La Chica Blanca en La Costa Blanca

2002-12-19T05:17:00.000-08:00

The worst part about saying goodbye is the moment before the last moment. When you have said all the things you wanted to say, and you are ready to part, as ready as you can be, and you just stand there and look at each other and don´t know what to do. Then you finally say "hasta luego" and slowly pull away and walk in different directions. On my last day here it is rainy and sad outside.... I am full of saying-goodbye food. Churros and chocolate from this morning at La Madrileña with Amy... oragne juice and tea from Club Social where I said goodbye to both Velia and Silvia. I went out for dinner last night with Velia at a really cool kind of funky place with lots of international selections-- we had sushi and an indonesian salad and a plate of little samosas. Really fun... she decided that I needed to have some classical Spanish music, so she burned a CD last night and we had to meet up again today so I could get it. That was Velia goodbye number 2, goodbye number 3 came when Silvia and I ended up sitting down at the table next to Velia and her friends in Club Social. Velia´s style of goodbye was cheerful, "¡Hasta mañana!" See you tomorrow. Silvia and I on the other hand, drew it out and hugged and cried in the middle of the cafeteria... She gave me a beautiful gift that she made herself. This colorful moon and sun decoration with a saying on the back that she said was her philosophy of living: "Haz de tu vida un sueño y de ese sueño una realidad." Make a dream of your life, and of that dream, a reality. I can´t translate it very well. It´s beautiful. What a hard goodbye... So now everything is done except packing, which I´m going home to do. Paz told me yesterday that if I can´t fit everything into my suitcase she will pay to send a box home, which was really nice and very appreciated. Paz and Paloma are the big goodbyes I have left... Also going to try to go out tonight to see the guys play for the last time and say goodbye to all of the Council kids... LAST TIME writing in the ol´ blog from the computer lab at school.... or from the Costa Blanca, for that matter. See y´all soon.

2002-12-18T07:51:00.000-08:00

4:00 pm Alicante temperature, 18 de diciembre de 2002: 73ºF.

2002-12-18T07:45:00.000-08:00

So. It´s 4:06 pm on Wednesday, which was the point in time that has been my goal. I just had to make it to this point.... and now I am here. Tomorrow I have one little teensy part of an exam, our listening section for my conversation class that will take 20 minutes. I am meeting with Velia tonight (for the LAST TIME) to pick up my draft of my paper that she corrected for me, which I need to tidy up and email in tomorrow. That is the total of work that I have for the semester. It is crazy to realize this, because I have been so totally crazy. But I got through my three exams today, that were not very hard, and that made me feel like I know Spanish pretty darn well... I am definately not fluent but I speak well and can understand pretty much any conversation if the other person is intentional about speaking... I was noticing as I wrote my papers that I am even pretty good at skimming in Spanish and understanding articles without looking up every word, although that is really hard. Speaking of papers, I turned in my trabajo de mierda today POR FIN!!! Here is the story of that paper. I worked on it when I could, after I finished writing my other paper. Had a bunch of books, had a bunch of information saved on a diskette. Was researching and reading when I got a chance but amidst choir concerts and rehearsals and LAST TIMES I didn´t have a good start on it. Sunday night talked about the paper at Ana´s (profesor) house and realized what other research I had to do. I did some more of that, found some more stuff on Monday online, started writing at home before the choir rehearsal, and then my plan was to work on it all day on Tuesday. Finished my research Tuesday morning, Tuesday afternoon went to really get into writing it and then I was going to finish it after the concert last night. Except that when I started writing my diskette messed up and I lost all of my research that I had saved in the file. Which was basically all of it, except for 2 or 3 of the books I have. So I had to re-research everything, and it was horrible, and by the time came to go to the concert I had caught up with my research but had nothing written. I met Silvia and Lorenzo in the bus stop at six and I cried because I was so stressed out about it, and they were really great and made me feel better... Luckily the concert was a good time. Silvia and I split a pack of castañas (chestnuts, roasting on an electric fire) on the route. LAST TIME singing with the choir.... we got to wear fancy teal robes with cummerbunds. Again, it was a combined concert with another choir and an orchestra, and we were packed into this tiny place that was very very very sweaty. We sang selections from Handel´s Messiah, Jesu Joy of Man´s Desiring, a Spanish folk song and Silent Night. We sounded good, they really liked us-- It´s really cool when you finsih singing and are greeted by a shout of "¡BRAVO!" But then I had to say goodbye to everyone and I was sad... Marí Carmen wasn´t there, Leticia wasn´t there... I really liked the people in that choir. I am really going to miss them... the weird part was that lots of people didn´t know that I was leaving, or that I wasn´t going to come back, and it´s weird when you feel like you´re saying goodbye forever and they don´t seem to care. Even people that you don´t know, but you know their face and their personality and suddenly that´s it-- Ah. So, I got home at 10:30, Paz was using the computer, I tried to study some and watched a few minutes of Un Paso Adelante (for the LAST TIME) (Lola and Gero are dating now, and Carmen isn´t going to be in charge of the school anymore, and Pedro finally told Lola that he was in love with her) **Funny story: I accidentally stumbled upon Paloma´s "diary" that is just a book she writes in once every few months, but it opened to a page with my name on it and I read the following entry: A Lindsay le gusta Gero, pero Gero es para Lola y para mí que se busque un chico americano por ejemplo su Novio mira hay viene Adios" Translation: "Lindsay likes Gero, but Gero is for Lola and for me, she should find some American guy, for example, her boyfriend, look here she comes, adios." Cute... (End of funny story, back to simultaneous discription of horrible paper writing experience and explaination of my current crazy state) So Paz didn´t get off the computer until 12:30, which is when I finally got going on writing the damn thing... I had made some coffee that kept me going pretty strong, and the same coffee was keeping me going when I woke up this morning at 7 after going to sleep at 5. Worked on the paper at school in between exams, my conversation teacher Cristina corrected half of it for me... Turned it in only an hour late. It is the worst paper I have ever written in my life, in any language. So yeah, maybe those two hours of sleep, or rather six hours of not-sleep are catching up to me. Now I have to go home and nap and start packing because I´m freaking leaving the day after tomorow. Have to see if I can fit all my stuff in my suitcases or if I´ll have to mail home my summer clothes. Have to decide if I want to go out tonight or tomorrow night, the band is playing for the LAST TIME tomorrow night at Jazz Bar... Meeting Velia for the LAST TIME this evening, getting churros and chocolate for the LAST TIME with Amy tomorrow morning, meeting Silvia for the LAST TIME for coffee tomorrow... Ah mi Silvia, I´m going to miss you so much. Apologies to everyone reading this....... Never thought I´d say it..... I don´t want to go home yet.

2002-12-16T04:04:00.000-08:00

Forgot to write about important thing from Thursday. I went to the elementary school for the LAST TIME... when I arrived Maria was rushing around like a crazy person, almost the same as my perpetual state this week, with this other guy who was showing her how to use a video camera. I got my usual greeting when teh class saw me ("LINDSAY!!!!!!") as well as a Christmas card from one little girl. Suddenly Maria was telling me that I was going to be famous for generations of English classes at her school, and then she told everyone in the class to hurry and get out their interview sheets again, and suddenly I was becoming the subject of the first video Maria ever taped in her life. We repeated our interview from the first day (what´s your name, can you spell that please, where do you live, what´s your address, etc) and then she asked me to explain and sing my song, the song about Joe in the button factory, as if it was the first day I taught it to everyone. So she taped me doing the whole stupid song by myself, pushing buttons and jumping around in front of the class like an idiot, and then the whole class did it and we got them on tape. Then she recorded me talking about Christmas, and how we decorate teh house, and how to make a snowman, in a mixture of english and spanish, and I sang Away in a Manger and class was over. It was embarrassing and I was on the spot, but she said I did a good job... pretty silly. I´m so glad that everyone who ever attends that school will get to see Crazy American Lindsay and her button song. Said goodbye to Maria... i hate goodbyes. I was thinking about all the major goodbyes I have had to say... I hate them always. Friday was a day of movies in class, we watched the end of Barrio for conversation and a really really great movie called La Lengua de Las Mariposas (The Tongue of Butterflies). Homework, errands, at night was the Magnificat concert, which went well, all things considered. I have to gripe about Jose Luis of course... The orchestra played Handel´s Water Music before we sang, so during this, we were basically waiting in the wings, and while the concert was going on, Luis was talking to the choir and making noise that was obviously audible in the audience, in teh church... So of course everyone was talking, and then getting too loud, and then shushing each other... Jose Luis made us shut up in between the different pieces, but as soon as the music started again, we could talk. Totally unprofessional, totally rude... I was so pissed. then during the concert (he sang with us, the other guy directed) he would talk in between pieces when the people clapped, or while the orchestra was playing, and he quietly sang along with the soloists, and he hummed our pitches before we came in without an introduction........ARGHAHEAHGHEAHAHHGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!! But other than that the concert was fun and went well. The orchestra was great, the people really liked us. Afterwards we all went out for dinner in a huge group, and although the place said the kitchen was closed when we got there, they decided tey would rather make 250 bucks off of us instead and opened it up and brought out plate after plate of awesome tapas. Had fun singing in the restaurant, good times.... Said goodbye to lots of people as I was seeing them for the LAST TIME. Lupe, Javi, Pascual... Pascual is the guy in the alto section, who I never really got to know, but we were just friends, we just always stood together and enjoyed each other´s company. He came and asked for my email address, even though he doens´t have email but he is getting it soon and will write me then... It´s weird, really. As he said, "I know we haven´t even really ever talked to each other but I feel this connection, I look in your eyes and feel like I know you, I really am goign to miss you." I felt the same way... The strange phenomenon of meeting, rather than making, a friend. Saturday I woke up and went out to do some Christmas shopping in the big outdoor market by Plaza de Toros. It was sunny, I had my coat in hand and was still way too warm in my sweater. Worked all afternoon, had a nice time hanging out and being at home with Paz and Paloma, which was great because we haven´t seen each other much lately and things had gotten kind of strange. But they´re better again and I´m sure we´ll leave on a good note. Went out with Amy later. We started the night at "Bierwinkel´s," this German bar, and had beer and little sausages wrapped in bacon!! Funny. The barrio was kind of dead and we never ran into anybody we knew, so we went to a few chill places, got a turron McFlurry, but the night we thought would be long and crazy ended early. Sunday, shopping again, places were open!! due to the holiday season. Ate my LAST big Sunday meal-- at Burger King by myself. Studied, got stressed out, went to our Mujeres professor´s house for coffee, except only me and two other people showed up. Stupid class, stupid stupid stupid waste of everything. At least now we don´t have to memorize a bunch of crap for an exam, we only have to do the paper. which I don´t have enough time to do, so I must run, because it is freaking me out and I have to work on it. Took our written conversation exam this morning. LAST choir rehearsal tonight. Grammar class, oral part of conversation exam tomorrow. Choir concert. Wednesday: Grammar exam, Reading/Writing exam (writing about the movie), turn in Mujeres paper (have to write it before I turn it in though), general language test for Council (a post-test, we took the placement test at the beginning and now they want to see what we learned), Thursday churros y chocolate with Amy for breakfast, conversation listening part, turn in Dos Democracias paper, pack..... Friday go home.

2002-12-13T04:13:00.000-08:00

In one week I will be on the airplane. I have so much to do in one week.

2002-12-12T05:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was soooooooo long, as Wednesdays usually are. Clases de español 9-12, last Desarollo class 12-2, talking to Armando about badness of combined Mujeres/Desarollo class 2:15-2:45, email, last Dos Democrácias class 3:30-5, internet/attempted work in computer lab time, bought bocadillo from Club Social (currently surviving on bocadillos and café), went to choir to say hi to everybody but left before the rehearsal started, got picked up from the Uni at 8:15 to go to Xàbia for the 9:30 Magnificat rehearsal, arrived at the freezing but beautiful stone church at 9:25, ate our bocadillos, rehearsal didn´t start until 10:15 as choir and orchestra members were dragging themselves in and the director was getting closer adn closer to exploding from frustration, had our rehearsal. The rehearsal went well, except for being really cold and acoustically not so great, and except for me being completely aggrivated at Juan Luis, the director of the coro universitaria, as he talked or sang or made noises whenever the director was talking or the orchestra was playing or trying to tune up, and hummed our pitches at the beginning of every piece, and made fun of the soloists, and ignored/told us to sing the opposite of the written dynamics but insisted that it was easier to sing the written (incorrect) lyrics than get everyone to change the phrase, and whined and complained when the director did something differently than the way he liked it, and was generally the least professional, most rude and obnoxious person there. At 11:45, when we got to the end of the last song, the director said, "okay, now we´ll just run the whole thing through from the top." He said this in Valenciano, which is a dialect of Spanish that is kind of a combination of Castellano ("normal" Spanish) and French, which was the language that he spoke throughout the entire rehearsal. So we sang the whole thing again (much to Luís´s dismay and whininess), and then sang through the Hallelujah chorus just to put the icing on the cake and thouroughly wear out our voices. At 12:30 we were free to go... I got home at 2 am. And was at school again this morning!! Well it was almost my last long Wednesday... next week I just have to deal with five solid hours of exams, from 9-2, and turn in two term papers. Madre mia... I can do this!!

2002-12-11T09:28:00.000-08:00

If this weblog entry had a title it would be, to the tune of the Clash, "I FOUGHT THE BULL, AND THE BULL WON." I was at school all day yesterday working, salí corriendo to make the bus home, drop off my stuff, and bus back to Plaza Luceros to meet Council and go to the Capea. It wasn´t everybody but most of the group was together again for the last time on the bus... I was thinking about how much the dynamic had changed since the beginning of the semester. Now all the faces are familiar and everyone knows who their friends are and who they get along with, and the whole group is more at ease just because we know who we all are. The scenery outside the window kept getting darker and darker and more and more sparse, until we were bumping along on some tiny dirt road in the middle of tumbleweedy nowhere. Suddenly the bus stopped and there was a little structure in front of us... getting off the bus then was kind of like the Spain you imagine, dark night, sliver of moon, dusty dry grassy terrain, a little mountain in the distance, this little whitewashed gate with a jigsaw-cut top like the tower of a castle and decorated by a few inch thick lines running along it. Went inside, they took us to the kitchen, and we saw the biggest damn paella cooking we had ever seen... The plate was huge. Probably five feet across. Smelled so gooood... We ate in a big wooden room, kind of a wooden tent-type round space with a platform in the middle and various heaters spaced throughout. Tapas first, salad and queso and chips and croquettes, and then the delicious paella, and fruit and coffee and plenty of vino for everybody. I was totally stuffed and had a great time. Then the folk band Tuna showed up in costume with their guitars to play for us, and that was awesome too. After that it was time for the Capea. We headed outside to the ring, past the giant sign that said that they weren´t responsible for any type of injury. We were the only people there, so everyone kind of spread out around the ring. Those who wanted to acutally entered the ring and stood behind the four little walls, one against each cardinal direction. These people were given red felt pieces of material to be their toro capes. My dictionary defines capea as "bullfight with young bulls." In my experience, capea signifies "a bunch of semi-drunken americans stupidly standing / running around a ring with a fast, strong, dangerous animal." It was absolutely fun. I was sitting in the bleachers with most of the people watching. Everyone is waiting in the ring, and suddenly they open the door and this "baby bull" comes charging out. It was much bigger and faster and stronger and more angry than anybody expected. Larger than a very large dog, and complete with a tiny set of little horns, about two inches long. So everybody runs behind the walls screaming and laughing and cursing with fear. Poco a poco people started coming out and giving it a try, waving their capes and moving at the last minute as the bull charges next to them. Some were more successful than others. I think that everybody in there got knocked down or run into at least once, or hurt themselves fleeing from the scary bull, like one guy who flung himself clear over the wall to escape but didn´t land so well. It was hilarious and really fun... I was having a big internal conflict between "I can´t believe those people are doing this, It´s incredible they let us do this, It´s totally stupid and dangerous" and "Brittany is the only girl out there. There are more girls than guys in this group tonight. I could do that. Am I not going just because I´m a girl? If I don´t try it I will regret it forever. There´s only one girl doing it! I can´t let my Women´s and Gender Studies major down." And back to, "I am going to be the one to get really hurt... I am so out of shape... how sober am I?... I don´t have to prove it to these people, I can be smart and safe instead..." I was going back and forth for a while, having a great time watching and laughing with the rest of the spectators.... Then they let the bull back in and brought out a new one, who was fresh and ready to go and when he charged out everyone screamed and ran away to safe places, and the audience all said "whoa!" or "damn!" or "ahh!" except for one person; I heard Ellie´s voice plainly say, "Oh, he´s so cute!!" I said to the girl next to me, "If I go in will you take a picture for me?" and grabbed my red cape. Didn´t have any interaction with the bull at first, letting other people do it, he passed by my cape one time kind of in a line after the guy before me. I think my initial words upon viewing the bull face to face were, "Shit you guys I´m scared!" But eventually I had my go... Did pretty good, had a couple of good passes, but then the bull didn´t run past me, just kind of stayed close to me and I kept turning and suddenly I was in the air and then I was on the ground and he was running away. My hat and my cape were some yards away... at this point my words were, "yeah, I´m okay, but I´m done." It must have looked bad because a lot of people that I saw today were like, "Lindsay, are you allright?" But it was not too bad, just a little bruised on my lower back and hip. I was about par for the people who gave it a try-- including a couple more girls, Amy included. It was super fun, a great night. The final score of the night´s opponents (not that these things are always opposite each other): Logic vs. Feminism: Feminism wins! Stupidity vs. Security: Stupidity wins! Fear vs. Bravery: Bravery wins! Lindsay vs. Baby Bull: Baby Bull wins! Pride vs. Pain: Pride wins by a landslide! Still feeling pretty darn proud of myself, and as Trip and I were saying to each other, glad to have another story to tell to the grandkids someday.

