Simply look around and view it

This is my new favorite pasteleria. It's in between my house and the Stanford center, a win for my stomach and a definite loss for my wallet.
You can't really appreciate it without Smell-o-internet. Why does that not exist? Get on it, Stanford.

Tomorrow morning (8:30AM! The horrors!) we're headed off to the north for wine tasting and fancy dinner and rain. (Typing that reminded me to pack my umbrella, which reminded me that I left it at work. Shoot.) We're not supposed to reveal the itinerary, but I will show you random, inconsequential things from the trip when I get back. And I will try to stay dry, I guess.

Just call me Alvy

So my neuroses have become more evident to me in Spain because
1) I keep getting told "No pasa nada" which means literally, "Nothing happens"or basically, "It's fine, you'll be OK, for god's sake stop worrying about it"
2) I end up by myself a lot in my room or on the metro or the street or what not and it's just me and myself in my head. We sound far too much like Woody Allen.

Oh my god Becky

Every week or so I have a reason to walk through el Plaza de Colon and I always see this delightful statue of a curvaceous woman lying on her stomach and I think, "You go girl".
So this weekend when Emily and I decided to go to el Museo de Libro I told her we should meet by the statue so she could take a picture of me and I could put it here.
As I was waiting for her by the statue I saw 7 or 8 tourists stop and take pictures with the lady, which I found utterly demoralizing. I like to think that I live here, that I am not a tourist.
Emily still took the picture for me but I want you all to know that I have a relationship with this lady. I am not some random Italian tourist coming up and putting my hand on her behind.

Make it work

This couple on the street is WORKING IT.

In other important news:
I have muscular calves (we're going to blame it on ballet). While I have no body issues with my calves it makes shopping for boots extra difficult because size 6 boots have very small calf spaces.
I think I still have a welt on my finger from pulling on boot zippers yesterday. In the end, success was found and I have a new pair of boots so I can look like all the other girls on the street. (This is very important).
They've already stretched out since yesterday, so it only takes 10 minutes to put the two on.

Hello.

Segovia

On Wednesday we took a big old group trip to Segovia. We took a tour of the University, my film professor gave a lecture, we went on a bus tour, and then walked about for an hour ALL while freezing our patooties off. Stanford students are so good at multi-tasking.

Here are some of my standard below-standard photos.

Aquaduct:

This is the castle in Segovia that supposedly inspired Walt Disney for Sleeping Beauty's castle.
The large majority of my pictures came out incredibly fuzzy. Bus tours are silly. Looking at this one makes me seasick. So I thought I should share.


I've decided that studying abroad is a little like knowing you're going to die in 6 months. You're presented with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you know exactly when its going to end. We end up listening to the id a bit too much -- always have seconds and deserts and going out.
Lately, it's been stressing me out, because we've crossed the half-way point and I think I have to make the most of every second. It's resulted in a lot less sleeping this past week.

Mooo

I bought these socks this weekend:
They are from a Spanish store (I just Wikipedia-d this and it turns out to be part of the same company as Zara, in case you were interested) called Oysho which sells sweaters and underwear and the like.

My host mom said that they didn't seem Spanish because they were too creative. She said clever things like that are usually American. She also thought that corn dogs (as I explained them) were ingenious. They're definitely not something Spaniards would invent.