One last adventure

Okay, I decided to go to Madrid.
I wasn't going to go after blowing all of my money in Barcelona, but then I realized that there are some ¡supermega guay! paintings at the Prado, that I shouldn't miss, for being only the distance between bellingham and seattle away. was that english?
anyway, so now I will get to see some stuff live that i have studied in my art history classes. Hooray!
Actually, yesterday I got to go into the Catedral Vieja for free (normally there's an entrance fee) because there was a mass for the Virgen De La Vega, the patron Virgen of Salamanca. I was in some souvenir shop buying a present when i heard some drums walk by. I looked out and there was a procession heading towards the big cathedrals (which are connected). I had already been in the new one (which is only relatively new... it is still in fairly Gothic cathedral style), but never in the old one since it costs money. So anyway, I went in. Stayed for mass.
Preists here are totally exciting! They yell a little, but not always angrily. And they use their arms. The mass was also kind of funny because it seemed a little bit unorganized cause I could see the preists giving instructions to other people as stuff was happening. Also, when he signealed people to stand up it was with one hand in a very unceremonial manner: "get up dudes!"
hehe. But fun. Unfortunately it's only the 2nd time I've been to mass here, but I'm glad I've gone at all. I still have many churches to visit. I am in awe at the art in all the iglesias, although I feel inferior because I don't know the names of art movements or time periods. I can only say "hey! what great color!" or "wow! look at the movement!" or "Wow! these people had no sense of perspective!"

heh. anyway. burning up time at internet.

ciao

Short

My brother sent me a book of Shorts. It's supermega cool.
I'm inspired.
I believe my writing is going to be shorter and shorter from now on. by the end of the week, it will be one sentence summarizing my state of mind. By two weeks, one word. This is not the meaning of a Short, in terms of literature...I probably don't have the ability to be as concise.
I don't have any stories to tell either.
hmm. okay. nope. nothing.
my brain is fried.

how about a haiku:

Bocadillos from machines
Meet under the Clock
I'm out of creative juice.


worst... haiku.. ever. I'm leaving.

no ganas

Man, I don't think I'm gonna be updating pictures from now on. Too much trouble and too much time being thrown at this internet cafe. (time=money)
mentionables: Nothing is that mentionable. I need to go home and study spanish after this.
oh, I saw a movie....El Año de la Garrapata with Beth, british girl. It was funny, but stupid. Predictable, and a bit run of the mill, but it was fun to go try and understand a spanish film.
I need to go rent some good ones....with subtitles, so I can feel better.
It'd be like a comfort blanket... or.
I go.

no puedo hablar ingles

no quiero hablar ingles. todo el mundo habla ingles a mi por que a veces, no puedo entender nada!
pero, eso no significa que yo quiero hablar ingles! ¡joder!

estoy solita. no tengo amigos. la boca de mi gato parece como comida para gatos.

soy internetadicta. me duele la garganta. me duele la espalda. me duele el culo.

la boca de mi gato. creo que haya algo perdido en el traduccion.

no hablo español. dejame en paz!

kuyang, to será la unica que puede entender esto. es un regalo. ¡tu eres especial!

Today's a Two-fer. on posts.

I'm so lazy to write. I finally got that headache that my brother told me I would get from my brain trying to work so hard to understand/learn a different language and connect all the various parts of my brain where my vocabulary/grammar/language live. (is that right, Kuyang?)

Today, I tried to go to the public library to borrow harry potter and some other children's books (Because that's my reading level! haha) but I couldn't. you need 2 passport photos and you can't be staying less than a month. I might be able to get one, but now I'm thinking I will just go there and study and/or buy my own books elsewhere. I need to read some narratives or something though because I am forgetting all my grammar.

I was totally braindead yesterday because I didn't take siesta, thinking i'd be able to do more things. So, what I did was: hang out at internet for a long time, typing/chatting in english for almost 2 hours. And then I left the internet cafe and couldn't speak spanish for shit! I couldn't talk to internet guy, I couldn't talk to the guy at the cafe, I was useless! Then I wandered around trying to remember why I wanted to go to the bookstore. couldn't. Then remembered I wanted to buy those little stick things that you push back your cuticles with. SO I bought those, then went to the grocery store to buy kleenex and facial wipes/make up remover towelettes, but somewhere between groc. store and home, I just randomly dropped my cuticle sticks. Damn. There goes 0.95 euro. I have no idea where they went!

