Sunday, September 17, 2006

Hi, duckies. María José called me a "gansa" today, and if I must be a goose you must be ducks.

Anywez, as I was not saying before, I had nice tourist day in El Escorial, with Anna-Julia-Matt-my memories. The people of El Escorial built a statue of a robot with a camera to mock me.



The castle, which is not actually a castle, at El Escorial is sort of ugly on a gray day, so I'm not going to show you what it looked like. This isn't a blog about the truth, it's about the beauty. Speaking of beauty and truth, here's a good illusion for you.




It's not a door, it's part of a panel of a door. Flat, smooth, but made of different wood tones to create this lovely door-on-a-door affect. To adorn this door with more door. Forgive me. It's beautiful, I mean. One panel of one door. Click on it, I encourage you.


I start my fake classes tomorrow. That is, the classes with only american students, the "high advanced" (re:intermediate*) language class, the Spanish Lit. course.

*Really, I feel so schmoozed. There are five levels, the lowest of which is Intermediate. To give you an example of the schmooziness of that: I have been taking Spanish one year, know only about 3/4 the verb forms and am constantly transgendering my nouns, and am in the middlest level, "high advanced."

The way my schedule is in my mind, I'll be taking those two classes, two humanities classes (Islam, Contemporary Poetry of Spain), and one regular, requirement-fulfilling history class. Three Carlos III credits are four Bard credits. All my classes but the History class are worth three credits; the history is worth six. That's 24 Bard credits of Spanish-language courses in a country without grade inflation. Aaaaaaacch.

Let's talk about food instead. I finally had a café bombon, which is espresso with condensed milk. Aiiiee, la leche, I'm telling you. Do we drink that? Seattle's Best Coffee doesn't sell it, and that's my only coffee expertise. (Confession: I tell people I worked "in a coffee shop," and let them add the little tattoos to my shoulders. SBC, and in the middle of Borders, too. SBC, which is OWNED by Starbucks).

Bocadillos are lunch, sandwiches made with french bread and meat and oil only. We had them for dinner yesterday, to eat in front of "La Importancia de Llamarse Ernesto," and M. José was somewhat doubtful of my choice to slice a tomato onto my bocadillo, rather than simply cutting it in half and wiping the bread with it. I'm just to old and set in my ways to convert into a proper Castillian wench.

2 comments:

Christine said...

If you were a tin woman instead of a rag doll, that robot would surely be your groom. Also, I clicked on the picture of the door and all I got was a picture of a door. SPOOKY ILLUSION, THERE.

I'm just going to post aggressive comments from now on because I can't stand living without you.

LOVEjerk

Anonymous said...

I'm posting a comment weeks and weeks too late, simply because i HATE that it says 2 comments when there are two and 6 comments when there are six, but when there IS one comment it says 1 Comments which is irksome. so here is TWO so that the s on comments doesn't cause anyone to itch. love love love from MWWEEEEE