What is Spanish for stress?

The stress of my own inability to express myself is growing. Today I told some old lady I would "take her down" because she was eyeballing me. I didn't think she'd hear, but... well, the point is, I am not used to having to communicate through pointing, arm waving, and eyebrow waggling. Even when I know how to say what I want to say, most people here don't understand anyway because of my foreign accent, and as soon as I use a word wrong they shut down completely and treat me like I am drunk or stupid. Even when I am neither.

Anyway, as promised, I have the recipe for delicious Bleu Cheese lasagne. Since we don't have measuring cups, you will have to suffer with me and eyeball it.

You need:
Lasagne noodles, cooked until al dente (which means not very cooked)
Ricotta cheese
Bleu cheese
Marscapone cheese
Parmesean Cheese (all this cheese is totally worth it)
Garlic
Shallots
Milk
Pepper & Salt
Spinach (optional, you hippie)

First, make the sauce. Mince the garlic and chop the shallots. Fry them in a little olive oil, which you will also need, unil slightly blonde and slightly clear, repectively. Add some milk, not too much, and wait for it to warm. Then add the marscapone cheese. This is my own recipe, I don't know of any other sauce that uses marscapone cheese. Anyway, stir until it is sort of melted. If it is thick, just add a little more milk. Then add about a third of the bleu cheese.

For the filling, carefully melt most of the remaining bleu cheese with the ricotta. Don't burn them, or even get them very hot, just enough to combine them.

Now assemble the lasagne. Start with a layer of noodles, then the ricotta mix, then noodles, then spinach and more ricotta mix, and so on however you like. Season every layer with salt and pepper, or don't. Whatever. Top the last layer of noodles with the sauce, and grate parmesean cheese over it. Bake at 365º or, with my oven, the "on" setting until the cheese melts and bubbles. Eat it. Not too fast. Chew before you swallow.

That's what she said.

Ha llegamos!

We have arrived safely in Madrid. The flight we were on wound up being the group flight, which worked out because after 34 hours with less than 3 hours of sleep Peter and I were both dead to the world and could never have dealt with the reality of the public transit system. We have settled nicely into our apartment (piso), although the oddities of lighting the pilot for every shower and line drying clothes still take getting used to.

We´ve made a few friends, and have already predicted a few people we won´t like. You can´t always tell from the outside, though. I don´t mean that some people seem like total jerks/idiots and turn out to be nice or thoughtful, because so far that hasn´t been the case. I mean, sadly, that some people who look nice from far away can turn out to be a little dull and... greenhorned once you get to know them.

Maybe it´s just becuase before we left we were special for going to Spain, and once we began to mingle with a large group of people who all believe they are special for doing the same thing, I don´t know, it was annoying. I´m excited to be in Spain, no question, but when we were in the airport with these... kids... saying things like "I´m going to get sooooo drunk, tehehehe" it made me want to distance myself immediately.

Of couse, not all the people we´re with are like that. I´ve met some people who agree with me, they´re here to learn and enjoy Europe, not get wasted on their parent´s dime.

Anyway, I´ve been having fun cooking at home to save money for travel. The other night I made putanesca sauce, because there is only one kind of bottled pasta sauce here. I really love cooking, especially because it´s easy to find really good ingredients. After all, this is Europe. I don´t think chocolate and bread are significantly better here, but the person who often claimed this was German, so maybe I´m just in the wrong part of the continent.

Tonight I´m making a bleu cheese and walnut lasagne, the idea for which I got from a lasagnette recipe. Hopefully it will work out. If it is delicious I will post the recipe.

I keep having dreams where I´m in Spain and California at the same time, like going to Gottschalks and paying in Euros or going around the corner of Calle Sainz de Barainda and going to a party at Brittany´s. I combat homesickness by telling myself that I can be homesick once I get back, but it doesn´t make it any easier to stop myself ending phone conversations to home with "See you soon." And it doesn´t make it easier to hear about Jacob´s death.

It´s not that I´m surprised. The last time I really saw Jacob he was vomiting blood into the driveway at a party. And we weren´t close. But still, I´m so far away. And who knows what the next nine months will bring?

In the 1.5 weeks we´ve been here there has already been a major hailstorm and a fire-related power outage. The hailstorm came at about midnight on Tuesday. It woke me up and I thought the building was collapsing. The hail was the size of pingpong balls and made holes in awnings and dents in cars. Then on Thursday morning there was no power. I thought it was just out apartment, and we tried the fuses. Then when we went to the metro all the streetlights were off. It was quite a sight. The housing advisor pulled us out of Spanish to make sure we were ok and tell us about the fire a block or so away that caused the outage. We didn´t get power back until that night, and even now there is a huge generator truck powering our whole block parked down the street.

I want to send and post pictures, but we don´t have internet in the aparment and I can´t do that in a locutorio, or internet café.

I do have a key just for "ñ" though, it´s pretty sweet. Ñññññ.