That Dreadful Coffee Addiction

So about two months ago I decided I needed to cut my addiction to caffeine, needing coffee every morning just starts getting irritating after awhile. I decided that the easiest, well, fastest, way to do this was by stopping completely for at least four days and then not having it more than once within every three days, enough to allow me to drink it if I want but not often enough to make me feel like I need it. I figured this should be easy enough, I had to quit like that when I was traveling this summer because we weren't allowed to have caffeine on the farm in Spain where we volunteered. That hadn't been too bad, so why should this time be any worse?

Well, lets just say that the guys at work weren't necessarily joking when they kept trying to give me chocolate every day at work that week. I never got too much of a headache but I certainly felt fuzzy enough and I must say, my craving for sugar went way up. After that week though, I was fine, didn't need coffee in the morning, didn't get headaches with out it, life was good. Except for that fact that coffee still tastes delicious...

My trick now was if I felt the need for caffeine at home, I'd make some tea, not enough to have too much of an effect, but still something. If I still wanted coffee I'd buy it while I was out or have it at my parents, that way it was a special occasion thing that cost money. This worked fine and dandy, except for the fact that this morning...I turned on my coffee pot...oops. I have opened the dangerous door to my coffee cravings again by proving how easy and delicious coffee is when all you have to do is plug in the pot, dump in the water and coffee, and press start.

As wonderful as this cup of coffee is that I'm drinking right now, I will keep from sliding back into the world of caffeinated beverages every morning, afternoon pick-me-ups of coffee, tea or soda and the pounding headache if I oversleep and go right to lunch skipping the coffee. Maybe to fool myself I will buy the stripped version of everyone's favorite caffeinated morning beverage called "decaf." It tastes the same, but no caffeine, it's like giving a dog a bone that's merely flavored like meat, but is in all reality just dry crunchies.

Reminiscing

I've started reading a new book today and it's been taking me on a nostalgic trip from this summer. I'm reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert recommended and given to me by a friend. It's written in three parts, like Gilberts year of travel was. The first section is her four months in Italy living in Rome and traveling around learning Italian, eating amazing amounts of fabulous food and meeting new friends. So many of the places, foods, phrases, customs, artists, museums, etc etc etc she mentions are so familiar to me from just the two weeks I spent in Northern Italy and I didn't even make it down as far south as Rome (which really isn't that far south at all).

It all makes me want to start planning my next trip so I can do everything and see all the things I wanted to see but wasn't able to. Of course I'd do this knowing full well that all it would do is open up new doors to places I want to go, things I want to do and foods I want to eat. There are so many places to go see too that it seems I should be going somewhere new before I start repeating myself in my ramblings.

For now though I will have to satisfy myself by finding the most authentic pizzeria I can, opening a bottle of Chianti (I never knew how much I liked Chianti until I spent 5 days in Florence), and sampling the gelatto at one of the very few places in Madison that serve it.

Alaska Pics

So upon finally finding my camera I have now downloaded my pictures from Alaska this summer. Who would've thought to look in the compartment between the seats in my car for my camera, apparently not me. So now that I have them downloaded I've sorted through and uploaded the good one's to my Picassa Album so be sure to click the link at the side of the page. There are some envy worthy pics of places I'd like to be right now!

Synopsis and Photo Slide Show

Well I know that the last couple weeks of my trip weren't exactly documented, posts kind of stopped after France. I was in places without internet connections and then in places where it was too expensive to spend much time online while I was in Italy and then just out of the habit of updating my last few days in Scotland and Ireland. Short synopsis, I took a train from Lyon to Torino in Italy where I met up with relatives in Vistrorio right near the Swiss border in the Alps. From there I took a train to Giustiono which is farther East and in the Dolomites where I spent 3 nights staying with relatives from my mom's side of the family (my grandma's cousins and thier families). From there I spent two nights in Venice sightseeing and shopping, incredibly hot and humid and crowded. After Venice I took the train down to Florence where I stayed in the most amazing and random hostel for 5 nights. I met so many new friends and took a day trip to Pisa and a day trip to Sienna. After 5 days there I flew from Pisa up to Edinburgh, Scotland where I stayed with a friend for 5 nights and took a bus tour of the Highlands. I flew home from Dublin so I decided to spend 2 nights there and take a look around too. All in all it was an amazing trip and I had such a good time seeing so many amazing sights. I'll embed the slide show here but if you want to see the actual album you can check it out here.

