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.

Even remotely delightful.

Oh tiny rainy California, thanks. Though two weeks of seeing people, no other plans, somehow never allows for as much time as one'd like with each-- still I got to see my family and some beloved friends, and phew thank goodness I did. The facts be that though I live in a sweet sitch in Madrid, home/reality/whatever is wherever my loved ones are. And a family is becoming, not just had. My family is becoming a family better at accepting itself. Thank you for all of you welcoming me.

Saturday and Sunday back in Madrid were pretty unreal feeling, really, but Monday I had three classes with sweethearts and felt much more present. Ivan made dinner and Ewan bought the bread and he and I cleaned up--charming, normal, sustainable.

All of a rush home: a hole in the clouds! I LOVE to fly cntnntl: they feed me meat and white bread and iceberg lettuce and something sweet, they give me a wee scratchy cushion an ugly blue blanket. Sometimes they pay me to bump myself from a flight! Cntnntl!




Sun flowers sun windows--but days and days of rain.




A behind the scenes shot of Posie's dance-date-distortion art project, which can be viewed on facebook.




Mama kept all her hair on for my arrival. It washed mostly off all of a sudden one evening. She put all the clumps on a paper towel and we all came and witnessed. I can't imagine not having been there. Hair loss should maybe be the least of cancer, under the pain and the exhaustion and the fear, but its visual impact is significant. The woman without hair is the image of cancer, and mama is not otherwise the image of cancer. She's tired, but she looks healthy, so I think the hair loss was something we all needed to see.

Here, with hair and flowers:



Hi, Beautiful.




Hey!



5 days went swimming by and I got no pictures of Monroe! Said Ma: "Oh, so it's like he was never here." Mmph.

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.

Dearest beloveds,

Look what Ewan did:



That is allllll the cooking salt in the house, now with glass! Now we have only sea salt and salt of the earth.

Here is what else Ewan and Ivan did: lots of favors for me yesterday. Salt of the earth!

Dar-lings. It's been a nice weekend. I still fear deathly grippe, so I've been drinking tea. No table wine, no terrible beer. Folks and I stayed out until 5am or so dancing last night, I lightly caffeinated.

Trifles: The caffeine in tea is (colloquially) called teína. In Spanish thought coffee, café, has caféina, and tea, té, has teína. Makes sense!

Klarifikation Korner: Mama, the photos I put up here are either taken by others or taken by my computer itself. My camera, and therefore my [missing] camera-computer cord, play no part. Thus the abundance of pictures of my room and window.

Thank you. Please enjoy this memory of Ronda, which, remember, memory, Christmas.

I came here with a little rolling suitcase and a huge duffel bag Papa sweetly donated. Since arrival I've bought a current converter, a permanent shopping bag, a shirt and some socks. I got a coat and some sweaters free at a beautiful squat which is now being shut down, before I had the chance to give anything back. I have swapped books, in a casual take-these-I-will-take-this manner which may or may not have augmented my collection. Christmas brought me some curiosities, and I hear the mail is bringing me more. That said: I don't have a lot of stuff here.

But I realized--as I hung my sheets to dry everywhere in my room, the rain outside having mooted the laundry lines--if everything one owns is multicolored, one really only needs about half the stuff. Look how that space filled:

Congratulations go to Rosie for being accepted by her top choice: Eckerd College!



Waaw.

I'm glad I'm not the only one in our family whose top choice was a college nobody else had ever heard of. Big hugs to you darling: you've worked harder at more than most college students have.

Silent morning mishap.

Lightning! then the nightmare. and loosening!

I spent last night with some kids I am tentatively calling my new friends, all actually friends and classmates of my b'loved housemate Ivan. Ivan is great, awesome, we get along super. I'm always glad when he's home--which he rarely is, since he is a sort of architecture grad student and spends all his time studying in this studio he and his fellow future architects rent collectively as a study/party space. No classes: just working on some huge final project for a year. Hannah and I went to the New Years Eve party he and his archipals threw collectively in the studio, since which very enjoyable occasion I've felt welcomed by all. Ivan and I spent most of yesterday making pizza dough, and topping shopping (creme fraiche white sausage eggplant sweet baby tomatoes). About nine people altogether ate mmmm seven pizzas of varying circumference + fatness. Almost everyone collaborated on one or another pizza. Oh it was very nice, my and Ivan's first pizza making though his girlfriend is Italian and everything. Someday I'll picture put up.

Sometimes outside the living room is thus:



But this morning when I a-rose for work---thus:



And by this afternoon:




Yow!

Salamanca, Late December.



My house, Epiphany.

Ode to Hannah Sunshine



by Hannah Sunshine

Ronda! With Nick and the adorable Rhodescholars.






Dear Christmas punkins,

There will be more photos. Especially this one:

I love you, Mama!



I love you, Moominfamily!

Thanks Ma!