Ok, so this post was going to be awesome and really long because for the last three weeks even though I've been neglecting the blog I've been keeping a list of everything I've been doing but my computer officially hates me and, after I closed the sticky note where I was keeping my list, it decided to freeze Firebox and not allow me to recover my post. So I'm going to do the best I can but I really have a bad feeling about this unfortunately (meaning I'm pretty sure I'm going to miss things that I wanted to talk about). Also, the entries will probably increase in length as I get closer to the present because I remember that stuff a little bit better. I haven't been posting much because I can tell that very few people read this thing and so I don't have much motivation to. If you do read this, please take the 2 seconds to comment on it, even if it’s generic, just so I have some idea of who's actually interested in what I'm doing and I can try to cater more towards what they're interested in. Also, some of the links today will be to pages in Spanish. Sorry, they’re just interesting so I put them up even though most of you don’t speak or read Spanish.

Miércoles 11 octubre 2006
So Wednesday was mostly uneventful other than the Erasmus party that night. Erasmus is the European Union exchange program and they have lots of activities like parties, trips, workshops, etc. They have both Spanish Erasmus alums and current foreign Erasmus members, and anyone else who’s a college student here. The party itself was pretty fun, good music and lots of people. We got there a little early by Spanish standards, and the place was mostly empty but by the time we left the bar was filled to brimming with people. We then had the experience of taking the Buho Metro home. I believe I’ve mentioned Buhos in the past but they’re the night buses here in Madrid. Most run out of Plaza de Cibeles but there are some that follow the metro routes, which are the ones I like best (because they’re so easy and usually not as full).

Jueves 12 octubre 2006
The next day was the Spanish equivalent of Columbus Day, Hispanic Day or National Day. This meant no school and a military parade which I accidentally slept through. I wandered around a little during the day and, in the afternoon, I went with Margaret to the Botanic Gardens. She hadn’t visited yet even though I had, but I was really glad I went back because there was a section I had missed the first time around. It was filled with Bonsai trees and it was amazing! I took lots of pictures so I recommend you check out my flickr set to get an idea of the variety (I didn’t take pictures of all of them though). Unfortunately in terms of flowers, it was a little later in the season so there weren’t as many. Regardless, it was a pretty good trip.

Viernes 13 octubre 2006
Friday, the Albellas left for Pamplona to visit Pepa’s mother (Pepa had been gone all week but the rest of the family left after lunch on Friday). Because they were planning to be gone the whole weekend, I figured it would be a good opportunity to cook a little bit on Saturday night for a few of my friends. To that end, I checked out Taste of America, the American grocery store that really just had dry foods and canned foods as opposed to what I needed, but they did have ginger ale which I’d been craving the past couple days. After that, I went to the Corte Ingles for the rest of the food. Corte Ingles is the Spanish one stop shopping center, literally. They have everything. I’m convinced you can buy children there if you look hard enough. (OK, not really, but you get the point.) In the end we found everything but buttermilk but I had looked up how to make it online earlier so it didn’t really matter. Margaret had gone with me and after we finished the shopping we went home and baked some cornbread!! It actually turned out really well. After the cornbread was finished, I went to meet Avery for dinner. I met Avery in the laundry room in Santiago. She’s studying in Madrid with the Colgate program which used to be connected with the Vassar Wesleyan program. We went to this great contemporary Spanish restaurant called La Finca de Susanna. It’s pretty cheap for really good food at a nice restaurant. Unfortunately though, we had to wait an hour for the table so we decided to wander around the area (right by Sol) for a while. Dinner was delicious but we couldn’t hang out for too long afterwards because I had agreed to work on Saturday.

Sabado 14 octubre 2006
Saturday, I worked at Biblioketa most of the day. A few days earlier, Lola, one of the women who run the store called me to warn me to come up with an idea for a workshop. I decided to teach a very basic lesson on the writing of fairy tales since I wasn’t sure how good the kids would be at English given that they’re only 6-8 years old. In the end, though, no one showed up for that part of the day, maybe because it was a holiday weekend. After work, I hurried home so I could meet my friends and we could get started on dinner. I actually ran into them on the metro on the way from work to my house. When we got there, we made a delicious black bean chili-mac and ate that delicious cornbread I had made the day before. Dinner came out really well and it was generally just a very nice night. After my friends left, I made cookies for the Albellas. They turned out perfectly!

Lunes 16 octubre 2006
Nothing too much happened on Sunday but on Monday I had my art class again. I finally finished the drawing I was working on. You can see it to the left of today. I’m really proud of the way it turned out. The shading to me looks really realistic and it looks mostly like the actual teapot. It seemed to take forever to finish, but in the end it was worth it. I think the drawing class is really helping and it’s making me feel more creative/want to draw more often.

Martes 17 octubre 2006
Tuesday I finally started the remainder of my classes. These are the only classes I have with actual Spaniards instead of exclusively foreign students. My first new class is Literatura y Pensamiento (Literature and thought). It’s going to be a pretty hard class because we’re reading really difficult texts: The Odyssey, The Divine Comedy, and Gulliver’s Travels. I’ve included the links to the wikipedia articles on them because I’m not sure who knows anything about them or not. The professor is really nice though and it seems like it should be a good class. My other new class is the Anthropology of Flamenco. It’s a really fun class that combines the history with the dance so we learn a little bit of everything. The first day we watched a movie about all the different styles of flamenco and then we learned a couple of the basic steps. The only problem with my flamenco class is that it doesn’t end until 10 and it takes about an hour to get back home so I’m always starving by the time I reach the apartment.