So I went home. No pasa nada... curious, but no pasa nada. incredulous...

anyway, went home, then went to a friend's apartment to have dinner and fiesta. Met some dudes from northern Cali, one of which didn't speak spanish but I wanted to know how cali was doing, so no problem. I'll speak english.... NOPE! INCAPABLE. I couldn't speak english worth crap!

Entonces...no cabeza, no español, no ingles, no cuticle pusher-backers! And then to top it off, I later hung out with native spanish speakers who spoke A LOT and fast. COOL. EXCEPT at this point my brain just turned off. haha. I was like a walking coma.

So the lesson today kids: Never underestimate the importance of a little Siesta! Today I took one for 3 hours and I can still hardly type! yay!

Papas for El Papa

Yesterday: ate el Papa's favorite dish. Mashed (but not smooth)
potatoes with that red spice that I can't remember the name of and frito
iberican... bacon. I can't remember the proper word for anything right
now.
News: my Uncle Johnny came out of triple bypass open heart surgery
yesterday or this morning and was already able to talk. He is my Mama's
kuyang, is much older than her, and has two adorable little kids, Aaron
and Trisha. Keep him in your prayers pls. I hope I can find a way to
visit all my family in Cali soon as well as my two friends that are
moving/have moved to LA.
Don't think I have any good stories today. Oh, one. I watched Kill
Bill 2 last night. It was dubbed in Spanish, but I was pleasantly
surprised to find that dubbing for movies and dubbing for TV is on a
COMPLETELY different level. The dubbing was awesome for Kill Bill,
nothing like trying to watch Princess Mononoke starring JLO and_______.
So I enjoyed the movie once again. Totally blanked out when the
monologue about
Spiderman and Superman came about, but I think that's normal. There was
probably a
lot that I didn't understand, so I'm glad I had seen it before.
Before I went to the movie, I tried to explain the main idea of the
first one to
my roomate Elisabetta, who had not seen the first one. Man, my spanish
was mierda yesterday.

Then after that I came home, walked past all the clubs and didn't go in
(an oddity), wrote some emails,
did some longass reading assignment, and went to bed at 4:00.

For some reason my coffee didn't work this morning though, so 4:00 was a
bad thing (even though it's a usual thing here). I was in class today
and I got the giggles over something, but then
during break I laid down over a couple of chairs and wanted to take a
nap, but I couldn't. It was like when you
take a benadryl and then have a latte. Bad news. Oh well!!! I just got
finished with a 3 hour siesta, so no pasa nada.

Applied for a job yesterday at Wing Luke Asian Museum. Unfortunately,
the job has been filled. :(
Gotta look for more prospects today.
Wish me luck!

bitching and whining

SO, it looks like I successfully brought seattle weather to Salamanca. Right now, it's kind of sunny, but a bit chilly and windy. And in about 3 minutes it will be overcast again...then sunny-ish again. The rain here is nice, but it smells funny. The rain in Seattle smells like heaven, I now realize. Maybe it smells like trees or grass or something green. In any case, it doesn't smell like piss.
This is not an all out diss on salamanca, just an observation. I am glad it's raining here, but now I'm sad that i don't have my "tractor shoes" (only my sponge-like running shoes), OR more than 3 long sleeved shirts-that aren't even warm! At least I brought my jean jacket...and I have a sweater I guess. haha.
luckily it's been only sprinkles when i have to leave the house though.

things other than weather:
class was awesome today. I discovered that I can't sleep more than 4 hours, otherwise i screw up my sleep cycle and can't stay awake in class. Today we talked about some political history of Spain. Good stuff. My teacher talks a mile a minute, but with a lot of passion and because of this, she is super easy to understand. (Either that, or it's easy to forget that you don't understand something.)

what else...
One of my roomates (Justyna de Polonia) left on Sunday, leaving me very sad to have gone through another round of good people. My roomate de italia is leaving this week too. I don't know if there will be others living in my house after that. It might just be me and Carmen (my host) and who knows what that will be like. We may just sit around staring at each other. She is kind of hard for me to understand because when I ask her a word that I don't know, she just substitutes it for a synonym that I also don't know and then I'm sitting there not knowing two words. But she goes on with the story cause she thinks I get it. Heh. I'll work on it.

Yesterday I found some gifts for people. One for my parents, brother, and something for Tony. Unfortunately, I cannot divulge more information because I want them to be semi-surprising.

