Ugh, the choir "concert" today was kind of a mess. Met at 10, practiced a little bit but did not warm up of course. Then headed to campus. First we sang West Side Story and the school song in an open area in the middle of Aulario II, which is a giant building of classrooms where students were all passing through, and then in another building, for about 4 people. After that was the "real" concert, singing for some ceremony again. So we waited until noon for it to start, sang Canticorum Jubilo, Veni Creator Spiritus and then the Hallelujah Chorus from this little balcony space behind the room where the ceremony was. Hooked up the laptop to a speaker so we even had MIDI-created organ music. It was not too bad... I think a lot of people had auto-censura-ed themselves right out of coming to the concert. Then we had to wait until the END of the ceremony to sing the school song. The end of the ceremony finally came just before 2. We spent part of the time waiting in the hallway outside, but spent from about 1:15 on waiting crowded together inside this tiny balcony listening to this boring boring man ramble on and on. There was much talk of throwing our shoes at him to shut him up so we could sing and leave, but unfortunately this never came to pass. Finally we got it over with and then got some free ritzy tapas over in Club Social 1, one of the cafeterias on campus. Silvia and I hung around and were flirted with by some really obnoxious guys who couldn´t take a hint. Stopped on our way back to the library to listen to this band that was playing outside-- everybody sitting in the grass in the sun listening. They were good, and it is a really beautiful day, and I would much rather be hanging out with Silvia and enjoying it than researching for my final papers. However, time is scarce, and the internet is scarcer, so I need to find and print stuff that I can read this weekend. Yesterday had some interesting points-- bought bus tickets to Barcelona. Was in a really good mood and had opened the curtains and windows and put on music when Paz came home, who ruined my good mood by insisting that there was too much current and that I had to close some windows. Then she closed the persianas and curtains, like always. I was in my room with the window open, trying to enjoy my little bit of sun and breeze, and she came in and said, "lindsay, i´m sorry, but i am going to cook and so I have to open the window in teh kitchen. And if that window is open and so is the one in your room, there will be too much air moving and the gas will explode." She frustratedly re-explained herself in response to my puzzled face, but said the same thing. I closed my window, thinking it was some spanish custom or something with the gas that I just didn´t understand. But I asked Velia about it later and she was also puzzled and thought it was crazy as well. Por fin, we had to turn off the music to turn on the TV while we ate. I don´t know what has been going on lately, but everybody´s host moms seem to be frustrated and moody and acting really bizarre as of late. Couldn´t go to the colegio yesterday because Maria couldn´t give me a ride-- the gods have not been in favor of me going there lately, Maria getting sick and having migranes and not being able to pick me up. Monday, I´m hoping. Ended up going out for dinner with Velia at a Kebap place that was really fun and tasty. Velia is great. Really thoughtful and genuine and smart. She knew I had bought tix to Barcelona that day and so she brought me this brochure from some hotel she recommended and a map of Barcelona with her favorite things circled and noted. She told me about this anti-war demonstration she and her friend went to last weekend, and our eating in a Turkish restaurant lead to a converstation about frustrations with some of the closed minded, prejudiced people in Spain, which she initiated. It´s so cool that we are intercambios-- I picked her name because a girl in the office knew her from class and said, "She´s really nice, and she´s always happy all the time....." Not a lot to base a choice on, and not enough to hint that we would have so much in common. We´re going to see an Italian movie tonight called Stromboli. Looking forward to it.

