2 stories from 2 food categories!

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Last night I watched peanuts for an hour and a half.
Laurel and I heard about this Valley style (by Jesuit) movie theater where they play older or underground movies for 2 euro. (Which, deceptively enough is not just two dollars.) We looked up the movies online that were playing there, and found we had a choice between a Spanish documentary on Woodrow Wilson and some animated movie called "Gritos en el Pasillo." For obvious reasons, we took our chances on the latter.

We got to the theater right as the movie started, and so missed out on the first couple of minutes on the movie, so you can understand our confusion when we saw a bunch of dressed up peanuts on the screen. The humor was reminiscent of Thumb Wars (a spoof on Star Wars starring peoples dressed up thumbs) and probably cost about as much to make as a bag of peanuts and a paint set does, because that's what it was. Nevertheless, I'll take any opportunity to practice my Spanish comprehension, even if it means listening to voice overs for nuts.

All our good room mates are gone. Thierry the French guy left at the end of October and the Italians are moving out today. A guy from India recently moved in, and the Chinese guy is still there, but they are older, antisocial, and do not speak a word of Spanish. Someone from the Philippines is looking at the empty room today, but he doesn't speak Spanish either. Lame. It's okay though, mainly because Maria Jesus (Peruvian landlord/housemom/can of crazy) is a social handful enough. Not in a good or a bad handful, just a definite handful.

Today was another holiday in Madrid (thank you catholic city!), and Laurel and I decided to spend it in Alcala de Henares, a small sleeper town just 20 kilometers ish outside of the city. It was cute and quaint, with a rose garden plaza in the middle complete with a picture of the Cervantes statue (this was his hometown). The actual statue was covered up, because it's being renovated. Don't as me how you renovate a statue. Ask the madrileños, because they're big on that. (A couple years ago, the mayor came up with a plan to basically update the whole city when they thought that the Olympics were coming here. Turns out, they weren't, so now they're stuck with all these road and building work projects and no motivation to finish them.)

On the way to Alcala, Laurel ate an apple.
Why this matters: We're two blond girls (wait! one! I forgot my hair is dark brown this year) that speak English to each other and are obviously American. So any slightly presumptuous person would guess that we didn't speak Spanish. Today, one of those slightly presumptuous people was on our train. This woman of about 30, (dressed all in denim, Sabine. ALL in denim.) was sitting with 3 of her friends across from us chatting away about something. At first, Laurel and I aren't really listening, because we're not nosy. But then we start to notice them looking over at us, and it grabs our attention. The all denim woman starts talking to her friends about how Laurel is eating this apple, and about how it's loud and annoying and she would never DARE eat an apple on the train. Laurel and I glance at each other for a moment and then just start laughing, and Laurel looks over at the woman and says (in Spanish): "I understand Spanish, you know." The woman turns beat red and replies, "You understand Spanish? Oh, well, uh...don't worry about it. I was just noticing and...yeah." Laurel and I just kind of returned a next-time-watch-what-you-say-in-front-of-seemingly-clueless-Americans smile. It was quite a rewarding moment to know Spanish for, but also came with a stinging reminder that to most people here, we're just two tourists with the same awful reputation as the rest of the Americans. Being American can be an exhausting role to play here sometimes. We have to overcome stereotypes of being stupid, xenophobic, loud (okay. that one might be applicable.), and unappreciative of culture. But don't worry, we're working on improving that reputation, and maybe by the time you all come to visit you'll be able to eat on the train in peace.

My schedule for the rest of the semester, just to fill you in:
Next weekend: Paris
The weekend after that: Sevilla
The weekend after that: The play Jesus Christ Superstar in SPANISH
The weekend after that: Rome
The weekend after that: Arrival of Duncan (whom you should know) and Andre (Laurels boyfriend)
Then Sweden for Christmas! Then London for New Years!

and in between all those...a bit of class, perhaps.

p.s. I love hearing from people, hint.
p.p.s. What's all this about comedy on strike?

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