Wednesday, November 4, 2009

To Whom It May Concern

If you're reading this right now, I mean anyone at all, whether you've commented on my blog before or if you're just passing through...

I have a question for you.

If I moved to Canada, would that be giving up and admitting defeat?

I love my country, my country that hates me. I love Canada too, but it's not my home.

I'm giving strong consideration to finishing off undergrad, applying to graduate programs in Canada and applying for permanent residence in Canada.

Is that giving up?

Please, I need an objective opinion. You may not know me (though if you read my blog, you certainly know a great deal about me), and you may not care to know me, but I need you advice, as an objective party.

Thanks in advance.

- Rachel

Maine... I Can't Believe You!

Epic fail in Maine yesterday. And across the country, as far as I'm concerned.

How can we continue to deny an entire population our rights as human beings, our ability to live freely and pursue happiness?

How can the Catholic Church throw MILLIONS of dollars into the hands of BIGOTS, when there are hungry who need to be fed and naked who need to be clothed? HOW CAN THIS BE?

What the HELL is going on in this world and why the HELL are gay people so scary??

Just because we want to be happy too?? Is that why we're scary??

Well a big F YOU to Maine and everyone who threw their money at the bigots and everyone who voted against equality, because gay people have money too, and we WON'T be spending it in your effing state. We'll go to Vermont, or Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or New Hampshire, or Iowa, or Canada, where freedom rings and rings and rings and won't be silenced.

We WON'T be silenced. Last summer was the LAST time I paid a visit to Maine, the absolute LAST time. I'm never going back to Maine until EVERYONE is equal and until my rights are as important and valued as any heterosexual.

I'm so angry I could just about spit.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

My Girls



This song and video is addictive, consider yourself warned.

This evening was the street lighting for all the Christmas lights in London. We went to Oxford street, braving the throngs of humanity who would smoosh us rather than allow us room to breathe.

Jim Carrey was there, though, it was neat to see him. I don't think I've ever been that near to a celebrity before, or that I have a desire to be that near to one ever again hah. People are absolutely rapid.

The lights weren't very impressive, I was thinking they would be something like the Osborn Family Christmas Lights that go up every year at the Disney Studios in Disneyworld, which are absolutely amazing, but alas. It's really not even worth putting up pictures of it.

Today is Hillary's birthday! Happy birthday Billary, three weeks today and we'll be together in London :)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Spain

We had a wonderful time in Spain. I absolutely loved Barcelona and would go back in a heartbeat (and once back, it would be very hard to force me to leave, it is just so entirely beautiful there).

Madrid... however... was a living breathing nightmare. I will NEVER go back to Madrid. Furthermore, I will NEVER fly Iberian Air, EVER again.

My mother had an early flight on American Airlines yesterday morning, so my friend (who had been in Spain with us) and I took the transfer to the airport with her. We got up around 6 am, finished last minute packing and showering and breakfast, etc.

We said our goodbyes to my mother when we dropped her off at terminal one. The transfer brought us to terminal four, five miles away, and we then tried to check in for our flight back to London.

The time changed while we were in Spain. Spain was six hours, then five hours ahead of home, and London was five hours, then four hours ahead of home. You guys on the East Coast changed your clocks back this morning, so now we're five hours ahead of you in London (again). It's all very confusing.

We walked into the 20 minute check-in line empty handed, thinking it wouldn't be a problem since we had our passports and they could just look us up on their pretty little machines. Oh how wrong we were.

We got to the front of the line and, I kid you not, four of the desk attendants got up to go on their breaks. At the same time. So we waited about 10 more minutes and finally someone freed up. But she was on the phone, having a personal conversation might I add, and she had no interest in us.

I don't speak Spanish very well, I have a very heavy American accent and I don't like speaking Spanish because of my accent, particularly around native speakers. But I do understand Spanish almost word for word. I hate it when people assume just because I have white skin and red hair and blue eyes that I only speak English, that I am a dumb American and that I can't understand what they are saying. Molly, if you're reading this, it's like people assuming that you're not Cuban when you totally are, and that's not right at all. Assuming makes an ass out of you and me.

So she was on the phone and we gave her our passports and, because of the time changes and our confusing, we knew our flight got in to London around 2:30 but we had no idea what time it left. I knew it was about a 2 hour flight so I said it either left around 11:30 or 12:30 (major confusion). The woman looked at me and said the only flight to London was leaving through British Airways (an affiliate of Iberian Air and American Airlines, for your future information) at 12:30. I looked at her, perplexed, and explained that we had a round trip from London to Barcelona and Madrid to London. She didn't understand what I was telling her, since we flew Air Europa to Madrid. She was pretty much a c*nt and I could have reached across the counter and smacked the smug look off her horse face.

