All Right. Let's Dance. - Johnny Cage

Dance. Bailar. Pretty common thing here in Spain and certainly something that I’ve encountered during my brief stay here. Being the hombre that I am, there’s no way that I’m going to try to avoid it but rather embrace this notion of some sort of rhythmic motion possibly set to music. Let’s take a journey into a couple of my exploits within that realm, shall we?

So it’s Monday at like 9:00 in the dining hall. I a-just be chilling and having possibly the greatest day of my life, as they were serving us pizza, when I’m told that there was to be a Flamenco class/seminar that night (and the following one as well). Now y’all know that I’m all about the dancing. Especially the awkward, white guy style. That’s just how I do. So there was no way that I was going to miss out on this. The class was to start at 10, thus giving me ample time to finish eating and such. Perfectness.

So after I finished doing whatever it was that I needed to do in preparation for this bailar action, I headed down to the lobby for to reunirme con some other peeps. There were only like 6 or so other personas down there at first, which was a little less than awesome, but soon thereafter, we all migrated into the open patio area with the instructors and then people started filing in. In total, there were probably 25 or so of us rocking out. Legitness.

We all formed a line facing the instructors as they started out by showing us the most basic of the foot movements, which was an easy little 5 step maneuver that a small child pull off. So far so good, felt pretty dece at this point. That feeling of “this is cake – delicious cake, mind you” didn’t last too long as the motions soon became a little more complicated as we began sidestepping, turning, and doing crap with our hands.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t feeling too bad when we started to partner up to rock it for realsies. My compañera for the whole thing was to be Jill, who seemed to have the same basic handle on this whole thing as I, which was very little. So that was encouraging as we started trying to rep this Flamenco together with all of its crazy steps, passes, and tricky footwork in general.

7 years of martial arts training and working out like it was going out of style had apparently not prepared me for the idea of participating in this dance as I just couldn’t seem to find solid consistency with it overall. I like to blame the teachers for this because as a man there’s no way that I’m possibly going to accept responsibility here. Simply can’t be done. But whatevs, I can say that by the end of the night, I was feeling pretty decent about the whole thing in general as I was starting to get it down a bit. So I was pretty much defs looking forward to rocking it the next night as well.

I rolled down to the lobby again on Tuesday just a few minutes before 10 for what promised to be a solid follow-up to the previous night’s Flamenco extravaganza. Again, there were only few people waiting to represent down there. I figured that more would show as everyone seemed to have a pretty really good time on Monday. False. In total, there were only like 10 people. Sadsies. But then again, perhaps it was for the best as we were all able to see better and get more attention from the instructors.

Speaking of which, I got paired up with the assistant instructor this time. I wasn’t really feeling that at first, but after thinking about it briefly I came to the conclusion that that’s pretty legit. I was totally going to aprender more than the previous night as… well… this partner would fully know what the hey hey hey we’re supposed to do and such (not that Jill wasn’t a good partner, but obviously lacking the skills an instructor would have).

Turns out I definitely picked it up better. I mean, it’d REALLY be saying something about my dance skills and overall athletic ability if I couldn’t work with the instructor for an hour and not even kind of figure out the more basic steps of the Flamenco. T’was quite the good time after I got over the initial weirdness of dancing with this like 30 year old woman. Not going to lie, I still had some issues with all the hand motions and my turns still probably looked reminiscent of an 8 year old on ice skates for the first time, but whatevs, my footwork was legit, and that’s what’s important, so step off :P

So yeah, that was my experience with some sort of legit danceness, so of course on Thursday I had to go out to the club, or discoteca if you will, to take it to the streets. First, though, a brief overview of the night life here in Toledo in which I partake. It involves the following: going out to a bar. Sometimes several bars, but always at least one. Then on Thursdays people seem to be fond of hitting up a dance club as well. Of course err’body know that I don’t drink. At all. But I still have a good time at said bars because let’s be honest here, it’s fun to chill with the home skillets… and oftentimes it’s fun to see them drunk too, but it’s definitely a nice change of pace to actually do something other than sit around for a night.

Moving on, so after hitting O’Brien’s (an Irish indoor pub), a hookah bar (again, y’all know that I don’t smoke either), Enebro (an outdoor bar – closed, though, for some reason at 12:16 on a Thursday night/Friday morning), and then O’Brien’s again, we FINALLY decided to meander over to the discoteca, Circulo del Arte, at like 1 something in the manaña. Money.

