Sweets

Aren't they just the correctest?








And one day Martin took us out in the Red Betty.






We paused to enchant an island.





Sweden says "hej hej."

A while ago the second-grade teacher asked me to print out drawings of maybe a garden, something for the second graders to color in "with pointillism" "that will take them a long time to finish."

So I hated everything I could find for free online, so I decided the real point of working with kids is to regress, so I drew:



The kids especially liked the kitten-squirrels in the tree, but my favorite is the rabbit-anteater-bear:



Tomorrow is a field trip! The other assistant and I had to plan games. Remember Red Rover? That is the absolute most fun but someone absolutely always gets hurt. Just like teaching adjectives by having the students describe one another.

From the Salon:

Right


Left


Straight ahead.



My room from below.



My room from above.



The hall is not always so dark.



Honeys mines I've been, let's see, 3 months out of Madrid, um almost a month on New York's couches, this is math, um another week at home, I was in Germany for more than a week and then later one day more, I just can't count the houses and beds and friendships I crashed on, we'd better ellipse...I got into Madrid the 27th and I didn't move into anywhere until the night before last. I'm homestarved, I think in this state any old bunker would satiate, BUT: this house is sunripened, handpicked, local grown organic uh a 20 year old WOOFer named Michael with a beard played flute to it while it grew...it's a good apartment.



The street is called Costanilla de los Desamparados, which means "itsy sloping street of the Homeless." Which ho ho ho, feels right. We're certainly camping at the moment, unmoved in, unfridged beer and floorspace conferences.

It's Atocha zone (by the gorgeous train station), metro Antón Martin, officially part of the Barrio de las Letras, or Literature Neighbourhood, where famous phrases have been bronzed and hammered into the pavement.

Our flat! Right about Lavapiés, where we lived last year. It's up in the world, and it is where we have moved. The rooms are big and sunny, the hall is big enough to gallop up, down, wide enough to lean in and converse, all four of us plus someone's friends, the floors are wood (excepting that of the big chummy kitchen, which is brick)...there's a balcony in the living room, plenty of traffic noise tra la. We're all pretty in love at the moment, with the apartment and with each other for having stuck through and stuck together and found this THING, this beautiful sunny thing. Ewan already is making noises about staying in it more than the (age! age!) year we have contracted.

Oh Yow!

So here's the news: last Sunday was Ma's Birthday. This Sunday is Posie's. Katie Jane Extraordinaire is here in Madrid and we're trading gossip. Tonight midnight we bus to San Sebastian, city I have been jonesing to visit since I damned got here. Saturday my student who reminds me of Hannah meets the Prez of the Dominican Republic, whom Hannah has also met. Sunday midnight I come back and teach again. A pigeon just landed on my balcón. This whole week has felt like vacations.

Merry Christmas! Well. I finally picked up my Pitre-treats from the p-p-post office, and oh-my-gosh how delighted forever. Items: one gorgeously houndstoothed cap (pictured on head) which comes JUST in time, as my ears were cold; one gorrrgeous painting of my name (pictured on door) which triggered a massive synaesthetic episode (shh) and features a supine stick chick and golden dollar signs, which, now that I'm a big self-supporting teacher adult, are way appropriate. Thank you Henry! Lastly and way not leastly, yow, a mix[ed] cd (pictured in the air) from the apparently super hip Zach. Dang, Zack. "Like Humans Do" is one of my favorite songs, and you are right on about M.I.A, Gnarles Barkley, and oh man did I mention the White Stripes were like my first "real" concert experience (even though I was sober and my whole family was there). So--delicious.



Thank you! I think this is a photo of me trying to show off the hat and the hat brooch (pictured on sweater) and the sign and my great nose all at once.