yeah there's typos, i don't care...

Teus- First day at work. right now i am in some sort of illegal alien limbo, i'm supposed to actually start work next monday but i need an national id card so i can get a social security card so i can register as a resident so i can sign my contract so i can get a university id so that, finally, i can begin work. and there is NOONE that actual knows the procedure. the local slang for this is burrocracy, government by donkeys. i also just heard today that my nsf grant was rated highly meritous (??), but will only be funded if there is available funds. 27 grants are getting funded for sure, and im ranked 38. there was 150-some grants... i thought for sure i had a better grant than # 38. so its possible i'll get something, but a long shot. i just moved into a new apartment about 3 hours ago with two graduate students. they speak broken english, i speak broken spanish, but theirs is a fair bit less broken than mine. everybody says they hate the town and its ugly...but its kind of cool to me. totally different. EVERYBODY lives in a multi stroy apartment building, so stanegly enough it feels like im in new york or something. Actually, in the film Rear Window, Hitchcock built a set with a simulated city in it, as viewed from an apartment window. I feel like I live on that set. both roomates are very friendly and fun so far. there is a kebab place by my building so i will not starve while in this hostile territory for vegetarians. my roomate santi showed me the traditional spanish market which was really cool, stinky with fish, but really neato. there is a whole olive store in it. i am having a shitty spanish lager to end my donkey government day... its helping.

wed- Fernando went with me to the police station to help me get my national id number assigned. we had to take the subway into Madrid. The first station we went was literally a former prison. Immigrants from numerous places go there to start their immigration process, mostly latin americans. hundreds of latin americans wait in line for hours to obtain a number, so they might actually be able to get inside the prison. amazing, their lives are so hard. after some smooth talking from fernando we exploit my unjustified privelege as a north american to walk right in to the prison. of course we are in the wrong place, so we have to get back on the subway and go to another police station in a totally different part of the city for researchers and students. Naturally when we got to that one it was also the wrong place, so, yes we got on the subway to another portion of the city. At the third station we just flat out got lucky. there was no cop at the door, and fernando talked us past the line and somehow convinced a woman to process me (for reasons that still elude me, what she did was illegal and she was taking a risk to help us out). imagine me trying to do this by myself! with no possibility of clear instructions. as we were walking out the door fernando was talking on his cell phone being interviewed on live radio- he´s from a small town and is locally famous. what a rockstar. This day is a major victory, at the end of the day i am registered as a Mostoles resident with santi´s help.

thu- Today, more fun- today I was finally assigned my social security number, so I can sign my contract. back in November to accept the fellowship i signed a contract and paid $75 to Fed ex it to spain. But again, for reasons i don’t understand, i need to sign a new contract. After seeing about 3 people over about 1.5 hours i am finally signing my contract. so here is the cherry on top of the burrocracy: I have to actually sit there and sign seven (!)copies of the contract. Que comica! More silly tasks tommorrow...back to the third police station to hand deleiver the donkey papers i received from other places in the morning.

fri- Soy legal!! Andrea helped me navigate the immigration shite, she immigrated from colombia a couple years ago. turns out shes into cycling and she told me about the anillo verde around madrid-64 km of car free riding. I need to interrogate her some more. just like in the us, when you ask anyone that doesnt ride..they tell you its too dangerous to ride a bike. But when you find someone that actually rides and knows what the fuck they are talking about...theres wonderful riding everywhere.

domingo- Last night I went to a play in spanish with some friends. The main charcatre was kind of like a cross between harpo marx and john belushi. I only got the really visual jokes, primarily the ones with american pop culture references (e.g. darth vader and alien). Ok so it flew way over my head due to my poor comprehension of rapid lispy ethpanol. I also went for a jog and saw more of my town. The parks have these funny workout machines where you can do a pushup, pullup, or rowing motion while lifting your own weight in a chair. Free gym! Im such a moron, Ididnt hardly eat prior to the play just assumiing i would have chance. I have been trying to eat on the spanish schedule, so my snack at US dinner time was meant to keep me alive until spanish dinner time (9:00 pm or often later). My roomate santiago was showing me the city at that time, then it was time for the play, then we had to get on the metro before they stopped running, all of this resulting in dinner at 2 am. Im just going to eat when im used to eating. i cant just go through llife with shaky hands and low blood sugar