I am listening to a CD called "Ella Baila Sola" (she dances alone) that is one of several that Silvia leant to me last night at choir. I had let her borrow Joni Mitchell and the Roches and we are keeping the music trafficking alive. So far this CD is good... It´s two chicas who sing together under the name of "Marta and Marilia." Silvia is so great... Seeing her was definately the highlight of choir last night. I headed home from choir, as always, unbelievably frustrated. The director drives me crazy. His attitude just makes me so angry... he is so presumtuous and acts like he is some kind of fabulous classical musician and wants us to sing Handel and all this music that is way out of the range for a choir whose basses sing the soprano line and which includes a huge number of fairly tone-deaf people who joined the choir because of the flyers that advertised, "it doesn´t matter if you can´t read music, if you have no training, you just have to enjoy singing!" Then he gets pissed off before the concerts (we are singing for some other ceremony on Friday) and yells for everyone to apply the method of "auto-censura" which means "if you can´t sing well, don´t sing." Doesn´t want to injure his fake prestige. He doesn´t work well with the choir-- for example, working on the Hallelujah Chorus. When the sopranos have to hit that A, he stopped the choir, because it sounded horrible and they were sharp and flat and all over the place. Instead of working with them and getting them to be ABLE to sing it, i.e. having them stand up or at least suggesting they sit up straight from their slouched, crossed legs positions, he yelled at them for not singing it correctly, drilled it over and over unsuccessfully, thereby injuring several voices, and asked for auto-censura. During the break Amy asked him if the sopranos could stand up to sing that part, and his response was that he knew that would help, which is why he is having them sing it sitting in rehearsal so that for the performance when they stand it will suddenly be easier. I´m sorry, that is wrong. Everyone´s going to be sharp or they will not even try because they think they can´t do it... practice is not practice if you will be doing something totally different for the performance. We´ll be standing, in a different order, in a different space... it just drives me crazy. Especially when he gets mad at them for not being able to do it; of course they can´t, none of them have a posture that would allow them to sing a high A! The other thing that made me embarrassed and uncomfortable at choir last night was that our copy of the Hallelujah Chorus has an error in it. Towards teh end, when the basses and altos sing through the whole line together of "King of kings, forever and ever, and Lord of Lords, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, " it says "king of kings, forever and ever, and he shall reign, hallelujah" which would not really matter except that the tenor line has the correct words so we don´t match. I raised my hand and told him there was an error, and he quickly said to make sure everyone knew about it and to change the words. But nobody does, except for a few altos, and I felt really embarrased because I didn´t mean to be precocious or anything, I just want everyone to sing the same thing. There is one very loud alto who is kind of the director´s pet, who is very stubborn and bitchy and who knows music and how it should be, and she belts out "and he shall reign" as loud as she can to prove that I am wrong. So now I don´t know what to do. I guess I´ll auto-censure myself, since I´m not sure how to sing correctly. Other things: He has us singing "Ha-" (breath) "-le lu jah." There is no such thing as dynamics-- in West Side Story the "ohs" always cover up the melody. We never went over any pronunciation of any of the English words, so for most of "America" everyone just sings la la la, and many people feel like they are behind or lost or inadequate. It´s just little things that he does and does not do. I really don´t want to be a snob, I keep reminding myself that I´m singing in choir just because I want to keep my voice in shape. But I also don´t want people to be hurting their voices and feeling bad and thinking they can´t sing or shouldn´t try. Everyone is frustrated after choir. Our English friend said it last night: It´s just not fun anymore.