2002-12-10T03:55:00.000-08:00

I am remembering what it is like to be stressed out by too much to do and too little time. I have to finish researching/write two term papers in Spanish, study for exams, rehearse/sing the Magnificat concert, rehearse/sing the regular university choir concert (well, one of them. I will be on an airplane during the other one), purchase the things I need to, find time to spend with important people... This stuff is all impeded by classes, bus travel time, availability of computers, siesta, mysterious trip to Murcia (for some reason) this Saturday to make up one of Gregorio´s missed classes, coffee at Ana´s on Sunday night to make up for one of HER missed classes, dinner with Council tonight and afterwards trip to a Capea where we get to run around with the baby bulls inside the bullring, etc... I´m looking for time to do stuff and not finding it. I may be able to check off the "book hostel in zurich" box on my list, because I sent an email to the City Backpacker Hostel... if not, I will get to enjoy an experience similar to those of these people. I did get a tip elsewhere that the airport chapel is a relatively peaceful place to crash though... So many ups and downs and mixed feelings lately. Choir rehearsal last night was HORRIBLE. Luis was at his worst, yelling mixed messages and being angry that people couldn´t sing better but not helping them to learn how. At one point he told the strong singers in each section (I was the alto) to shut up, and then made the choir sing the whole piece, poorly, for some reason, to prove they couldn´t do it or something. He was not happy to hear that I won´t be at the final concert... But I think the alto section is pretty good, and there were other strong singers who weren´t there last night. Such as Silvia. She wasn´t there, and I was so angry at the director, and so when we finally took our break I was thinking about leaving and calling somebody from home just because I was so frustrated, but instead I was met by a ton of attention from other singers in the choir telling me how much they were going to miss me... My friend Mari Carmen, an older woman who is a retired teacher and who is now taking some classes at the university, said how sad she was that I was leaving and started to tear up-- I was very surprised and touched. We´re going to try to find a time to have coffee together. She said she was looking for a CD of traditional Spanish music to give me to take home... I would like to give her one of Aaron Copland. She is very sweet. The Magnificat rehearsal was better, and Pascual, the guy who sings in the alto section and who has a fantastic voice, asked me if I had classes Monday afternoons because a choir that he sings with was beginning to work on something new and needed contraltos, and he liked my voice and wanted to know if I could join.... I told him I would love to but I was leaving soon. Things like that make me think-- just for a moment-- that maybe I could stay here, what would happen if I lived here a little while longer, I am going to miss out on so many things... But on the other hand I can´t wait to come home. It´s a crazy mix. I have written far too much weblog and far too little term paper... time to get crackin.

2002-12-09T04:25:00.000-08:00

Well Barcelona was good times, even though the group I was traveling with was not a very good group to travel with. Five was a bad number, and we just didn´t have the same priorities. I feel like I will go back someday and be able to do it right, but on the other hand, I was there two days ago, and spent a lot of time poking around trying to figure out what we wanted to do and eating at McDonalds. It took us a long time to get going on Saturday, and to find a place to eat. Finally we got walking and saw (the outsides of) the two big Gaudi houses, the Casa Batllo and Casa Milla (I think) with the chimneys on top. Took the bus to Parc Guell, which was awesome. I am starting to realize how much I like visiting parks. Whenever we find a nice park or an outdoor natural thing to do it is always successful. Saw the longest bench in teh world, and the salamander fountain, and all the famous things. Very colorful and fun and beautiful. Shep and Lauren had bought train tickets for the 4:00 train home, because they wanted to get back to celebrate Rachel´s birthday. Khloe went with them, but Katie and I stayed because we wanted to see the inside of Casa Batllo, and because we didn´t want to go home yet. I still would have liked to stay longer, but I couldn´t by myself. Katie and I had a good time, hung around the park some more, had some extra-delicious ice cream... Casa Batllo was awesome, definately worth the 8€ price of admission. We took the train home and got into Alicante at 10:30. Paz was surprised to see me so early. I took a shower and went to bed. Then I did work all day yesterday, felt kind of abandoned by Paz and Paloma who went out for the Sunday meal with her friends. Julie called and asked if I was coming. I told her I wasn´t invited, and Paz had something cooking on the stove for me to eat by myself. So I hung out and tried to focus, talked to Ben, got work done... I am kind of overwhelmed by what I need to do before the end, and how close the end is, and how busy I will be all the time until suddenly everything is over. Have to write to final papers in Spanish, plus exams and whatnot, and the Magnificat concert this Friday night in Denia, with a rehearsal (also in Denia, more than an hour´s drive away) on Wednesday night... Took a break from my work to play a game of Battleship with Paloma, who cheated and ruined the game by not putting all of her ships on the board. Played almost the whole game until she accused ME of cheating and looking at her board, therefore seeing that she had not put down her other ship... I hadn´t looked at all, but I knew that there wasn´t a place left for her ship to be... So I caught her. I was kind of pissed off, I hope she learns from it and doesn´t cheat in the future. I always thought she was cheating a little bit when we played the Oca game and Parchis, like applying rules to me but not to herself, or not telling me that I get to roll again but then announcing it when she lands on that space... I chalked those up to forgetfulness. Turns out she is much more malicious. That sneaky Paloma. Paloma also made a hilarious joke yesterday. She gets all these toy catalogs, like Toys-R-Us type catalogs, which she looks through and circles things and writes them in her wish lists to the Reyes Magos. (By the way, you don´t go visit Santa Claus in the malls here, but instead the three kings. Apparently on the 5th of January they used to come in by boat, before the night when they brought all the presents, and all the kids would go see them and get little candies or something. Now a helicopter flies into Plaza de Toros and drops them off, and then picks them up again later on... Hm, home for Christmas, or helicopter in Plaza de Toros with the Reyes Magos... It really is a tough call here.) So Paloma had gotten a new catalog and sat down at the table with the catalog and pen in hand. I said, "¿Más jugetes?" Paloma, without dropping a beat, said, "¡¡Por menos dinero!!" which is what this scary stupid clown on TV says in some commercial that they air all the time. (more toys for less money!) She imitated the voice and everything... I laughed for a long time.

2002-12-07T01:19:00.000-08:00

I´m in Barcelona! Coming at you live from the "Ideal Youth Hostel." Having a good time-- I really really like this city. Yesterday was a partly frustrating day. The overnight bus ride was not so good. There were assigned seats and we were right behind the bus driver, who kept rolling down the window for some reason. Sometimes it was to pay the toll, sometimes we didn´t know why. In any case, we were freezing and nobody slept very well. So we were tired yesterday and had a hard time making decisions and agreeing to do things. Spent a lot of time wandering around and looking at shops and stuff instead of seeing the sights and doing all the Barcelona stuff there is to do. We did see the Sagrada Familia, and it really is awesome. I wish we had gone inside, but we had a couple people who were claustrophobic and afraid of heights, which is not good if you go up to the towers inside. The outside was amazing enough. We also walked around the Barrio Gotic, saw the (outside of) the cathedral, the Gaudi house, went to the Picasso museum... I really liked it. At night Shep, Lauren and Katie went to see the Jimmy Eat World concert, which is why they came to Barcelona. Khloe and I went to see the movie La Casa de Los Locos, or L´Aubergue Espagnole, which is a french movie about htis french guy who moves to Barcelona for a year and lives in this house full of international students who are studying there. It hit WAY close to home, it was really funny and really really good. I´d love to get a copy of it. It was also cool to see it in Barcelona because we kept saying, "We saw that today! We´re going there tomorrow!" And generally the movie included a lot of standard Spanish culture things that we experience every day. Loved it. Today we´re going to see some of the other Gaudi architecture and the Parc Guell....... woo hoo! I hope that I can come back here some day, for like a week.

2002-12-05T09:36:00.000-08:00

Going to Barcelo-na, goin´ to Barcelo-na...... I´m excited! Yesterday was a horrible day but today I have been in such a better mood. I think choir last night was the turning point. I kept making faces and making the other (5) altos laugh, from the posh british face to the rock and roll punk rock face... Went home and went to sleep. Slept in, because i had no classes today. Showered and went back to the peluquería and they were much nicer and fixed my hair, which is now almost exactly the same length as it was when I got here. Oh well. Ajo y agua. I went to the outdoor market, ran some errands, walked around town, met up with Amy for a while, and then went to the colegio. I hadn´t been with my regular class for several weeks and when they saw me they all yelled, "Lindsay!!" or actually I guess it would be "¡Linzi!" In any case they were really happy and we had a fun class, talking about Christmas. Maria said that every year, it never fails, when she asks the American students to talk about Christmas day they get so excited and emotional and "radiant," and I was no exception. Then she asked me to sing a christmas carol, so I sang Away in a Manger, and then they wanted another one so I sang Holly Jolly Christmas and now it´s stuck in my head and I´m all excited for Christmas to come! I can´t believe how fast the time is flying. Going to Barça tonight, then writing the papers and singing concerts adn going to final dinners and having "last times" doing normal things and then packing and coming home... AH! One funny thing-- Paz brought home some turron the other day for me and my family. Turron is traditional spanish christmas candy that they make in Alicante, and we had been talking about it, so she got me some. I had planned on getting some anyway, so it was really nice, except she brought me Hacendado brand turron. Hacendado is like Roundy´s. They make everything that exists in the supermarket, only cheaper and crappier. I told Velia and her cousin and they kind of laughed and looked at each other in disbelief, and said I´d have to take home some real turron, from the factory or from one of the turron specialty stores, so that my family could know the difference.

2002-12-04T06:25:00.000-08:00

I feel like I keep getting screwed over. First of all, there was this crap with my flight home. I don´t remember if I have explained this or not, but STA Travel created a new flight for me that was different that the one I viewed and ordered, but still counts as the "group flight" and therefore is still the same (high) price. Fine, whatever. Until I realized that the return flight includes a 15 hour layover in Zurich, from 7 pm on the 20th to 10 am on the 21st. I went to a travel agent and now I am waiting for her to call me back after she talks to STA Travel to see if anything can be done to change it. She might have tried to call me this morning, but I was in class and couldn´t answer my phone... So then yesterday afternoon I decided to finally get my hair cut. It had gotten really long, and I really liked it long, but it needed to just be cleaned up a little bit. I had checked out the different "peluquerías" in my neighborhood and went to the one that seemed the most new and busy. I wasn´t too worried; my hair is straight, and I only wanted a trim, cut straight across the bottom. My only concern was that she´d cut it too short, so I made sure to say (twice) that I only wanted a little tiny bit cut off, just the ends, to make it healthier. She cut it the perfect length.... on one side of my head. The other side is a good half inch shorter. I didn´t notice while I was there because there was an advertisement on the bottom corner of the mirror so I couldn´t see that side. I think she noticed, because I saw her whispering something to one of the other stylists before she rang me up, but of course she didn´t say anything... To top it off, it cost 17 Euro. I had asked for a cut, the woman said, "cut and blowdry?" I said yes. She washed my hair before I realized what she was doing, but I thought, whatever, I guess this is how it goes, never mind the fact that I took a shower before I came here and my hair was still wet when I walked in... Got charged for all three. She fried my hair with the blowdryer and a round brush, blasting inch-wide sections of about 100 hairs until I had the statickyest hair ever. Whatever, a bit of Spanish style, right? Got home, thought it looked kind of uneven......... Got upset, convinced myself it was no big deal, just in my head... Paz came home and noticed that my hair was uneven before I told her that I had gotten it cut. She thought I had cut only one side by myself. I told her the story, she was really upset, and so was I. I don´t know if it was because I was a foriegner or what, but I´m pissed off, and sad, and am going to try to go back to see if they´ll fix it. Unfortunately this will require cutting my hair back to about the length it was when I left the States, so that´s three months growth suddenly un-done. I feel like I am more upset about it than I should be... I suppose nobody is ever happy when they first leave the salon. But it´s one thing when you don´t like the cut they gave you-- it´s another thing when they just do it WRONG when all you asked them to do was cut it straight. So I went out with Velia for a beer to try and make myself feel better, and that was better. Other crappy thing that is pissing me off: The class "Women in Contemporary Spanish Society" has been the worst class I have ever taken in my life. Originally, there weren´t enough people signed up to offer it, so they "combined" it with "Urban Development in the Mediterranean" which is a human geography class. They did this so they could continue to offer both classes so people could get the credits they needed, and because they figured since they were both sociology classes, somehow they would have something in common. "Combining" these classes ended up to mean that each week, (for the class only meets once a week for 2.5 hours at a time) we had either one class or the other, either one professor or the other. We started a week late, two classes were cancelled because both professors went to Cuba for some conference, so we have taken 5 classes with each professor and the only thing that detirmines which one we get credit for is which subject we write the final paper and take the exam. In the "Mujeres" (women) class, we watched a movie, which took up two class periods, read one article about domestic violence and commented on it, and talked about the history of the feminist movement, which was mainly talking about the US and the rest of Europe, for two class periods. Today, our last class with this professor, we started 20 minutes late, spent about 15 minutes figuring out a date that we could go to her house for coffee and to talk about her trip to Cuba, heard the same information in review that we learned last time about spain and the global feminist movement from 1960-1975, (total information that we learned: the fact that there WAS a feminist movement.) then she told us that Franco died and Spain, in a hurry to catch up with the rest of Europe started to make more liberal laws again. Then we heard the years that a bunch of countries legalized divorce/abortion. After that, the conversation shifted to talking about the future of the world, and how a very conservative wave is passing again, adn how our professor´s only hope is the young people in the anti-globalization movement, and then we talked about Cuba and then ended class early. You just read EVERYTHING that we did in class, I did not leave anything out. I have learned nothing in that class. What I will learn will be learned on my own while researching to write this paper, and I will also learn a bunch of dates and names when I memorize them for the exam from the packet that she gave us but that we never talked about. And to think that this class was basically the reason that I came to Alicante-- It was a program in Spain at my language level that had a women´s studies class. What a crock. What a waste.

2002-12-03T03:45:00.000-08:00

So the time is ticking away. People are asking me how many days I have left (17) and how I feel about going home (excited and anxious and torn) and telling me they´re going to miss me, and I´m realizing how much I am going to miss them as well. Trying to stay focused and get work done, working on final papers and such, which unfortunately has been severely impeded by my discovery of online crossword puzzles. I need to be working so that I can spend time with people, which is going to be a high priority these next 2 and a half weeks. Yesterday I went to the elementary school for the first time in a month or so, and visited a different classroom than usual. The kids were not as enthusiastic as the other class, but it was good to go. Taught them the same song. Speaking of songs, choir was really fun. Beforehand I met Silvia for coffee, and during the rehearsal we were silly as usual. I´m getting much better at talking to the other people there too... talking to people I don´t know and understanding and joining conversations is getting much easier lately. Helped Lauren with her English homework during the Magnificat rehearsal-- they were only rehearsing the solos and we spent most of the time waiting around. I was asked to try the alto part in the trio, and later they made it into a 9-tet with three on each part, and I am one of them. So that´s exciting. Excited for Christmas. Looking forward to coming home. Trying to make the most of my time here before it is over.

