My Foot's All Better!

Seriously, it has been a few weeks or months or whatever since they drilled holes in my bone, and I can officially report that nothing has changed in well over a year. Or was that two years? I can vaguely remember having foot surgery, but that's about it. I do have this interesting scar on the outside of my left foot, and occasionally (like this weekend) the area under that scar aches a little bit--maybe from pressure changes or something, I don't know how these things work. But the point of it all is that I play soccer when I have time, I run and walk all over everywhere, and I generally have no complaints about the metal screw in my 5th metatarsal. I highly recommend it for anyone whose stupid stress fracture refuses to heal, and of course has insurance that covers such things. Don't forget about the insurance, because stimulus or no, I don't reckon the feds are too excited about fixing your fractures just yet (they're going to have to boost taxes a bit more for that to work out...:)

Alicia asked me to mention something about the good people at Carrefour and their amazing pricing system, so I thought that would be paragraph two for today's entry. Yes, the great supermarket chain that has installed itself in many of the locations formerly occupied by Continente here in Spain (I suspect the two chains traded stores across Portugal and Spain, but have no external information to confirm that hypothesis) has a pricing system that is truly worthy of note. See, like many stores, they advertise. So some guy comes around every week or two and jams an advertisement booklet into our mailbox. This booklet is full of all the deals you could possibly want, if you weren't living about a mile away from the place and aware that you were going to have to carry all those purchases across the unreasonably long Roman bridge. Sometimes those deals are so good that we're convinced we must be reading wrong. Most of the time, we're not reading wrong. But when we get to the store (bus passes are nice on those days), we somehow inexplicably fail to read the black and white of the signs, such that items marked "2 for the price of 1" or "2nd item at 50% off" are invariably rung up by our kind cashiers at full price. Thus far, I have been completely unable to convince a cashier that in fact the sign on the shelf reads "ITEM DISCOUNTED." So I leave a lot of stuff at the register. Occasionally, I am informed that those prices haven't gone into effect yet (even though the advertisement is already circulating throughout the city, and the sign on the shelf announces the discount), or perhaps that the sign just hasn't been taken down yet (even though the date on the sign includes today), but usually it's just the blank stare that says "you're obviously not from around here, the price you get is the price that the system assigns, regardless of advertised prices in print." I have never felt that the cashiers are rude or mean about the pricing stuff, usually they're more than happy to send that lady on the rollerskates back to double check the prices. I am starting to think that the company that operates this particular Carrefour store has a couple policies that are at odds with my own view of the world. The first policy is that signs and advertisements will intentionally be sent out before they're in effect and after they're no longer in effect. This allows them to catch those of us who are either real go-getters or too lazy to head out for the sales during the actual sale period, preventing us from capitalizing on the savings advertised. We get there when those prices aren't in effect, and rather than leave empty-handed, we buy what we can. The second policy, one that makes me a little bit more unhappy, is that they very intentionally put signs up over items to which those signs do not apply. They're far better at this than any supermarket I have ever visited, going so far as to confirm that either the size, or brand, or both, of the item advertised is the same as the one over which the sign is placed. Meanwhile, the product actually discounted is two shelves over and two shelves up. They are careful not to put the product's upc or barcode or whatever that number is called on the signs, thus preventing me from even that method of price confirmation. There are a few of those handy pricing machines around, but those only tell you the price for the single item, so you can't (as far as I know) tell if the second item will be discounted or not until you get it up to the register. I generally don't worry about holding up the line any more, I just want to make sure I like all the prices before I pull out the old credit card. My conclusion from all of this is that it's generally less of a hassle to go to Dia or Arbol, which are within reasonable walking distance, for all of life's essentials. If I ever feel the powerful urge to buy some cured fancy cheese or something like that, I have the lady behind the glass case at the deli section chop it up, wrap it, and slap on a price sticker. That way, at least I know how much it's going to cost before I get in line.