I am listening to a CD called "Ella Baila Sola" (she dances alone) that is one of several that Silvia leant to me last night at choir. I had let her borrow Joni Mitchell and the Roches and we are keeping the music trafficking alive. So far this CD is good... It´s two chicas who sing together under the name of "Marta and Marilia." Silvia is so great... Seeing her was definately the highlight of choir last night. I headed home from choir, as always, unbelievably frustrated. The director drives me crazy. His attitude just makes me so angry... he is so presumtuous and acts like he is some kind of fabulous classical musician and wants us to sing Handel and all this music that is way out of the range for a choir whose basses sing the soprano line and which includes a huge number of fairly tone-deaf people who joined the choir because of the flyers that advertised, "it doesn´t matter if you can´t read music, if you have no training, you just have to enjoy singing!" Then he gets pissed off before the concerts (we are singing for some other ceremony on Friday) and yells for everyone to apply the method of "auto-censura" which means "if you can´t sing well, don´t sing." Doesn´t want to injure his fake prestige. He doesn´t work well with the choir-- for example, working on the Hallelujah Chorus. When the sopranos have to hit that A, he stopped the choir, because it sounded horrible and they were sharp and flat and all over the place. Instead of working with them and getting them to be ABLE to sing it, i.e. having them stand up or at least suggesting they sit up straight from their slouched, crossed legs positions, he yelled at them for not singing it correctly, drilled it over and over unsuccessfully, thereby injuring several voices, and asked for auto-censura. During the break Amy asked him if the sopranos could stand up to sing that part, and his response was that he knew that would help, which is why he is having them sing it sitting in rehearsal so that for the performance when they stand it will suddenly be easier. I´m sorry, that is wrong. Everyone´s going to be sharp or they will not even try because they think they can´t do it... practice is not practice if you will be doing something totally different for the performance. We´ll be standing, in a different order, in a different space... it just drives me crazy. Especially when he gets mad at them for not being able to do it; of course they can´t, none of them have a posture that would allow them to sing a high A! The other thing that made me embarrassed and uncomfortable at choir last night was that our copy of the Hallelujah Chorus has an error in it. Towards teh end, when the basses and altos sing through the whole line together of "King of kings, forever and ever, and Lord of Lords, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, " it says "king of kings, forever and ever, and he shall reign, hallelujah" which would not really matter except that the tenor line has the correct words so we don´t match. I raised my hand and told him there was an error, and he quickly said to make sure everyone knew about it and to change the words. But nobody does, except for a few altos, and I felt really embarrased because I didn´t mean to be precocious or anything, I just want everyone to sing the same thing. There is one very loud alto who is kind of the director´s pet, who is very stubborn and bitchy and who knows music and how it should be, and she belts out "and he shall reign" as loud as she can to prove that I am wrong. So now I don´t know what to do. I guess I´ll auto-censure myself, since I´m not sure how to sing correctly. Other things: He has us singing "Ha-" (breath) "-le lu jah." There is no such thing as dynamics-- in West Side Story the "ohs" always cover up the melody. We never went over any pronunciation of any of the English words, so for most of "America" everyone just sings la la la, and many people feel like they are behind or lost or inadequate. It´s just little things that he does and does not do. I really don´t want to be a snob, I keep reminding myself that I´m singing in choir just because I want to keep my voice in shape. But I also don´t want people to be hurting their voices and feeling bad and thinking they can´t sing or shouldn´t try. Everyone is frustrated after choir. Our English friend said it last night: It´s just not fun anymore.

One more note about the weather. Today Ana Planet, my Dos Democrácias professor, told us that the weather today was unusually cold, and that this is generally the type of weather they have in January. Temperature at 18:00: 61º F, low tonight of 52º that feels like 48º. Also, in case you haven´t heard, one of the greatest natural disasters ever has happened off the coast of Galicia, which is the northwest corner of Spain. A huge huge huge ship that was illegally transporting oil broke in half in a storm and has leaked tons and tons of oil all over the Atlantic ocean and the coast of Galicia. The big problem is that it is a Greek ship with a Latvian captain that passed through French waters but broke in Spanish / Portuguese waters towards its ultimate destination of British-owned Gibraltar, and nobody wants to be responsible, and nobody is sure who is. So time is a-wasting and the oil is spreading and Galician sea towns are suffering. It´s a huge mess.