If Only My Ears Didn't Feel Like They Had Cotton in Them

Now does the trip seem to get better as you go because you are seeing better things, because you have more to compare it to, or because you know you are getting nearer to the end? Whatever the reason it seems to have been continually getting better as I was in Lyon and now in Italy. I had a great time in Lyon visiting my friend and meeting all of his friends and just being able to relax for a few days. Now I am nearing the end of my first stop in Italy. I have been staying with relatives (ok, so the connection would actually take about a paragraph to explain with out confusing everyone so we'll just leave it at relatives) in Vistrorio which is near Torino.

I have been able to go hiking and sightseeing, eat all kinds of amazing food and try to learn Italian. Vistrorio is right in a glacial valley so there are an amazing number of beautiful views to take in. The only down side to that is the constant up and down with altitude and my ears still feel like they have cotton in them. On Saturday we had beautiful weather and got to see the Matterhorn while we were hiking and took a gondola part way up Chamois, one of the ski resorts in the area. Unfortunately today wasn't as nice and it rained and stormed for awhile but it was the first time that I had seen rain and heard thunder since I was back in Madison so it was actually very nice.

Tomorrow I will be leaving and heading East to Trentino to visit other relatives (more closely related but still, takes a while to describe) in a small town called Giustino. More fabulous updates as they come!

Learning French

So I've been chilling out in France for about a week now. I flew into Marseille last weekend and spent 2 nights with some Couch Surfers and got to see some of the citys festivals that weekend. They have a huge celebration for the Solstice with music and food everywhere. I took the train up to Lyon on Sunday and have been chilling out here all week staying with a friend. It's been great to just relax and enjoy the area I'm in and the people instead of rushing from place to place. I've also been able to do a lot of finalizing for the rest of my trip so I'll have less planning to do as it goes!

I now have an odd collection of Spanish, French, and Italian words, I never really know what language is going to come out when I try to say hello or thank you. Certainly makes things more interesting, I love hearing all the different languages too though.

With any luck I will have a few pictures coming soon, we'll see though!

The Half Way Point

Here we are with our last day in Spain. It´s hard to believe that I´ve really hit the half way point. 3 1/2 weeks in and 3 1/2 weeks left. We spent 3 nights in Tarifa after getting back from Morrocco, 2 more than we had planned on, but it turned out to be suprisingly difficult to figure out how we were getting to our next destinations and both ended up changing our ideas at least 10 times. Tarifa is the perfect place to spend a few days catching your breath and getting ready for the next journey. It´s a really small touristy town, but it´s also very laid back and quiet. People don´t come to Tarifa just becasue it´s Tarifa, they´re either coming from, or going to Morrocco, so everyone is trying to relax before they go or catching thier breath afterwards.

It´s right on the Med between Gibraltar and the other main port town to Morrocco (I´m totally blanking out on it´s name right now) and has a loooong gorgeous beach and lots of wind. I spent a number of hours on the beach swimming and laying out in the sun getting covered in blowing sand. With all the wind it´s popular for kite surfing too so that was pretty fun to watch as a few of them came closer to the more crowded part of the beach.

With the Euro Cup going on right now we´ve been able to go watch some Fútbol games at bars or resturants where the whole place is actually watcing the game, think the popularity of American Football but with less obnixious fans. Two nights ago we actually got to watch Spain beat Greece while we were out to dinner in Spain, now that was sweet.

We spent last night in Málaga and are doing a little sight seeing before we head to the airport this afternoon where we both catch flights to our next destinations. Brandon will be heading to Berlin and I´ll be heading to Mersaille. I lucked upon some perfect timing because Mersaille is having their biggest party of the year this weekend. They´re the oldest city in France so every year they have a huge celebration in thier historic district, should be a sweet time!

Back in Spain

Yup, we´re back in Spain. We went all the way from Meknés to Tarifa yesterday and found a hotel last night. We´re glad to be back in Spain and in Tarifa where things are a little calmer. We´re trying futily to figure out the next leg of our jouney up to France, there seem to be too many, yet not enough options. We´re excited to be moving on to a new country. I´m also particually excited to have a normal keyboard again. The Arabic keyboards down in Morrocco...not laid out so well for typing English...

Medinas, Souqs and Couscous

Our stay in Morrocco so far has been a whirlwind tour. We spent a night and a morning in the Medina of Tangier. A Medina is the old district of a city in Morrocco and is full of twisty allys, street vendors and people. Morroccan culture is certainly different than anything we've experienced so far. It changes as you ravel though it too. The north at one point was controlled by Spain so there is a lot of Spanish spoken and an overtone of Andalucian culture. We headed south to Casablanca the next day where it starts to change again. This pqrt of Morrocco, and a good portion of the south, had been under French control so a lot of French is spoken and there is a lot of French influence in the culture.

