Off, Birthdays and what I´m going to do

It´s off! I´m free! Woohoo! No running, jumping or dancing. But at least I can walk!
I´ve been thinking a whole lot about what I¨m going to do this summer. I really feel like I¨m not ready to leave europe yet, especially spain. Maybe I will stick around granada or portugal until the week before my birthday. I definitely want to be home by my birthday because I want to celebrate it with my friends, family and especially my brother. And I do miss being home, a lot. A few days ago, I woke up and expected to be back in my room in the US. And I had a horrible craving for chocolate chip pancakes and eggs. AAh.
On wednesday was Sara´s birthday, and at first I was feeling kind of awful because I didn´t think I could make it up to the house. But I took a cab to placeta de san miguel bajo and walked down the hill without much problem. The next problem was getting up the stairs in the house. After about 20 minutes of brooding and questioning whether or not I was going to fall down the stairs and die, we figured out a very easy method: someone carry me. The rest of the night was fantastic. I got on the roof and was greeted by Laney, Sara, Kim and about 20 random spanish musicians with accordians, guitars and some type of drum. It was a great night. Tomorrow is Laney´s birthday, and I¨m sure it will be quite interesting, especially since her mother and grandfather are here.

Pity spanish style

I´ve been having my ups and downs for the past couple of weeks. My experience here has changed drastically since I´ve been on crutches. One thing that´s really been interesting for me to observe is the way in which people treat me because of my foot. For a while it really bothered me how people would just stare at it. In the US, if someone has a broken foot, its like nothing happened at all, people just keep walking. But here, people have absolutely no problem staring, and being caught staring at my foot. Little kids will sit and point, people will just stop what they´re doing and look. It´s very interesting to note that the elderly people, the ones who usually wouldn´t even give me the time of day, have been incredibly nice and helpful with me. I was walking across the street the other day, and happened to be walking next to an elderly woman, who then sat down on the bench and called to me ¨Hija, sientate!¨ (honey, sit down!) She then proceeded to ask me to tell her exactly what happened, interjecting with many head nods and sympathetic looks. Another time, I had an elderly couple walk up to me and ask if it was hurting me )it wasn´t). Another thing which has been really interesting is the way people are really helpful. Granada isn´t exactly the best city to have a foot in a cast (in fact, it´s pretty impossible to get around) and so a lot of times, even though I don´t want to, I have to accept help from others. This is especially true with the door to my apartment building. It is a constant battle with that door. I just can´t balance myself on the steps enough to push it open. Every day when I come home, I struggle with that door for a good five minutes until I can wedge my crutch into the opening or someone from the street helps me out. Usually someone will come and help me. The first time it happened, I almost started to cry. When I told my mom, she said ¨well, you´d have done the same for someone else.¨ but would I? I would love to think that I would´ve been the kind of person to help someone without being asked, but the truth is, I really don´t know. Now, after having this experience, I think I have changed my view. The fear of offending someone or of putting myself in a situation like that has completely dissappeared. Because as much as I hate accepting help from those random people off the street, I really do appreciate it.

Whats worse than a broken foot?

A broken foot when you´re in granada! I can´t believe my luck! Basically it all started when I went up to my friend´s house before a jazz show. We were goofing off barefoot on the roof (the best place to be when its 80 degrees and sunny) and we decided it was time to head down to the show. So someone(I can´t quite remember who) thought it would be a good idea to put a full bottle of beer in a broken plastic bag. So of course the bag breaks even more and the beer falls through and shatters on the floor. At first I thought I was lucky because I had my shoes on. But no, the glass went right for my foot. Everyone was so frantic about broken glass and beer being everywhere (my friend´s parents were about to arrive) that i slinked off to the bathroom unnoticed. I knew immediately that something was wrong with the placement of the cut, but I didn´t know exactly what. It just felt like I had cut my foot on a piece of glass. My friend´s sister eventually found me, and a bunch of people helped me wrap it up. I walked to the plaza on it, it hurt a bit, but nothing more than a usual cut. We ran into my friend´s parents at the plaza, who then frantically told me to sit down and go to the hospital. Everyone thought they were overreacting. I tried to walk down to Laney´s, but the hills were too steep and they hurt my foot even more. Some of the guys who were with me got frustrated and drunkenly decided to carry me down, which I appreciated as much as I despised. We arrived at Laneys, who then helped me apply butterfly bandaids and an ace bandage, and Matt had a car so we all left and went to the show.

