Raindrops on Roses, My Face, and the Kitchen Floor.

Another walk in the park thwarted. I'll just have to update.

I have an awful cough that sounds pretty manly and a little terminal, but I don't feel sick at all. María, however, will not be satisfied until I go to the farmacía and buy some cough syrup.

Last night we had a lightning storm and it was amazing. Amazing. It even rained on my face in the middle of the night through the open window. If I had thought of it, I would have taken video of it for you, but then I might have died because it was a lightning storm and María wanted the window open. Why was María in our room? Well, during the storm, there were some pretty fantastic cracks of thunder, you know, the kind that shake an apartment complex, and Ellen and I began joking that we ought to go into María's room and say we were scared and start singing what I'm sure would be a fantastic rendition of "My Favorite Things" from the Sound of Music. Just as Ellen was giving me a sound bite of what I had to look forward to, María came into our room because she was scared. It was pretty great. She sat on my bed and jumped at the lightning bolts and said things like, "¡Qué miedo!" and wagged her hand (a part of body language that means "intense" here).

Durante la tormenta, I mentioned that in the United States, storms make me nervous because I'm afraid of tornadoes (a reasonable thing to be afraid of), but that I'm calm during storms here because there are no tornadoes in Spain. To which she replied, "Oh, Chica, listen, you don't need to be scared. We don't have any tornadoes in Spain."

And that my friends, is what we call "the language barrier".

Which has been frustrating me a little lately. Namely since I received my graded composition in grammar yesterday.

Last night we also had a little rain in our apartment when the ceiling in the kitchen and bathroom began leaking like the upstairs residents had turned their bathroom into a recreational indoor pool. Turns out their washer had just broken mid-cycle and flooded their entire apartment. I woke up María and explained to her what had happened, to which she responded by grabbing my arm tightly and dragging me to the kitchen where Ellen was putting pots underneath the leaks and soaking up the water with an already sopping towel. Apparently, this is not the first time this has happened.

Ellen and I were supposed to go to Portugal hoy, but instead, we are going to experience "the Long Night of Museums" here in Seville, which entails free admission to any museum after 9 pm. The museums will stay open until 2 am. Personally, I think it's pretty nifty and I prefer it to a beach in Portugal, which may seems backwards to you, but I have my reasons.

It looks as though I will either be going to Oxford for break and distracting Ms. Kuehn (a-hem, start looking for people I could stay with). Or renting a cottage in southern Germany with a group of people and playing a lot of cards and enjoying a lot of God's creation and trying to buy groceries from red-faced husky german men who wear socks with sandals (a tell-tale sign of Germans here)

Fact: If you have not seen the mullet-dreadlock combination, you have not lived.

Another fact: My butt is sound asleep.

But if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go buy some cough syrup.