In Casa we met up with one of my old friends who is studying there for the summer. We spent the night and morning in Casa before jumping the train again and heading down to Marrakesh where we are now. They were having electricity problems with the tracks so what should have been a 3 hour trip took over 6. In the end we made it to Marrakesh jsut fine and are staying at an awesome little hotel with a huge tiled courtyard that has orange trees and tables to sit at. We spent today shopping in the Souqs, which are the huge marketplaces in the Medina. It's suprising how similar a lot of the stalls are and how similar a lot of it is to the import shops in Madison. We didn't make too many purchases but we have been eating good food and relaking in our courtyard. We have a few more days of Morroccan adventure planned before we head back up into Europe.

Now Thats Some Good Shit

Over the last weekend at the farm we got to do a little sightseeing and exporing with our other WWOOFers. One of the guys lives in Malaga so Saturday afternoon we drove to the coast and swam in the Mediterranean for the first time, swiming in saltwater is so cool, you're incredibly light. Its the only way I can float on my back without my feet sinking like rocks! After getting some delicious pizza we went to this huge benefit concert to raise money and awareness for the slave trade in Mauritania. Think outdoor Madison kind of concert with an activist/hippie crowd but 5 times as big. There were 4 bands that played and a "sideshow" of an qcrobqtics troupe doing different things during the time between bands. By far the coolest thing we had done on our trip so far. This small French band called Caravan Palace was freakin awesome, they were like a funk swing band from the future, absolutly wild. The first band was a hip hop fusion which was pretty cool and the last two were both Flamenco Fusion which is the popular genere of music for a lot of our age group in Spain. Its pretty interesting but can get repetitive after awhile.

The next morning, after sleeping till noon because the concert went untill 4am... we drove up to a Natural Park and ate our picnic lunch and went hiking. The mountqins of Andalucia are gorgeous, it's all reminiscent of the Sierra Nevads in California (which suprise suprise, the mountains qre called the Sierra Nevadas) or of parts of Colorado.

Our last day of work turned to be rather interesting and messy. For whatever reason they decided that it was the right time of year to stock up on thier manure for compost/fertilizer. Yup, I'm sure you all guess what that meant... The boys had been doing most of it getting chicken poop but that afternoon the 4 of us got dropped off at the side of the road with a big pile of bags to shovel horse manure. This starts out as just shovelling up the piles into bags that the farmer has piled next to the road, but as those piles dissapear you have to start digging under the hay trying to find the older piles. Fuuuun stuff, by the end of the afternoon we were quite good at determining what was "good shit" and what was "bad shit"

Needless to say our stay on the farm was good even though we cut it a few days short and left Tuesday morning. We hopped a series of busses and made our way down to Tarifa where we caught ferry to Tanger, Morrocco. That, will be anohter post though.

WWOOFing at Caña Dulce

I´m sitting here watching the time on my computer tick down at the internet cafe so I may not be able to do the last week of travling justice in this post. After leaving Quéntar last week we had a hell of a time getting all of our bus connections out to Coín to get picked up by our WWOOF hosts. I can never remember exactly what WWOOF stands for, it´s something along the lines of World Wide Organization of Organic Farmers. What it is is an organization of organic farms and the like that take volunteers for weeks at a time in exchange for room and board. Brandon an I have been at a Permaculture farm near Coín for the last week with the couple who live there and 2 other WWOOFers. It´s called Caña Dulce because of all the invasive cane surrounding it that they use in a lot of their furniture and bulidings. Our project for the last few days has been cutting cane to build a fence around on of their gardens...it is truly amazing how much cane that fence eats up. It´s not a farm so much as it is a sustainable living ecosystem. The couple that live there built it and have over 600 varietys of fruits, vegetables, and plants they grow throughout the year. They teach courses on Permaculture (basically sustainable agriculture) out there also. There are a number of seperate small buildings that make up the area so it´s a lot like living outside or being at camp with going between different buildings and areas of the farm. We´ve also done a lot of gardening and cleaned out the kitchen which is an outdoor patio coverd with a roof and cane and vine walls so that we could paint the concrete floor. We´ve done a lot of hard work but it´s been good to do someting physical. It´s been really good for us to be able to decompress from those first few days and get our bearins on what we´re doing next.

What are we doing next you ask? Going to Morrocco. We´ve met a numebr of people who have told us a lot about things to see there and one of the women we´re WWOOFing with was just there so we´re pretty excited.

