American in Spain

Mondragon, the town where Marga grew up, is a rather difficult place to get to. It’s situated in a mountain valley in the Basque Country. Until this year, getting to it by car required driving through some winding mountain passes. A couple years ago, they began a major highway project in the Basque Country, and are building a major motorway that will run right by Mondragon. The travel time from Mondragon to nearby cities will be more than cut in half. As with most Progress, the surrounding countryside has been damaged altered.
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Glad to see you all survived the night. I watched Transformers last night. I’m not a big fan of the comic book genre, so I went in with low expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. There’s something so geekily gleeful about a sports car that turns into a giant robot. The film required a lot of disbelief suspension, but the special effects were simply astounding. The line between which pixels were reflected light off someone’s skin and which were rendered by a computer is completely blurred now. Unlike the 21-year-old lead actors in this movie, I was the right age at the peak of the Transformers cartoon and action figures reign and recall deep envy of my friend, Jacob’s, Megatron toy.

Today just some random photos that don’t fit with anything else. (more…)

Learning a foreign language gives you a perspective on that language that the native speakers don’t have. Some phrases become so ingrained into the language, that their original, literal meaning fades. For instance, saying, “Catch you later!” when departing from someone might be a little confusing or frightening for a foreigner who didn’t understand all the intricacies of the verb “to catch”, even though the phrase is simply meant to say “goodbye”. Even the word “goodbye”, in English, French, and Spanish, no longer carries the original “go with God” meaning. And so I turn to the Spanish phrase, “si Dios quiere”.
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On Sunday, we had dinner in a restaurant with Marga’s aunt and grandfather. The meal was good, but unremarkable. As we were leaving the restaurant, I spotted the most horrible porrón ever, sitting up on a shelf. It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing.

Warning, what you’re about to see may cause nightmares. (more…)

For various reasons, we visited Mondragon again this weekend. On Sunday, I got to see the sill from my recent post, Sill Traffic. I was surprised to see that it had been cleaned up, a new road surface put down, the skier properly removed, and that traffic was flowing normally.
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Occasionally I (hypothetically) download whatever movies have the strongest torrents. These are usually recently (or soon-to-be) released films that lots of people are currently downloading. Due to the nature of bittorrent, the more people are downloading the same thing, the faster everyone’s downloads are. Initially counter-intuitive, I know. Anyway, the other week, I (hypothetically) downloaded a movie I’d never heard of called Hot Fuzz.
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None of the photos in this post were posed by me. I found the scene just as shown. These toys were part of the attic cleaning I mentioned earlier.
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I took this picture last time I was in Mondragon, in Grandpa Ramón’s house. When I was in the bathroom, I noticed this strange character in the corner, sitting in a wooden chair. To see him better, I moved his arm, which pivoted up into this rapper pose.
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I watched Michael Moore’s new movie, Sicko, the other day. Let’s just say that he makes a good argument for me not returning to the States until I’m a millionaire. I think I’d rather have whatever life-saving operation I need when I need it than an iPhone.
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We were planning on going to Pamplona for the San Fermin festival again this year, but Marga came down with a bad cold on Thursday evening and is still feeling bad today. With the kind of intense partying required by San Fermin, either you’re dancing around having a good time, or you’re sitting around complaining. So it requires full stamina and health.
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