She said she checked every single flight on Iberian for that day and that we weren't on any of them. She said, because we didn't have a flight to London, it would cost us around 600 euro (that's roughly equivalent to $1100, which is roughly 2 times what we spent on our round trip tickets from Boston to London and then back). Tears were already welling up in my eyes at this point, while I frantically tried to call my mother, who had turned both of her phones off. We were on our own for this one.

She directed us to tickets and sales, where we gave the girl our story and she said she checked all the flights as well and we were on none of them. I could have died on the spot, but she told us to go to information and customer service, which we did.

When we got to customer service, we gave the woman our whole story. At this point we had been enduring this process for the better part of an hour. After we told her our story, her exact words to us were "So?" in the snottiest voice ever. "What do you want me to do about it?"

In my head I was screaming "Hello! We are your customers! Serve us!" But outwardly I was just welling up with tears and trying not to burst out crying, successfully might I add. I held it together very well, actually.

She directed us to British Airways, since the general consensus was that we were probably just confused about which airline we were flying. We got to the queue at British Airways and the woman at the top of the line, who was directing people here and there and everywhere, looked at us and asked us if she could help us.

We said "We don't know, we think we're flying Iberian, but everyone thinks we're flying British Airways, and we don't have a flight and we have to get back to London..." and basically we were about to burst into tears in front of this poor woman, so she told us to go right into the line and they would help us.

We got to the front of the line and went to the desk of a man named Constantine. God bless this man. He was confused about our story at first and thought that we were flying from Madrid to Barcelona and Barcelona to London, but eventually we helped him understand. He said "No you're not on any of our flights."

And then, with a nod and a smile he found us on Iberian Air, the 1:15 flight to London.

All the people we had gone to beforehand who had told us that they looked everywhere and couldn't find us had been lying to us. They had looked us in the eye and told us we needed to pay 600 euro for tickets to London, that we weren't on any of the manifests and therefore weren't booked to go to London.

I am so. fucking. mad. about all the shit that happened yesterday. This man was the only one who bothered to help us. We told him everything we had been through and all the different people we spoke to and he told us that it is a common problem with Iberian (we had a similar, but much less devastating experience on our way from London to Barcelona with Iberian) and that he was sorry that his co-workers didn't do their jobs. An apology from him meant to world, I just wish all the others hadn't put two twenty year old women through such hell, apparently for the sheer fun of it.

So we got on our flight, at last at last, and headed back to London. We were seated in the emergency row on the plane (and because of our bad luck that morning we were pretty terrified that we were going to be the cause of the misfortunate of the entire plane), but it was really nice to have some extra leg room.

We went through customs and got our luggage and got on the Heathrow Express to Paddington tube station. We were so emotionally exhausted (and my friend had developed a nasty cough) and just wanted to lay down and sleep, but we had to soldier on and carry our heavy bags all over God's green earth and all through the stations, etc.

An Australian man ran up to us at Paddington, apparently in distress, with tears welling up in his eyes. He was short, with grey hair and very bad teeth but he was kind and very sincere. He said he was headed home to Australia with his family and they needed 13 pound 50 pence more for the Heathrow express to Heathrow. We couldn't overlook a fellow traveler in distress, so we handed him 30 pound and went on our way. He offered us his camera, anything we wanted in duty free, but we declined. He took my friend's email address and promised us that God would bless us.

The way I see it is, God blessed him for giving us a miserable day and causing us to have pity on a traveler in distress. Everything happens for a reason, the reason we had such a terrible day yesterday was so that we could help that man and his family to get home to Australia. I don't even care if I'm out my last 10 pound because of it, and I don't even care if he didn't really need the money or if he was just going to rob us and say he was going to get in touch with us and repay us, he looked sincere and I'm not one to judge.

I'd want someone to help me if I were frantic and just trying to get home.

Other than yesterday, the trip to Spain was very lovely. It's good to be back in London, though. So good to be back.

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Doesn't Anyone Understand?

We toured Toledo today. The city is very beautiful, very old but very very beautiful. We saw the oldest synogogue in Western Europe. It's no longer a working synogogue, but now more of a museum. For a long time in Toledo there were three groups, Jews, Christians and Muslims. The three groups lived in relative peace and harmony, as far as any records can tell.

Then Queen Isabella came and ruined it all and had all the synogogues torn down and all the jews basically converted or killed. Very unpleasant times indeed.

The Spanish didn't take part in WWII (from what I recall from high school history lessons), because they were dealing with their own civil war at the time. Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain from the 30's until relatively recently, being a facist, let Hitler use his country and his people for target practice for testing out bombs and weapons of destruction. That's where Picasso's famous "Guernica" comes in (I'm seeing it tomorrow, I hope I don't weep). Joan Miro, my most favourite artist, has some very insightful pieces reflecting on the civil war and the years of tumolt for Spain. We went to the Miro museum in Barcelona, which was such an astonishing experience for me. The first time I saw a Miro first hand was in Hartford in 2004, I believe, at the Athenium (if you're from Connecticut you've probably been at one time or another, it's very small but it's a cute museum and I believe it's the oldest public art museum in the United States, but I could be mistaken). He is a contemporary artist, and most of his works seem very primitive and unrealistic, but what you really must do is look beyond the figures, the paint, the frame, the palet, and make the painting something for you. I like art that becomes whatever you want it to become.