Oh.. a stupid heather moment: I thought I had 4 weeks left and was all freaking out cause I thought "4 weeks! it's so short!" but then my friend told me, "5 weeks, dummy." So I stopped freaking out. even though it's only a 1 week difference. I'll freak out again next week. Maybe by the end of 5 weeks though, I'll be ready to go home.

who knows.

gotsta go.


h.m.m.v.

No place like "home"

I don't even want to tell the story.

So, I was stuck in Barcelona. Vale. Went first class to Madrid, which was mas o menos comfortable, except that my feet swelled up for some reason, probably for sitting in one place too long. The blood must have been tired of powering my enourmous brain. Isn't that grody though? That didn't even happen to me on my flight here to España. Anyway, that went okay. Then i got the the train Estacion in Madrid to wait 3 hours for my train to Salamanca. Talked to Tony on the phone for awhile, then killed time walking around Madrid a little bit. I only saw one thing, but it was good. I saw Plaza Castilla, which is a big intersection.. maybe the most important intersection in Madrid, with a fountain in the middle, 2 really interesting buildings on one side of it, and a sculpture/giant Sundial. Saw some people going at it there. They were really going at it. I couldn't let them deter me from looking at the sculpture though, so i sat down for awhile. They might have thought I was a pervert... So I went back to the station and waited patiently for my train to come. Finally it arrived and I got on the train with a euphoric feeling of future homecoming, when this lady came up and asked me "What seat are you in?" "11V," I said. "Me too," she said. How odd. So, then we sat there for awhile, not thinking about it, until I said, "Is everything the same on both our tickets?" She brought her ticket out again. Hmm. One of them has the wrong date... GUESS WHOSE! So they made me get off the train. Turns out the lady who sold me my return ticket in Madrid, booked me two tickets. 8/12 11:00pm - 8:00 am Barcelona - Madrid and 8/12 11:00 am - 1:30 pm. Hmm. something doesn't work here. OH, how can i go from Madrid to Salamanca when I haven't even left Barcelona yet?! So, I got off, feeling very frustrated, cause THIS time it wasn't my fault! now things are just going shitty. I started feeling sorry for myself and crying a little. "I don't get to have lunch with my family which means I have to pay for lunch, I'm never gonna get home to Salamanca, and I paid a lot of extra money for these stupid tickets that are just making me feel worse."

So I went to the customer service window, started crying harder because the woman was on the phone and I had time to rehearse what i was going to say in Spanish, which made it worse because it made me think how crappy my situation was. Then a security guy was like, "man, what happened?" and I said, "I'm just stressed out. My ticket is wrong." He said, "Don't worry about it, you'll change it and that's that. It's easy, don't stress!" So then I asked for a kleenex and went to the other ticket window to jump through the last hoop. I felt better once I started listening to my ipod. I just needed a diversion. 2 more hours left to kill, so I wrote Cathy a letter in my best handwriting. Bought lunch (Bocadillo with tomato and serrano). Thought about buying Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban but decided to find it cheaper somewhere else. Got on the train. SMOKING SECTION ¡Joder! Well. Whatever. At least I'm gonna make it home. So I did. Finally. My roomate Olivia from Taiwan is gone and I didn't get to say goodbye. I only have 2 more nights with one roomate and 1 with another and I think I will be all alone after that. I have to default to what's left of those guy friends I made the first 3 weeks. Which is really only 2 people now. Oh well. At least I have Friday and Saturday to relax, although I'd rather go to school. My spanish sucks right now. ¡Que lastima! Hopefully I'll be able to catch up in my class. *sigh* OH WELL.

I miss my backnobber.

-Mica

Can-t...use...proper...punctuation

Vale. So I-m stuck here in Barcelona. A beautiful, hot, colorful, interesting city. But it-s not Salamanca.
The last four days have been really fun. Sightseeing, being a tourist, hanging out with Lisa, going to the beach, eating Farggi ice cream, taking touristy pictures and running out of space on my memory card, pretending to know something about art and architecture, shopping and EATING. Man, there-s some good food here. Taking the metro everywhere and sweating all the water out of my system, hunting for famous Barcelona sites such as Parc Guell as seen in "L-auberge espagnole" and some other gaudi building that-s in a a Brazilian music video.

