Life

An essay tonight about Conrad's Heart of Darkness. I can read it now. But I'm glad it came no sooner, gave me some time to recover first. Still I had to watch the movie, and in Spanish, and they pronounce their words with such a strange rhythm that even though I'm generally getting better at understanding movies, I was often lost in the darkness of the shadows even when the characters spoke, and when they didn't it was worse, and I found myself wondering why people watch such things, read such things... and the director! How could he have wanted to capture such darkness on film? It's funny that I go home and tell Jaime a small peice of what I was thinking - how could the director just go home after a day at work and put it all aside? Oddly enough she'd seen a movie about the director's experience directing the movie. He'd almost gone crazy, she said, living out in the jungle with his family and all the stress of what was almost the industry's biggest flop. And the darkness... maybe.

The weather's taken a turn from the better but I've taken a slight turn for the worse, all the fighting against hurricane winds and rains in Galicia, the long travels across Spain alone, have caught up with me and I'm just trying to stay in and quiet and take lots of vitamin C to get over it as quickly as possible. All the Erasmus kids here are sick and so far I've been by far one of the healthiest. It's no time to be sick. Mostly I just stayed in and read, but I did take a quick walk to campus, both because I needed to walk a little bit, and because the fall colours were so beautiful yesterday when I didn't have my camera. Some of the trees that were so brilliant yesterday were already a bit faded today, but others had jumped into their prime. I got a few pictures. None of them amazing.

The debit card situation is a pain in the ass for me, my mother, my landlady, my friends. I've carried a card for five years and never once lost it, but now, when it's the most difficult to replace, I carelessly left it in my pocket or something and it's probably in a sewer somewhere now. At least it was old and wearing out anyway. The new one will take 7-10 days to get to Florida, and then some time to get to me from there. Lovely. Ana is being flexible, Allan can bring me cash, Lea's offered me a loan very willingly, and I have a credit card too... but I'd prefer to do the best I can by myself. I gave Ana all the big bills I had, and that will keep me paid up on rent until Allan arrives. Hopefully the card won't be too late in coming after that anyway. The credit card I can definitely use for groceries, but it's a pain as I'll have to pay back my parents in dollars what I pay in euros.

So I'm trying not to spend too much, I should be able to make my small bills and coins last for groceries for a while. Grocery list for the week is basically two jars of lentils, three cans of pureed tomato, 8 cheap yogurts, 3 boxes of peach juice, 4 loaves of bread, a package of mushrooms, two lemons, an onion, a bag of frozen peas, a bag of croquettes, and a bottle of oil (the fryer ran out, I should be good for my contribution now). I'm angry with potatoes right now since the last bag I bought was moldy and nasty.

I've continued simplifying my Eroski curry recipe. I tried it with lentils and loved it. So so so cheap and so nutritious. A whole thing of lentils costs only about 45 euro-cents. The result is about halfway between curry and chili. What's the fundamental difference between the two, anyway? I need to start eating more rice. I've got loads of it. I'm used to it being the easiest carb to make fresh in my dorm room, but here bread is so much easier and goes better with more foods. The toasters here have a little lifted part for you to make bread toasty and warm and amazing. I love it.

With the last long weekend behind me, I need to settle down more and concentrate on school. Allan and I are going to Andorra next weekend and I'm super excited. I'll still do things on the weekends most likely, little things around Navarra. There's still so much I haven't seen close to home. If things work out just right I might hop over to Madrid again and hit Toledo. If they don't work out that's fine too.