Unimportant Realizations and Resolutions

This is my snaggle-toothed heart-breaker. Don't judge. It's not a very flattering angle.

Ok, I am going to disregard my current upset-ness as regards my disappeared European converter and instead focus on the fact that I have had a good week.

Things I have decided:

A: The next time I catch a woman staring at me on the bus, I am going to have a little fun; meaning I am going to wink at her.

B: José María and Carmen are two of my top teachers of all time. They are amazing at la enseñanza. Amazing. They make you understand things and have fantastic senses of humor and know exactly what they're talking about.

The other day, Carmen was explaining the difference between a "bata" (robe) and an "albonoz" (bathrobe). When Britton asked, "¿Una bata puede ser 'sexy'?" ("Can a robe be sexy?") Carmen replied in a low throaty voice, "Puede," raised her eyebrows, winked at the class, and then began laughing this deep, Spanish laugh. It was pretty great.

Today, José María began to deliver on his promise to refer to "McBeth" as much as possible, as we discovered last night (which I will detail in a moment) that he is actually quite capable to saying "McBeth" and not sounding like farm fowl. Now it's less like, "quack, quack" and more like "Mahk-Bayth". We are all so proud.

C: I am going to go to an authentic, insane, European soccer game.


Now that that moment is over...

So far this semester, my theater class has been discussing seeing a play written by Federico García Lorca, but the play we had chosen happened to be the same day as a wedding of one of José María's relatives, so instead we opted to bear witness to an interpretive dance to Lorca's collection of poetry, "Romancero Gitano" (Gypsy Romance).

I went in fully expecting weird lights and spandex-onesie clad art students with dark makeup snapping and making googly-arms while someone read poetry in a lame beret, but what I got instead was amazing authentic flamenco music, singers, and some of the best professional dancers in the country who interpreted the poems by performing the significance of the poem in dance while it was sung by an amazing flamenco cantante. This "play" included the most famous female flamenco dancer in the south of the country and a man who danced to the point swimming his own pool of sweat and spraying sweat from his sopping hair when he did quick turns. He was own, proper sprinkler system.

And then, at the end of the dance, they killed him with fake daggers so that he could go off stage and collapse in a heaping pile of well-earned exhaustion, I'm sure.

Yeah. It was amazing.

And there was definitely a stripping nun in there somewhere.

I'll leave you thinking as you wish on that.

Most people are probably unaware of what my plans for break are. I know I've mentioned that I am going to England, but I think I've neglected to say that I have bought tickets and reserved hostals and that I am, in fact, going to be spending two days in Dublin, Ireland as well before winging to London and busing to Oxford and that I am going to go see Spam-a-lot in London as well.

We have another three day weekend this week (today is my Friday) and I fully intend to...

A: Go to a bar on Reina Mercedes.

B: Go out for tapas.

C: Buy more postcards.

D: Figure out how to send postcards and packages here.

E: Eat crazy ice cream

F: Sign up for a gym

G: Finish my book

H: Finish this blog entry...

One thing down, seven to go.

PS. My history teacher is telling us about what she did when she went to Chicago, and through lots of circumlocution and description, we've figured out that, from a suggesting list her student gave her for her visit, she ate a corn dog, deep-dish pizza, went to Water Tower Place, ate at the Cheesecake Factory, ate ColdStone (describe as "an ice cream store where they mix things together in front of you" except in Spanish), went to a White Sox game where there were fireworks, ate Crispy Creme donuts, ate actual breakfasts (pancakes, hashbrowns) etc. She loved the food and the American schedule and was happy that everyone was smiling at her and now whenever Spaniards say anything bad about Americans, she tells them they're wrong.

Adorable.

PPS. We spent 10 of 50 minutes talking about history. That's the way to end a week.