2002-12-02T03:28:00.000-08:00

Good weekend. Friday after "studying" all day, I went to see El Crimen de Padre Ortiz, a Mexican movie, with Velia at the ABA6 cinema. Caught the bus home, Paz and I got dressed up fancy and went to El Taller, Amalia´s restaurant, for the 1 year anniversary party. It was good times, free tapas and drinks, hanging out with Amalia´s family and Julie and Paz´s friends. The family called from the Thanksgiving celebration at my house, and I stood outside in the street and cried when I heard them singing Johnny Appleseed. It was so beautiful and so fun to hear everybody... It makes me smile to think that the next time that is sung, I will be there singing along. Saturday I ran errands and read "Possessing the Secret of Joy" by Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, an awesome book. Went out with Silvia, Leti, JuanRa and Katherine (choir people) for a dinner of tapas at Lizarran, (don´t know what happened to those other toothpicks...) Our waitress was crazy. We sat outside for a long time, it was good. Headed to the barrio afterwards, spent some time at Salamandra and later went to dance at Directo. I really like Directo-- we were up on the fourth floor and after making our way through the totally crowded first three floors we had the top one almost totally to ourselves. We had a ton of fun until Leti noticed that her movil and wallet with keys were no longer in her jacket pocket... they had been stolen. Her jacket was on the top of the pile on the counter, only about 5 feet away from us, but some sneaky person got in there. So I got to see the police station when we went to report it... There´s a chance they´ll return the wallet and keys, without money obviously, but once in a while the thieves take the valuables and return the documents. I hope so... It sucked, we had been having a great time until that point. Got home at 5, slept in, woke up and read. Velia invited me over for the Sunday meal with her family "+1argentino" who usually comes over on Sundays. It was great. Her family is really nice, their apartment is really nice. We had a really good meal too, fishy apetizers of squid and something else, cod maybe? with spices and seasonings, bread and different types of jamon, cheeses, tomato spread. Then a break before the main course of black paella. It´s made with squid ink and little noodles and vegetables.... Literally black. But really tasty. The next course was fruit, I had grapes and part of a caqui, and then coffee and little postres-- an ice cream bar and a taste of some chocolate mousse type thing-- and sweet wine. Quite a feast, and good conversation... really nice. Velia and I hung out for a while, I saw her pictures of South Africa and some other places she´s visited, and we looked at pictures online of our novios. Tee hee! It was a good afternoon.

2002-11-29T07:42:00.000-08:00

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

2002-11-29T04:39:00.000-08:00

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?

2002-11-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-27T03:05:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-26T00:40:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-25T05:03:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-21T00:46:00.001-08:00

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.

2002-11-21T00:46:00.000-08:00

2002-11-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-20T05:30:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-19T03:14:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-18T05:07:00.000-08:00

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.

2002-11-15T04:00:00.000-08:00

It has been rainy in Alicante for two days. Gray and wet and cold, pretty icky. Yesterday I was going to go to the "Gran Paella" meal with Velia but they had to cancel it because it was supposed to be in the parking lot and it was pouring rain. Velia and I ate on campus and talked... I do like her. Going to do something with her this weekend, a movie or maybe go to this lecture and meal about violence against women-- this month there is a big focus on that with lots of discussions and lectures, the 25th is the national day against domestic violence. So I want to go and check out the feminist scene in Alicante. Tomorrow I am hopping on the trainette with Amy and Ellie to go somewhere, Benidorm or Denia or something, for the day. I hope the rain stops by then. I have been getting some interesting information from home lately, like the statement that "Jesse really does capture the essence of Jesus," or that his father "can´t imagine a better part for him." I guess I knew that he was the lead and that the show was Godspell, but I suddenly realized that he is playing Jesus Christ and apparently doing a great job. No more Barnaby Tucker for that boy, I guess. In other news, Julia Weinberg is now standing at the record Weinberg family female height of 5 feet 4 and a half inches. I am 5´3" and a quarter, when I left for Spain I had about half a centimeter on that girl, and I knew that when I returned she would be taller. But I thought that she would be a little bit taller, like we´d have to stand back to back and it would be evident but we´d be close... Apparently not. Apparently there will be no contest. This is a very, very, very weird thing to think about. It reminds me of this conversation I had yesterday over tea with a woman I met at the University. She is from the study abroad staff at the University of Iowa and so she is spending a week checking out some of the programs that they send their students to in Spain. So I was telling her about the program and about my experience. We talked for a little while about study abroad and relationships, and people who leave their loves at home or who bring them along on teh programs, and how sometimes it would have been better for everyone if they each had gone on different programs or how different people think about it and about their goals for study abroad... They are trying to put together some kind of discussion or brochure or soemthing to address the issue, because it is one that a lot of people deal with, without making ultimatums or getting too involved in people´s personal lives. Interesting. Anyway, after we talked about that, she asked if I had thought a lot about going home. I told her that I had been recently, and she said, "You are going to be surprised when you go home." Why, the weather? The culture? She said that people always think that when they go home everything will be familiar and the same and comfortable, but in fact, even if we think we haven´t changed or been affected by studying abroad, we have. And when we get home there will be nobody who can relate to that, nobody else who knows what it was like in Spain or who wants to hear any more of your stories that, to them, have no meaning. I hadn´t thought about that, and I definately have been thinking about home as a familiar good place that I want to be. But if I am different, it´s not going to be the same... And it will be nice to have familiar things like foods or warm showers or music, but suddenly cutting off this part of my life really is going to be very strange.... It´s going to feel much more final than I had realized. Because, for what it´s worth, this is my life now. Leaving home was like going on vacation, because I knew I´d be back after a time. Leaving here will be confining this entire world of big places and people and bus routes and phone numbers and tastes and plans and this life that progresses with motion and fluidity to a tiny storage place of memory that all of you reading this can´t imagine, don´t know. Cut off, back to the past, which will be different as well, with giant sisters and new roofs. Y ya esta. That´s it. No more. Let´s go to Mayfair. I won´t see that man I see right now out of the window, in the tall yellow boots and green uniform, bucket and net thing in hand, going off to clean the fountains at school. No more 2 dollar coins. I feel very weird. I didn´t realize this knowledge that I have been acquiring. I am still anxious to come home, I still have things I like or don´t like about Alicante, but... it will be sad to try and explain, because you can´t explain a life to somebody. Though I attempt to do so on this silly weblog every day! :)

2002-11-14T00:51:00.000-08:00

"Aim drimin af a wait crismas, yes laik de wans ai yus tu nou...." Such is the Spanish pronunciation guide to the new piece of music we got in choir last night. I think it is kind of ridiculous that we keep getting new music, that is invariably too difficult for the choir, when we cannot yet sing any of the music we already have. And so far everything we have worked on has been in English, although as of yet we still have not tried singing with words. It is also almost entirely music that I know very well and have sung before. Silvia wasn´t at choir last night and I was feeling sick and exhausted, and that song hit home a little too much so I went home and went to bed. The sun is shining, the grass is green, the orange and palm trees sway. There´s never been such a day, aqui en Alicante. And I am longing to be up north... The truth is I am dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know. With every email and blog entry I write, I am thinking more and more about coming home lately, and that song plus thinking about Ben all day because of our anniversary was a little too sentimental after a long day of classes. Plus it just wasn´t the same, singing only the solfegg with all these tone deaf Spanish people. On Thanksgiving, I am going to call home to hear everybody sing Johnny Appleseed. I´ll be home for Christmas...

2002-11-13T09:44:00.000-08:00

Remind me never again to have all of my classes on the same day. It is a draaaaaaaaag. Classes are still good but it is impossible to be focused and pay attention for this many hours of the day. Here is what I don´t understand. If it is 68 degrees Farenheight right now and the low for tonight is 58, why am I so cold. Why do we have problems starting the car in the morning, when the transmission bucks us all the way to school/work. I am seriously worried that my sense of temperature has just been totally screwed up. After working outside painting all summer, spending all day every day in the hot sun sweating bullets (is that phrase right? can´t speak english now.) and feeling chilly inside my air conditioned house, and now living on the coast of the Mediterranean, how am I ever going to make it in Milwaukee? Or walking around even our tiny campus of Macalester in St. Paul, MN? And how am I going to manage to jump into Lake Michigan on New Years morning? Maybe that will freak my system back into midwest temperature mode. Today is the three year anniversary of my first date with Benjamin Evan Chandler. It´s weird because we have more than an ocean between us and I don´t think we are even going to speak to each other today. But we both wrote the romantic and sappy and wonderful emails to each other, so I guess the sentiment is there. It´s amazing though, kind of overwhelming and making me feel too sentimental. I am looking forward to spending the week and a half that we´ll have together at home over Christmas and everything before Ben leaves to study in South Africa. Ah, counting the days, but they are flying by here, which is good. I´d enjoy our anniversary today much more if we could celebrate it by doing something silly together, like cooking dinner and going to a cozy coffee shop and walking around downtown watching them put up Christmas lights. Is this happening yet? They put up some giant white wire nativity scene figures above the doors at El Corte Inglés. We don´t have to wait for Thanksgiving. Not that the big department stores in the States ever did anyway.

2002-11-12T00:51:00.000-08:00

I went to choir last night even though I wasn´t sure my voice was going to make it-- I have been kind of sick and my throat is really sore. Sucking on lots of vitamin C drops but sadly my ecchinacea supply got moldy in the ziplock bag and they don´t sell it here. I´m having other kinds of tea all the time though. Anyway, choir was fun and it was exciting to see Silvia again. I brought her some CDs to borrow and showed her some pictures of my life at home. We were in the middle of looking at the pictures after choir when the director came up to me and asked me if I had ever sung Bach´s Magnificat. I told him no, and then after too many moments of frustrated misunderstanding I realized that he was asking me if I wanted to sing it with a special smaller choir which was rehearsing at that moment in another building. There will be a little performance on December 13 right before I leave. I went-- we had to sing in this weight room place because nowhere else was available. There were a lot of other really great singers from the community and a few university students and other people from the regular choir. We basically read through the whole thing, aided by the electric music of luis´s laptop as usual. It was really fast and they had been practicing for a month. I did my best to follow along. It was good to be with some real musicians though instead of the remarkably tone deaf choir... I´m going to do it I think. They practice on monday nights after the other choir rehearsal, so I have to get a ride home because it´s over after the busses stop running. I just have to practice on my own because I have a lot of catching up to do. But I am honored that he asked me and it is going to be fun to sing. I´ll just have to deal with the normal end-of-the-semester stress in December and some hungry monday nights; didn´t eat last night until 11:45.

2002-11-11T03:56:00.000-08:00

Got my registration forms for next semester in the mail today. Weird. I had a great weekend. Friday night I went to see Gato Negro Gato Blanco with Velia and her friends, who turned out to be fun theater people. They were kind of hard to keep up with but I enjoyed their company. The movie was great, hilarious, and I managed to handle the subtitles in Spanish pretty well. Afterwards we went to a couple of cafés, including one where white wine was the specialty and they served it to you in tiny little white bowls. Met up with some people in the barrio for a while and walked home with Michelle and Roberto. Saturday the choir had the dumb little song thing-- we sang the school song at some ceremony and afterwards hung out in the lobby eating tapas and talking. I was with the group who was last to leave (hooray for familiarity) and went home with Silvia for paella. Her other roommates in her apartment were gone for the weekend and so it was just the two of us. She showed me how to make paella and we talked about a million things, cultural differences and september 11 and music. The paella was great and afterwards we had coffee and she got out her guitar and played some Tracy Chapman and some songs she wrote. She is really awesome... She said that there are some people in life who she will encounter for the first time and think, "We should get to know each other, we will be friends." and she thought that when she first saw me. I thought the same and I´m really happy that we´re getting to know each other! I stayed at her house all day, her friend JuanRa came over with truffles and another friend as well... good times. I left her house and went to meet Ellie and Amy at the Panoramis to see a movie-- Sweet Home Alabama. It was dubbed over in Spanish and I think it lost a lot without the good down-home southern accents and stuff, but it was pretty easy to follow and when the movie was over and we came out into the mall and got popcorn and cookies (there were cookies at the sub shop!!!) I felt totally seperate from Spanish culture and much more like I was immersed in American culture. Which is kind of funny considering we had just watched a whole movie that was in español. And that we could buy beer with our meal at the little Pan & Co. fast food sub shop in the mall. Sunday was another day spent with españoles; Maria, the teacher from the colégio, picked me up with her husband and we drove to the golf course because they go there every sunday morning (noon is sunday morning) for a walk. It is the only place in Alicante where there is grass and trees and little ponds and ducks and everything... Really beautiful. They are building a new subdivision kind of area right around the golf course and Maria and her husband just bought a plot of land there where they are going to build a new house. The houses in the area were really gorgeous... A great neighborhood. They invited me over to their house for comida (big mid-day meal) which on Sundays is prepared by their two daughters. They are 17 and 14 and seemed like really nice girls. The whole family is great, the apartment is great. I had a really good time. Food was fairly simple but good. Maria explained to me ahead of time that in her family they do kind of the opposite of the rest of Spain-- on Sunday, they want to take it easy! So they don´t go to the trouble of preparing a huge fancy meal, and have a normal meal instead. It was rice with garlic, fried egg and tomato, a typical spanish salad with everything from apples to corn to white asparagus to garlic cloves to carrots, and homemade ice cream for dessert, how yummy! After we ate Maria and I talked for a long time, told each other bad words and phrases and colloquialisms in our languages. Looked at lots of pictures, one of her daughters played the piano for us (a piano!!! electric, but still!!!), and just took it easy. It was great, very homey and fun. It really is true that when I hang out with Spanish people I seem to have a better time than with the Americans. Maybe I´ve just met cooler Spaniards than Americans, or maybe I just like hanging out in houses more than in bars. Anyway, the weekend was great, and I think my speaking abilities are really going to solidify. They are pretty good now, so I have been told. And I´m really proud that I spoke so much Spanish this weekend. Awwwiiiiiiiiiiigght. I cannot express my jealousy of everyone who went to see Godspell and You´re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I heard they were fantastic... thought about them all the time. I can´t wait for the videos. I can´t wait to give big hugs to the stars.

2002-11-08T04:05:00.000-08:00

I got another invitation to a Spanish person´s house, yippeeee. Maria, the teacher at the colégio, invited me over on Sunday. I am going to have a busy fun spanish weekend. I hope I stay healthy... feeling like I´m getting a cold. Feeling actually cold too. I can´t believe that weather.com says it is 70 degrees here, because I¨m in a sweatshirt and shirt and sweatpants that are usually all very warm and I am chilly. The sun is not out, it´s got to be that and the humidity and the wind... but it really does feel chilly. I really hope I do not experience some kind of enormous temperature shock when I return to Wisconsin. But I bet I will. Well I finally got pictures taken of my apartment, and developed them and got them in the mail to my family. As we speak they may be in the air, traveling over the ocean! Unfortunately by the time they arrive, I might be moving. Paz wants to move, and right now is a really good time to get loans from the bank in Spain. She is already planning on taking one out for a car, since the one she has now is dying, and it will be easier to get a bigger loan now and work on paying for both things over time than to do one now and try to do the other later. The guy at the bank told her that if she doesn´t sell her place and move now, she probably won´t be able to do so in the future. She wants to move because this is the house she bought with her husband and while she has made it her own, she doesn´t really want to stay here, although she has for many years. Also, and more importantly, her parents, her two closest friends, Paloma´s school, Paz´s work and the University are all in the same neighborhood that she does not live in, which is very inconvenient and she feels detached from them at home. She drives the same route every day many times to go to the same neighborhood... It just makes sense. However, it kind of sucks for me. She told me that it would be better for me too, closer to the University and to downtown and lots of things and a nicer apartment, which is true, but what a hassle it will be to move during these final six weeks! She also really wants my opinion about the new place and stuff because "it is my house too" and she´ll have other students in the future. She told me she will need my help, morally more than physically, which I will give, but which I wish I didn´t have to deal with. Maybe that is selfish of me, and I know that this is the time when she has to do this, but I am kind of bothered by the whole idea. Amy thinks it is no big deal but it seems like it will be a real pain to me. This accompanied by some statements like "I am NOT going to live in a neighborhood with gypsies" and laughing about the hilarity of the cuban-voiced "negrita" in Gone With the Wind and how "the only latin americans that I don´t like are Argentinians, Uruguayans, and Colombians" with stories about their badness made me kind of pissed off and uncomfortable about Paz last night. So much for her wanting one of the anti-Raider ERASE RACISM shirts.

2002-11-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

One other interesting fact; I know everyone in the US is engaged in either attending/performing plays or commentating on the recent election. In Spain, nearly everyone votes. There are 13 main political parties, and casting your vote makes a difference and everyone believes it. In the big 2000 parliamentary election, 73.79% of the population voted. Spaniards think the US voting system is a joke. Maybe because it is. Hey, I have an idea. How about all of the important people in my life come on over to Europe so we won´t have to live in the crappy conservative US anymore? Eh? Eh?

