El Dia de la Hispanidad - Columbus Day

17th day, Sunday, 10 oct

The weather has been a bit 'under the weather' - no pun intended - and that could only boost up the need to work at the AES implementation. Confident progress towards ShiftRows stage was made.

18th day, Monday, 11 oct
 
Manana es dia de fiesta - consequently, el dia antes de la fiesta es dia de fiesta. I'm positive this recursive looking sentence has been understood by everybody. I could only use this time to progress towards the MixColumns stage and Key Schedule in AES. I actually had a conversation with Andrei that scolded me on the grounds that I do not know what 'free time' is. What a strange concept.

19th day, Tuesday, 12 oct
 
El dia de la Hispanidad is today, my friends! In the United States, it's called "Columbus Day", in Southern America - "El Dia de la Raza" -  it celebrates the day in which Cristopher Columbus, following the orders of Isabela I of Castile (a great visionary) set foot on America. In his health, we drank Sangria, and honestly the girls and I turned a bit rosy-cheeked. No sooner we realized that the Sangria has 7% alcohol than we realized we were getting happier and happier.

I don't fully realise its importance  what with me being a Romanian patriot, but  the Spanish speaking world surely takes pride in being quite vast.

20th day, Wednesday, 13 oct

Boring Nuevas Tecnologias de Programacion theory class looming in the clouds. I thought I would dress elegantly -  I tend to do that at least once a week, a whim of mine - and apparently guys here were a bit surprised. Girls tend to dress...trendy and cool, and ladies over 40 are really elegant and beautiful, it seems a mixture is unusual.

Since Oana had some serious problems with her wifi driver on Ubuntu (it seems all bad luck befalls her), Jose was kind enough as to help her solve her problem - many of our asignaturas here are linux based so Oana was really happy when she had it fixed.  It so happened that it rained today. At sunset, you could see a sort of beautiful red sky - red granada-ish iron dust mixed in the atmosphere - with two rainbows. Absolutely breathtaking.

21st day, Thursday, 14 oct

Iasi - my home town in Romania - celebrates  today along with the thousands of pilgrims the day of Saint Paraskeva (Sfanta Paraschiva). The days of Jassy, a time of praying, a time of going out with your friends/classmates/family and watch the entertaining programs the mayor laid out, a time when merchants from all parts of Romania gather in Iasi to expose their local sweets, national costumes and so on. The smell of icercream, mici (cylindrical barbecued meatballs would be an accurate description) and beer lingers everywhere and the town central plaza teems with people. Although many of my friends say it's not that much fun, what with all the crowds and various types of society strata mixing, I relish it because it's a singular, out of the ordinary period.

If I were at home, I and Silviu would pretend to go watch the fireworks together, but actually go in Taverna (a local rock pub, where we feel like home) and miss the fireworks altogether over a beer.

But I'm not at home, consequently I and the girls just got on with our usual school activities.

22nd day, Friday, 15 oct

Cleaning day, working and reading. (When I say reading, I say Naruto manga reading.)

Let's eat

9th day, Saturday

Saturday was "doing chores" day - we washed clothes (they dried in 1 hour because the sun is relentless here), we had our basin in the bath repaired and paid the rent (half, for September) to the landlord. Very conscientious indeed. I am most certain that the landlord noticed how the air in the apartment now smells like jasmin and soap, and not dust and cigarette smoke.

Before us, some girls lived in the apartment - but I can't fathom how! The washing machine and the oven hadn't been used - neither the shower for that matter - supposedly they sent everything to their mothers for washing and only ate pizza but still, we had to use gloves in the beginning.

In the evening, we went downtown and marveled at the numerous Chinese bazaar/stores that basically had the same products but many customers. I bought myself a Chinese gown (I think I have a ball dress for this year's BA graduation party) and - Silviu, writhe in pain - it is pink (other colours were much more adequate as to what I like but the sizes were either too big or too small). A blonde makes do with pink, how cliché.

PS (#1): It turns out that the truck with gasoline cylinders comes today, not Thursdays how we expected (this is how we get hot water and fire granted that the apartment is older than my dad by a considerable amount of years). You basically have to get out to the balcony when you hear the ruckus they make and yell "1 (2) bombones aqui" - you pay them 1 euro and they bring the cylinders to the piso where you live. We have 3 full cylinders right now, so we're good.

10th day, Sunday

Today, the most incredible thing happened! The wind blew all day and the sky actually tried hard to be cloudy. I also noticed that if it were really cold, I would freeze in my room, because the window is not tightly closed and it lets wind in.

Meals have consisted so far in vegetarian soups, vegetable salads, cereals and mils and fruit. We decided to go wild today since it's  Saturday and spent the morning doing pancakes with finetti (yummy:)) and spaghetti with chicken meat, champignons and grated cheese.

In the evening we went to the Catedral Real located downtown and attended the shortest service in my life. It lasted only 30 minutes. Many old people and no choir but peaceful nonetheless. I think next Sunday I'll go back to the neighbourhood church "Nuestra Senora de la Consolacion" though.

I have put together a faculty schedule and it looks very bad - they emphasize here more the teoricos and so far, less the practicas. I have 6 subjects to attend, each with at least 2 teoricos (lectures) and only one practica (lab). For instance, IA is packed with 4h of lecture and 2h of practica.

I just have to get through 8h of Spanish classes tomorrow.