Oh man, total excitement on Un Paso Adelante. Ingrid quit school and is moving to Caracas with Rafael Amargo, and Juan wanted to come with her but she wouldn´t let him. The poor guy. The goodbye scene between Ingrid and Lola was literally tear jearking. Another great scene was when Silvia, Pedro and Rober were sneaking out of Carmen´s office in their underwear after stealing the big exam (which turned out to be not a real exam at all, but a staged act put on by Cristobal and Carmen for acting class) and getting locked in, therefore having to climb out of a window down a rope made out of their clothes. (Yes, I know that the show is endorsed by the underwear company and that is the reason this occurred.) The group is getting the CD published, but Jero was left out of the cover foto even after he did all the work to put the CD together. Adela told Cristobal she loved him, but he didn´t say anything. Diana was a bitch as usual. Jero blew Lola off for their date, Lola blew Pedro off because she doesn´t realize that he likes her, although apparently in the previews for next week Rober walks in on Pedro and Silvia laughing together.... in bed. ¡Qué fuerte! What else happened yesterday... Amy and I got some coffee and ran some errands at Gran Via last night... Seriously folks, Un Paso Adelante was definately the most exciting part of my day. I think that when I go home, I am going to have to call Paloma and Paz every week to find out what happened. I´m hooked. It´s so great.

Two hours later, the temperature is 64 degrees, in the sun it is really warm. Seriously, the whirlwind of hot and cold throws me off every day. So now, because I am anal about keeping a journal, I am going to retype what I did this weekend. Friday I didn´t end up going to the feminist thing because I had gotten SOAKED in the rain and it took forever to get home from school because people in Spain don´t know how to drive in the rain and there were accidents and nervous people everywhere. It was cold too, and then I got home and ate too fast and was feeling sick. Talked on the phone and rested and then went to buy a new bus pass before the weekend. I found a little shop that sells teas and they had ecchinacea! Hooray! My teabags I brought from home had gotten moldy in their plastic bag. So I got some loose ecchinacea tea and a little infuser. Met Amy and Brandon for dinner at an Indian restaurant, ate till we were stuffed. Walked with them all the way to Panoramis to meet Velia and her friend for a movie, but after all the food and the wine I was so tired and feeling kind of sick still, and so when I got there I told Velia that I had to go home to go to bed. It sucked because I really wanted to see the movie, a spanish movie called Los Lunes al Sol that is winning all kinds of awards... So I left, still missed the last bus and had to walk the long walk home. Got home, ended up talking to Paz until 1 AM. So I didn´t end up doing any of the things I had originally planned on Friday but I enjoyed myself the whole night. Saturday: Went to Dénia on the trainette with Amy and Ellie. The trainette is great, it goes along the coast and you get to see the sea and the mountains and little pueblos... really beautiful. It´s a two hour ride to Dénia. As we probably should have expected, they had decided to change the train schedule so our plans were all messed up and we had missed the train to Dénia that we wanted. We went to Altea for awhile, which is on the way, and spent some time there and then caught the train from there to Dénia later. Dénia is great. It is well known for its seafood, which I sampled at dinner, and is a nice cute little town that is probably too touristy in summer but right now was a great place to hang out. We went to the castle there-- very different from Alicante´s, lots of grass and vegetation. Did some shopping, ate at this great little hole in the wall place. Because we had to catch the bus back, we had to eat very early (6:45) and none of the restaurants were open yet, except this one we found. It was owned by these two guys, the cook and the waiter. The waiter was a real character, very talkative, kept coming over to explain to us that he had painted all of the paintings on the wall, and the decorations on the tables, and that he had invented this little cover for this plate, and this is a one of a kind place. He was tired because they had had a surprisingly busy day and our food choices were limited. These two things combined with Ellie´s bad spanish and low tolerence for difficulty in dealing with people made ordering our food a huge process. We just could not get Ellie and this guy to understand each other. Eventually the cook came out, grabbed the notepad from the waiter, and set everything straight. Still, throughout our meal, the guy kept checking on things-- "Only one more soup, right? And you had the fish. That is coming soon." "We don´t have agua con gas, I´m sorry, we are out, we were so busy today, what do you want instead?" and other such things. I think he just liked to talk to people.and we were the only people in his restaurant. I thought he was great. He drove Ellie crazy. The food was good and we had a good time. Realized that, when given the option, I think I would always choose not to be with Ellie over being with her. We just don´t click. And that´s okay. Got home, had some tea, watched some Arnold Schwarzenager Christmas kids´ movie on TV (the next day they showed Home Alone-- can´t hold back that holiday excitement), went to bed. Sunday: woke up, showered, dressed up, went to church. Got lost on the way, got there at 12:20 for the 12 o´clock service, but when I arrived i found out the service actually had started at 11, not 12, so I missed the whole thing anyway. Went out for coffee with Amy. Lots of people came over to our house over the course of the day. At the peak of the party, Paz, Paloma, Gema, Sophia, Gema´s mom, Paz´s friend from France, Amalia, Julie (the American student who stays with Amalia) and I were all squeezed into our little apartment. Julie came to church with Lauren and I at the 7 pm service. It was nice, although I had a huge coughing fit in the middle of one of the hymns and was red with embarrassment and exhertion.

