcoming arms and longing for people I miss. 

Today I miss $40 tickets to Ireland and hanging out with my friend Jaclyn. Two months ago I was in Dublin sleeping on her air mattress and feeling so overwhelmed by the feeling of being at home with a person. Since being home I have felt such peace with ending my journey early and where it’s going next. I feel rooted and grounded and ready to grow further. 

But first I want to share some of my favorite things about Dublin. In list form because the internet is all about lists these days. 

1. My hosts & their amazing friends welcoming into their lives for a week

2. Jameson Distillery/ Guinness Storehouse tour (in one day)

Dagmar and Alexandria and I met on our walking tour the day before and drank alcohol all day together the next! (This is especially important because Friday was Good Friday and there is no alcohol served in the whole of Ireland that day. Of course I would visit Ireland, the land flowing of great alcohol, on the one day it’s illegal.)

^^^ learning how to pour a proper pint!!

3. Viking TV show casting call in Temple Bar

Vikings is a TV show on the history channel that films in Ireland. They held open casting calls at the Irish Film Institute and THERE WERE SO MANY BEARDS. Literally hundreds of men with beards wrapping around the streets in temple bar. It was magic. It was wonderful. It was exactly what heaven will look like. 

note: the hoards of people on the right near the turquoise pillars are in line for the casting call. I’m pretty sure this is NO WHERE NEAR the entrance to the Irish Film Institute 

4. All of the penis jokes about the gigantic, useless needle structure that Ireland build when they all of a sudden got rich. It’s taller than any building and is great for finding your way home when you’re drunk. 

aka the stiffy on the Liffey 

5. Howth Cliffs

6. The double rainbow I watched out of the plane window when I landed with tiny bunnies hopping across fields next to the runway. 

7. Drinking Founders beer abroad (I’m just a midwest girl living in a big big world)

8. The way Irish people hang up the phone. 

They literally say bye until someone has the courage to hang up to phone first. they will literally walk with their phone out front of them saying bye at it without eaven listening to the other person. It’s weird and I love it. I may start doing it myself. 

9. Sandeman’s walking tour of Dublin! 

I love Sandeman’s walking tours. The guide I had for this city was a local and his insight was incredible. It did help quite a bit that he was an actor and history major.  Thanks Conor!

10. Trinity College

aka the learning place of King Joffery aka Jack Gleason

I also really enjoyed some of the museums I went to and the BOGMEN I saw that were like hundreds of years old and STILL HAD HAIR ON THEIR HEADS. Look it up. It’s spooky and awesome. 

[kolyincatalonia]

jut hold on i’m coming home

While I am not a big fan of Chris McCandless I am going to open this blog post with a quote he wrote in the margins of a book shortly before he passed away in the wilderness of Alaska.

“HAPPINESS IS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.”

I don’t like McCandless because he pursued (most of) his adventures purposefully alone. I didn’t think I was doing the same thing when I boarded the plane to Barcelona in January. I was going to join a family, a new culture, a new community.

And it did! But I was never felt fully integrated and I honestly only had two friends outside of the family in my town. 

While my adventures were amazing and I got to see so many incredible things, when I traveled to Barcelona I was always the weird one because I lived there but on my two day weekends I was also a tourist. Always meeting people passing through, and only a few who stayed. I felt very alone even surrounded by people. It’s one thing to be with people, and another to be known by the people you’re with. 

When I traveled abroad, I also traveled alone. I went to Barcelona and Dublin and London and it was all spectacular. But I would trade ALL of the cathedrals and beaches and boat rides and hikes and museums to experience one of them with a friend. Right now I have a collection of photos and ticket stubs that I don’t regret. I learned a ton! I learned about myself, I learned how to speak better Spanish, I learned mediterranean cooking, but after three months I knew it was time to come home. Happiness is only real when shared. Life is only worth it when it’s shared.

All that to say plus a few other reasons, I flew home and hugged my mom on April 17 and my best friend surprised me at the airport and it was the best day of the year. So I’m back in West Michigan for a while. I get to walk at graduation and make my family happy andreconnect with my community and culture a bit more before I move to Montana for another summer. I’ll be posting more travel things while I’m home because I lost a lot of motivation to keep y’all updated my last month in Spain. So keep reading, keep in touch, and let’s get some coffee now that I’m back in the pleasant peninsula. 

