Barring any amazing events that warrant documenting, this will be my last post from Granada. Here´s a shout out to Molly, Marité, Robin, Laura, Shanika, Diane, Gina, Beth, Oliver, Sean, Lauren, Kynae, Joann, Amalia, and all my crazy professors. See most of you in September, and to all those who I won´t, you´ll be sorely missed.

Top five things about Granada, leaving out the obvious things like "I learned a lot," and "Gee I´m sure excited to start school," not to mention such sweeping generalities such as "The Culture":

1. Tapas- finger food dinner for the price of your drink. How much better can it get? Start with a coke, get a potato with garlic mustard on it. A lemon soda for a second round, get the most delicious bite-sized hamburger you´ve ever had. Arab tapas, Mexican tapas, brie with honey on it, it just goes on and on. All of my dreams of massive weight loss went right down the toilet.

2. Spanish people- yes, I suppose this technically violates my omission of cultural generality, so I´ll add to the category, "including citizens of the EU who are here on vacation," because they´re just as fun. Seriously, you gotta love ´em. If they´re not running you down on their moped (be-mulleted girlfriend on the back), they´re making you their best friend for life. Granted, nobody moves when you´re walking right toward them on the street, but I never expected to meet such a wide collection of interesting bastards in a mere five weeks. Bless you all and your amazing talent for relaxation and staying up until three every night.

3. The World Cup- be it Germany v. Australia or Mexico v. France, I could always go into my local tv bar to cheer for...whoever. Truth be told, most games I really didn´t give a crap who won, but the fun came in oohing, sweating, clinching and cheering for the country whose colours flecked the cheeks of the onlookers. Or against them, if the case turned up, and it did, once or twice. But I lived to tell the tale, so...

4. Lemon Soda- no complicated explanations, here. The stuff is delicious and you can´t get it state side. Darn you, FDA!

5. Federico García Lorca- what a guy. Check him out.

Top Five Things I Could Have Done Without:

1. Americans. I realize the irony of this. We´re everywhere. Granada in particular, though, has an amazingly high student population and thus an amazingly high number of students who come in for a language course for a few weeks and, according to my personal experience, do little more than drink and stand under my window yellng for my German roomate to come out and get a drink with them. Oh yeah, and they all haunt the MacDo´s just down the street from my house. I think two of them are surrounding me right now, and one of them is looking at porn, and I´m being serious.

2. Lack of Air Conditioning- What a wuss I am, but dammit, when it´s 100+ out there every day, it´s nice to have somewhere to go to get out of the heat. There isn´t.

3. Distance from my wife. Sheri, I love you dearly and am greatly anticipating seeing you again. Come out here and we´ll travel together, though in the off-season when we can separate ourselves from the heathen mobs.

4. Homework. We had a lot of it. I´d rather we didn´t, despite the purported "leg up" we´re getting on the opening semester of our program in California.

5. There´s this nasty clog in the drain on the floor of our bathroom that makes it so water runs out of the bathroom and into the entry way and on into the living room at times. Seeing as how we don´t have a mop that works, it not only sucks, it´s a major drag.

End Transmission.