2002-11-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

What a good mood I am in. I have realized that for the most part, whenever I do things with Spanish people, in Spanish, I have a good time. And lately I feel like I am making some good Spanish friends. I just got back from the colégio where I work with the kids, and was reminded of how much I like Maria. She was telling me a story about a little autistic five year old at the school. Apparently last week he grabbed a bag of candy from his teacher´s desk, and she asked him, "What are you doing?!" and his response was, "Happy Halloween!" I told Maria that candy has the power to solve all of life´s problems. Class with the kids was really fun today-- I taught them the song about Joe and the button factory. They are working on the words, going to study them at home so hopefully next week they´ll be able to follow along with the song a little bit more as they are jumping around and laughing and pushing all of the buttons. Another kind of funny story-- The kids want to learn the words to the song "So Complicated" which is on the radio here all the time. Maria had gotten the lyrics and wanted to ask me about a word she didn´t understand, the word "cha." We finally figured out that she was talking about the line, "Chill out, whatcha yelling for?" Why would she ever guess that in that sentence "cha" means "are you"? Crazy English. She also thought "chill out" meant to scream. I really like her. When I was leaving today she invited me to come over to her house sometime. It´s the second invitation to someone´s home I´ve gotten in two days! Yesterday my friend Silvia from choir invited me over to her house for the saturday meal to try her paella (mmmm) after our little concert. We are singing one song, the school song I think, for some little event. It should be fun but I was really shocked by the director´s behavior last night... The choir is not a very serious one, it is open to everyone and in the beginning he insisted that everyone should come and it doesn´t matter if you can sight read or are trained or anything, just as long as you like to sing. So we have a number of pretty tone deaf people, and we mostly just read through things and work on getting the notes but hardly any time is spent on interpretation or dynamics or vocal technique. So we have been practicing this little school song for a while, always with the electric piano that is hooked up to the laptop and music software to just play the accompaniment. We don´t have a living accompanist. So just before the end of the rehearsal last night the director turned off the piano and had us sing it acapella. Then he got furious because not everyone could hold the notes, and said, "This is not a rehearsal anymore. This is a performance. Those of you who can´t sing well, don´t sing. When you are in a rehearsal, fine, you can practice and try to sing along but when it is time to perform, if you can´t sing it, it is better not to sing at all." He also got mad because nobody caught the ritard he tried to conduct, because the electric piano stops for no man and we were all used to steadily plowing along. He seemed very stressed out. I think it was partly because another director from Alicante was sitting in on the rehearsal and he must have been nervous. Still, it was rude and everyone was kind of put off. Oh well, we´ll see what happens on Saturday, and afterwards I can go to Silvia´s house and have a good time and good food. Friend #3: Today I met my new intercambio for the first time. We had lunch together at the cafe at school. Her name is Velia and she and I seem to have a lot in common. She is tall and Spanish looking except she was wearing a t-shirt and jeans and no makeup. She´s very nice and talkative, likes traveling movies a lot, is going to see the plays her friends are in this weekend (so many people going to shows without me!). She is a languages major and knows German and English, lived in England for three months on an exchange program. She also studied for a little while in Capetown, which is where she got the T-shirt she was wearing. It was cute and looked like it had a giraffe´s neck coming out of the neckhole and simply said, "Hello!" Her boyfriend is Mexican and is across the ocean, like mine. We are going to see a free movie tomorrow night that the University sponsors-- The cinema shows foriegn and independent films I think. This one, called "Gato Negro Gato Blanco" (black cat white cat) is French/German/Serbian and won lots of awards when it came out. I reeeally hope I can understand it. I like Velia a lot. My other recent fun time with Spanish people was last night at the Oliver Gallery. After choir I went over to Amy´s house for dinner, which was fun, got to meet her mom and stuff, and then we went to Oliver Gallery. Tons of Council people were there and the guys sounded pretty good. Lauren sang with them on a couple of songs-- she has a great voice. But as the night waned on I got kind of sick of being there with all the smoke and tiredness, and I was getting tired of some of the obnoxious drunk Americans, but I had to wait for my friends who live near me to be ready so I had people to go home with. So I ended up talking more with Sergio and his brother. Sergio is the intercambio/kind of boyfriend of my friend Khloe. I went to a party at his house one time and I also hung out with him and his brother on Halloween-- they were big fans of my little girl costume. On Halloween whenever I made the comment that I was a very "inocente" (innocent) little girl, his brother, whose name I disgracefully cannot remember, would correct me by saying, "indecente." It was not true but it was funny. So now whenever they see me they ask me where my huge lollipop and pigtails are. But they are cool guys and it was nice talking to them for a while last night. I got home really late and slept almost till noon today. The weather is changing. I was supposed to meet Velia outside of the library but she told me to call when I got there because it was too cold outside. Kids at the school were wearing WINTER coats, such as one uses to protect oneself from Minnesota winters. Definately necessary-- Gets down into the 50s at ngiht, and right now it is 72 degrees according to weather.com. However, the wind today is making it much colder. Also, at night, it is always colder inside the houses than outside. The floors are all cold tiles and there is no insulation and it seems like the cold just builds up somehow. The mornings are usually pretty chilly. It is CRAZY windy today. I walked from here to the school, which involves cutting across this open dirt area and walking along a street that has just a field (AKA hard dry dusty dirt, think dustbowl with mountains in the distance and tumbleweeds) on one side-- when the wind would blow sometimes the huge clouds of dust completely blocked your vision. I was literally hiding behind a parked truck at one point to avoid the dusty wind. I am an Okie. A Spanish Okie.

2002-11-06T10:03:00.000-08:00

Uf, ¡estoy cansada! (Ughh, I am tired!) This Wednesday has been a long one. But we don´t have any classes tomorrow because our teacher is going out of town, and the guys are playing again tonight at the Oliver Gallery, and Amy is trying to convince me to go. Chilling out there sounds much more fun than sitting akwardly at home, so I think I might just go! It should be a good time, lots of people are going, and I´ve never been to the Oliver Gallery before. I wanted to clear up a little misconception that at least one regular reader of this weblog had gotten from my entries; this extra pudge I have grown is not due to alcohol calories. I am not a crazy party animal, and probably drink less than 90% of people on my program. I don´t want to give that impression in this log... when I do go out, we go to bars, because that´s what there is to do in Alicante, and I don´t drink much, because I can´t afford it and because I don´t want to. When I do go out, I have a good time though, so I write about it in this journal. But I don´t want any of my loving family members to worry about me, so have no fear, I am taking care of myself. :) There is a very very very very good chance that the empty space that opened up in our house next semester will be filled by none other than the fabulous Andy Swanson. I am so excited that I am going to explode. How fun will that be?? In other news, on Uno Paso Adelante last night, Sophia lost her baby because she danced too much and didn´t take care of herself, and she broke up with Roberto; Pedro got locked in the janitor´s closet overnight and freaked out and punched Cristobal in the face because he thought it was his fault after Cristobal made everyone try to conquer their phobias, Pedro´s being small places, for acting class, although later he gave up after his deathly fear of heights was exposed and he couldn´t conquer it; Ingrid was selected by a famous Flamenco dancer to be his partner in a dance he was choreographing, but he put the moves on her and her boyfriend´s ex saw and now he is worried because she is accepting the job that the guy offered her; Cristobal and the short haired teacher went on a date after she thought he sent her a rose, but it was really from her little sister, and when they got back to his apartment, it had been broken into and all the stuff was gone; and everyone but Lola ditched out on the music guy´s dance for the song they had recorded. I think that´s all. I know you don´t have El Paso Adelante in the states and I don´t want any of you to fall behind. It is like Fame in that it is about a dance academy, only a weekly series, and is muy importante.

2002-11-05T03:24:00.000-08:00

Browsing Macalester´s website. Our president, Micheal McPherson, just announced that he´s leaving Macalester after this year. That sucks, he is a good guy. On the bright side, it turns out that the WGS department recieved a $45,000 grant, which is good for me and my major. Also read a bit about Mac alum Walter Mondale who is running for Senator in place of Paul Welstone. Looks like the Dramatic Arts and Dance Department has a show up this weekend too. So many people in so many plays that I can´t see! Que triste. And what´s this-- apparently the musical this spring is not going to be Studs Terkel´s "Working," but instead "Guys and Dolls"? How very un-Macalester. Either Dale talked them out of Working, which I doubt since he doesn´t have many allies in the department, or some other director had some reason that they hated Working and didn´t want us to do it. Somebody always hates every show that each director proposes. Maybe they won out this time... Bob, the music guy, must have talked them into Guys and Dolls. He is a big fan of the old classics. Hey, remember my freshman year of college when we were supposed to do Godspell until it went on tour and we lost the rights? Isn´t that ironic. My mind is mixed up with combinations of Spanish and English. Lately I have been coming out with bizarre phrases that are made up of both languages, such as "Tengo que go..." and "veintiseven" and "We don´t have homework in none of our classes." And most of the time I don´t notice until someone points it out to me. Weird.

2002-11-04T05:01:00.000-08:00

Interesting weekend stories: Halloween: Kids at the elementary school looked gory and great, we played outside in the grass. Pumpkin, pumpkin, ghost = duck duck goose (or duck duck gray duck for you Minnesotans). Also What Time Is It, Devil?, during which I was trying to run after and tag ten year old kids but instead I ran into a tree and smashed my ear pretty good. Thank god they were running away and didn´t see me. Still hurts. I am a graceful goddess. Went out to the Barrio at night dressed in an awesome little girl costume, enjoyed the free shots that it brought me, had a grand old time and even got up to dance on the bar at Austin´s at one point with some other American chicas!! And only partially re-sprained my ankle in the process. A really great night, really fun, good times all around. Friday: Paz´s dad was over installing a new outlet. Hadn´t seen him since the first week. When Paz took him home he told her my spanish was much better, and patted his cheek as he said that I was "muy guapa, mas gordita." Translation: "Very attractive, a little more fat." Thanks, grandpa. Saturday: New outlet was explained when fancy new computer which was delivered. Apparently Paz is just borrowing it from a friend at work to use for work, but it is brand new and flat screen and everything, and now I can watch DVDs and turn the setting to English! It´s awwwwesome. I bought an ice cream bar which was Nata (basically vanilla) flavored ice cream dipped in chocolate with almonds. Sounds delicious, right? And harmless. Not so delicious when the ice cream is mixed with blood that is gushing from one´s mouth after a particularly pointy almond piece cuts the roof of one´s mouth, right behind one´s front teeth, when one is taking one´s first bite of the hard as a rock frozen treat. Went to the city of Elche, only half an hour away, with Lauren, Rachel, Khloe and Beth. A nice city, well known for its palm trees. There was a medieval festival going on and we heard cool music and saw lots of costumes and animals and visited the outdoor craft market, which was really neat. Had a fun time.... Daytrips are good. Sunday: Took a long exercise walk and found this park in the center of Alicante. Please note that park does not in any way signify grass, shade or vegetation. Still, a park. It has another castle on top, but it´s really just an overlook and not a castle. You hike up to it on a stony little path. The park has mini golf and enourmous chess boards and a roller rink and bocce ball and rock climbing and basketball and a mountain bike course and many other fun things. A pretty good discovery, I thought, and a good place to hike right in Alicante. Went to the polleria = chicken store with Paloma to pick up chicken and fried potatoes for cena. Awesome. Very tasty. Played a game with Paloma all afternoon called "The Goose Game" which is your basic board game. Pretty fun, even though Paloma never gets tired of just rolling and moving that number of squares. Went to church with Lauren at night, possibly the only protestant chruch in Alicante. It is very close to our houses, right in our neighborhood. A protestant church only exists because the pastor is American. The congregation, which last night had oh, 15 people in it, three of which were little girls under the age of 5, is very international and includes a few Africans, Americans, Argentinians and Alemánes. (I said Alemánes just to keep the line of ´A´s going, but it means German in spanish.) The church is just a room with a platform, piano and electric organ. It was nice, I understood everything! Very informal. The pastor would kind of stop in the middle of everything to talk directly to people in teh congregation. He introduced me to everyone during the service. There weren´t any bullitens. Sang a lot of hymns, some with familiar tunes, but obviously all in spanish. Nice people. One lady had had a foriegn exchange student from Brookfield years ago. Small world, eh?

2002-10-31T15:00:00.000-08:00

RIGHT NOW it is midnight, the moment between Halloween and All Saints Day, and I am dressed as a cute little girl, starting the night at Austin´s with lots of other Council kids and one of our profesoras, Cristina, who is very cool and is friends with one of the regulars here who is also a professor from the States. It is looking to be a great night! I am excited. I am also excited to devour the huge sucker that tonight is a prop, part of my costume. Also, for everyone´s information, I am perfectly comfortable in these shorts tonight in the streets of Alicante. The weather here is UNbelievable. ¡Hasta luego!

2002-10-31T02:45:00.000-08:00

¡Feliz Jalowín! I spell it that way because if I write "Halloween" it will be pronounced "ah-yo-ehn." Kind of a weird day, because it is sunny and beautiful and the only real significance that today is Halloween are the many "HALLOWEEN PARTY AT XYZ AMERICAN/IRISH PUB TONIGHT FREE SHOT!!!!!!" flyers everywhere. I am excited to go to the elementary school today because I think the kids are putting on masks and trick or treating at the different classrooms... hopefully there will be some candy involved and it will feel more like a regular October 31 for me. I have to put some kind of costume together. Vamos a quedarnos al Austin a las once y media para ir de marcha, porque no hay clases mañana. Todos los clubes les gusta cualquier razón para dar una fiesta, y una día de fiesta americana es un razón bastante bueno. In case anyone is worried about my coffee intake, I wanted to mention that my four espresso shot statement yesterday was an estimated total encompassing the entire day, including my regular coffee that I have at home in the morning. Have no fear; my addiction is nowhere near Deboe Konkol standards yet. No big plans for the three day weekend yet... hoping to take a day trip with Rachel at some point to a park or something, we´ll see. The weather is supposed to be awesome. High of 76 every day. Hmm, let´s check Milwaukee: Half of the temperature here. Feels like less. And only 26 degrees at Macalester, feels like 15??? Increíble. I am going to have the coldest Christmas ever.

2002-10-30T10:03:00.000-08:00

Well, I have been informed that my recent blog entries have been "a little weird," for which I apologize, but which has been a result of happiness instead of homesickness. If this makes things weird, apologies, but I don´t think I want to change back. I´m just using this thing to entertain myself as well as all you readers. And to make fun of Ben a little bit through indirectness and inside jokes, which was a grand part of the last entry. Lo siento a todos. Last night right as I came home there was an accident in the street that my apartment is on. It was very exciting. This car was trying to turn the corner but another van was parked right around the corner in a place that is totally impossible to see from the first street. (Streets in Spain = very bad visibility, almost all one-ways, horrible parking jobs everywhere including on the sidewalk, diagonally in front of corners and regularly double parked.) When the car turned and saw the van they swerved (of course) and drove up onto the sidewalk and into the glass windows and door of this "tienda de regalos" = crap shop. Nobody was hurt but the glass shattered everywhere and lots of fake flowers and alarm clocks and batteries and potholders and vases were knocked to the floor. Apparently the owner of the gift shop is friends with Paz, and told her that a woman who was just coming into the store was almost hit but the owner pulled her out of the way when she saw the car coming and saved her. The reason it was so exciting was that for about 20 minutes, I felt like I lived in a busy lively neighborhood because when everyone heard the crash (walls in Spain have no insulation and you hear everything) everyone ran to their windows or came outside and around the corners to see what happened. I was looking out from my little 4th floor balcony, there were people out on all the other balconies below me. The sidewalks and streets had onlookers and people on them instead of just dog poop and trash and car parts (about 4 repair shops within two blocks of my building), and the neighborhood felt chatty and personable instead of lonely and sketchy. It was quite the excitement for the afternoon, I tell you. I like Wednesdays a lot because, although it is a long long long day, I really really like my Wednesday classes. This is the only day I have electives other than my language classes, which are also good, but it´s nice to get a little more intellectualism. My professors are great and there are some really cool and interesting kids in these classes. (Also some remarkably stupid people, but whatcha gonna do.) Today in school I learned about the development of the city of Barcelona and development of tourism in Spain and the strike that the teachers went on yesterday (I saw the big demonstration in Plaza Luceros, traffic was horrible becuase the procession of people was long and slow and blocked some of the main throroughfares in Alicante) and the educational system and all its problems and the new laws about it and the Spanish constitution and social security... Retired people in Spain recieve money every year to go on vacation, as long as they don´t go during summer, the main touristy season. This insures that the hotels and restaurants and everything can stay open and make money all year, and allows tourism to flow, which is good because it is basically the main industry in Spain.... Everything links together and it is very cool. And I am a huge nerd. I am the opposite of Ellie and many other students here, who cannot beLIEVE that they make us go to class on Fridays?? And when her professor complained and asked the class to please not go out so late on Thursday nights because it is impossible to have class with a bunch of hungover sleepyheads, Ellie said, "I´m sorry, but she better get used to it, because it´s not going to stop. Going to class is just not the reason that we are here." And long Wednesdays are not so bad, not when you have four shots of espresso coursing through your veins. (Only 35 centimos for a capuccino con chocolate from the vending machine, plastic stirring stick included! ¡Que barato! ¡Que riquísimo!) Amy and Lauren are skipping choir again tonight. :( The three of us Americans joined together and they are pooping out. Our German friend Carol wasn´t there last week either. This is partly good, because I will talk more with the Spanish students, like my new friend Silvia who invited me over to her place to try her paella sometime. She says it is her specialty. She is very much a typical alto personality. I like her a lot. On the other hand, I will miss having the other girls with me to help me deal with some of the other people in choir, like this one guy who thinks he is the shit and flirts with all the English speakers, or the just-out-of-high-school ditzy American girl who is kind of clingy and omigod! totally excited about everything! Actually both of them are not that bad and I won´t mind having a conversation or two with them... Being with this group of Americans has taught me how to be more amused and less annoyed by ditzy, less-than-intelligent people. Still, I am glad when Wednesday rolls around and I can get my learn on. Yeeeeahhhh.