Speaking of lines, have I mentioned how polite the people of Mérida are about lines? If I have and you remember it, skip on down to the next paragraph. If I haven't, or you don't remember, read on: this is a good thing. Here in Mérida, unlike literally everywhere else I have ever been, people are kind of polite about lines. I can't even begin to remember how many times I have been sent to the front of a line by someone who just didn't want to get out of the store any time soon. It's quite odd. I have even felt compelled to do the same a couple times when someone shows up behind me in line with only a few items. The other nice things about lines here is that people arriving in a line-waiting situation announce their arrival with the question, "who's the last person in line." How crazy is that? Imagine waiting the crowded waiting area in the Cincinnati DMV for your license renewal or tags or something, and someone comes in behind you and hollers [man that word looks weird] out "who's the last person in line?" It's really quite phenomenal. This happens in banks, in post offices (even where you take those numbers), grocery stores, butcher shops, pretty much anywhere there might be a line. I have yet to be pushed out of the way or line-jumped here. Don't try that in Portugal... We even fight over who's getting into the line first for the waiting room to wait for the second waiting room before getting in line to board the plane (mind you, nobody ever has a big carry on bag in these situations, it's just some innate drive to be on that plane before the rest of the passengers). Well, at any rate, the good people of Mérida, Extremadura, Spain, must be about the politest waiters-in-line or line-waiters in the world.

That ends my line digression. The next topic up for discussion today is when I'm going to get those $800 that are now being promised to me as a means of saving our economy. I'm all for stimulating the economy and all that, but when do I get to have my economy stimulated? My economy isn't a very patient one, and we here in Spain are suffering more than most countries, so where's my stimulus? I'm not mad or anything, but it's about time they showed me some green for all the hard work I've done over the 2008 calendar year. I filed early so I could get that "refundable tax credit" as quickly as possible, and now I'm being told I'll have to wait until June. People last year were getting those things before June, I can guarantee you that. So I ask you, is this a change for the better? Sure, they're telling me I'll get more than I did last year, but think how much interest I could make on the earlier credit last year than I will be able to this year - it almost evens out. Plus, with inflation and so on, I'll bet that the "$800" I'm supposed to get this year (I'm still deeply skeptical about this money) turns out to be less valuable than the less-than-$600 that they actually gave me last year (bonus question: can anyone figure out why I got less than the $600 that everyone was talking about for couples filing jointly?). I guess in the greater scheme of things this is still all George W's fault (it will ALL be his fault until something good happens, don't you think?), so I'll write him that nasty email I've been meaning to send for quite some time. Meanwhile, somebody figure out if they can speed up the refunds a little bit. That way I can get that camera and stimulate the economy. Uh, Nikon is still a US company, innit? Sweet.

Speaking of U.S. companies, why in the world are Levi's so expensive in Europe? I know they're kind of pricey for jeans these days even in the States, but I'm talking 70 or 90 EUROS for a pair of 501s. I know for a fact you can get those for $35 at any department store, and sometimes they're even on sale for less than that. The minimum wage over here is like 600 euros/month. I'd guess the average work month here is 20 days, with holidays and fiestas and all, and if we're being really generous we can say they "work" 8 hours on a work day. So that's 160 hours and 600 euros in a month, which comes out to 3.75/hour. Pretty sweet. Let's convert that to U.S. cash at $1.28 to 1 EU, and we're making $4.8 an hour. I'm thinking they probably get to keep all of that, right? Actually, on that point, I'm not sure. Of course that's the minimum legal wage, which means that in real terms very few people make that little (I've read in a couple places that it's not much more than 1% of the total population in Spain, though I don't know if that accounts for illegal immigrants as well). Nonetheless, that's not an awesome wage, especially if you're looking to drive a car (which drinks gas at aroung 1 eu/liter) and live in a house with electricity (that stuff isn't cheap here, even though it's practically all hydro- and solar power). So if you move to Spain, 1) do it legally, and 2) make sure you've got a job where you make more than minimum wage. I'm just saying...

Anyway, we're off to Andorra in just over a week, at which time it looks like I'll be somewhere between chapters and looking for something to do with my time. If only for the 4 days of the trip. Ok, so I'll take something to work on even for the trip. Man, give a guy a break. It's 4 days. I'll be driving half of that time!

Another year, another chapter.

Well, I'm staring at a rough draft right now, but I suppose the final version will not be done until next year. Actually, there are a few of them that look like that now, so it's going better than some people may have expected, though as always not as well as I had hoped. That's all I have to say about the dissertation for now, otherwise I'll probably get distracted again...

