Just to answer a question I'm sure you're DYING to know

I noticed that in the previous post I didn't mention any of the guys I know here.

The reason is simple. The ones who aren't married are too buys hooking up with the ever-available girls here, and since I'm the only person in my Spanish class, that basically limits me to my art history class, where there are four guys. I tried talking to a married one today, for a change, but the wife definitely gave me a dirty look.

...and an updatie WILL be had

Hola.

I'm not sure how I'm going to update this. My roommate, Katie, is stretched out on her bed snoring, and I'm sitting here listening to music and trying to figure out what I'm going to update about.

Her phone just rang. It goes "Black Magic Woman." I know that there's more to the song, only with my headphones already on, it's kind of hard to hear what else her phone is singing.

So school looks like it's going to be school after all. I'm reading a novella called "El túnel" (quite literally translated, it roughly means, "The Tunnel") and the art I'm studing in art history has some of the Romanesque and Gothic stuff from last quarter, except this time questions like these are thrown in:

"How does this make you FEEL"?
"Do you LIKE this?"
"WHY do you THINK that?"
"WHY do YOU think the artist PAINTED like that?"

After school, I've been walking around. Today, after I came back and put my stuff down after my last class at three, I walked over to the Prado and this huge park called the Parque del Buen Retiro. Which I think means "the park of the good retreat" or something. My computer dictionary only has retirar in there, so I'm only guessing. And that picture is of someone random. I found it on Google.

So that spent about 1.5 hours to walk to. Walked around there, looked at the crystal palace, the man feeding turtles in a pond, and walked back via Gran Vía and Calle Princesa. And Puerta del Sol.

Damn this internet connection to hell. I always get disconnected. I didn't think any internet connection could be conceivably worse than what we have in Newhall, but I have been proven wrong. As I always am in matters of computer and people.

This weekend Katie, Sheila, one other girl and three other guys are going to Morocco. I'm going to Toledo for a day, going around Madrid for another, and then the third I'm not sure. Maybe El Escorial or to the Valley of the Fallen. Ernest Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" was written around there, and there’s a big hill with a HUGE cross on it and where Franco is buried. The prisoners of the Republican army after the Civil War built it, and lots of them died while working on it.

The internet still isn’t working. I’m writing this on word.

For the benefit of the people who I’m not in daily contact with, I’ll talk a little bit about the people who I see often enough at school to find out what they’re really like.

Samantha - the girl who goes to UIC. She’s cool because she’s not taken a Spanish class for 9 years and we still talk in Spanish whenever we do talk. She hates it when the kids at school don’t speak Spanish or when they “ACT LIKE FUCKING TOURISTS AT THE BARS AND ARE ALL LIKE ‘QUE ESTUDIAS’ ‘COMO ESTAS’” (she went out last night and got really annoyed with the kids around her). She's 24, and she has a boyfriend who was in a band and on tour in Germany last month. She doesn't know what music he plays because she thinks it probably sucks and if she doesn't hear it, she doesn't have to pretend to like it. She’s got pretty cool roommates named
Amanda, Katie, and Elizabeth - Amanda (ballerina) Katie (gets hit on by all the guys here) Elizabeth (has been here since the first summer session. She knows Spanish well)
Esther – met her in flamenco class. She is as uncoordinated as me, and she is very tall. She’s very nice.
Scarlett – we go to the grocery store to get figs and fruits for lunch because we’ve realized that the señoras aren’t too keen about fruit in the house. Actually, they’re really basically only keen about lard.
Alex – a girl I’d rather not see, but she’s always around. She’s loud, and she kisses up to the teacher like no one I’ve ever seen.
Julia – she’s also loud and she thinks she’s “the shit.” And she’s in my art history class. However, whenever she opens her mouth I want to run into a wall. Today’s question included:
“How come Jesus doesn’t have body hair anywhere? Were the painters just not big on body hair? Because, I mean, he was a GUY and guys have hair all over”

I AM SO CONFUSED

So I just changed the colors again here, which made it completely look like I am getting ready for Thanksgiving...with brown, red, white, etc., and what is showing up for me is something I created a time before that. Is the internet here hours late?

So you can tell me: is it the one with a red background, or a white one?

I bought a "pocket" Spanish-English dictionary today because after I went to the store for nailpolish remover and had to ask for the "eraser of paint on fingernails," I realized I had to improve my vocabulary. And that I need help.

But these colors on blog are a cry for help too.

Yes, it is possible to make even uglier color combinations

If Kris is in danger of actually getting over his perpetual headache, this combination of colors will ensure that it will indeed stay there for yet another month. Glorious.

I am really liking Spain so far. Then why am I taking the time out of my oh-such-a-blast schedule to update about nothing? Because I was too sleepy to go out. So there. The scary thing is that I might have actually felt like going to the seedy bar with seedy people had I taken a nap earlier today instead of going on a walk in the afternoon.

Last night I did go to what the people here call "La Cueva," or "The Cave" because there are stalactites and stalagmites inside, and when making their drinks with milk, the milk comes out of the stalactites hanging over the bar. While my roommate Katie proceeded to drink 4 liters (not joking) of this stuff, I got to hear all about her and my other roommate's, Sheila's, lives. It was all right. I still don't know how comfortable I'm going to be the students here, because they don't really seem like my type. I did meet one really nice girl, Samantha, here, who incidentally goes to UIC. She came here with a backpack....and that's all. Oh, and a purse. She wants to go travel around Europe for 2 weeks after she's done, and so she didn't want to take a lot of stuff. She moved to Chicago when she was 17, started working, decided when she was 21 to go back to school, and here she is now at 24.

Tomorrow evening I am going to go see a Shakespeare play with Scarlett (no, unfortunately not named after Gone with the Wind). I'm sure that will wind up at a tapas bar somewhere, which, just to show that I DO know, is the type of bar very popular everywhere in Madrid where finger foods come with the drinks. The plates the food are on used to cover the drinks so the flies wouldn't get to them. I learned that in Spanish last quarter. Saturday I'm going to Segovia. After that I don't know. But it will involve something to do with Spain.

I'm leaving tomorrow

And I thought if I changed the colors on here I might enjoy posting more on here. I don't like the colors still. But at least it's different, and it doesn't have those dots everywhere. Actually, I didn't really mind those, since at least it was decoration.

I don't know if I'll spend more time on here anyway. It's not that I like the colors on livejournal better, but at least people know about that one. And, what can I say, I guess I like attention.