But this wasn't meant to be a rant about Miro.

In Toledo today, I noticed there to be a lot of graffiti of swastikas. I don't understand how anyone, particularly someone in Europe, particularly someone whose country suffered under a fascist dictator for decades, could possibly promote the fascist way. Don't they know how their parents and grandparents suffered? Don't they know how all the people of Europe suffered? Fleeing from bombs falling here and there, shrapnal everywhere, air raids, no food, never knowing if you'd live to see tomorrow or if your children would live to see the end of the war. Or worse, if you were one of the direct victims of the fascists, if they stuck you in a ghetto and then huddled you into a cramped box car and sent you off to never be seen or heard from again. Spain is a Catholic nation, don't they know what the Nazis did to the Catholics? Don't they know, don't they understand? How can anyone draw the swastika without silently killing their soul?

Sadly those aren't the first swastikas I've seen in Europe. There is a little shrine, with candles and swastikas in chalk on a stoop near my school in London (in one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in London, might I add). I got so angry and sad when I saw it, that I blew both the candles out, and I don't even care if CCTV saw me do it. They're English, the Nazis tried to wipe London off the map of the world, don't they understand?

On a MUCH happier note, I just got word that Obama signed the Hate Crimes Bill into LAW! How awesome is that?

Perhaps there is hope after all. Yes, I'd say there is a lot of hope. Things are getting better all the time :)

http://www.hrc.org/13699.htm


Miro, 1973, "The Smile of a Tear" very appropriate for today

Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Eleven Months

We are in Madrid this lovely warm evening. It's been a very long day of traveling and touring and eventually eating, so now we are resting for the night.

Today is my eleven month anniversary with Hillary, and it is sad that we have to spend our anniversary apart.

However, we'll be together next month for our one year anniversary. We'll be in Paris then, it will be que romantico.

I can't believe it's been eleven months, it feels like just yesterday we were driving home from Ani, got hungry for Wendy's and spent the better part of an hour sitting in a dark parking lot eating and talking about life, silently telling each other that we couldn't put on this facade anymore.

Love happens and it knocks you right off your feet. It's the best, most stupifying feeling in the world, to be sure. Perhaps numbing is a better word for it. I don't know if I like the feeling of numbness, or fluttering about, but I do love being in love with a wonderful person and I am very glad that we found each other in this big scary world.

There is no one out there who would climb mountains with me on a whim, who would stand by my side from 3,000 miles away, who would so thoroughly entertain me while simultaneously captivating me. I fall in love with every pretty face I see, but I have never been so completely in love with not only a pretty face, but a wonderful mind and a beautiful soul.

Here's to Madrid and eleven months with Mogli.

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Barcelona

Welcome to Barcelona!

This city is AMAZING! I wish I had come here to study abroad instead of crumby old London. There is so much here, and the weather is beautiful and there are palm trees everywhere.

And the food... magnificent.

Tonight at dinner we shared our meal with a little black cat who was walking amongst the tables. She was a skinny little cat so I dropped her some of my salmon. But she wouldn't eat any of my salmon, which was curious because she looked hungry. Then she disappeared. A little while later she returned, followed closely by a kitten, who proceeded to consume all of the salmon I had dropped for his mother. I stroked the cat while she watched her kitten eat, and I swear she was smiling at me. I fed her some salmon so I was certain she had eaten, and she ate every last drop. Then another kitten came, and it all got too crazy and we were leaving the restaurant but it broke my heart to part with the cat, she was such a sweet cat, and she knew exactly how to make me fall in love with her (it's probably because I miss my Kitty).

Earlier this evening, we were walking down to the beach so my mother could put her feet in the Mediterranean Sea, when we came across a man on a bike. Not just any man on a bike, though, a man on a bike wearing... only a bike. He was completely nude!

I got pictures. It'll take me a while to figure out whether Americans are sexually repressed (in that we giggle at nudity and think it's obscene) or if Europeans are too sexually liberal.

Barcelona is amazing, we've walked all over the city so far. This morning we went to Monserrat, which is this really interesting old Monastery in the mountains outside of Barcelona, but it's more like Disneyland in the mountains, with music and dancing and food and liquor. It was awesome.

My internet isn't working (I'm writing this on my friend's laptop right now) so I will upload pictures when I get back to Londontown or if the internet in Madrid works after Tuesday :)