Go Big or Go Home-speech

Hello tender friends!

This is a speech I gave last week at my public speaking group. It covers the same time period as a speech I shared before- when I studied abroad in 2007 in Valencia, Spain my junior year of college. Here goes:

 If you’ve ever lived abroad, you know that everything has the potential to be an adventure. Even going to the grocery store! Bridget, Kathy, Justine and I became extremely fast friends during our study abroad program. One of our favorite cultural activities was going to the food store just a few blocks down the street from our dorm- Mercadona.

We were tickled, just tickled, on our first visit when we discovered they had small carts that rested on the ground for you to place your groceries in. At this time, we were seeing famous architecture every day, both inside and outside of Spain. Famous architecture is great and all, but I actually remember the delight of these foreign grocery carts even more fondly.

The girls and I made excuses to go to Mercadona almost every day- for bottled water, a bag of oranges (we weren’t allowed to pick oranges off the trees even though we were living in Valencia, and that irony has always stuck with me), wine, or baked goods.

Our carts were full, but the double chocolate muffins called my name as I passed the bakery that day. “Maybe I’ll just bring these back to the dorm in case we need a snack with our wine before we go out dancing,” I said to Justine. She nodded while distractedly reading the label of a box of granola bars.

But I continued talking, as if I needed to justify my purchase: “We’re in Spain. I never see double chocolate muffins like these in the U.S. Plus European food laws are stricter, so these probably are way healthier than they would be in the U.S. We’ll need energy for our dancing, and we’re just going to dance it off…”

“Stace!” Justine exclaimed. 

“What?” I looked at her and she smiled, no longer distracted by her granola bars.

“Go big or go home. Just buy the muffins.” 

And the next group catchphrase was born: Go big or go home.

Bridget, Justine, Kathy and I also walked to our classes together. “Let’s take a different street today,” Kathy suggested one day. So we turned off Avenida Blasco Ibanez and onto a street that ran parallel to it two blocks over. We planned to turn back the two blocks the other way when we approached the university.

Then something magical happened. 4-21 year old girls came upon a park with enormous metal flowers and bugs. The name of the park was Parque Gulliver’s Travels, after Jonathan Swift’s famous novel with tiny Lilliputians. But now, 4-21 year old American girls were the possible Lilliputians. 

My inner 4-year old stood there with a pounding heart. I felt like I was in Disney World. We all stopped and gazed. 

As my eyes rested on a flower twice my body height, Bridget said, ” Class starts in 10 minutes. 

“But when are we ever going to see something like this again? I asked.

“The course syllabus said we could miss up to two classes without it affecting our grade,” Kathy pointed out. 

“The professor was late a few weeks ago because he was finishing his ice cream outside the classroom, so it’s not like everything is so strict here anyway,” Bridget added.

 We knew we were in agreement.

Then came the words we were all waiting for. Justine said, “Go big or go home.”

We started climbing the bugs and flowers like a bunch of 4-year-olds.

A month after we explored Gulliver’s Travels Park I noticed a guy in the computer lab with a surfboard. He had smoldering dark eyes, laid-back surfer vibes, and a Jeep. He also dripped testosterone. I knew I wanted to get to know him, but I was too shy to strike up a conversation. (More power to you if you’re the kind of woman who could initiate a conversation with a guy, but that was just never my style.)

He turned out to be the roommate of one of my American friends in the program. When I visited my American friend in his room, I met him and learned his name: Antoni, the Catalan version of Antonio, but he went by Toni. 

Toni had pet turtles, and I pretended to be enthralled by them. “Do you want to see them today?” he asked whenever we crossed paths after our initial meeting.

“Si,” I squeaked out each time, then willed my limbs to work as I followed him to his dorm. I twirled my necklace in my hands to calm my nerves and tried not to stare at him. I pretended to be interested in the turtles and didn’t say much because I was afraid of saying something stupid. Every time our eyes met, I wondered if an otherwise healthy 21-year old girl could die of a lust-induced stroke.

A few weeks later, a campus-wide outing to a discoteca was planned. My friends and I bought new dresses and tickets to the event. I wore heels, one of the three times total that I wore heels throughout all of college. I wore the same necklace that I wore everywhere because it matched my dress.

Toni and I caught each other’s eye a few times at the pre party (in Spanish, called a botellon) outside the dorm before heading to the discoteca. I couldn’t bear my own shyness and kept looking away even though I was dying to talk to him.

Then, at the discoteca, I felt someone grabbed my hand. Startled, I looked up into Toni’s eyes as the multicolored disco lights lit up his face. “Do you want to dance?” he asked, but he said it so quickly that I was afraid I misunderstood and didn’t answer right away. To my right, I sensed that Justine, Bridget, and Kathy were talking about what was happening.

I just stared dumbstruck, until I realized- this was the now or never moment- and I had to say something.

“Si,” I miraculously managed to squeak out. My hand developed an electric charge as Toni walked me to the dance floor. I didn’t know how to play it cool.

Would I stumble in my heels? Did I look good? I wondered.

I willed my heart to stop thudding so wildly, convinced he would notice it and realize that I had no chill. I almost turned back, ready make an excuse that I was tired and was going back to the dorm, because my nerves were unbearable.

But then I looked over my shoulder at the girls. And through the smoke and flashing lights, I could see Justine mouthing the magic words of encouragement to me: “Stace! Go big or go home.”

I decided not to go home.

Maybe to be continued…my public speaking group said they’d like to hear what happened after this.

Oh, and here’s a picture of me and my boo boo from this weekend to prove I’m not at AI bot.

Ok, that’s all for today, tender friends! Thank you for stopping by!

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