Grabar

Grabar: to record.  As in, when my host mom was on the phone with the internet company and they told her that, even though my internet was doing funky things and we suspected something had happened to up the price, that was perfectly normal and she definitely wouldn't have to pay any more than she already was, I said, "¿Has grabado la conversación?"  Did you record the conversation?  So you can present it later in court when it turns out they were lying to you?

Apparently, the internet companies here are all crooks.  First of all, there are about seven companies in total.  Of those, there is only one that will allow you to connect by cable—the rest, like what I'm using now, feed off the magical 3G network, the efficiency of which depends on how close you happen to be to a Vodafone tower.  They had a cable modem set up when I got here, with a little wireless router and everything, and that worked swimmingly.  But since that company has a monopoly on cable internet, they can do ridiculous things to their consumers, like make my host family sign a year-long contract with them and not tell them about it until a week after they had bought the damn thing.

Obviously, they weren't going to sign any year-long contract just so little ol' me could have my precious internet for four months.  I wouldn't want them to.  What a rip-off.

So they went with option B, Vodafone 3G.  It has only kind of been giving me problems, but a couple of the other girls in the program still don't have internet in their houses, which must be horrible, so I can't complain.

My host dad showed me the contract they wanted him to sign for the cable modem, and there was literally a page of fine print.  From what they've told me, it sounds like the people in the store will lie outright to you about what they're doing and what you're getting.  And my poor host parents don't know the first thing about the internet, and I don't know how to talk about the internet in Spanish, so the whole thing has just been a major pain in the you-know-where.

Anyway.  The internet is working now, so I shall take advantage of it.

On a side note, I miss the sound of my coffee maker.  Of course they have coffee here, but the apparatus they use is like... a little tea kettle.  The water goes in the bottom, the coffee grounds go in a sieve-like thing in the middle, and then you screw on the top half and put the whole thing on the stove.  The coffee ends up in the top half when you're done.  I'll take a picture of it.  Maybe this is a Real Life Percolator?  I don't know.  But I miss Mr. Coffee.

Here are a couple of pictures for your visual entertainment.  They are up on Facebook, to which I believe all of my current Loyal Followers have access, but in case you didn't notice them, these are the highlights:

My street.  I live way down at the other end, but all the houses look pretty much the same.  I'll get a close-up one day soon.

Plaza de Cervantes in downtown Alcalá.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Madrid.  I think it's a fountain, but it could just be a monument.  Anyway, I love it.

I'm going in search of botas and school supplies today, and I think I'll be in Madrid again at some point this weekend.  Lots more pictures to come, so don't touch that dial!