Here we are at the end of December, and it is beginning to look like I've posted too many times in the past few weeks. Fortunately, I haven't run out of nothings to talk about! Obviously, the Christmas holiday is one of the many subjects of this post, but there will also be a bit in here about my guitar, and maybe something about how we won't be celebrating the New Year like everyone else we know.

First off, the most exciting thing to have happened in the last two days is that I finally got my guitar. Yes, that's right, my guitar is finally here, in my very own home, sitting quietly (for now) in its sad little cold room. It's not allowed into the "hot" part of the house just yet, because I'm convinced it will explode the instant warm air touches its fragile wood frame. See, I've even given it our guest bed, at least until we have company. Some of you will remember that the guitar was supposed to be here a few weeks ago, but such are the cruelties which I daily face that I was forced to send the original back to the manufacturer due to numerous miniscule imperfections in the finish around the guitar's shoulder. That was a sad day for me; I had been able to try out the 7c and the 5c after many weeks of patient waiting, and I had even decided that I much prefer the 7c to its less numerically impressive sibling (mostly because the shop clearly took a lot more time putting together the 7 than the 5--I can't guarantee that they sound substantially different, but I do believe that the action and scale on the 7 are marginally superior), only to discover the flaws that would force me to reject the chosen guitar and wait another uncertain period for the arrival of a more perfect instrument. I was very happy yesterday to determine that the replacement is far better than the original, and I can now finally get on with my life. Hopefully that will end the guitar saga.

Alicia and I were able to take some days away from home to visit another home, Portugal, with our friends Mariana and Alex. We ate food most of the time, but we also drank coffee, watched movies, explored certain parts of Lisbon, and hung out with some friends. All in all, we had an awesome time, but I think all four of us were left with the feeling that it would have been nice to spend at least some time with family during the Christmas holidays. After all, we graduate students spend little enough time with the family as it is, and moving overseas for an extended period like this certainly doesn't make that situation any better. On the other hand, I don't think I could have bought a Spanish guitar in the U.S. for even twice what I paid here, and then of course the coffee in Portugal is reason enough to justify a few months in Iberia. Oh, and the dissertation, that's a good reason too, the main reason, even...that's right.

As for the New Year's festivities, it doesn't look like we're going to have much of a celebration on that front. Maybe there will be some grape eating, though frankly I don't see the fascination of that particular tradition, but that's about it. Our friends (at least half of whom are named Paco these days, for real!) have invited us to the bar "Claca" or "Claka" for a celebration, but the tickets they had showed a price tag of 55 euros/person, which is about what I'd pay to see U2 here, but definitely more than I can justify for the right to sit in a very smoky bar and watch people get drunk. Thus, it appears quite likely that we'll wander the streets tomorrow evening and see how rowdy things get in a laid back provincial town before retiring to our home, where we'll probably watch a movie and get ready for a day of work on the 1st. Anyone jealous yet?

There you have it, my last blogging fit of 2008. Maybe I'll resolve to write more interesting things in 2009, but I might also resolve to only write when interesting things happen! Happy 2009 a day or two in advance!!!

A lot like Christmas?

You know that song, where the person sings "it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"? That's not true here in Mérida. It's beginning to look a lot like it might rain some of the time, or randomly turn sunny at other times, but neither of these seems a clear sign of an impending Christmas. On the plus side, it has finally warmed up after our "cold" snap - we had almost a week of highs only in the 50s, which is just brutally cold as far as I'm concerned (if we ever get an electrical bill, I'm sure the cooler temps will look a lot worse!).

Since I last posted, only a few noteworthy things have happened. The first was my parents' visit for the Thanksgiving weekend. They brought a whole feast of traditional festive foods, so we were all stuffed for a few days. They also brought a car, which allowed us to visit a couple of the nearby points of interest, including the famous city of Trujillo and the less famous city of Zafra.

Okay, so neither of those is really famous, but the first one boasts its mighty status as the hometown of one Francisco Pizarro. Aside from that, it's an interesting little medieval town with a huge central plaza where parking is only permitted during the lunch hour.

