Almost Halfway

Its been a fun time, but you know, its not all about having fun...next week, I have 3 papers and 5 midterms.  That kind of puts a damper on things.  So, I'll be taking it easy this weekend.  We have an excursion on Friday (through the Fund) to Alcalá, a smaller city on the other side of Madrid, but  I'm not really sure what we're going to be seeing...

This past Friday, I went to the Prado again for my class, Grandes Maestros de le Pintura Española.  I would suggest looking at this painting by Goya, here.  It's called, Saturno devorando a sus hijos (Saturn devouring his children).  Saturn is the Roman god of time.  We are all the children of time.  He is eating us.

Last Saturday, I took the train to Madrid where Elena and her parents picked me up from the train station.  We went back to her house, picked up on of her friends, and sat down to eat paella that her dad made at around 2 or 2:30.  It was really good: chicken, calamari, clams, shrimp, and of course, a lot of rice.  While wee were eating, and for a while after, we carried on pretty extensive conversations, almost completely in Spanish.  Her dad, in particular, had some interesting stories...

Her dad grew up in a pueblo in the Franco era.  Franco was the dictator from 1936 until 1975, when he died.  During that time, Spain was held back economically, politically, and socially.  The pueblos suffered the most; Elena's dad didn't have a bathroom or even running water anywhere in his town.  The first time he left his pueblo, he was 10 years old.  When he first used a toilet, the flushing sound scared him so much that he thought he broke it.  He ran out of the bathroom so the people wouldn't know that he was the one who did it. 

Also, her dad's family raised a lot of farm animals: horses, pigs, mules, etc...these animals lived in the first floor of their family house.  The heat from the animals helped to heat the upper floors of the house.  On the second floor were the bedrooms and on the top floor was the kitchen.  Of course, when you live with animals in your house, not only do you have to put up with the smell, but you have to live with the fleas, too.  The Spanish word for fleas, for example, was one of the words that I didn't know.  He explained it by pinching his fingers together, jumping them around the table, and saying, "bip, bip, bip, ¡te pica!" meaning, "bounce, bounce, bounce, they bite you!"  But, he said that when you live there, you get used to it.

His family also raised sheep.  On Fridays, when they would have a town dance, everyone would wash themselves to get ready for the event.  He told of one time when he was dancing with a girl from the pueblo who milked cows for her family.  While they danced, she told him that he smelled like sheep...so he responded, telling her she smelled like cows.  Apparently, you get used to the smell of the pueblo, too.

We sat around talking for over 3 and a half hours.  A lot of the time, they were asking me to pronounce English words or to explain the difference between some words.  Afterward, at around 6:30, Elena and her friend, Natalia, and I went to meet more of Elena's friends.  We walked around some of the busiest parts of Madrid, had a drink in one of the plazas, and grabbed some quick food close to the train station so I could catch the 9:50 PM train back to Toledo.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in the bathroom before going to bed and I heard some ruffling in my room.  I looked in to find un murciélago, a bat, in there.  It was flying around a lot, but got tired after about a half an hour...so it perched on the wall.  Check out the video below.