"My room has no strength"

Yep, that's what I said. That's apparently why Carmen looked at me so strangely. When I told the lab folks what happened, they started laughing at me. I looked up all of the words in my handy little phrasebook, but I should have looked up "electricity" instead of "power". Apparently the literal translation for "power" doesn't cover electrical power. Only physical power. Oops. So now I'm looking up spanish words but then looking the same word up in the "spanish-english" section to confirm that the meaning is really what I want to say. Oh well, at least I figured out where the breaker box is which is good. It seems that the burners on my stove are the problem. If I have both going at once, it trips the breaker.

So I am now fully recovered from my second all night out partying with the Spanish. It's the first on this trip but pretty much a redux of my experience in El Escorial in August. A group of us started in a little bar in the market downtown and then moved on to a place for "pinchos" for dinner. Pinchos are a type of tapas. Basically, it's a bunch of stuff on slices of baguette or piles of stuff in little pastry cups. They're totally delish. Absolutely fabulous. And unless you eat enough of them, not. filling. at. all. It was me, Rushi, Irene, and two other gals they know. The girls (me excluded) were all eating super slowly like little birds while Rushi and I hovered around the edge drooling thinking "are you going to eat that?" They ordered three rounds of food (one thing per person per round) and then were ready to move on to the next location. My first thought was "Sweet. These were tasty appetizers, and now we're off to dinner." Nope. We were off to another bar. To be followed by another and then a dance club until they upped the lights and shooed everyone out at 4:30 am. So by the time I got home, famished, at about 5 am I was still awake enough to throw together a sandwich to curb the hunger. I so want to go back to that place with Rushi and/or Marta, belly up to the bar, and just eat my fill of those things. Super yum.

Yeah, so I managed to have my early morning post-bar snack and stay up late (early?) enough to re-hydrate and metabolize some of the alcohol in my blood stream so that Sunday was not so painful. Albeit, I woke up at 11 am and napped again from noon to nearly 2, but it sounds like I was better off than most of the others. Sundays are gloriously lazy here. It's easy to lounge without feeling guilty when there are few other options. Besides watching "Abre Los Ojos" which is an awesome movie. It's the Spanish version (original version) of "Vanilla Sky" directed by Amenebar. He also did "The Others" with Nicole Kidman and (my favorite) "The Sea Inside". If you haven't seen that last one, go rent it. It's a wonderful flick. It's in the same vein as "Talk to Her" and "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" - also great movies.