The next morning, I couldn´t really walk, and so I knew something was really wrong. I called the API office and they told me to meet them at the hospital. The doctor took one look at my foot and scolded me for not coming in sooner. Apparently he could tell immediately, just by looking at it, that I had broken a tendon. Lovely. They operated on my foot, which hurt like hell. I tried to be really strong and not cry about it (the fact that I broke a tendon, aside from the fact it hurt like hell)but the timing just couldn´t be worse. It´s my last few weeks here in granada and i´m restricted to crutches! The worst part about it, in my opinion, is the ironic way in which i have to inject myself every day with blood thinner. I say it is ironic because usually my mother has to chase me around the house when it is time for my flu shot. I´m terrified of needles. It takes me a good hour or so to psychologically prepare myself to inject myself, but I´ve been getting it done. I told my mom that when i get back to the states i´m going to pierce my belly button because really i´ve pierced it 10 times already and so i know exactly how it´s going to feel!

That all happened last week. I´m feeling a little bit better now: I went to the doctor this morning, who told me that I had two more weeks with the cast. I wanted to kill him, but I know it´s not his fault. Some of my friends have been absolutely wonderful. I took a cab to a cafe and hung out with Laney and sara on saturday. Gavino met me on the sidewalk infront of my apartment and we had a drink at a cafe. Others have been calling me and leaving me text messages, which is wonderful especially since I get really bored lying in bed all the time. Others have not been so great. I haven´t really talked to anyone who was there when it happened, they all seem to be MIA.

And incase you´re wondering. The jazz show was awesome.

Otra vez Bellville trio!

Tonight I went out with my friend patrick to see the Bellville trio again. I met Patrick randomly in a plaza on monday, and we went to Picaro on wednesday, so I figured if he liked jazz, he´d like the bellville trio. We got there at about 10pm, when it was supposed to start, but of course since we are in Europe (and this is not a bad thing) it didn´t really start until 11:30. So we sat in the bar and had some wine and tapas, and then I noticed that the only other people in the bar were the members of the band. So I strike up a conversation with one of the guitarrists. He was surprised and happy when I mentioned that I knew Stefan Grappelli´s works and even more surprised when I mentioned that I played jazz violin. It was very cool. Eventually Laney, Sara, Matt, Rob, Sophie and the rest showed up, and the bar filled up. The show was incredible, as usual. As much as I enjoy watching flamenco in the caves, it´s also quite nice to be able to watch a form of music that you know you understand fully. During the intermission I spoke with the guitarrist a little more, and mentioned that I wanted to see them next tuesday, but the cover was a bit expensive (5 euros). So he told me he´d put me on the list so i could get in for free. I don´t really believe that he´ll remember my name, but we´ll see!

This weekend is the start of our spring break. i think i´m going to Nerja with Celia on saturday. I´m kind of excited because I haven´t been to costa del sol yet. So it should be a cool experience.

Goodbyes and an exam on Cervantes

My friend gustavo from Argentina left today. Last night, his housemates threw him a going away party. I walked up there for part of the night, but kept feeling like i should study for my 16th century lit exam and my art history exam. I had bought Gustavo a 4 foot plastic sunflower,which i knew he would appreciate, and so I wrote him a little poem on an index card:

¨Our lives are the stories we tell ourselves
imaginary, drawn like the lines between the stars
To be a revolutionary is to chang the life of one person
because the Universe is simply a room full of friends
and Eternity is this very moment.¨

I left at around 1am, shantal and nicolas cursing at me because they knew gustavo would´ve wanted to say goodbye. But I just couldn´t stay, I was too worried and upset to really stay out that late. And besides, my 16 century literature exam was at 8:30am, and my art history exam at 10. brutal.

So later, at around 230am, I get a phone call from gustavo, who sounded like he was in tears and pretty upset that i wasn´t there. He said he was going to Morocco to live for I don´t know how long. Later I found out that he doesn´t have a real passport, and so I´m really worried about him. But then again, he´s a grown up, he can fend for himself I suppose.

My 16th century literature exam was absolutely brutal, especially since she really didn´t mention anything about it before hand, just that we had one and that we should know everything. So when I arrive at class, the professor isn´t even there, it´s just some random guy who passes out a piece of paper and then an excerpt from the Cervantes. I immediately recognize it as the prologue, but of course we didn´t go over it in class, and it´s written in impossible rennaisance spanish. At first I didn´t panic because I thought that I could just use my dictionary to look up the words i didn´t know. No such luck. Dictionaries were not permitted. The exam was 7 essay questions, all pertaining to the prologue that was given to us, and so I don´t think I did too poorly mainly because I just answered the questions as best I could. I wrote a nice little essay at the end when she asked us to name some other works of the rennaisance. I wrote about what each of the works had in common (mainly that they were all humanistic, rather than teocentristic aka based off of the power of humanity rather than god) and that each is a social commentary embedded within the work. Hopefully i´ll get some credit for that. we´ll see.