Now from what I’m told about these discotecas from the locals around here is that there are three types of people who go to these sorts of establishments: Spanish guys who like American chicks, South American guys who like American chicks, and then of course there’s American chicks. Now as far as I’m aware, I’m none of those, so you can probably surmise my comfort level with this right away as I entered this club to find… well… Spanish dudes, South American dudes, and a couple of American girls… dancing with Spaniards and South Americans.

Due to a lot of us getting separated at all the random bars we hit up and other some such things, the only American person at the club with me right away was my broheim Erik. We had come with a bunch of the members of the Puerto Rican contingent that dwell in the Fundación, so yeah… they all know how to dance, like actually dance. I like to think that I’m a pretty fearless cat and moderately coordinated when it comes to bailar whilst in ‘Merica, but it’s a bit different when I’m in Spain… with people I don’t really know that well yet… and peeps who actually have legit dancing abilities.

After a brief period of just kind of bobbing my head to the music, though, I started to get into it a bit. Erik slowly started to come around as well, although he’s said that he’s not really into dancing that much at all. The Puerto Ricans, being the Spanish speakers that they are, all knew like every song that came on and apparently the matching dance that went with it, so they pretty much rocked it while Erik and I white-guy’ed it. Eventually, one of the Boricuas, se llama Luis, started telling us and showing us what to do with all the steps, claps, and such that they were all doing. Solid gesture on his part. So Erik and I started rolling with it a bit more when a couple more peeps from the States showed up in Danielle, Amanda, and Laura. That made err’thing more normal as they were basically all in the same boat as us… well… except for Laura to some extent who used to captain her danceline team in highschool. She knew what was up. Nonetheless, t’was definitely mejor with the estadounidenses there.

Danielle, Amanda, Erik, and I left the place at like 2 or so because Amanda had to catch a cab home, so we figured we’d all just walk together to make everything easier. Not going to lie, I kind of wanted to stay a bit longer. I was just starting to get my groove on, but it wouldn’t have been as good sans those personas, so rolling out was the best option. Overall, I must say that it was an enjoyable time and something that I’m sure I’ll do up again en el futuro. Why, you ask? Because I’m a DANCING MACHINE, SON!

*Note* I HATE the formatting with this thing. The spacing darn near always turns out wrong and for some reason a few of my pics have decided to not show up. But that's a negative note to end on, so please enjoy this comical newspaper snippet:

¡Vamos a Iglesia!

So there are a lot of things that I really miss about being home. No doubt about that. But one of the most evident is the Christian atmosphere that I’m surrounded with at the U. Just to give everyone a little heads up about what last semester consisted of in relation to this idea, I attended weekly meetings for both Campus Crusade for Christ (Thursdays) and Truth Business (Mondays), partook in a sweet Monday night Bible study, and co-led an AMAZING prayer group on Wednesdays. So that’s a fair amount of stuff that took up a lot of my time. Thus this summer was weird enough not being around any of that, let alone while actually being at school. I have both my usual Bible and a Spanish version up here that I read a few times a week (not as often as I should or would like to, however), but I’ve really been missing the fellowship aspect of Christianity whilst aquí.

There’s tons of churches up here, though, so it would seem that it wouldn’t be too much of a task just to get up and go to one. But the problem with that is that ALL the iglesias in Toledo are Catholic. Now I’m not going to get into the whole Catholic spiel here because it’s not worth it and honestly I waver a bit in my thoughts about the Church sometimes. I have no ill-feeling toward them and there seems to be little doubt (usually) that they get the main message right about the Bible (Jesus = Lord and repentance of your sins and accepting His gift of salvation = eternal life), but nonetheless, let’s just say that I’m not a Catholic.

I was raised in a legit Presbyterian church and confirmed as such, but these days I consider myself to be a non-denominational follower of Christ. I mean, let’s be real here, denominations don’t make any sense. It’s all the same book (again, not getting into Catholicism). So anyway, point here is that I’m a Christian in need of fellowship and a solid church to go to.
T’was last Friday (the 12th) that I met Andrea down here while going to the mall in Poligono, which is another town about fifteen minutes from Toledo. We got to talking and soon realized that we were both Protestants looking for a church. She had been told of one by her boyfriend who had studied here in the past and hence, relayed this information to me. I became quite excited at the prospect of going to a legit church and by Thursday she had seemingly had all the specs figured out, so we decided to hit up today. What follows is the account of today’s activities.

