The Beginning

I have succumbed to the horrors of blog writing in honor of my leaving the United States and moving to a beach town in southern Spain. Now all my friends will be able to read all about the everyday mundane things in paragraph form instead of via facebook status updates. Yay!


Happy? I am... I promise to try to update this thing as much as possible with interesting content and pretty pictures. 


So yes... now for the interesting (maybe) content! 


The Visa Struggle:
Well, I just got back from driving to Chicago to pick up my visa/passport from the Spanish Consulate. This is the second time for this trip because the Consulate requires you to turn into your application in person if applying for a student visa. Psah! However, I did get to see a lot of interesting things on the way. My favorites were the large tattooed man rubbing lotion on his belly, the powdered blue car with bright yellow rims and driving past all the lightening bugs. 


I wish the Spanish Consulate was more like the Canadian, where I could just fly to the city where I am going to live, turn in minimal paperwork and then walk out with a visa for 4 years. But no... never... I had to get a legalized police report from every city I have lived in for 6+ months in the past 5 years. This is a hole of my own digging, since I did choose to live in London and Toronto. And since Canada didn't sign the Hague Convention (I learned a lot about this through the process... could write a paper on it) there was an additional couple steps. What I thought was crazy was the differing processing times for the three police reports: Saint Paul 5 minutes, Toronto 2 weeks, London 40 days. 


This visa cost me about $587 (800-ish if you include the speeding ticket) to get. However, compared to the hoops that foreign nationals that want to work in the US, that is tiny. Still a pain though, but the visa is in my hand now and I am ready to continue on the second stage of the Visa Struggle.  

The Prize from the Struggle:

325 Days of Sunshine... in Almuñécar, Spain. A small town of 25,000 people (which doubles in the summer from all the British tourists). Once I am there, I will give you more information. Because that is about all I know about the town so far... unless you want me to give you a history lesson... scary!


Last Days in STP:

As usual, I left most things to the very last minute to do, but everything will get organized sooner or later. Going to go to the Renissance Fair(e) on Sunday. I am somewhat sad that I never made it to the Spam Museum or the Jelly Belly one. I am gathering as much stuff I think is unique to Minnesota and could possibly be enjoyed by students abroad. Or I could just bring a gallon of ludefisk, a hot dish cookbook and a 6 pack of Grainbelt. I am going to miss the microbreweries here (I know that Grainbelt isn't a microbrewery). 


But more so, I will miss all my friends here. But I hope they all will keep in contact or even come visit me! I believe I have a trundle bed in my apartment 100m from the beach (More on that on a later post - I was really lucky in finding this place!)


Once I get home tonight, I will have to drink some in celebration while doing my laundry and cleaning my room in preparation for my eminent departure. And for Kayla... I will buy a pint of either Apple Sorbet or Mexican Chocolate Fiesta ice cream from Izzy's.