Today i saw had a wonderfully spacy (by the way “space” is “espacia” en espanol, “ethpathia” in ethpanol) recharge day strolling around casa de campo, an enormous and varied park featuring pseudo wild bosque, a roman era aqueduct, a lake, views of old madrid (royal palace, catedral, etc.),a zoo, and an amusement park. I like everybody i know here but somedays i just need my alone time. Tons of latinos gather there to hang out and make food. particularly peruvians i am told. I got off the metro and walked into the park. my vague plan was to walk a few km to the lake and get on the metro 2 stops down the line to go home. So i walked a couple hours, after a while i saw that i was approaching a metro stop. I figured it was the one before the stop i was aiming for, and it was raining so i figured i would get on it and take the subway to the lake. As i got closer i realized that it was the same stop that i had arrived at. i looked at the map for maybe 10 minutes and decided it was simply impossible for me to have made this unintended circle without leaving the park. So apparently we can add at least one worm hole to the park attractions.

Strolling in the park with a light rain and joy division blaring in my ears was the perfect activity...well a bike would have been even better (next time). Everybody warned me not to be in the park in the dark because all the hookers in the city go there. I don't know why that is dangerous (zombie hookers maybe? brains!!), i think it’s like alot of things that people tell me here which i don’t understand fully. As i was walking by the lake, sure enough i saw a couple hookers sharing an umbrella even though it wasn't even close to dark. they must have been two early birds getting trouser worms. They did not attempt to turn me into a zombie or eat my brain, they just stood there by the road.

Viernes- This week im sort of getting settled and doing some work. I submitted one paper for the first time, and resubmitted another which was accepted quickly. I also had my first day in the field. Yesterday I helped Fernando and his student Cristina pick out some study plots. The research site is crammed full of research plots. Due to the daylight savings change…which I somehow made and then unmade…I was late meeting them. Because I was late, in a hurry and bike commuting for the first time in a city I don’t know yet, I was totally frazzled and disorganized. I forgot sunscreen, I forgot my second liter bottle of water, and I wore the wool hat I had been used to wearing recently. It ended up being not hot, but pretty warm compared to what I have experienced recently. So I pretty much looked like an unprepared douchebag (way to make a first impression!). I have probably done the equivalent of a year’s worth of desert field work days over the course of my career in all seasons (115 degrees to 20 with snow), so I am not a rookie, but I came off looking like one…and was spoken to like one (“you know in summer you will have to bring water, sunscreen, and you can’t wear your wool hat”). Annoying, but my own fault really.

I had a good ethpanol day today. I practiced a little with my roommate Maria as we walked to the health center. Then the doctor at the health center spoke to me in very slow Spanish with lots of gestures, and I understood the important things. Then a little practice at lunch, a little on the way to the supermarket with orta (I think his last name is Ortiz, but he is from Andalucia and they eat the end off of their words). I’ve never seen the name in writing. I successfully registered at the health center, so my tarjeta sanitaria is on its way.

My experience in Spanish grocery stores is simultaneously exasperating and an adventure. EVERYTHING that I think of as everyday, good and cheap fare is an exotic delicacy here. For example corn tortillas are totally absent, and flour tortillas are represented only by Old El Paso. Chiles in any form (dried, fresh, including jalapeneos or serrnaos or whatever) are hard to find. I guess Mexican-origin or Mexican- influenced foods are somewhat of a new trend, but they have been imported sans chiles, the thing that makes food worth eating in my case. I stocked up this evening by buying some kind of pimiento picante powder, and some kind of hot sauce from Louisiana (editors note: turns out neither are actually hot, I used a quarter of the hot sauce in one meal!), but in Europe it’s marketed for Turkish people. This wasn’t really expensive, but when I ask about red chili or fresh serranos or whatever nobody even knows what I’m talking about. I found some shite peanut butter, basically Euro-skippy, except in a container half the size of the standard…3.40 euros ~ 5 bucks!! Needless to say I didn’t buy it. Oh and about 4 bucks for a can of frijoles!! It’s hard even to locate dry beans of Mexican or central American varieties..im going to have to find a big bag of dry beans and cook a bunch myself. The local legumes are lentils, and chick peas which I do like…they are just not my favorite. So needless to say, my everyday diet will just have to adapt. One really nice thing is that decent olives are cheap, as is shitty beer, and the potatoes are cheap and good…way better than the russets that dominate the US supermarkets. Also the cheese is not cheap really, but very good. Theres a mozzarella-like goat cheese, and several aged varieties.