Laney stayed at Gustavo´s party, and so she looked dead when she showed up for our music history exam. In retrospect, even though I wish I had stayed to say goodbye, i´m glad I left because I knew everything on the exam and felt really well prepared for it. I think I did well. I hope she did well too.

As far as my other exams go, we´ll see. My 20th century literature exam was absolutely horrible. Silly me for actually studying literature and literary movements, one of the questions actually was, and i quote ¨what was antonio machado´s nickname?¨How should i know? but I can tell you why his poetry demonstrates a conflict between humanistic and religious themes. Bah!
POE was kind of difficult, just really long. I couldn´t finish, but neither could anyone else. So i´m not too worried.

Civilization and Culture exam

The Civilization and Culture exam that I took was really quite interesting. I had gotten into a bit of a discussion about the youth of spain (and the rest of the world) with my professor earlier in the semester,and I guess he wanted to hear more about it. So the exam was jjust an article photocopied from the newspaper about the newly found statistics about the youth. Stuff like the majority are against capital punishment, most don´t vote by party but rather by candidate etc... He just gave us this article and a sheet of paper and that was it. So i just wrote my response to it. I hope that´s what he wanted.
Mainly, I think that articles that are written about the youth that say things like ¨the youth is more apathetic then their parents¨ just causes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we think that we are apathetic, then it´s like, why should I even bother if I´m the only one who cares? Furthermore, The article noted that we have no motivating idols, that we are surrounded by trash tv and crappy music without meaning. I sort of agree in that I think we´re just sitting around waiting for some revolutionary to come along like MLK jr or John Lennon to motivate us. But I think that´s just silly because MLKjr and John Lennon were just normal people with the same 24 hours a day as everyone else. So why are we waiting around for some superhero to come rescue us? We need to rescue ourselves.
Being in spain has really made me realize that although I´m surrounded by a different culture, different language and a different history, things are still the same. The older generations are still bitching about the younger ones being disrespectful and unmotivated. The political science majors are the ones doing all the organizing, the psychology majors do all the analyzing and the hippies just look the part and smoke pot. Everyone´s a little apathetic, but I think all we really need is a good prod of reality and everything will be on its way. Once you get people talking, they´re really not so apathetic after all, it´s more that they feel helpless, and that helplessness is a terrible feeling. So to cure themselves of it, they just don´t want to know. It´s apathy, but its a normal reaction.

Dinner party, Belville trio, exams and the future

Amanda had a dinner party last night at her new apartment in the upper albayzin. The view from up there is incredible, it´s completely different than the rest of the city because it faces away from the city center. From her roof you can see the mountains, and a hill with a church on top, with cows, chickens and horses. Seriously. It´s about a twenty minute walk from my apartment, and all up hill but definitely worth it. Laney made this incredible couscous dish, Mike made some type of chicken and honey sauce and anna made pasta, that really got stuck to the bottom of the pot and took us forever to clean off!
Afterwards I went out with Laney and Sarah and Rob to see the Belville Trio. Honestly, was one of the best concerts I´ve seen in a while. i met a girl there from Mallorca, who was pretty emphatic about dancing even though the bar was incredibly packed. It´s strange how much I´ve recently come to realize how much music is an important role in my life. I´ve been going through some emotional troubles the past week and just hearing some familiar music made it all go away. This was especially incredible because both my ipod and my laptop are not functioning at the moment, and so I´ve been going without any familiar music for about a month now. Very tough.
This coming week I´ve got midterms, and so unfortunately i´m going to lock myself away in my apartment forever. Of course, that´s probably not really going to work, but that´s the plan. 5 exams in 3 days. yucky. And I have to write my thesis proposal for next sunday. I´m thinking I´m going to do it on culture shock, especially since I´ve got a pretty awesome contact with the psychologist here in granada.
I´ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to accomplish this summer, and i think my best bet is to go to mexico and work with CIDHAL, a feminist lobbyist group (www.cidhal.org). The womyn´s center at hamilton might fund me, which would be amazing. Jess went last year, and so I¨m hoping to just build off of what she did. We will see. All I know is i´m not ready to go back to the states just yet, and I don´t really want to get a crappy promotional modeling job. These times are just too valuable to waste doing something I don´t want to be doing just for money.
we will see.