October

This week got off on the absolute right foot. I slept an incredible 6-7 hours last night and Eddie felt better today, good enough to return to the gym after being out of commission since Friday night. I know I have mentioned our workouts etc. in passing but since it's a big part of what I love to do can you humor me on this one while I talk about our gym experience here? Please? If it's really too painful just skip to the next paragraph about funny stuff that's been going on, Eddie-isms and interaction with the family.

Ok so, gym. I think I've mentioned the gym is very modern, with all the equipment one would expect in a high end American gym, with the exception of deadlifting platforms which are also sometimes absent in our gyms because they are really only heavily used by athletes and power lifters. Given how much Eddie and I paid for our membership I'm glad they have just about everything we could need. The people at the gym are pretty much just like Americans in their exercise. They all have differing levels of intensity and knowledge etc, and the gym offers the very latest in exercise classes like BodyPump, spin classes and so forth. Where they are not American is in their attitude towards their fellow lifters. Here we find the typical Spanish mindset once again: nobody, and I mean nobody, puts anything away when they are done with it. If you want to find a specific weight for something the last place you would look is in it's rack where it ought to be. Just a little tic which surprised me. The bigger issue is much as we have found it anywhere else, which is to say before they hear us talk to them in Spanish all they do is stare, and not kindly or with curiosity. In their defense I have been, as Eddie so eloquently puts it, "putting us through some crazy stuff." I have always been under the impression that the gym is a place to let loose physically and since I no longer have the regular competition of organized sports I can really only compete against myself and whoever I'm working out with. People understand it at home, especially in Ashland but also home home. Here it seems almost like I've farted audibly in church and then laughed about it or something. Their faces seem to say "what are you doing and who let you through the door?" It is getting better because we speak to them in Spanish when we have to interact and today we got some free help from one of the trainers and he was very cool about it. Nobody has yelled at us or anything so up front but Eddie and I both get a feeling while we're there that everyone is staring. It should fade before the semester is over. When we run in the park it's much more normal because just about everyone is running or walking and I'm not sure you could run in an "American" way. Maybe beat your chest and spit a lot.

Mom asked for more pictures of people so I'll just dump those here. I don't have any of our family yet but I'll get some up eventually I promise:

 Eddie and I share ice cream sometimes. What of it?

 Ahhh mira. From left to right: Paula from Miami who speaks fluent Portugesa and is awesome, Anna from Chicago also awesome (Eddie and I are going to Portugal with these two in two weeks) Eddie, Colleen from....I forget honestly, but she's cool, and Haylee whose origins I have also forgotten but who came from the University of Hawaii.

 We cut through the park if it's early enough and still unlocked on our way to the other side of the Rio Guadalquivir.

 Lets see. Christine is on the near left and she was in an earlier post, and the other guy in the picture in white is Rico who I wrote about last time.

 Eddie was excited about the train in Jerez that took us around the winery.

I hope I didn't create the impression that there is friction with our family. Quite the opposite, Eddie and I love Reme and Juan Antonio and Pablito is just a riot. He's 13 so everything to do with girls is hilarious, and just about every night we joke about the girls in the program and Eddie and I have him in stitches. Last night Eddie busted out his best Goofy impression and Pablo about died. Tonight Reme and Eddie and I discussed marriage as an institution and our attitude towards it personally, then the American attitude and the more relaxed European approach, pros and cons. Then we talked about the difficulty of having children and how Eddie and I certainly do not feel we could handle that at this point in our lives without steady jobs or finished degrees etc. Not that we are in danger of it, but it was an interesting conversation. Our Culture and Society of Spain teacher is a wonderful old lady, originally from California. She became absolutely smitten with this country way back when she came here to study and has been teaching here since the earth cooled or so. She is an incredible resource for traveling ideas, where to eat, what to do etc. I mention her for two reasons, firstly because she's Judy she knows one of the best instructors of Sevillian Flamenco and offered us a chance to sign up for classes twice a week starting in October. I can't dance for beans, but given the laid back nature of our group and the once-in-a-lifetime nature of the opportunity I didn't hesitate to sign up. The very favorable ratio of attractive girls to guys in our program also factored into the equation. Secondly though, I loved what she told us about her second love after Spain, John, the only American ever to work his way up to fully professional bullfighter status. He has been dead some ten or fifteen years now I think. One of the girls in our class asked if they were married. Judy replied, "oh no. We were never married. But we were madly in love and I never worried about that." It sounded so perfectly European, in the best way.