Christmas in April

And as any self-respecting Jew knows, that only can mean one thing- Chinese food and a movie.

Today Luis went out to the country house that he and Pepita have about an hour and a half outside of Madrid. He happens to hate Chinese food, so that's where Pepita and I went for lunch. I love Pepita. It's nice just getting to talk with her and learning about her family and her life. When the program told me that I'd be living with her, the letter they sent me told me that she was 60 and Luis was 67. After I arrived here, I got the feeling that the ages the program told me were wrong, I just didn't know by how much. So apparently Pepita is going to turn 70 this year and Luis is 75. This makes a lot more sense in Luis' case (missing his bottom teeth, not entirely with it) but I don't think Pepita looks like she's 70. She was very happy I was so shocked. Oh, and the chinese food itself was good too. I haven;t had any while I've been in Spain, and go figure that of all the things that could remind me of home, chinese food would be one of them.

The movie part of my mini-Christmas will be happening in a couple hours, with the key difference being that this movie will be entirely in Spanish. I've been working my way up, first watching Spanish movies with English subtitles, then Spanish movies with Spanish subtitles. Now I'm going to give it a whirl without any subtitles. I will be so happy if I just understand the basic plot details. I'll let you know how it goes.

Classes continue as usual. I started a new class this past week that's supposed to be about Spanish nationalisms, which would be a really fascinating topic. Despite the fact that Spain is one country, it has very distinct regions and languages. In a lot of the country they speak castellano, what we know as Spanish, but in Galicia they speak gallego, in Cataluña they speak Catalan, and in País Vasco (where I'll be traveling to next weekend) they speak Euskera. They also have their own cultural differences, kind of like you find between some regions in the States (like comparing the south to the northeast). It's a really fascinating topic, and the current state of affairs is just a mess, especially with ETA, the radical Basque nationalist terrorist group that wants to keep terrorizing people until Galicia becomes its own separate country. (This should not make you worry. We will be perfectly safe on our trip this coming weekend. The program would in no way jeopardize the well-being of 25 students).

So this is all the stuff I should be learning about. Unfortunately, my professor is a puttering old man who canceled the entire first week of a two-and-a-half week class. So now after finishing week one of our 1.5 week class, we're still only in the mid 1800s. And haven't really discussed nationalisms at all. On top of that, we originally all thought that we had to write a 10-15 page paper in Spanish on some aspect of Spanish nationalisms. But the other day he told us that if we've come to class every day and just want to pass the class without earning an especially high grade, we don;t have to write the paper. Normally I'd be the overachiever that I am and write something to turn in, even if it sucked. But I'm taking this course pass-fail. The grade I get will never show up anywhere, I just have to pass (which I will, since I will have gone to every class). So that just made my life a little less stressful, especially since the week after next I'll either have 2 exams and a paper or 3 exams and a paper. Fun.

I also had a really good conversation with one of the monitores the other day about terrorism (it was really uplifting). I didn't realize that the March 11 bombings in Madrid 4 years ago were also carried out by Al Qaeda, I thought it was ETA. (Though maybe the whole march 11-september 11 connection should have tipped me off...). It was really interesting to talk with a foreigner who has experienced something very similar to 9-11. I'm having a lot of trouble trying to explain the conversation, I guess overall it was sad but comforting in a way to know that we're not the only country that's experienced such a horrible catastrophe.

When I havent been tackling the world's biggest issues, I've been sleeping (I love sleep) and hanging out with my friends. We went to this great vegetarian restaurant yesterday, and even though I'm not a vegetarian, it was just phenomenal. I never knew a meal without meat could be that good. I don't plan on going veg anytime soon (or ever), but I can definitely see the appeal. We also went to this place called the Jardín Secreto (The Secret Garden) for dessert two nights ago. I think it's one of Madrid's best kept secrets (oh god so bad..... you can hate me now). I went with Rachel, Annie, Annie's housemate Stephanie who goes to BU, and Stephanie's friend Rebecca. We split a bunch of the most phenomenal desserts including orgasmo por chocolate- I don't think I need to explain what that means. Needless to say, we had a fantastic time with great food and even better company.

Also, it finally stopped raining for a day. It rained all this past week and it's supposed to start again tomorrow. Thursday or Friday though it's supposed to return to spring weather and sunshine, and I can continue trying to get skin cancer to look more Spanish. Awesome.