2002-10-29T03:39:00.000-08:00

I just found out from a weblog of someone very close to me the answer to a question that I directly asked him in an email. The question was regarding the upcoming marriage of someone from our high school class. Crazily, a girl who dated and broke the hearts of several friends of mine, who went to my elementary school and had a controlling best-friendship with another friend of mine, whose birthday parties I went to and whose house I slept over at, whose horrible mother was one of my girl scout troup leaders, is getting MARRIED. Wowwwwwwww.... When I read the name (on the weblog of the person who refused to answer my question personally in an email, as it had been asked), I gasped loudly and all these people in the library looked over to see what had happened. My mind is blown. Everyone seems to be talking about marriage all of a sudden but it keeps hitting closer to home, and Krista is not supposed to be getting married at this point of life. I guess this is my marriage conversation #1 of the day, which will certainly be followed by more as I relate this story to friends and hear about their sister´s/friend´s/personal-plans-for-future wedding complete with too much information on dresses, bridesmaids, colors, rings, music, money, time of year, honeymoon... What is with all of these young people getting married already?! It is freaking me out. I am regretfully entering the time of life when weddings are a frequent topic of conversation and a frequent occurrence among friends and acquaintences. This makes me uneasy. Now in my mind, the main purpose of weblogs is to babble at liberty about your personal thoughts on the world and then post them for anyone to read and enjoy/judge you by. I don´t know if that is a good purpose but hey, everybody´s doing it, and it´s the truth. I do not think that weblogs should be used to convey information of a conversational nature, especially when that information is requested directly in a personal email. Yet I have been the victim of such weblog misuse. Speaking of indirectness, I am endlessly frustrated by the fact that I cannot type in the address of that particular weblog whenever I wish to view it, becuase there is no way to type the symbol that is over the N in Ñ without the N on computers in Spain. Por eso, every time I want to view it I go to google, search for something like "elephant tidal andy martin chicago", click on the first site it finds with the title about thinking about me all the time, read a bit from that site, then go to the links section and finally click on the link to the weblog that I want to read. It is a huge hassle. If you want to read someone else´s thoughts about Krista´s upcoming marriage, or about the shameful purpose of weblogs and the embarrassment they bring, or if you simply want to view a great picture of the author of said weblog with devil horns and a box of Jalepeño poppers, follow the above instructions, and you can imagine that you too are sitting in a computer lab in Alicante without the little tilde thing on your keyboard.

2002-10-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Had some time before choir and using the internet again won out over playing with the cats or watching people make out in the grass. Public Displays of Affection are VERY common in Spain, and now that it is dark out at this time they seem to have escalated to the next level. Not that anybody holds ANYTHING back when they are in broad daylight anyway. I am still surprised that "Lindsay" is such a terribly difficult name for Spaniards to pronounce. At the elementary school, all the kids were totally blown away by my name... I had to write it on the board, not that that helps much. I also dropped off some film today, and just like last time, when I told the guy my name was Lindsay he immediately gave the pen and information sheet to me, throwing up his hands in an "I give up" manner. You´d think I was expecting him to pronounce or spell "Lefeber" or "Wauwatosa" or something. I am getting sick of having a headache all the time.

2002-10-28T04:02:00.000-08:00

As Grover sang so beautifully on Sesame Street back in my day, "GranaaAAaaAAaaAAdaaAAaaAAaaAAaaAA! OLÉOLÉOLÉOLÉOLÉ!" I loved the city. It looks like this. I had a great weekend there, complete with a live Flamenco show, a beautiful (if gory) monestary and cathedral (make sure to check out the organ in those pictures, It was beautiful, I wanted to hear it so bad!), the site where Cristobal Colón asked Ferdinando and Isabela for money to check out a new path to the Indies and the coffins of Ferdinand and Isabel, what Bill Clinton referred to as "the most beautiful sunset ever*," and of course the Alhambra. The Alhambra is the last of hte great Muslim palaces and it is AMAZING. The gardens, the intricate details carved in clay eveywhere, the tiles, the fountains-- the whole water system in this huge place runs without machinery, they simply figured out how to use gravity and water pressure to make all these fountains work. Unfortunately the famous fountain of lions wasn´t running, but I still saw it! We spend the whole morning at the Alhambra yesterday, and I was glad that I remembered to bring sunscreen because a lot of skin was exposed in my tank top and it was HOT and the sun was strong. It was a good weekend, hung out with some cool people and just had a nice time. We had more free time than the other trips we took with the group and that made a huge difference. Came home and crashed though, even after sleeping for almost the entire 5 hour bus ride... Paz came in and took off my shoes and put a blanket on me, but I slept the whole night in my clothes on top of my covers. It is still really hot here. It is cold in the mornings but gets sooo hot during the day. It´s 75 degrees here, heat index of 76. What´s up? It´s almost November. It is hard to understand. I don´t know what I am going to do when I return to Wisconsin and Minnesota. I hope I find money somewhere to afford to turn the heat on in our apartment in St. Paul. Speaking of which, I just heard this morning that Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash?! I met him at Macalester. He was a good guy. He was a good politician. It is so weird to be behind on American news here... Some things are all over the television, like the sniper. But with many more gory pictures than I´m sure any of you saw in the states. Still, it is weird to find out about things when they seem so far away... Hard to explain. * - Let it be known that we realized too late that if Bill Clinton had in fact seen "the most beautiful sunset ever," we were futile in our attempt to see it again. The most beautiful sunset ever can only occur once in the span of time, and so we should not have been surprised to view the somewhat disappointing sunset over Granada last Saturday night.

2002-10-25T02:06:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I went to the elementary school again to work with a class of 10 year olds who have never had an American student come to their class the whole time they have been learning English. They were really excited and fun to work with and talk to about Halloween. I am also beginning to really like the teacher of the English classes, Maria. I like her for several reasons. 1) She picks me up on her way to school so I don´t have to take the bus, and goes out of her way in other ways as well because she wants her students to work with real English speakers. She wants to learn from us too. 2) Maria is politically minded and very interesting. The class is doing this little Halloween puppet show play thing and they were listening to a tape of the dialogue. It is about a witch who turns a princess into a bird, but then a knight comes and kisses the bird and she turns into the princess. The witch falls into the river and dies and the knight says, "Now we can marry and live happily together." Maria stopped the tape and said, "what is this? The knight thinks he can just marry the princess now? Because he thinks that alllllllllll women are craaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy about getting married, and craaaaaaaaaazy about handsome knights. No! The princess will say, I don´t know you! I am too young! I have to finish my studies and get a job! I don´t want to marry you!" This was how she ended the story. I was very impressed. Because most of the girls in Spain are in fact crazy about getting married and crazy for handsome guys. I am learning though that this is changing, and many women in Spain are now overwhelmed with trying to do it all-- studying, having a job, raising kids, running the house, caring for grandparents. They are trying to be more modern but the traditions have not caught up with them yet and so they are stuck being responsible for everything. Another interesting thing about school politics: after class was over we were in the teachers lounge and Maria was showing me these articles that were in there about new laws for the schools and all of these problems with them. There is actually a teacher strike scheduled for next Tuesday. (In Spain, strikes are very scheduled and usually last about 3 hours and then everyone goes back to work.) The problem is that in Spain, everyone has the right to a free education until they are 16. This includes immigrants, legal or not, and people of all classes. There are public schools, which are free and generally crappy because they dont get much money-- these schools generally have to deal with all of the non-spanish speaking immigrants. There are semi-private schools, which the government will help parents pay for, and there are private private schools which the parents have to pay for themselves. Except that the government gives lots of money to the private schools. Maria was also telling me about some pamphlet about schools in Spain that is full of pictures and examples of schools that DO NOT EXIST. Were never built, are not anywhere, but this pamphlet talks about how great and modern and wonderful they are. Also, the organization of the schools is supposed to be totally democratic, but right now the directors of the schools are being specially selected by the government. It´s very bad. The teachers are very angry. So Maria photocopied these articles for me and helped me understand parts of them that would be difficult... While in the copy room, she and another teacher were explaining the title of one of them to me. It references a quote that was used by the media after WW2 was over and generally means "Advancing towards the rear." I asked what the last word meant and Maria told the other teacher to explain it to me. He said, "What, the rear of a political group or the rear of a woman?" They laughed, and Maria said, "In the USA that would be considered sexual harrassment!" And they laughed again, and explained they were just having fun. I thought a lot about sexual harrassment laws in the US and how they seem so silly to many people here. Are they? Are they too extreme and strict? It´s weird looking at it from another culture´s perspective. I have been learning a lot about politics and stereotypes and cultural attitudes by simply comparing what different people say to me. Maria has one opinion, Paz has another, my Dos Democrácias professor (who I love) says something else, my other 5 professors all have a different take on the same subject... It is very interesting. Learning about the Spanish constitution ("you will laugh when you read that" "It is a very incomplete constitution" "Isn´t it strange?" "it lies"), knowing what it says about politics/education/religion/etc and then seeing those things in action and seeing how the law puts it into action / ignores it (I read the section on rights and responsibilites), talking about divorced parents in my Mujeres (=women´s studies) class and in Dos Democrácias and with Maria, and then talking to Paz vs. observing her and her friends. Different attitudes about different cities, about different racial and religious and historical groups, different attitudes on food. Not being able to speak as easily has taught me that you learn a lot by listening... just by being able to compare what you know and what you observe and what you hear different people say in your head without commenting. It is a good lesson for me to learn. Also, last night I went to Teatro Principal by myself to see Hello Dolly! in Spanish. It was really fun... I was REALLY excited. I would never have been able to understand what was going on if I didn´t know the show pretty damn well. Got a couple of interesting translations-- holy cabooses = jolines (similar but different than "joder", kind of like saying "oh fudge"), Ernestina Rica instead of Money... It was hard to understand the Spanish, i was too far away to see their mouths moving. They did a lot more to establish romantic connections in every case, between every couple including Dolly and Horacio, which helped to make sense of things. Added some more interesting symbolism too-- Dolly came out for "Before the Parade Passes By" wearing the hat with ribbons down her back. Great singing, great acting-- really good characterizations of everybody. Dolly was great. Ambrose was much more an "artist." Minnie was hilarious and akward and outspoken. Irene Malloy was much sexier and flirtier... Dancing was much more choreographed. All movements of the chorus in the background were very orchestrated and dramatic and graceful. Dancing waiters-- AWESOME. Parade: lame. Ours was way better. Oh, and no live orchestra, all pre-recorded music. :( Brought back lots of memories. I had lots of fun. My favorite addition: After the song with Dolly´s line about snuggling up to the cash register on those cold winter nights ("It´s a little lumpy, but it rings!"), the next scene began with a blackout and the sound of the cash register, CH-CHNG! CH-CHING! CH-CHING! CH-CHING! and the lights come up on Horace alone in the feed shop, busily and frustratedly pushing buttons and pulling the lever over and over. A good laugh. Going to Granada this weekend with the group. Whoo hoo!

2002-10-24T00:47:00.000-07:00

Hooray, here are pictures of school, the Universidad de Alicante. For some information on the campus: Council´s office, where my mail comes and I get general info, is in Aulario II. Aulario III is the horrible prison-type building where everyone in Council had their classes for the first month. I spend lots of time at the library using the computers, which are in the 2nd and 3rd floor with the huge long glass windows. (A lovely view.) I am trying to get a hold of my friend´s digital camera to take some personal pictures of people and places, but there are some complications... eventually I´ll get some taken and post them here. I also found a site with someone else´s lame personal pictures of Alicante. They were on the Council program here this summer. Mostly they are pictures of drunken partying, which is what many people do here all the time, but there are a few that might be interesting, like the castle, or Armando, or Toledo, or the bar Austin´s where everyone begins their nights out. Although these are not people on my program this semester, they seem similar, so you can get an idea of the kind of students who I have been talking (complaining) about.

2002-10-23T10:29:00.000-07:00

For Alicante pictures click here. Click on the top strip of pictures, which will open a new window thing, and then hit the "back" button on your main window to get back to my blog. Then, in the small window, use the "siguiente" or "anterior" buttons to move through the set. I´ve been to the MARQ museo arqueológico, el puerto, playa san juan, playa postiguet (in the background of one of htese is our hotel from teh first day), teatro principal (hello dolly is there tomorrow night), el ayuntamiento, el barrio (but those are definately not casas tipicas, not any that i have seen anyway), castillo de santa barbara, "como un estrella" = like a star is a sculpture right near the train station and corte ingles, a huge department store, where i meet people often adn where i transfer busses-- there are ugly buildings and traffic all around it that you can´t see, the picture is really funny actually; the Explanada, plaza luceros (another meeting place). Enjoy! Does anyone else think that the bird´s eye view looks kind of like the campus at Northwestern?

