Culinary Adventures in Spain

Spanish food is yum. Paella, Croquettes, and Allioli are everywhere, even in the supermarkets. In my house there is a pan kept in the oven for deep-frying things, like frozen croquettes. It is awesome but dangerous for my health... :)

Some Asian foods are surprisingly easy to find and others are more elusive. Looking in the right places, which seem to be the big gourmet grocery store, El Corte Ingles, and in the small Alimentos which are often Asian owned and therefore carry a few ethnic products, I can find every kind of noodle imaginable, dozens of types of soy sauce and ramen, etc... but I haven't been able to find fish sauce or curry paste (I did snag a jar in Barcelona, that with proper use may last me until winter) or bamboo shoots. For fish sauce I can substitute soy sauce, or maybe oyster sauce. But I don't know about bamboo shoots. It's not just a seasoning, so I feel bad having Allan ship them to me. I may try to stock up if I take a trip to a nearby, larger city.

I'm somehow addicted to yogurt now, but packaging it with little candies etc isn't as common here as it was in the U.K. - almost all of them are marketed towards kids, so it's a bit embarrassing. But oh well. :P Other supermarket staples of mine in Spain so far are spreadable Camembert cheese and Nutella on krisprolls. Major yum.

I already have a favourite block for food here in Pamplona, just west of the Plaza Castillo. There is a restaurant there called Don Lluis which I ate at last night - an incredible meal, and for 12 euros, whereas similar menus in the area were at least twice that price. I had seafood paella and Navarran trout (fresh, cooked to perfection, covered in salty ham), and Allan got some sort of pasta, and then tender pieces of bull meat cooked in onions etc. For dessert there was this unbelievable flan, made there at the restaurant. It was all food from the region of Navarra, if not Pamplona itself, and was just incredibly appropriate, especially after watching The Sun Also Rises... Allan: I'm glad we're both eating tables. ^^

Almost next door is an ice cream shop called Larramendi. It's so good, reasonably priced, and they even sell you big tubs for you to take home! Very tempting. Allan ate three scoops of Dulce de Leche, and I got a scoop of Chocolate con Trozos and a scoop of Chocolate Blanco con Trozos.

I Will Miss You

I'll miss you every time I see a piney banana tree,
I'll miss you every time I eat patatas amb all-i-oli,
I'll miss you when the sky is bright,
I'll miss you when I walk at night.

If I had a save point here I'd save my game, two times.
Because in this moment, everything is right with the world.
And I spend too much time saying goodbye.
But everything is right with the world,
And I regret nothing.

My Cabinet

I've stopped moving. I've unpacked. I have a little cabinet in the kitchen and a shelf on the refrigerator. Here's what I have at the moment:

Spreadable Camembert
A few slices of Jamon Serrano
Three enormous Milka Trio Bars
Thornton's Summer Collection Box
Dreamtime Tea from Chelsea's in London
Saltire Rock
Moffat Toffee
Nutella
Whole Wheat Krisprolls
Thai Red Curry Paste
A bag of Frozen Ham Croquettes

Language Delight

I love this article in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=general&src=me

Stephanie linked to it on Facebook, and it's basically - yeah, Sapir-Whorf was an idiot, but languages really can affect thought. And here I thought I knew all the basic cool language facts randomly mentioned in general audience newspaper articles... well, this is a good one! Some awesome quotes:

"Some 50 years ago, the renowned linguist Roman Jakobson pointed out a crucial fact about differences between languages in a pithy maxim: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” This maxim offers us the key to unlocking the real force of the mother tongue: if different languages influence our minds in different ways, this is not because of what our language allows us to think but rather because of what it habitually obliges us to think about."

"Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so."

"In recent years, various experiments have shown that grammatical genders can shape the feelings and associations of speakers toward objects around them. In the 1990s, for example, psychologists compared associations between speakers of German and Spanish. There are many inanimate nouns whose genders in the two languages are reversed. A German bridge is feminine (die Brücke), for instance, but el puente is masculine in Spanish; and the same goes for clocks, apartments, forks, newspapers, pockets, shoulders, stamps, tickets, violins, the sun, the world and love. On the other hand, an apple is masculine for Germans but feminine in Spanish, and so are chairs, brooms, butterflies, keys, mountains, stars, tables, wars, rain and garbage. When speakers were asked to grade various objects on a range of characteristics, Spanish speakers deemed bridges, clocks and violins to have more “manly properties” like strength, but Germans tended to think of them as more slender or elegant. With objects like mountains or chairs, which are “he” in German but “she” in Spanish, the effect was reversed."

