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American abroad tells family why he can't imagine moving back to Texas

Who needs the "turmoil"?

via Jeronimooo0000/TikTok and Flo Dahm/Pexels

Jeronimo Noriega loves Spain.

The rising cost of living in the United States, combined with new technologies that make it easier to work wherever you like, has made it much more attractive for some to live and work in another country. Over 50 countries have made it easier by easing visa restrictions to encourage digital nomads to work within their borders.

Further, many people simply don’t like the rise-and-grind corporate mentality pervasive in the U.S. and prefer places that offer shorter workweeks, more vacation time and robust support systems.

They're tired of the hustle and bustle of the American work culture and are looking for a life that values personal happiness, family and relaxation.

Jeronimo Noriega is an American expat showing zero interest in returning to his hometown of San Antonio, Texas. The 27-year-old student has been living in Oviedo, Asturias, in Northwest Spain for the past 14 months after his family decided to pack up its bags and explore a new lifestyle.

In a viral TikTok video that has been seen over 5.4 million times, Noriega makes the case for why he has no interest in returning to Texas after falling in love with the Spanish way of life and cost of living.

@jeronimoooo0000

Who needs to be rich anyways give me some culture boiii

The first thing that Noriega admits is that salaries are better in Texas. However, everything balances out when you consider the cost of living. He says that people who make around €30,000 ($33,000) a year in Spain are “middle class” and that if you make €90,000 ($98,000) you can live like a king.

“Listen, if you're making 90 grand in the north of Spain, where I live right now, you're going to work in a limo. You're getting drinks at the Tennis Club after work,” Noriega said in the video. He also enjoys having 3-course meals with wine and coffee for “like 20 bucks.” In an interview with Business Insider, he said he routinely eats “delicious” dinner for just $11.

But what he really doesn’t miss about life back in Texas is the rise-and-grind lifestyle.

“What am I supposed to be in Dallas 2 hours a day and the car to get to work it back and never have time to do anything? No way,” he said in the video.” I love the work culture in Spain,” he told Business Insider. “In America, I felt like my only options were to rise and grind and get beat down by the machine, but everything is different here. In Spain, they seem to value their lives over their work — it's not even a work-life balance.”

He also says that in America, there is a deep dread within the culture that he doesn’t feel in Spain. “I love the US, but even the mood is different here,” Noriega admits. “In the US, there's turmoil going on underneath. No thank you.”

So, Noriega has no plans of returning to the U.S. anytime soon.

“Now that I've had a taste of what life is like outside the rat race, I'm not eager to get back on the wheel,” he told Business Insider. “Life is long, and you never know what will happen, but I'm staying here for the foreseeable future. All I have to do is take a walk to the coffee shop, have a delicious dinner for $11, or take a break in the middle of a weekday to remind myself why I'm staying.”


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A teacher is going viral for giving a biology lesson wearing an anatomically correct suit

Being an educator in the American public school system is one of the hardest jobs in our nation. Not only is the work itself challenging, but with constant battles for educational funding and a student body increasingly tethered to their electronic devices, most teachers in America and around the world are navigating uncharted territory when it comes to finding ways to keep their students engaged in their studies.

Verónica Duque doesn't have that problem, at least not now. The 43-year-old said she was looking for creative ways to engage with her students when she came across a form-fitting, anatomical bodysuit while doing some online shopping. She decided it was the perfect visual aid to convey vital information (pun intended) to her students in Spain.

Duque's husband tweeted a collage of images from the classroom lesson, which quickly went viral, with nearly 70,000 likes. Loosely translated, the tweet from her husband Michael reads: "Very proud of this volcano of ideas that I am lucky to have as a wife. Today she explained the human body to her students in a very original way. Great Veronica !!!"


In an interview, Duque explained the thought process that led her to presenting her third-grade-class with a unique approach to learning.

"I was surfing the internet when an ad of an AliExpress swimsuit popped up," she said. "Knowing how hard it is for kids this young to visualize the disposition of internal organs, I thought it was worth giving it a try."


Twitter


Related: ER nurse's donation request goes viral: 'This is the underwear that no woman wants to wear.'

Online retailers like Amazon have a number of similar anatomical bodysuits for sale. While most people apparently purchase them for Halloween costumes or as gag gifts, it's now likely that Duque's viral moment will inspire some other educators around the world to take a similar approach to teaching the body basics to their students.



While some on Twitter were critical of the suit, the vast majority have praised Duque for her innovative approach to teaching. And the anatomical bodysuit is reportedly far from her first creative endeavor in the classroom.

"I decided long ago to use disguises for history lessons," she told Bored Panda. "I'm also using cardboard crowns for my students to learn grammatical categories such as nouns, adjectives, and verbs. Different grammar kingdoms, so to say."

And when it comes to the inevitable, made-up controversy that tends to latch itself onto virtually anyone that goes viral, Duque said she says there's another far more controversial stereotype she hopes her brief moment of fame will help address.

"I'd like society to stop considering teachers to be lazy bureaucratic public servants," she said. "We're certainly not."

Get this teacher a raise!

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16 terrifying pics of Spain's growing desert you should show a climate-change doubter.

If nothing changes, southern Spain will be a desert by 2100.

If you're headed to the beach in southern Spain, this probably isn't what you're envisioning:

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

In July, this duo was spotted sunbathing at the Entrepenas reservoir in Duron, the second largest reservoir in Spain.

