Why am I like this

Alright, this fiasco has reached epic proportions.

My process for writing this paper (8-14 pages in Spanish on the diglossic situation of Classical Arabic and Andalusian Arabic in the Iberian Peninsula between the 8th and 16th centuries):

1. Decide that I need to sit down and actually write this paper.
2. Open my computer, check gmail and facebook, stalk people's spring break pictures as they go up: 15 minutes.
3. Mentally kick myself, and sign out of skype, facebook, ichat, gchat: 5 minutes.
4. Try and write one sentence in Spanish, get so hung up on the subjunctive and vocabulary choices that I lose my train of thought: 20 minutes.
5. Say screw it, get onto Write or Die, bang out 500 words of bullshit, with no factual basis or research, in English, with no quotes or references: 10 minutes.
6. Wikipedia a reference about dialect differences in Arabic, get distracted, follow a series of links, end up reading about something completely unrelated to anything useful (music videos): 10 minutes.
7. Prompted by Wikipedia, re-watch all three mashup videos of the billboard hits from 2009, 2008, and 2007: 15 minutes.
8. Realize what just happened, close all my windows, and try to remember what I was writing about: 5 minutes.
9. Try to translate my 500 words of crappy English into a Spanish paragraph, simultaneously inserting random references to back up my made-up claims in the hope she won't actually check any of them: 30 minutes.
10. Google "when to use 'aunque' in the subjunctive in Spanish," manage to click on the "Gawker" and "NYTimes" bookmarks at the same time: 5 minutes.
11. Wonder, yet again, who in their right mind let Steve Jobs name his latest creation "iPad": 5 minutes.
12. Have coffee with my señora, watch as my host sisters peel all the stickers off the fruit in the fruit bowl and stick them on their faces: 45 minutes.
13. Realize I have accomplished absolutely nothing, return to Write or Die, spit out 500 more words of even worse English: 15 minutes.
14. Check facebook, change my status to something about how much I hate this paper: 5 minutes.
15. Realize how screwed I am, update my blog and bitch about my life: 20 minutes

WHY. I am not even exaggerating. ARGH.

Spring break recap

Oh hey Madrid, I missed you!

Pictures from my trip are coming soon, but transferring and exporting and uploading and formatting everything is more than I can deal with right now.

Casualties of the trip:
Sunglasses (sat upon during the train ride to Geneva)
Purse (in a story we won't discuss)
One pair of tights (related to the purse, in a story we won't discuss)

Items smuggled, at various times, onto an airplane, wittingly or unwittingly, by either myself or my traveling companions:
Lighters
A corkscrew, complete with an actual blade
Nail clippers and razors (can you take these on planes?)
More than 100ml of shampoo and toothpaste, not safely contained in a one-quart plastic bag

Items lost:
NONE!

Literature (well, the definition varies) read:
Lolita
Harry Potter y la piedra filosofal
New Moon (please god do not judge me, I can explain!)
The April 2010 edition of French Marie Claire

And coming soon, a story in four parts:

Lyon: In which I remember, after 24 hours of saying "pero" with a French accent, how to speak this language, and also why I love France so much
"Shit, 'caminer' isn't how you say 'walk' in French, is it?"

Highlight: speaking French without getting funny looks, or alternatively, ordering mousse de chocolat à l'orange after eating chèvre chaud for lunch

Lowlight: trekking from the bus station to the hostel for 45 minutes up hills, carrying all my stuff, after Lyon shut down the subway line because of an incident voyageur

Geneva: In which we leave the EU without realizing it
"Wait, what do you mean they don't use Euros here?"

Highlight: Finding the Protestant Cathedral (yes, really) and taking in spectacular views of the entire city

Lowlight: Getting contôled on the train and having to pay an extra €25 for having bought the wrong tickets (on purpose, heh)

Barcelona: In which I accumulate rocks in my pockets and sand in my shoes
"It's like... the Mediterranean version of Venice Beach plus Hawaii plus Mexico, or something."

Highlight: Napping on the beach, drinking wine on the beach, wading in the ocean, picking up rocks on the beach, listening to music on the beach, taking pictures on the beach, getting sand from the beach everywhere, and finding that sand in the bottom of my bag last night as I unpacked

Lowlight: The story we won't discuss

Mallorca: In which we break out the flipflops, finally
"Wait, they speak Catalan here too!?"

Highlight: Dramatic readings of scenes from New Moon, featuring Jacob the Gay Werewolf, Edward Cullen, the Mostly Absent and Ashen-and-Listless-when-Present Vampire (played by me as I recovered from my stomach pyrotechnics), and Author Stephanie Stephenie Meyer, who can't actually write for crap and needs to discover new ways to describe the color red

Lowlight: Throwing up on the side of the road (yes, really) - not my finest hour, though I managed to not get it on myself or anyone else - and the following 24 hours of absolute misery lying comatose on my bed

Plus one extra airport scene, in which I get locked in a newsstand for fifteen minutes because the lady went to take her cigarette break, didn't realize I was still in there (reading Marie Claire), and lowered the grate before I realized what had happened.

Stay tuned...

And I'm off

Well I never got around to posting pictures from Salamanca, but I promise I will do so eventually. For now, I'm on spring break, which means I've spent the past few days wandering around Madrid enjoying the beautiful weather - picnics in Retiro, sleeping in, exploring art galleries, drinking coffee in cafés, you know, the usual.

