One discovery I have made about myself surprised me, but I don´t think it will surprise anyone who knows me well.  That is, yo soy borrato.  I am cheap.

Since arriving in Santander, I have eaten at the bus station croissanteria three times, though to be fair I have sat waiting at the bus station during eating hours twice, and I arrived in town there. Plus, it is just across the street from my hostel, and the breakfast pastries are not bad.  Ok, the food is not that great, and I just spent the last entry chastising myself for trading quality for convenience at Burger King.  Maybe I´m just cheap. I got my last check from my old job on Friday, and I´m feeling this new, weird combination of freedom and uneasiness about no longer having an income. 

Trust!  And faith!  I hear my Mom saying, "Everything will work out."

I saved for months, and I have plenty of funds for this trip.  But I was surprised about eating cheap food because I prize a good, not to mention chic, restaurant.  I raved about La Musa and had no qualms spending over my budget there.  Actually, I have no budget, other than a fuzzy round number for the whole trip.  Again, convenience and ease are sirens in the pitch of sometimes dizzying dissonance.  Put a better way, not knowing where I am or the language, people, and customs, has so far been exotic and a fun challenge to navigate.  But now that the novelty is wearing off, I´m both craving and avoiding the familiar.

For example, I avoided coming to this internet cafe for awhile.  True, I´m borrato and don´t want to pay for the internet.  But it´s also because I want a bit of freedom away from the tether of home and staying in touch.  I want to give myself a few days to float on the waves of  "somewhere else", buoyed and moved by the tide of something I don´t fully know.

Lost? No. Adift? Yes. It´s a primal feeling probably like the child I saw today in the cathedral plaza as I sat with my morning tea and cheap pastry from the bus station. A little boy of 2 or 3 broke away from his mother and ran gasping for the stone stairs to the church, to climb to an unknown place beyond his sight, which must have seemed absolutley alluring gauging by his joy.  But then he did something all children do.  He looked back to reassure himself that his mother was there and that it was both ok and safe to try something new.

I think of it like a tether ball.  Being anchored gives you the freedom to swing as wide and as fast as you can.  But if the anchor snaps, the ball flies off and gets lost.  I´m not trying to get away from an anchor.  I´m just trying to feel what it is like to be a human being somewhere else, like on Santander buses. A human being who has chosen to feel his way through new places, to experience a different either, and, thus, to experience himself in a new way.  Swinging the ball wide, and perhaps loosening the tether a bit.

Now it´s 9:15pm, and it´s time to amble toward dinner...at a real restaurant which I hope is worth every dollar I spend over my budget.