> The old people, who easily made up 80% of the Sorian population - sure, it meant that there were barely any people my age - but I don't think I'll ever again live in a place with so much cotton candy hair, or purple hair (only the most hip grandparents sport this trendy colour!), until my potential future kids stick me in a home (I can't WAIT to have a legitimate excuse to sit on the couch all day without being judged for it). They made me feel so young! When I yearned for human contact, they always came through for me, shoving me in the streets (those people will NOT take the extra few steps necessary to walk around another human who is standing in their direct path);
> The smallness of Soria - I don't think going to big cities would have been as exciting if I weren't coming from a such a small one! If I had been placed in Madrid, or Barcelona, would I have even traveled half as much? Would I have gotten to know the world of airports as well as I did? Sure, I've grown a lot as a person this past year - yes, I mean physically - but I feel as though the most significant aspect of my emotional growth came from airport experiences. I truly learned to stop caring about anything material at all! Ah, the Madrid airport; where I first lost a new, €60 coat on my way to Valencia; and where I later lost my suitcase and all that was in it to a drug-dealing gypsy thief because of the most inefficient airline crews known to mankind (BRITISH AIRWAYS AND IBERIA YOU SUCK SO MUCH). Yes, the airport became a source of great emotional growth for me. NOTHING will make you appreciate not being homeless like having to spend the night wrapped up in your winter coat, spread out on three tiny wooden chairs in an attempt to recreate a bed-like setting in a cold and deserted terminal. And looks, and vanity? I never cared about them less than in those moments I spent running frantically through terminals, about to miss a flight, waving my arms like a turbine (SOME PEOPLE NEED TO DO THAT, for balance), my tangled hair stuck in my mouth, the straps of my over-packed bag slipping off of my shoulders (like those seven year old kids you see go to school in their oversized backpacks), my pants falling off because I had unbuttoned them on the long bus ride to the airport and obviously forgot to re-button them, my heart beating fast, so very fast, reminding me that the sole source of exercise in my life was, in fact, that monthly jog through airports...
In all seriousness, Soria turned out to be pretty fantastic - notwithstanding a shaky week following a weekend trip to Sevilla that showed us how unbelievably exciting a Spanish city could truly be, full of oranges, flamenco, PEOPLE UNDER THE AGE OF 90, and even cheaper, more delicious food than we'd come to know (honey-roasted eggplant! goat cheese and berry jam on toasted crackers!) - and another trip to Mallorca that made us crave island life, with its heavenly ocean air and delectable seafood. The weekend fiestas in May leading up to THE fiestas of the year (las fiestas de San Juan en Soria, about which I hope to have the energy and commitment to write a post in the near future) were so much fun, as long as you did not show up to them already hungover (lesson learned)... In my day-to-day life, I worked (so very hard) a few hours a day, came home, cooked with Erin and ate, then ate some more, watched so much TV, and learned the joys of living in a city where I could walk anywhere if I had the ganas to leave the house. The hardest adjustment since being back in Montreal has been accepting that everything is a (ridiculously overpriced) bus and metro ride away. I can no longer walk to my favourite pasteleria and order my "coffee with milk with ice" for 1.20, gulp it down, then get hungry with my friends and walk another 30 seconds to my favourite bar and order "patatas bravas" and a "beer with lemon", and another "beer with lemon"... and then, because we can, walk another minute down the Collado (the main street) and get the BEST. TAPAS. EVER. at bar Poli... and then finish off the night with the usual walk back, past the lit-up palace and sleeping storks and, most importantly for some, sleeping pigeons that cannot poop on your head for the forth time in under 3 months...
What a year.
The Collado, which is the main pedestrian street
The old people.
The Palace, which I walked by every day, and where I went to court
The STORKS
