Everything from my mind and the weather to funny words and politics!

Rain.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain. Soooo much rain that, when you look both ways before crossing the street, you do so several meters away from the curb to avoid being soaked from head to toe. The cars shoot up sheets of water that are sometimes so huge that they come up over the windshield and give the effect of being within a submarine instead of a car. Needless to say, the beaches have been deserted for the past few weeks due to this wet, overcast, and often windy weather. The general mood of the people has changed along with the weather; everyone is indecisive about future plans since nobody knows if there will be enough warmth or sun to merit an outing and the students at school huddle indoors to avoid the drizzle. They fret over the new wave of exams that begins crashing down upon us.

Although my outlook is optimistic, I am also preoccupied. Yes, I know that I need not stress over grades and classes, but I am the sort of person who always wants to commit 100% to everything I do. I don’t want to merely go to my classes, absorb something about something, and live for the weekends. I want to understand all of the material in my classes; I want to know how Franco got control of Spain during La Guerra Civíl between 1936 and 1939. I want to understand the mystery of the Mona Lisa and be able to compare her to Venus. I get so wrapped up in this learning that I begin to try to measure my progress, try to answer the questions in class, try to catch up on two trimesters of classes missed. I get so caught up in this that my whole world begins to revolve around analyzing Spanish texts and devoting too much time to figuring out what modulation is within argumentative, periodistical texts. You can see how this could begin to infringe upon my "relax and have fun" time! So then I back down and say, "Look Jocelyn: you are here in Spain for a few particular reasons. You are here to know the people; to know yourself; to climb, see theater, explore the city, revel in art, and learn Spanish. You are obviously learning Spanish, so relax and do everything else! Get your nose out of the books and put on some walking shoes! Call some friends and have some fun!" My other internal self now interjects: "Well, who are my friends? I can’t hang out with everybody, and I can’t hang out with just anybody. If I hang out with everybody, then I will never create lasting friendships. If I hang out with everybody then, in times of need when I just need to spill out my guts and talk, I’ll find myself lacking that closeness that allows for the spilling of hearts. I also can’t hang out with just anybody because I know me and I know I have to be healthy. I know I need to hang out with people who let me feel comfortable; people who respect my need to breathe air that is smoke-free; people who value culture, who want to show me the town, and live during the day instead of during the night. I need friends who will relax with me, explore with me, and carry on philosophical conversation with my ever curious mind." "Right," says my other self. "So you identify those friends and pursue the opportunities that allow you connections with them." So I do that, being the good, obedient self that I am, and I call friends to see if they want to go to the tea-house or Terra Mítica (a theme park with roller-coasters, etcetera). Unfortunately, the rain-produced indecisiveness of the world around me and the upcoming exams halt my plans for bonding. Everyone is indoors studying or brooding or whatever. "Good!" says my carefree self. "Now you can learn the lesson of patience! The rains will dissipate and the sun will return. Then you can frolic on the beach with fun people."

You see how my brain works?! I constantly carry on little internal monologues -and I am happy to say that they are always more hopeful than that of Hamlet!

NOTE: Although it may sound like I spend all my days cloistered in a gloomy room waiting for the rains to stop, this is not the case. I go out with friends, and today actually brought sun, but I am ultimately still looking for those friends that I am comfortable being around. I have, thus far, stumbled upon kind, well-meaning and interesting people who, unfortunately, partake in an array of activities that I do not fancy: drinking, smoking cigarettes, hooka, or hash depending on the people, throwing caution to the wind, and you get the idea. Needless to say, I am working on finding the right crowd, but when you choose the art track, your peers tend to be a little more liberal-minded and loose of spirit. Regardless, there are interesting people everywhere. For example, the rock climbing crowd is great! However, I hold the ranking as youngest by at least half a decade every time and, as much as I love adult males, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to be able to spill my woes over crushes and tampons with you! Thus, I search for some girls of my own age. No worries. It’s all a matter of relaxation and not pushing time.

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I have finally figured out the logic behind the Spanish way of eating. Initially, this may sound like a relatively simple issue: three meals a day and you´re on your way! But no! The way of eating is really a reflection on society as a whole. For example, we in America tend to eat whatever is convenient and as quickly as possible so as to get on with our day. We place importance on dinner, devoting the majority of our time and calories to that meal. Lunch, meanwhile, is usually a quick sandwich somewhere in the middle of the workday. The Spanish, on the other hand, love their lunch. They go so far as to organize their entire day around this meal: go to work in the morning, come home for a few hours for lunch, then return for the second part of the work day. The result is that dinner is crammed in at the very end of the day (around 9) and that it is usually a light meal. They, like us, neglect breakfast. Now, I couldn´t figure out how the Spanish survive the long hours between 7:00am breakfast and 3:00pm lunch, but the revelation is upon me. Between desayuno (breakfast) and la comida (lunch), they have almuerzo. On top of that, they have la merenda between lunch and dinner. This makes way for a very light dinner so that you can hop right into bed without worrying about the negative effects of heavy digestion while sleeping. Whew! Now I know what I have to do! I have to tune in for the merenda at 6:30pm and eat less at dinner so that I can sleep well.

