Can you tell I don't want to do my homework?

I forgot to mention that one of my friends got stung by a jellyfish in Mallorca.  It looked painful.  Not a whole lot has happened this week.  We had dinner with Ángeles's ex the other night, and it was surprisingly not awkward.  I was convinced his name was Brian for quite awhile, but apparently it's some variation of Ibrahim (Brahim, maybe?) that I'm not sure how to spell.  He's apparently Berber and was born in Tangier.  Interesting.  He was very nice, anyway, and they seem very friendly with each other.  They've only been divorced for a few months, though.  I feel so bad for Ángeles right now.  Her father fell and cracked his hip and can't move for a month and her mother is also bedridden from depression or something.  She's an only child and they live all the way in Galicia, so she's under a lot of stress what with having to take care of them and make a decision on more permanent care.  I wish there was something I could do.  She's in Berlin until Wednesday, so I have the house to myself right now.  She'll come back for a few days, then leave again for two weeks to take care of her parents, during which time I'll probably live at the Fund.  I feel so sorry for her and I hope I'm not too much of a burden.  Anyways, on a more positive note, we had a group tour of Alcalá de Henares yesterday.  It has a university and was the birthplace of Cervantes.  That's pretty much it.  Don Quixote and I are getting to be quite good friends, though:

Not really relevant, but I had a lovely conversation at lunch with one of the Japanese students named Kotaro.  I mention this because I am apparently horrible with names and thought his was Totoro for the first few weeks here.

Only me, really.  Speaking of which, I missed the bus three times the other day.  There are two buses that I can take (with staggered schedules) and the stops are a block apart.  I missed the first by a few minutes, so I walked down to the second.  I arrived literally just as the bus pulled away.  I turned to go back to the other stop and saw the other bus, early for once, go around the roundabout and past my stop.  I then had to wait for twenty minutes for the next one and missed my class.  To make matters worse, there's a mental hospital on the route of the bus I did eventually catch, and one of the patients decided that screaming the entire way was a very good idea.  It's a 30 minute ride.  I was ready to kill someone.  Speaking of buses, on the way back from Alcalá, one of the students puked on the bus.  We had to stop for an hour or so to clean it.  Good times.  In other news, my friends and I went to "the wall" yesterday- literally just the city wall.  It's the place to go and drink, apparently.  There were certainly some trashed Toledoans nearby, anyway.  We played some cards and got weird looks from passers-by.  Hurray for lame American tourists!  Open alcohol isn't technically allowed within the city walls, so our Spanish friends had ghetto paper bags around their bottles.  I had to laugh.  After a card game and a half, Veronica and I met up with our ice cream friends at O'Briens (the one Irish pub in Toledo).  On the way in, we passed the bartender telling two guys that he never wanted to see their faces in his bar again.  I wonder what happened.  Anyways, I spent most of my evening having a lovely conversation with the Spaniard about the pros and cons of healthcare reform and the differences between the Spanish and American systems.  I must say, I'm pretty proud of my language skills.  Obvious American accent aside, I can hold conversations pretty well.  I also thankfully sound like I know what I'm doing when the male citizens Toledo decide to creep on me while waiting for the night bus (driven by a crabby old man instead of Stan Shunpike, unfortunately).   This is the first weekend I've actually spent in Toledo (thank you, homework) and so far, so good.   Sorry for the choppiness of my last few posts; I'm trying to catch up on everything.  I'll try to stay on top of things now, but we'll see.  ¡Hasta pronto!

The Spaniards can't make a good burger, apparently

Almost caught up!  Last weekend, my friends and I went to Mallorca.  Veronica and I left a day early, as we don't have class in the afternoon on Thurs, and the others met us on Fri.  It's only about an hour long flight, so we arrived at around 8.  Our hotel was fantastic- near the airport and the bus into Palma, nice rooms, a pool, breakfast included, only 16 € per person per night for a double.  Not bad, eh?  Anyway, we walked along the beach a bit and found a sushi restaurant the first night- hurray!  I was pretty happy.  We then headed to another place for drinks.  Cultural note: the Spanish kind of bounce around from restaurant/bar to restaurant/bar, eating or drinking a little at each place and conversing.  Dinner takes several hours this way.  It's pretty fantastic.  Anyway, our socially awkward waiter hit on me pretty much the entire time.  Yah.  I was pretty sure he was in high school until he said he was twenty.  Side note: there are a TON of German tourists on Mallorca.  It's like the Bahamas of Europe and all the Germans apparently want to escape the cold or something.  Pretty much everyone assumed we were German all weekend and kept asking "Sprechen sie deutsch?"  Um, no.  Fri, we headed into Palma, a surprisingly nice city reminiscent of the Plateau de Montreal neighborhood. Plaza de la Reina:

