Un fin de semana con mucha lluvia. Qué asco. (A Weekend With a Lot of Rain. How Disgusting.)

So not too much to say. First off, I don't think I gave the Scottish national park we went to enough credit in the last entry. So here's a bigger picture of one of the views we had in Loch Lomond National Park. It was so breathtaking. Very serene, very quiet.


Moving right along...

1) There is no word for "procrastination" or "to procrastinate" in Spanish. The closest they've got is that a person can be "little concentrated," to use the literal translation, and Katie and I agreed that the translation absolutely does not have the same meaning. It is nowhere close. It's kind of like how there is no word in Spanish for "awkward." They have "torpe," but it means that someone is clumsy. Nope, not the same. Some people here have had to drastically revise their sentences, considering so many college students use awkward so much in their speech.

2) Fernando just finished putting up his Christmas decorations and they are incredible. I will take pictures and put them up soon. I should probably not say much more now. Just wait with bated breath.

3) My friend Matt gave his presentation in our Franco class on Thursday (I was the other one who went) and he talked about soccer under the regime. It was really interesting. The most interesting part to me was that dialects within Spain were banned everywhere (the only language you could speak in Franco's Spain was Castellano) except for within the soccer stadiums. So basically, all of the regional pride and cultural identity in Spain that was banned in spaces all over was channeled into the soccer games. It makes total sense, then, why soccer was so popular and why it was a diversion for so many people when Franco was dictator. It was a space where people could go, speak in their native dialects and languages, embrace their regional culture, and cheer for their regional team. Franco was also quite smart for allowing that. It channeled people's energies into a game and kept them distracted, rather than encouraging them to channel their frustration into the "real world" and create problems for the dictatorship.

4) So... I kind of have a lot of work to do. Theoretically, in this coming week I should write 34 pages. Yup, in Spanish. I say theoretically because they aren't due for me until January, but it would be awfully nice to get them done before my parents come, otherwise the first week after my parents leave in January is going to be h-e-double hockey sticks.