(Originally written Saturday, September 15, 2007)
Hola a todos!

Life here has become more like home, but has not calmed down at all! Every
weekend there's another city to visit, another bar/disco to go to, and since I
don't have that much homework, I have plenty of time to do it all!

Many of you emailed me about the bullfights and why I find them fascinating.
Well, I'm going to one in Madrid tomorrow night (the capital of bullfights in
the world) so next blog I will go into that in depth with a new fight in mind.
As for the cruelty, what about wrestling and all of the human violence on TV?
Also, there have been 2 student deaths at the U of A these past few weeks and
everyone here is desensitized to that. Isn't that sad? What I mean to point out
is that violence is part of life in America these days, which is terribly sad,
but we've all adapted to live with it. As such, the only difference with the
bullfight is that the bull actually dies and there are no special effects.
However, I'll talk more about this and the art form in my next blog.

Another question was my family here. Arita is 46 years old and separated from
her husband. After they separated, about 4 years ago, she started hosting
students from around the world. She's absolutely wonderful! She does my laundry
once a week, cooks three meals a day for me, and gave me the biggest bedroom in
the flat. I'm particularly lucky because my room has AC, a double bed, I can
get internet, and I have a TV, though I haven't turned it on yet, go figure.
Arita is an amazing cook and takes cooking classes every morning, not that she
needs to. She makes all the traditional Spanish dishes: paella, tortilla
espanola, etc. A strange thing here is instead of salad dressing, they'll use
mayo and that's it. I was surprised, it's not that bad. She has a son who's 16
years old, Daniel, and he's okay. He's hard to understand because he speaks
quickly and in one pitch, but I'm slowly adapting. He's your basic teenager and
doesn't talk to me much.

People also wanted to know about language barriers. I've been taking Spanish now
for 8 years, though I feel like I should speak better than I do, given the time
spent learning. Before coming here, I considered myself advanced. Now that I'm
here, I'm basically fluent. Yes, I do make grammatical errors when I'm
speaking, but that's only when I'm using the preterite or subjunctive. I
understand everything people say and always make myself understood. As of yet,
I have not experienced the language barrier. Luckily, I learned about the
"club" situation before making a fool of myself. A club is a whore house, a
bar, pub, cafe, or discotec are the terms used for places to go out at night.
So, when in Spain, unless you want to get an STD, don't use the word "club."

The men here. As of now, the only Spanish men I've spoken with are old, but fun
to talk with. They tell me that olive oil is the key to good cooking. Let me
tell you about Spanish fashion. To begin with, they seem to be stuck in the
1980s. The stylish male hair cut is the mullet. Men wear capris, have man
purses, and wear pink shirts a lot. The girls dress in all of the latest
fashions, which so far seem to coincide with America. Unfortunately, the jeans
that go up past your belly button are coming into fashion here, but I think
I'll pass on that one.

Church. Last Sunday, Kristen and I went to a Catholic Mass in the Magisteral.
Kristen goes to the U of A and is from Minnesota. The mass was beautiful: they
used incense and the songs were nice. Unfortunately, my Spanish isn't as good
as I'd like and I only understood about half the mass because of the echo. It
was beautiful inside. An interesting note, only about a third of the people
took communion, compared to about 97% in America.

Last weekend I went to Alicante, a city on the Mediterranean. We took a midnight
bus and arrived at 5:30am. It was a little scary walking through the empty
streets in a strange city, but luckily the 2 hobos we past didn't follow us and
we made it to the beach just fine. It's illegal to sleep on the beach, so we sat
on benches and watched the sunrise. Alicante has a medieval castle on a huge
rock, which was simply beautiful. It takes a half hour to climb up the stairs
(the elevator was broken). Well, the stairs were under renovation, so we
couldn't go up, but we tried. The water was beautiful! The waves were mild and
there was so much salt in the water that you couldn't help but float. There was
so much salt, that when you sun-dried, the salt crystals would appear on your
skin. Without even getting in the water, your skin would become sticky with the
salt from the air. It was incredible!

There is still so much to write! For instance, two weekends ago I went to the
Prado, and yesterday the program sponsored a trip to Toledo. However, since
this email is so long, you will have to wait for the next installment.

Besos,
Lily