[kolyincatalonia]

london

So I’ve heard my whole life about how Brits know how to “queue” or as I liked to call it, stand in a line. I wasn’t that impressed. Anybody can stand in a line and wait. But when I arrived in London I found I was very, very wrong. British lines are called queues for a reason. They’re massive. They never end. And if you cut, I’m pretty sure they arrest you. And lucky for all arriving guests, you get to experience this cultural phenomenon the second you step off the plane and wait to get through customs.

After the dizzying line I somehow managed to get a bus ticket to the wrong part of the city. Stratford to be precise. I was staying near King’s Cross. After a couple minutes of confusion and struggling to understand the Tube system I took a break to look around. I was standing in the area of the 2012 Olympic Summer Games and it was beautiful. Then I stood in 3 different queues to get my Oyster card (metro pass).

My first ride on the Tube was surprisingly above the ground. On the Tube you get to experience the great cultural phenomenon of “avoiding the eye contact of other passengers even if it means jumping off the Tube and getting eaten by rats.” London is a very serious city.

When I got to my hostel (Clink 78 — don’t stay there. It sucks. And is full of 18 year olds on holiday from Spain.) I checked into my room and found another American girl checking into the same one. And she was an au pair in Germany. And she had just graduated college. My soul sister. We became fast friends and spent the night wandering around the Southbank, Chinatown, Camden, and Leicester Square where we accidentally stumbled on the red carpet premiere of The Second Best Marigold Hotel. After spending time with friends in Barcelona who have no idea what it’s like to live as a foreigner and an employee in somebody’s home it was refreshing to air grievances with someone who understood.

The next day we split up because I had a lot of ground to cover. I hit the ground running and didn’t stop until I got on my flight back to Barcelona. I honestly caught the last bus to make my flight seconds before it pulled away from the stop.

Instead of boring you with the details of me walking around alone for four days, I’ve made some lists in true internet-journalistic form.

Things I Loved:

The doughnuts at Bread Ahead (I would seriously kill for these)

British Accents

The Owl & The Pussycat pub (thanks Billy!)

Brick Lane

Gin & Tonics at the Ace Hotel with new friends

Basically all of Shoreditch

All of the old things (aka pretending I’m in 1 of 1000 British movies I’ve seen in my lifetime)

Street food at the Borough Market (cheap and to die for)

Pretending I was in Harry Potter movies

Things I Liked:

Tate Modern

Changing of the horse guard

St. Paul’s

Crown Jewels (Tower of London)

Biking through Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park

Things I Hated:

The Tube

The massiveness

Tourist pubs everywhere claiming to be the oldest one, like, ever

Box Park

The shitty pub crawl I went on that literally had 3 people

London Eye (a waste of $50 if you ask me. just go up an elevator in a tall building or get a decent meal in the building next to the Shard)

Bus tour

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (aka being squashed with a bunch of people with backpacks and puffy jackets for 3 hours)

Clink Hostels

[kolyincatalonia]

moving abroad is a lot like getting married

stage one: the engagement 

You bought your ticket. You made the leap. Your emotions are fluttery and everything will be amazing. Your big move is all you can think about, all you can talk about, all you dream about! Your friends are about to board you on the plane themselves because they don't want to hear anymore about your next big adventure. You don't know exactly what you've done, but dammit you're excited. This stage lasts the moment you commit until...

stage two: panic

You almost crash your car when all of a sudden it clicks. You are packing up your entire life to go on some wild adventure. You're not ready. Your flight leaves in hours, not days, not weeks. You don't know where your passport is. 

stage three: honeymoon

You are on the plane. You made it. You didn't die. You're there. You start falling in love with all of the new things. And everything is amazing! The plants are different, the language is different, the sky seems bigger. You fall in love everyday with a new piece of culture. You never want to leave and you definitely don't miss home. This stage usually lasts about a month until...

stage four: the separation

Everything is horrible. All of those peculiar things about your new home are no longer "quaint" and "quirky" but annoying as hell. You want to go home. You want a shitty cup of american dinner coffee. You want to hug your mom. And live down the street from your best friend. You are lost. You begin to wonder why you even came in the first place. You google plane tickets home. You avoid skyping your mom because you don't want to cry. 

stage five: the real love 

Now, this one sneaks up on you. Little by little you stop googling flights home. You start making your life something that you feel comfortable in. You have a bit of a routine. You come to terms with the things that annoy you and start focusing on the things you love instead. This love is more mature than the infatuation you previously held. It's a fuller type of love, more robust. It understands more. And not just about the place itself, but about yourself.

