A Queen is Born

I love royal stuff! From BBC News (the only one I could find in English):

Spain's future queen gives birth

Princess Letizia, the future Queen of Spain, has given birth to her first child, a girl.

The newborn is second in line to the throne after her father Crown Prince Felipe, 37.
She was born about six hours after Princess Letizia was admitted to Madrid's Ruber International clinic, accompanied by her husband.
Spain's government says it wants to change the law so that females have the same succession rights as males.
The baby's name has yet to be announced by the Royal Palace. [They named her Leonor]
Photographers, television crews and the curious gathered outside the private clinic.
Under the Spanish constitution, the eldest male automatically succeeds, even if he has an older sister.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero has pledged to change the law, saying it discriminates against female royals.
Prince Felipe married Letizia Ortiz, 32, in May 2004 - shortly after the Madrid train bombings. [The day before I came to Spain last summer to au pair]
The crown prince's romance with Ms Ortiz, a well-known television presenter and a divorcee, had been kept a secret.

The Operation

As it turns out, I wasn´t dying, as I thought I was last week. My lovely infection had gone down a little bit thanks to antibiotics but I still had a nice big lump right at my tailbone. Mom figured out what it was, a type of cyst that´s more or less common, but that has to be lanced or else the infection will come back when I stop taking antibiotics. The cyst remains, but I had to get the infection out.

So yesterday I went to a public hospital in Madrid to have a tiny operation. As opposed to the States, public hospitals (healthcare in Spain is free) are where the best doctors are, because apparently it´s very difficult for a doctor to get into one. There are a series of exams and trials to get into a public hospital, and the ones who don´t pass work at private hospitals. Victoria´s sister, Mercedes, accompanied me (Victoria is my international relations person). Both of them speak English, which was wonderful, because I didn´t have the slightest idea what the doctor was saying. The whole thing went more or less quickly. I sat down with the doctor at his desk, told him what was wrong while he wrote it all down, he examined the lump, and said he needed to make a small incision to get the infection out (with shots of local anesthesia, of course). I made Mercedes take pictures of everything for me. She was laughing hysterically, saying I was worse than a Japanese tourist. I already know those will be my favorite pictures from my study abroad experience.

He bandaged me and gave me some pain meds, although it already feels better today. Then he didn´t charge me anything because he said it´s his custom to never charge students. Mercedes said she would´ve rather put it through the insurance because now we have to buy him a present, and we don´t know anything about him. I suggested we get the photos developed and give him a framed copy. I´ll go back for a checkup on Thursday.

The White Stripes

The last few days have been insane. Sickness, the White Stripes, Barcelona -- everything´s happened to me. On Sunday, Beast came to visit Madrid with her parents. As it usually happens in the presence of Beast, we all had a ridiculously good time. It was so good to see a friend and hear Guilford gossip again. She had brought me twizzlers but her suitcases were lost on the flight over. Pity. We also learned to dance flamenco, gringo style. Around the same time I developed this mysterious infection right at my tailbone which I really started to worry about. By Tuesday night I felt fluish and was in bed the whole day. Perfect, because Wednesday I was flying to Barcelona to see the White Stripes. But infection and delirium would never stop me from seeing the most incredible live concert in the world. So I went, and everything went smoothly until the day after the concert. It was in a smallish venue, unheard of for the White Stripes in the States. Jack White came out in a matching white and red cowboy suit and top hat, immediately began rocking ¨Dead Leaves on the Dirty Ground,¨ and by the second song I found myself in a mosh pit. Not good for painful infections. So I got myself quickly back to a good spot where the people didn´t look like the truest fans, where I could dance and scream all the words to my heart´s content. I got the funniest looks from the Spaniards. How does she know all this English? ...Best concert ever. I stayed in a nice hostel, but I slept horribly and the wardrobe kept getting bigger and smaller. I woke up with crazy hair and my eyes swollen shut and all my joints aching. I also had a conspicuous limp and was unable to sit down. I walked through Barcelona a bit and went to the Picasso museum, but felt so horrible I decided to take an early flight back to Madrid. The airplane was spinning upsidedown. I had to stand the entire way home in the metro and in the bus, and practically collapsed when I got home. I didn´t go to school today but feel a little better. Plus, I´ve been to the doctor twice and now I´m full of antibiotics and pain meds. But it was worth it.