Andrea and I had agreed to meet in the Plaza de Zocodover at the hour of 10 in am (as we believed the service started at 10:30). As per usual, I arrived at my destination substantially early (like 9:50). Turns out this was quite perfect as I caught her as she was walking toward the Fundación (my place of residence; she’s living with a family while here). She told me that she hadn’t been able to really get the directions to the place because her family had come and visited her this weekend, and since she didn’t have internet at her host family’s house, she needed to hit up the Fund to check it all out.

Después de regresar, we struggled around the computer for a solid 10 or so minutes trying to figure out where this church was and how to get there. We found out within this sleuthing that the church we were going to was different than the one we thought we were going to rock. Huh. That could pose some problems. Nevertheless, we printed off some basic directions, asked the receptionist which bus we should take (either the 61 or the 62), and headed off. At this point the time was 10:13 and was pretty apparent that we weren’t going to make any 10:30 service as it takes like 15 or 20 minutes to get to Poligono. Meh. We were determined to figure this out and figured that we could go sharing or something if it didn’t all come together. We arrived back at the Plaza de Zocodover just in time to see the 61 close its doors and drive away after picking up some people. Fail.

Undeterred, we continued walking way down to another bus stop in hopes of catching the 62 in the near future. We quickly made our way to this parada and took a gander at the bus routes and schedules. The 61 and 62 come every half hour it said. Ohhh. That could be mal, but whatevs. Thanks to the directions we’d printed off, we knew that the church was on the corner of Estenilla and Río de Alberche. That only did us some good as there were like 5 stops on Alberche and we really had no idea which was the correct one for us. We stared at this thing momentarily trying to figure it all out but soon thereafter the 62 showed up and we hopped on. The time, 10:30 exactly.

We rolled into Poligono and started earnestly watching for any signs of a church. Apparently, the Good Lord had our backs as the bus drove right past one that looked unbelievably promising. La Iglesia Evangelical Bautista. An Evangelical Baptist church?! That had to be right. The front entrance seemed to have a gate in front of it, though… Even so, we jumped off the bus in excitement and started heading toward it. There was a sign there that said that service was at 11. I looked at my watch, 10:48. Score! We were actually early somehow. Thus we walked across the street so Andrea could get some quick sustenance as she hadn’t had time to eat breakfast this morning.
After exiting the local tienda, we saw a woman opening the doors to the church. Awesomeness in a can! We exchanged pleasantries with the woman and I awkwardly performed the Spanish cheek-cheek-kiss thing. Over this preliminary foolish-looking-ness on my part, we went in and sat down. It was a small, quaint looking room. Certainly not a giant, ornately decorated sanctuary. It appeared to be more of a small converted dining hall. There were about 10 small rows of pews on either side of a walkway and then a stage-ish thing up front. The wall behind the pulpit was ordained with the following:
JUAN 14:6 Y JESÚS DIJO, YO SOY EL CAMINO, LA VERDAD, Y LA VIDA
NADIE VIENE AL PADRE SINO POR MI.
A huge smile appeared on my face upon seeing that. I had actually been wondering the other night while praying how to say that verse in Spanish and the BOOM there it was. I nodded my assent with it all as I often do when something like that pleases me. This could very well be home, I thought.

Andrea and I took our seats on the on the right half of the room on the near side of the pews as people slowly started walking in. Everyone was super-friendly and seemingly very interested to talk to these two American strangers in their church. I was more than happy to converse with these locals. We learned quickly that the normal pastor was off doing something that weekend and couldn’t attend, but that didn’t bother us at all. Everything seemed legit as a man walked up to the pulpit.

There were actually two services. This first one was more of a lesson and kind of possible application thing aimed more toward adults. The man noticed us right away and greeted us from the pulpit in an amiable manner. Soon thereafter, one of the members of the congregation prayed and we began.

The preacher wasn’t too hard to understand. He spoke quite slowly, so that was nice. As seems customary in Spain, though, he didn’t really say his “s’s” at all. That made him a bit hard to follow as sometimes his words would sort of jumble together, but overall he was good. He spoke of conflict and giving glory to God throughout it while referencing Acts several times. It was solid, but I wasn’t overly excited about it.

