palace of winds

This morning I learned all about how to argue over the bill in Spanish.

“I want to pay.”
“No, I’m going to pay.”
“I have a lot of money. I’m going to pay.”
“No, I have eight pesos. I’m going to pay.”
“How many pesos do you have?”
“Eight. No, nine. Eight or nine pesos.”

“Do you want something to drink?”
“How much does a beer cost?”
“Three pesos.”
“I only have two pesos.”
“That’s okay. I have five pesos.”
“Okay. Let’s go drink a beer. You’re going to pay.”

Luckily for those situations where you don’t have a friend with five pesos, I learned in an earlier lesson how to hold down conversations with pan-handlers. It was vaguely disturbing, actually, the implied racism.

“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, miss.”
“Excuse me, do you have two dollars?”
“No, I don’t have two dollars.”
“But you’re American.”
“No. I’m Mr. Jones, from Mexico.”
“Bye.”

I don’t know how to spell or read anything, though, since I haven’t done any of the reading bits of the lessons. They tell you explicitly not to do them in your car, which seems sound advice. I’m doing the Pimsleur program, and while I think I’m going along at a good clip it’s also frustrating. It’s entirely different from the way I learned German in the classroom; I don’t understand the parts of speech and I don’t know standard rules of conjugation or anything. I mean, I’m figuring some of it out, but it’s completely not focused on that. It’s also frustrating realizing how much I have left to learn, and how much I already know in German. It’s very tempting to switch back to that — to work on perfecting my slipping knowledge there. I know Spanish is more useful in America, but I already know so much German. I don’t know.

I spent an hour on the elliptical yesterday, which was nice, though I feel a little bad that I just did the 1 program twice rather than pushing myself with the 2. I’m just now finally getting over the soreness of Monday’s ass-kicking. Never again will I take a few weeks off and then go full-on back into lifting. Ouch. I desperately need it, though.

I’m going to miss the elliptical when I move out. I’m considering buying my own, though it’s a huge space commitment when it’s likely any apartment complex will have a fitness room with one. I don’t think I can afford a gym membership at this point, as much as I’d like one. That and cable are luxuries I think I’ll have to forgo; the internet is teetering on that line too.

Rosh Hashanah starts Monday at sundown. I’m not remotely Jewish, but I think I could use a new year celebration right now, so I’ve been gathering recipes. Ginger plum sauteed chicken thighs, sweet and sour succotash, orange honey cake, cranberry nut rugalach. Though I’m not a big fan of walnuts and I read somewhere that nuts are to be avoided on Rosh Hashanah; something about the Hebrew letters and sin. That’s probably a pretty strict orthodox thing, though.

Last night I dreamt I was going skydiving with Katie and Kim and about fifteen other people. To get to the right height we all clung to a rope ladder dangling from the bottom of a helicopter. Much of the dream consisted of rising; I was at the bottom of the chain of people, enjoying the big openness of the sky and the clouds. But instead of making it all the way up to the proper altitude we started going back down. We ended up all being draped out on the ground (there was some brief concern on my part, as I was at the very bottom of the stack of people and so would be the one impacting the ground first). Someone up near the top of the chain had made the mistake of looking down, which had freaked him out and so we’d all been unable to go. You were never supposed to look down.

Katie and Kim and some of the others and I all piled into a big SUV and took it back to Katie’s house, where we were going to hang out with about half the group of would-be skydivers. Katie was in her robe in her kitchen and the mid-morning light was coming in big and warm and bright and she was laughing about something, alight in that way she has, and we hugged and it was lovely and just what I needed.