Las ratas del aire

Miercoles el 28

I have made 4 general observations about Cádiz thus far.
1) I hate pigeons. My teacher from K2 called them “las ratas del aire,” which means air rats. That’s what they are. Disgusting. And they’re everywhere. Every plaza that they visit, they surround you, fly around on you, and poop all around you. One took a shit on Paul’s computer the first day that he was here, and they have yet to redeem themselves. When god made pigeons, he messed up big time. Marisa and I plan to spike bread with alka seltzer and watch them all explode. I’ll let you know how it goes.

2) Cádiz has an amazing citywide sanitation program. I will tell you why. There is probably 1 dog to every 10 people here, and every single day, dogs shit in the streets. There is no grass for them to poop on, so they just do it wherever they want. Owners do not ever bother to pick it up, so it’s just everywhere. Also, if people can’t make it home to go to the bathroom, they pee in the streets, so we never know if the pee on the streets belongs to an animal or a human. A mixture of cigarette butts, pee and dog shit. However, every night, amazingly, the magical sanitation fairies clean up all the garbage from the streets, like, literally there are vacuum cars and trucks that wash the streets. It’s awesome. My only concern is Carnaval. I don’t know if they clean during Carnaval, but they really should, because after one day of the pre-celebration the streets were literally covered in pee and garbage. Either they’ll clean it, or we’ll be up to our knees in basura. I will also let you know how this goes.

3) Babies and dogs. Merz, listen up. Dogs here are the cutest dogs in the world, all sizes, breeds, ages. Some are scruffily, some are really unfortunate looking, but they’re all the cutest dogs I’ve ever seen in my life, hands down. Not just the dogs, but the babies too. I kid you not, American babies suck compared to Spanish babies. THEY ARE SO F ING CUTE. They all ride in strollers until they’re like 5, and they’re parents bundle them up in sleeping bag type things and hats and scarves, so they’re sitting in their strollers with all of their limbs sticking out like cute little starfish. They probably all have heat stroke, but they’re so cute while they’re having heat stroke. And they all have little bikes and toys that they play with and scream Spanish words in their cute little baby Spanish voices. God they’re cute. Marisa is trying to start an album of cute babies and dogs, but it’s really hard to take pictures of peoples’ babies and dogs when you’re already weird for being American. We will have to think of a good way to get around this without getting arrested.

I can now understand pretty much everything my family says, and what people in the streets are talking about. The challenge now is being able to speak back.

Last weekend we all went to Seville. It was AMAZING. We saw la catedral, which is enormous and beautiful. The ceilings had to be about a million feet tall and there were old paintings and various religious artifacts from the 17th century. I’ve never seen anything like it. Also, Alcazar, which was the craziest most amazing building I’ve ever seen. It’s over 1000 years old, like pretty much everything is here. It used to be a Roman fortress, but the Spaniards took it over and turned it into a palace. I have pictures of everything that I will post as soon as I get my package with my USB cord!

I miss and love you all! You’ll be hearing from me soon, because I usually do something really stupid every day.