The Riverlands

So, we’re all familiar with the weather in Tucson, of course, and how much we rejoice when we leave the house in the mornings and the sky is covered in clouds, because that means we’re going to have a few hours of temperate weather before the sun burns it off in the afternoon. Tucson + clouds = shade. Certainly we don’t associate clouds with rain. At least I don’t, never having lived anywhere else. Rain is associated with something entirely separate, a black mass looming suddenly over the horizon on a perfectly clear day, and running like mad for shelter before the wall of water hits.

This turned out to be a bit of a problem today. See, I bought this leather coat on Saturday in Madrid. (I was so happy about it! It’s beautiful dark brown, with a fur-trimmed hood, long and thick and warm, the sort of the thing that’ll last for years and actually, for leather, came at a really decent price. My joy has been marred only by discovering, running into Gaelle after class today, that I bought the exact same coat that she did at the mall in Segovia a couple weeks back. Only the color is different. Arg. But you know, it’s not like we’ll be living in the same area for more than a few months, so it’s not a huge deal…I just feel bad!! Hopefully she won’t mind. I haven’t told her yet; I was carrying it over my arm and I don’t think she got a good look at it.) But, as I said, I bought this leather coat. And even though it was leather, I thought, no prob, I brought a poncho I can wear over it when it rains, right?

So sticking my head out the window today, as I do every morning to get an idea how cold it’s going to be, a sort of unconscious surprise registered at how cold it was, exactly, since it was cloudy. Usually clouds in winter mean a warmer day, since all the warm air is trapped close to the earth, right? But I didn’t, as I said, think about it consciously; all I really thought was, wow, it’s really cold today. I’d better wear my new coat!

But there’s this funny thing about clouds in Europe, it seems…so I look out the window in Lit & Rock, and I’m like, wow, it’s drizzling. Shoot! I wore my leather coat! But then I thought, well, I’m not going home for hours, it’ll be gone by then. Right? Wrong. Not only do clouds apparently bring rain here, but rain that actually sticks around for long periods of time. Consequently I had to walk home in the rain, in my new leather coat.

The good news is that I had a shawl I’d also brought, which I wrapped over the coat, so actually the coat didn’t get very wet. It may rain here, but it doesn’t rain hard. Drizzle, as I said. So the coat should be fine. But in future, I feel it is important to take a lesson from this experience: when you wake up in the morning and it’s cloudy, that means it might actually rain later in the day, and you should be prepared for the experience.

I’m sorry I’ve been rather quiet on the blog lately. It’s really been rather quiet here. There’s not a lot to tell. I’m trying to find out if it’s possible to move out of the dorms, because the situation here is really…well, I’ll rant about it later. If you ever spend a semester in Europe, don’t do the dorms. Anyways, I’d appreciate y’all’s prayers on that one, they say I have a contract, then international program director said he’d try to arrange something, but I don’t know how much he’ll be able to do or not…

Other than that, like I said. Quiet. I’ve been reading Don Quijote a lot. I’ve also discovered a great rock band through this Lit & Rock class, a Spanish group called Saurom (and that’s the name of one of the founders; it’s not the Spanish version of “Sauron” or anything. Coincidentally.) They’re pretty heavy metal–Christopher will like them a lot, I think–but with just a little bit of Celtic influence mixed in, and even better, they’re take a lot of their inspiration from literary masterpieces such as…Lord of the Rings! Their entire second album was inspired by Tolkien. In general, their lyrics are very poetic. I love ‘em. Unfortunately no one in Segovia’s cd stores seems to have heard of them, so it’s off to Madrid again. I need to buy some yarn for a new hat so I’d be making the trip anyways.

Also, we had to pair up for end-of-semester projects for the rock class, and since Maciek just joined the class, we’re now partners. The problem is, for the project we have two choices: we can either analyze, from a literary point of view, a song or collection of songs, and explain their literary elements to the class…or we can write and perform a literary piece. Of course, Maciek, being rather outgoing, is all about writing a song. And I’m like…dude…we’d have to sing it for everyone. You’ve got to be kidding me.

The conflict remains to be decided. I suppose a lot of it will depend on how good a piece we can actually turn out. I also need to find out whether it needs to be in Spanish. I don’t think so, since half the music we’re listening to isn’t Spanish, and it’s supposed to be a “creative” endeavor, but you never know. (Maciek suggested we write a song in Polish and then it wouldn’t matter if it was good or not since nobody would understand it, but since that translates more to he’ll write a song in Polish and this is supposed to be a group project, I don’t think that’s going to work either.) Anyways, I figure if we start soon, and we can actually come up with something good and get to the point where we…meaning I…feel confident enough to sing it in front of someone else (assuming my voice doesn’t die when I get up there) then fine. Otherwise, we should have time left to cobble together a nice literary analysis thing over Christmas. At any rate, it promises to be interesting. Maciek and I have the tendency to take opposite views on just about everything possible…kind of like Rhiannon and I in high school…so first he asks, “So, d’you wanna be partners for the project?” and I’m like, “Sure,” and then he’s like, “Great. Now we’re going to kill each other.” And sure enough, then he wants to go with the “creative” option. Go figure.