Hot Dog Night

Ah! Saw some wonderful jazz and ran around in the city last night. I´m so happy now. Gabe and I went to see a group called Dead Capo, which I had heard before and which has decent reviews. I think one said the pianist was Debussy-influenced, so I was hooked. They´re Madrileños but make a good effort at funk and blues. Very tight sound. They played some Monk, some surf rock during which the drummer yelled ¨yeehaw!,¨ and the best part was that they ended with a tune called ¨Hot Dog Night.¨ The players kept stopping at intervals and saying ¨it´s been a hot dog night, and I feel all right,¨ so eventually we realized it was a take-off of the Beatles´ ¨A Hard Day´s Night.¨ I guess if you´re in a Spanish jazz band, ¨hard day´s night¨ kind of sounds like ¨hot dog night.¨ Sounds pretty bad, but it was awesome.

The last story I did for WFMY is finally posted: ¨Migrant Workers´ Union Makes Impact.¨ Click on the Beyond the Headlines link.

Boredom, More Art

I haven´t written in a week because there´s been nothing to write about. Mostly I´ve been cooped up in a big empty house waiting for school to start next week. I´ll walk and do some exploring, then ride the bikes in the gym that don´t go anywhere, then eat a huge meal that makes me want to take a nap, which makes me unable to sleep at night so I stay up watching bad Spanish movies or the Madrid version of 20/20.

But tonight I´m going to see some jazz, which I´ve been craving for some reason. I also went to a great art presentation today, a multi-media exhibit on the marginalized people of Madrid -- the homeless, prostitutes, illegal immigrants, etc. It was actually an amazingly well-documented anthropological study done with video, photograph, and written interviews. You could go to a station and listen to recordings of various streets in Madrid, simulating what a homeless person has to put up with all day. Callao - man spraying street, women with jingling skirt, bus number 20, music from shop. There were pictures of every design of city bench along with facts about it: what kind of heat it absorbs (stone vs. wood), whether it has arm rests, etc. And dozens of maps tracking places to sleep, hide possesions, bathe and get food. A gimungous exhibit with endless documentation of every aspect of their lives.

Next week starts photography and cinema class... so excited. My translation class is all right.

Classes start, sort of

Monday night our directors Victoria and Rodrigo took us out for a very nice dinner in the city. It was a tapas restuarant that´s been around for a good thirty years, and was so good that I even ate their olives. Victoria is a psychologist who works at a ¨good energy¨ center where they do acupuncture, tai chi, and other sorts of therapies. In the last few days she had been interviewed for a TV show called ¨Ding Dong,¨ which came out yesterday on channel 6. The show had something to do about a woman who had been cured of her fear of water in one therapy session. Strange stuff.

Other than dinner on Monday night, then watching a horrible dubbed Sylvester Stalone movie on TV last night (Ojo Asesino), I haven´t been doing much of anything. I was supposed to have a class on Monday but no one showed up, but it started today. Applied Linguistics of Translation, it´s called (Lingüística Aplicada a la Traduccíon). My radio class starts tomorrow, but I´ll likely drop that one because I don´t need so many credits. Then all my others start October 3rd. Going to see ¨Crazy in Alabama¨ tonight. I might just start running, with all this food and nothing to do for a couple weeks.

Theater, Fireworks, Great Art

What a lovely weekend. Gabe and I wanted to see a movie, and I had read about an artsy little theater that shows movies of all sorts and at a third of the price of any other theater. What´s a day in Madrid without getting lost a thousand times -- half the day was spent walking around looking for it. But in the process we found some great, non-touristy parts of the city, a mix of a Chinatown and a Bohemian neighborhood full of life. Punk kids with purple mohawks, old men having coffee and arguing, churches with people getting married, kids screaming. We found the theater and opted for the American movie, All the Pretty Horses, instead of the 1944 French ghost movie showing before and a Spanish one showing later. They really do show everything. There are a couple documentaries showing next week and Almost Famous on Wednesday.

