Send me electric mail.

Today marks the halfway point of my time in Albany, NY. I'm here on a ten-week fellowship at SUNY. Today also marks one month of hiebra-free living, a fuerza. :/.

Gold and a Pager

Back to school for me. I realized it's been a long while since I last even thought about this thing. Let's see... I have left Spain now, which was the reason I even started with this, to keep in touch with people back home. And now I'm in Austin. Going to graduate school. To be a librarian! Anyway, hello. And bye again!

to join

wtf. Today in class I had to do a dictation for the bilingual kids. Before I start, this one kid in the back calls my name, hoping that I'd go over there without the teacher finding out. The teacher called him out on it, though: "Qué quieres?" "Nada, le llamaba a Arturo." "Es mi clase. Qué quieres?" Damn. Anyway, I know this kid, and he probably just wanted to say "joint," pretend to smoke a joint, and laugh. He always does that. srsly. Well, the kid gets reprimanded, and so afterwards, I begin the dictation. I get to, "Spain joined the European Union in 1986," and the kids are having trouble understanding 'joined.' So I pronounce it slowly and emphasize the ending so they know it's in the past tense. Joined... joint... the guy in the back starts giggling. Then the teacher comes up behind me, laughs, and whispers, "Joint. Como un porro!" Ay, ay, ay.

bottles and cans

I was thinking about this today, so I thought I'd make a quick list of things I've gotten accustomed to in Spain:

cheap produce
lighters with removable flint tubes ;)
looking like an idiot in everyday situations
cheap flights
cathedrals
cold, cold beer
giving missed calls
pay-as-you-go cell phones
text messages
fifteen-minute commercial blocks on tv
not running errands from 2pm-5pm
everything being closed on sundays
mullets

There's definitely more, though! I just don't feel like thinking too hard right now.

More of Texass

I've got a pretty bad habit of biting my hangnails off. It caught up with me while I was in Austin because I developed this huge blister-like thing on my finger. It was so, so gross. So I tried to pop it with Christina (and La pequeña Amy Winehouse):



I also had a lot of fun driving while I was in Texas, but it sucks getting stuck at a railroad crossing.

Texass

I've just spent more time in an airport in one week than anyone ever should. srsly. My flight to Austin was last Saturday, and the second leg of the trip was delayed three hours. Which meant I had to be given a different flight to Austin. Anyway, it sucked, but Austin was great. The department went way out of their way for me. I sat in on two classes, got tours of different centers and libraries, met with professors and students. I visited the school for three days, and then I had time off until Friday. My parents came up for two nights, so I hung out with them for a couple of days. It's always fun to go out to eat with them because they'll pay the bill, haha. I love it. At the end of the trip, I signed the acceptance letter and mailed it. Here I come, atx.

o/a

I took this picture on the way to Granada. I was going on a field trip with some students, and someone pointed out the clouds to me. Crazy.

The job I have is awesome. So, I got a call from someone at the University of Texas inviting me to visit the campus. They offered to pay for most of my plane ticket, so I really couldn't say no. Anyway, I was a bit nervous to ask my boss if it'd be OK for me to take a few days/a week off. He was really cool about it, though. "Claro, cuántos días necesitas? Una semana?" Um, sure! So, I'm going to be in Austin from April 5th to April 11th. Will you? Lemme know.

Even though I love riding my bike to work, it can have some pretty frustrating drawbacks. Last week I rode it to run some errands around the city (oh yeah, I finally got my resident card, the tarjeta de estudiante; yeah, a student, right...), and when I was the furthest away from home, I realized I had a flat tire. I don't know how I got it, but I had to walk my bike home from the police station. At least Thi was there and she offered to walk with me. She knows what's up. Anyway, that night, I fixed the flat. I had a bit of trouble changing the inner tube, heh, but in the end, I was pretty confident I had done it correctly. Crudely but correctly. As I rode to work the next day, though, I noticed that it was flat again. FAIL. So, I had to walk home from El Palo that day after work. Technically, I've now walked most of the length of Málaga: from El Palo to the police station! Oh, and to make sure I was doing it right, I had looked up "how to change a bicycle tire" on Google and noticed that I had done some things wrong. I decided to give it another try, then. And it seems to have taken this time around. I rode it to work and back today and yesterday. Win!