"In a different experiment, French and Spanish speakers were asked to assign human voices to various objects in a cartoon. When French speakers saw a picture of a fork (la fourchette), most of them wanted it to speak in a woman’s voice, but Spanish speakers, for whom el tenedor is masculine, preferred a gravelly male voice for it. More recently, psychologists have even shown that “gendered languages” imprint gender traits for objects so strongly in the mind that these associations obstruct speakers’ ability to commit information to memory."

"Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany? Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned? At the current state of our knowledge about the brain, this is not something that can be easily measured in a psychology lab. But it would be surprising if they didn’t."

"Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward.”"

"In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.” They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals. There is a wealth of stories about what to us may seem like incredible feats of orientation but for speakers of geographic languages are just a matter of course. One report relates how a speaker of Tzeltal from southern Mexico was blindfolded and spun around more than 20 times in a darkened house. Still blindfolded and dizzy, he pointed without hesitation at the geographic directions."

"If you speak a Guugu Yimithirr-style language, your memories of anything that you might ever want to report will have to be stored with cardinal directions as part of the picture. One Guugu Yimithirr speaker was filmed telling his friends the story of how in his youth, he capsized in shark-infested waters. He and an older person were caught in a storm, and their boat tipped over. They both jumped into the water and managed to swim nearly three miles to the shore, only to discover that the missionary for whom they worked was far more concerned at the loss of the boat than relieved at their miraculous escape. Apart from the dramatic content, the remarkable thing about the story was that it was remembered throughout in cardinal directions: the speaker jumped into the water on the western side of the boat, his companion to the east of the boat, they saw a giant shark swimming north and so on. Perhaps the cardinal directions were just made up for the occasion? Well, quite by chance, the same person was filmed some years later telling the same story. The cardinal directions matched exactly in the two tellings. Even more remarkable were the spontaneous hand gestures that accompanied the story. For instance, the direction in which the boat rolled over was gestured in the correct geographic orientation, regardless of the direction the speaker was facing in the two films."

"But one piece of evidence is telling: if you saw a Guugu Yimithirr speaker pointing at himself, you would naturally assume he meant to draw attention to himself. In fact, he is pointing at a cardinal direction that happens to be behind his back. While we are always at the center of the world, and it would never occur to us that pointing in the direction of our chest could mean anything other than to draw attention to ourselves, a Guugu Yimithirr speaker points through himself, as if he were thin air and his own existence were irrelevant."

"For instance, some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.” After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense."

Catalan Class 2010 is in the news!

Monica's crazy Catalan project was by and large a great success, and now there's an article about our class in the Diario de Mallorca, the biggest newspaper in the Balearic Islands. Check it out: http://www.diariodemallorca.es/mallorca/2010/08/21/missouri-habla-catalan/596601.html

There was a photo of our entire classroom, from the back of the room, and this one of Emily's Ensaimada:




Some excerpts:

¿Por qué un chico norteamericano se interesa por una lengua que se habla en regiones situadas a más de 7.000 kilómetros de distancia? "Tienen mucha curiosidad por las lenguas minoritarias", explicaba Marcos en una reciente visita a la isla: "Muchos han estudiado español y les llama la atención, otros vienen de cursos de otra lengua románica, algunos tienen ganas de ir a Barcelona o tienen que ir allí a hacer sus prácticas".

Basically: Why would a North American kid be interested in a language that they speak more than 7,000 kilometers away? "They are curious about minority languages," Monica explaied on a recent visit to the island. "Many have studied Spanish and it calls their attention, others come from other romance language courses, some want to go to Barcelona or have to go for their studies."

"e incluso investigaron sobre la valenciana fiesta de la Tomatina, adónde se han animado a viajar tres de sus alumnos."

And they learned about the Valencian Tomatina festival, inspiring three students to go.

Un motivo mallorquín recurrente es Rafa Nadal, señala Marcos: un estudiante hizo un proyecto sobre su vida personal y profesional usando vídeos del tenista con diez años; otros hicieron un trabajo representando una entrevista "en broma y en serio", con el manacorí.

Basically: A recurring Mallorcan theme is Rafa Nadal - one student did a project about his personal and profesional life using videos of him as a ten year old tennis player; others did a project representing an interview "in jest and in seriousness", with the star.

