(A sculpture by Juan García Ripollés in El Parque de Retiro)
Today, my Cultura y Civilización class started - at 8:30 am. Now this may not seem early to many of you, but remember that in Spain, days are generally 3 to 4 hours later. So when you look at it that way, this class essentially started at 5 in the morning. I had to get up without sunlight - and that's a struggle for me with or without the time difference. Ugh. But the class will be interesting. We take a lot of culture trips around Madrid and Spain, and actually have very little classroom time - yay! Also this morning, a representative from the Morocco Exchange organization came to talk about the trip. Sounds like it will be quite the weekend. He mentioned Hammam Public Baths - where you get "exfoliated" by some Moroccan women while wearing a bathing suit and sitting in a big bathtub. "It's an adventure," he encouragingly added.
Today in Economics, we had a debate about an article by Bjorn Lomborg - who essentially argues that deforestation is an exaggerated issue and that the real problem is the poverty level in developing nations. I had to defend him, and did a darn good job. I had quotes and everything. I really love debating and get to talk in my lawyer-voice, so I had a good time. I then rode home on the train with Sebastian, one of the guys in my class. He's pretty lovely and is from Sweden, so that's nifty. I hope I didn't intimidate him with my lawyer-voice. . .
Julia's maid is having foot surgery next week, and won't be returning to work. I asked Julia how long she's known BC (that's how her name sounds - I have no idea how it's spelled), and she said 7 years! And although another woman come for an interview today, Julia didn't like her one bit. According to Julia, "she did everything all wrong," and we spent a good fifteen minutes looking for a tupperware container that the interviewee did not put away in the right place. I don't think Julia will be asking her back anytime soon.
The lightbulbs of the chandelier in my room have slowly been going out - I'm down to three out of the original six. So today, I told Julia about this seemingly simple situation. I had expected her to point me in the direction of the extra lightbulbs or tell me it would be fixed tomorrow when BC will be here, but instead she told me to just use my lamps instead. I wouldn't mind using these lamps, but the problem is this: the decoration in my room is 70's metallic-chic and the lamp-shades are made of aluminum (or some sort of metal-type substance - I wouldn't consider myself an expert in identifying lampshade materials). As you may know, light does not shine through metal and I find these lamps to be really quite pointless. So now in addition to toilet paper, I need to conserve the use of my chandelier, because once the other lightbulbs go out, I will be sitting in the dark next to my impractical lamps.
The problem is not that you have to watch out for toilet paper and light bulbs but what's next. Maybe BC is a subconscious way of making you think that it is your job to do the housework. In the meantime it seems that thoughts of Sebastian are far more pleasant.
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