ana ismi sacha

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Lunes!! (Monday)

So, I´m learning Arabic. What? Yes, Arabic.

WELL, The other night I was walking home from my hot dog vendor dinner, and while passing Puerta del Sol, I saw a band setting up. And seeing as live music is just about my second favorite thing in the world, I stayed to watch. While I was waiting for them to get started, the lead drummer (of the bongos) came up and started talking to me. He was from Ecuador, had a flute tucked under his arm, and hair down to at LEAST his waist. He started telling me about their band: they´re all from South American countries and came to Spain to study/play/live by music. He also told me that the police shut them down if they start getting to crazy with the Bongos, especially past 2 am (No it was not 2 am at the time. No I did not have dinner at 2 am.)

Anyways so when they started and got all into it and had a huge audience that was obviously loving it, they´d have to stop whenever the cops gave them "the eye" and bring it down to a whisper, or just abruptly stop all together and kind of twiddle their thumbs suspiciously as the cops past. I guess the fuzz has a power trip in all countries.

Anyways, at this concert-in-the-street type thing I met a guy named Yassine, from Morrocco. Eventually I found out that he speaks fluent Spanish, French, and Arabic, and which one would I prefer to speak in? HA, I rambled off the few phrases I had learned thanks to Jason, (and you´d be proud to know, Jason, that he said I spoke them very well), we settled for Spanish. The next thing I know, I´m being taught Arabic phrases (translated from Spanish) by him and his sister, Fatima, over homecooked Moroccan food that she´d made (which was DELICIOUS, although I can´t remember the name of half the things I ate. There were breadlike crepes with honey, dates, soup, and some really hot spice that I was warned not to eat but did anyways, regretfully so. Then the meal ended with Arabic tea, which is like hot honey water with mint leaves in it.) Anyways, I´ve got about 10 or so phrases down, and counting. I was also informed that I can travel to Morocco for about 30 euro. (not FREE, but not bad)

Museo del Prado. On Sundays it´s FREE, and so I visited. Pretty cool to see Diego Velazquez paintings that I´d studied in high school hanging right in front of me. Lots of romantic and classical art. When I go into Museums like that, I can´t stop thinking about the time and effort these supposedly normal people put into this stuff. It makes me kind of embarrassed for certain elements of our generation, making toilet seats their masterpieces (which I literally saw at SFMOMA, Laurel can back me up on that) or songs whose meaning goes no further than YEAH! YEAH! Yeeee-ah! (you know who you are, USHER.)

This morning was our API meeting about our excursions. There´s like 6 or seven trips where transportation and hotel stay are FREE (well, if you don´t include the eleven thousand dollar tuition. so almost FREE.) including Rome, Santander, Paris, Barcelona, Salamanca, and Toledo. Santander is next weekend, and Paris is in November.

After the meeting, the kids from the group and I went to the football stadium (translation=soccer) to get tickets. I´m not going to the one tomorrow (Laurel trumps football), but I´ll definitely go eventually. Anyways, while we were standing in line for tickets, I got approached by the news and they started asking me questions about my passion for football or the game or what have you. I didn´t have much to say, considering I´m not even going to the game, let alone know who´s playing, but who knows, maybe they´ll put the football ignorant girl on tv anyways and I´ll have my 15 minutes. But being an American girl with awkward style is a good conversation starter as it is, and apparently I´m guapa. So I´ve heard.

Housing is going a little bit better, I have some leads, and Laurel gets here tomorrow, so I¨m holding my thumbs about it. (look it up)

did I mention that I love it here?
--Sacha

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