Mònica Marcos está encantada con la buena acogida que ha tenido su curso introductorio de lengua y cultura catalana y sueña con poder ofrecer la especialización en esta facultad donde hasta ahora se enseñaban todas las lenguas románicas excepto el catalán y el rumano. Gracias a ella, a la University of Missouri ahora sólo le falta el rumano.

It says thanks to her, the University of Missouri has gone from only missing two Romance languages: Romanian and Catalan, to now missing only Romanian. What about Galician?? But still, a nice sentiment...

Incluso puede seguir disfrutando de las ensaimadas, aunque sea casi rectangular como la que hizo con toda su ilusión y de motu propio una de sus alumnas. Asegura que "era buena".

A bit about Emily's Ensaimada. ^^

Not Even Creeping

I am sitting on the balcony of the hostel in Valencia. There are a few Norwegians just feet away, having a quiet conversation. I'm not even creeping.

Leap of Faith

Allan and I are spending the night in the airport tonight. Our flight to Barcelona leaves at 8 tomorrow morning, and there's no train that goes to the airport early enough, so we're going in on the last train tonight and killing about 6 hours before we have to check in.

Since coming to Scotland my bag is lighter by gifts given (playing cards, magnets, a chocolate frog, a ceramic spoon holder)... and things lost (a UV filter, a pair of hiking boots)... heavier by gifts received (maps, a Chilean flute, toffee, two books)... and things purchased (McAllister tartan scarves for my family, a London London London bag for Melissa, a Great Glen Way tea towel, a pair of celtic knotwork earrings, a Scots-English dictionary)... The net difference is almost negligible.

I'll miss the food here - the meat pies and the coronation chicken and the Cadbury, Thorntons, and Galaxy chocolates, the salty Moffat toffee, the overly sweet Indian food, the Swedish crisprolls, the Muller yoghurt with tons of tasty chocolate bits. Starting tomorrow, I'll have a new country's worth of food to adapt to, and somehow thinking of that makes it more real than anything else that I'm going to be living in Spain, at least sort of - 4 months, so on the border of legit. I'll stay put. I'll unpack. I'll settle into a routine. I'll have a grocery store and favourite foods I buy every week, and maybe a bakery I go to every other morning for Pan Au Chocolat. Just a guess. I really don't know. Anything. It's a leap of faith, an expectation that come December, it will all seem so natural, so inevitable, so... normal.

Lazy Days in Scotland

I've been in Scotland for a while now. By the time I leave, it will have been nearly three weeks, so tied up for the record of foreign countries I've been in the longest. And of course, because of budget and energy and basic human needs, I'm no longer snapping photos and sightseeing like a chicken with my head cut off. Since Lucia left Edinburgh things have been slow, and its been nice. I almost feel that it even means I see the country in a deeper way now that I'm just relaxing and hanging out here. The day Lucia left, Allan was exhausted *ahem* and I was a bit sleepy too, so we mostly just cooked at Steven's house and then played British, 90's edition trivial pursuit until we were ready to collapse. Despite Allan obviously being the most familiar with the material, and I the least, he had rotten luck and I had great luck, and Steven taking pity on me, so I actually ended up winning.

The next day we had to carry our bags around Edinburgh, so were too lazy to do much other than eat chicken bakes under the trees in a park in the shadow of the castle. We watched the sunlight go through the leaves and just lay on our backs and talked, lots of it light hearted laughter, and then other times I felt that there was something unsaid between us. But we'll manage. In the evening we headed to Lockerbie and Allan's mom made yummy Indian food, and then I spent the evening trying to get the apartment thing settled and you can imagine we slept well that night.

Today we didn't leave the house at all except a brief walk to the castle. All morning it rained and stormed fiercely and both of us were frightened by it somehow, having flashbacks to our aborted walk and imagining walking through this. In the morning I taught Allan how to make Egg in a Hole. We basically just played on our computers otherwise. Allan misses Lucia a lot. It's a bit awkward to be in the epicentre of all of this but not either of their fault, in fact I know what it's like and am sort of happy for it in a strange way, but also sad for them to be separated, and also just wishing Allan had a bit more privacy for it, its a bit weird that he has to put up with me at this time. I do try to give him a bit of space for it. And its not that we're not getting along fine, we're even having some fun haha, it's just that its not natural for me to see this much of another person's relationship, to have the news come in on both sides and have to live with it, especially when I've already had my overdose of Allan and Lucia in the Highlands. Ah well.

