Hello? This is your life calling...are you listening?

I haven't been writing because I haven't been listening. To Spain, to myself. I am getting lost in my head instead of in the city. I am diving into pointless emotional depths instead of the Mediterranean. I am growing in passion for things that are not with me instead of the things I will only have here.

I write of this now because today all this changed. I am getting ready to go to Egypt and I am feeling. I predict this will be one of the wildest things I ever do, because for the first time I will be traveling to a place by myself where I don't speak the language and cannot expect a single thing. My idea of bravery is changing with every tick of the clock, because I don't know that I am this kind of brave. And yet, I always thought I was.

What I need is a nice slap in the face, a real solid kick in the butt.

Wake up, me, and start appreciating what it means to be abroad. I hope to have a new pair of eyes when I come back in a week, to my home in Spain.

The Word FutbolistA is Masculine, and Only Masculine

It’s happened a couple of times now. I’ll be having a conversation with a Spanish or European man here and fútbol will sneak it’s way in. Normally if this conversation is between a man and a woman it will shyly peek it’s head in and either get swooped up by another man or it will get too scared and crawl back into it’s hole. But not for me, for me “fútbol” will actually crawl all the way out and stretch it’s legs into a conversation that suddenly the man is very happy to be in! But then he will get very suspicious, as if I were a spy, and ask how I know so much about fútbol and I will say : “I play.” And then he will be very impressed.

It’s really very fun and a very good way to make good male friends here. But I didn’t start really thinking about it until class one day.

There we were, completing an activity aloud and as a group (remember, nothing is EVER done alone in a classroom in Spain) to really seal down the subjunctive tense. The activity was based around fútbol and fans of fútbol (hinchas) so, naturally, our conversation after the activity was complete was about fútbol. We have one male (German) in the class so, naturally, our professor asked him what team he likes (note: not if he likes a team, but which team). They talked for a minute about fútbol and then our professor turned to the rest of the class (all women) and said that sometimes women can be fans of fútbol as well. Are any of you ladies fans of fútbol? No one raised a hand but me. I was asked all the questions: what’s your favorite team (club: Barcelona , national: Argentina), who is my favorite player (Messi, duh), why my favorite player is not Ronaldo (yes, he is very, very guapo, and a great player, but he is a bit of a show-off and I prefer Messi’s no b.s. style of play)...and that’s when I got the bug eyes. So I said, “I play.” Then they got buggier, if possible, and the whole class sort of looked at me like I was magical. And they still look at me a little weird...in a good way.

Since then I have been very preoccupied by the surprise that comes as a response to a woman who plays fútbol. After all, I am in western Europe. The land where it is just as likely to find a man with a hair dryer as a woman. The land of speedos, and short shorts, and shaved legs--yes I am still talking about men. So why is it that in this land of metrosexuality is it strange for a woman to play soccer? 

I don’t know if I will ever know...