back in españa

Today I walked into the teacher's lounge and I was a bit shocked at what I saw on the front page. The headline for the main story is "An average of 100 women report abuse every month in Córdoba." But that wasn't the shocking part.

Look at the women to the left. Notice anything strange? Well, apparently if you're Spanish, you won't notice anything in particular. I was a bit shocked to see half-naked women on the front page of a newspaper, then I remembered oh yeah, I'm in Europe. Still, isn't it kind of ironic that the women are protesting domestic violence but they're just out there lettin' it all hang out?

By the way, yesterday was the National Day Against Domestic Violence here in Spain. Apparently that involves outdoor interpretative dance in the nude?






Anyway, I'm back from my trip to Edinburgh, or in Spanish, Edimburgo. We got there on Thursday night and drove on the left side of the road (hooray UK) to our hostel to check in, then get food. We went to a traditional Scottish place and got some fish and chips or shepherd's pie or whatnot. Scottish food isn't really all that exciting, in my opinion. Two of the other girls really wanted to try haggis, but I wasn't all that thrilled about the prospect of eating sheep intestines, so I passed on that. We went to bed a bit early because Carole was still recovering from strep -- yes, strep. Two of the other girls, Corey and Steph, went out to see more of Grassmarket plaza, which was right by our hostel. I, for one, was ready to get out of the cold since it felt like the windchill would make the temp somewhere under freezing. Horrible.

We did our guided tour in the a.m. and went around the tacky tourist shops in central Edinburgh, too. The tour was helpful in teaching me about Scottish history, which I knew almost nothing about. It turns out that Edinburgh has a whole bunch of morbid stories from torture and witch trials and war prisons to serial killers who sold their victims to the medical college for money. Who knew? I also got to go on a nifty, nighttime underground tour of the creepy Edinburgh vaults. So creepy. Apparently there's paranormal activity down there, too, if you happen to believe in that hoohah. Either way, it was creepy to be down in some cold, wet, dark vault where there used to be rampant crime and death. The vaults were unknown for 150 years because they were boarded up. More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_vaults . Creepy.

Other stuff we did there was sample some real Scotch whiskey, see the Scottish parliament, see the Edinburgh castle, and do some general shopping. I managed to find a bookstore which was a welcome discovery. There are no English language bookstores near where I live, so it was nice to find some books to take back with me. Today I'm going to start reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, the same guy who wrote Blink, which I suggest you read if you haven't already. Last night I just finished Running With Scissors and that is a ridiculously weird book. I would recommend you read it if you have a strong stomach and aren't grossed out by some vulgar stuff. Pretty funny, too, though.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It's kind of weird that I'll be spending the day in another country, but them's the breaks. I'm in charge of making apple pie for tomorrow, so I have to jump on buying those ingredients and looking up translations for the ingredients in Spanish. Fun stuff.

Other than that -- not much is new. Life is back to the grind for the next couple weeks until I go home for Christmas. I am going to Madrid with a couple girls in a few weeks, so that will be fun. Not much else to report.

OK I'm gonna go down to the little cafeteria and get some espresso (they just say café, but no, it is ESPRESSO to our American standards, thank you very much).