Well 9/11 passed just like any other day. I watched a special on TV in Español last night; I can´t believe that it has been a whole year since I set my dorm room on fire. Dinner last night was fantastic. Fried eggs and some kind of tomato sauce/salsa with green peppers and zucchini, and we ate it with pieces of bread instead of forks and knives. We had wine coolers with dinner and my mom was being silly to try to cheer me up. I was feeling kind of down in the dumps after sitting around all afternoon and I miss being with people I know well. I felt better after dinner and spent most of the evening wrestling and tickling and playing with Paloma. She is only ticklish on her feet, but don´t worry, I managed to translate "This little piggy went to market" into español. Now I´m off with Ellie to go to a travel agent that has student discounts to look into a trip to Italy and France for our week off in October. It´s new for me and I am excited to begin the plans.

The TVs in the lab aren´t working, so no CNN for me. Today feels like any other day, except for President Bush´s warning to stay away from bars and touristy spots where lots of Americans gather because we´ll certainly be blown to bits. Went out for churros and chocolate last night. This is the greatest invention of Spain. Churros = stems of dough that are bent into a little teardrop shape and lightly fried. "Cho-co-lah-tay" is like hot chocolate, except it´s more like a cupful of melted Hershey bar. You have to use a spoon. Dip churro into chocolate and eat. It´s not too sweet, but definately too delicious. My reaction was probably equal to the reactions of my host mom and sister when I gave them some peanut butter to try. I brought a jar because I heard they didn´t have it here. It´s true. They were both pleasantly surprised, of course.

Can´t believe I forgot to say 2 important things. 1) We were in Valencia for the first day of the Tour de Spain, which started in Valencia. The park we ate lunch at was on the street they passed while doing the time trials, so I saw a bunch of awesome biking teams zip by. It was very exciting. Yesterday the actual tour passed through my university, and while I didn´t see the bikers, I knew when they were coming through because suddenly there were 5 helicopters passing overhead. I tried to tell some people about the Best Dam Bike Tour, which was difficult since I didn´t know the spanish words for "tour", "multiple sclerosis", or "my butt is officially sore." 2) The best holy relic we saw when we were in the cathedral. I was walking past the confessionals, all of which were empty. But then I saw one open one up ahead with the light on inside. As I walked past, I was lucky enough to see the beautiful scene of an old priest sitting patiently inside, ready to assure forgiveness to all, illuminated by a little overhead light, picking his nose. It is strange that tomorrow is "once de septiembre" again. It is more strange that I am not in the states. It´s still present in peoples´ consciousnesses here though; for the past week they have had a segment on the news that is kind of a memorial and a historical review. It´s hard to understand in Spanish though and i keep trying to hear the actual voices of the Americans speaking underneath the Spanish that they play over their voices. I have had 2 strangers at bus stops start talking to me about it, asking if I was from New York and how I felt about everything. Hopefully, tomorrow we will be able to locate a TV in English that we can watch for a little while, CNN or something, because I don´t like feeling so disconnected. I don´t think of myself as a patriotic person but I guess this is one instance where I want to feel like I am part of the American People (slight joke that Ben will understand) and be able to share in the rememberance. I hope nothing else bad happens... I don´t think it will. I hope that Bush and Saddam don´t blow up the world. I wish I could understand the news better. General sentiment here is anti-Bush, but not pro-Saddam, just fed up with the same American ugliness that I don´t like either. On a lighter note, yesterday I met with these girls who I am supposed to be in an "intercambio" with, kind of like exchange. They are Spanish and learning English, and I am the opposite, so we hang out and help each other. I thought they were going to be university students but they are 30. I might see if I can switch. They were nice though. I also bought some shoes. When we were in Valencia, there was this big wedding and all these people were gathered around a plaza that we were walking towards, and suddenly there were these rapid loud exploding sounds and our whole group of 75 froze in terror and some people screamed because we thought it was a maniac or a terrorist or something; I was ready to run until I noticed that no one in the plaza was running or screaming or scared, and then we found out they were fireworks of some kind. September 11 changed my world.