2002-10-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking about my comment about food-orientation that I posted last time. I realized that food is a big focus here, because it´s something everyone needs and everyone can talk about. The students, especially the girls, end up talking about it a lot. How everything is fried and they can´t believe how much oil is in everything or how many carbs they are eating and how it´s great that we eat so much fruit and don´t they bake anything how they are gaining/losing weight. Love the food, hate the food, scared of the food. I also found out recently that one of my friends struggles with bulimia, but her attitude is no different than most of the girls here. It´s hard because I really don´t want to be pulled into that type of consciousness again, worrying about eating and gaining weight and everything, but I also want to stay healthy and exercise and it is true that basically everythign I eat is drenched in oil and fried, which I know is not good for me... A minor dilemma which I can surely handle for two more months. Speaking of food, for Paz´s birthday we went out last night to "Foster´s Hollywood," an "American Style Restaurant." It was kind of like Applebees or Ground Round. Even had peanuts to throw on the floor. Paz and I split some fajitas, which were very good, and took home dessert to eat with our champagne: a lucious piece of chocolate cake with rich fudge sauce... It reminded me of a certain Jewish grandmother who was always offering me more fudge, but it didn´t taste as good. Paloma had insisted that she didn´t like the hamburgers at Foster´s, so (since we had gone to the mall for the restaurants again, I guess this is a normal place to go out for dinner) she got her dinner at McDonald´s next door and took it into Foster´s. She did eat a piece of cheesecake at Foster´s, and then wanted to share our fajitas as well. This unfortunately turned into a very akward situation, where Paz, who has been angry with Paloma a lot lately, started talking to me about Paloma´s selfishness so that Paloma would overhear. She began talking about the gift we had gotten her together (a certificate for a manicure and pedicure because Paz likes that kind of thing and is totally stressed out lately-- I have a bad record with these but I think that this one will actually be cashed by the recipient. Note: all past certificates of this type are still valid.) and asking if Paloma was going to pay her half. We hadn´t talked about it but I assumed that I would pay for most of it. We had made the certificate together though and it truly was from both of us-- Paz started insisting that if Paloma did not pay her half, it was not really a gift from her, and that she knows Paloma has at least 10 Euro to buy a gift but that Paloma doesn´t have the sentiment of gift giving because she doesn´t want to give up her money. Talking about how Paloma is very selfish with her money and with everything, such as the food that night, and about other children that she knows who save up their money to give gifts to their parents for their birthdays. I told Paz that Paloma did have the sentiment of gift giving, that this was a different situation because she is only NINE and we are like sisters, that this was a gift to Paz and she should not be concerned or intervening with the money involved, and moreover that Paloma was sitting right there. Paz continued to rant and complain and specifically bash Paloma´s character without looking at her or addressing her directly. The whole situation made me terribly uncomfortable. I was sitting across from the two of them and could watch Paloma withdrawing and finally beginning to cry, at which point Paz turned to her and said, "Why are you crying? Don´t cry." Paloma said, "I don´t want to be selfish." Paz: "But you are selfish. It´s the truth. Are you going to pay 10 Euro for the gift? Look at your food from McDonalds. Look at that cake. You just ate my dinner. It´s true, you are selfish." Then Paz turns to me and says, "Lindsay, what is your opinion? Don´t you think she is selfish?" I tried to explain that, while there is truth in what Paz was saying, I think that if you are going to hold Paloma responsible for her money and her food and whatever, you ought to give her the respect of talking to her directly and including her in the conversation instead of talking about her as if she wasn´t there. Paz said that she was there the whole time and could have said something but instead she just sat there coloring. I thought the whole thing was totally rude and mean.... Paz does this kind of often too. Paloma will want something out of the ordinary (ie McDonalds) and Paz will say no, no, no, but then give in, and then later use it against her to make her feel guilty. I told her later that it made me really uncomfortable to be in that situation, only being there as a sounding board for Paz to bounce her complaints off of and onto Paloma indirectly. Paz apologized but said that she was worried about Paloma´s selfishness and did not know how to talk to her about it. All in all, on the way home in the car I just sat and thought about how totally grateful I am for the family I have and the respect that is given to children in my family. Thank you and a big hug to everyone reading this who is related to me. The other exciting part of the evening was the hugest most disgusting cockroach I have ever seen on the wall of the living room. It was probably an inch wide and 3 and a half inches long, and could fly. Paz killed it with a spray while she was talking on the phone to her 80 year old aunt who had called to wish happy birthday-- "Thanks for calling!" SPRAYYYYYYYYY "I´m doing well, good to hear from you" STAMP STAMP STAMP "Thank you, thank you." STAMP STAMP STAMP. What´s more, Paz wouldn´t let us open the windows because that is how they get in, so we had to just turn on the fan and open little tiny vents in the shades and live on whatever oxygen happened to be left in the atmosphere. Had my first dream in Spanish last night. Who knows if it was proper grammar or whatever, but it was definately Español. In the dream Mom and I were in a store and the womean there started speaking spanish to us and we did our best to speak back to her. Craziness! But a good sign... i am not as frustrated with the language anymore in waking life either... Hooray!

2002-10-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

Weekend was pretty good... Here is a summary. If boring, lo siento. On Friday night, ended up going to the mall with Ellie and Amy just for something to do and then to a little restaurant for wine and tasty garlic mushrooms. Saturday morning I had the kind of Saturday morning I was hoping for. Sunny, not too hot, lots of people out. Slept enough, had a good breakfast, went out walking. Got a new watch, went to the mercado, wrote in my journal in a little park. For lunch we had some "spaghetti," that is spaghetti noodles with "tomato sauce" on it, which comes out of a box and tastes like spaghettios, and chorizo and jamon sprinkled throughout. Siesta and then Paz and Paloma left. Read Bridget Jones´ Diary, got a call from home... Couldn´t decide what I wanted to do later, called Ben for a while, decided I ought to force myself to go out. Showered, made dinner (fried frozen jamon y queso crepe, bocadillo sandwich with fish in tomato sauce from a can, cerveza), called around. Wasn´t having luck till I got ahold of Lauren, who wasn´t going out but who was watching a movie with her sister and sister´s fiancé. She invited me over-- it was exactly what I wanted to do that night. We watched Amor Ciego - translation: blind love - which was the movie Shallow Hal dubbed over in Spanish. A good evening. Sunday I woke up alone again, Paz and Paloma had never come home after going to Gema´s house. Had a tranquilo breakfast, started some homework-- reading the constitución de españa! They came home with Sophia, 5 year old daughter of Gema and friend of Paloma. Those two were obnoxious and put Paz in a very bad mood for most of the day, but I got lots of work done. We ate a good meal of chicken fillets, tomato salad, french fries, a fried egg and bread. Took Sophia home, talked to Jessica, the student at their house. (I realized for the first time this weekend that the names of the three students staying with Paz and her two best friends are Lindsay, Jessica and Julie = Lindsay, Jesse, Julia...) Ran some errands... At home I ate the most delicious frozen pizza ever. (Can you tell that I was focused on food this weekend?) It was spinach, feta cheese adn walnuts, no sauce, and I cannot believe that I ate the entrie thing except for once slice by myself. I was totally stuffed. But it was too good to throw anything away... Today has been good except that I got totally and completely lost on my way home, i tried to take a different way because I had gone to this used CD shop (got an "Amaral" CD), and I was lost and sweating in the sun for an hour, but eventually I made it home. I should never have taken the map out of my bag. Going to choir now... time to bust out the ol´ Handel. Paz´s birthday tomorrow. Not sure of plans. Two more months!

2002-10-18T04:20:00.000-07:00

Just so everybody is aware of this, anytime there is an update here or an email in your inbox it means that I have waited for 10-40 mintues for a computer to free up in the library. For a school as huge as this one, the computer resources are remarkably small. I have never seen a printer in the library anywhere, and there is always a long line for computers... Maybe the school should spend less money on palm trees and fountains and more money on the students. Of course there is a giant empty computer lab on the first floor with 250 computers that no one is allowed to use until November because those are reserved for "registration." The lab is EMPTY. I think I spend about 4 hours of every day waiting. For the bus to come, for the bus to get where I´m going, for the bank, for the computers, for Paz to go shopping/come home, for the food, for siesta to be over, for SOOO many things. I am learning patience. I am learning to think too much. I am learning to be really damn sick of waiting all the time. Yesterday was a really fun day, hopefully a turning point for me. The evening before had been long, I did skip choir where apparently they began sightreading the hallelujah chorus (hm should I pretend to sightread teh soprano or the alto part that I know by heart?) without warming anybody up and there was a lot of screeching horribleness, so it was okay. At home I was making a card for Ellie´s birthday and Paz and Paloma asked me what present I had for her. I told them, this card, and they immediately insisted that I give her one of the tiny porceline dolls out of the china cabinet. Paloma has a collection of dolls-- most are disney barbies of all of the main characters of all of the movies, pretty cool, but then there were a few of these little cheesy tacky spanish dolls... I didnt want to take it but they insisted and reminded me I had no money and helped me wrap it up and everything. Paz made fun of me once again because my perfeccionist tendencies gave me difficulties in present wrapping, and I have the same difficulties when trying to wrap my sandwiches in foil. Argh. She gave me a hard time about redoing my braids this morning too-- "¿Puedes? ¿Puedes? ¿Necesitas ayuda?" Anyway. The next day I made it through the morning and went to Ellie´s for lunch. She LOVED that little tacky doll! It was really nice to be over at her apartment and meet her señora. I was really thankful that she (Sacramento) had invited me. We had delicious paella and coffee and a cake from Corte Ingles and champagne... We were stuffed! Afterwards Ellie and I just hung out in her room and talked, which was really great, something very normal that we don´t get to do very often here. I ran some errands and then studied with Amy in a café, and then Lauren, Rachel and Ellie met us and we all went to take Ellie out for her birthday. Churros and chocolate as the place was closing up, then to Jazz Bar where five guys from our program were playing guitar and singing. Everyone from Council was there, it was a pretty bizarre reunion, but it was really fun and I stayed out late and got home at 2. The 45 minute walk home is a pain in the ass but better than a taxi I suppose... I was with a group of people for almost the entire way as well. Still, living so far away is a problem for me. At Ellie´s, Sacramento offered that if I don´t want to make the trek home some late night I can spend the night there on the extra bed in Ellie´s room-- an awesome option. I don´t really have plans for the weekend except to go watch shopping. I can´t really decide if I like not having a watch or if it drives me crazy. I may go to Altea with the girls on Saturday, but they are leaving extra early and right now sleeping in sounds much more appealing. Plus I wanted to hang out in Alicante during the morning/day on Saturday... the weather has been sunny and windy and cooler, and it helps my mood a lot and makes me want to be out and about. I wanted to go to the outdoor market or the central market, and both are only open on Saturday mornings. We´ll see. I am praying that this good mood holds up... I am almost halfway through my time here, I am beginning to think I can make it through and enjoy the majority of the time I have left. I hope so. I mostly hope that I can just regulate myself and stop being so manic... as some people on my program often say, "We need some tranquila up in here." Tranquila is nice, y felicidad es mejor.

2002-10-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

I am sick of crashing through so many moods here... I feel like my schedule is too irregular, I go from being overwhelmingly busy to totally bored to thinking about coming home to feeling like I know where to go in Alicante. Yesterday I was fine in class, then went to the elementary school to work with the kids for the first time, which was kind of haphazard and out of control, but I think I will go back. Out of control kids who you can´t understand or speak to are hard to deal with. A letter from Katie and a phone call from Ben were both happy things and also made me sad, but I was brought out of the dumps by Cat Stevens and songs from "Sad Lisa" to "Don´t Be Shy" to "Miles from Nowhere" to "On the Road to Findout." More music made me feel better that night when I dressed up and went to a free piano concert. It was really good, really different. I was feeling better, feeling like I could handle it here, and then this morning has been another roller coaster of emotions and exhaustion. Bad morning in the casa, frustration in class, frustration with other people, didn´t do a paper that was due today... I think I am going to cut my busy Wednesday short and skip choir... I can´t handle any more re-reading of West Side Story. It´s the only thing we work on, I know it, I am sick of it. Arrghhhh......... Tomorrow is Ellie´s birthday, I have to figure out what to do for her, but we´ll go out with some friends and hopefully that will be fun. I am crashing from mood to mood moment by moment. I am the little blonde engine that couldn´t decide how she felt.

2002-10-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

Maybe I will change the title of this page to "La Chica Blanca en la Disco Beach," which is one of the best descriptions of Alicante I have ever heard, from a guy at a hostel in Italy. I can´t believe how warm it is here... I got a new sweater in Italy and Ellie got a leather jacket and I was hoping that I brought enough cold weather clothes, but sure enough, everyone went to the beach yesterday because it was so freakin hot. It´s 61 right now with a high of 80 today. When we came into the Alicante airport after our trip, we heard a remarkable number of british accents. Upon asking some women what was going on, we found out that there was no special occasion, no convention or reunion as we had expected, but that this is how it goes in Alicante in the fall and winter; We are the British Holiday location. I can now look forward to seeing middle class Englishfolk lounging around in their shorts and sandals and yelling at the hyper kids they are holding on leashes while trying to get Grandma across the street... at least if the example we saw in the airport holds true to form.

2002-10-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

Italy summary, continuing with Perugia, Florence, Milan: PERUGIA-- A beautiful, quaint, cute, romantic European town that is all narrow streets, old buildings, flower boxes and always either uphill or downhill on cobblestone streets. Think Amélie or Chocolat. We met: Ellie´s roommate Emily and her great all-vegitarian roommates. We saw: Their amazing apartment. An underground walled city. Many shops. The Perugina Chocolate factory. A beautiful countryside view from a park on a hill. We ate: A lot of chocolate. A meal in a funky restaraunt that was pretty fun and mostly tasty until, surprise, it cost €27. A fabulous dinner party at Emily´s apartment with lots of cool people and delicious food and good wine. And Vienetta for dessert! FLORENCE-- Yeah, it was Florence. Yeah, it is really great. We met: Ryan Hagen and the NYU crew, including Chris Koniezcka who was surprisingly in Florence after his American road trip fell through. Lindsay Goss and two other Macalester girls who were in a different program studying there. Leslie Monagle, a girl who I didn´t really know but who went to Tosa East and was also on Lindsay´s program, and we saw each other and it was very strange. We saw: A "rat" in the Arno. Some classy bars, including the Ryan Hagen favorite, "ART BAR." The cathedral Santa Maria Novella. The Medici Chapel. The Medici Palace. The leather market, several times. (The leather market saw Ellie reaching for her money belt several times as well.) The Florence Synagogue. Lindsay Goss´s reproduction of the Fresh Concepts sketch show opener on the steps of Santa Maria Novella, complete with song and dance. The Duomo. The Cupola with a rainy but incredible view of Florence. The Central Market. The Acadamia and Michealangelo´s David, which wowed me more than I expected it would and in a way that I can not explain. The open air sculpture gallery. The only free church in Florence, complete with the sound of the monks chanting. We ate: very well. A home-cooked pasta meal at Ryan´s apartment. A lot of espresso and "café mocciado." A delicious and homey 3 course meal for American students for five dollars in the basement of an American church, where the pastor kept encouraging us to finish the wine and have more pesto. We also had rice krispie treats for dessert there. A wonderful feast of fresh bread, cheese, pesto, sundried tomatoes, grapes, wine and chocolate that we purchased fresh in the market and ate there with swiss army knife and fingers on a little out of the way place on the second floor. This was probably my favorite meal of our trip. Soup and tea for my cold, brought on by the temperature change, in a little diner-type cafeteria. Tiramisu. The most delicious thing ever at Fermata Ultima (last stop), a late-night creperia disovered by Lindsay Goss: a fresh crepe with nutella, some kind of white cream, and walnuts. Holy Italian sweetness, Batman. MILAN-- We saw: Rain. A very nice hostel. A very creepy man who the people at the hostel let us hide from. A lot of rain. An internet café. The subway. The train station. Did I mention the rain? The airport. The worst fog I have ever seen, which made for a 17 hour day of traveling and waiting. Yeah, we didn´t see too much. It was raining. We were tired. We ate: Hot sandwiches in a park by the hostel. Happy-hour buffet snacks in "Bar Louisiana" which was the closest place to the subway stop we could find in the rain. Gelato, at a gelateria which was across the street from Bar Louisiana. We had planned to see some of Milan that night, but we saw two restaurants and a store that was across the street and then went home to the hostel to sleep and rest our feetsies. It was a great trip and I was glad to come home. I wished I was really coming home home, to family and familiar things of the United States. At least I had my host family to come home to-- sike! Dragged myself in at 11 on Saturday night to find a note on my bed that said, "Hola, I am traveling. I´ll be back on Sunday night. There is food in the kitchen. Careful with the gas. Close the blinds before you go to bed. Kisses, Paz." So much for a home cooked meal again... I did my disgusting laundry and sewed my bag and talked on the phone and watched a movie and sat around on sunday, and made myself food but not much because I don´t know how to cook with the food we have. I was glad when Paz came home.

2002-10-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

Using the internet once more before catching the train from Roma to Perugia. Rome has been beautiful... I really began to fall in love with the city as we strolled around last night after dinner. It is amazing to see so many beautiful, old things and places and so many different kinds of people. We feel like we have finally begun to understand the mix between the very old and the very new and how that works in this city. It is impressive. Yesterday we spend the day with Ralph, and it was incredible to see him. We went to the colosseum and toured the Forum and the area with all of hte ancient Roman ruins. It's crazy to be trying to figure out a date on a building, but it's hard because it's in Roman numerals, and then you realize: ROMAN numerals. I AM IN ROME. We went to a gelati place and sat there for so long that we had to buy another helping.... hee hee. But it's Italy, and we had to. We've been eating well, little picnics of food we bring with us for lunch, and going out for dinner. It was pizza the first night and tomato and mozzerella salads the second night. Plus wine of course, and bread, and bruchetta, and chocolate and espressos here and there. The sun came out yesterday and we could really start to see the beauty of all of these buildings. Every time you turn around there is a big old statue staring at you, or something made of marble, and if you can see around the enormous groups of tourists you really get to take in some amazing sights. I am excited to go to Perugia-- it sounds like a small, romantic, classic Italian city. It will be good to stay with Ellie's friend as well, because the hostel worked out fine but it had its quirks, like "Guido," one of the employees there, or freezing showers and wet bathroom floors and a hot water heater on the opposite side of my bunk that made a horrible loud noise any time any of the showers or sinks in teh hostel were turned on. Getting into the groove of this though, strengthening my walking muscles and letting myself get the feel of the city. Not really looking forward to going back to Alicante at the end of this week, but I think that maybe Ellie and I will be able to approach it from a little bit of a different angle now and find a way to make it work better for us, a way that we will be able to enjoy the city and do things there that we enjoy without worrying about finding things to enjoy. Still, I am also excited to return to the states in December... what a crazy mix of emotions that will be! For now though, we are living it up in Italy!

