Q: Pirates vs. ninjas? A: Batman

I know tmcado and you do not. I feel horribly sorry for the lot of you, because she is beautiful, brilliant, friendly, patient and willing to get lost with me in the best of Madrid.

Other than that, the only thing of note is that i finally found my skirt. That only took a month. (It's orange. Oh yes.)

Next update ought to be from home, but chances are that I'll have some tearful goodbye tomorrow. (If I can't restrain myself, I can always delete it later.)

España- te amo.

I have an excellent sense of direction. (No, don't laugh, I'm serious.) I can pick up a map, and locate where I am, where I want to go, fold up the map and go there. I can do this on a regular basis. I can do this without thinking about it. (I can even fold the map back up properly!)

Not in Cordoba, boy. Not by a long shot. I spent fully half an hour wandering around the square kilometer where I am staying with out once laying eyes on my alburgue (Note: this is not, as I have been trying to say ah-luh-bUrg-eh, it's al-bERg-eh. This is important.). I found my way back only through sheer pig-headedness, becuase of my (stupid) refusal to ask for directions.

Regardless, I have hit during the international guitar festival, which means free music everywhere. All night long if I can manage to stay up- which seeing as I have a shiny new alarm clock... oughtn't be a problem.

This is me. Sad but true, as illustrated by the following anecdote: I cut off all my hair with a pocket knife, because I was sick of waiting to find a pair of scissors. Without a mirror and in the dark, I managed to give myself a decent haircut, that (get this) someone complimented me on today.

Then: I am smit. Am going to buy myself a small house in Cangas, where I shall run a river guiding service and youth hostel. On the weekends, I shall vacation to the Picos de Europa, where I shall climb big rocky mountains.

Now: So frigging hot. Net so frigging expensive.

Love you all, will write more when I am not MELTING IN THE SUN. HOLAY CARP.

I wanted to go the mountains. Evidently, all of Spain and most of France had the same idea. Thusly, I have ended up on the beach, but this too was a near thing, seeing as to get to the beach I had to go through Pampalona, and the Festival of San Fernando starts tomorrow. I finally managed to get a bus, and now I am here.

I can sum San Sebastian up for you in exactly one image. This morning, I saw an old woman with a walker on the beach. Wearing a bikini. Seriously, this made my week. People don't try to hide aging here, but old people can be just and crazy and funky as young people.

The last four nights, I have been the only girl in a room full of stinky guys. Hummmm. I have been too fastidious so far on my trip. But I am catching the begining of the San Sebastain jazz festival tomorrow (Cassandra Wilson!), and a soccer game today (Dubuti Cup!) and I don't have any idea where I'm going next week.

I just got the the coolest thing ever. Two words: Tintin. Basque.

Brilliant.

Am currently traveling with a brilliant British boy, and a crazy Canadian girl. We say goodbye tomorrow, and this is terribly sad.

Girona is a lovely town in the old European tradition. Small. Red tiled. Stone.

I had, for the first time in my life, an attempted bag snatching, which was such a non-event as to be amusing. It seemed as though the would be assailant felt it his duty to make a grab, but he really wanted us to know that he was doing us a favor.

Every one in the world needs to be listening to Chris Demeanor. Go. Find. Listen. You will not regret this, though the song "Cactus Man" will make you hate women. (Yes, much as "Gone for Good" does.)

I think it says something (I make no guesses about what) that the souvenir I really want from Spain is a European keyboard. A logical placement of the extra keys? Is such a thing even possible?

I am off to an even smaller town in the morning, high up in the Pyraneese, where I shall tramp around foothills robustly and in great health. All my planning (such as it was) is for naught, seeing as I am going through Pampalona just in time for the running of the bulls. I did want to see the city, but not then. Not during one of the worlds major annual touristic events. I'll just skip it and go to San Sebastian, where I can soak up the International Jazz Festival.

I don't plan to have internet access, but neither do I plan on being dead, so expect the next update in a week or ten days-ish.