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Today, since we were not sure if the rains would impede our climbing, we went to a new climbing gym. This gym is bigger, taller, and more interesting than our little bouldering gym here in Alicante, but it was still significantly smaller than our Rocknasium. You can begin to imagine how small the gyms are around here. In reality, the climbers in the area always climb outdoors and they always do sport climbing (with a rope and gear). The rock around here doesn’t lend itself to bouldering -or so they’ve told me. Also, none of the gyms tape routes. The climbers devote their time to continual games of Add-on or laps and, as far as I can tell, don’t devote themselves to particular problems for extended periods of time. The gym is definitely just a way to train for the outdoors, and rightly so since the gyms are fairly dinky. Dinky or not, they are still a good time. Unfortunately, I have not made it to the Alicante climbing gym in a few weeks. After climbing today, we played a fun game of basketball and I realized just how out of shape I am. All right, I may be able to climb and dance, but I definitely don’t do prolonged running. Whew! I need to get my heart in shape! Hopefully I’ll get more opportunities to play soccer or basketball after a nice day’s climbing. (My climbing buddies tell me that these little partidos after climbing are usual occurrences in warmer weather.) I’m hoping for some beach volleyball too!

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Ok, more on the American image abroad: Apparently the Spanish government paints a pretty nasty picture of we Americans. Arrogance and American go hand in hand in the minds of the average Spaniard, but these are all stereotypes broadcasted by politicians. Everyone I know who has met Americans or been to America say that we seem welcoming and friendly enough. The point being that the Spanish government is adept at manipulation and uses its power over the media to broadcast negative images of the American population, but that immediate relations between Spaniards and Americans are generally positive. Good news. The media manipulation, however, is bad news. The Spanish recognize this manipulation that is brought about by corrupt politicians and an extensively powerful government. They have their king (Carlos I), president (José Luís Rodrie Zapatero), and many political parties all vying for power –among them the socialists (left-wing), the popular party (right-wing), and a number of other parties that very from community to community. (A community is a collection of provinces. i.e. Madrid, Andalucia, etc. Imagine groups of states in the US formed into alliances within different regions while still maintaining their statehood and you have the general structure of Spanish political geography.) Each party has their own newspapers and TV stations, and they all share their very biased opinions vehemently. It seems impossible to find information that even pretends to be neutral or objective. Fortunately, the people here know all of this and always intake their information with a grain of salt. Although we come from a country with free press, we would do well to follow their example and be very critical of all the information that comes our way. But you already know that.

Well, only two days of school left until vacations! Then comes la Semana Santa, or week of the saints, when glorious processions abound. More on that later! In case you’re curious, yes, we’ve changed our clocks for daylight-savings-time over here also. The weather we’re having here is apparently very unusual: they’ve have a very dry winter (too dry) and the heat has come too quickly with everyone fretting over global warming, and now these unpredictable rains. Well, through it all, the birds still sing beautifully! (more beautifully, in fact, than the birds in my part of Davis, and even better than the exotic birds I heard in the South of India. –you know the ones, Rachel!)

As for my singing! Yes, I sang my two songs in Spanish, but I went into English for the end of “Mamma Mia!” by Abba. Humorously enough, the backup singers on the karaoke CD version of the song that we downloaded from the internet sang in Spanish! The version of “I will Always Love You” that a friend of a friend sent through email for me to use ended up having a country feel to it. It was fun re-interpreting the song in my own way after having always heard it sung by Whitney Houston. The show itself was fairly amature in terms of general performance, but the Spanish guitars were marvelous! Their fingers dance over the guitar-strings and the music is so filled with emotion. The theater itself was beautiful and fairly small (about the size of the Hobblit). The people were kind, but I was surprised to find even some of the singers smoking backstage. The sole techie was a very nice guy who is into hiking during his free time and the two ushers were a pair of comedians they were! I had a few laughs with them in the lobby before returning to the stage for the bows.

Well, time for dinner again! And a good thing, too, after all that climbing and basketball earlier today! I hope that all of you are enjoying the sun. Let me know if I have not covered something that interests you or if you want embellishments on topics that I have glossed over. I live to share with you!

Muchos besos,

Jocelyn

PS Couch potato: my friends love this word! Out of all our vocab words for English, they can´t get over this one! Why do we call a teleadicto (a television addict) a couch potato?! My best explanation was that generally you sit on a couch eating potato chips while watching TV. Any thoughts?! :-D