Traveling the world teaches us not just about how other people live, but also, perhaps more profoundly, it teaches us about ourselves. 

[kolyincatalonia]

mi vida

A handful of people have asked me how I became an Au Pair, so here's a post about how I got my job and my daily life in Vilaverd. To get my job made a profile on AuPair.com, added some pictures of me with my old bosses' kids, and explained I was looking for work after I graduated from college. I expressed interest in over two dozen families, emailed with a couple, and had a skype interview with Marian and Benji. A couple weeks later we had a contract. Three months later I was on a flight to Barcelona. The process is suprisingly simple. It's especially great if you have experience with childcare, foreign language, and/or sports. My family and I share a love for outdoor sports like snowboarding, hiking, and climbing. My advice on finding a family is look for people with similar hobbies or values as you. You're going to be living in their home for a long time! An Au Pair isn't just an employee to a family, but a part of it. You'll want to be a part of a family that you'll feel at home with. 

During the week we wake up at 8, prepare a family breakfast, and get ready for school. Nil has school from 9-12 every morning,  go to Spanish and Catalan classes 3 times a week, and Marian and Benji go to the gym and do errands in town during that time. After class I hang out in a local coffee shop and read the news and do my homework when I get out of class until we go home. Around one we eat lunch together. When we finish eating we spend time watching cartoons until Nil takes his nap. Here I read, spend time on the internet, sleep myself, etc. Then the afternoon is a time when I hang out with Nil alone and practice English and doing Montessori inspired activities. We're also big fans of dancing to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off". We eat dinner between 8 and 10 and Nil heads to bed after that. Every other day he has a bath and 7/10 times he cries the whole time when I'm the one giving it to him.

This life is wonderful and rewarding but I don't think it's for everyone. It involves so so so much patience. From tantrums to the language barrier, patience and grace is needed for every situation. It sucks to have Nil crying hysterically for his parents and all I can do is comfort him in English, a language he is just barely understanding right now. It sucks when my host parents have to use google translate every time they have to explain something complicated to me. 

This life is more peaceful. It's a time of solitude for me really. I've made some amazing friends in Barcelona that I wish I could hang out with more than every other week. I have one really good friend named Eva here. She's a journalist and a total bad ass. She's older than me and I'm inspired by her. She's been to every major city in Europe, aside from Paris where we will hopefully be going to together, she hikes and takes time to create beautiful photos, and she is ever patient explaining the culture here to me. And translating satirical medieval festivals in real time. When I grow up, I hope I'm as cool as Eva.

If you're looking to come party in Europe or even go out to the pub with your friends every night, this probably isn't the job for you. I live with a two year old and a sleep schedule to respect, as well as a home. It's different than my life in Grand Rapids, but I'm grateful for it. Here I have a lot of time for reflection and reading and exploring the beauty around me. It's nice to be a part of a family here and really learn the Catalan way of life. Don't get me wrong, I love traveling. I love learning new things. I love having fresh stamps in my passport. But I think what I love the most is learning a new way of life, learning how people do life around the world. Sometimes looking at architecture and museums bores me to tears. Seriously, there are only so many words you can read and walls you can look at until all the lines turn to mush. Living somewhere gives you a deeper insight into a place and I believe it gives you so much more than staying in a hotel for a week, or even a month. 

[kolyincatalonia]

how to learn a language

part one: learn how to order beer

part two: go out and drink a lot of them

part three: stop caring what you sound like and your mistakes

part four: tell your life story to your cab driver at 4 am in your new language

I went to Barcelona for a total of 36 hours last week and it was a wild ride. Did I mention I was completely alone? Yaya dropped me off at the metro after giving me directions to my hostel in spanish and I was off. Bewildered by the number of people (I think there were more people on the subway than in the whole of Vilaverd) I quickly turned on 1989 by Taylor Swift to calm my nerves. 