OKAY, so my four days are up and i have unwittingly put "buy return train ticket" off the whole time. Mentally, I-m prepared to go back to Salamanca. Me and Lisa get up at the asscrack of dawn to go buy my train ticket for today, but SURPRISE no hay nada. no seats for me on tomorrow-s train. no seats the next day. all that-s left is a first class night train tomorrow to madrid and then another train to Salamanca with a 3 hour layover. I will get into salamanca at noon, which means i missed a full week of school save one hour. AND to add salt to the wound, my return ticket costs. Costs=verb. Costs money, costs soul... Costs pride.

So now I-m here in Lisa-s Enforex school, not taking classes because i didn-t want to pay an extra 100 € for what i thought would be a 2 school-day visit well, i don-t regret that, but i am going to go home and studystudystudy.

ANYway. 4 great days in Barcelona have passed and now i have 2 more days to kill time, not spend money, and just relax. I hope this turns into a really good thing. Lisa has been gracious enough to find all the good things to do, let me stay in her place, show me good food and everything, but i feel i-m wearing out my welcome. It-s her last week and poor lis won-t have a day all to herself anymore.

okay, this is the part where i say something to cheer everyone up.

my cat-s breath...

Alriiiight It Worked


=mica

No time

this is my 2 minute post. Still in Barcelona. hopefully going back to salamanca tomorrow, but i need to buy my train ticket. Thanks Mama for helping fund me.
going to see some gaudi stuff today and also a gothic cathedral.
went cava tasting. totally cool.
having lots of fun stillin barcelona. tonight's my last night, but i think i'll just chill out and hang loose. out of time.

Kanack attack

Me and Lisa found a Filipino Restaurant called "Fil Manila". Now I'm too full to walk so we found an internet café with air conditioning.
And now, a message from Lisa:
Hola! ¿Que tal? I am very very happy that Mika is here! We love to eat a lot! Yay....

/end lisa

so... time to go do fun Barcelona things... i'm so full.

train ride was comfy, had a surprise bed. Lisa's roomates are crazy bitches, but they're gone now, thank goodness. One was some 15 year old Indian British girl who smacked her head on some stairwell and then cried. stupid. who would cry over that? and 7 stitches? what a wuss.
Bought a bikini cause my old one is broke.
No new mosquito bites, but my old ones itch.

bye now.

"Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face"

SOO I bought my billete for my train ride to Barcelona yesterday,
sometime between internet and dinner.
I leave friday after classes at 8pm and arrive in Barcelona at 9am.
That's a long trip. I'll be sure to bring my bucky pillow and to
recharge my ipod, camera, etc. I need to get myself a small FM radio
though because there's not MTV in my house and I'm dying to connect with
some pop culture over here.
Okay, I will not be buying anything. I must learn to save money!
Somehow!
blah blah.
Last night I talked to Tony on the phone instead of going to sleep.
It was worth the sacrifice though, and I still managed to wake up
promptly
at 8:00, beat everyone to the bathroom to wash the
smoke out of my hair, and make it to and through school with only
one nap that was taken at an
appropriate time (during break; not like when i was in college and had
frequent bouts of narcolepsy/jet lag though living in my own city.)
Ahh.. remember college? How I loved thee. How I long to return. I
hope I get a chance to sleep through law school soon.

BAH. Today I must call my grandma because her birthday was a week ago
today and
My tarjeta de telephono was out at the time and because i was too lazy
and forgetful
to buy a new one.

okay, everything in fragments today. I keep finding out that gente
actually read my blog?!
so now i feel guilty that my posts aren't more like wil wheaton's
(haha!) because he actually tells stories...
and stuff... I also realize that my english is probably a bitch to read
since I type and talk too slow for my brain, don't edit these posts, and
don't give a crap about writing with proper punctuation.

oh well, it's my party, right?

anyway, my Grandma Rosa is now 93 years old, Happy Birthday Grandma!

Maybe today i will find a rosary to send to her. Which reminds me, I
need to send some stuff by mail but
there is never sufficient time between internet and dinner.

okay, too much blabbing on about nothing today. Tomorrow I leave for
Barcelona!

hasta mañana

More

More mosquito bites. I can now count 11.

I decided to go to Barcelona today. It's gonna cost me!