I´m Cold

It´s cooooooooold!!! I woke up Wednesday morning and I was suddenly freezing. No fun at all.

Wednesday was yet another Spanish holiday, el Día de Hispanidad. It´s a patriotic holiday celebrating the armed forces. So no school that day, or the next because I don´t have classes on Thursdays. Wednesday I played basketball in the rain until I decided I might get the flu, and Thursday I went into the city with no plan. I really must stay away from Gran Vía from now on; the devil and all his pretty shoes live there. Madrid, despite it now being cold, is lovely in the fall. All cities are, I think. Everyone walks around in scarves and hats and leaves are falling... it´s like a movie. So pretty.

Last night Gabe and I went to Madrid to see Dilated Peoples, an amazing hip-hop group from the States. The show was great but we got there in time for about seven songs. In the States, if a show says they´re going to start at 9:30, they´re on by 11 at the earliest. I´ve never heard of a show like that starting right on the dot. Even jazz starts on time. After that we wandered around the city a bit, discovering some deserted coblestone alleyways along the way, the narrow kind that wind up and around apartment buildings, where your voice will echo for a hundred feet down. We ended up in Plaza Mayor, which never impressed me much in the daytime, but is breathtaking at night.

My room is about 10 degrees colder than anyone elses so I´m not really convinced that I need to leave my bed today. I just watched the 90s sequel to To Sir With Love (Rebelión en las Aulas II) and now bullfighting is on. Blah. I´m thinking about taking a shower, that´s today´s goal. Tomorrow my friend Melissa is coming to Madrid for fall break... and then Wednesday I´ll be in Barcelona to see the WHITE STRIPES!!!

La Conquista, the Nurse, and Rain

Friday night I went to a giant party at somebody´s house near the university where there were mostly international students. Mexicans, Italians, Germans, Belgians, Brits, Americans (well, two). It was a blast, until I got into an argument with a guy who, after telling him I was from North Carolina, called Michael Jordan the n-word. It´s amazing how well my Spanish kicks in in a case like that. I also don´t go a day here without hearing the Spaniards and the Mexicans argue about la Conquista. The Spaniards assert that 20 soldiers conquered all of Mexico, whereas the Mexicans have a slightly different opinion (which I would agree with). I´m pretty sure it was the Spanish diseases that conquered all of Mexico, and the fact that the Spaniards, with their beards and armor and horses, looked like ghosts. It´s kind of like Yankees and Southerners still arguing about the Civil War, but worse.

I didn´t do much on Saturday, and on Sunday I went to see the Wedding Crashers (de Boda en Boda) and walked around Madrid for a bit. There´s an awful male nurse that lives in our house that tried to follow me there. He never stops talking, but worse than the average nurse (he he), and cracks horrible jokes all day that nobody thinks are funny. And he likes to follow me around when I don´t want to be followed and tell me about how Asian scientists discovered a new dinosaur and named it after him and how I´m not supposed to cut my eggs like that and how mental health is the easiest because all you have to do is give out pills and talk. Whew.

In other news, we got the first rain we´ve had since we´ve been here, which is nice for Madrid because they´ve been in a drought all summer, but not nice because now it´s cloudy and dark all the time. But perfect cowboy boot weather.

My cinema class rocks, only because of the professor who´s super passionate about what she does. She´s like a Spanish Robin Williams, talking at incredible velocities and running around the class pointing at students and saying, ¨YOU! What´s your name? What is cine? Why is it art?¨ I´m literally shaky every time I leave the class.