And I love you, friends list mine; I wish you were all here with me, fending off conversation with lanky, suttering Spaniards and eatting tortillas.

Soooo. I had platanos for dinner last night. (Which for those of you not in the know are a Dominican food, consisting of double fried banana chunks. Only, not bananas, plantains. There is a difference.) It turns out that weird hostel food is a lot like weird dorm food, only more exotic. In odd ways.

I have been adopted as the traveling companion of the month by a random British boy, who has informed me that he will be hiding in my luggage, in case I any ideas about leaving without him. He is beautiful-beautiful, and having him along will assure that I have something to draw whilst on the bus. (He only loves me for my Harry Potter, but hey. I take models however I can get them.)

I filled an entire camera with photos from my Gaudi excursion yesterday, and I have this horrible dread that none of them will develop properly.

Yes. My life is hard.

Postcard update: If your name is Cabel, Anna, Ko, Bill, Joan, Alli, Bibi, Tura, Jeff, Laura or Mateo- haunt your mail boxes.

I have arrived in Barcelona, and if anything, it is hotter than Madrid. This is ridiculous. I shall come back to the states ready to move to Atlanta, or Tallahassee or Phoenix, and I will live there contentedly with out air conditioning until I forget Spain. There is no air conditioning here, which is probably not a bad thing, seeing as I would likely freeze inside buildings, and have to be bribed to leave.

I waited around for my train for an hour and a half before I thought to ask where the platform was. Twenty minutes before the train left, I was at a station fifteen minutes away from my platform. Oh the agony! Oh the wandering though miles and miles of metro tunnels in a misguided attempt to find a subway going in the right direction! Oh the pain of attempting to locate my subway on a subway map, which turned out to be useless, as it was a special subway that doesn't show up on a map. Oh the bitter irony of finally getting to my station across town, only to have to wait twenty minutes for my train. -_- Seriously.

Nine hours on a train is a lot like nine hours on a bus. Which is to say: about eight more than is in anyway interesting. I saw much graffiti in bright colors (known here as punitio), and a badly dubbed version of Men In Black II. There is a great big plot to make me watch every movie that I was deliberately avoiding, but I'll attempt to be strong.

My train made a sound like booster rockets firing every time it sped up. I didn't examine the sides of the train before getting on, so for all I know, there were booster rockets strapped to the sides, but it seems unlikely. (Although our snazzy little pull out TVs told us that we cranked it up to two hundred kilometers per hour, which was cool.)

I have the slowest hands on a camera ever. I think to myself- Oooo! That would be a cool picture! but by the time I grabbed my camera, whatever it was would be out of sight. So I left my camera out, only to have the same thing happen. Then I held my camera, only to be thwarted by lack of photogenic landscape.

I seem to have converted to this Spanish eating schedule, though not with any grace. Light breakfast around eight, huge (gargantuan) lunch between two and four, then a light dinner around ten thirty. I haven't yet learned the sleep schedule, which seems to be sleep from two until eight, and a siesta in the afternoon.

Fascinating as that is I'm sure, the time has come for me to begin stalking some dinner, and attempt a call home. If I were more on top of things, I would do this tomorrow around eleven, and catch everyone at home. Wait- maybe I'll just wait till tomorrow. Ok, that's one less thing to do.

Postcards: If your name is Bill, Joan, Bibi, or Laura your postcard has been sent. If it isn't, a little patience please, I can only write so fast.

Before leaving, I very carefully redesigned my lj with an eye to fast loading. Oh it loads alright, but all the screens are 800x600. -_- Also, the keyboards are whacked. In Latin America, they at least had the sense not to move the apostrophe key!

Anyway, I'm being rained on, and the one thing I did not pack was a rain coat. My hotel owner is from Chile, and he teased me about coming to speak Castillian Spanish, and going straight back to my new world roots. I have painted exactly one postcard, and would like to state that there is an excellent reason that I am not in architecture school and this is that I can not draw straight lines.

I wish I had more time to say something interesting, but I have not learned how to fully use half hour internet chunks.