Love loves to love love.*

It is almost V-Day here, and this year there are advertisements galore. I thought that the Spanish weren't as into the holiday as the U.S., but I think the retailers here are jumping at any opportunity to sell anything. Most of the marketing reeks of desperation, more so than V-Day marketing usually does.
But love, well, what can I say...most of the time, I love to love love.

Life, love, voyage round your own little world.*

Well, it has been nearly nine months now. Oops. Life here sometimes seems like an alternate reality, another world, where time has a separate existence. Everything in the U.S. seems to continue along obediently following time, whereas here, I feel like I have stepped off the wheel. It keeps spinning, but I am standing still. Yet, time passes here as well, I am now 30 years old and I have been here for nearly a year. It is cold again, the leaves are changing and falling. The Christmas lights are on. But I don't yet feel a part of this time, I still feel like I am living in somewhere in the middle.

A lot has happened in life and love in the past nine months, and I will update you all on the events as I struggle to get my blogging momentum going again! The picture below is from the catacombs in Tarragona from a trip with my parents in March.

Confession. Everyone wants to.*

Here are a few samples of churches in Raval, the neighborhood immediately adjacent to my La Rambla abode. The last picture is one of the many bell towers that elegantly mark the time in Barcelona. Sometimes it seems like they speak to each other in their leaden bell tongues, wondering how the last hour was in their part of the city, passing ancient gossip, laughing at the little humans listening with awe.