2002-10-04T08:06:00.000-07:00

La Chica Blanca en Roma! It is surreal to be here but it is very exciting. The coloseum, the Spanish Steps, the panthenon, the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica... we are doing it all. Ellie and I split a huge ice cream sundae last night to celebrate our arrival. It is expensive here so we're trying to minimize our coffee and gelato intake. The weather is grey and cool but kind of romantic. The Freestyle Hostel, where we are staying, is pretty laid back and a little weird but working out well. Thinking about home a lot but amazed to be here. Going to meet up with Ralph Renson tomorrow... I am so excited to see him.

2002-10-02T06:56:00.000-07:00

Last night: homework, planning, studying over coffee with Amy. Today: long day of classes, scrambling to tie up loose ends such as mysteriously detained packages, choir, packing. Tomorrow: email, one quiz, last minute stuff, ¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡VAMOS A ITALIA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am psyched.

2002-10-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

As predicted by several people who know me well, singing in choir is going to make me feel much better. The first rehearsal last night was very promising. I´m joining with two other musical friends of mine, and we met a German girl who spoke English and had lived in Sheboygan for 6 months but knows even less Spanish than we do. We got the music for West Side Story (ironic after singing it all summer on the College Pro Ladders with Elliott) and a big Schumann piece, learned a little canon to warm up with, got placed into sections... I have high hopes. We started singing the music for West Side Story and I freaked out when everyone started singing in solfeggio. I tried desperately to figure it out through the whole rehearsal, the piece was in B flat and I couldn´t seem to get it right, and then at the end I realized that they were singing fake solfeg, C was always do and the notes weren´t going to change with the key. I was very relieved that I would not have to learn ANOTHER language while I was here. So after a nap and some music yesterday, and buying bus tickets for our Italy trip and a new satchel to carry my stuff during the day, I am feeling much better. Really excited about Italy... I think it is going to be really good for me, a really good change. For dinner Paz made me chicken soup, which was kind of a joke because I had been trying to explain my Chicken Soup for the Soul CD to them the other day, so she made it for me because it is good for my soul. She also kept refilling my beer glass because, as she said, "Cerveza es bueno para la alma también." Paz has also been trying to speak to me in English once in a while.... she has taken a lot of classes and she knows a lot of vocabulary, which is really helpful, but she doesn´t speak very often so she struggles to put sentences together. Still, she is trying to speak in English to give me a break from Spanish and it is very sweet. Paloma chimes in her favorite phrase from her English workbook, "wa´s de time?" She is a very time-conscious little girl and she is always trying to look at our watches in the car on the way to school, worried that we are running late. Now she asks in English and we all laugh-- she says it all the time, whenever we say anything in English, and it has become a running gag. She thinks the word "fart" is the funniest thing she´s ever heard, and Paz thinks it´s funny too. Their other favorite english word is "cockroach." I am really lucky to have them taking care of me and cheering me up. Mood swings are weird here... so much to do and so much excitement but such a long distance at the same time. Getting out of Spain for a few days will be a great break. The amazing discovery of this morning: a couple tablespoons of Nestle Quik into my café con leche (coffee with milk). Oh man. Now that I don´t have the chocolate cereal anymore, I feel kind of like I´m missing out... Paz and Paloma, and many people in Spain, have chocolate milk for breakfast, and then a snack of a pastry or cookies at about 11, and the big meal at 2 or 3. Now I can sneak a little chocolate in there too... Definately a few customs that I have to import to the USA when I return. Namely meal schedules and siesta.

2002-09-30T04:23:00.000-07:00

Well I can say now that I have experienced the Alicante nightlife; clocked in at 4:15 AM on Friday and 5 on Saturday. Friday I hung out with a girl and her intercambio (spanish student learning english) and we went to lots of bars and clubs and mostly kept moving but didn´t spend much time anywhere. Saturday I went to a house party at the home of another girl´s intercambio, which was really fun and much more my style than the clubs, but afterwards I met up with Paz and her friends at a club and danced for a while and had fun before coming home. The daytimes this weekend were not so great. Spent a lot of time by myself or at least feeling by myself amidst lots of people. After going out on Saturday night Paz´s friend Gema slept over, so in the morning we went to her house for cena. Paloma and Gema´s daughter Sophia were there, also Gema´s mom. The meal was really good, paella and mushrooms and salad, and the little mermaid in spanish was on the TV, but I was feeling really alone and pretty silent. I can have a conversation when I want to, but it´s hard and I am tired of working so hard to understand everything. So at Gema´s house when the women were all engaged in conversation that was mostly about silly pointless things, like most normal conversations, I zone out. It´s too hard. I don´t want to work that hard to understand a conversation and be able to hang out with people and relax, or to watch a movie or TV or listen to the radio or music or anything. The only times I was really directly spoken to was when I was asked if I was hungry and if I was tired. In the first case I was given food, in the second I was put to bed, like a baby at naptime, the curtains closed and the door shut behind me. The opposite of what I needed.... very difficult. After sleeping little and talking to Ben on the phone I came out of the room and joined the rest of everyone as they were waking up in the living room. Paz asked me if I was sad and I told her I was and cried and everyone tried to comfort me, which was really nice, but it didn´t make thigns any easier... I helped give the girls a shower and then everyone got all dressed up and made up to go out to the McDonalds at the mall. That was interesting... I had a Greek Mac which is in a pita with yogurt and cucumber sauce, the deluxe fries which are wedges and taste like Johnny V´s seasoned fries. Passed up the beers though I could have had one, and also could have smoked a cigarrette anywhere in that mall if I felt like it. Had this cheese/yogurt strawberry flavored thing for dessert. They also had fish sticks and some other differnt options... The weirdest part was that we sat there talking for like an hour after eating, like you would in any other restaraunt, but it was McDonalds and so very strange. All of the sounds went in one ear and out the other, or not even into my ears at all. On the way home (finally) I was talking to Paz about being frustrated and tired and sick of trying and the three of us ended up in a teary mess. It is good to have her support and she says that she is glad that she has mine, and I am really lucky to be living with people who want to help me out and who love me and take good care of me. After talkign to her adn to my real mom on the phone I was feeling better but today I feel like things are building up on top of me again... It´s the first day of regular classes at the university today and it´s crazy. I got here an hour late after 15 full busses passed by the stop not picking anyone else up, then finally got to class and found out that they changed all of the places where Council´s classes are and had to find the new location. It´s things like that that Council is horrible about. They couldn´t have told us on Friday that our classes were moving? The communication sucks. Today I´m going to buy a bus ticket home from Valencia for after our Italy trip-- thank god that is soon, I need a break adn I´m excited to go. Choir starts tonight. Hopefully that will be fun. I feel like I´m starting to slip downhill. It´s great to be here, but is it over yet?

2002-09-27T04:28:00.000-07:00

After school yesterday I went to the colegio (elementary school) where I am going to be volunteering, helping 8, 9, and 10 year olds learn English. It was one of the first things here that I have seen and thought, "of course, this is for me, I am excited about this!" We saw the classrooms and students and met some of the teachers... really nice. We did see the preschool rooms and I thought about all of the "maestras" in my family... I don´t know the schedule yet but I´ll be helping there once or twice a week I think. I´m really excited, it seems really fun and it will be a good thing to add to my schedule and give me stuff to do. I feel like something has clicked, language-wise. I am still struggling and I know I make a lot of mistakes but it seems like I am remembering vocabulary all of a sudden and I am able to understand basically everything that is said to me, and I feel confident that I can respond the way I want to and communication can happen. It is the beginning but finally I can see how this language thing is going to work. Gracias Dios. Friday friday.... weekend be good to me. Gonna give the nightlife another try I think.

2002-09-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

This morning on the way to school I had a conversation with Paz. A real conversation, where she would say something and I would say something. This is a very good thing. We were talking about Ben and about long distance relationships-- she didn´t realize that I went to school so far away from home and didn´t live at home every weekend. In Spain people generally live with their parents until they are about 30, and usually don´t work at all while they are in school. I´m glad we had this conversation because I think I am getting depressed from lack of sound. There are plenty of sounds here, but many of them I can´t understand, like the TV in the background or the radio or people talking on the bus. I have to work really hard to listen to them so usually I tune them out. The other sounds that I can easily understand are bus noises and cars and American 80´s music pumping from car stereos outside my apartment. I am realizing that I haven´t seen a piano since I´ve been here and I certainly haven´t heard Jesse messing around with different chord progressions and old/new songs. I haven´t heard any records or organs or choirs. I haven´t been singing very much or even listening to my music because there is something weird about speaking/listening to English while I am in Spain, even when I´m by myself.... I don´t really understand why. (Thank goodness choir starts on Monday-- I´m really hoping for good things.) I speak English with people at school and when I´m out with my friends but I feel like I can´t really have conversations with them the way I can with Janna or Mom or Ben. I am much more silent here than I have ever been because it´s a lot of work to just comment on things if I want to say something more than "I like that" or "that´s incredible." Anyway, we had this conversation. And it was really great. I think it was spurred by the caffienated (HOORAY) coffee I had this morning. Hey, it wasn´t Starbucks coffee either, the girl couldn´t get her employee discount so I never got any beans from there. Paz found some leaded coffee in the back of the cupboard. I asked Paz if my accent was very bad-- I know my words aren´t perfect but I don´t want to have an ugly accent. She told me that my accent was sweet, because my voice is sweet. She agreed that many Americans have an accent that sounds like (and she made this noise, imagine an old engine trying to start) "raorrrraaaorrrrrraaaoorrrraaaorrr" but that mine isn´t like that, es dulce. They have an interesting concept of Americans.... one guy I talked to thought that we all carried guns around in holsters in the street, frequently witnessed speeding car chases, and usually parked our cars and walked away leaving them open. We are either easy going chill people or the ultimate patriots or selfish and self-important. As my teacher said, spaniards get their ideas about Americans from two places: the movies and George Bush. Another really interesting thing about Spain is the gory, gory news. I can´t believe the things they show on TV-- footage I´d never seen of September 11th with people falling and crashing from the towers. Dead bodies in the streets. Bloody messes. Two days ago there was a terrorist bomb in País Vasco and three policemen were severely wounded and one killed-- they showed two red indistinguishable pieces of him lying in the grass on the news. America gets the prize for violent fiction, but I can´t believe the real life things that I see on the television in Spain.

2002-09-25T06:42:00.000-07:00

Thought I would give this page a little bit of a new style. It was easy because I don´t know HTML and so I just click on the pre-designed template that I want. Woohoo! I went to Lucentum last night, which is an archeological museum on the site of a dig. It is this ancient Roman city where you can walk the streets and see the foundations of the different buildings and rooms, and see firsthand the places where the wheels from the horsecarts wore down the stone. Pretty amazing.... pretty damn old. I figured out how to turn on the TV with the remote control. To turn it off, you press the power button. Obviously. To turn it on, you have to press the number of the channel you want to start with. When I have wanted to watch TV up until this point, I have been sitting on the couch, repeatedly pushing the power button in vain, and then getting up to push the button on the actual TV, which you have to push twice, once to shut off all the power (it´s kind of in remote-only mode) and once to turn it on. It took me all this time to ask somebody how to use the TV. How lame is that?

2002-09-24T01:01:00.000-07:00

I ran out of toothpaste. Sadly, you can´t buy Tom´s of Maine in España, so I had to venture out to the Mercado and see what I could find. The kind I got is clear and it has little blue "Micropartículas" in it. The micropartículas seem to be the big selling point since the word is all over the box, but nowhere does it explain what the microparticles are or what they do. But hey, my teeth feel clean.

2002-09-23T04:53:00.000-07:00

Madrid is an enormous city. We left on Friday after classes (didn´t get a chance to write then: thursday night we bought our tickets to Italy!!!! so exciting.) and rode a bus for 5 hours or so to our hotel in Madrid. It was a nice big fancy hotel and the views from out of our little balconies were impressive. Everyone said Madrid was very similar to New York. I wouldn´t know because I haven´t been there, but it had the busyness and the crowds and variations of people and stuff going on and noise and smells and some of the buildings that i would imagine are in New York. We had all of Friday night free, so I got some dinner (a giant mess of cholesterol burger with cheese, bacon, a fried egg, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato-- probably the most amazing burger I ever had. came with a big mug o´ beer too) and helado (spanish ice cream. very good.) Afterwards we walked around a little... I had kind of gotten separated from my friends and so I ended up in this party in someone´s hotel room that wasn´t very fun. It seemed dumb to be partying in a hotel room that could have been anywhere... A lot of them went out to bars and clubs later on, such as the 14 story club Carnival, but I was not up for it and had an early night instead. In the morning the bus was broken so after we waited for an hour outside the hotel, we walked to some places that weren´t originally on our itinerary. This unfortunately involved a lot more waiting, and was frustrating. It was a grey cold rainy day and none of us were prepared for it either, being used to Alicante´s perpetual vacation temperatures. It´s kind of like Florida. But once we got inside the places things were better. First we went to this nunnery that has been active since the 15th or 16th century that is also an art museum. I liked it a lot, very quiet and peaceful in the midst of the crazy city... it was interesting to think about the nuns who live there in a middle-ages lifestyle. Afterwards we went to the palace. AMAZING. I took far too many pictures that will express far too little about the impossibility of this place. So gorgeous, every room intricate and beautiful and dripping with chandeliers and carvings and statues and decadence. One room was totally covered in porcealin. Every ceiling had these fancy paintings of angels and the heavens... I was reminded of the ballroom from Beauty and the Beast. Pretty much every room was a smaller version of that ballroom. We visited the senate and had a little tour of the building before breaking for lunch. I ate with Amy and Phil (who both were backpacking around Europe this summer seperately from each other but in all the same places-- very cool people) at a little place called Café Jamaica or something like that. We had some delicious pasta meals- I had some kind of mushroom linguini deal. At first I thought they had real coffee there, so I ordered the Guatemalan blend, but it turned out to be just Guatemalan espresso.... There is no such thing as a cup of coffee here. It´s all espresso or "café con leche" (coffee with milk) or some other blend, but no plain coffee. And a 20 oz cup is unheard of, except at the Starbucks in Madrid (currently the only one in Spain) where several people from our group rushed into to satisfy their cravings. I didn´t go inside but I did ask a friend who worked at a Starbucks in the states to see if she could get her discount and pick me up some beans.... It was my first time patronizing that corporation in years, but I tell you, the decaf beans we have at my house are just not cutting it in the morning and I´m sick of buying the 0.35€ espresso cups from the vending machines at school at 10 o´clock every day. Tangent, sorry. After lunch we visited La Prada and another more modern art museum that I can´t remember the name of.... Saw lots of fancy things, Goyas and Picassos and Dalis. Overwhelming... I wished I knew more about art. I was all museumed out. So I totally changed gears and fed my sports craving with a Real Madrid futbol game. A big group of us went, one girl organized it, and I hemmed and hawed about going because soccer is not my favorite thing, but I decided that if I was going to see a soccer game it was going to be there. As one guy put it, if you didn´t like football but had tickets to the superbowl, wouldn´t you go? I made the right decision. It was AWESOME. We were way up at the top of the stadium and it was crazy noisy and the excitement was so contagious. Those guys are amazing, their skill is incredible. I can´t believe how well they are able to control that ball with any part of their body. Intercepting a pass by jumping up and hitting the ball with their head, and it flies directly to an open teammate who is 20 yards away. But they sure are babies when they get hurt, or if they feel like pretending for one minute that they are hurt. Made our way home in the rain by taxi, and ate dinner at a chinese restaurant. Hit the spot. Getting to Toledo in the morning was another small problem. September 22 was Dia Sin Coches (no car day) in Madrid, and an enormous bike ride was taking place along the street in front of our hotel. We cheered them on for a while and it was so cool and I missed my bike so much, but they never stopped coming, and our bus could not leave. We were literally waiting for hours but finally made it out of the city. Rearranged our plans once again. I really liked Toledo. An old city, narrow streets, very hilly, lots of old gothic buildings and all cobblestone roads. Lots of displays of shining armour outside of souvenir shops, lots of swords and knives and painted ceramic stuff inside. We visited La Casa del Greco and saw some of his art, which I was very fond of. Walked around, worked our quads and calves, ate at a little restaurant and had to get on the bus to come home. I wanted to buy a postcard with a picture of the fabulous cathedral and the caption, "HOLY TOLEDO!" but amazingly, nobody had invented it yet.