Zafra, for its part, is a medieval walled city stuck in the middle of a modern city. It boasts a medium-sized plaza and a smaller one, but since everything was closed the Sunday we visited, I couldn't take advantage of the "two pairs of Kelmes for 36 euros" deal. I guess that gives us a good reason to go back someday!

So that all happened last weekend: fast-forward to this weekend (the week flew by with writing and writing and more writing, but the details of that activity are by no means worth discussing). This weekend, a couple of friends who are living in Madrid came out to visit us in the quaint countryside, which gave us a rare opportunity to visit a lot of the archaeological sites that I haven't been able to visit and photograph properly since we got here. I am hoping that at least some of the pictures that I took will turn out to be useful, but more importantly, we managed to drag our visitors to nearly every monument in the city in just two days. This is promising news for our Salamantican friends, whose visit later this month will prove a VERY welcome break from my upcoming days of toil and tedium.

See, here in Mérida, and maybe in Spain more generally, they have this thing called a fiesta. Back in the new country, we think of a fiesta as a chance to get together with some of our friends and celebrate. But note that we think of it as a punctual event, which has a finite slot of time (or at least a beginning, with perhaps a more indefinite end in the not-too-distant future) in our busy schedules. Thus, a Friday fiesta will only on the rarest of occasions bleed over into a Sunday afternoon event. By contrast, life in Spain seems to be a single, never-ending fiesta. Sure, people do occasionally go to work in the morning, which interrupts the party for a while, but breakfast comes soon enough, and lasts long enough, to remind them what life's really all about. Just as the average person is getting settled back into the tasks of "work" after desayuno, the clock tower strikes 2 or 2:30 or 3, and off they all scoot to their homes. The lunch section of the fiesta is a pretty serious one (not that desayuno isn't a biologically-mandated necessity, it's just not as intense as lunch), lasting between 2 and 3 hours and including the consumption of large quantities of everything, occasionally followed by a time of rest and relaxtion often referred to as a "siesta" (which I suspect may in fact be a simple mispronunciation of "fiesta"). The lunch hours are often interrupted later in the afternoon by a return to work, but the afternoon work hours are only long enough, as a rule, to inspire a hunger and thirst that can only be quenched on the way home by a visit to a tapas joint. Once the reveler has again staved off immanent starvation, he or she heads for home, where, the hour being advanced beyond 9 pm, dinner is just beginning to materialize. Since it's still just a little too early to dine, perhaps the entire family gathers to roam the streets with the countless other party-goers of the city, window-shopping down the walking streets and spitting their sunflower shells (or tossing their chestnut shells, now that it's the season!) all over the ground. The luckier partiers will arrive in the Plaza de España at just the right time to score an open table at one of the four corner cafes, and will thus be able to kill another hour in anticipation of dinner - over drinks and salty snacks.

So that's life on an average day. But now imagine that you don't have to work at all on Saturday, because it's an official, calendar fiesta. Since that fiesta happens to fall on a Saturday, you naturally can't be expected to have to undergo the pain and suffering of a normal "work day" on Monday, can you? Of course not. Then, imagine that Wednesday is the official fiesta of your town's patron saint, say Santa Eulalia, for example. Why in the world would anyone show up for work on Tuesday, since they've already had Monday off? They wouldn't. So what you're looking at here is a five-day weekend. Not bad, right? That's what I thought, anyway. But as it turns out, I was wrong. You see, the standard work week is really just a series of interruptions that are imposed on the fiesta that comprises real life. So a five-day weekend is really just a return to what should be, whereas the normal two-day weekend is more reasonably a set of concessions designed to prevent the rest of the world discovering how life really ought to be lived.

Clearly this posting is now too long, and I am now distracted by many trains running in various directions. Time to end it.

Arrivals

Every once in a while I have nothing to say. Actually, that happens all the time. In those times, only my internal moral obligation (along with my thousands of adoring readers) keeps me moving forward with the compelling monologue that is this blog. And now that you've all left in disgust, I'll continue with my discourse in solitude.

