Viva la Vida

A glass of Rioja red, my Ex-Pat Diaries, and
Jerica Mercado, sitting in El Plaza del Mercado.
This is as close to awesome as it gets.

Sitting in a café/bar called Café del Mercado sipping my (second) Rioja wine, writing and letting the sounds of conversations in English and Spanish flow over me. The day has been relaxed and casual--un café con leche here, un helado there as my much-abused brain struggles to string together sentences in Spanish after eight months of learning Polish. Already I have said "tak" when I should have said "sí" and "dzień dobry" when I ought to have said "buenos tardes," but the people are gracious and patient with my fumbling self, and I trust that in time my vocabulary will return.

As I sit here though, I cannot help but feel like the luckiest girl. Just over a year ago I was sitting in sunny, beautiful, most-loved Mexico; just over a month ago I was drinking wine in Budapest, the most beautiful city I've ever seen; and just days ago I was drinking wine with my good friend on her balcony in Warsaw, the city I now call home. At the end of the month I will visit Gdansk (Poland) and Bergen (Norway). And at the moment I am getting pleasantly tipsy in Logroño, Spain. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't get much better than this.