We decided to hit the cathedral on a whim, and wow.  It has got to be my favorite cathedral I've seen in Spain.  When I walked in, I was first struck by the light.  Words can't describe it, and the camera couldn't capture it.  It flowed in through stained glass, painting rainbows on the floor and pillars, illuminating the hollow core of the cathedral.  The sheer space inside couldn't be photographed, and the colors of the glass were so vibrant as to be painful.   The nave and altar decorations were very interesting too- the whole hanging contraption above reminded be of a whale jawbone with lanterns attached.  I stood staring in astonishment, taking it all in, for what must have been half an hour.  Photos:

The pictures don't really do it justice, I'm afraid.  It was stunning; I just wanted to capture the colors and carry them away with me.  Veronica had to pull me away; if you've ever seen the "double rainbow" youtube video, that was me.  The colors!  The light!  The space!  Aaaaah!  Ok, I'm done now.  It was renovated by Gaudi, so I can't wait to see Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (if I ever have time to go).  After the cathedral, we asked the tourist office about beaches.  There was one near our hotel, but it was crowded and not very scenic.  Following their advice, we took the bus to the end of the line: Illetes beach.  It was small and very pretty, with clear turquoise water and an emerald-green tide pool on the rocks to the side (I had to do some exploring :).  I definitely heard some Spanish (as well as the usual German), and I overheard a British guy saying that it was his favorite beach.  Go tourist office.

We got back at around 5 (and went from being cool Spaniards eating a late lunch to lame American tourists eating the early bird special for dinner) and decided we really wanted a hamburger.  You would think, what with the Germans and all, that they would have good ones.  Sadly not the case.  We did, however, get free shots and club recommendations from Carlos the Creepy Waiter from the night before.  So not a total loss.  We then met up with everyone else and decided to go out for Katie's birthday to a bar near our hotel with green and red Christmas-style lights and really good piña coladas.

The owner had a black chow chow!  It was so cute!  Sadly I didn't get a picture, but I was dying over it.  We dubbed it Sirius Black (my Fund friends decided to assign everyone there a Harry Potter character a few weeks ago.  I'm Dean Thomas.  Why?  Because they wanted me in Gryffindor without being generic and I have the darkest skin of the group.  Nice).  Anyways, we tried to follow Carlos's advice and head to a discoteca in Palma but apparently he had no idea what he was talking about.  Granted, half the youth of Palma were congregating, drunk, in the Plaza he mentioned, but they were just kind of sitting there and the club he recommended was closed.  We returned in defeat, sans celebration.  The next day, we decided to return to Illetes beach and pretty much just spent all our time there.  It was very relaxing; I enjoyed it.  On the way back, we stopped by the cathedral so the others could see it, but there was a wedding going on.  It must have been someone very rich/important as everything was incredibly fancy and elegant.  We watched the bride arrive and walk into the church (her veil was twisted-argh), then watched a gaggle of tourists enter right after her, as her music was still playing.  How tacky!  One guy was wearing plaid shorts.  It's a wedding, for God's sake, have some respect!   Once we got back, we decided to try for hamburgers again at another place.  Unfortunately, they were also subpar.  Due to our various disappointments with the nightlife, we decided to stay in for the night and play cards.  Sun., we had to leave the beach behind and fly home.  We shared a taxi with a very nice couple, Esperanza and Marcel, on the way to the airport.  They're from Valladolid and are going to look for lodging for us when we go there in November.  How nice!  The rest of the trip back was rather uneventful, except for the creepy old guy who kept groping Veronica's leg on the flight.  Ew.  One thing I forgot to mention in my last post: they recently renovated the facade of the cathedral in Salamanca and added new carvings to it.  One of the carvers decided to modernize it and add an astronaut:

So I named the three flies in my apartment Jack, Ralph, and Piggy and don't have the heart to kill them now