And the pics really are worth a thousand words.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

The reservoir has shrunken dramatically as water levels drop.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

The receding water has given way to cracked, arid soil...  

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

...and abandoned relics reflecting a region that once revolved around life on the water.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Like the reservoir itself, tourism, and the local economy that benefits from it, are drying up too.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

So, what the heck is going on at the Entrepenas reservoir? Where has all the water gone?

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

The area's severe drought and dusty countryside are indicative of a larger force shaping landscapes across southern Spain.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Yep, you guessed it: climate change.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

A 2016 study spelled disaster for the lush Mediterranean region due to human activity.

By 2100, southern Spain will have transformed into a desert, researchers have found — unless drastic measures are taken, like, now, to slash carbon emissions to curb the worsening effects of global warming.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

“The effect of the human is to deforest, to replace with agriculture and so on," lead author of the study, Joel Guiot of Aix-Marseille University, told The Guardian last year.

"You change the vegetation cover, the albedo, the humidity in the soil, and you will emphasize the drought when you do that," he continued, noting the Mediterranean is already very susceptible to the consequences of a warming planet. "If you have the [direct] human impact, it will be worse."

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

You don't have to be in southern Spain to see the alarming effects of climate change, of course.

In the U.S., researchers have pointed to similar dismal findings when it comes to global warming's impact on things like domestic tourism, expenses related to natural disasters, and food production.

Scientists, however, have not found a friend in the White House.

Unlike other prominent world leaders, President Trump has publicly rebuked the vast majority of climate scientists who say global warming is real and humans are to blame. He appointed Scott Pruitt — who's argued that the science surrounding climate change is still up for debate — to run the EPA. He's hellbent on resurrecting a dying, dirty coal industry and, in June, announced plans to pull the U.S. out of the world's best hope to collectively confront the woes of global warming: the Paris climate agreement.

Why doesn't Trump care?

Mother Nature certainly doesn't care about our national borders.

Similar consequences seen in southern Spain can also be seen in the U.S. and around the world.

Wildfires scorch the land near Santa Barbara, California, in July 2017. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.

We need to act. Now.

Or else sad-looking beach day photos will become the norm.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

To learn more about climate change and to take action, visit the Sierra Club.

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These streets used to honor a Spanish dictator. Now they'll honor the women he persecuted.

From 1939 to 1975, Spain lived in fear of a dictator named General Francisco Franco.

During his rule, Franco captured and murdered political prisoners, suppressed freedom of religion, forbade languages, and created a network of police to secretly spy on citizens.

On one hand, calling him "The Hitler of Spain" seems like an advantageous simplification. On the other hand, here's a picture of him:

Uncanny! Photo via AFP/Getty Images.

Franco's regime was toppled decades ago, but the memory of him still haunts and angers modern-day Spain.

When a statue of Franco went up outside a Catalan cultural exhibit in Barcelona, it was decapitated, defaced, and completely toppled within days.

The wounds left by Franco are still relatively fresh, so any image or reminder of him is a sensitive matter. "[We] have a dispute anytime anybody says or shows anything to do with Franco," Bru Rovira, a Catalan journalist told The New York Times.

A defaced statue of Franco in Barcelona. Photo by Pau Barrena/AFP/Getty Images.

Unfortunately, a quick walk through Spain's major cities turns up reminders of Franco everywhere.

In Valencia, Barcelona, and more, streets are named after people who served in Franco's regime. General José Millán Astray, attorney Adolfo Muñoz Alonso, and minister José Enrique Varela were all part of Franco's dictatorship. All three have streets named after them to this day.

Fortunately, that will be changing soon, as Spain announced plans to remove every street name attached to the Franco regime.

The measure to erase Franco's regime was first introduced in 2007 but went widely unenforced. Last year, a political swing to the left put the issue back on the agenda.

Photo by David Ramos/Getty Images.

Even better? They're going to rename the streets after influential women.

Women are vastly underrepresented in Spanish street names (except for saints), giving the country a brilliant opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. In February 2017, street names in Spain will start bearing the names of women who were persecuted under Franco's regime,like Soledad Cazorla, the first public prosecutor to specialize in gender violence, as well as several civil rights leaders and activists.

Soledad Cazorla visiting Niger in 2008. Photo via Montserrat Boix/Wikimedia Commons.

Other streets will pay tribute to prominent Spanish artists and innovators — women like novelist Carmen Martín Gaite and Ángela Ruiz Robles who invented the first e-reader in 1949. Many more will bear the names of internationally influential figures like Rosa Parks, Frida Kahlo, and Jane Austen.

This move is a long overdue show of gratitude to women who have helped shape Spanish culture and a perfect way to heal the wounds left by Francisco Franco.

When it comes to street names around the world, women are vastly underrepresented. This will go a long way in closing that gap.

A 2015 study of seven major metropolises found that less than a third of streets were named after women. This might seem like a small problem, but street names are important.

Savile Row in London, Broadway in New York, Grafton Street in Dublin, Bourbon Street in New Orleans — these names are more than just markers on a map. They're cultural epicenters that help define a city's identity. The same goes for streets named after people like Martin Luther King Jr., Jackie Robinson, Peter Jennings, or Warren, Ohio, town hero Dave Grohl. Not having a proportionate amount of streets named after prominent women hardly makes any sense.

Soon, the names of women will play their part in helping to define Spain's identity and values from the street level on up. Other countries around the world should consider following suit.

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