Pasada de Moda en Madrid

(A view of El Parque de Rodríguez Sahagún in Madrid, Spain)

Well, seeing as I set my alarm for 8:30, I didn't get up until 10 this morning. I had a dream that Julia was mad at me because I forgot to lock the door and someone had broken into the house. I asked her what was stolen, and she wouldn't tell me. I also dreamt (in a separate dream) that the family was here and we were touring around Spain - I'm so excited for them to come!

Best part of my day: I had a muffin for breakfast. And it was great. I was recently telling Julia about how someday I'm going to open a muffin shop, (which was difficult because I did not know the word for muffin and it wasn't in the dictionary, so my story turned into pictionary, and my drawing resembled a tree more than a muffin) and yesterday she came home from the store with muffins (magdalenas, for future reference). I'll need that later when I franchise to Spain.

Then I worked on my Economics paper - those Japanese had a very complicated industrialization. Of course, I'm going to be way over on the word limit, like usual, and because the professor wants us to send him a .doc version, I'm going to need to actually cut things out. I generally just change the margins, but because he'll be able to see the word count, I probably shouldn't be a 1,000 words over. Bother.

Then I had lunch with Julia (pasta - mmm. . .) and went back to working on my paper/checking my e-mail every 5 minutes to see if anyone had sent me anything that could be used as a distraction. Julia told me she was going to a dinner that night, so that I could eat whenever I wanted, so when she left I decided to go on a walk first. There was already a woman in the elevator when I got in and as we were going down, I noticed that she was wearing a Prada coat and carrying a Louis Vouitton purse. So not only did I feel like a giant, (because European elevators are really small and she was one of those petite types) I also felt really underdressed, (I was wearing my wool Alaska socks and Nike Airs - and although I was wearing my snazzy scarf, it did not match any of the aforementioned items).

But anyway, I like walking around Madrid at night and wanted to see some of the Christmas lights, so I just meandered around Julia's neighborhood a bit. I passed the Mallorca bakery Julia's told me about (I will definitely be making a trip back there) and ended up in Casa, a home decorating store. They had all their Christmas stuff out, but I started with the kitchen supply section, where I spent a good half an hour. I nearly bought a pack of heart-shaped mini-cupcake silicon molds (the fastest I've moved all day is when I saw them) but then thought to myself, "Gee, what is the purpose of making a cupcake smaller and heart-shaped? P.S. You don't even like cupcakes!" (It has to do with the frosting and the messiness - cupcakes are inefficiently designed - the frosting should go in the middle, as it will be in my muffin store someday). So my physical self obeyed my mental self and reluctantly put them back. I did end up buying some Christmas ornaments because they had little snow-globes I liked.

I got back to Julia's and after working on my internship applications, I had dinner (hotdogs and potato puree - both items seem to be quite popular in Spain) in my room, while watching The Santa Clause on my computer. I was quite content.

Julia came back from her dinner a few minutes ago wearing a fur-lined cape. Not many people can pull that look off and she can, so I'll give her that (although I do not support the amount of fur she has in her closet, which I highly doubt is faux). She's very well dressed and I've decided that her clothing budget is through the roof.

Now, as pictures didn't happen yesterday (I had an hour and a half long conversation with the family instead) - I'm going to do that right now.