It feels good to relax, to sit, to get my laundry done. Despite all the time I somehow neglected to email my program coordinator, so that's first in line on my to-do list tomorrow. Allan's family is super nice and I'm continuing to enjoy the food here - today I tried caramel chocolate shortbread and cardamom crisprolls with Swedish cheese from Ikea, and for dinner we ordered Indian food in which was fun, it was like our Chinese food but Indian of course! We're leaving for Spain on Monday and this weekend we're planning to see New Lanark and Hadrian's Wall, both quite cool and World Heritage Sites to boot.

Back to the Islands

We spent a day on the Hebridean Island of Iona. White sands, turquoise waters, and a long, lonely beach for just the three of us. Incredible.

And the moon brings us back
I'm going back over to the islands
In between your smiles
There's a clue whether to scream or be silent
And the wind blows sad and joyful
On our arrival onto the island
And with your sense of dislocation
You make the perfect travelling companion

And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out

Suspicion fills a stranger
Who looks beyond the horizon
All the days that I've found love and left
With only my feelings to survive on
I walk the solemn line in with the rhythm
Of the seas around the island
And there are times to act and times to stand back
In time to show what's needed to rely on

And the world will always seem
So much younger than me
When I take the boat out
A crowded world will always seem
Emptier to me
When I take the boat out

When the sea answers the island...
When I take the boat out
It's emptier and silent...
When I take the boat out

How come you always seem so real defined
You put your hand in my hand
Make it my design
And we give what we have and we do what we can
Put your hand in my hand

And the sea answers the island...

- Take Me Back to the Islands, Idlewild

Sad Stories

I know my life is too awesome to complain, ever, and that's almost part of the problem - I think there might almost be a human need to complain and feel sad sometimes and if you don't have enough reasons to you start to go a little bit crazy. ;)

Nevertheless, I do have two sad stories to rant about -

First of all my apartment search might finally finally be settled. This has been a long time coming. I love how you have to go to all those Study Abroad prep things and they tell you about culture shock and homesickness and maybe a bit about how getting a VISA sucks, but neglect to mention things like how difficult it will be to find accommodation if you are on one of the programs that doesn't include it or at least help you get it sorted out.

I think part of the problem for me is that I've never looked for an apartment even in the U.S., so I'm not sure what I'm doing on any level. It's also so convenient that I'm doing my 'hardest' study abroad program first - as soon as I get the hang of this sort of thing they'll start doing it all for me in Germany and Norway. But even controlling for all of this, it has been a challenge.

UNAV has listings of accomodations somewhere on its website, so I went through all of those and a lot of them looked great! Reasonably cheap, good location, internet, basically just fine all around. So I started sending out emails... and more emails... and more emails. 90% of them never responded, 8% told me it wouldn't work for x or x reason (they've already found someone, need someone for a full year, etc... thank you to this 8%!), and most maddeningly of all, several told me that it should work fine, but when I then replied to this email, they never replied again - even if I sent reminders etc!!

I was getting desperate. I started this process in mid-summer, and by the time I had to start travelling I was no closer than I had been at the beginning - and the number of listings was starting to dwindle as I got closer to the start of the semester. It came to the point where I had replied to just about every suitable listing under Pisos Compartidos (shared apartments). Then I got the idea to look for a place in a 'family house', even though the real meaning of that confused me - some of the listings seemed to describe homestays while others described basically Pisos Compartidos. ?? Still, some of them seemed okay, so I sent emails to all of the decent ones. It was my last shot before I was going to call my program coordinator in Spain and cry, or else just show up in Pamplona and see what I could do.

The next morning (geeze, they were faster than the apartment people!), I had several new emails. Rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection - and then, the very last one - seemed as though it would work. I replied, they replied again! It seemed like a go, until we got to the issue of payment. They said I should just transfer them the deposit. I didn't really know how to do that, but they said it was easy and gave me their account number. Allan agreed that it was easy - called direct debit and just a simple matter of transferring money from me to them - but I didn't know any of the terms he was throwing around, in English or in Spanish. Admittedly, I was ignorant even about how this worked in America, but hey, we had renters at the lake, and they always sent us checks. Didn't it work that way here?

I called my mom and then my bank. No one had heard of direct debit, all recommended wire transfers, which run about 50$ and would require my mom to go to the bank in person, and for me to have lots of personal bank information from the landlady. Lovely. I called my study abroad coordinator, and he basically told me that yep, direct debit is super easy but only Europeans get to use it, everything has to be much harder for Americans, so wiring the money is probably my best bet.