That service ended at 11:44. The next was to start at noon, so we just sat around and waited for its commencement. At around that time, the same man got up and walked back to the pulpit. After some sweet songs and some really passionate and awesome prayers said again by members of the congregation, another man meandered to the front of the room.
He started talking and I must say that he had the most perfect diction and enunciation abilities of any person I’ve heard yet in this country. A welcome relief. I could pertnear perfectly understand this guy. Yay!

He opened his sermon by reading Luke 18:18-29. This centers on the rich ruler who asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. The man says that he has kept all the laws after Jesus tells him this. At this point, Christ tells him to sell all his possessions and to follow Him fully.
I was quite enamored with all the goings-on at this point. This guy seemed solid. As he continued talking, I found out even more so about how legit this man and this place were. How so, you ask? The man used this story as a backdrop to fully and clearly explain the gospel. There’s no way that sentence can come anywhere near to completely conveying the meaning and importance that it actually deserves unfortunately, but let’s just say this: That’s THE message from THE book (i.e. the most important thing in the world is to understand and accept this concept). Like he summarized the entire Bible and basically how to introduce Jesus into your life. It was amazing. It was like being back home again.

Just a quick summary of the four main points of the Bible for anyone reading this:

1. God loves you and has an amazing plan for your life and a desire to know you personally.
2. However, people are sinful and thus are separated from God. This makes it impossible for them to experience everything that God has for them.
3. Jesus Christ is God’s only way to bridge this gap. Only through Him and Him alone can we experience all that God has for us.
4. One must pray to repent of their sins and accept Christ into their heart to be able to connect to God and to enjoy all of the gifts and the plan that He has for us.

So yeah, that’s what the guy basically talked about. This is just a quick little succinct summary of it all. Point is, AWESOME. I’m so glad that the guy did that. It makes me know that this is a legit church and one that I’m going to want to go to in the future. The people here were great and friendly, the atmosphere was very welcoming, and it’s a Scripturally-based church that’s focused on Christ. Amazing. We rolled out of there at about 1:20 (a long couple of church services, indeed, but you’ll receive no complaints from me) and headed back to the Fund. I can’t speak for Andrea here, but I can certainly say that I think I just found a little piece of Minnesota in España, and more importantly, a very apparent Godly presence.

And as a sidenote, if anyone has any questions about Christianity or anything, please don't hesitate to ask me.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).

Something's Rotten in the State of Toledo

A’ight, so here’s what it to right now. There’s really only one thing I’m focused on at this point. Solamente una cosa. An object of consternation so grand that it fully and wholly encompasses my entire being. Here we go. *takes moderately deep breath* The zipper to my cargo shorts fell off. Yeah, fell off. Like, what? I know that you’re thinking to yourselves right now (assuming that people actually read this thing, which is probably a bit of a stretch, but you know, optimism; right, kiddies?) that that’s a completely irrelevant and ridiculous thing to talk about. Seriously, quién cuida? Well, I’ll tell you who cares, the guy with the two thumbs *types with toes while points at self* This guy.

Ok, here’s the larger scale issue with this whole thing. I only brought like three pairs of shorts up here (and yes, I wear shorts now, in case you’re wondering). Well… that’s not entirely true. I think five actually, but two of them are athletic shorts, and you don’t really wear those around Spain as people for some reason actually try to dress moderately nice around here. I mean, I don’t particularly care, but whatevs. I should point out, though, that one of said pairs of athletic shorts doesn’t even have pockets, so there’s no way that I can really wear those outside. Anyways, point is that I only really have three pairs of shorts.

Now with the zipper having fallen off my cargos, they’re basically out of commission. I mean, guess I could get like a pin or something to hold them together, but c’mon, for realsies? I mean first, where am I going to procure a pin? Not a common item in the slightest. And second, that’s NOT an area where I’d prefer to have a sharp, pointed metallic object. But yeah, the zipper totally split within the first like hour of my wearing them the first time, but whatever, the fly still kind of stayed shut, so I continued to rock ‘em. It wasn’t until the second vez that I decided to vestirme in them that the thing just came clean off. There’s no way that one can come back from that. Like the German car, they’re Audi.