Sabado- Was up late until almost 3:00 am talking to Becky via internet. With a 6 hour time difference and both of us working, its hard to find an easy way to communicate. But it works.

Woke up and made coffee for the first time in Espana in my trusty French press, recently arrived from the US (thanks Becky!). I had been starting the day with a Spanish percolator. They have these crazy electric stoves here that can make the coffee in about 3 minutes…so perc coffee is actually decent you don’t have to boil the living shit out of it because the water is brought to a boil really fast and just erupts into the upper chamber. It just makes a normal-sized mug though, which is a lot by Spanish standards. The Spanish don’t sit around drinking coffee in the morning like Americans, they have one very stiff but tiny coffee in the morning, and usually one more in the afternoon after lunch. Because a Spanish “solo” is basically an espresso shot, drinking coffee is a quick affair. All the people that have ever lived with me know that I like to take a good hour to suck down a morning megablast that would kill a lesser man than me. But as you know I trained in a steel cage with Bruce Lee when I was younger. So, since it was the weekend I indulged myself and I felt awesome!!! I think maybe I have been chronically under-caffeinated since I got here. I’m not sure if I should take the opportunity to act more like a Spaniard and lessen my addiction, or say “Fuck it, I prefer feeling AWESOME”. My guess is “Fuck it…”.

So I took the metro back to Casa de Campo, the huge park from last weekend, to begin my ride of the Anillo Verde (try to stay with me here…the cycling path which circles Madrid, duh). I am expanding my territory systematically by returning to a known point and expanding from there. It felt great to ride again…due to all the snow in Flag, it had been many months since my last decent-length ride. Riding fast with my headphones, I am not the most attentive person around. You kind of have to watch for the route markers, especially starting from casa de campo because every path is a bike path, and there are many. So I commence riding totally enjoying myself, asking people where I am from time to time while looking at the map kiosk. Then after only a short while I arrive…at casa de campo. I found a second wormhole!! I am beside myself and can’t believe that I have made two attempts to explore casa de campo and surrounding places, and somehow looped back to where I came from in an hour or so. I got kind of pissed, because I wished I could have been riding last weekend, and now I’m here and still can’t seem to ride the green ring. But….i had a bike, I had many hours of daylight, I had food, and I had water. What was I mad about? It just means extra riding providing I can actually find the correct way. So I turned around and tried again, using every map kiosk that wasn’t totally illegible with tags. Is hard to explain how I got lost in words but I almost did the exact same thing a second time. I tried out some ethpanol on some other folks on bikes. They were British and were lost also (at least its not just me who is the douche)…it was because of a spot in the route that is under construction. It looks as if you are supposed to turn right, but really you are supposed to go straight even though the trail is not visible. If you make the right (the way I went), you will reencounter the anillo verde and get on it going the wrong direction. Unless you are familiar with the terrain, or at least not a space case, you could loop all the way back to casa de campo.

After this trouble spot it got a lot simpler. The northern portion of the ring was a little annoying because it makes 8 billion road crossings and you can never really get into your groove and stay geared up. So, its a lot slower than the mileage would indicate. Another rough spot was a portion under construction with a confusing detour. By this time, if riding clockwise like me, you are beginning the southern third of the ride. This part was awesome, with lots of long rolls and fewer unexpected turns. Naturally I got lost from time to time, going where I thought the trail SHOULD go rather than where it actually goes. Al l told the 64 km ring became about 80 km and took twice as long as I expected. But I’m not complaining, It was exactly what I needed…a nice long tour of the pseudo-wild urban interface and a rapid perusal of about half the city parks in the Madrid metropolis. I took the metro home pretty tired before the hordes of zombie hookers descended upon the park to scavenge brains. I wasn’t exhausted, but it whooped me a little bit.