Watching a live video feed of people filing out of the House Chamber, where Obama just finished delivering his first State of the Union address. It’s causing me to question whether I picked the right week to discuss the topic at hand. The earthquake in Haiti, health care reform, the state of the economy, and [...]

In Spain, listening to people prattle on about politics was an interesting diversion. O.K., maybe not just a diversion; more like a case study, an alternate universe where history had run a different course and now a different set of factors controlled the political reality. Not unintelligible, just not the same. The PP, former party [...]

Yesterday, I woke up on my floor.
Apparently I’d walked home from downtown Palo Alto after a friend’s 21st birthday party and had only mistaken one other room for mine before I found it. I just didn’t find the bed.
All night, I spent what brain function I still had converting drink prices into Euros and being [...]

So, I’m back from Spain by way of Indiana and the cold (at least in Indiana) harsh reality of my return is setting in: not much is different. Sure, the songs I hear on the radio or drifting out from open dorm doors aren’t acoustic covers of “Ayo Technology,” an erstwhile number-one-hit in Spain, but [...]

Despite the steady stream of columns I’ve been writing, life in Barcelona has been a bit more complicated than one easily reduced, column-ready anecdote per week. Now, in a month it will all be over, and I’ve thought of one last topic about which I never quite got around to writing about: endings. About coming [...]

One day, a few weeks ago, I exited the metro. After leaving the mouth of the underground tunnels, the air by the bus station always feels crisp. The feeling fades a bit after you walk by the ever-present, slowly-circulating river of cabs winding by the bus station–the smell coming off in waves from the fish-filled [...]

I finally did it. I have finally been to a country that is neither the U.S. nor Spain.
I recognize that this probably doesn’t sound like much of an accomplishment, but I assure you, dear reader, it is. If you ask my friends, they’ll definitely grant me a certain air of worldliness (read: pretension). Until last [...]

Hace un par de días that I read my fellow temporary-Spaniard and Daily columnist Molly Spaeth’s open letter to men inviting us not to be so disgusting. It occasioned me to think a bit about what I’ve seen in this country, and why sometimes being a guy is harder than it looks. I know Spaeth’s [...]

Sometimes, I don’t know how I feel about being an American.
Scratch that. Before you jump down my throat, let me rephrase: Sometimes, I don’t know how I feel about being an American abroad.
In Barcelona, Americans are infamous for roaming about in packs and drinking their way through the semester. Clubs boost their weeknight business by [...]

This week, I’m taking a break from Spain and from the present. Instead, I’ll be using this space to sing the praises of past aimlessness.
Last May, throwing my luggage in the trunk of my friend’s silver Mustang, I left California at two in the afternoon. The car reflected, snub-nosed, in the windows of the storefronts [...]