The rain in Spain...

...does not fall mainly on the plains. And whoever said that was smoking crack. The rain in Spain falls mainly in Santander. It's apparently been raining here pretty much non-stop since September. I've landed myself in the Spanish equivalent of Seattle. So at least I can say this is quickly feeling like home. And it's lushly green and beautiful - if you can stand to be out long enough to enjoy it.

I got up this morning, got all ready for work, made coffee with my newly borrowed italian coffee pot that took some admirable gesturing, a poor attempt at my spanish, and a hail mary call to Isa to acquire from Carmen at the front desk, and was about to walk out the door when the sky exploded. That's the best I can describe the apocalyptic sound and downpour that came from the heavens. Thunder and lightening and heavy rain that I later found out also produced an inch of pea-sized hail. Folks here promise this is unusual weather for Santander, and I'm waiting for this oddity to go away. The 10 minute walk to work is all uphill which is challenging on an inch of loose ice with rivers of melt-off running down the sidewalk. It's unfortunate that the safest place to walk without slipping was in the rivers of runoff because my shoes were not so water proof. So dear, sweet Marian sat me down at a heater while one of the students from another lab ran off to fetch me a pair of Crocs from the medical students' changing room. I was impressed that he got my size right and clomped around the rest of the day in pale blue plastic slippers. But I am now the proud owner of a pair of spanish galoshes. Botas de agua - or at least that's what I'm calling them since they're my new water boots. The rest of me was quite dry with my raincoat and umbrella though the tiny cheap umbrella I brought along kept turning inside out in the gale force wind and threatened to turn me into Mary Poppins...

I also made impressive shopping trip #2 to the supermercado and managed to find everything on my list while resisting the urge to look like a crazy lady roaming up and down the aisles looking at all of the alien food items. Canned anchovies and tuna seem to be *the thing* here, so those might be on my lab list in addition to the turron that I'll be lynched if I forget. And they store milk *and* eggs at room temperature on shelves here. In celebration of my purchases, I rewarded myself with a bottle of grapefruit juice, though in hindsight I seem to have jumped the gun on that one. Turns out I bought "papel higienico" (toilet paper) instead of "toalles de papel" (paper towels) and now my dishes smell like flowers. Oops. In my defense, it's cheap toilet paper that looks like paper towel and was stacked two rolls each three across, so I thought it was three small rolls of paper towels. At least I didn't make the mistake the other way around.

I have also learned that Spanish coffee induces Parkinson's disease. So while I can usually handle an American cup o' jo and do my surgeries, not so much here. And since I'm here for my steady hands, no coffee for me until the weekends. Too bad cause the Spanish coffee and jetlag had just convinced me to give up my four month abstinence, and I may be going through the DTs all over again...