Welcome spring!

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Tonight, we are going to be exploring the realm of scent-triggered memory, or at least the one that I just experienced. When I got back to my apartment after being gone literally all day, I resigned to my room for some chill time. Upon exiting with the purpose of making dinner, I encountered a smell that in a split second was familiar to me. For the back story, we're going to take a trip to the BLC, specifically Cool House 08-09. Two girls that shall remain nameless, mostly because I couldn't for the life of me come up with their names, often had a disagreeable odor emanating from their doorway. I also do not know words with which to describe the smell. Most likely food related, but the best descriptor I can manage is "nausea inducing". Now, I have know idea what anyone else thinks about this subject, but I feel I may be especially affected because I am a very scent oriented person. By that I mean a strong sense of smell, fear of the way other people think I smell, etc. There you go, traumatic scent recall.
Hmm, this doesn't have a whole lot to do with Madrid...I suppose I ought to tell you about my weekend!
This past Thursday, as you know, was St. Patrick's Day. El día de San Patircio. Madrid gets pretty into it, but I'm not all that surprised. There are quite a few Irish pubs aroud, the city as an entity knows that there are many Irish students studying here, and merchants know that people love en excuse to party. I didn't see this myself, but the Puerta de Alcala was illuminated green in celebration. I went with a group of friends to a pub called The Irish Rover near the football (soccer) staduim Santiago Bernabeu. We had to wait in quite a long line to get in, but it was worth the wait. There was band from Dublin there that playes traditional Irish songs and later on used U2 to transition in to some classic songs that we were all singing along to. All that and a pint of Guinness and I was set. Friday and Saturday I did a lot of walking around/exploring but this time with company. Areas included were Atocha, La plaza mayor, Ópera, El templo de Debod and El parque del buen retiro.
Midterms for my program classes are next week, so thinking about that, my final papers for those classes, and a 900 page book had me preiodically really stressed. I need a hug, and a closet that isn't worthless, and to be thankful for what I DO have, goodness!

Inglés

Hello there! This post is brought to you by a e-mail forward I got from Grammy (my mother's mother) this morning about the lunacy of the English language.

An Ode to English Plural We'll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes, But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes. One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese, Yet the plural of moose should never be meese. You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice, Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice. If the plural of man is always called men, Why shouldn't the plural of pan be called pen? If I speak of my foot and show you my feet, And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet? If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth, Why shouldn't the plural of booth be called beeth? Then one may be that, and three would be those, Yet hat in the plural would never be hose, And the plural of cat is cats, not cose. We speak of a brother and also of brethren, But though we say mother, we never say methren. Then the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, But imagine the feminine: she, shis and shim! Let's face it - English is a crazy language! There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England. We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend. If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the folks who grew up speaking English should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane! In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship.. We have noses that run and feet that smell... We park in a driveway and drive on a parkway.

I think about things like this all the time, even more so here in Spain. English is weird and I don't envy the people that learn it, but nonetheless it is becoming a worldwide language. Many of the Erasmus students (people studying abroad from other countries in Europe) speak English better than Spanish and speak it amongst each other. One of the biggest "moments" I've had is about eggplant. Where did that name even come from?

Some brief investigation has maybe proven my suspicion of German influence. However, Aubergine appears in the German page too, and aubergine is french and in Spanish it is berenjena, relatively similar. I thought to look in Italian, expecting a word similar its "Romantic" cousins but the word is melanzana! That really threw me for a loop, because it just looks like a hybrid of the words for apple in Italian (mela) and Spanish (manzana)! I'm seriously tempted to go on a linguistic scavenger hunt to discover how the deviations came to be but, as usual, I have more important things to attend to.

Speaking of important things, yesterday I got the CERF, course equivalency request form, submitted so soon I should be finding out the credits I'll be getting for my classes this semester. That process got me thinking that before too long, I'll be selcting my classes for the fall semester back in Madison! I really dislike having to think about things so far in advance, it's just unnecessary anxiety that I definitely don't need in my life. There has been productivity in my life, though. I read a short play for my siglo XVIII lit. class in periods of time from Tursday night to yesterday afternoon. La comedia nueva (The New Play), Leandro Fernández de Moratín.

On an unrelated note, I made French toast for breakfast this morning. It was delicious, but I've never wanted maple syrup more in my life!

Recap

Update! Still having charger problems, which is a problem. As I would prefer to be taking photos. However, photos have been uploaded to Facebook and should be put on Flickr before too long.

In the time between beginning this post and now I found my charger, oh happy day! I am chronically disorganized, at least in my room; I like to think I make up for it in my notes.

Things have been consistently going pretty well over here, except for a bout of salmonella that hit three of my friends and me, that was disruptive. Classes are in full swing and I'm enjoying them all so far!
Dialectología (Dialectics?)
Dialects of Spanish/Castellano in the peninsula and in America
Sintaxis comparada (Comparative Syntax)
The second semester of my syntax class last semester. Same professor, different topics.
Phonology and Phonetics
Outside of the program with Spanish students, there is a German girl so I'm not the only extranjera! The building blocks of linguistic studies.
20th Century Spanish Art
Just what it sounds like. We have been learning about Gaudi and Barcelona and now I want to go there even more than I did already!
18th Century Spanish Lit
The enlightenment! I had to think for a while to get that in English. Other class with Spaniards. Here I have three other WIPTers (Badgers!) in the same class which I'm glad about, we can stand together! Lots of reading for this one.

This past weekend was the "Carnaval" celebration and I went down to the parade with Lindsay and Caleb. There were a lot of cool groups, unfortunately no pictures though. Two popular places to go to celebrate Carnaval are Cádiz and the Canary Islands.

As of Sunday night, my friends and I have a trip set to go to Germany during our Holy Week break. Other homeland! But, a lot has to happen before we get to that.

Un abrazo muy fuerte!