Knowing this, I sent another email to the landlady, apologizing for the delay and complication (and feeling that she must be feeling that she could get a Spanish or European renter much more easily) and talking about options. I offered to pay all of the money at once, in cash, when I arrived in Pamplona, and considering the other options... she accepted. Really this is ideal, because I can see the apartment before handing over the cash (although unless its a hell hole I'm honor obliged to go through with it), and don't have to overly involve my mom, pay for the money to be wired, etc.

So, this has been a lot of fun basically but thanks to a lot of helpful people and most of all my future landlady's patience, looks like I'm finally okay where this is concerned.


The second sad story is about my boots. If you remember, I've wanted hiking boots for a while and finally impulsively bought some online some time before leaving on my trips. The boots were a bit... less hardcore... than expected, but they were also lighter weight, cuter, more comfortable, and cheaper. Well, I completely fell in love with them during the walk. They kept my feet cozy, warm and comfortable and proved completely waterproof despite loads of abuse. And then it happened...

Like stereotypical backpackers, Lucia and I got into the habit of tying our boots to our backpacks when we needed a break in our less restrictive shoes, and this worked fine throughout the walk. I would tie the boots to each other and to the bag, and in this way they withstood miles of hiking and numerous bus rides, no problem. At the end of our journey, with one more bus ride to go, (from Inverness to Edinburgh), I tied them up just like before and put my bag in the cargo hold, which wasn't to be opened until the bus arrived in Edinburgh. Allan and I both saw the shoes tied onto the bag when we put it in the bus.

In Edinburgh, I put on the bag and realized within a minute or two that there was only one shoe attached! I looked all over the ground and inside the bus, but it was nowhere to be found. :( Of course, I have one of them left, but one shoe isn't worth much, so it's really a sad state of affairs. What I can't puzzle out is what possibly could have happened to it. It would have been strange enough for it to manage to untie itself, but even then how could it have gotten away? No one would steal a single boot, and it would seem weird for anyone to take it accidentally, either. It couldn't have fallen out at other stops, because that compartment wasn't opened until Edinburgh. It basically vanished.

It sucks, because if I had left it somewhere, I could blame myself and it would be fair. If I'd been overly careless with it, I could learn a lesson, but what I did was basically standard backpacker practice, and I do think I tied them on well - they only had to sit in cargo, and those same knots had held while I walked miles with the bag on my back. If they had been stolen, I could at least be angry or something. But this is just rotten luck, and mysterious at that, and I'm almost in denial about the whole thing. I guess its just a traveling hazard, but it sucks that I have no idea what happened to it, no one to blame, etc.

To make matters worse, I looked online and couldn't find any boots at all like it - it was such a hybrid pair, somewhere in between hard core leather boots and a tennis shoe - and it appears to have been somewhat unique in this regard. Ecco doesn't make the pair any more, which is in fact why I got them so cheap initially, they were on clearance. But this story does have a decent ending - I went back to the website for The Walking Company, who I bought the boots from originally, and the item is still on their website, on clearance. They only have a few pairs left, and only in my size! Somewhat impulsively, I ordered a new pair and sent them to Florida, and I guess I'll ask my parents to send them on to Europe from there. So at least I'm only down the money, and considering what I put all my stuff through on this adventure and how everything else survived, I guess I'll just have to accept it.

Edinburgh Festival

First of all, there is no actual Edinburgh Festival. What people call the Festival for convenience sake is actually several festivals put together, perhaps most notably the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which is the largest arts festival in the world and in 2009 was comprised of 34,265 individual performances, spread out over nearly a month. Its just out and out impossible to 'do' the entire festival, and I didn't even give it a good try, since I was only in Edinburgh for about 4 days and the whole festival was something of an afterthought. Still, Lucia, Allan and I went to see two shows - a drama, Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, as well as an opera, Montezuma. Both were part of the Edinburgh International Festival... or so they claimed.