I found the hostel easily enough, found out my online reservation was for another location, intentionally left my passport at home so it wouldn’t get stolen to find out that you need it to check in, waited around for a half hour, found a copy of my passport in my email, and got an entire apartment for 9€. Then I went walking around the city for 8 hours.

I walked past La Sagrada Familia and it took my breath away. If you do anything in your life, please go there, pay the 18€ to get in and marvel at Gaudí’s masterpiece. I cried. I then walked to Las Ramblas and shopped along the way. I highly recommend coming to Spain in January because everything is on sale. Seeing as my wardrobe was packed in one duffle back coming here I decided to expand it a little bit. After buying a slightly warmer jacket I walked my sopping wet feet around the Gothic Quarter, drank coffee at Els 4 Gats (where Picasso used to hang out!), explored a bit and made my way to the MACBA. 

At the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona I wandered around the one of the exhibits and was about to exit when the security guard directed me into another room. It was a incredibly odd and amusing piece of 15 laptops sitting around a round table playing a video of a girl playing with adults’ shoe laces under the dinner table from all different perspectives. And across from me sat a cute boy. And somehow I managed to get this boy to walk around with me the rest of the rainy night. He’s Australian, his name is Charlie and he owes me 10€. We walked around the neighborhood the MACBA is in and got tapas at Quimet y Quimet. If you are ever in Barcelona go here. I think I died 5 times during our dining experience. 

Now, maybe I’ll talk about the title of this post. At dinner I had a couple of glasses of sangria and by the end I was ordering all of our tapas in Spanish. I knew coming into this experience I would have to get over my fear of speaking incorrectly, but I don’t think I realized how much that mattered until after the sangria.

(my phone died so here’s a cool stock photo to illustrate me drinking sangria)

We made our way back to my hostel around 9:30pm and our night had barely begun. (Mom continue at your own discretion here). We bought 2 bottles of wine for 6€ total and pregamed for the hostel pub crawl that began at 11. Somehow we managed to find a channel on TV playing Adventure Time in English and after 2 more glasses of wine we headed to the common area to go out. 

At this point I’m tipsy. (Sorry mom, I told you to stop reading). Charlie, Me, a guy from the Netherlands, Rico (hostel staff), and Kate (American) headed to the metro before it closed at midnight to get to our destination. On the metro Kate and I make friends with the boy a few seats down with a puppy. At this point I manage to have a conversation with him about his life. In Spanish. I probably mess up, but I know he’s just moved he from Italy to study. His dog is a five months old. 

As the night goes on, I drink more beer (sorry mom) and a ton of water (you’re welcome mom) and more beer (stop reading mom). By the end of the night I’m having full fledged conversations with strangers in Spanish. It sure as hell wasn’t perfect. I couldn’t figure out the word for “fall down” to save my life but I managed to communicate. 

By the end of the night I couldn’t find my friends at the dance club and with my phone dead and no understanding of the bus system I took hailed a cab back to the hostel. And I spent all 20 minutes of this cab ride telling my driver every detail of my life that I could manage to spit out in Spanish. I’m pretty sure we got there and he had to tell me to shut up and pay. 

The next day I went to dinner with Frida, a Swedish girl who works at the hostel and went out with us the night before, and we relived the night together. I started by saying “Yeah, I think I was talking in Spanish for a long time last night and sounded like a complete idiot.” To which she replied, “You were actually pretty good.” 

Even though my Spanish is far from perfect, it still works. Language is all about connecting human beings together, sharing the way we see the world, and building relationships. Maybe for now it means me stumbling over verb tenses and using my hands, but I’m connecting with people I would never get to meet if I didn’t try. 

I probably don’t need to spend 25€ on alcohol to practice speaking Spanish. I could have just thrown my pride out the window on day one. 

This is me learning to be humble. 

PS - More photos coming when I write about my love affair with Guadí and day 2 in Barcalona! For now enjoy some iphone photos. 

