"You have delighted us long enough."

I updated my photos. They're at the link on the right that says "What does all this look like?" And I updated the link because I hadn't realized til recently it was still showing the old one.

Not too much has gone on, just living as much as I can while I'm still here. I finished my exams Tuesday. I know I passed all of them, and I'm pretty sure I have a B in all the classes except Translation in which there is a good chance I have an A. And I got my 10-page (mine was 8-page) Spanish culture paper back yesterday. I don't remember if I ever said anything about my satisfaction with my work... but I truly felt that using that paper to wipe my bum would have been a more useful reason for its existence. I got a B. Haha. Who knew?! The paper really deserved a C, any honest English professor would have given it a C-/D+. I'd like to know what would have happened if I had taken the time to write it, expanded on the one paragraph that concerned the culture part, re-read it, accurately cited my sources, etc. He probably would have made me president because a B for the piece of crap I handed in is just insane.

Anyway, I've been wandering about Madrid a lot lately, visited Retiro for a while to people-watch, Christmas shopping and such. I blend into the packed streets of holiday shoppers quite well. Shopping is a universally performed task, it speaks all languages. And I suppose the fact that we're all bundled up makes us appear less different. I mean, my coat is from Zara, THE Spanish clothing store. Except the bottom button got really loose and was starting to come off, so I "mended" it but now it's even looser except that it's not going to fall off anytime soon. Two of my four pair of jeans (the only pants I wear) have holes on the inner thighs. I mended one pair... pretty darn well if I do say so myself. (Get it? "darn"!) I've been looking for a new pair of jeans around here, but they do not make them for American girls. They come in my size, of course, but the waist is SO low and my bum is not that big so I don't understand why the waist needs to be that low. It just comes to the crack. That is ridiculous. These Spanish females have some pretty insane body builds, that's all I gotta say. Sara was nice enough to pretend we'd ever be the same size and offered to let me borrow a shirt. I pointed out I'd probably not fit even if just for the chestal region, and she said that I'd then just have a big escote (cleavage) and I could cover it up with a scarf. Then I mentioned how her shirt would be stretched out and she said never mind then. She's a sweet girl.

On Thursday night, a couple of the girls at school who share an apartment threw a Christmas party. Everyone from Suffolk was invited and we were supposed to dress up. We weren't there for too long because we were starting to bother the land-lady, but it was really fun to have everyone together and it not be cliquey like some other schools I know (cough, DULANEY, cough). After we all went to this club called Chesterfield's which I had avoided like the plague because all the fliers they send out are pictures of American kids looking like drunk American kids: oh yeahhhh let's go there while I'm in Madrid!! But it turned out to be not too bad, and about half Spanish kids. It was pretty fun, but I left a little early because I tried to wear high heels again and my toe still feels bruised, plus I felt sickish.

On Friday I went to a Mexican restaurant with Gisella, Kacie, and Stacy because we heard about it from some people at school. It was so very good. I got a pina colada, and they put cinnamon on top! I wasn't a huge fan of the cinnamon, and the drink was at least half rum so I could barely taste the pineapple coconut party. I don't think I've ever mentioned that if you go to a bar and order a vodka and fanta limón, for example, it's always half (and very often more) vodka and then limón. So the drinks are about €7-€8. BUT, in the U.S. it's at most a quarter of the alcohol and the drinks are about $3-$4. Then we met another friend Alejandro and went to this little bar that played rock music like The Doors and Jimi Hendrix, and had posters up on Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, The Beatles, etc. It was cool, except when it started to get crowded we realized everyone but us was in their late 20s - early 30s. I left because I was rather drained, and I again felt a little sickish.