Well. The Sun Also Rises was just fine. I basically wanted to go because it is the story that made Pamplona famous, and it seemed almost like fate that it was playing on a day we would be in town. I'm not a fan of Hemingway in general, and the play was very Hemingway, and very long, but still well worth watching, especially for Allan and I. The second part was much more interesting than the first, but all of it was done pretty well and made far more interesting and funny by repetitive reminders of the limitations of the theatre. Since these touches were unexpected I did feel that they cheapened the seriousness of the play, but I was also grateful to them for keeping me awake during slower scenes - waiters had a habit of doing crazy juggling tricks with cups and bottles of wine, much fun was made of the way the sound effects were prerecorded and not always in perfect sync with the action, etc. My favourite part were the table animals - during a fishing scene, a guy shows off his catch in the form of two large tables, which we are to imagine are fish. Well, its a way for them to save on their scenery costs, right? But the best is when he shows off his little fish, which is a miniature table. XD Defeated the purpose, of course, and brought laughs from all around. Tables (with mounted horns) were also used for the bulls in the bullfighting sequences, and this worked surprisingly well but was still amusing especially after the fish scene. All in all it wasn't my favourite but it was well worth the time.

Then, Montezuma. Lucia was really looking forward to this one, poor dear. She hadn't liked The Sun Also Rises too much and was looking forward to some classical opera. Things started out as expected - Montezuma singing about his empire and conducting a sacrifice to the sun god. His voice was a bit high pitched but that might have been a statement about his personal weakness for better or for worse, or something. But things devolved quickly. I knew the plot, at least the historical one, and yet I was constantly confused. Little was explained, the supertitles were often terrible, and that was only the basics of the mediocrity. Soon the Spaniards, who also sang like women, were throwing coke cans and taking off their pants. One of the Spaniards sang with a dog, who was maybe supposed to represent chaos and aggression, but the dog just sort of seemed random, dragged about, poorly trained. Then it started to look as if they were trying to make the whole thing political - a random microscene in which they switched from Italian singing to Spanish shouting and showed a Mexican flag - 'chaining' Montezuma in a poncho and a sombrero, etc. When the curtain fell for intermission, we thought we were about 2/3 of the way through the performance and made the decision to slip out while it wasn't too late to eat at a restaurant. Looking up the play today, it seems as though we made the right decision.

Excerpts from the Guardian review and comments from others:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/aug/15/montezuma-edinburgh-opera

"Director Claudio Valdés Kuri's vision of Montezuma is a surreal train wreck of a production, like a B-movie so awful it becomes rather watchable."

"I'm glad I went, even though I can still hardly believe that this was the Festival proper, not some student production in the Fringe. It was a life-changing experience. I now realise I could be an international opera director."

"The performance was riveting in its awfulness. All the basics of opera were forgotten: diction; intonation; ensemble; expressive, narrative and dramatic shaping. The directorial decisions were baffling."

I think I'm just going to pretend it WAS a Fringe production - not so embarrassingly bad, then - and I can say I've tasted both sides of the Festival.

Scotland Summary

I'm at Allan's house now and will be for the weekend. We'll catch up on some much needed sleep and maybe take a trip or two out, like to New Lanark or Hadrian's Wall, but for the most part I'm starting to look ahead to Spain. Scotland has been awesome. I was expecting a lot from the country but it has exceeded all expectations. The highlights have probably been Edinburgh (seeing Allan's haunts, the, lovely castle, etc...), climbing Ben Nevis (the U.K.s highest mountain), Loch Ness (the good, the bad, the pathetically touristy), and our brief but spectacular taste of the Hebrides Islands (Allan, Lucia and I had an afternoon on a beach of white sands and turquoise waters, and all to ourselves!) As far as the company goes, I love both Allan and Lucia dearly, and we had a lot of fun, but I'm not sure I thought through the ramifications of my plan to get them to hook up clearly. In fact I'm not sure I even expected it to actually work. It did and I'm happy for both of them but of course there were a few lonely times and a few awkward times but all ameliorated by a bunch of drunken Slovakians on one night and a certain Slovenian on two others.

We didn't complete our walk in the end. We'd planned to go from Ft. William to Inverness across the Great Glen Way, crossing Scotland from sea to sea and not even at its absolute narrowest point! In the end we were a bit cocky. I still think it wasn't so much the raw distance as the fact that we did our trial run in dry weather, on flat ground, and with half the weight. Really smart, and to make matters worse the day before the walk was the day we climbed Britain's highest mountain, and you're not supposed to do anything the day after. While we had unbelievably nice weather for most of the days of the trip, it rained every day we were walking, and after several days of trudging through pouring rain and the like, Allan was in lots of pain, I had caught some sort of sickness from Lucia, and Lucia was both sick and in pain, though possibly to less extremes, so we ended up taking the bus on two days. Still, we completed more than half the walk and learned a lot for next time. We should have been in better shape, we should have built in a rest day (especially considering Ben Nevis), and there were also things outside of our control, like pretty bad weather even for Scotland and illness. Whatever sickness Lucia brought with her from Chile was some nasty stuff - she is only now recovering after a month of sore throat, dripping nose, and cough, whereas I had the same symptoms more severely and acutely (already feeling fine again), and now Allan seems to have caught the same thing.

