I just found this expert I wrote during or shortly after my adventure living in Spain one summer with no money. It was the most amazing adventure! I am also sharing photos that are raw and real during that time of my life to preserve them in the best way possible.
Looking out from the treehouse I called home over looking the most famous plaza in Barcelona, Spain, Plaza Catalunya, I observed all the tourists observing me overhead. They looked at me with wide eyes as if I was a rare animal at the zoo. They took pictures and marveled at not only me, but all of what we had created on Plaza Catalunya. It was all a beautiful, wild sight to behold unlike anything anyone could have even dreamed up. I was used to the tourists and journalists snapping pictures of me and didn't even notice anymore. I didn't blame them because if the roles were reversed, I would have probably taken a picture of myself too. A strange girl with hair made light from living under the sun and skin as tan as it could possibly be resting comfortably in a make shift treehouse big enough to hold 20 individuals. I'm sure no one would have guessed I was just an American college student who originally came to Spain to be a nanny just a couple months earlier. Wearing an outfit constructed of piecies put together from the joint clothing tent, I'm sure I looked as hippie and foreign as they come.
The treehouse was made of mattresses tied together with ropes and netting which made enormous hammocks from the branches. A ladder up the side of the tree trunk served as steps. It was a magical tree house, filled with free spirits from all around the globe who came to the revolution in Barcelona to live together and make a public display for peace. Resting in the treehouse, it dawned on me what a sight I must have been. It was almost impossible to believe that just 3 short months earlier I had been living in San Francisco renting an apartment. Yet at this time in the tree house I didn't have a cent to my name and that was more than alright by me. This is my true story of the events which led up to living in a tree house in Spain with the Spanish revolution as well as the events which took place following the revolution. It is a story of losing literally all of my belongings and having no money or home for 8 months in 2 countries whose language I did not speak and the incredible lessons I learned in the process about what truly makes a soul feel happy to be alive.