Sorry for the absence of posting lately; I've been really busy!  Whoever said study abroad was easy homework-wise clearly just took blow-off classes.  Anyway, I think I'm on the week of Sept. 27.  Really, I should say Sept. 29th because nothing interesting happened until then.  As well as being my birthday, it was also the day of the huelga general.  The idea was that everyone in Spain would go on strike for workers rights and such.  The reality- nothing really happened in Toledo.  The only effect of the strike on me was that I stayed in the Fund Tues. night and discovered the Flor with my friends.  The Flor is a really cute bar with outdoor seating and fantastic sangria.  The view is pretty fantastic too- it's right by a church and a park and overlooks the cathedral.  I also met Joe, one of a group of brits staying at the Fund for three weeks to teach English and one of my new favorite people.  Sadly, he's back in England now, but we had some good times.  My birthday itself started horribly- a friend and I started a philosophy presentation that morning for our class in the afternoon.  We compared philo to cake, though, so it was a success.  Things improved later when Ángeles threw me a party.  This time, I could actually make conversation with people!  Hurray!  Ángeles and her friend Hot Miguel (not actually his name, we just call him that) made some Galician concoction at the end of the night to keep bad spirits away or something like that.  It consisted of apples, sugar, and aguardiente (basically moonshine) in a big pot.  They set it on fire and stirred until it burned itself out, at which point we drank it.  Yeah.  It was pretty good.  Ángeles stirring:

My friends and I, a little blurry:

It was a good night.  The next day I helped some tourists out and they told me I spoke English really well and that they were from Connecticut ("It's by New York- do you know where that is?").  I thanked them and informed them I was from Michigan.  Nice.  I also chatted with some Texans on a tour of Spain.  That night, Veronica and I went out with our friends from the ice cream shop.  Apparently the one from Madrid watches The IT Crowd- Los Informaticos in Spanish.  How awesome is that?  I usually can't find people who watch it in English!  They also watch Dexter.  It's pretty funny watching TV here- most of the shows are American and dubbed in Spanish.  I can understand them pretty well now as long as I don't look at the characters' lips.  I watched CSI in Spanish the other night.  Fantastic.  Anyway, I didn't want to go all the way back home as we were leaving early for our weekend trip to Ávila and Salamanca, so I spent the night illegally in a friend's room in the Fund.  I kind of felt like I was breaking parietals or something at ND.  Anyways, here are the wall and cathedral of Ávila (the cathedral and houses are built into the wall!):

Our guide was from France and had a pretty pronounced accent; I kept being surprised that she was speaking Spanish.  The main draw of the cathedral is a sepulcher made for three of the patron saints of the city (it has something ridiculous like five or six), siblings martyred in Roman times.

After seeing the sights, we continued on to Salamanca.  It's famous for its university- one of the best in Europe.  The central plaza (I can't remember the name.  Probably Plaza Mayor):

The cathedral has two parts: the "new" cathedral is gothic (one of the last of that style built in Spain) and the "old" one is romanesque.  They're attached to each other, so they're not really two separate cathedrals, but there's a pretty clear divide.  They're kind of like siamese twins.  I love gothic architecture.  The immensity, the pillars like huge tree trunks, the flying buttresses- I love it.  When we visited, the sound of monks chanting echoed throughout the cavernous new cathedral.  Combined with the smell of incense and the lights filtering through the windows high above, reflecting off of spinning dust motes and glinting on the organ pipes, it lent a haunting atmosphere to the place, as if we had stepped back in time or the ghosts of the past still dwelt there.  It's amazing to think of people building these churches over decades, sometimes centuries.  What possesses someone to start a project like that, one that they probably won't see completed?  It's truly amazing.  The new cathedral:

The old cathedral:

A view of the cathedral from a convent:

By the way, the word for flying buttress in Spanish is arbotante.  I actually didn't learn this in a cathedral but from watching Los pilares de la tierra (The Pillars of the Earth) with Ángeles the other night.  It was a good miniseries (in Spanish at least).  I want to read the book when I get home.  I tried it in Spanish, but I just don't have time.  I want to strangle whoever said study abroad was a blow-off semester.  I have two 5 page essays due Mon. and a 10-pager due in two weeks.  And the next two weeks are midterms.  I feel like every week is like this, too.  Estoy jodido.  But that's enough wallowing in misery.  I had an film criticism due the Mon. after Salamanca (you see what I mean? It never ends!), so I spent most of my free time working on that.  I had to track down a place to rent movies in Salamanca and pay 6 euro to rent a movie from the '70s.  Ridiculous.  I did get out though, we went out for drinks and tapas with some students from the University of Chicago Sat. night.  Let's see... after that, the only thing that really happened until Thurs. of last week was our goodbye dinner for the brits.  We went out for chinese and to the Flor.  It was pretty fun.  A random thought I had: there's a roundabout near where I live with a fountain in the middle.  A bunch of ducks live in the fountain.  My question: why are there not a bunch of duck carcasses in the street?  Are the street cleaners just really prompt?  Perhaps the ducks are smarter than I give them credit for.

So much hair, so much black, so much attitude...