The two most important things that have happened in my last month both concern arrivals. First off, my sister in law was finally able to make her long overdue entry into the U.S. People whose patience and resolve survive the whole U.S. Visa process (in many cases well over a year long, with numerous interviews and innumerable document submissions) are to be greatly commended, and if it weren't for the desire to be reunited with loved ones I'm not sure how many people would see it all the way through. Well, that's an unnecessary editorial: all I mean is that I'm elated for my brother and his wife!

The next arrival in the last month concerns my parents, who are now back in Europe, if only for a few more weeks. They had a very productive time in southern Africa, and (not least importantly) they managed to stay healthy almost the whole time, no small feat given the conditions they have occasionally experienced there. One of our main concerns was my mom's health and recovery from the cancer surgery, but the doctors assured her that it wouldn't be a problem for her to travel, even to places where medical attention is sometimes pretty rudimentary. So I am happy to report that they both arrived back in Europe healthy and ready to work some more--good thing, too, because they both had classes to teach a week later!

Those are the most important and interesting things that have happened in the last month, so the rest of this post will just be inane ramblings about things that aren't of great interest to the reading community. But I suppose if you made it past my first paragraph you'll read anything, right? Ha!

When I'm not working on my dissertation--and I confess that I invest a lot more time in that than I would like--I occasionally do other things. Those things involve running (which I hate), watching soccer (I like that, especially when Alicia watches with me), watching comedic television series like Malcolm in the Middle (one of the greatest shows ever written) with Alicia, going to church across the Roman bridge (sometimes when I get there there's even a service of some sort, though my odds are not much better than 50-50 lately), eating pork products at the many tapas joints in town, walking up and down the walking streets imagining what it would be like to go into a store (I imagine it would be miserable, for the most part, so I try not to go in), and finally, thinking about which guitar I should buy. As always, the list builds to a crescendo of emphasis, and you will have rightly guessed that the only item in that last sentence that will receive any further treatment is the last one.

My search for a guitar began when I realized that I like guitars and Spain is a good place to buy a guitar. In other words, about two days after I got here, when I discovered a musical instrument store in town. At the time, I was fully invested in the idea that I would be buying a scooter for scooting around, so a guitar seemed like an unjustifiable luxury item, especially given the world economic crisis (I had to sneak one reference in, didn't I? Everyone else does...). Sadly, from a scooting perspective, at least, prices for the delightful little two-wheeled suicide machines--along with a valid insurance policy--proved unexpectedly high, even prohibitive. In a sense, you could say that my right to own a scooter was violated by the economic crisis. That and clever pricing, perhaps...

At any rate, having suffered such great oppression and somehow survived it, I picked myself up off the floor of the downtrodden and raised my sights to a next lofty objective, namely the acquisition of a magnificent Spanish guitar. Then I realized just how lofty that objective was, deciding instead to pursue the more realistic objective of a very nice Spanish guitar for a reasonable price. Having made up my mind, the next task was to identify the exact instrument to suit my needs. The store I had initially visited carries a range of guitars varying from barely instruments to quite some way out of my price range. The three or four guitars in the middle proved to be made by Admira and Alhambra, and in this small sample the Alhambra models seemed more suited to my needs. Naturally, my next step was to read up on these guitars online. While I was reading up on these instruments, I came across loads of information on a number of other manufacturers whose instruments were in the same range as those of Alhambra, including Admira, Almansa, Bartoli, Camps, etc. Obviously, there are more manufacturers that I could possibly list here, and in particular there are quite a few companies that make guitars that meet my first set of requirements while quite surpassing those I later adopted. I'm just writing about what I did, so I'll stick to the plot.

I eventually asked a guitarist from our church whether he knew of any instrument shops in town, and he mentioned two, one that I already knew and another in the same general area. In my studies I had discovered that the prices at the store I had visited were a bit higher than list, or right there, so I decided that my best bet was this other store. When I next had an evening free, I forced Alicia to walk across town with me to see what we could discover. The fellow working in the store explained to me that all their guitars are at least 15% off the manufacturer's recommended price, and that he can order anything they don't have in stock to give me a chance to check it out before I decide what to buy. I tried out a few of the guitars, but most of them were so far out of tune that I didn't feel mean enough to make Alicia wait while I tuned them all and then tried them out.