I don´t understand how it can be so warm and so cold at the same time. Weather.com says it is 53 degrees. In the sunshine, it is very warm and comfortable. But in other places, like the shade, or the night, or my bedroom for example, it is beyond freezing. It is absolutely more cold inside than outside, because of the materials that the houses are made out of. They retain the cold. I came home last night at 12 after the Magnificat rehearsal and my bedroom door was closed. It was closed because Paz and Paloma closed it to keep the cold out of the living room. When I opened the door I felt like Scrooge in the movie, when he opens the door to his room in the inferno of Hell and it is totally iced over, the coldest place imaginable. My bedroom has these two doors that go out to our little apartment balcony. They are windows on the top half. They are made of wood that is about 3/4" thick or less. We don´t have shades in Alicante, but instead these garage-door type plastic woven door things behind the windows, or the doors in the case of my room, that you pull a cloth strip along the wall to raise and lower. The plastic strips are about two inches wide and then the light can come in a tiny tiny bit through the little holes in between the weaving. They are called persianas. This is the only type of insulation that exists in our house, or in all of Spain for that matter. When I have to get out of my body-heated bed in the morning, it takes at least 15 minutes to get up the courage. Immediately slide my stockinged feet into my slippers, which are a necessity with the all tile floors in Spain. Grab my bathrobe, stumble through the dark house to the bathroom and hope it is a no-shower day. Every other day is shower day. This morning for example was shower day, which meant that I had to go through the horrible torture of getting myself all wet with water that can not make up its mind about whether it is going to be hot or freezing cold, turn off the water and set down the hand-held shower head, suds up and scrub as I freeeeze in the cold air, rinse shampoo, repeat process with soap, conditioner, and face wash. I once loved showers. Now they make me want to cry. Really, really, really cold in our house. Scarves help. So does the round Spanish space heater that is designed to go under the table. You pull the tablecloth, which is thick and goes to the floor, over your legs and enjoy a bit of toastiness. But you invariably have to leave the table at some point. Oh the adventures of life without central heating. This morning also sucked because after my cold cold shower and attempts to prolong my coffee drinking so that I could keep holding onto the warm mug, we got out the door late. As usual, Paz and Paloma don´t tell me when they are ready to go, so I was in my room getting my stuff together while Paloma was waiting downstairs at the door of the building and Paz was waiting in the doorway of the apartment. So I suddenly realize it is quiet and finish getting my stuff together and fly out the door... I wish they would tell me when they are ready to go. Other days I am ready before both of them. Anyway, we left at 8:30. If we leave at 8:25, we get to Paloma´s school before 8:45. If we leave at 8:30 we get there at 8:55. Plus, they are doing construction on one intersection that we usually pass to get to the place we park, and because of all the one way streets, there is literally no other way to get over there easily and so it takes a long time to find a place to park and then to walk to the school/bus stop. Everyone was pissed off this morning.

damn, damn, damn. i just wrote a huge long entry about the weekend. tried to post it, but it was eaten by the internet. Weekend was fine.