Mosquito

¡Que horrible! Anoche, cuando dormía tranquila, una mosquito venío en mi
habitacíon y pensaba "SWEET! ¡Comeré muy bien esta noche!" Entonces,
ahora, tengo choques sobre todo mi cuerpo. Uno en la mano, uno en mi
espalda, uno en mi pierna izquierda y tres en mi pierna derecha. shitty.
So I used my brother's trick and have applied roll on deoderant to the
affected areas (wow, this has got to sound hot to non-spanish readers)
and am trying so hard not to itch them.
___________
skip this section to hear me blab on about something that's actually semi-important to me
____________

Tonight I go out with a hot girl (catch-she
walks like a man) from my class and some Polish folk. Last night, saw a
live band at El Savor that was only so-so, but i got to drink a pretty
good mojito! I want to go to latin america, dammit. It would save me so
much money anyway and there would be more prospects for salsa. I also
went to Medievo and had my picture taken about 3 times for the local
"Party Pictures" page around here (link NOT provided). Yesterday, I ate
paella and a bacon bocadillo. Today, so far, i have eaten potatoes with
vinegar and garlic with tomatoes and green bell peppers and croquetas.
ah shit. I think it's raining out here. WTF? I bet it's not even
raining in Seattle. This is good. I will finally be able to wear my
jacket. Blah blah blah. Bought Ronald a present today. I will have to
mail it to him in LA or Silicon Valley. :( Goodbye forever Ronald.
(He's moving and getting on with his life, which reminds me that i must
pay some bills today and call about my damn financial aid and the
thousands of dollars i owe the government for my education that does not
guarantee job security.)
___________________

OH. Here's some Heather news. So today, in a valiant attempt to spice
up conversation class, we talked about the war and the armies of
different countries and how they all work. Then we talked about
Ensalada vs. Paella (Pluralism vs. Melting Pot) in the US. Some girl
asked me about Hawaii and said that she heard there's racism there
because WHITE PEOPLE ARE DISCRIMINATED AGAINST. I said, "YEAH,
discriminated against, but it's not RACISM" Okay, so these are the
words i wanted to use. Power, Hegemony, Denial of Reproductive rights,
Control. blah blah. of course. This is my soul.

You know i coulda run my mouth off if it were English, so this was
probably a great exercise for me in choosing the correct words... i
don't think i did that well anyway so I'm gonna have to practice.

OKAY.

THEN we have a new classmate who is from the fucking East Coast who is
an older (late 20's early 30's) woman. OMG, She started running her
mouth off about how when she was a librarian she had to kick out the
Japanese students because they were working so hard, basically trying to
go off on the whole Model Minority stereotype. So I said, "Were they
Japanese people from Japan or Japanese Americans, cause there's a
difference. If you think that Asian Americans work harder it's because
most of our parents are immigrants and they TRY to make us work harder,
and by the way, international students work hard because they paid a
shitload." OMG, I couldn't even get to what i wanted to say because i
could have broken down the whole stereotype to mis-interpereted economic
data and interracial competition.

So anyway, what i said to her I think was not completely correct because
i could write a 20 pager on the topic if i wanted to, but man, I was
working on a fundamental level with this woman who, I think, was itching
to say the word "Oriental".

bah. a very heathermichellemarivillanueva moment for me today. I didn't
ACTUALLY get really worked up about it, because i have learned over the
years to freaking calm down and choose my battles, but this woman was so
misinformed i had to at least give her some BASIC explanations. It
really wasn't a fight or a deep discussion even. and explanations is
the wrong word. I had to at least bust a little bit of her whitey east
coast bubble maybe. how technical of me. whatever.

anyway, it sounds like it was really important to me, but it's not. It
was nice to get a little bit academic though since most of my
conversations are just ligando anyway. "hi, where you from, how old,
what are you doing here? how long are you staying?" OMG, it's like A/S/L
hahahha. ok. i nerd. blah! enough for today.

Maxed out

Haha. I just maxed out my posts on buzznet, my photoblog page. Tomorrow there will be more I guess, but there's lots of new things to look at for now. Oops. Some dude, just came up to me and told me I dissed him at the Salsa club last night. Bo! I couldn't understand anything he said though but then he said it in English. I need to go home and study!
Anyway, last night was nice. Camelot of course to meet up with folks. Got a little shitted on. Cum Laude to find a camarero but no luck. El Savor for salsa, but no one to dance with. Good music still. Submarine for Sex on the Beach and met some dude named Leo who works outside Capitolium handing out crap. Plutos after that and looked at some boy's ID because I'm such a good listener that I thought he said he was 29 instead of 19.
BAH.
Got home late. I think i will rest my feet and study some vocab. One straight week of going out ends tonight.
I hope i find some old ass friends (like 40 years old) who will just invite me to go watch MTV at their place so i can stop attempting to be 18 and failing! haha!