A few days later, I wandered over there alone to get a last look at all the instruments, having pretty much made up my mind that I would buy an Alhambra guitar in one of four models. I was highly disappointed to learn from the salesman that they didn't have a single one of the four guitars I wanted to play in stock. They are expecting a shipment of one of them to come in some time in the future (I've played that game with stores in Portugal and know it's best to pretend you never heard anything), so I went ahead and placed an order to see the guitar I am most confident I'll want to keep. Fortunately, the salesman is in no hurry to sell me anything, so he again insisted that if I don't want the guitar after it gets here, he can send it back and order a new one, or not order a new one--whatever I want.

I had been considering two "Flamenco" models, but upon closer inspection realized that the features that distinguish those from the traditional classical guitars (thinner body, lighter woods, lower action) basically contribute to a less pleasant sounding guitar under my normal playing conditions. If I were a talented musician, or an aspiring Flamenco guitarist, that would be one thing. But I'm just some guy who wants a guitar that makes him sound better than he is. So in the end, I opted for an all solid-wood guitar, meaning "mahogany" back and sides (it's actually sapele, if anyone knows what that is), cedar top and neck (reinforced with ebony), and ebony bridge. Eventually, if the promised shipment of other models ever arrives, I'll be able to check those out and compare them with the one I ordered, but I'm not holding my breath. I hope my guitar will arrive at the shop in the next month or so, but since they may not have even started making it yet, there's no guarantee on that. I'll try to remember to post an update about the new guitar when and if it ever arrives...

Oh, looks like we'll be having my parents over to Spain for Thanksgiving and then we'll be in Portugal for a few days later in December for Christmas and a bit of sight-seeing with some friends, so give me a call if you're going to be around! Ha again!

Another Month, Another Blog Posting

That's right, my rate of production is scheduled to be about one per month over the duration of our stay in Spain. It's because I get finger cramps from typing all day every day, sometimes so badly that I can barely type at all the next morning (I have to warm my finger joints on a hot coffee mug, but sadly, we cannot get the good stuff here, and I suffer even more from the swill I am forced to drink). I will keep this short.

First off, the foot is in excellent shape. Never better. Or maybe better at some point, but it's really feeling perfectly well in all respects, with the exception that the scar where they hacked me open is pretty stiff and weird feeling. I should be rubbing it regularly to loosen up the tissues underneath, but it's not worth the effort, or else I just don't remember to do it often enough. I have in fact been running about 15 miles a week on this foot, wich isn't great, but isn't bad either. Since I haven't found anyone willing to invite me into their soccer team, this is my best exercise for now.

And speaking of soccer, Portugal lost (well, tied, but lost, if you get my meaning) to Albania yesterday in their fourth qualifying match for the World Cup. I'm resigning myself to the very strong possibility that they will be missing out on the 2010 event, so if you have any suggestions for teams that are generally enjoyable to watch and at the same time not despicable people, let me know.

We just got back to Mérida from Salamanca on Sunday evening, and I must say that, despite the high volume of U.S. and other foreign nationals in the city (myself included for those few days:), Salamanca is actually a very interesting and comfortable city. Therefore, it comes highly recommended by me to all those seeking a potential out-of-country experience at some point in their Spanish-language-learning careers. So I guess that should be all of us. Based on my very short time there, I found Salamanca to be lively, somewhat expensive-ish in some ways, loud, and terribly confused. See, on the one hand, you have all these thousands upon thousands of university students from all over the world, all partying it up all the time and trying to forget the fact that they're probably supposed to be learning things right now instead of making all kinds of noise in the middle of the night. On the other, you have all the (probably more like hundreds and hundreds of) normal people also living in the city, trying to run shops, go to church (several times a day, it would seem), and just stroll around minding their own business. So from my perspective, you have a nice mix of everything, meaning you could go there and find the out-of-the-way nooks and crannies and just lose yourself in the Spanish culture, which is very much alive in the city. But you could also go there for 9 months and interact with a grand total of maybe 5 actual natives, the rest of your Spanish language experience being limited to the other "Spanish-as-a-second-language" students in your class. I find myself leaning more toward the first option, but maybe that's just because that's exactly where we find ourselves right now, in Mérida where everyone's a native but us. I guess I like Mérida.