The rest of the weekend, I went out and explored during the day and at night sort of rested because I did, in fact, get a cold. The cold is just now going away. A ton of other girls on my floor got colds or bad sicknesses, so I suppose I got off easy. I finished my exams and yesterday I went Christmas shopping. I'm just about finished. I have to get a few more things which I'm having difficulty finding, but that's it. Let's hope it all fits. After Christmas shopping, I went to TGI Fridays with about 5 other people for Happy Hour. Yeah, I know, one of my last few days in Europe and I go to TGI Fridays. Well let me tell you about Happy Hour: the drinks were half price, so I got this big huge drink (which was already kinda cheap at €6) for €3. The smaller drinks went down from €4 to €2. I tried some new drinks yesterday, it was really fun. After that we tried to go to Chesterfield's to meet up with other people, and it's supposed to be girls get in free before 1am, but they told us it was €10 to get in. Gisella and I flat out refused and walked away, but our other friends went in. I've been there and it is not worth even €5.

Tonight we plan to go to Kapital all night for our last hurrah. Tomorrow I have to pack and take my stuff to the Puertos so that I can leave for Italy Saturday morning at 5am. So that means that this will almost definitely be my last post in Europe. How incredibly sad. But I won't think about that today, I'll think about it tomorrow. Today, I'll pretend like it's not my last. I can't wait to come home and see everyone!

Vale, venga. Hasta luego, tío.

It's quarter to 4 in the morning on a Friday night. The Spaniards drunkenly passing through outside my residencia window are singing... loudly. I think it's a Spanish Christmas song because they all got really into it, especially the females. And this is completely acceptable. What will I do in the quiet and boring old United States?

Si nunca ha ido a España, le falta algo; si ha ido de España, le falta algo.

"Single women have a dreadful propensity for being poor. Which is one very strong argument in favor of matrimony."

This past weekend I went to Salamanca and Segovia with API. We left Friday afternoon on a bus and about 3 hours later we were in Salamanca. It's a college town! How great is that?! The University of Salamanca joins the ranks of Oxford, Cambridge, and the Sorbonne in Europe... according to the Spanish tour guide. It's one of the oldest in Europe, and the oldest in Spain. It was founded in 1218 by King Alfonso IX, then reorganized in 1254 by Alfonso X, not 200 years after Normans invaded England in 1066. It has something like 80,000 students. So during the day the town is rather peaceful and calm; but at night, if you can't find something to do, then you are both completely blind and completely deaf. Having said that, we stayed two nights and I did not go out at all. Leave it to me to accomplish such a feat.

Friday night, I ate a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant with Laura, Gisella, Ginger, Stacy, Kacie, and Alejandro. After dinner we went to some packed bar, but Laura and I shortly left because we weren't in the going out mood (and I'm poor). She and I went back to our room, because we're always hotel roommates on these trips, and watched a little TV before going to bed because we had to get up kinda early for our tour the next morning.

The tour, as tired as I am of them, was quite nice. I like the little bits of info they share with us. Like the professors wore their professor robes with a colored piece on their chests which represented their field, the room they taught in had/has inscription in front of it with the subject and the same colored background, so they students knew where to go for class. Yellow for medicine, green for political science or whatever juris civili means in Latin, and BLUE FOR LANGUAGE aka "linguis". I took a picture of the blue sign. It has a little description underneath, which I believe says the languages taught, and then something probably about knowledge:

LINGUIS
Hebraicae, Chaldaicae, Arabicae,
Graecae, ut omnis pateat ad
sapientian aditus, Senatus
publicum ludum statuit.

On the elaborate sculpture decoration of one of the entrance doors, there is a skull with a tiny frog on it. Although the professors meant that as a warning to students of the evils of women to their studies, the students changed it that if you found a frog/woman you'd be sure to pass your exams. This is because the frog is soooo tiny and hard to spot on the wall filled in sculptures and decorations. So the frog in Salamanca, is a sign of luck. I wonder if "salamanca", then, has anything to do with "salamander". Anyway, the school seemed pretty gosh-darn amazing, and I really wished I had chosen that API program rather than Madrid. But no, because Madrid has the Puertos and an airport, and that's enough to say that I would not have done it differently.