And now I am off for ten days of travel! I am meeting some friends in Lyon (that's in France) for some wonderful French food, art museums, and Roman ruins as I remind myself that I actually do speak French (or did at some point in my life); then I'm flying to Barcelona to meet up with other friends, where I will be perplexed by Catalan and wonder, yet again, why nobody in this country actually speaks the same language; and then I will fly to Mallorca, where it will hopefully be sunny so we can go to the beach for two days, relax, and say, "So I went to a Mediterranean island for spring break!"

I'll be back on April 2 (oh my LORD when did it get to be April!?!) and will spend the remaining two days of my vacation frantically writing the 8-page Spanish paper (in Spanish, this is such a bad idea) that I have been putting off for an entire month. I'll try to post updates during the next week and a half if my hostels have computers with internet, but nothing is guaranteed.

Play nice while I'm gone!

León and Zamora

Yes, yes, failure at updating. My bad.

So, too many weekends ago than I care to admit, I went on a NYU sponsored trip to León and Zamora, two cities northwest of Madrid. I was pretty terrible at taking pictures, but here are a few.



The cathedral in León, which is famous for its stained glass.



They're apparently in the process of restoring it.



There was more glass than stone in these walls. Astonishing when the light hit it just perfectly.



Mountains in the distance, as seen from the cathedral.

And then we went to a winery for lunch and a wine tasting, and that's basically the rest of the pictures. So without further ado.



It was called Bodegas Fariña.



There were, obviously, many wine barrels.



"Llena" means full, if you were wondering.



So I know that judging from the pictures I have put on this blog it looks like I only ever wear one outfit. I swear I own other clothes, really.



Our tour guide (who happened to be the grandson of the founder of the winery, how cool is that) went on like a ten-minute rant (in Spanish) about how it's important to use corks and how he thinks screwtop wine bottles are stupid. Dad, I thought of you.



There was an entire wall of the winery's very first vintage.



What they used to use to harvest/crush the grapes a long time ago.



This is where the winery was. Apparently Toro is very famous as one of Spain's best wine areas.



And then there was wine tasting...



And lunch! Food was absolutely delicious, of course.



It, of course, entailed multiple courses of meat-based stews (apparently they eat a lot of that in this part of Spain), bread, salad, cheese, cookies, coffee, and dessert wines. Why is this entire country not obese.



More wine. It was quite delicious as well.

And then we traveled on to Zamora, which I actually liked more than León, but still didn't take very many pictures. (Sorry.)



A plaza...



An awesome-looking wall...



Look, greenery.



Oh, Spain, never change.



A cool street...



Zamora...



And more Zamora.

So, yes, apologies for the delays, expect another picture post about another weekend soon (hopefully tomorrow...!). Other that that, estoy de vacaciones ya, and am gearing up to fly to Lyon on Wednesday for some adventures in France!

Not dead yet

So this is just a brief update to let you know I am not dead. I had midterms, and then I was sick, and then I went to León and Zamora, and then I was still sick, and I had more midterms. And now I am leaving in an hour and a half to get tapas with a friend who's flown in from Bordeaux, and tomorrow the two of us are busing up to Salamanca for the weekend!

So, in lieu of anything about Madrid, I will direct you to something really cool sent to me by my mother, and also the most ridiculous thing I've seen on the BBC in a while.

Yes, I'm still talking about this...

...but not in the way that you think, I know nobody really cares.

Related to my last post, I would like to bring you the following sentence from today's NYT:

"Ms. Booker did not appear in court the following day, resulting in the case’s being dismissed."

While I realize that it is not in fact grammatically incorrect, surely someone at this newspaper, which many people regard as a bastion against Americans' ever-increasing inability to properly write English, suggested that "dismissal of the case" or even "case's dismissal" would have been better than "case's being dismissed." That's a sentence that would not have been out of place in my sophomore English class in high school, when we still had to "peer edit" other students' works. I would have underlined it and put "awk." ("awkward", one of my favorite abbreviations ever) over it.

Alright, sorry about that, it's like a nervous tic and I can't help it. On a completely unrelated note, yesterday I caved and got a grande drip coffee from Starbucks and sat outside on the Paseo del Prado and reveled in it. Although, unsurprisingly, the drip coffee at Starbucks in Europe is even worse than the drip coffee from an American Starbucks. Oh, well. Still pretty amazing.

This is why we can't have nice things, NY

You know, New York, I don't really follow your politics a whole lot because you're all basically crazy up there and I can't vote for any of you anyway, but I still spend a lot of my time living, working, spending my money, and studying in your largest source of income, and this really isn't acceptable. In fact, it makes me wonder how you can focus so much on "eradicating domestic violence" and catering to those crazy feminists and goddamn liberals down there in the five boroughs when you really couldn't give a care one way or the other. I really shouldn't, after reading the news, think, "Okay, so 'date anyone even remotely connected to politics' can be added as another bullet point on my list of things women cannot to do if they value their physical and mental health." Clearly, if you work for the governor of New York, rules of common decency and human interaction, not to mention, you know, laws, don't apply to you. Obviously.

Paterson, when you're governor, maybe you should try, I don't know, governing instead of making me nauseous, as a woman and as a thinking person, and, on a less appalling but still frustrating note, also breaking down even more of the Democratic Party in New York while you're at it. Because that is exactly what we need right now. I think we all have other things to worry about in New York, don't we? Isn't that your job?

That is all.

PS: Enjoy all that snow. I hope Albany's hard hit and you all get frostbite and your fingers fall off. Maybe if it snows enough you won't be able to get to work - at this point, the general consensus seems to be that you're better off holing up in your (State-Police-monitored) mansion until your term ends anyway. Maybe the grand leader could follow another governor's lead in that other cold snowy place and just resign?