Photo Lab

I had my first photography lab today. I liked it, but only after I figured out what I was doing. It´s not really my thing. There were a lot of people doing a lot of things at once that are technical and in Spanish. Four stressful factors. But I didn´t do too badly. I have this fear, that I´m quite sure will turn into a series of nightmares seeing how my dreams go in Spain, that i´ll be the stupid American girl that accidentally switches on the light in the dark room and ruins everyone´s photos. That´s one of those things that I probably can´t go, Oops! I didn´t understand! Which I can do in my other classes.

I bought some purple and yellow pansies and planted them in a shoebox on my balcony, because I don´t have a cat. But they´re super cute and they haven´t died yet.

It´s Friday night, so now it´s time to go stay out till 7 am as the Madrileños are fond of doing. Love you all!

Cinema and Photography

Yesterday I wrote a nice long blog entry then managed to delete the whole thing when trying to attach a picture. But this time I´m smart, writing it on Word first.

Things are picking up now. Classes officially started Monday, the same day that it decided to drop 20 degrees in temperature and that there was an eclipse. I shouldn´t complain, the weather is actually perfect now. On Sunday I was wearing a sundress and sandals and Monday it was in the 60s or 70s, enough for a long-sleeved shirt. There are zillions of students on campus now, who were all walking around in funny glasses to see the eclipse. For some reason I thought that the ecIipse was Madrid-specific because it was a huge deal here, but turns out it happened in lots of places. North Carolina, anyone? I half blinded myself trying to look at it. Our house is now full of students so there´s always something going on. In a couple hours we´re all going to play soccer near our house, just for fun.

My have my translation class on Monday as well as world cinema. In cinema we waited close to a half hour before the professor zipped in with a gray t-shirt that said LAUGHTER. She´s a lot of fun, but talks faster than a Spanish news anchor. I was able to follow along fine, and besides, we´re supposed to tell all our professors that we´re foreigners so they don´t give us bad marks for grammar.

Tuesday I had photography, and it was more or less what I expected: it´s easier to understand than most of my other classes because the terminology is technical (and also uses many English words -- flash, zoom, etc.), but if I ever decide to take a photography class in the States I won´t have the slightest idea what I´m doing in English. We´re doing fotogramas on Friday, which I assume is a photogram in English, right dad? Then next week we´re making little cameras out of Nesquik boxes, or something like that. Baby steps.

I think someone should FedEx me a poundcake.

Torrente 3

My spell of boredom has ended now that school starts officially tomorrow and the house is full of students. I´ve been hanging out with the Mexican girls that live downstairs (there aren´t any Spanish girls in the house for some reason), Mayra, Marina and Algeria. With me, Mariana and two Manuels it makes for a lot of ´M´s. Yesterday I went into Madrid with the girls and mostly walked around and shopped, and had some lunch. The yellow line on the metro is finally open! That´s my favorite one, and it was closed forever because of construction.
Then today I´ve been finishing up some of my internship work I´ve long procrastinated on, and went to see the funniest movie I´ve seen in a while, Torrente 3, about a bad undercover cop named Torrente. In Spain the Torrente series is super famous, all with ensemble casts (of course, with all Spanish actors so I didn´t know anyone). If you ask any Spaniard he´ll say the movies are vulgar and distasteful in every way, yet hilarious. The movies try to be as politically incorrect as possible. They might be bad in Spain, but a movie like this would NEVER EVER come out in the U.S. In the opening scene Torrente was on a plane, and suddenly a man jumped up and took hostage of a passenger with a plastic fork from the airplane meal. Torrente pulls out a gun and says calm down, no one will be hurt, it´s not possible to kill someone with a plastic fork! But then the man starts stabbing the women in the neck with the fork till blood squirts out and she falls dead to the floor. It´s all very exaggerated. Torrente starts shooting but he misses the man and hits the pilot instead, so the plane plummets down toward Madrid and straight into the Kio Towers, the famous diagonally-slanted twin buildings at the entrance of Madrid. Torrente escapes with a parachute.