So now I’m down to dos pairs of shorts. And I’m just gonna throw this out there, it’s absurdly nice in Toledo ALL THE TIME. It’s like 80 here and sunny daily. Seriously, this place has gorgeous weather. I mean, it’s also always in like a permanent drought, but that doesn’t really affect me, so whatevs :P Anyways, so it’s pretty understandable that I would prefer to roll with the shorts. Now that I only have two, that might be a philosophy that I’m going to have to rethink. I should also point out that these surviving members of the half-pants family are of a very similar style as well. Now, not saying that I really care about style that much, but I do somewhat. You know, I can’t deck myself out in the same basic attire todos los días. Ugh. Struggles.

Granted with all this, that nothing interesting has ever happened to anyone wearing cargo shorts in the history of mankind, I was really feeling like I was going to break that trend. Like do some paleontological digs, go hunting in Africa, or carry an absurd and unnecessary amount of items in their pockets. I had plans, dag-nabbit! I HAD PLANS! And now I fear that I must say goodbye to my friends the cargos. I just as well could be in Denmark chilling in a cemetery. Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back athousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! My gorge rises at it. Except replace “Yorick” with “pantalones cortes de cargo," “Horatio” with “The Internets,” and "He hath bore me on my back a thousand times," with "I hath bore them on my lower extremities twice." Pretty much the same exact thing. Yeah, that’s a Hamlet reference. Just trying to bring a little culture to this place :P

I literally feel like a piece of my being has been torn away, a portion of my innocence lost, and a bit my joy stolen. I seriously have no idea how one could possibly rebound from a loss such as this. I mean, I’ll probably just move on like a normal person would because it’s seriously just a pair of shorts and they’re not worth devoting an entire blog entry to, but still, you get the point.

La Comida

All right, I’m a-gonna be honest for a sec here: I seriously have no idea what half the stuff I consume at the Fundación actually is. I’m thinking that in reality this might be a good thing, though, so you know, whatevs with that. But I feel as if I must devote some space to the food.

First and foremost, I have to say that the fruit is FRIGGIN’ INCREDIBLE! The oranges are succulent, the apples gorgeous, the bananas… well, the bananas aren’t that great, but meh, the watermelon is dece, the peaches banging, and the pineapple is marvelpendous. But none of them can hold the proverbial candle to the two mystery frutas that the Fund boasts.

The first of these legendary items is… the… um… well, I don’t actually know what it is, but it’s delicious. Preliminary accounts and service recon missions had it scouted as being honey dew, or muskmelon, if you will. However, said reports have turned out to be false in nature. Its physical characteristics are as follows: light green in coloration with a darker kind of spotty green peel. It’s always cut, though, prior to serving so I’ve yet to see it in its natural form. It boasts a citrusy, sweet taste as well. One can only pose conjecture as to what it actually is… of course, one could also ask one of the cooks, but to that I say no.

The second of these treats has been identified as a plum of some sort… however, it’s quite different from your standard run-of-the-mill plum found throughout err’where else. The skin is quite akin to said fruit, but the inside not so much. It’s almost nectarine-like. Except it’s a good nectarine. Not like those crappy one’s that one might procure at the local Terry’s Holiday Market. Thus it only stands to reason that we the peeps of the Fund have since dubbed this miracle foodstuff as the elusive “pectarine.” In fact, we’re all so enamored with this treat that we’ve since taken on a new sport, The Pectarine Toss. Such a thing simply cannot be adequately described in a literary context, but let’s just say that we now have a sweet idea for the Fundación’s talent show!

But alas, it’s not all mystery green fruits and pectarines. While the vast majority of the food is actually pretty edible, there’s still some that completely baffles me in terms of its taste. Take for example, the weird concoctions of vegetables that the cooks throw together. I mean, I hate on vegetables all the time, but there’s some serious missteps over here wit dat. I guess, though, I can’t complain too much as I’m able to duck everything that seems bad on the surface level.

But back to the awesome, a couple of days ago there was friggin’ PIZZA! Yeah, they made some pie for us! And yeah, I just used a New Joisey term for pizza; big whoop, wanna fight about it?! I can’t begin to describe to you my excitement for this ‘za. Oh, goodness me for delectableness. Not to mention the fact that they busted some chicken out on us the other day too. Heck yeah! I must say that I can only assume that I looked eerily reminiscent of this guy upon my initial viewing of said pollo spectacular-osity.

