On a Spanish TV show, a woman called Guadalupe has asked for help in finding a long-lost friend. Guadalupe lost touch with her best friend Lucia when she started spreading rumors and saying mean things about Lucia. Now she wants to apologize for her meanness and get back in touch.

The program found Lucia and showed Guadalupe an interview with her former friend.

“This is your friend Lucia,” the show host announced. “She is here to meet you! What do you think?”

“God, she really let herself go!” Guadalupe exclaimed. “She looks horrible.”

Moral of the story: time doesn’t cure aggression. It makes it worse.

Here is the beautiful Indian blanket I told you about:

 

And here are two ultra cute small vases:

 

And here are the embroidered tablecloths:

 

My body has understood the time change to mean that I now need to sleep both during the day and in the night. In between the bouts of sleeping, however, I managed to visit Madrid’s phenomenal flea market called El Rastro:

 

“How much are you saying these are?” I kept asking a gentleman who was selling beautiful embroidered table napkins for 3 euro.

The gentleman must have thought I was trying to haggle. “I can give you a discount,” he said hastily.

Everything I saw in tourist souvenir stores can be found in El Rastro at about 1/10 of the price.

Of course, I bought everything in sight including a beautiful Indian blanket that I saw costing exactly 5 times more in St. Louis. And then I started walking along the beautiful little streets of Madrid’s city center.

 

The photo was taken on a beautiful Sunday morning when everything was still closed. Including these cute stores:

 

 

Finally, I arrived at Plaza Mayor which, as usual, is filled with tourists and numismatists. Numismatists are very special people. And so are philatelists who can also be found at Plaza Mayor on Sundays.

 

If you don’t think this is beautiful, I don’t know what is wrong with you.

 

Of course, I decided to be as touristy as I could and had chocolate con churros on Plaza Mayor:

 

This beautiful experience was somewhat marred by the thoughts of how much darling N. would have loved dunking these delicious pastries into the hot chocolate.

My sister is arriving on Monday morning and I can’t wait because she will finally feed me. I still haven’t figured out where to eat around here. If it weren’t for the nice Turkish people who, to my greatest joy, have opened döner kebap stores on every corner of every street in Europe, I would have starved in Madrid.

Student writes: “In both of these short stories, female characters are the ones who cheat on their husbands. This is strange because normally men cheat while women remain faithful.”

I comment: “Who do these men cheat with, then? Other men? What if they are heterosexual?”

This is, of course, a male student.

Oh youth, oh innocence.