1. Have a big accomplishment right before your birthday Load your schedule in such a way that you’ll be done with a big project right before your big day. I turned in this semester’s last packet of writing for my creative writing graduate program and I had an article published on Slate about my great-grandmother’s […]
More than a year ago I was with a group of friends talking about our upcoming move to Madrid when one friend exclaimed “You must find these amazing cookies made by nuns” and proceeded to tell me a story about her quest to find these special cookies during a trip to Madrid. It ended well […]
There is a lot of kissing in Spain. From young people passionately making out in the streets, to kissing new and old friends hello, to signing off emails with “besos” (that’s kisses in Spanish), kisses here are everywhere. There is no sense in resisting. Every walk in the park reveals intertwined couples rolling around in […]
I’ve said previously that I am no fan of running. But if I really remind myself of it, it’s true that I’ve been a reluctant runner at various points in my life. There was that time in college when I had a dog and ran up stairs to the mostly abandoned East Campus at Western […]
Last week was a crushing one, food wise. After a few fancy food fails, I’m feeling like I need to take a break, stop pretending I’m a secret vegetarian chef, and serve up PB&Js and bags of chips for a while. I can be a really competitive person. At least over things I feel that […]
There are two types of people: Those who enjoy looking at pictures of other peoples’ food, and those who do not. This feature is for the first group. If you’re part of the latter group, can I direct to earlier posts on home decor or cats? Welcome to a new regular The Dame in Spain […]
My parents recently visited us in Spain and we had a go-go-go two weeks, trekking to Seville, Cordoba, and Barcelona, with some in-between time in Madrid and surrounding cities (including Segovia and Toledo). I didn’t know much about Seville before, and knew even less about how to pronounce it. Turns out both suh-vill and say-vee-yah […]
Both my mom and I have been having a recurring dream for years where we discover hidden rooms in our homes that we never knew existed. One time I dreamed that my guy roommate had a bowling alley and a garden room through the closet in his bedroom. Here we were sharing a small two […]
A few weeks ago, Mr.Dame in Spain was away and I had the place to myself for six whole nights. I started to have flashbacks to all those years I was a single lady in Washington DC. Those times, oh those times, they were such a mixed bag of emotions. I’d be with my girlfriends […]
Chartreuse is the happiest of colors. It’s like if grass mated with the sun. I even love the word chartreuse. Elegant, vibrant, and so very French. The color is actually named after a liquor French monks first made in the 1700s, which makes me like the color even more. I’ve always loved chartreuse. My mom […]
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