i always wait too long to write on this.

i only have 11:35 left on internet now, and i´m sorry this entry will be short. cos i know you all love me and love trudging thru my awfully long posts every time i write them. :-D

so had an interesting time on the overnight train to barcelona, didn´t realize it was a holiday weekend and got really frustrated when the trains i wanted to take were all full. so i hung out an extra day in barcelona, which was good. met a guy in my hostel that i had actually already conversed with, momentarily, in an internet cafe in milan. neither one of us could get it to work, so we helped each other out. and when he saw me in barcelona, was like, you look familiar... and we figured it out. that is the 4th time i have run into someone i just met twice. good times. small world, for travellers, at least.

so barcelona was more fun than i expected. really, i just hadn´t done my homework and didn´t know what to expect. then on to salamanca to see joanna. so fun. that girl is fun, even tho we´ve only conversed twice in teh past 5 years. yeah, really. it was fun to be shown around a city by a local who knows the fun things, like that there is an astronaut sculpted in the doorway of the old church. for serious, yo.

now i am in madrid. and it is raining. and cold. and i don´t know what to do here, except see museums, and i am museumed out. but this is the first hostel with a free use kitchen in a long time, so i was quite glad and cooked myself some eggs for dinner. yum. and a lot cheaper than burger king.

so i was thinking...
the human eye is amazing. i get so frustrated with my camera all the time cos it can´t capture what i am seeing the way i am seeing it. God did a really good job with our eyes. able to focus on contrasting lights near each other, able to focus on multiple distances instantaneously, able to filter out reflections in train windows to see what is really outside. sweetness.

i really like knowing spanish. i was so SO rproud of myself when i checked into my hostel tonight and the guy talked to me in spanish, not english, tho he knows both, and i was able to understand everything he said. i think. i definitely got the main idea of what he said and his instructions about where stuff is in teh hostel and how barcelona has a problem with pickpockets and madrid is just as bad. i was so excited. i certainly can´t speak as much as i understand, and i only understand if people speak slowly, but i love it. it is so nice, a nice change from pretty much every other european country.

so maybe i will learn more spanish. or maybe i only like spanish because i am able to communicate in another language, and it isn´t spanish that i like. i hope i will have opportunity and reason to learn more languages. and i hope i have as easy a time with them i as i have had with spanish. not likely, tho.

i like you all. please email me. :-D i miss you and want to know what is going on with you, too, while i am gone. please? pretty please with a cherry on top? thanks! (omg, pix pls, thx!)