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.