You´ve got to be kidding me. This made it to the States?

I am never going to eat again. Thanksgiving was AWESOME. After class yesterday I hurried to the outdoor market to buy the six biggest potatoes I have ever seen in my life and a head of garlic for 1.50. Bussed home and successfully cooked some delicious garlicky fluffy white spuds. My fingers still smell like garlic today! Covered the bowl in aluminum and got on the bus to meet the other 70 some people who were at Armando and Cindie´s apartment for the meal. It was craziness! I had thought that we would be scrambling for food, but there was plenty for everybody. Turkeys and potatoes and green beans and corn and bread and wine and tortilla and salads and stuffing and gravy and canned cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie and apple cobbler and oranges and brownies and turron and chocolates and ice cream and jello salad and everything delicious! Some professors and family members of the students were there also. I can´t believe how much work Cindie did, or that she does this every year-- she cooked all the turkeys adn stuffing and pies and a fair amount of vegetables. And she had this crazy thing at her apartment, rented tables and chairs and got plates and silverware and glasses. Unbelievable. After we ate some of us went outside the back of the building by the water (Mediterranean Sea) and some people played guitars and we hung around as the sun set-- after it set I had to put my sweater back on over my tank top. It was way too warm, much too warm to be that full of food. But the experience was great. It didn´t compare to Thanksgiving at home with the family, but I was thankful to celebrate a Thanksgiving and to have so much fun with everybody. People were laughing at me because I was so excited. I really do love Thanksgiving, it is definately my favorite holiday. My classes were cancelled today because almost everybody in the group went to Mallorca this weekend. One other girl in my class and I met our professor Teresa for coffee this morning, and now I´m at the Uni trying to get some work done. Going to meet Velia to see a movie at 6 and tonight I´m going to a party at Amalia´s restaurant with Paz. Tomorrow Silvia and Leti and some other choir people are having a party, and that is the only other thing on my schedule. I´m going to try to get to the travel agent to see if I can rearrange my flight home-- Looked at the tickets and realized that when STA Travel decided to create a new "group flight" for me that was different than the one I ordered, they included a fifteen hour layover in Zurich. I hadn´t noticed until now because I get in at 7 and leave at 10... didn´t realize that there was a change from PM to AM in between. So I´ll either be getting in earlier or having a one night adventure in Zurich... we´ll see, hey?

In the words of Bing, "I´ve got plenty to be thankful for..." Such as: I am thankful that Paz walked away from the car accident last night without a bruise on her body. I am thankful that the kid driving the moto who ran into her car only hurt his leg, especially when his helmet had been doing its job of protecting his handlebars instead of his head, and he was driving crazy moto-style [read: ignoring laws, lanes, limits] with his lights off at night. I am thankful for the bus, now that we are "sin coche." I am thankful for the internet. I am thankful that I´m going to get some turkey today in a crowded home full of american students. I am thankful for being missed. I am thankful for being warm enough and healthy and well fed. I am thankful for my mind and the opportunity to explore and learn. I am thankful for having wonderful friends and the ability to make new ones. I am thankful for having the best family I could imagine. I am thankful for beauty. I am thankful for music. I am thankful for laughter. I am thankful for shared love with Ben Chandler. (He´s the one on the right.) I am thankful for the telephone. I am thankful for language. I am thankful for surpises. I am thankful for consistency. I am thankful for the cat who came up to me yesterday when I was sitting in the grass, much too frustrated and overwhelmed, just to snuggle and make me feel better. I am thankful for hope and the openness of the future. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Poor Paloma. She´s got a lot of heavy stuff on her mind. The mother of one of the boys in her class just died of stomach cancer, only 25 days after they found out she had it. And this morning she found out that the Reyes Magos (In Spain the three kings bring presents instead of Santa Claus) do not actually exist. It has been a day of disappointments for me so far as well, because class was so horrible that I am skipping my third one now. Checked the mail-- I had an envelope with my name and address typed on a stuck-on label. Inside was a postcard with a picture of Macalester on it. In the corner it says "sponsored by the macalester college alumni association." The only words on the postcard are: "Hey! Hope you´re having a blast. We miss you. Tell us about it when you get back! Good luck" I suppose I appreciate the gesture but I think it is one of the most impersonal things I have ever recieved. Maybe if it said my name, or the name of the person who wrote it, or any kind of acknowledgement that it was a greeting from one person to another, it would have been a little more successful. Have to do too much work before my next class. Have to decide if I want to miss the secondpart of that class to put up with the frustration of another choir "concert" where we will be singing three Christmas songs, including White Christmas, which might hit too close to home today as it is unseasonably warm and sunny and I heard that Milwaukee got its first big fat snowflakes last night. I slept better, and was warmer last night, but I think I dreamt about too many people that I miss too much. I think it was brought on by something I ate. Feeling crappy. In happier news, my aunt and uncle Deboe and Ronkol made the state of WisCAHNsin famous on the David Letterman show last night. Or so I´ve been told.