I can't believe I only have a few more months left in Málaga. I don't like thinking about it. The idea of living in Austin makes me very excited, but leaving Málaga doesn't =/. I still don't have a plane ticket home, but oh my God, the prices are ridiculous. I haven't found anything less than one thousand fucking dollars! Pfft. Anyway, what I'm saying is give me one thousand dollars, plz. THX!

Donchu know?

Greece! Greece was awesome. I got to see the Parthenon, the acropolis in Athens, the Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Athena, a bunch more temples, and some crazy monasteries built upon huge rocks in Meteora. Seriously, how did they even build these monasteries:



And the food. I think I ate a total of nine or ten gyros while I was there. And the feta cheese... damn. Oh, and the gyros there come with french fies inside! Greek salad, stuffed tomatoes... This piggy's dream.



Simone and I made a few videos during the trip. I've uploaded a lot of them to my youtube videos page in case you want to check 'em out.

The last night we were in Greece, we couldn't find a cheap place to stay at all. The city we were in had no hostels or even one-star hotels. They had a total of about five hotels, some of which were closed due to it being low season. The cheapest we could find was Hotel Morfeus, which charged us fifty euros to stay there one night! We had to. Anyway, we held a ritualistic burning of the receipt in a plaza in Athens:



So, the trip was great. The flight home sucked, though. I missed my connecting flight from Barcelona to Málaga by -four- minutes. Four! They couldn't let me check in less than forty minutes before take-off. So I had to buy a new ticket home. Fuck. And, during my sprint from the luggage pick-up area to the check-in counter, my phone fell out of my sweater pocket. I didn't realize this until I had already gotten to the counter, so I ended up losing my phone. I'm about to go to Vodafone to see what I can do. I'm hoping they'll say, "No problem, here is a new, free phone for you onto which we've already transferred over all of your saved contacts. Thanks for being a customer!"

Less and less

^ The inebriated walk home with Simone.

Oh man. My mom just called me to tell me I received a letter from the University of Texas at Austin. And they accepted me for the Master's program I applied for! Yessss! They didn't send a financial offer, though =/. I guess I have to wait a little more for that.

Also, I am going to Greece tomorrow! Well, the trip begins tomorrow. Simone and I go to Barcelona for one night and then have a flight to Athens on Friday. We'll travel around several cities for a week and then head back to Athens for our flight home on Saturday. So, so excited! The food is what I'm most looking forward to. Okay, the Acropolis, the Parthenon, and the food.

I might also be going to the U.S. in a couple of weeks to visit UT Austin. They offered to pay for my flight and hotel but haven't gotten back to me about dates yet. We'll see.

Una tasa baratilla

^ My weinerfinger. That was at Juana's birthday party.

I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros today because fuck, man, I applied for my student card (residency) back in October, and I was supposed to have received it within two months. It's been four months already. Last week I went to the comisaría to ask about my application like they told me to do the last time I went to the Oficina de Extranjeros, and they told me to go to the Oficina de Extranjeros instead. So, Thi and I spent our morning there trying to get some info. After waiting on three lines and having fun discussions about all of the other extranjeros and their ethnicities, we finally talked to someone who worked there. Amazingly, they solved our problem within twenty minutes. God knows what they had been doing the past four months, yo. Spanish bureaucracy be crazy.

As they explained what we had to do next, they handed Thi and I a form to pay a tasa. "Um, ya pagué una tasa cuando fui a la comisaría," I say. "No pasa nada, esta tasa es baratilla," the guy explains nicely. "Cuánto es?" "Muy barato, 5.59€." "Pero de esa cantidad era la tasa que ya pagué." So he looks at my receipt and says, "Mira eso. Sí que son iguales. Bueno, de todas maneras también tienes que pagar esta tasa." So now I have to go to the bank and pay this fee before they can fingerprint me for my student card. Yup, you can't pay it there; of course, you have to go to the bank. At what time did I finally get this figured out? 2:20PM. At what time do banks close in Spain? Oh yeah, 2:15PM. Fuck. Now I have to wait until my next day off, Monday, to take care of this.

To celebrate our one-step advance in four months, we treated ourselves to some cheap Malagueta Chinese food. Mmm, 5€ menú.