I´ll be updating more about this last week when I get a chance in the next couple days.

Quéntar, the perfect mountain village

After another full day of traveling between Madrid and Granada Brandon and I are realizing that while cities do have some cool stuff we are way tired of getting ourselves turned around and ending up in Plaza´s we´ve already been in. Last night we got to a small village near Granada called Quéntar. We´re staying in a guest house of a couchsurfer and there are a couple other surfers there too. It is the most typical looking small European village, it´s gorgeous and confusingly layed out and so unique with extremely friendly locals. We´ve been eating well, happy to go around the corner to the market and then actually cooking a good meal. The village is on the side of a mountain so today we´re going to expore the town a little bit and take a hike, after 3 days of on and off sun and rain we have a beautiful sunny day. The trip feels like it´s finally underway and we´re sleeping off the last of our emotional and physical exhaustion from traveling so much in so few days.

Madrid!

Hola mis amigitos!

Brandon and I landed in Madrid this morning around 11:00 that´s around 4:00 in Wisconsin...We had about 24 hrs of travel all together but no major problems. We´ve wandered around Madrid a bit and gotten a bite to eat before taking a nap and finding a different hostel for tomorrow night (unfortunately the one we´re staying at tonight doesn´t have room tomorrow) We´re pretty worn out and in need of a shower but other than that we´re doing good and still can´t quite believe we´re in Madrid and starting our trip!

Sewing!

With the ski season over I've finally been able to pick up some sewing projects again. The only thing I've really been working on has been my knitting project...socks! Which hasn't gotten anywhere quickly. This is mainly because I'd only work on them on weekend trips. Hmmm, not the best completion strategy. Anywho, I've finally been able to fire up the sewing machine and get working. I finished a baby quilt yesterday that's been sitting almost done for months just waiting for the final touch.

I had started a white fleece vest the other day but the pattern I was altering ended up being way off on sizing so I got frustrated and it's currently sitting in a cute little Starbucks bag decorating my sewing table. So today I decided that I'd start a new project, use some of the fabric I've had kicking around for way too long.

What started as a dress shirt has evolved into a lightweight little jacket. The fabric is really cool, kind of a retro glam look to it, but it's really hard to keep it looking modern and not like your grandmas sofa. Yea, so adding sleeves was posing to be slightly difficult. What fit perfectly well as a cap sleeve shirt didn't fit so well with longer sleeves attached. After various curse words and inane mutterings I repined it (probably for the 20th time) and guess what? It fits! and looks good! Now all I have to do is pin the other one and sew them both...but hey, I've got it figured out right?

Meat Industry...again

I just came across a more in depth article from the LA Times http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beef18feb18,0,4428760.story

Meat Industry

Recently I've had a number of conversations about my eating habits regarding meat, organic, local, and processed foods. To preface this post I don't like lables but if forced to have one (or just a short answer to the question) I'm vegetarian. I choose to avoid meat when possible, but with that said I do occasionally have a craving for it and think there are ethical, sustainable and responsible ways to go about eating meat. For instance, I would choose free range or organic meat that was raised/slaughterd ethically. Also, really throwing off the animal rights side of vegarianism, I am an advocate of sustenance hunting and fishing. I believe that if done sustainably hunting is good for the balance of our microenvironments, especially with what we have done in Wisconsin to the deer population by increasing thier food supply (corn fields) and reducing their natural predators (killing off the timber wolves). Also, I try to avoid as many processed foods as possible.

With that said I was reading headlines today and came across one on BBC News. It covers the largest meat recall in the history of the US. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7249911.stm The USDA recalled 143 million lbs of beef from the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company dating back to February 1st. The article state that while it is not an imenent health threat most of the meat has likely been consumed already. The same company was video taped by the Humane Society of America and two former employees were charged with cruelty to animals.

This instance illustrates why I try to avoid processed foods and why the meat industry has problems. The fact that most of this meat was eaten before the recall was in effect makes you wonder what else you might be eating that you aren't aware of and what the standards of the plant are. It is obvious that Westland/Hallmark was not following the standards set by the USDA and FDA. This isn't just in regards to the meat industry. In the fall fo 2006 there was a recall on spinach by the FDA http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/spinach.html because of an e. coli contamination.

This doesn't go to say that everything produced organically or locally is always better and that we need to question everything mass produced or processed. We just need to be aware of what is out there and help be part of a solution by promoting awarness and raising our standards for knowledge and quality of our food. After all, if we are what we eat, wouldn't you like to know what you're eating?