Such a cooollldd morning... I hate getting out of bed. And today wasn´t even a shower day. Paz said that if I want a hot water bottle for my bed tomorrow night to ask her. "I´ve got the ´ot wat´er bot´les, Mr. Toop!" Had fun at choir last night, even though singing White Christmas again made me sad. Laughed a lot with Silvia. Keeping the music exchange going-- loaned her more Joni Mitchell and the Tracy Chapman album she doesn´t have (¡que guay! = cool!!) in exchange for another Ella Baila Sola album. They are awesome. Silvia has good taste. We´re going to have a party on Saturday. Magnificat rehearsal was much better too... It was a good night. Just reserved the hostel in Barcelona for the 6th-- yippeee!! Also have to remember to reserve my spot for Thanksgiving at Armando´s house. I think I´m bringing mashed potatoes.

I´m sleepy. The weekend was good but it tired me out! Friday night went to see Stromboli with Velia, Amy and Ellie. It was an old Italian Ingrid Bergman movie... kind of weird. Met up with a bunch of Velia´s friends afterwards and went to Rio de Viego for some wine and good times. Ellie called her friend and had her come and meet us-- I don´t think Ellie spoke any Spanish the whole evening. She is in a lower language level than Amy and I but she still knows a lot of Spanish after living here so long-- she just doesn´t try. I think she only met with her intercambio one or two times... doesn´t spend a lot of time with Spaniards. It´s too bad. I feel really proud of myself when I know that I hung out with all spanish people and was able to listen and follow along and speak a little bit and have a good time. It´s really fun. Saturday I had a rehearsal for the Bach Magnificat-- turned out that the rehearsal was and the concert will be near Dénia, which is more than an hour´s drive away. Which explains why we met at 8:30 for a 10 am rehearsal. I could not wake up that morning and definately did not speak much spanish from the backseat while Lupe and the guy driving chatted away. Lupe is a really cool person. She lived in Ireland for 6 months or something and is reall nice to me because she understands what it is like to be in my position. She is really energetic and funny, kind of reminds me of Emily Scholtka and especially the impression I got after I first met her in 6th grade. We rehearsed with a full live orchestra, a lot of young people, really talented. I wish the choir had been better than we were... It was really embarrassing. Really embarrassing. Our director really doens´t know what he is doing and therefore the choir doesn´t know how to be professional. We also are all at different stages of learning this music and we just don´t have it down yet. I felt bad for the director of the orchestra, who lead the rehearsal. Our director sang with us and DROVE ME CRAZY. Yelling at us for missing entrances and not being able to do certain parts, interrupting the director to say inane things to the choir to try and be pretentious, talking while the orchestra was playing before and after the choir sang, whistling the flute part of the duet of the player who wasn´t there that day. And when we were taking a break outside and everyone was smoking, and he unintentionally blew his smoke in Lupe´s face adn she (a non-smoker and serious singer) tried to dodge it, he made fun of her and said, "Oh no, tobacco!" and then pushed his smoke in her direction on purpose. I was really glad that she stood up for herself-- somebody said, "yeah, we probably shouldn´t, but tobacco isn´t really that bad, " and she said, "I´m sorry, but I don´t agree." Way to go, you tell Luis the way it is. Luckily the second half of the rehearsal was much better and we had learned things better after just the morning´s rehearsal. I think that the concert is going to be really good in the end. Too bad it is in Dénia and nobody will be able to come see it. I´m getting more excited about singing it though. It´s hard! Came home, ate, napped, studied a lot and then went out on the town with Amy. She had never really been out late doing the Barrio thing so we decided to go and have a Saturday night Spanish style! It rained off and on all night, unfortunately, but we had a great time. Danced a lot, mixed it up with crazy places dancing and chill places talking, spent some time with Khloe and Katie and Sergio and some time just by ourselves, went to the port after the barrio lost some of its charm, talked to nice guys and successfully avoided the creepy guys, had a great time. I had planned to sleep over at her house so I didn´t have to take a taxi home-- we came in at the average hour of 5 am. Got a delicious chocolate crepe on teh way home too! Sunday we slept in, I went home, hung out by myself studying, ate a good meal, watched a christmas movie on TV, went to church. There was a little meal after church of pizza and stuff for university students. Not bad. The sermon yesterday was not my favorite adn I think the church is a little more conservative than I would like but I still enjoyed going there. Had some problems with gender issues. The message was that man is bad through and through-- Man was given the choice between being faithful to God or going with woman, the only creature who was like him, and gaining knowledge, and chose the latter. So while humanitarians think they can change the world by pulling the good out of man, the bible says no. Instead man has to look outside of himself to God, because God is all good. The sermon even included diagrams, partially to help the understanding of the not-so-great spanish speakers in the congregation. I would have been okay with it if he had taken it a step further to say that as Christians we can share God´s love with the world and we are not doomed to just being all evil and powerless to change anything. Had the song "I love you with the love of the Lord" in my head... that part of the message seemed to be a glaring omission to me. But I had a nice time. Came home and crashed.