herro

the cool, drizzly weather this morning made me think of two things this morning. first off, i wish i were on the cape, or just on the ocean in general. i would love to just sit out wrapped in a blanket with some hot coffee and read a book.

secondly it made me think of one morning while at home when kasia, ben, (maybe chris) and i went to 'a taste of heaven' in andersonville for breakfast. i guess the weather was somewhat similar to today. i'm hoping we can have a repeat when i'm home (in a day and a month) for thanksgiving.

i've started to read a book for leisurely purposes entitled 'night train to lisbon'. the back cover review mentioned 'the shadow of the wind', a really great historical fiction mystery set in franco-era barcelona, so i thought i'd enjoy it. so far it is pretty good - a swiss philologist who teachers greek, latin, and hebrew at a lyceum randomly picks up and leaves his town after a chance encounter with a portuguese woman. he then picks up a book in portuguese and becomes obsessed with the language and heads to lisbon. that's where i'm at so far - it seems as though he's having a midlife crisis, but something deeper than that.

it makes me want to just pack up shop and move to Catalonia - I could support myself teaching English, rent a flat from some elderly Catalan woman, and get skinny from only consuming coffee. a wonderful life would i leave...

back to reality, i am pretending to re-immerse myself in grad school work. unfortunately the classes i am taking haven't really panned out to what i expected. 'linguistic structure of english', though good for my resume for fulbright hopes of teaching english, hasn't taught me much. it feels very elementary - i can't even describe it.

'comparative development of the romance languages' is in theory very interesting, but the professor has structured the class poorly and bounces back and forth from topic to topic and really i just have no idea what is going on. luckily for my final project i get to work alone on topic with catalan, so that may prove rewarding.

'early slavic linguistics and texts' is the only exception. though my most difficult class, it is really fascinating and i have actually acquired factual information about the structure, phonology, morphology, etc. of the language. i may take sanskrit after all, next semester. on va voir.

tonight i am hopefully seeing a movie with bobo, possibly 'quarantine', which looks reasonably frightening.

hola

he de començar a escriure més sovint, llavors aquí estic de nou...

this morning at 11 I had my on-campus interview for the Fulbright to Andorra, and I must say I think it went really well. my panel consisted of professor thomas (head of fulbright and my linguistics prof), professor rhodes (hispanic studies professor, and apparently catalan speaker), professor shepherd (my comparative romance professor) and some other man I don't recall. basically I spend the entire time explaining the linguistic, historical, and educational aspects of Andorra, since almost no one has any familiarity with the tiny country. i think it played in my favor in that everyone saw just how interested i am in going to this place.

the second half of the interview was conducted in catalan and spanish. i had no idea professor rhodes spoke catalan (not that i know her), so she ended up conducting both the catalan and spanish portions. for as stressful as having a trilingual interview was, i loved every minute of it. and that is why i am going to love Andorrashe commented that i have a Lleida accent, which is hot. Lleida (or Lerida) is an Eastern Spanish city. i think i did well in both languages, though looking back i said the word for 'winter' (hivern) instead of 'summer' (estiu) when describing when I learned Catalan. oh well.

other than that things have been ok. i went to the doctor today to get the thing on my leg checked out. a stream of liquid nitrogen was a simple solution. i now have a doctor in boston. for whatever reason i am exhausted today, so i think i shall now retire to bed.

bona nit a tothom