Piece by Piece

November 20th

My last day of school for the week began with me being a little unproductive.  I woke up at 8:00 looked at my watch and then fell immediately back to sleep waking up an hour later.  A little disappointed in my self for falling behind schedule, I quickly laced up my running shoes and did my loop around the Zaidín area.

Back at the piso, I did homework and also sent a lot of messages to my old friends in the US.  While writing, the doorbell rang and I received a package from my dad.  Inside were excellent cookies from my Grandma, an amazing Umbral t-shirt from my brother, my hiking boots, sleeping bag, and a warm blanket.  I won't have to repeat the freezing nights in Dublin on my next trip.

I stopped at the library to check out the book I'll need to for my presentation of the US.  The book is translated from English and the author is a professor at Cal Poly San Louis Obispo.

I walked over to Blake's piso in Plaza de Toros to talk with his roommate Ettori about our upcoming trip to Italy.  I'll be in Italy for 10 days, December 19th-29th , and right now we have no plans, just tickets.  We'll be flying into Milan.  After going through what would be a smart route to take, it looks like this trip to Italy will be a "Northern Italy Tour."  I had thought it would be cool to bomb straight down to Naples and then work our way back up to Rome, Florence, and Venice.  The 9 hour train ride from Milan to Naples doesn't sound bad now, but I know when I'm one the train it will be a little much.  Also, adding another city would cut days off the others.  I want to tour and see as much of Europe as possible, but I also want to have a more tangible experience than "I went, took some pictures, and left."  This trip will be "Italy: Part I" and hopefully I'll be able to do a southern tour in the future.

Class was good.  My professor is very excited for my upcoming presentation on the US.  I don't want to let him down.

I came back and did some homework and then went out to "Barrio Latino" salsa club where I met up with some kids from my class.  There are free salsa dancing lessons every night and although I found the teacher's instruction to be a little tedious, it was fun to "put our skills to use."

Back home, I had a great conversation with Heiko about "the past and our generation's responsibility to remember it."  We were referring to the Holocaust and World War II and had ended up on this conversation as we had seen a pro-Franco, pro-Fascist protest in the street that evening (I guess today was the anniversary of his death and there are still some people in Spain who think that the time under Franco was better).  Heiko said he felt uncomfortable and unsettled to see something like that occur in Spain.