My liver is sobbing. Alcohol hiatus NOW.

Hi blog world,

I have officially dropped the ball on maintaining an appropriate level of bloggage with all of you TWO followers (Shout-out to Lut and Emmy WOOT WOOT!). Unfortunately, I have let too much time go by without chonicling my awsomely funny and unsuccessful interactions with men, stupid drunk things I did, and an all around thematic coverage of my life, so I can´t catch you up on those things without writing for about 4 more hours. Dont got the time, kids. Y'all can ask me about it when YOU COME TO VISIT ME! YAYYYYYY!!!! please?

So over the last month I have found an amazing appartment on the top floor of a building with large windows, skylights, and even an oven. Hello Spain, your luxuries are simple and fabulous. My roommate, Leah rocks my socks and we occasionally throw together a piso dinner that involves more or less 1-4 bottles of wine on any given weekday. I bought a duvet cover from Ikea (still my favorite affordable furniture store in existance) that is pin-stripey and candycane-esque and a super fluffy comforter. I'm sleeping like a baby.Oh and of course my first purchase for the piso, before bedsheets and food, mind you, was a coffee maker. I also found packs of coffee for 90. CENTS. EACH. My life is complete...ly oversaturated with caffiene.

On the scholastic front, classes are going pretty normally. I'm very happy with my selection of courses since others have been described to me by one hilariously accurate friend, Anna, as "finger painting for blind children." I'm in Morphosyntax (my inner linguist is giddy at the mere mention of the course title), New Narrative of Latin America, and Literary Translation. I'm also thinking about writing a thesis this semester about the translation of "Pedro Paramo" by Juan Rulfo and how its translation affected its reception in the US during the Latin American Literature Boom. So far I haven't started any reasearch. None at all.

Extracurricularly, I got an internship with www.universidad.es as I start tomorrow. I will be the in-house unpaid transaltor/helper person. I've been explained various times what the position actually entials, but it always becomes a blurry vagueness once I really think about what all those professional sounding job activities mean. Vamos a ver. Also, I have taken up running because my jacked up knee no longer bothers me that much. The floating chunk of whateveritis must have found a nice place to stay lodged into so my joint doesn't lock up when I run. In fact, I have taken up running to the point that I RAN A HALF MARATHON ON SUNDAY! WOOOOOOO!!!!! My first race was, unfortunately, in Leganes (small town outside of Madrid), but fortunately with awsome people. Anna, Danny and I entertained ourselves in the cold morning hours while waiting for our race to start by making various snarky remarks about either the children's race, the old people, the fat people, or DUMB COCKER SPANIELS. Anna has something against those dogs and after the 16th kilometer that inner canine-oriented fury came blasting out of her mouth when she saw one walking on the side of the road. It's ok though, we were in Spain, more accurately, a shantytown of Madrid, so I'm fairly certain neither the dog nor its owner understood the sweaty, angry woman's cry of absolute loathing.

Piso commetns, check. School comments, check. Extracurriculars, check. What else is left??? Well, I will mention one pathetic and humorous thing, out of the entire first month in Spain I realized at one point that there were only a handful of days when I had not consumed alcohol. 4 to be exact. Only 4 days of sobriety. I have since gotten my act together and I am a functioning scholar/member of society, so don't worry about your alcoholic friend abroad. I need to go recaffienate now so I'll end this before it turns into that 4 hour recap of my life I said it wouldn't be. I miss you all mucho and when I get reliable internet I will be Skyping you like there is not tomorrow.

Paz y amor,
Matt