After the tour, Laura and I took a nap and then went out in search of food. We ate at a bar-café, and wandered around through the Plaza Mayor/University area for a while. We bought some wine and cheese for that night because we decided not to go out again but to stay in with wine and cheese. We went back to our room, had quite a long chat about our pasts, presents, and futures, then went out in search of dinner food. I bought pomegranates and apples for dinner because I was still really full from lunch. Gisella and Ginger came over and we had our wine, cheese, and some of their bread things with herb cream cheese (a thoroughly un-Spanish selection of food), and watched the Eurovision Kid's Song Contest on TV, which was ridiculously hilarious. Russia won, that's all I know.

Sunday we had to get up early to go to Segovia for a little tour. I'd already been to Segovia so I fully planned on skipping the tour and giving Laura and whoever else wanted my own tour, and then having more time to eat. The bus was something like 2 hours late to pick us up, when we got there it was raining, and we still had to leave Segovia at the same appointed time. So Laura and I went off on our own and I showed her the important things and we ate some pasta and then I stopped at a panadería (bakery) for a bit of chocolate. We ended up with an hour left so we sat in the tourist office and waited. The tour group took almost the entire time leaving everyone with 45 minutes to eat, and they were soaked. Laura thanked me all the more for my tour. When I got back I was greeted with a large box, full of 4 tins of cookies from Mommy dearest. LOVELY! So I ate and watched a movie and did some mending on my pants and coat which were coming apart.

Yesterday, Monday, I went with Ginger to the Mercado Navideño, Christmas Market, in Plaza Mayor. I was hoping to see a bunch of different things, but it was the same 3 kinds of stand repeated. There were stands devoted ENTIRELY to Nativity scenes, I've never seen such things: animated Jesus the carpenters, breadmakers, every animal imaginable, palm trees, different mangers, etc. There were stands with bunches of Christmas junky decorations: lights, little signs, moss?, hanging things, ornaments, ribbon, etc. And then there were the joke shop stands with the masks, fake blood, whoopie cushions, trick water fawcets, face paint, costumes, etc. Ginger and I were QUITE thrown off by these. I found out later that December 28th is their sort of April Fools Day, día de los Santos Inocentes. Only they get a little more into it than we do on April Fools. Puerta del Sol and the streets leading up to it were all lit up and decorated, I got some photos. We walked back to the residencia because I had asked to meet up with Lucía because 2 of the cookie tins were for the Puertos, and I had to return their books to them, so naturally I needed to freshen up.

I went to their piso at about 8pm, and I won't recount the mass of awkward that is me, but I was finally let in by Lucía and then was greeted by Rita and Ana. I gave them the cookies, and they loved them. They were very happy that Mom had gone so far as to send cookies for them. They'd also never had gingerbread cookies, but they know who the gingerbread man is, la muñequita de jengibre. They asked me all about my trips. And when I told them about my Italy trip (Dec 16-20th) I asked if I could leave my suitcases at their house because I have to be moved out by the 16th, and not only did they readily acquiesce but they offered to take me to the airport for Italy, pick me up from the airport after Italy, and take me to the airport for home (Dec 21st). I said thanks very much, but they wouldn't be taking me to the airport for Italy because my flight is at 6am, so I'll get a taxi. Then Rita wrote down the dates to put on her calendar, and realized there's a day between coming back from Italy and leaving for home, and said I could stay with them. I'm a wretched person and pretended I didn't realize that at all and said thank you, but really had she not offered I would have asked. Rita then said I should stay and they would order some pizza with... HAM and cheese. They really don't lose an opportunity to eat ham in Spain. Anyway we ate and talked a bit, mostly I listened. We talked about differences in cultures and such. It was enlightening. So we finished and said we'd be in touch about dropping my stuff off with them and flights and such.

That's all for now, I'll post photos as soon as I swipe someone's camera to put them on my computer. I have my last class later today. Tomorrow and Friday are national holidays in Spain, so I have nothing to do. Thursday, Monday, and Tuesday I have exams. Other than that I have Madrid to myself to explore before going to Italy.