2002-09-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

I was thinking this morning about my breakfast. The first day, Paz asked me what kind of cereal I liked, and I ended up with corn flakes. After a while I realized that there was not enough fiber or substance in cornflakes to get me through the day, so I asked if we could get mueslix (granola). Paz said okay, and she got some chocolate mueslix. That night we all had chocolate cereal for dessert, and Paloma had it for dessert again last night, so today when I wanted to try it out for breakfast for the first time, there was not much left. Hmm, chocolate, I thought. For breakfast? Weird. Then I remembered that Paloma has a glass of chocolate milk for breakfast every day, and cookies are another pretty common breakfast food here. I noticed how well my cereal tasted with coffee, and with orange juice, and I thought, hey, maybe these Spanish people are on to something. After all, women in Spain eat like this, and they all have amazing bodies. Then I remembered that their bodies all have a totally different concept of metabolism than mine. On the other mano, when in Rome.... (hey I am going to be in Rome soon.) Chocolate cereal is also kind of nice because nothing here is very sweet. The cookies, the cakes, the pastries, the candy... all kind of sweet but nothing that will satisfy a craving. Except for maybe a bombón, which is a tiny drink of half espresso and half nata. Nata is pure cream. Bombóns are quite sweet but I think too many will kill you. Class was good yesterday... a long day but it felt much more normal to be busy during the day, and to come home at night. I was going to go out but my friend never showed up at the meeting spot and her phone wasn´t on.... hmm. Today I´m going to an outdoor market and doing some Italy planning. Tomorrow, after class, Madrid! A weekend excursion with Council. Should prove to be awesome.

2002-09-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

The afternoon turned out to be a good one yesterday. I went to a famous museum of archeology with two other girls, Amy and Lauren, and it was a success. We walked there in the soggy heat-- it has been rainy lately ("rainy" means that sometimes 6 raindrops land on you while the sun is still shining, and there are somewhat fewer people on the beach) but it has made everything very humid and icky. We were disgusting when we got to the museum but they let us in and we spent a few hours learning about items from different eras that have been found in this area; it was really well organized and interesting, lots of different mediums, sound and videos and artifacts, organized into sections from the prehistoric period to the roman empire to the 19th century. Long long walk home, on which we saw a bus that was on fire, and Amy and I succumbed to the call of churros and chocolate. Danced to Red Hot Chili Peppers with my sister last night and slept a lot to get me through this long day. Wednesdays I have my three language classes from 9-12, then my combined class (Urban Development and Human Geography in the Mediterranean/Women in Contemporary Spanish Society) from 12-3 (usually ends before 2:30) and Dos Democracias from 4-7. ¡Ay! Today was the first day we had the women´s studies part of our combined class-- it´s really not combined at all, but just alternating classes each week taught by different professors. They combined them because there weren´t enough people interested in each class but together they can still be offered. Anyway, it was great to be in a women´s studies class again!! We read this article about some research these people are doing on the sexist nature of the dictionary of the spanish academy-- it´s surprising, and amazing, and interesting, and I remembered why I like studying this so much.

2002-09-17T00:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a sleepy day, so I took a 2 and a half hour nap. Hung out, did some homework, ate some dinner, and then I went out for ice cream with a girl who lives in the same neighborhood as me at a little café. It was nice and low key, but I am wishing that I had more going on because it is hard to find stuff to do that doesn´t cost money. Classes don´t have that much work either... maybe that will change. I am wishing that they were more spread out instead of having one 10 hour day on wednesdays and also have days like today when I will have one hour of gramática and be done. That´s more time on the bus than in class. Have I mentioned that there are cats everywhere? There are cats everywhere. Little scrawny stray cats. I saw one today who looked like a scrappy Jasmine.

2002-09-16T04:29:00.000-07:00

Hmm, it´s been a while since I´ve been able to write an update. Thursday night we ended up going out for dinner and doing a little bit of shopping and hanging around the Barrio. Friday the 13th was an unlucky day in some aspects; my mom´s car got towed during the night so we were all late to school and work, and I forgot to bring the lunch I had packed for the beach. We still went to the beach however, which was beautiful. Ellie and I went to the beach in San Juan which is the really nice beach. It is 20 km long or something ridiculous, so it doesn´t feel crowded, and it´s nice and quiet and peaceful. Our bellies got to see the Mediterranean sun for the first time, and mine was so embarrassed that it blushed a little bit. My white fishbelly has never had a color before. : ) My day passed much better than Paz´s, because when she went to pick up her car from the towing lot it was covered in fish scales. While they were towing it somebody had thrown a bucket of fish scaley water into the street and it went all over her car and into the engine. Apparently the smell was unbearable. She had some unpleasant interactions with the jerky police working there but eventually the car got cleaned off and she got it back home again. That night I went out for drinks (sangria!) and walked around the Barrio with some friends... It´s still not quite my scene. Eh, oh well. Had to get home and rest before Saturday, when Ellie, Lauren, Amy and I decided to find our way to a little city called Alcoy where there is a "parque natural" called Fant Roja. We took a Greyhound-type bus that wound its way over the highways and back and forth up the side of a mountain to get to Alcoy. The double decker tour buses are awesome in terms of scenery, and we were way up in the front on top. Once in Alcoy we managed to find a taxi to take us up to Fant Roja, where we ate our picnic lunch and then hiked the 7 km trail. It was great to be there where it was quiet and natural, the opposite of the hustle adn bustle of Alicante. We got caught in the rain at the end, but when the taxi took us back down the mountain there was sun again. It was cold up there too, another nice change. We walked around Alcoy for a while and then headed home. I was tired and gross, so after a shower I took it easy at home until Paz, Paloma, Paz´s friend Jema and her daughter Sylvia came back with the movie Chocolat and some ice cream. I don´t know how much I would have followed in Spanish if I hadn´t seen it before, but we had a fun night. In the morning I went to the beach again and then came home and took it easy. Domingo in Spain is amazingly relaxed.... nobody is out anywhere unless it´s the beach. Siesta is calling my name.... Last night I ended up staying up past 2 AM talking to Paz about religion and her life and my time in Spain and cultural differences between Spain and the US. I really lucked out when it comes to my family. We live simply in a very small apartment, but she is a single mother and after her divorce she painted the whole place and bought everything herself, so it is really her place and she has made a good home for herself and Paloma. I feel so lucky that she has brought me into that home, and she really wants me to be comfortable and to feel that I am at home. She doesn´t want me to worry about needing to ask her to do things or use thigns or eat things, because she wants me to be part of the family and feel like I live there. I am so glad that she is as open-minded as she is, and she is a strong person but she can be very welcoming. I was trying to explain to her that of all the people I have met here, she is the person that I feel like I have clicked with the most, and it is wonderful that I can have that happen at home because that is what really makes it feel like home. She thinks it was destiny. I did a lot of listening last night and I am so anxious for the time when I´ll be able to speak more and we can really have more of a conversation, but she says that I speak with my eyes and she knows I understand her, and I can always get my idea across when I need to. Now I´m ready for a nap though... all that listening can tire you out.

2002-09-12T03:23:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-09-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-09-10T00:59:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-09-09T04:42:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-09-06T04:26:00.000-07:00

I am still getting used to the daily schedule in Spain. It goes something like this: 7:00 AM - Wake up. Shower, eat, get ready for school. 8:00 AM - Leave my house, catch the bus. (I live the farthest to the south from school out of anyone in my group. I have a long commute and am eager to get my bus pass so I don´t have to pay 3 bucks a day just to and from school, plus going out anywhere...) 9:00 - 12:00 (or 3 on wednesdays): Tengo clases. Afterwards, email, errands, etc. Return home for lunch. 3, 3:30 - Eat. This is the big meal of the day, everything shuts down, my señora comes home from work and returns later.... She makes tasty food. Despues, siesta. 5:00 - Stores re-open. 8, 9:00 - Restaurants and cafés open, or if they opened earlier, people begin to go to them. Noise and business in the streets until about 12. This is usually when we eat dinner, which is light; frutas, saladas, bocadillos (sandwiches). 12, 1 AM - bedtime. Weekend schedule is the same, except nobody goes out until at least 10, 2 AM is prime time for nightlife, and people come home at 4, 5, 6, 7 AM.... We´ll see how I fare this weekend. Yesterday our group went to see La Festival de los Moros y Cristanos (Moors and Christians) en Villena. We took a big 2 level tour bus. I sat right up in front of the top on the way... the mountains are awesome. This festival is a huge 5 day party and the second day is a huge huge parade. This one had 20,000 people in it. There is an occasional float, but mostly everything is a group of people walking in step (mostly) with a band. Each group is dressed in fantastic costumes that cost up to 10,000 dollars apiece, and they all represent groups from Spanish history. There are the Moors, the Christians, the pirates, the gypsies, the Jews, farmers, students, nobles, mas y mas y mas, from different centuries, and lots of variation in each of these categories. There is a leader to each group who has a lot of flair and style and is waving around some kind of sword or sickle or crossbow or pitchfork or spoon (the students of the 15th century had giant spoons, since they were poor, they kept spoons with them so if they found food, they were ready.) and following the leader is one or two or three lines of poeple, arm in arm, capes flowing behind them, walking in slow steps in lines that are the whole length of the street. The band is behind them. Every band had a kid pulling two timpani in front and somebody just banging the crap out of those drums. They marched oboes and little old fashioned instruments, the things that oboes are descendents of but I can´t remember the name. Lots of brass and woodwinds.... awesome music. Usually every category of people in teh same dress had a whole set of men first, then women, then kids, and then a float with the little kids throwing confetti everywhere. Everyone was smiling and laughing, people in the parade with drinks and cigars in hand, holding each other up, (you should have seen the pirates) and talking to each other and their friends, really casual. Everyone was in the parade, everyone walking around was in costume because they had participated too.... there were few people just watching. It was fantastic, loud and exciting and breathtaking, really alive. We walked around and met people and had drinks and ice cream and these waffle things with chocolate on them.... ay mí. The parade lasted more than 5 hours. It just kept going, and everyone stayed excited and happy... I´ve never seen anything like it. And those costumes, just fantastic. Amazing. What style. The busload of obnoxious drunken Americans and frustrated-with-the-obnoxious-drunken-Americans Americans got home at 1 AM, and everyone had class at 9. I would have made it on time no problem had I remembered to turn on my alarm clock. I would have been in class earlier had my señora not insisted that I eat before I go. ("¡5 minutos! ¡5 minutos mas!") So I´m going home to sleep and eat and shower, and then we´ll see waht the night has in store for me. Tomorrow at 8 AM I am going to Valencia with the group, so that will be exciting. Afterwards I´m going to the restaurant of my señora´s friend Amalia. Amalia is also hosting a student named Julie who is in my class and who is cool, so the four of us should have a good time. For now, I need to load up on sleep. This is my first real weekend here and I want to enjoy it!

2002-09-04T05:57:00.000-07:00

El numero de me telefono movil es: 619.177.358. En los Estados Unidos (USA): 011.34.619.177.358 Con una tarjeta de telefono (calling card): 34.619.177.358

2002-09-04T05:56:00.000-07:00

I am connected with the world! I got my movil (cell phone) today. Everyone here has them and they are much nicer than the ones in the states. I got mine for 110 €, just about equal to dollars. The phone is tiny, has every imaginable feature, and came with 60 minutes of local talk time. Instead of having a plan here, you just buy little phonecard things with minutes on them. And when you receive a call, it costs nothing to you no matter where the call is from or how long you talk. I am excited to figure out all the features. A new toy, a new toy! My classes went much better today. Yesterday I had 2 classes with the same profesora who was strict, boring, and hard to understand. Today I had 3 new profesores who were all very enthusiastic and interesting. They seemed really cool and helpful, and I think I followed most of everything that was being said. One of my elective courses is becoming a combined course because of low enrollment. Women in Contemporary Spanish Society is being combined with Urban Development in the Second Half of the 20th Centry: The Mediterranean. Today the teacher from the second course was there, and he was awesome. His style reminds me of Professor Stewart at Macalester, only he doens´t know any English and the rapid Spanish craziness is a little more tricky to follow. It seems like a really interesting class; maybe after this I will be able to understand Ben´s love of geography a little bit more. I don´t know how they´ll combine the two classes. It´s a shame that there wasn´t more interest. Although now that I know the kinds of people in the program, I´m not surprised. The University of Alicante is much more a business school than the good ol´ liberal arts I´m used to, and most of the Americans here are interested in economics and business (and spending money at expensive businesses). In any case, these classes seem good and I am remembering how much I enjoy being a student and learning interesting things. It blows my mind to realize that they´ll all be en Español este semestre.

2002-09-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

I am tired. The sun and trying to understand classes in spanish takes a lot out of a girl. Especially when you go from 7:30 to 3:30 without eating. But lunch usually isn't until about 2 or 3 here, and dinner is at 8, 9, or 10. I am enjoying the food though. Today for lunch I had a tortilla (here that means omelet) and a cold salad with beans, tomatoes, green peppers and oil. Plus the usual bread and a pear. IT'S THE LITTLE THINGS. -maps have no cardinal directions marked on them. usually the sea is at the bottom, but it's pretty arbitrary. -keyboards are different, some symbols are in different places, and every keyboard i have used has a different way to get a ' to show up. this is terribly annoying. -girls don't really wear shorts. i am not a big shorts person myself, but it is so damn hot here and people are in jeans and long sleeved shirts. fashion is so important here. -I can't believe the people on my program who complain about the food/houses/people/customs/culture/language. What are you doing here? Mostly talking during the presentations at the museums . -there are cats and dogs all over the place, and instead of saying hello or petting them, people kick them. -warm milk on cereal!? Just a few things I find interesting.

2002-09-02T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am out with 3 other American girls. We are walking around downtown, mostly window shopping, but checking out stores like El Corte Inglés and other trendy places. Biggest news of the day: I only got slightly lost on the way home from school, and later made it to meet up with the girls without any problems! Hopefully I´m getting the bus system figured out. The hardest part is that there are no street signs. Some corner buildings have the name of the street on a little plaque, but many don´t. It makes following the map a little more difficult when you have to walk for 3 blocks just to figure out where you are.

2002-09-01T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am at home. Today we moved in with our host families, which was a terribly nervous process. 75 students were crowded into a hotel lobby with all of our luggage and parents were lined up out the door. It was crowded and busy and loud and everyone was all dressed up and just waiting for their name to be called. I was the fourth to last. VERY nerve wracking. But I have a wonderful family. Paz is my señora and she has a daughter who is 9 named Paloma. It is just the three of us here in a small apartment, but I think it will work out great. They are very nice and understanding, and once this language barrier (which is quite a barrier right now) starts to break down, I will be just fine. Today I got a nice shiny new sunburn at the beach on my thighs and hips. It smarts, but it was worth it to play with Paloma in the waves and sand. Tomorrow is the language placement test and some orientation stuff at school. I am much more nervous about taking the bus and finding my way through the city than I am about the test. I am directionally challenged in Milwaukee. Cross your fingers for me while I'm here.

2002-08-31T07:21:00.000-07:00

I am in an internet cafe in Alicante. This place is so beautiful that I am constantly overwhelmed. The flight was long and I was tired, but I had no big problems getting here. Last night I got to the hotel, took a shower, and then they whisked us off to a tapas bar for dinner. Tapas are like hors d´vours, which I do not know how to spell. Lots of fish and little sandwiches and mysterious things that they don´t bother telling you what they are. Instead our guide just says, "try it, everything is good!!" After dinner I walked in the ocean for the first time ever with some other girls on my program. The Mediterranean is warm and gorgeous-- the beach is immediately behind our hotel. We went to a little bar right out on the beach and sat outside and talked. We got to bed about 12:30, just as the night life was getting started. People here usually head out at 11 or 12 and come home at 4, 5, 6, 7 am.... that´s going to be something to get used to. Today we toured this enormous castle at the top of a small mountain. From the top you could stand in the salty breezes and see the blue sea on one side and all around the rest of you was the city of Alicante, busy with buildings and people, and edged by mountains in the distance. I could not get over the beauty of it, and I´m sure my pictures won´t do it justice, but you´ll have to believe me that it was just breathtaking. I am excited about jumping into that water this afternoon. Tomorrow morning I will meet and move in with my host family, so I´m keeping my fingers crossed. It makes one nervous, because we´re not going to be a big group of 75 anymore, since we´ll be dispersed throughout this city which is much bigger than I realized. But our coordinators assure us that we´ll be within walking distance of each other, so that is a comfort. I hope my family and I get along! More exploring tonight; I´m going to have to hit the barrio sooner or later. I can´t believe I´m here.... it´s really amazing.

2002-08-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

Throwing the rest of the stuff in my suitcase..... I already said goodbye to Dad as he left for work this morning. In a few hours Ben and Chris will come pick me up and take me to O'Hare. Tomorrow at 4:45 pm (or 9:45 am Central Standard Time) I'll be IN SPAIN!!! Orientation this weekend and classes start on Monday. Nervous, anxious, excited........ Hasta la vista, USA.