here, there, everywhere

In Madrid, where I shouldn´t write too much since I´m on the communal, free internet in my hotel, and where I am probably over-enjoying the easy accesibility of upside-down punctuation (¡¿) on the keyboard. This is the last leg of my trip, which is a bit sad (though I miss home like crazy) and so far I´m having a great time exploring and trying to pretend like I know how to speak Spanish (I have a really horrible ability to nod like I understand when in fact I don´t, which seems ... ominous, but I´ve also been able to more or less politely get by, if not interact overmuch, so, hooray for dimly recalling those four years of high school Spanish and not starving to death or sleeping on the street.

In hopes of at least marginally improving my inexcusably bad Spanish, I actually bought a copy of the first Harry Potter book in Spanish (along with a Spanish to English dictionary) today, in large part because I´ve almost finished the only book I brought with me and the only English books for sale were $20 paperbacks by Michael Crighton or Patricia Connolly and the like. I spent a good 30 minutes painstakingly making my way through the first two pages, dictionary in hand, and can confidently say that I a) have spent an unreasonable amount of time feeling almost sympathetic for the Dursleys, with their boring ties and tuneless humming and as-of-yet unexplored tendencies towards child abuse, and b) know the Spanish word for drill! So much better than a Michael Crighton book. I don´t really know if this will help me communicate while I´m actually here (unless Voldemort stages an attack against Muggles, in which case I´m all over that) but at least my brain can stop atrophying at least a little bit and maybe I can even make friends with a dentist. Or something.