pows and wows

Back in a wonderful place I once lived during that magical time known as "senior year", we would sometimes gather around our little wooden kitchen table at night and tell our pows and wows of the day. Basically, you say one "pow" (bad thing) that happend in your day, and then end on a good note with one "wow".

I really loved that, perhaps because my childhood home had quite the kitchen-hangout culture. But everyone knows...sitting around the kitchen table is a blessed, blessed thing. Especially if it's a warm wooden table.

Spaniards go above and beyond in this aspect during the wintertime, and they do this using this UFO-shaped electric heater called a brasero. Placed under the kitchen table, or any table really, with a heavy blanket thrown over, it exudes warm heaven underneath (where your lower-half is neatly tucked in).

And what happens? Everyone migrates to the table. There might be a few gone missing..a stray uncle doing his thing.. the teenagers upstairs on the computer... This is especially in the case of there being more than 10 members present, as there almost always are at the Almendros home on Sunday afternoons.

Thanks to Carmen, Consuelo, Pilar, and of course, the brasero, I picked knitting back up on Sunday, and am feeling really good about it. I even learned a new pattern!

You know, this atmosphere is the perfect place to really get into the winter mode. With my three female mentors casually giving tips and correcting clumsy errors... nine year old Claudia lazily playing cards with whoever will join.. Alex reading a Nintendo magazine... one or two snoozing (sitting up) on the couch.... Well, family feels good.

Anyway, here's a pow and a wow of Tuesday, in reverse order:

Wow: First private class got cancelled. Didn't make money, nor did I have time to go home before my other lesson...but I did get to hole up in the Getafe library for an hour and a half :)

Pow:Fell asleep in my second lesson. I haven't been sleeping much lately...err.. luckily my student is a little boy. It's not my fault his mother keeps it so warm in his house (oddly enough, there is a brasero at the table we study at !) I don't think he noticed when I all of the sudden read something totally invented which was a mix between two or three or maybe even four words from two different lines...or that my eyes went sort of cross for a mili-second, or when I immediately woke back up after a quarter of a second's sleep, heart beating rapidly, as if I had almost just crashed the truck or something).

But to still end on a good note, I hope everyone's wows dominated their pows today!