Week One

So the people here put mayo (not light Miracle Whip, but the real deal) on everything. I knew this, but yesterday I was gobsmacked to go out for dinner with friends of F and be served fried potatoes drowning in hot sauce and mayonnaise. Followed by pizza topped with rocquefort, sunflower seeds, and more-actually it was really good. But I'll save the extensive culinary scene for another time.

The countryside is lovely. They get more rain here than Manchester so it's pretty green. The horticulture, it must be said, is spectacular-a partial catalog includes not just the corn, green beans, tomatoes, and peppers in people's gardens, but occasional oranges, lemons, passionfruit, olives, chestnuts, and walnuts.

The tough thing, though, is the language(s). I want to be like the people on The Matrix who just plug into the system and bing! they know jujitsu. I go to class for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, and will (bureaucracy have mercy) start teaching in the evenings. The classes I take now are in Spanish, and a lot of people speak Euskara (Basque). It's hideously difficult to speak at all, even *just* Spanish. Persistence is required, or maybe magic.



For solace I can walk up into the hills and hang out with the dwarf Emo cows. They're some kind of unusual variety from Scotland with long Bieber-like hairdos. It's been pretty warm. I don't know how they do it. But it makes me feel less like a putz for my lack of communication skills to wander up into the hills by Santa Barbara, where people also do rock climbing in addition to ranching tiny cows.
There's also great people-watching. This is an approximation of my favorite Basque hairdo, the Dread Pirate Mullock. Business (read 'short and inexplicable jheri curl') in the front, dreadlocks in the back. Obligatory piercings. Very serious punk/anarchy/leftist political scene here, it's not just dress-up like in California. I'm not sure if you can see this, but the graffiti below reads "Benedict [the pope]=inquisition! Terrorist! Pederast!" There are others that say "Hail the Third Intifada!" It's interesting. Anyway, I'm exceeding my word count-more for another day.