[kolyincatalonia]

i'm learning how to eat slowly

7:30 am: primero desayuno

9 am: segundo desayuno

12:30 pm: el almuerzo

4 pm: la merienda

8:30 pm: la cena

My life before moving to Spain was hectic and my eating patterns were erratic at best. Most days after I graduated I would forget to eat until 4pm. Every day was filled with endless to do lists that I promptly threw away out of frustration and went to the bar with my friends. We'd go out, we'd drink, we'd go to bed late. The next morning I would wake up around 9:30, exhausted, and begin the routine again. 

I had graduated college, turned 22, and was in a constant state of limbo the month before I left. I was always exhausted and always frustrated. In fact, my last hours with my family sucked! We were stopped on the highway during the blizzard last thursday and I honestly thought I was going to miss my plane (this weather is part of the reason I left). We ended up driving through neighborhoods in Chicago and got to the airport just in time for my flight to be delayed by 45 minutes. 

After nearly 20 hours of travel I arrived in Barcelona at midnight. I grabbed my bags, marveled at the signs in Catalan and Spanish, walked out into the parking area and there Benji (my host dad) was. We drove an hour in the dark to my new home in Vilaverd and life has been slow ever since.

  Slow is not bad, but it's not normal for me. I'm getting used to this new life. It's been a week, Nil still has fits about me being here, I don't speak the language, and I only have one friend outside of the family. It's not easy. I knew it would be hard. I think this is good for me. 

This new slowness does not come solely from absence of friends, but also in the way we eat. I am constantly finishing my meal first. My family at first wondered if they were feeding me enough. I am finding they are enjoying each bite while I am consuming it. I'm learning to take each bite and savor it. In each bite of food and each slice of life that comes my way. 

xoxo from españa, 

kols

[kolyincatalonia]

22 days

As I approached this summer, my heels were buried in west Michigan.  For the first time since graduating high school, I would be staying home for the summer.  The past few years I gallivanted around Glacier National Park.  Far away from home I found a community of people in love with traveling and exploring and hiking, and I'm pretty sure they were all liberal democrats.  I don't think my grandparents like the ideas they gave me.  Their ideas challenged what I had known and what people around my hometown considered indisputable facts. Their ideas and the adventurous nature of the café intrigued and captured me.  From May 2012 to September 2013 I lived in Grand Rapids for only 4 months. I spent time in Kenya, Montana, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Toward the end of that time period. I knew that my relationship with Grand Rapids was not done quite yet. 

  So, I started working on a farm.  I planted some plants and had a relationship with the soil.  This decision to stay made me uncomfortable.  It was against my very nature.  The farm kept me though, it made the shitty days at the soup shop worth staying in my neighborhood.  It made seeing my former classmates at the bar more tolerable, knowing in the back of my head this uncomfortable feeling was good for me.  I am learning.  

I am learning how to forgive.  I am learning how to choose joy in the midst of a polar vortex and in the midst of 90% humidity.  I am learning how to grow roots. 

December 11 was my last day of college.  Forever.  I graduated.  Until that date, my iCal was a myriad of appointments, classes, work days, and meetings.  After that date, my iCal is empty.  The only events listed are birthdays.  The world is my oyster, and I am giving myself permission to leave. 

It is time to learn how to grow roots in new places.  Places where I am not known.  Places where I only have myself to fall back on.  It's hard for me to form deep relationships with people I don't have longstanding memories with.  I don't know why, it's hard, and I'm working on it.  I live with two girls I met when I was 12 for a reason.  I feel safe with them.  

So it's time to learn how to feel safe with another city.  Grand Rapids, I really do love you and I will really miss you,  but here I go. 

I read a blog post yesterday about staying.  It opens with a quote from Veronica Mars (one of my favorite TV shows ever).  In one episode Veronica tells her dad, Keith, "The hero is the one that stays."  The author, Isa, goes on the say that while she once held the staying philosophy tightly, it is an unhealthy standard to hold over each other. She says,

"So when people leave, I’ve learned the secret: let them. Because, most of the time, they have to. Let them walk away and go places. Let them have adventures in the wild without you. Let them travel the world and explore life beyond a horizon that you exist in. And know, deep down, that heroes aren’t qualified by their capacity to stay but by their decision to return." 

I'll be back, but first I'm going to learn Catalan.