Is it rainy here? A few days in I would have told you it was all rubbish. We had lovely sunshine on the islands and the weather while climbing Ben Nevis was also fine. Yes it rained when we were in Glasgow but somehow rain bothers me less in urban environments. Then we started walking and it rained the WHOLE TIME - and then we finished and the weather in Inverness was absolutely glorious again. But what's really freaky about the rain here isn't the frequency (it rains far more in Costa Rica, for example), or the intensity (when it does rain in St. Louis in the summer, you better be inside unless you want to be blown into the Mississippi or struck by lightening, it's somewhat less here), but more of the combination between the two and other factors as well. It does rain frequently, I'd say at least once every other day, and unlike in, say, Costa Rica its still quite heavy and unpredictable, and cold or at least a bit bracing.



What I dislike about Scotland:

The wet, because towels and clothes never dry but always seem sort of damp and cold.

The way hot and cold spouts are separated and the hot water gets as hot enough to make tea - sometimes that can be handy yeah but usually you just have to pick between burning your skin off or freezing - it would be so easy to combine the spouts but no, why would anyone ever need warm or even lukewarm water when they could have boiling or icy?

The unpredictability - I mean rain is fine, but if you wear your raincoat it probably won't rain and carry it around all day, and if you don't, it's guaranteed to rain regardless of the forecast and regardless of how blue and clear the sky seems when you go out.

That there are random areas that according to Allan are rough, and I believe him of course for like Glasgow which has a reputation, but I mean he'll even say it of these little towns which look so sleepy and sweet. Makes me a bit sad. :( Why do these places have to be so gritty and real when they look so much like a fairy tale?



What I like about Scotland:

The wet, because it feels lovely and is good for my skin.

The food, the food, the food. I love the meat pies with their delicious flaky tender pastry and mix of vegetables and meat and spices inside. :D :D :D The candy is tasty, like Crunchie with its honeycomb centre, and the Galaxy and Cadbury chocolate. And there are berries by the side of the road, like in Finland and Norway, and very nearly as tasty. They have Magnum Ice Cream which is always a bonus. Blood Pudding really isn't bad after all, Potato Scones are quite nice, the availability of Indian food is always pleasant even when it doesn't seem to fit, and here's the big one -

Haggis: it's awesome.

The evil pine tree forests (in spite of everything), and the native deciduous forests with their dappled sunlight.

The moss and the lichen and the rocks (never get old somehow).

The Gaelic. It's more real than I expected, (but, to be fair, I was being pessimistic.) I've heard several people speak it and up north the signs are written in Gaelic first, English second.

Scots, too, and the myriad of different accents, are also somehow more real than I expected. Part of this I think is just the normal growing up in America you think everything else is hopelessly quaint and exotic, grow up and get disillusioned and then get surprised again to discover some things are real.

The Islands - they're as lovely as anything Caribbean or Mediterranean, different of course. I expected the desolation and the wildness and they are as advertised, but the deep blue of the waters and white sands caught me by surprise.

The Mountains. If you know me at all this comes as absolutely no surprise, but many of the are bigger than expected and all of them lovely. I expected them to be more like the Appalachians in a sense with more tree cover but I love them the way they are, more naked and windswept and almost like the Faroes. There are so many waterfalls snaking down everywhere like liquid silver and there are even some valleys by the sea that could rival the average Norwegian fjord.

The way the power outlets have little individual on-off switches.

Inverness. Perhaps the lovely weather made me a bit bias, but I thought the city was so nice with the river running through and the funny bridge and all the churches and the castle. :)

Loch Ness - its super touristy but even that's a bit fun once in a while, all the Nessie madness is so ridiculous it becomes fun again. And Urquhart Castle is lovely, and I had fun taking a swim in the Loch itself.

Ben Nevis - what a great mountain, what a lovely day spent climbing it. It's a bit of a challenge but really beautiful at every stage. Breathtaking in both senses of the word. :P

Edinburgh - So much culture for such a small city, plus its just so lovely and historic, even taking out, say, the brilliant castle and Arthur's Seat, the little mountain. Most of the city is actually a World Heritage Site. If I could afford to study abroad in an English speaking country, it would be in Edinburgh for sure.