I leave you with this thought: how awesome are these new fashion shoes that all the 19th century aristocrats in Spain are buying? I mean, how awesome, right? Jane Austen has to be green with envy at how far society (and fashion) has advanced since her times, and I can't say I blame her--she clearly missed out on some good times. Seriously. It's not clear to me what we should call these things (booties? ankle boots? shoots?), but they're all over the place now so it'd be a good idea for you to do some re-search to avoid being left behind by fashion. It's too late for me, but there's still hope for the rest of you!

If We Were in Spain

Then this blog would look something like this:



Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. I haven't updated things around here very much over the past few months, but that's probably because nothing much has happened since I last wrote a whole bunch. Remember, this blog is about my poor foot and its experiences on the soccer field, in the various medical posts, and of course during its recovery from surgery. Naturally, had anything related to that central matter happened over the course of the summer, I'd have been all over it. Since I have nothing but more of the same to report on that end of things, I'll have to make up some more interesting stuff to talk about. So here goes.

Alicia and I spent the early half of the summer (after her graduation and before her birthday) visiting friends and family in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. You may well ask yourself how we could justify such frivolous travels, but I should point out that we were doing all this in preparation for a more extended trip overseas than we normally undertake over the summers. Thus, we were right to travel, as we don't expect to see much of our family or U.S. based friends over the next nine months. Back to the story: we were visiting friends and family over the first half of the summer, and of course had many wonderful experiences with loads of fishing and photography. After all that fun, we thought there could be no better way to decompress after our many travels in the car than to pack up all our belongings into various boxes and whatnots in order to jam them all into storage. I am sure you can imagine how much fun it was to pack everything we wouldn't need for the next 10 months into boxes, while at the same time setting aside whatever we would need (clothes, books, papers, etc.) for eventual packing into suitcases. So I won't describe that experience.

Finally, when it seemed that we could never enjoy a day of peace and tranquility, we discovered that it was Alicia's birthday, and we had spent most of the day moving our things into storage. Truly, it must have been the most unjust way to spend a birthday ever. Fortunately for everyone, we had also planned a double-party with many of our Cincinnati friends for that same evening, both in celebration of Alicia's auspicious day of aging, and (especially for everyone else) of our immanent departure into states and countries far distant from there. It was eventually an amazing and very enjoyable way to set a final period on our nearly six years in Cincinnati.

After the celebrations in Cincinnati, we departed northward to Wisconsin by way of Glen Ellyn, Illinois, and were able to enjoy almost two final weeks of relaxation and leisure in what would soon be the frigid north woods. Alicia wasn't able to bring in the big one this year, though some controversy remains as to whether this was my fault (apparently you're supposed to pull the anchors as soon as someone gets a big fish on the line) or hers, but stories as to the actual size of the beast differ greatly in their details (by some accounts, it was easily as long as "my arm," while others assert that it would barely have provided a mouthful after proper cleaning). We're hoping to try our luck in the same general area next summer, if we end up with any free time...

We left Wisconsin for Spain on the 1st of September, which if I remember correctly was Labor Day in the US. I have no interest in reconstructing the details of our flight from Minneapolis/St. Paul to Philadelphia to London to Lisbon, it was an uneventful series of flights and unremarkable in most ways. We were only able to spend a night in Portugal, in part because my parents are elsewhere and because we needed to get to Mérida as soon as we could to secure permanent lodging. Our bus ride to Mérida from Lisbon was as uninteresting as the flights, so on to Mérida. For the first time in our many visits, we opted to take a taxi from the bus station to our temporary lodgings--too many suitcases to justify bumping along across the bridges and around the crowded sidewalks in the middle of the afternoon. Our favorite hostal, Hostal Anas, was unbelievably booked solid, so we were forced to accept accommodations at the Hostal Bueno, which is nothing of the sort, though were it entitled "Hostal Barato" we'd be more than happy to agree.

