Monthly Archives: October 2009

Going to San Francisco to Visit my Friend

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I have a friend going to acupuncture school in San Francisco, CA. She has been there a little over a year now and I am thinking I had better get there and visit her before she finishes or I’d end up having to stay at a hotel San Francisco and not getting the advantage of staying with her. She has a Friday off from school latter this month so I will fly up on a Thursday afternoon and spend a long weekend there with her.

It has been a very long time since I have been in San Francisco so I am looking forward to going. I have to admit I do not remember a lot of details about that trip, but I did have a lot of fun. I was fairly young, only 21 and went there for my first time on Pride weekend. It was a non stop party. I do remember arriving there on Friday with my friend we drove up from Los Angeles, that is where I was going to school at that time. I know we hit some bar on Castro St. Friday night and the rest is a blurred memory of dancing and drinking. I remember I slept through about half of the Saturday parade and when I got up I headed out to the streets to see the rest of the parade and get back to the party scene.

Well that was many years ago and those days of parting are far behind me. This time I am looking forward to some site seeing, enjoying the views the bay some museums and possibly a play or the opera. A big change from the days of drinking and parting the nights away. I am sure I will be remembering more of this trip and it will not be one big blur.

A long and relaxing weekend in San Francisco is what I am looking forward to.

Pseudo Moms in Palma

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Palma was amazing. It’s exactly what I thought it would be after reading all the blogs written by the American expats. It’s lazy, sunny and the cafe culture is fascinating. A school friend met me at the airport and helped me get situated at one of the luxury hotels Palma has, which was one of the nicest hotels I’ve every stayed been in. She told be she chose this hotel because it’s centrally located, plus it’s not too far from the the Plaza Espana, which is the central meeting point for all the students from abroad people in Palma.

All the students studying abroad here live with there host families and have ‘madres’. The ‘madres’ act as a substitute mother and does all the cooking, cleaning and will even dote on the student! The set-up is so different from the independent living situation I have. My friend had to have dinner with her ‘madre’ that evening, so she showed me a small tapas bar nearby, this place, bar was adopted by all the abroad students. It was a small English speaking bar and I could tell this helped make them feel less homesick. But there are local people our age too and most of them are the crew on these huge luxury yachts. What I liked most about this place was all the shirts on the wall.

The next day, my friend and I had some of the best coffee and what’s called an ensemada, which is a flaky pastry, and then we met up with another girl and began to walk around the city. She showed us the downtown and where all the best shopping can be found. She didn’t have to go back to her ‘madre’ for lunch because her ‘madre’ was gone for the day, so she had time to show us a spectacular sandstone Cathedral and then she took us down to the waterfront and marina, where we saw all those luxury yachts. That evening, we went to dinner and it was my first time to have sushi! I really like it, I thought for sure I’d be only eating Spanish dishes. It was time to head back to my hotel, and for my friend to head back home and wait for her ‘madre’. That kind of made me envious that she had a pseudo-mom to go home to.