More rain!

Maybe you never thought of Spain as a rainy place, but it has been raining or misting off and on for the past week. Northern Spain is even flooded. So strange! I’m not looking forward to this week of colder temperatures, but I heard it was the worst winter in Minnesota this year, so I guess I feel lucky.

I have also kind of established a schedule of some sort. I’m only taking one class at USAL about Gender, but the professor didn’t even show up! So I’ll have to wait until next Thursday. The other classes are with IES and unfortunately I think I’m going to be bored out of my mind. My Lit class is covering things from Lit last semester at Mac, except we’re reading different books, and 2 History classes both dealing with Franco in some way. I do have a pretty open schedule though and am trying to set up an Intercambio, where I meet up with a Spanish student to practice their English and switch to practice my Spanish. I’m hoping I can become friends with them and meet other students. Vamos a ver!

This past Wednesday I didn’t have classes due to it being the University’s patron saint’s day. Yay San Tomas! So I went to an Art Deco/Nouveau museum with Andrea and Emily. It was wonderful! I loved it so much. Lots of stained glass within the building itself (built in 1905) and weird collections of creepy dolls, sweet glasswork, bronze and porcelain sculptures and more! I honestly fell in love and realized I wanted to live in an almost ugly over-decorated house! In the evening I went to a movie with the girls called La mujer del anarquista (The wife of the anarchist). Set in Spain’s Civil War, this woman gets separated from her husband who’s on the leftist, non-Franco side. It was ok; the only thing worth watching was the lead actor! Que guapo!

This week I also watched the program Tengo una pregunta para usted (I have a question for you), where people from all over Spain were invited to ask one question to Zapatero, the president. Whoa is all I have to say. Most of the questions were about the financial crisis, and poor Zapatero had to stand there and face these angry people talking about el paro (unemployment rate) and finding it hard to maintain hope and confidence in the country. Zapatero was like a typical politician in that he used pretty words and was a little vague, but I think he was brave to stand there and talk directly to the people.

I went out this weekend to go dancing and it turned out to be a fun night. Emily and I stayed out late and left the discoteca, where an Italian student approached us. He tried to guess where we were from: Germany? Finland? Belgium? The blonde hair must have thrown him off. So we joined him and his friends and danced at a place without a name to some pretty good Spanish rock music. It was really nice because they weren’t creepy and they danced freely and even air-guitared! I hope I can call one of them later, have them actually remember who we were and go out again! I want some friends!

Observaciones:
1) Spain fries a ton of food. Here you thought it was only in American fairs, but no! I have had fried fish, French fries, fried red peppers stuffed with fish, fried cauliflower, fried croquettes, fried chicken breasts, fried churros, etc.
2) For those of you who may not know, I don’t especially like beer; however, Spain offers girls a girly version called a clara. It’s half beer, half sparkling sweet water/tonic. It’s pretty good and would be great with spicy food, but since that doesn’t exist here, I drink it without food. Plus, it’s almost cold, which is great because cold drinks aren’t very popular here.
3) I just did laundry for the first time! I took my clothes to a man and helped him load the washing machine. He told me to come back in 2 days to pick it up. I came back, it was neatly folded, organized and clean for the bargain price of 7 euros, which is a standard price for a load of laundry. I’m going to be wearing dirty clothes definitely, but it’s hard if you ever go out, because the smell of smoke is an evil thing to try to air out.
4) Young Spaniards also have a thing with shortening words: boli (boligrafo - pen), cumple (cumpleanos - birthday), profe (profesor), bici (bicicleta - bicycle).
5) School supplies in Spain are different as well. The standard size for paper is not 8.5x11 in, but is longer. Lined paper is not very common either; it’s normally graph paper found in notebooks.