The next two days are a blur of walking this way and that throughout all the streets of Mérida, writing down numbers and (eventually) calling them to get more details as to the nature of the apartment advertised. Our first stop was at a pair of message boards on the entrance to the Ayuntamiento, and we were able to gather a large number of numbers from that site. After I had called every number that had an even remotely interesting ad, and scheduled two or three apartment visits, we were forced to seek other means of bolstering our list to make sure we scored something before leaving town on the 8th. Much of this time was spent wandering the streets and trying to figure out which part of town we like the most, which was the most expensive, and which buildings were even worth considering. After all, in a city known for its Roman ruins, we weren't exactly excited about living in one...

The second day of our search was pretty miserable. We had called nearly every apartment we could (on one of these highly inefficient pre-pay cell phones) and by early afternoon were willing to consider stopping by agencies to see what they could show us. One in particular had some real "winners" to offer, complete with dirty dishes in the sink and cockroaches under the beds! We were sorely tempted to sign on one of those on the spot. That was also the agency that promised to show us places at 5:30, then at 6 or 6:30 (having assured us they could have us back to the place we were scheduled to see another apartment by 7:00). When we arrived, they said it would be more like 7, to which we replied we'd have to be leaving because of our prior engagement. Truly, a terrible agency. I won't name them, but the initials would be similar to those of a well known Italian fashion brand called "Dolce & Gabbana." Anyhow, we were able to squeeze in those nasty places I mentioned above before jogging back across town (it's a good thing it's such a small town) to meet the owners of one of the first places we had called.

As it turns out, we decided to move into the first apartment we had arranged to see--we just saw it on the second day because that's how the scheduling worked out. I had liked the place just from the ad--it claimed to be close to the Plaza de España, which is Mérida's central square, and had one of the lowest prices we saw for a furnished place near the city center. When I called to schedule a visit, I discovered that it was actually within about 150 yards of the city center, about 50 yards from the end of the Roman bridge, and right next to one of my favorite archaeological sites in the city. I told Alicia right away that that was the place for us, but naturally we were going to have to see it before we could sign the papers. I actually started referring to it as "our apartment" in discussing all the other places we had scheduled to visit, saying things like "after we talk to these people at the agency, we'll head over to look at our apartment" and "sure, this place is nice, but the location is nowhere near as good as our apartment's" and so on. When we finally made it to "our apartment," it was about 7:15 (fortunately, I had called to let them know we'd be late, which wasn't a problem because the owners live upstairs).

It's not a huge apartment, but it has two bedrooms (that was our minimum requirement) and two of these "light wells" that run through the whole 3-story building from top to bottom, allowing a lot of light into the rooms that don't face onto the street and providing a place for us to hang our laundry (they don't really go for the dryers in Iberia). When I told the landlords that we were from the U.S. they were a little surprised, as they had guessed from my accent that we were French or something like that. I didn't know whether to be proud that my Castellano doesn't have an obvious "American" accent, or to be deeply offended at being mistaken for a Frenchman. In the end, I decided to go with the former, because the landlords have lived in the U.S., Germany, and France, and he's Australian. This means that both of them speak very good English, and in fact they're both English teachers at the local public schools, which means we're all very comfortable talking with one another.

After seeing the place and talking with the landlords, Alicia and I were both ready to have a look at the lease terms, so we took a copy of that over to the Plaza de España and looked it over. Since there was nothing interesting to see there, we decided to call back and see when we could come by and sign the paperwork, and it was no later than 9:30 when we had the papers signed, the keys in our pockets, and a new home in Spain. I think my favorite thing about all this was that we could move out of the Hostal Bueno the next morning!

We're pretty well moved into the place now, but we signed on it on the 4th of September and moved in on the 5th, so we've had some time to get things in order. However, during the past 10 days we also had a 5-day trip to Madrid, where my Fulbright orientation took place, and where we met some really cool people that we're hoping to be able to visit in different parts of Spain while we're living here (and we've insisted that they all visit us in Mérida as well, what with the extra room and all). Madrid is a pretty amazing city, and we're fortunate to have a good friend in Madrid/Cincinnati who was able to show us around some and feed us at his home on the north side of the city. I can't go into all the Madrid excitement here, I'll do that some other time, but I strongly encourage anyone to visit there sometime, it's a great place to visit for any length of time, as near as I can tell. There, my foot's still fine after all this typing and all the apartment searching, so I can't really say much more about it.