Greetings from España otra vez.  It's been awhile since I last posted, so I've got a lot of catching up to do.  Last Fri, we went to the Prado for my art class.  It was enjoyable; I'm a fan of El Greco.  Afterward, those of us in the class met up with the rest of the friend group to go to the ballet.  I knew nothing about this, just that we were going to the ballet, and I assumed it would be Nutcracker-esque.  Not so.  Entitled "Rock the Ballet", the show mostly consisted of a male and female lead and the "Amazing Boys of Dance" (I'm not making this up), an all-male chorus, dancing to rock music.  They came out in tight jeans and different colored T-shirts-- for anyone who's seen The IT Crowd, it was exactly a scene from "The Work Outing" episode.  Unfortunately, I was unable to take pictures.  My personal favorite was a sort of tango-esque number with blow-up dolls.  Yes, blow-up dolls.  To "Habanera" from Carmen.  This is why I love Europe; I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.  A middle-aged French couple was sitting next to us, very conservatively dressed, and I couldn't help but wonder what they made of it.  Afterwards, we went to Dominoes and gloried in greasy American pizza.  It was a wonderful night.

Three of us then took the night bus to Seville.  A note to Spanish men: please don't try to hit on random girls in the metro unless you have all your teeth.  It's just embarrassing for everyone.  Anyway, the bus ride was very, very long.  6 or 7 hours, in fact.  The guy sitting next to us was from Nigeria and had some pretty spectacular black-and-white, pointed snakeskin boots.  And a mesh cut-off shirt over his T-shirt.  We arrived safely and, after searching for quite awhile, found a hostel with vacancy.  Then, we just spent the day wandering about.  We visited the cathedral and saw Christopher Columbus's tomb:

The four statues represent the four kingdoms of Aragon, Leon, Castile, and Navarra.  We spent quite a bit of time strolling along the river.  Nothing too exciting, but it was enjoyable.

We then had dinner and drinks at a tapas bar.  Rule number one of tapas: don't eat the bread first.  It was served to us before our meal, so, naturally, we ate it.  Well, it turned out that several of the tapas were dips and we, breadless, had to eat them with a spoon like soup.  We might as well have carried signs that said TOURIST in neon lights.  Afterwards, we attended our second show of the weekend- they were having some sort of flamenco festival that Ángeles had told me about (have I mentioned that I love her?).  Anyway, there was a concert featuring a gypsy flamenco guitarist, Tomatito, who is apparently one of the best flamenco guitarists out there.  It was fantastic.  Words can't really describe it, but the music evoked wind sweeping across desert sands, flickering firelight, Imams calling the faithful to prayer, bedouin camel caravans, sorrow, passion, the firmament, the landscape and the people of southern Spain, and a little bit of jazz.  Flamenco sounds very Moorish to me for some reason, like the glory days of the Muslim caliphate viewed through layers of everything that has happened to Spain since.  I love it.  Tomatito (that means "little tomato"; I have no idea why he's called that) was on guitar, of course, with a back-up player who I think was his son.   There were also two or three cantaores- flamenco singers (or, more appropriately, wailers)- and several people who's sole job was to clap rhythmically.  After a few strictly musical numbers, a bailaor came out and danced.  He was pretty phenomenal as well.  Requirements for flamenco dancers/singers/clappers/whatever: long black hair, black outfit, incredible amounts of attitude.  They all had prettier hair than I do.  At the most intense part of the dance, the bailaor dramatically threw his hair tie across the stage and let his shining, raven locks flow free.  Truly.  After the Hair took a bow, Tomatito let his son take over for a few songs.  He was pretty great too.  Then, his (Tomatito's) grandson came out and danced.  He must have been 5 or 6 and already had the requisite black and red outfit, shoulder-length, glossy black hair, and an attitude to rival the Hair's.  He was a pretty darn good bailaor too, and flung himself around the stage with such drama that it was impossible not to think he was adorable.  It was an incredible concert. The next day, we took the bus to Córdoba to see the Mesquita.  Originally a mosque, it was converted into a cathedral in the 16th century.  On the way, we ran into Sancho Panza:

Too bad Don Quixote was still in Toledo.  Below is the mosque part of the Mezquita:

 ... and the cathedral part:

It had a very peaceful, quiet atmosphere with dim lighting and the smell of incense on the air.  It felt very holy.  It's interesting to see the soft, draping peppermint arches flow into a baroque cathedral.  The two parts don't seem like they could be part of the same structure, but they work very well together.  Take note, extremists.  We got back to Toledo pretty late, but it was well worth the detour.  Córdoba seems to me very stereotypical "Spain" with its whitewashed buildings and flower boxes and cobblestone streets.  I'm falling asleep, so I'll go ahead and post this.  More on last week and this week later.