At night we walked to Villaviciosa and saw the fireworks that initiated this week´s festival. Fourth of July has nothing on Spanish fireworks. I thought the whole thing was the grand finale. It last for at least 20 minutes, and was beautiful. Madrid is so flat you could see them from anywhere.

And today to the Reina Sofia, the modern art musuem, where all I wanted to see was Antonio Saura. He´s a post Spanish Civil war artist that almost exclusively painted with blacks and grays and browns -- a lot of disfigured portraits, figures that look like piles of corpses, and crucifixions. Real morbid stuff, but intriguing especially if you know the history behind it. And then I got lost some more, waited forever for the bus, and I´m back home now. Classes start tomorrow, I think.

¡Viva México!

I´ve only been taking Spanish classes on the computer this week until next week when real classes begin, so nothing much to report in that area.

I have a Mexican roommate named Mariana. Her boyfriend is Spanish and lives in Villalba, which is where I was last summer au pairing. We get along fine, and honestly, I get along better with all the Mexican students than I do with the Spanish. It seems that there aren´t quite as many girls here as there are boys, so I keep finding myself in circles of Spaniards smoking and drinking and arguing about the best 20th century arquitect or Spanish politics, things I´d barely understand in English. Most are much older than I am. But that´s how it is here, and maybe how it always has been, these macho intellectual circles. I pretty much just want to go shopping in the city and look at pretty things in musuems, the girl I am.

Yesterday was Independence Day in Mexico, or at least the day it´s celebrated. Kind of ironic that all the Mexican students are celebrating it in Spain. ¡Viva Mexico! And this whole week is las Fiestas de Villaciosa de Odon, the town I live in. There´s a running of the bulls or whatever it´s called in English, lots of music, lots of parties, a marathon, etc.

I bought some broccoli yesterday. Mmmm...

Love you all.

In Madrid

Finally, in Madrid, at a computer. Hi to everyone, I miss you all!

First, getting here was an ordeal, but since then it´s been perfect. Gabe and I are set up in a student house within walking distance of the University. We both have a roommate -- mine comes on Wednesday and I heard she is Mexican. We each have a balcony, a fridge, a kitchenette with sink and stove, a microwave, writing desk and big wardrobe. The rooms are three times as big as US dorm rooms. There´s also a live-in maid and cook, which is bizarre. Spaniards are used to people doing things for them all the time, but it makes me feel guilty.

The University is the most expensive private school in Spain. I´ve never seen anything like it in my life. It was built 13 years ago, so the architecture is super modern, with man-made lakes and waterfalls, and sliding glass doors that I´ve run into about eight times. There´s a giant sports facility with everything imaginable, which I could care less about, but it looks nice. Everything is absolutely spanking new, lots of shiny gadgets everywhere, and all the students are rich and trendy.

Because Gabe and I are the ¨embassadors¨ for this program, they´re over-accomodating us (in a good way). They escort us everywhere, take us on outings into the city and to places around Madrid, pay for meals, etc. The food here is still horrible. I haven´t seen a vegetable yet other than a tomato, unless white asparagus with mayonaise counts. I am going to go crazy shopping in the city, and I´ll probably live in the modern art musuem. My Spanish is fine and I´m in love with the accent here. It´s so fun to lisp on purpose. It´s wonderful to have an abroad experience where you already are familiar with the city. Madrid is my city, I know it backwards and forwards already and now I can do some more adventurous exploring. The lifestyle is so perfect here, hard work all day but about a thousand breaks for coffee and tapas. A 10 pm dinner doesn´t bother me so much anymore.

Yesterday I bought a mobile phone so you all can call me, although if you´re reading this on Tuesday don´t try to call because I haven´t figured out how to work it yet. The number is (011 34) 610 770214. It´s free for me to receive calls, and cheap to make them too. Also, the email I use most is mereveto@hotmail.com.

I love you all!
Mere