Lindsay Ricketts

Here´s part of an email i finally sent my parents and extended family, the part you guys havent heard-

Madrid - so now i am living with an amazing host family in madrid. only my second day. already i love my senora paqui and senor moises and their soon to be married (* i put that in for mom and dad. wow, three kids already! from 10 to babe) son, who speaks the only bit of english! so it is good to have him. when i arrived, paqui kept hugging me and saying Que bonita!! Mi nueva amiga! Mi nueva hija! So sweet… she is always asking if i like this or that. she talks a little fast, so im trying not to get frustrated. so far so good. but i am shocked at how much i cant understand. even simple things. still, im hopeful, but… a little taken aback. Gosh i hope i can learn spanish well in this one month!! our program director Paco is also amazing. there are 8 others, only one is a guy, so its a girls trip! they all seem very nice. we had a welcome dinner which was fantastic!!!!!!!!!! so delicious! all paid for by the program too. and paqui cooks me every meal and will give me a sack lunch for our trips which happen all but one weekend. I think im going to visit the basque country during my free weekend. All because of you Kate! any specific places or things to see?

So im happy to be here, and oddly not feeling homesick. Ladi tells me just to never think of it haha. But i have this security of all my family and friends´ love and I know you will all be there when i get home. and a month is a blink in a lifetime. Rico wrote me this fantastic note to read on the plane that was so optimistic and told me all the things i wrote just now. This is such an experience. I rememeber my frist journal entry in Vienna, so unsure, a odd feeling being away from home. I dont feel that much now. although i will be so excited to come home, i know that.

End of Email cut and paste.

No juciy stories that were eliminated there yet. but i did forget to write about my random experience on the way over here. there was like 25 kids on the plane who thought it was hilarious to make DUCK NOISES throughout the place. Remember in movie Finding Nemo the seagulls who said MineMineMine…Mine…Mineminemineminemine…minemine…mine. completely like that. i thought it was hilarious at first. one of those wierd social experiments. then after 30 mintues of trying to sleep adn their continuation… i wanted to, as Joey said, Rip of my arm so i had something to throw at them. but anyways. a funny story now.

Katie… that book Overnight to Innsbruck… WOW. SO AMAZING. I miss you. I want to come back if only to talk with you about the trip and the book. For other readers, its about a couple who get separated in Africa and think the other has deserted them after frantic searching. It sounds more dramatic and lame than it is. It is a story of traveling, of metamorphasis instead of romance. it follows the girls perspective and then the guy´s. here´s a part of my tangible journal about this book and the thoughts that followed it.

Such a two way illustration - from flighty wanderer who feeds off traveling the unknown, whose feet find no rest in rest, to a content and stationary embracer of day to day rituals (and visa versa. in many ways they switch places). i wonder if I´m experiencing a bit of the visa versa, just starting to undestand the exhileration of experiencing the jewels of the world, to feel the … i dont know what to call it yet, comfort? Yes, something near comfort of the same color coated metros, the same sunrays, the same hand holding lovers, the comfort and irony of all theses simlliarities in the great cities of europe, all vastly different locations, whereever i have planted my feet, whereever i crouch to scribble on these scraps of paper. I can starte to understand how this could fee like home… a different type of home. A sensual home instead of a tangible one. Yes. To experience the jewels and cranies of the world…

I feel such different things at different points in my journey…

Jeremy - i dont know how i can do video chat though! im using my families internet, but theres no visual component… any ideas? i seriously have wished multiple times that both of you guys were experiencing different things with me… i get so excited when you guys comment back.

muchas besas! ciao!