The castles. I know it's super duper stereotypical but they're everywhere and it's just so cool. Allan actually has one like a fifteen minute walk from his house, a little one and not very old but still beautiful and ruined, all trees and vines twisting around the stonework and birds living in the upper stories. ^^

Flying Over

My flight to Dallas was at 6:40. My parents got home from New Orleans at 3:10, and at 4:00 they went back to the airport with me. The line at security was longer than normal but not too bad, and then I ate a last American meal at Popeye’s. For some strange reason, the shrimp meal was cheaper than any of the chicken meals, so I got that with a bottle of water and some rice with red beans. I’d never eaten that kind of rice and beans before. It was quite good and I was quite hungry. I even got a biscuit. One last artery-clogging bit of Americana.

The flight was half an hour delayed, which made for a tight connection in Dallas – FTW (I know it’s Fort Worth, but I always think For the Win!!!) Still, there’s an enormous difference between a tight connection and a missed connection. I knew I couldn’t run, not with the backpack and the heavy briefcase, so I simply walked quickly from one terminal to the other. The boarding line had dwindled to about twelve, but I was in no real danger of missing the flight, and as it was there was no wasted time – I got right on and we left. As soon as I got on, the man directing us to our seats said, “Oh, I see you have Popeye’s (pronounced more like papayas). I like them.” Then, when I sat down, the man next to me made a comment about them too… and when the flight attendant came around to remind us to stow our luggage, she said, “remember to give me your Popeye’s….” almost seamlessly. It sure got a lot of attention, but the more I thought about it, everyone I ran into the whole way from America was very nice and friendly. Even the security guards had cracked more jokes than usual, both of the people I sat next to had been friendly, etc.

On this flight I initially sat next to a sort of wild looking man – I mean sort of crazy eyes and long hair. But nice. And an interesting life story and current situation. He’s American, with kids over in Europe who he was going to spend a holiday in France with. He left his hometown of New York as a teenager and ended up selling cars to tourists and drug dealers in the Greek Islands, and he’s a recreational pilot today. Nice anyway. Strangely, although Tampa and my previous flight had both been very crowded, this flight was anything but. Soon I hopped across the aisle to the two empty seats there and flew in what was for me almost unreal luxury the rest of the way to Europe. I had plenty of room at my feet for luggage etc, I could cross my legs any way I liked, I had an extra pillow and blanket, an extra tray table, and I could even just manage to curl up and sleep. I didn’t think I actually nodded off completely, but the flight went so quickly I think I must have. First, though, the flight movie was coincidentally enough How to Train Your Dragon, which takes place in Scotland and with which Lucia became obsessed recently. The main flight attendant kept making jokes about me ordering a Scotch on the Rocks, so finally it came out that I’m almost 21, so not as funny as he might think. But of course, he had a hard time believing it, and over the course of the light told several other flight attendants. He also kept joking about it being my actual birthday and ‘buying me drinks’ – giving me a water bottle instead of a glass. Very nice, if a bit weird. :P

It got somewhat cold on the flight, cold enough I was glad to have two blankets. They woke us up in the ‘morning’ and I was quite drowsy as they came around and served breakfast. I always make myself drink all the orange juice I get on flights, because its there and good for the immune system, etc. To help myself wake up, I opened my window shade and the light was brilliant and fantastic, all white clouds and blue sea, and I huddled in my blanket looking out and sipping my orange juice and would you believe that I felt like a first class luxury passenger. Being crammed in like sardines somehow dulls the thrill of air travel, but somehow even the few more inches of elbow room made such a big difference, and I realized anew the miracle of soaring through the clouds.

The Day I Leave

The soup was yummy. I finally went to bed at 4 am last night. Lucia gave me some opinions while packing but mostly I did it myself. It wasn't easy. I wanted to pack light, not win the worst dressed award in Pamplona, and have stuff appropriate to a range of activities as varied as hiking across Scotland, getting covered in tomatoes, and going to classes and parties. I woke up early - actually the butterflies in my stomach woke me up, which is weird because mentally I'm quite calm. It turns out that my quick iTunes restoration left me with some tangles to sort through later - a lot of dead links and duplicates, and I don't have 100% of my old library, but I'll live. There's always Youtube, after all. I showered and got squeaky clean, checked into my flight and printed information I might need.