Le Poisson

Well the losses seem to accumulate, last night I thought about it a little bit and I seemed to be missing something? As I kept searching, I could not for the life of me find my beloved Irish cap! Well... joder. Whether by robbery or by simple absentmindedness, the thing that made me easy to distinguish, the thing that kept me warm, the perfect gift from my parents, the rain protection and fun accessory, my cap has left me. Fortunately, caps of that sort are very popular here as all old Spanish men wear them, so there must be cap stores somewhere. Perhaps I will go in search of a new one, or perhaps I´ll just wait until I get to Scotland. I don´t know, it´s a difficult thing to attempt to replace, lots of sentimental value - very similar to my camera. Ugh, why am I cursed with the ability to lose anything? I guess that makes me smart for deciding not to get a laptop... that would be gone.

To top it all off, last night I also discovered that I couldn´t find the adapter (€1 or less, not worried about that) to plug in my stuff to the wall, so I was going to take my iPod to the nightly internet café to plug into the computer to recharge. As long as the computer doesn´t have iTunes, the iPod should just recharge and not be messed up. But... it froze. It just stopped, right in the middle of an NPR Food podcast. I wanted to hear the rest of the story about faulty Chinese exports! Whatever would happen to that cut of tenderloin that is infected with the aviary flu? Well, I was not happy at all: no cap, no camera, and now no iPod. That was definitely the last straw. I went and walked around the city for an hour just to chill out and think about where I am. It was wet outside, dark but lit but lots of street lights. I had become familiar with the various routes and people that I might encounter. Frustrated as I was, it was also abundantly clear what kinds of habits Spaniards have in large groups - they never move out of the way. Ever. And they´ll stop in their tracks randomly, even if they´re in the middle of a crowd. And they´ll walk down the street in long lines next to each other, blocking the whole avenue, no matter who´s coming the other direction. I do not like this Spanish trend. I do not like it, Sam I Am. Others have advised pushing people out of the way, they don´t seem to mind and in fact seem to simply ignore being pushed out of the way. But my question is, why aren´t they just courteous enough to move a little bit so that I don´t have to push anyone? I guess the Spanish are more used to contact than Americans are, they´re ok with being touched by a stranger a little bit, but we definitely aren´t. Either way I still find it rude for someone to stand in my way when I´m very clearly moving that direction.

And right now it looks like I have about $888 at my disposal, having started with about $1,843 and $250 having very nicely been augmented by my parents and strangely $450 added by ORL - I just e-mailed them to make sure they´re aware of that issue and to see if/when they need that back. And if I have done my math correctly, $500 more should be coming along later to finish making up for the $750 that was subtracted from my account at the beginning of the semester to help pay for the semester. So all in all, subtracting ORL money, I seem to have spent about half of my total money and approaching halfway in my trip, that´s none too bad. I suppose as a poor college student I can always ask nicely from my parents for a little extra to finish off the trip, but realistically I´ll be with them for that finish so who knows, I may be just fine yet.
Oh yes, but I forgot one very interesting piece of international trade, at the beginning of the semester, we all paid that €100 ransom for our cell phones that will be paid back at the end of the semester. So actually depending on how things go, I could actually make money on that deal... very little, but still it´s an interesting concept, kind of a forward contract without any express interest except in the wayward possibilities of international trade within the currencies of the historically strong US dollar and the more modernly explosively strong Euro. I might make as much as $5, which would be cool, even just in theory. But that also means I´ve used less than half of my real total money, which is nice.

As far as the iPod goes, right now it is happily charging in this SalU computer lab, no problems at all. So at least I have my music. Last night I felt somewhat lost without music to listen to, I was about to whip out my penny whistle, or go in hunt for a piano. But alas there are no such things available at midnight. As long as I have good stuff to listen to, I really don´t feel much of an urge to play music. But I do have a strong urge to sing along, which is difficult to do here without some wierd looks. There just aren´t any places to let loose and belt out a fun song from a musical, which I can usually do in my car at home. I do really miss singing, particularly with the group, all us View Crew people (GH) . I can make do, however, just singing to myself willy nilly in the streets of Salamanca. Most of them have no idea what the lyrics mean and it´s fun just to let loose every once in a while, particularly since I´ll probably never see any of them again and definitely never talk to most of them. What do they care if I am singing 'Le Poisson' from Little Mermaid? They might even like the melody.

Right now it doesn´t seem like we´re doing very much in our classes - in Cultura e Identidad Latinoamericana (the class taught in English), we´ve been looking at the Spanish conquest of Latin America, using examples like food of the mix of cultures and what the great differences were between the societies. I quite enjoy the food aspect of it, particularly since I get to do a research paper on food in Latin America. In Political Science, we look all the time at political articles in the newspapers and talk about the Spanish political history and heirarchy. It´s quite interesting and I think I´ve learned a lot from our Argentinian teacher. Yesterday to distinguish the difference between someone working for the state as opposed to the government, we watched an episode of a British show called 'Yes, Minister' about a permanent state secretary working with an appointed cabinet member. We don´t have such distinctions in the US, President Bush can appoint up to 4,500 people, whereas the British Prime Minister can appoint only 100 and to popular demand that number is declining. It´s pretty ridiculous, right? In Spanish Civilization, we´re slowly learning about the layout of the country and what each region does and really what the country as a whole does as far as working and thereafter consuming. Quite interesting. In Art, we continue to look at the history of art and architecture throughout Spain, since before the Romans up to Dalí. Our teacher is very biased towards what he thinks is good art and therefore will not take much time to look at the works of either Dalí or Gaudí, a grand shame if you ask me. In my final class, Cine y Literatura, we continue plowing through our miles of reading and watching to discuss major literary and cinematic moments in Spanish culture, from the living in illusion character of Quixote to... well I don´t know to what, we haven´t gotten there yet. The only real work comes along in the great amount of reading for my film class and for Van Norman´s latin American class. But both look to be interesting, and the rest of the classes are generally pay attention in class and get an A. I just wish I could take a picture of something and keep my head warm, but at the very least I can sing to myself in the streets like a crazy person :-).