Lessons in Life

What an interesting trip this has been. It has had a lot of ups and downs. The ups have been really wonderful, and the downs have taught me some very interesting lessons in life.

Since I began my job as a cocktail waitress, I was reintroduced to the world of "serving others" but in a very different way than I have done in the last 3 years as a physical therapist. Let me tell you, physical therapy is a very "physical" job. It takes manual strength, mental and emotional strength, and intellectual strength. And I am sad to say, that I have not appreciated this skill that I have and this love for the body and healing people as much as I should have.

After about 3-4 weeks of working at Villa Tiberio in Marbella, running around like a chicken with my head cut off, taking orders, cleaning up after people, limping home, having to ice my knees, rub my back, not being able to physically get out of bed until 2pm, and to top it off having dirty napkins thrown at me by my manager, I decided enough was enough. My prince came to my rescue (I love u baby!) and we walked away from the restaurant, never to return. No amount of money or tips was worth what I was doing to my body, my self-esteem, and my pride. So many times I wanted to scream..."I'm a doctor dammit! What the hell am I doing here cleaning up after these people?" How could I expect anyone to appreciate me if I didn't appreciate myself?
That was a hard lesson learned, but never will I do that to myself again.

So with that said, I am so excited to return to the states and return to working as a physical therapist. It's where I belong. It's my calling in life.

Other than that whole drama, it's been one thing after another with our apartment. We should've known when we decided to rent the apartment from an old lady who had lived there for over 20 years. The place is falling apart. First we found out that we couldn't sleep on the bed because the mattress was so old it had no support. So since then, we have slept on the sofa bed, which to our dismay but recently not to our surprise, has bed bugs. We fall asleep at night itching and scratching. Very frustrating trying to sleep.

Next thing we know the neighbor from below leaves a note on our door that our toilet a/o bathtub are leaking into his apartment, and have stained all his towels. Great! So the plumber begins to investigate the origin of the leak in our apartment and in his, and can't seem to find anything. Then while Cesar is shaving one day our water heater starts making a weird noise. He opens the cabinet and there are sparks flying out of it! So he immediately disconnects it and we have been without hot water for about 5 days now. The same plumber that tried to determine where the leak was coming from came to fix the cable to our water heater. He couldn't fix it and now says we need a new water heater!

All this is really funny if you think about it, but what makes it not so funny is that the old lady refuses to pay for anything! The agency that found us the apartment has fronted the money for a new mattress, and the plumber, but no news on the water heater yet. What lesson have we learned from this? Haven't figured that one out yet! :)

So we have basically decided to cut our losses, ask for our deposit back and leave the apartment and Marbella. It just hasn't been what we thought. So with the money from the apartment and our savings from our job, we are going to travel through as much of Spain as possible.
I have already changed my ticket to return on August 9th instead of September 5th. Cesar is still working on changing his.

In the next month and a half, we will be posting a lot of pictures of cities in Spain. We are finishing Andalucia in June before we head to the east for the Barcelona salsa congress, Valencia, Mallorca, Ibiza, Benidorm, Alicante, and many more. Then we will head back to Madrid, and then check out the north of Spain (Bilbao, Santander, San Sebastian, and Santiago de Compostela). That's the plan. We'll see how long the money lasts. So stay tuned for some pics to come!