The Rules of the Game

 "Normality is a paved road. It's comfortable to walk, but no

flowers grow on it. " - Vincent VanGogh

Questioning Montserrat.

My new friend Becca and I have now spent seven weeks together, experiencing new cultures, and dissecting each element of life piece by piece. In this time we have learned a lot about each other. Especially the general roommate habits and characteristics such as our eating and cleanliness habits, how long it take each other to get ready, and when to agree to disagree. We have a lot that we differ on, but I think we have more we see eye to eye on.
On day two of our big spring break excursion, we made our first travel mate. He was quick to observe that in very few of our stories do we refer to ourselves as "I". Something that is also evident in our blogs, in the first draft of this post I used the word "Our" twenty-one times and the word "we" forty. Since most of our experiences are together and the only time we seem to spend apart is when one of us is in class or in the bathroom, we have swiftly become one.
We spend a lot of time discussing the morals and reasoning behind the things we are witnessing We consider everything from every angle. We consider why Parisians act the way they do on the metro to whether aquariums should exist or not. We also bicker about if sharing hair brushes is as unsanitary as not washing hands. Becca is a vegan and an advocate for animals lives and I feel very strongly about protecting the environment through creating the least amount of waste. These are often key factors for our debates and we can sit at the dinner table for hours trying not to lose the contest, all while denying it's nothing more than conversation.   

Observing Montserrat.

Like any relationship we have differences and flaws. The better friends we become the easier it becomes to snap at each other when we are hungry, tired, late, or lost. I recently read an interesting New York Times opinion article about friendships between women, and how they rely on each other as a primary support system in a way that can be tracked across cultures throughout history. Throughout the story I couldn't help but think of the friendship that is growing between Becca and I. We share a bedroom, we grocery shop, cook, and eat most meals together. We compare our upbringings and enthusiastically look forward to the rest of our lives. We travel together, laugh together, and are experiencing a whole new part of the world together.

Admiring Parc Guell with inappropriately friendly new friends. 

Living abroad together we are each others primary support systems. We have no other close family or friends to spend time with and thus have become very dependent on each other. While I am thankful for Becca's company and her holding the position of the honorary French translator and hostel-booker, I also quickly get frusturated when she leaves things all over the place and causes us to arrive at a train station too close to the departure time (even though we haven't missed a train...yet). And I wouldn't even have to ask to know that she gets equally fed up with my constant complaining and persistent urge where I feel obligated to share every random thought pops into my head. Yet, we are in quite a unique situation. At home we would usually have other people who we are close to in order to diversify our human interactions, but in Europe it is just us. For the next three months we are stuck together; in a bedroom, a classroom, and on trips that we have planned whether we like each other or not. So being angry at one another for extended periods of time is not an opportunity that either of us has the luxury of.

Appreciating what is untouched by man. 

So we have created a list and titled it, "The Rules of the Game". It is a list of guidelines we have set for ourselves in order to prevent arguments and to get the most out of whatever we are experiencing. I don't plan on sharing the full list with you because first of all it is a work in progress and second of all the rules apply to us and not you so don't be nosy! Nonetheless, I will share our most important rule: Off The Grid. We have hastily learned the tourist scene is absolutely not for us. We have made a pact not to visit the top sites on TripAdvisor, but the ones nobody has written about at all. Maybe we will write our own hipster-hidden-gems-blogs for other travelers out there like us, to stumble upon some day, and dream about our travel lives. Where they can read about our discovered spaces and places where we have adventures and our interesting travel mates such as Armin (the half-Persian, half-Turkish, Australian,who lived in Japan for six months during high school, then foraged berries as a chef at a top rated restaurant for six years, then up and quit that job and 24 hours later had bought a ticket to Spain for three weeks) or even Tokaka (our middle aged hostel roomate from Tokyo who just spent 24 hours traveling to Spain with an intricate bedtime regimine and has a serious sized planned packet of sights she'd like to see) and especially Anna and Sophie (our German and Finnish counterpart pals who we ate Tapas with and had a lively discussion on German and American politics, history, and patriotism), Or maybe you can just peruse the pictures and decide if you think "Off The Grid" is a good rule or not.