Otro día de clase en España...

I am not an efficient student. This semester has been the easiest one of my life school-wise and I still have managed to difficult it up for myself.

By this I mean that I have waited until right now to do all the important assignments of the semester that all happen to be due tomorrow. It´s not so bad because none of them are too long, I just have been working on my Andalucía journal for hours and my hand is about to fall off. This is why I am writing here because I wanted to give my hand a rest. Now that I am typing, though, my fingers still hurt a little :(

Anyway, I have been in love with Madrid the last few days. After a bad homesick week, I got to talk to my dad and just that conversation made me feel worlds better. Thanks for hooking up the webcam, dad, you saved my weekend suffering from self-pity and dreariness.

I spent this weekend by myself, without speaking any English at all (I think, I mean I wasn´t exactly recording everything I said or anything). I wandered through the tumultuous crowds that was the city this weekend.

On Saturday I went and saw an American movie (27 Dresses) by myself. So I take back the comment about no English. I saw this movie in VO (versión original) because I absolutely abhor dubbed movies. I prefer to watch all movies in original language with subtitles if necessary. Dubbing movies always makes them less real to me. They seem like cartoons or something, like some version of Tom Hanks in those ridiculous old school Godzilla films from Japan. I say Tom Hanks because Forrest Gump was on tv the other night dubbed with Spanish. I did not appreciate this version... not at all. It took all the natural melancholy and blandness of human existence that is what makes Forrest Gump so beautiful and tragic out of the film. I know that last sentence sounds like a bunch of dramatic horse shit and it might be, I don´t know.

Anyhow, I did see this movie in English with Spanish subtitles, which, believe it or not, does improve my Spanish a lot I think. I get to see all the ways they express themselves to mean kinda the same sentiments as English slang/phrases. It put me in the Spanish mood, so to speak.

I basically wandered through the city all day, stopping to have lunch at the Museo de Jamón. Bocadillo de Lomo con Queso a la plancha is where the party´s at. This is a fresh baquette with pork loin and some delicious gourmet stinky cheese all grilled like a panini. And the best part is that you can get this with a beer (granted the beer in Spain sucks big time) for about 3€. This is a fantastic deal and the food is great. And you get to stand at the bar and consume while chatting with the Spanish bartender.

I went to the Rastro finally on Sunday morning. It was my first time there, I´m ashamed to say. I prefer to sleep in on my Sunday mornings and not go toll through mountains of junk. But it was an experience. Lots and lots of people, especially since there is a bus strike and todo el mundo está en la calle para las manifestaciones. Protests all over the place, especially in Sol which is super crowded all the time anyway. Throw in all the striking bus workers and it was a mess. Kept a tight tight tight hold on my purse and with head down I made it through and lived to tell the tale :)

So now I have to go prepare for my art history presentation tomorrow. Not too bad, presentations don´t bother me. Just something to get through. But it´s only about 5-10 minutes so it´s not so bad. It´s the writing about 10 more pages in the old Andalucía journal that will kill me I think before the day is through. I am in the library working now but I think I will head home. Or perhaps not. I really don´t know.

Also, I witnessed something this morning on my metro ride to school that I have been waiting to see since my first ride in January. The doors of the car closed on a guy. Every time the whistle blows people run to try and get on. This bothers me to begin with because there are signs everywhere that very clearly tell you not to exit or enter after the sound of the whistle. Some people make it and some don´t. Very often people kinda reopen the doors and delay the whole train. Like a good city girl I hate these people and sneer at them. WELL... this morning an old couple (I am sorry it had to be an old couple, but as I wrote previously, there are signs) tried to run and make it on way after the whistle had blown. The guy was leaping on as the doors closed and THEY DIDN´T REOPEN LIKE USUAL! This was completely bizarre because usually they act like elevator doors and open when something is between them. I was literally right in the mess of things, right there in front, and this other guy and I immediately had our hands on those doors and pulled them open. This old guy was trapped in the doors right around his shoulders and he was using some choice Spanish profanity. All the people on our car were screaming and generally freaking out as well. It totally was not that big of a deal, the doors had the power of, like, the closure of a ziploc bag, but it was still exciting. The poor couple had to get on the train and be embarrassed for a few minutes, too, so maybe they´ll think twice next time they try to get on late. I must admit, though, that my heart was racing. In the movie we watched in class last Thursday a guy got cut in half by a falling elevator when the chick was trying to pull him out and my mind immediately flashed to that scene. I thought I was going to see this guy get ripped in half right in front of me. Well, for a split-second, at least.

Reading through this blog I notice that some of it doesn´t sound quite right and now I am panicking... am I slowly forgetting how to speak (or write as it were) English? That would be tragic because I don´t speak/write Spanish all that brilliantly yet. Now I just sound like an idiot in every language. Crap!

P.S. I use the expression "piece of cake" all the time. In class the other day we were going over Spanish expressions with food and I discovered a pleasing little nugget of information. To mean the same thing as "piece of cake" how we use it in English, they say "hacer pan" which means "making bread." I don´t know how many Spaniards make their own bread, though, because it´s really not that easy. That damn yeast is temperamental.