Lastly in relation to the food, I’m obliged to mention the drinkables that are to be found here. Or rather, the lack thereof. For breakfast one is treated to some orange drink option, so of course I rep that, however this zumo = not so much, but nonetheless, I take it down with gusto. For lunch and dinner the only available drink is water or, as we in the Spanish speaking world know it as, agua. That’s less-than-stellar at best. The lack of milk (well, there’s milk available for one’s cereal in the morning, but that’s it, and even then…) and proper orange juice is nothing short of disconcerting for me. It’s gonna be a hard few months sans my drinks of choice. I’d totally go out and buy some however there’s defs a lack of a place to store it, so it is what it is, I guess. I feel like I’m slightly dehydrated at times due all these factors, but whatevs, I imagine I’ll fully adjust shortly. Plus, I eat a boat load of fruit, so that’s certainly helping as well. But meh, overall the food here's pretty able to be eaten, and that's all I can really ask for.

Holy Schnikes, I'm in Spain!

So I've finally given in to peer pressure and decided to start writing a blog. Yeah, I'm weak, I know. So here's the gist of what it do in mi vida right now, it all basically comes down to the following: I'm in friggin' Spain! But before I get to all that, let me write a little about the flight over here.

So we were told to arrive at the airport about 3 hours before takeoff for international flights. Whatevs, not too bad. Except for the fact that my flight out of Minneapolis was at 6:40 in the am. Kinda unfortunate, but again, whatevs. So being the overly punctual family that we are, we got to said airport even before 3:40.

We walked in and noticed the place to be completely barren of any and all life forms. We stumbled upon some security guard who said that the agents and such don't even show up until like 4:30. Sadsies. So alas, there was much waiting to be done. That didn't really bother me, though.

It was Philadelphia that bothered me a bit. The flight arrived at like 10:00 their time. Ahead of schedule actually, go figure. That's all well and good except for the part where the flight to Madrid didn't takeoff until 6:10. What the frigg is one supposed to do in an airport for 8 hours?

Turns out nothing. My computer's apparently a piece of work and decided that its wireless connection didn't need to funcionar, it was almost impossible to take a nap due to the fact that I'm apparently paranoid about sleeping in airports because I feel someone's going to off me in my sleep, and I quickly grew tired of lugging my bag around as I had definitely overpacked it, so wandering around was out of the question.

So what's there left to do, you ask? Stare. Yeah. Stare. Just kinda looking around watching people and such in the hopes of not coming off as too creepy. 8 hours and some change (because the flight was delayed due to some hurricane, I guess. I mean, c'mon, a hurricane?! That's weak.) of just looking at stuff. It turns out I don't have ADD.

Of course the worst of everything was the McDonald's in this dive. Now don't get me wrong, I love McDonald's in a very unhealthy manner, but this one... eh, not so much. Just gonna throw this out there... there were NO double cheeseburgers. What!? Is that some sort of sick chiste?! I walked up to the establishment and was instantly taken aback by this startling revelation. I was asked what I wanted to consume and I couldn't find words. I somehow stammered that I wanted the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich or whatever that mess is. "That'll be $4.99," the cashier said. I reached into my wallet and pulled out the McDonald's gift card I'd been given by my awesome friend Laura and handed it to the woman. "We don't accept those here," she reported. It was at this point that my head exploded. After a quick clean up I handed her some money. This was largely due to the fact that when properly used, money can be exchanged for goods and services.

I don't know if you could really call the Southern Style Chicken Sandwich a "good," though. *shrugs* Anyways, the woman asked for my name because apparently that's easier than a number or something. As per usual, I replied with, "Aaron," as that's totally mi nombre. Preliminary transaction completed, I walked off to find a spot to sit and wait for my foodage. T'wasn't too long before I heard, "Erik!" I rolled my eyes and walked over to procure my sustenance. Being called "Erik" has been a recent source of disconcertion for me. I get it all the time. Is it something about how I pronounce "Aaron" that forces this upon me? Meh, it's all hood.

I must say, though, that said McDonald's meal FAAAAR outclassed the food served on the flight to Toledo. I hate vegetables with the passion and fury of a thousand suns, but I actually chased down the horse meat they gave us with the little salald also included in the meal. You could literally see the marks where the jockey hit the thing. And you KNOW it's a legit meal when the dessert is some sort of rhubarb-cake concoction. *shivers*

But all that's irrelevant as I sit here typing this because holy schnikes, I'm in Spain!