5.15.2008

Feeling grateful for the help


The past several days I've been struggling with a nasty case of tonsillitis. It's no fun when you're not feeling well, and much less so when you are living by yourself. So it was tremendously encouraging and greatly appreciated to be receiving so many calls from friends here. They kept checking in, could they do this, do that. Wonderful. Thanks friends!  I was brought vitamins, medicine, food, reading material...  Asun's calls have been the best medicine of all. And the antibiotic seems to have really kicked in now, so I'm finally starting to feel halfway human again. Monday morning I was definitely not feeling human. I woke up identifying with Gregor Samsa, Kafka's protagonist in The Metamorphosis, the main difference being that Gregor was alive and acutely aware of his surroundings. I'm not sure if I felt more like a dead cockroach or a sack of rotten potatoes covered in molasses. Today I'm feeling much more like myself. I'm not 100% certain that's a good thing, but I'll go out on a limb and rate myself higher than either a dead cockroach or a sack of rotten potatoes covered in molasses. Speaking of which, last Saturday night we had an end-of-year dinner with the students at the Bilmore and were served an interesting salad of endives with fresh cheese, avocado and miel de caña, which is kind of like a very light molasses.  That may not sound too appealing, but it was actually quite wonderful. Miel de caña is a kind of cane syrup that is produced locally. It's extraordinarilly good with lightly battered and sauteed slices of eggplant.  It's a sad, sad evening in Malaga: ETA's latest victim was from here, from El Palo, where lots of our students live.  The terrorists leave behind another widow, this one with a six year-old son. And we're also distraught over the tragic plight of the earthquake victims in China and the storm victims in Burma.

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