I like when I am doing anything and then the song iTunes plays is one of my friends's.

Dang, dearheart, is Granada beautiful or hwhat. Spent a day or so with hippies from the olden studenten days of Madrid, whom've max-exodized to Granada proper, where rent is a hundred a month and nobody can find enough work to pay even that. I crashed in a three person house with about a hundred other people. Reminder: Granada is all white with orange trees and china plates on the inner and outer walls of its houses.

Imagine I took photos!

This tiny beautiful person taught me to make coffee with ginger. Another taught me how to make cheese in twenty minutes with only milk and lemon juice. Wow really cool.

Here are what these people are nicknamed: Codo, Chema, Mele, Fani ("Fani eez funny!"), Almu...

I wish I had photographs! Then we went camping at this free festival thing. Tristan was there! Like a fairytale! And we froze at night in a circle of crowded tents but in the morning we could eat! That's the best part about camping: eating outside with lots of people. Baked potatoes and zillions of torn off bread hunks with stuff. I didn't even get sick til I hitched a ride home with some kids who umm were sleep impaired. An' ate a bunch of sausage and paprikachip sandwiches. OH my gosh never again.

That's the story! Also, today I found 20 bucks, my phone charger, and affordable greek yogurt. Oh ha ha.

This is still my favorite part of my thesis transl. introd.:

"Translated wordplay such as “the mama donates/ beauty” function mostly by sending the reader back to the original text on page 201, “la madre dona la/ hermosura,” during which transit the words “madre dona” and “mama donates” undergo a species of magic-eye congelation, a cross-eyed bilingual reading from which the Madonna emerges."

When I wrote it I laughed and Emma said "what what what" and when I read it to her she had many many more whats to what

but it's an important point, that third-eye of ze reader of parallel poems, the 3D spanglish congealing down the page divide

I never posted Carnaval photz.



Well Carnaval is not such a huge thang in Madrid, though there is some weird tradition where a sardine is buried... but stuff was fab enough in Toledo. We went to a house party, then a plaza party (with a big paid-for sounding cover band and zillions of costumed people. Smaller town means I think elaborater costumes) and then a converted mosque (converted into a dance club, ooh this world) (that was probably the most fun of all) and then oh chocolate and churros and heavily slept through bus ride home. But Toledo, strangers:



We the Madrid contingent did not dress up so much. Truthfully we were pathetic. Ewan and Ivan were "rockstars." Gonzalo + Juanjo + María were "hippies." Elen and Keith were two Americans who took an earlier bus to hacer Toledan tourism and were exhausted.



I was "a dude."



Kids in Toledo were dressed to the nines, often in groups of that or more. A huge group all in one costume...6 cross dressed brides, 5 pawns, eight Snow Whites would not be a ridiculous troupe. The whole thing was so silly, so wigged and extraneous and cute.

E+I+I's embarassingly attractive friend A all went to a week-after-Carnaval costume party.



Note Ivan's hat, the same hat (his) I wore the wknd before.