I survived the weekend with only minimal casualties, namely being sick all day yesterday. Luckily I was able to rest and sleep and I feel better today. On Friday night I went out for a little while with a friend of mine named Samuna. We ended up at this outdoor fiesta thing-- we had been following the music and when we got there we realized it was for teenyboppers, it was all kids who knew the motions to the songs, and their parents and grandparents in the back or around the sides. We danced and had fun and learned some of the dances. Kind of like the Macarena. There was this baby there who would not take her eyes off me, she kept walking away from her mom towards me... it was cute but kind of embarrassing. A lot of babies and little kids stare at me. One little boy the other day was walking behind me and he exclaimed, "Look at the blonde!" or something like that, and his dad shushed him.... I think I probably stand out the most when I´m walking with Samuna, because she was born in Liberia and is black black and I am so white. Quite a pair. After a night of not great and not enough sleep (and here begins the not feeling so well), I woke up early to go to Valencia. Valencia is gorgeous. Much less busy than Alicante and much more romantic. We toured a cathedral and I saw, believe it or not, the Holy Grail that Jesus Christ himself drank out of at the last supper. They had some other gory things like crucifixes and famous paintings and the arm of a saint who died in the 15th century or something, but since he was a saint, his arm is still in good shape with actual flesh on the bones. Hey, that´s all the convincing I need. We also went to a huge mercado = market with all this fresh food. Fruits and vegetables and nuts and bread, stand after stand after stand, and giant meat counters with big hunks of meat and chickens hanging everywhere, and then the back part was where the fish were. Women hacking the heads off these squirming fish, eels for sale that were still moving around, calamari with the suction cups and everything. Everything as fresh as can be!! That place was a museum of smells. We went to the store of some famous porcelin factory, and to a little cafe and heladoria = ice cream shop where we could try horchata, which is a typical drink of spain. This cafe supposedly made it the best. It is made out of this little root called chufa, and it is the texture of rice milk but sweet... very different. I liked it. We ate lunch in a big nice park where the sound of the doves cooing was always present, and afterwards went to some art museums. The guy in charge of my program is named Armando, and he is awesome. He looks kind of like the 1955 version of Doc Brown from Back to the Future, only with a heavy Spanish accent and a little bit less dramatic. He is a wealth of knowledge... it´s great to go on these excurciones with with because he can tell you intersting things like why a painting is funny or what king ordered this to be built and who conquered what when... It´s teh perfect job for him because he really likes to get to know people and talk with people but he also knows a lot and wants to share it and learn more. I guess he was originally studying to be a priest, but now he seems pretty cynical of some aspects of Catholicism. However he is good-natured and funny, and he just questions things but leaves it up to you to decide how you feel about them. On the way home we drove by the masterpiece that Santiago Calatrava is currently working on, next to another museum that he designed in the past.... It is so similar to the Milwaukee Art Museum, I was kind of freaked out, and I felt like they stole our building but of course it is the other way around. I don´t think this one moves though. And it´s not on the water. Ha. But the white beams and shapes were very similar. It took 2 and a half hours to get home and by the end of the ride I was feeling pretty ill. Headache, chill, stomachache. Made it home at 10:30, and nobody was there! :( So I made myself some tea and put myself to bed, which took about an hour and a half to get up the effort to do. Slept most of the day yesterday and took it easy and now I am feeling much better. Finished my book too, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues by Tom Robbins, esta muy bueno. I don´t know what it was, just the general changes in food and schedule and everything or what.... We only drink bottled water at my house so it wasn´t that, unless I just got some residue from washing the dishes and brushing my teeth and whatnot. It varies from house to house, some people drink the water, others don´t. I think it is just a matter of preference, but I want to be careful. I´m glad to hear that things have been going well on the home front, from a new puppy at the Simons´ to a new poopie at the Kelnhofers´, everything seems pretty good. I miss home here and it´s hard when I want to share a story about my family or the way things are at home but I just don´t have the language yet. I suppose it will come with time.